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Friends United Meeting |
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November 1997
Call of a Rich Young Man
By Louis R. Herchenroeder
Pockets of people were gathering and praying all around Reardon Auditorium, and I stood alone weeping. The conference speaker, Dr. John Maxwell, had just asked for all pastors to stand. While we were standing, he invited each pastor's church members to lay hands upon their own pastor for prayer.
Minutes before, I had responded to a similar invitation to pray for those who were sensing a call into ministry. And when a man in front of me stood I gladly reached forward and prayed for him. Likewise, when there was a call for moral purity, a man to my right stood, and many in my section surrounded him for prayer.
It was lonely being a pastor, especially being the pastor of a small rural meeting. I had been called to my first church right out of seminary with hopes of planting a church with a small preparatory meeting of about 25 worshipers. Now after nearly three years, with no more than 40 worshipers, with subsidies from the yearly meeting running out, I was attending this church growth conference with a real need for new ideas and new hope for ministry.
I had been to conferences before, but this time I had asked my own church members to attend with me. They also were in need of a spiritual lift, but the scheduling of the event made it impossible for them to participate. So I went alone. And when the call came to "pray for your pastor" I stood alone, weeping, because I knew no one had come who would pray for me.
Then a miracle happened. Three older women behind me had been searching for their own pastor. They had been separated from their church group during the last break, and had found some empty seats near me. One of them asked, "Don't you have someone to pray for you? We can't find our pastor, so we'll just pray for you."
They could have been angels sent from heaven for all I know. Placing their hands on the shoulders of a thirty-something pastor with blubbering eyes, they asked God's blessing on my church and my ministry. In an instant, I realized that I had never been alone. God knew my need. God's presence was with me, my hope was restored, and my calling to be a pastor was reaffirmed. Matthew 28:20 was proven to me that day: "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
For me, the calling has always been part of my relationship with God. Far from being instantaneous, the calling had a curious beginning even before I was saved. It grew as I grew in faith: as I became a Christian, as I served in the church, as I studied in seminary, as I pastored my first church. I look back at that evening at Anderson University in March of 1990 as the day when God removed all my doubts. There is now no turning back.
In the late 70s while I was still an engineering student at Purdue, I experienced some spiritual uneasiness which included a growing desire to serve God. I was an unsaved member of the Catholic Church, and I was active as a song leader and C.C.D. teacher, and I volunteered as a tutor for the Catholic elementary school. Yet I wanted more.
I made an appointment with my pastor to discuss this yearning to serve. I went to the rectory hoping for answers which would satisfy my deep felt longing. He met me at the door to the rectory, and with the doorway still between us, I told him I felt God wanted me to serve in a greater way. Was there something-some church need that I could fill? The answer surprised and disappointed me. Monsignor told me that it was just a stage I was going through. "Give it time and it will go away," he counseled me. In just a few minutes the whole appointment was over, and my answer to God's call seemed to have been rejected, and a disappointment with the church took root.
Shortly thereafter, I dropped out of church, and for several years I struggled spiritually. To this day I have a love for ministry to college students and young adults, especially those who are wrestling with a new call into the ministry. I realize how God calls people to serve him who may be spiritually immature, but who are humble and willing.
Seven months after I graduated from Purdue University in May 1980, I gave my life to Jesus Christ. In that same December a blur of activity began which forever changed the direction of my life. Bruce Cheek, a co-worker, invited me to visit Sycamore Friends Meeting near Greentown, Indiana. I attended and was warmly welcomed. Through Bruce, I met the woman who would be my wife, Shelly Beavers, who had grown up at Kennard Friends Church.
The following summer, Bruce got me involved at Quaker Haven Camp. As a counselor there I discovered the joy of leading young people to Christ. That fall, I began working with Sycamore's youth program, and Shelly and I were married.
During revival meetings in March of 1982 at Sycamore, I found myself at the altar-something I thought I would never do. Dr. Lowell Roberts from Asbury College had been preaching about the Holy Spirit and the Quaker understanding of baptism by the Holy Spirit. I knew the fullness of the Holy Spirit was something I lacked, and I went forward for prayer. During that time of prayer I let go of my own will for my life. I had given my yes to whatever God asked. With my own selfish desires for wealth and personal success out of the way, God's call to ministry returned.
When the clerk of our Christian Education Committee asked me to teach an adult Sunday School class, she was surprised when I said yes. So many other adults just assume they are not qualified, so the usual answer is no. I didn't even know all the books of the Bible, but I had already given God my yes. At age 25 I was teaching the Bible to adults who had been in the church all their lives. Through teaching, I learned to study and memorize Scripture. My prayer life expanded as Shelly and I made Sycamore's mid-week Bible study a priority.
During one mid-week service in April of 1984, God spoke to me. First he spoke through Scripture. Pam Ashcraft led our study that night from Mark 10:17ff, the story of the rich young man. I realized I was like that man who was called to sell everything and follow Jesus. Second, God spoke through a young mother who stood and testified about how God was calling her to a sacrificial lifestyle. She was moved by Christ's command to leave everything and follow him, and she was struggling with the call. Everything she said seemed meant for me.
During our prayer time, I found myself reasoning with God that I couldn't possibly quit my engineering job to follow him. Why, who would pay my tithe? Who would support my older brother the missionary or my older sister who served in campus ministry? To my surprise, God spoke a third time. In a voice that was not my own, in words that I could not have imagined, God asked me, "Don't you think I can come up with a measly $280 per month?" God knew what I earned, what I tithed, and he wasn't impressed. I knew I had no excuse but to follow Jesus. Besides, I had already given him my yes.
God spoke a fourth time that night, this time through me. When the service was finished, I overheard a man trying to reassure that young mother who was still troubled by God's call to a sacrificial lifestyle. He told her, "You are already serving God. It's just Satan trying to make you doubt yourself. It's just a stage you are going through. Give it time and it will go away." Something inside me was shouting, "No!" It was like I was hearing my Catholic pastor all over again.
As soon as I had the chance, I told the woman that she was right. God spoke through me as I told her that God was calling me to follow him in the same way.
While not specifically calling me to pastor, God had called me to follow Jesus. He had spoken clearly to me through his Word, through the Holy Spirit, through the church, and through my own experience. I began claiming Matthew 11:29 as the new direction for my life because I knew Jesus was directing me to "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me."
Things began happening quickly. In June of 1984 we put our house up for sale. In July I left my job at Delco Electronics in Kokomo. In August we moved to Nicholasville, Kentucky. And in September I began classes at Asbury Theological Seminary. During those months God affirmed over and over his calling through the words of our friends, through our church, and through answers to prayer. We believe God sold our house in a depressed housing market. We know God provided us an apartment in a tight rental market. We were blessed when God gave me a part-time job which paid enough so that Shelly could stay home with our one-year-old son. We were doubly blessed when God moved our home church, Sycamore Friends Meeting, to begin sending us $100 per month.
In my own mind, I was unsure about pastoral ministry, because I saw myself as more of a teacher than a preacher. However, Asbury was geared toward training pastors and missionaries, and the faculty included only professors who had previous pastoral or missionary experience. Consequently, seminary proved to be a nurturing environment which strengthened my beliefs and my calling. I grew to see that the local church was God's only plan for reaching the world for Christ. After three years I was more than ready to test my calling as the pastor of a new church at Quaker Haven Camp in northern Indiana.
In 1 Samuel 7:12, Samuel set up a stone between Mizpah and Shen after a decisive victory over the Philistines. He named it Ebenezer, or "stone of help," saying, "Thus far the Lord has helped us." It has been some 20 years since I first responded to God's call to serve-a call which God extended, event by event, through my relationship with him. However, a divine appointment with three anonymous saints in a crowded auditorium has become my Ebenezer. That event stands as a marker between where I have come from and where the Lord is leading me now. Whenever I have doubts or frustrations in ministry I can return to my Ebenezer and proclaim with confidence, "Thus far the Lord has helped me!"
Lou Herchenroeder is pastor of Sycamore Friends Church in Indiana Yearly Meeting.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
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