Responding to the Call

INTRODUCTION



My previous books are writings that some people call poems, some say they are free verse but to me they are simply writings.
This book contains some of the stories I have recorded or written over the past 60 years. The “string” that laces them together is what many people in the church say is a “call.” A call presents itself in many different ways.
Sometimes it is a feeling that God wants you to do something, to be something, to change, to go somewhere. The feeling can start small and then intensify over time until it must be answered. That is the way my father experienced the call to be a preacher. (It is interesting that prior to the late twentieth century it was a call “to preach.”) The ministry, the pastorate was secondary to the call “to preach.”
We now understand that the call can be for many ways to minister in the Kingdom of God. In my father’s life it was not only the call to preach, it was the call to go to school, the call to be the pastor of several churches, the call to start churches in California and many other calls that changed his life.
These stories include the call to Dr. A. Scott Patterson to go back to a yellow fever infested Nigeria to be sure that many years of missionary effort would not be lost. The call to Dr. Albert Schweitzer to go to Africa to “Repay the grace of talents.” In his case the call was as much intellectual as it was spiritual.
My call to be the pastor of a small semi-rural church was both specific and limited. My call to be an architect was just as important as the call to be a pastor. And, it can be argued that the call to go to Louisiana to listen to a man who was trying to find his way back to the Lord was just as much a call as any other.
Sometimes the question is not. “Is the Lord calling?” The questions is, “Are you listening?”

Andrew SmithApril 20, 2020