Converting to the Ministry

There is a conversion taking place in my heart in and in my mind; which is strange because there hasn’t been too many of those over the years. I don’t remember when I actually converted to Christianity probably because, being very young, I never actually had anything to convert from. I do remember a moment of revelation about God’s grace and my sin that I had many years ago, but even that wasn’t a true conversion from anything. That experience didn’t so much as change my thinking as it gave the things I already thought more substance and weight. It took my theology from the compartment I kept it tucked away in and turned it loose in the ugliness of the mess I made for myself. But none of that addresses the true conversion I am in the midst of right here and now. My thinking is being challenged, and deepened. If this were an article in a Business Management magazine I would use phrases like, “paradigm shift” to describe what is going on.

I spent four summers of my (rather lengthy) undergraduate career working at a youth service project camp in East Tennessee. We recruited most of our new staff from our past campers, and often the fist year staffers would have a hard time adjusting because they wanted to revert back to being a camper again rather than take on the responsibility of a leader. We were constantly on the lookout for symptoms of a “camper mentality” in our first year staff. I think a lot of this current conversion is my own moving away from a sort of “camper mentality” to a “ministry mentality.” By mentality I mean not just my thinking but also the doing that is a result of my thinking. Preparation for ministry has been a process of refocusing my energies on becoming a servant in God’s Church; thinking about others first and putting others first. My time in seminary has not been just about learning things about the Lord, but letting those things shape me in a way that affects how I view the Lord’s people.

Second Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” This process of converting to a ministry mentality is fundamentally about the Gospel. I am discovering my place “in Christ” for the work of the ministry of his Gospel.