I posted this on my blog this morning, and wanted to share it here as well, because I think it needed to be said. (I’ll probably get my head shot off on my blog for it, but I am used to that! 😆 ) Hopefully there won’t be many bullets flying here. 🙂
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What Happened to the Call?
In 1994 I firmly believe I was called to be a pastor in full time ministry. Acting on that call and affimation from several people around me, not the least of which was from my atheistic mother(!). I enrolled in Bible College in 1995.
Bible College is an experience which I am convinced, all believers should have. On orientation day, the dean of students stood up in front of row upon row of eager faces and read from the scriptures.
“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”
But he replied, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.”
(Luke 22:31-33)
This was greeted with stunned silence. Of all the things we might have expected in a ‘welcome’ speech that verse was not one of them. It was, however, the honest truth.
A good Bible College will test your faith like nothing else! It will shake up your belief system, it will make you question everything you thought you knew for certain, it will toss you, it will sift you, it will chew you up and spit you out.
That’s what Bible College did to me. I didn’t lose my calling. I believe it is still there. What I did lose was most of my innocent, sheltered, pentecostal belief system.
It is amazing how one can drift through life, go to church every Sunday, listen to the sermon shake the pastor’s hand on the way out after the service, go for a coffee with friends after church and never — not once, stop to examine what you’ve heard and put it to the test in your own life and experience.
Bible College very quickly wakes you up from that slumber. It shows you just how important it can be to question what you hear on Sunday. It teaches you how to examine the things you hear, and it makes you — if you’re ready to let go of your security blanket, thirst to examine everything.
I started to do that. When I was studying hermeneutics, I started to pull some of the pet theologies out and give them a good solid once over. I started to discover that what I’d been taught was the rock solid unquestionable and inerrant truth about some core pentecostal values was possibly — no very probably not as iron clad as people would have me believe.
I’ve already talked in the past about my discoveries on the issues of homosesuality and the Bible, so I won’t bore you with the details here. Suffice it to say, I learned that not all that comes down from the pulpit is necessarily God’s own truth.
This put me in a quandary.
As a woman, I was already facing a lot of opposition from my fellow students, to the idea that I was called to the ministry and my husband was not. Women, at that point were rare in ministry in pentecostal churches. (A situation that has marginally improved since). So that was my first barrier to the ministry — who would accredit a woman?
Now, I began to honestly take stock of myself, I had to admit that there was also a second, and probably more daunting barrier. My sexual orientation.
Well, in the end, I was one of those that “satan” sifted as wheat. I dropped out of Bible College early in my third year, believing that it was no good wanting to pursue the ministry when I was if not unacceptable to God, then at least, and more importantly, unacceptable to the people who would be instrumental in any attempt at becoming accredited.
I struggled on, limping and in spiritual agony for a year or two after that, but my once regular attendance at church became more sporadic as time wore on and what was preached with monotonous regularity from the pulpits of most of the churches I became involved with, consistently failed to measure up with what my own studies and my heart told me was true.
Eventually, though, it all became too much, and I left the pentecostal movement around 1999.
I attended church sometimes, as the whim took me, visiting Baptist churches, Uniting Churches and various other denominations but never finding the vibrancy that I so loved about the pentecostal services I had attended since the 1970’s.
Sometimes, I would go to a pentecostal church and hide away in the back row and worship, making a quick getaway afterwards to avoid having to reveal anything about myself.
When I met my partner, Sandra, she was attending a Church of Christ where the pastor, Graham was accepting and affirming of all people regardless of orientation, creed or anything else. I attended that church with Sandra for a few months and I believe a lot of healing took place in that time.
I also attended the Brisbane MCC with her a couple of times, and that’s were some real healing happened and, slowly over that time up until now, I came to the understanding that God knew who I was all along. When God called me, I was gay. When I went to Bible College, I was gay, when I left Bible College and threw out my belief system, I was gay.
Now that I am slowly rebuilding my belief system, I’m still gay, but I know that God still knows who I am, and he hasn’t condemned me.
What happened to the call?
It’s still there.
In my last podcast, I played an interview with Anthony Venn-Brown about his book “A Life of Unlearning.” In the interview Anthony said: “Change will come … we’re still waiting for the first affirming pentecostal church in Australia, we don’t know which one it is yet, but it will happen.”
I pray for the hastening of that hour.
A small part of me dreams that I might someday yet, become the pastor of a church.
The call is still there, and I am ready to step up when the fullness of time comes.
Amen!
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