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Guide for Elder Wannabe's
Here are some suggestions for those wanting (or "feeling called") to enter the ministry. I've learned by experience that some of these items would be helpful to candidates and others pursuing ordination. Other items represent what I believe might be helpful. In any case, I offer them up for consideration for students and others to perhaps avoid some of the mistakes I've already made and many others have also perhaps made along the way:
1) Find the janitor in your church and offer to help him with his responsibilities–take the majority of them over if you can. Do the work he'd rather not do. If your church doesn't have a janitor, volunteer to take over the work in addition to other gainful employment you may already (hopefully) have. Hopefully, you'll be in a church where there is either a lot to vacuum or mop. Use this time to meditate on God's Word and how you can work humbly for others. If you're blessed enough to be the janitor of a church, don't take any money that the church would like to give unless they insist. If they do pay you, give everything back on Sunday in the offering and don't ever talk about it. Or, use a portion to buy good books or music for later study.
2) Do not go directly to seminary out of college or do not go to seminary at all. Spend two or three years working and saving money. Having a job while going to college doesn't count and don't pretend you work as hard as the average man just because you're going to college on your own and paying for it by working in the meantime. Don't quit this post-college job until you've gotten good enough at it to be promoted a couple of times. Realize that your job in the ministry is to deal with people who have to put up with everything you'd put up with in these couple of years and more–much more.
3) Remember that being ordained really doesn't do anything except confirm what is already a reality in your ministry–that is, if you even have a ministry or a reality that encompasses real ministry. Understand that the men who ordain you are just men and you all together don't add up to anything more than the one elderly lady in the back of the church who can't always make it because of her health but the prayers she offers to God after a life of service make her among the most important in your church.
4) Do not volunteer for pulpit supply in your church or in other churches. Volunteer for pulpit supply at nursing homes or hospital chapels. Not only will this provide you with the greatest way to learn how to speak in challenging environments, you will be exercising true religion by visiting "orphans and widows"–the forgotten of the church in this society–in their distress. Nothing could help your preaching more.
5) Find some set order of praying every morning and evening–noon too if there is room–and if there isn't room in your schedule for this just stop reading. Don't pursue the ministry. Don't curse a generation with the wickedness of your presence in the pulpit without prayer. In this day and age of funky spirituality–go with the old and proven stuff. No one drinks 2 year old Scotch. Don't think you can freestyle prayer with our Lord until it actually happens as an outflow of the Lord's work in your life. Try Morning and Evening Prayer via the Book of Common Prayer and steep in the wisdom of the Fathers on this one. Find a parish in your city that has at least one weekday where either Morning or Evening Prayer is offered on a weekday and do everything in your power to be there every week.
6) If you really feel called to the ministry or want to be an elder, put off your own desire to do so until people actually force you into it. Continue to say no for years and don't just accept leadership positions because they're offered to you. Don't buy the mantra offered to young men that you ought to be in the ministry because you're nice and intelligent and well-spoken. What a load of you know what. Some of the worst ministers in the world are the smartest and the sneakiest. Prove yourself by serving the congregation in ways that no one sees and few care about. Remember #4 above–and find other similar ways of working hard at it.
7) Any extra money you have after spending everything possible on your wife, use to buy the best in sacred music or books. For the first ten years, you'll likely buy all the wrong books but buy them anyway and read through them with the understanding in the next ten to fifteen years you may very well disagree with what they advocate. Start buying books by author and not by the publishing house where you find them. Learn the good authors to buy and read through everything they've written–then take the people they reference in their own works and read through their sources as well.
8) Read a good fiction book at least once a year and don't always busy yourself with reading theological history, philosophy, or theology. Take at least three months off every year and read nothing but your Bible (all at once or interspersed throughout the year).
9) Take a foreign language besides the biblical languages. A European language if possible but one which will force you to appreciate the best in other cultures.
10) Read your Bible more than you study it. Study one good passage or topic a month while you still have time. But always have your Bible open, reading, praying, and then thinking about it.
11) Live the lifestyle of a mendicant monk, but treat your wife like a queen. Don't make her financially support you through school. Do it yourself even if it takes three years longer than it would otherwise. Christ gave Himself up for the church and ministers should do likewise in spades for their wives.
12) Learn to read music. Sing in a choir regularly for years or learn to play an instrument. Go hear the best in music (note, this does not mean attend a rock concert) and find ways to support exceptional music in your community. Take the hit and buy season tickets to the symphony or the opera instead of drinking Starbucks every blasted day of your life.
13) If you decide you really have to go to seminary (and this decision you should weigh carefully because it's not for every minister), find a seminary that is intimately connected with and responsible to a local church. Make sure it's more like a monastery of very committed men instead of some place where academic concerns reign. The pastorate is not about being a scholar. If you want to be a scholar go to a good school and become a teacher but whatever you do don't become a seminary professor. Look at schools like Andrewes Hall here in Phoenix where men are taught in conjunction with a local REC church and guided spiritually by very wise men. In fact, look very closely at any program the REC offers. It's likely the right one.
14) Do not go to an undergraduate Bible school. Go to a State run school. Learn to value those who are completely different than you are and learn also to see the good in their ideas.
15) Move to a city if you are in a small town. You can go back to the small town later (DV) but you need the difference in the air that a large complex environment like a city provides. God's work is being done chiefly in the cities and we shouldn't forget that most of those we are called to minister to find themselves living in and among the cities of this world.
16) Ask yourself. Are you really sure you want to become an elder or minister? If the answer is yes you likely shouldn't. Sounds unbelievable but true. Not to say you can't, but spend your time serving in your church instead of trying to "confirm" a call by asking every person you respect what they think about it or what they think God's will is for you. Let the people of God lift you up at the right time. If you are truly called to the ministry, it will happen in due time as God ordains and the people of your parish desire. Remember, though, to make sure to say no to them at least two or three times. If you aren't called to the ministry after all, you will have still lived a life of service to our Lord and rightly so–that is no small thing and in fact it is likely the greater accomplishment.
By Kevin D. Johnson
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