Calvary Distinctives

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Calvary Distinctives – Call to Ministry

Servant School

April 22, 2021

Introduction

This series of classes will be based on Chuck Smith’s book “Calvary Chapel Distinctives”

The Introduction to the book contains a short little chapter titled “Call to the Ministry”.

Why is this chapter here?

Though the Jesus Movement gets started at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa back in the late 60’s and early 1970s, by the mid 1990s, the Calvary Chapel movement had a surge in churches asking to be “affiliated” with Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa.

In 1994, the year that our church Calvary Chapel of Fullerton started, over 750 churches were either planted or became associated with Calvary Chapel.

That kind of growth in the movement brought problems.

Over the next couple of years, it became obvious that some of these churches didn’t quite pass the “smell” test of Calvary Chapel. They were close, but something was a little “off”.

This was the impetus behind the development of the book known as “Calvary Chapel Distinctives”.

Even though all McDonalds don’t look alike, there is enough similarity in all of them that when you walk into a McDonalds, you know what to expect.

Chuck’s desire was that the same principle apply to Calvary Chapel. There needed to be some common ground, areas with which all affiliated “Calvary Chapels” had in agreement.

The “Distinctives” is that common ground.

So, in a sense, the primary aim of this book is to those leading these churches. It’s aimed at pastors.

And at the very core of what it ought to mean to be a pastor is what we call the “call”.

Is a man in the ministry because it’s what his family decided?

Is a man in the ministry because he’s cool and tells good stories?

Is a man in the ministry because the board of some denomination or church has decided he’s smart enough?

Or is a man in the ministry because he has a great love for Jesus and has sensed a deep call in his heart from God to serve Him?

This class will be helpful to any person interested in knowing more about Calvary Chapel.

Though not all have a sense of God’s “call” into fulltime ministry, there may be a few of you who have been wondering if indeed God may be calling you to serve Him.

Let’s take a few minutes and listen to Pastor Chuck talk about his own call to the ministry. This clip is from an interview that Greg Laurie did with Chuck back in 2013.

Chuck’s Call to the Ministry

Charles Spurgeon was a famous pastor in the last half of the 19^th century. His church in London seated over 10,000 people. He preached to huge crowds in a day when there were no microphones or PA systems.

He also had a school to train men, a “Pastors’ School”.

I would encourage any of you who are looking to go into the ministry to consider picking up a copy of Spurgeon’s book, “Lectures to My Students”.

In his chapter titled “The Call to the Ministry”, Spurgeon says that a pastor’s “call” ought to show these four things:

1. An intense, all-absorbing desire for the work.

2. An aptness to teach.

3. He must have a measure of conversion-work going on under his efforts

4. His preaching should be acceptable to the people of God

While we often will talk about how God uses the “foolish things” to confound the wise, and that God can use anyone as long as they are wholly devoted to the Lord, there is another side to consider.

Spurgeon talks about how God wants the very best men in the ministry. He writes…

One brother I have encountered—one did I say? I have met ten, twenty, a hundred brethren, who have pleaded that they were sure, quite sure that they were called to the ministry—they were quite certain of it, because they had failed in everything else. This is a sort of model story:—“Sir, I was put into a lawyer’s office, but I never could bear the confinement, and I could not feel at home in studying law; Providence clearly stopped up my road, for I lost my situation.” “And what did you do then?” “Why sir, I was induced to open a grocer’s shop.” “And did you prosper?” “Well, I do not think, Sir, I was ever meant for trade, and the Lord seemed quite to shut my way up there, for I failed and was in great difficulties. Since then I have done a little in life-assurance agency, and tried to get up a school, besides selling tea; but my path is hedged up, and something within me makes me feel that I ought to be a minister.” My answer generally is, “Yes, I see; you have failed in everything else, and therefore you think the Lord has especially endowed you for his service; but I fear you have forgotten that the ministry needs the very best of men, and not those who cannot do anything else.” A man who would succeed as a preacher would probably do right well either as a grocer, or a lawyer, or anything else. A really valuable minister would have excelled at anything. There is scarcely anything impossible to a man who can keep a congregation together for years, and be the means of edifying them for hundreds of consecutive Sabbaths; he must be possessed of some abilities, and be by no means a fool or ne’er-do-well. Jesus Christ deserves the best men to preach his cross, and not the empty-headed and the shiftless.

One of the reasons it is important to have a sense that God has called you is because you will find in any ministry that there will be times of great discouragement.

I’ve been in some sort of ministry since 1976, and have gone through many, many times of wondering why I should spend my life enduring such trials.

The thing that has kept me going is knowing that God was the one who called me.

My call to the ministry came during a time of sorrow.

It was after my senior year in high school, and like Chuck, I was going to spend a week in the mountains at a summer youth camp at Forest Home near Idyllwild.

Best of all, my girlfriend of eight months was going to go as well. Except … she broke up with me on Monday, the second day of the camp. I was devastated. I remember crying that night with my pastor and struggling with even wanting to be at the camp where I would be around this gal for the next week.

But in my sadness, God had my attention. He had taken away the one thing that would keep me from hearing Him.

During all the Bible Studies that week, I could sense God moving and speaking to me.

I spent time looking back at my last two years of high school and how God had used me as one of those “Jesus Freaks” in the early Jesus movement.

On Thursday night of the camp, an old retired pastor was speaking to this group of three hundred high school students. His name was Earl Riley. He was a tall lanky man from Arizona. Though his topic that night was about missions, he really was talking about serving God.

As Earl spoke, I began to realize that the things God had been doing in my life over the last few years all made sense.

God had been using me both at school and at church.

At school I was a guy that God used to reach other kids for Christ. I was a kid learning apologetics and debating his atheist teachers in English class and History class.

At church I was a part of the youth choir. We not only sang at our church, but toured all over California and neighboring states, sharing our testimonies and praying for members of the congregations.

I realized at that camp that the greatest thing I could do with my life was to serve Jesus.

And though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, I can see now that all of the things that Spurgeon talked about also applied to me.

In the fifty some years I’ve done ministry I’ve had plenty of times of discouragement where I wanted to quit.

But I have always kept going because I know that God has called me, and I want to be faithful to Him.

And so, for some of you, this is something you need to think about.

I can’t tell you the exact next steps you will need to take, but perhaps God would ask you today to give yourself to Him afresh and ask Him to lead you in preparation to be used more and more by Him.