Is the Missionary Calling Biblical?
One of the great blessings for the church in the region that Nina and I worked in for 13 years was an annual one-week conference that we held at our regional base. Many traveled by helicopter, plane, boat ride, or some combination of the three. This made the conference quite a logistical feat, but the extra effort also sweetened those times a great deal.
One year, a question was posed to the gathered group: how did they know they were supposed to be missionaries? Was there something else, besides what they read in their Bibles and the confirmation of their church leadership, that caused them to become a missionary? It was a landslide: not one person who had come made it to the mission field by anything other than the conviction of what they read in their Bibles and their church agreeing that they should go.
Sadly, this isn’t always the case.
The Crisis of Calling
There has been no small amount of ink spilled on the topic of “calling.” In the world I inhabit, the topic of the “missionary call” is a regular one, especially among young people. The common rationale, spoken or implied, is that people want something concrete and tangible to anchor such a weighty decision.
There’s an understandable urgency behind the desire for a missionary call as well. The word of God is clear that His church is to be about spreading His name to all peoples, nations, and languages of the world (Matthew 28:16-20). Men and women who die in their sins do go to hell, even those who don’t ever get a chance to hear the gospel (Romans 1:18-20). These men and women cannot know and be reconciled to the God of the Bible unless someone goes to them and teaches them (Romans 10:14).
It’s generally taken for granted in evangelical circles that these “goers” cannot and should not go unless they are confirmed and sent as members of their church (Romans 10:15, Acts 13:2-3). Nevertheless, the question persists: is there some added confirmation, something additional to just the word of God and their church? Often it is the lack of this “additional confirmation” that holds so many back from going into missions.
I worry that when we look for guidance and confirmation outside the church and the Bible we can fall too easily into mysticism. It’s normal to look for further confirmation on big decisions: “Is she the right girl to marry?” “Should I go to that college?” “Is this job the right one?” Many of these are “wisdom calls.” It’s not a matter of evil or good. It’s a matter of whether this decision is wise in your situation. This is the beauty of God’s church. There’s a lot of wisdom in the counsel of good church leaders, especially those who labor to know their sheep well. But that too often doesn’t satiate the appetite that many have for something heard, seen, or felt in regard to making a key decision.
The desire for a “calling” stems, in part, from the mistaken idea that the Bible supports such an interpretation when it comes to ministry. Kevin DeYoung summarizes this well in an article examining how calling language is used in the Bible.
“We have an upward call in Christ to be with Jesus and to be like Jesus (Philippians 3:14). We have been called to freedom, not bondage (Galatians 5:13). God has saved us and called us to a holy calling (2 Timothy 1:9). He has called us to his own glory and excellence (2 Peter 1:3). Not many of us were called to noble things (in the world’s eyes), but, amazingly, we have been called to Christ (1 Corinthians 1:26). And if called, then justified, and if justified, then glorified (Romans 8:30). In other words, I do not see in Scripture where we are told to expect or look for a specific call to a specific task in life.”
The Bible does speak to calling, but not in the way that’s commonly used regarding missions.
So if the “missions call” terminology is faulty, how should those contemplating or committed to missions speak? Let me suggest two paths that can alleviate a lot of confusion and help potential missionaries who genuinely want to know what they should do.
Aspiration Rather Than Calling
Bobby Jamison, in his book The Path To Being A Pastor, advocates for the language of “aspiration.” This is quite helpful. Instead of “I feel like I’m being called to be a missionary” we use the language of “I aspire to being a missionary,” which tracks with what we find in scripture (1 Timothy 3:1).
When someone uses the terminology of calling, especially when it’s unqualified, it sounds like they had a private conversation with Jesus and the matter is pretty much settled. When someone says, “I aspire to be a missionary,” their local pastor has an implicit invitation to speak into that. Aspiring to something acknowledges that they’re not there yet but they are aiming, desiring, and pressing toward that goal. That’s a wonderfully humble posture that encourages all around them to hope and pray for the Lord’s blessing in that aspiration.
Internal and External Calling
Of course, “calling” is deeply entrenched in Christian vocabulary. It’s hard not to use the term. So, if someone still would like to use the language of “calling,” I would encourage them to speak in terms of an Internal Calling and an External Calling.
Internal calling is someone feeling a strong, humble, Bible-bound, gripping need to be involved in a ministry. As Spurgeon says, it ought to be “an intense, all-absorbing desire for the work”. This is something that will be clear and constant in their life. It is not a fluctuating, conference-reliant, seasonal mood. Instead it is a steady conviction that eats at them in a glorious Spirit-led way.
The external call is performed by the Christians in that person’s life, especially his or her pastors seeing and agreeing with someone’s internal call. Do they see that a missionary candidate has the gifts, the drive, the abilities, the character and the maturity to become a missionary? If the external call does not match the internal call, the external must take precedence.
I lead a missionary training school called Radius that has five campuses around the world. The students that speak English go to our campus just across the border in Mexico. Though not required for all mission work, one of the things we train missionary candidates in is how to learn a language. We use an easy language, Spanish, to test how well they can do that task. Every year we have a few students that are quite mature, love the Lord Jesus, are highly dedicated…and are horrible at learning a language. We pass that information on to their home church and the student is spared from years of misery trying to figure out why they were “called to be a missionary” and yet couldn’t produce simple sentences in the local language.
The external call can spare an aspiring missionary a lot of pain and guide them toward a ministry that they are more suited for.
I pray regularly that more and more people would aspire to be missionaries, that their church leadership would see and confirm the same thing. By having the right expectations for how our God ordinarily communicates, and using better language, we can be a significant help to those who go and those who send.