 The Call and the Responsibility
Hywel R. Jones, Ph.D.
Dear Alumni,
I have never met most of you because I have only been at
Westminster Seminary California for five years. But I am glad to
have this opportunity of making contact with you now and
especially with those of you who are actively involved in the
Gospel ministry. Those of you who are serving the Lord in other
capacities will not mind my singling out those who are ministers
for special attention, I am sure. Having studied here you will
not need convincing how important the ministry of the word is in
the life and witness of the church, and I hope that you know
that the Lord does not disdain the service for him that you are
engaged in. So I hope that you all will know the Lord’s help as
you serve him and see some of his blessing on your labors.
From time to time I tell students that there is an unseen
line that they will cross when they enter the work and office of
the pastoral ministry. Of course the test (or one of the tests)
of a good seminary education is that it does prepare one for
much that is to be encountered in the work of the gospel and
also provides one with resources of various kinds that enable
one to respond to such opportunities and trials. But however
good the seminary is (and WSC is the best in North America,
right?), there are two things that it cannot do. The first is
that it cannot provide one with a call and the second is that it
cannot prepare one fully for the realization that the
responsibility for the ongoing ministry of the word in all its
aspects is now in one’s own hands.
I hope that I am speaking in language that you can all
understand. There have been amusing moments in class when having
departed from my notes and used an idiom from my past, I find
that I am met by blank stares. On such occasions – which are
becoming fewer and fewer I may add – my immediate defence (note
the spelling!) is to say that I often feel as students do when I
hear them speaking. But a call to the work and a realization
that one is accountable to the Lord for how one engages in it
and what one actually does is lingua franca. It is the same in
American English as in English American and as in Welsh (well
almost!)
A call is a precious reality. It is at one and the same time
a constraint and a delight. It is something that translates
itself into a burden and a pleasure. One old friend used to say
that it is the best job on earth – with plenty of overtime! My
chief mentor is on record as saying that it is “the greatest and
highest calling that a man can ever have”. It acts like a vice
and yet it imparts life rather than crushes it. It is a
realization that one has been singled out from all eternity not
merely to become a Christian but to become an ambassador and
under-shepherd by the Head of the Church and not merely by a
particular congregation or denomination!!!
Often I have occasion to remind the students of one of my
favorite sections in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Christian is
in Interpreter’s house and sees a portrait of a man on the wall.
This is how Bunyan describes what he saw:
“It had eyes lifted up to heaven; the best of books in his
hand; the law of truth was upon his lip; the world was behind
his back. It stood as if it pleaded with men and a crown of gold
did hang over his head”.
When Christian asked who the “sober” man was (and that means
serious, not morose, but certainly not light-hearted or
flippant), Interpreter answered by saying that he was the one
who had been appointed to guide pilgrims to the Celestial City,
and that he could “beget children and nourish them as soon as
they were born”.
Such a conviction cannot be imparted by any seminary or by
any church for that matter. It does not come with a graduation
certificate nor even with licensure and ordination in a
denomination, though it may be imparted by means of any one of
them and confirmed by them all. I hope that your sense of having
been called by Christ has already proved a strength and comfort
to you in the service for the Lord.
But even though one is armed with a call and certificates and
is engaged in the work, we still cannot rest on our oars. In
addition to learning something about our people, we learn
something about ourselves – and that it is not only they who
have problems! We have to learn to cope with and to cure
ourselves. We have our frailties and our failures. We need to
take our own medicine, so to speak, and to depend on the Lord
for strength and wisdom, to seek pardon through the merit of
Jesus Christ’s blood, to take up the cross daily and follow in
Christ’s steps in accord with Scripture and to know his love and
compassion ourselves so that we may extend it to others in times
of doubt and danger and death. We need to remind ourselves that
he will never leave nor forsake us. The Christian ministry is
more (not less) of a fight, race and journey than the Christian
life.
Our prayer here is that the Lord will uphold, enrich and
empower you in your service for him more and more, and that he
will use you to the glory of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ in
the days ahead.
With Christian greetings and good wishes,
Hywel R Jones
Copyright 2006 Westminster Seminary
California, All rights reserved.
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