“There will be a drought,” announces Elijah the Tishbite, and so there is. Without preamble, genealogy or call, one of the most vivid characters in the Bible steps into the action. Unlike Abraham, Moses, David or Paul, there is no ‘before’ in the story of Elijah; no details of his call to service; no record of an encounter with God to set him on his prophetic journey. But encounter there must have been, as no faithful Israelite would have dared to speak with such authority or taken God’s name into his mouth as confidently in announcing judgement as Elijah does at the beginning of 1 Kings 17.
Why will there be a drought? As any well-taught child of Israel could have told you: rain = blessing and drought = curse. According to Deuteronomy 28 v.12, Israel’s full obedience to God’s commands would be rewarded by rain on the land. Her disobedience would lead to the skies becoming bronze, the ground iron and rain turning to dust (Deuteronomy 28 v.23 and 24). And why was Israel under God’s curse at this moment? King Ahab had begun to worship Baal (1 Kings 16 v. 31), the Canaanite god of fertility and rainfall.
Does it mean anything that there is no call recorded in the story of Elijah?
After all, the call has been a staple of many missionary testimonies. It may be to “mission” or to a particular place or people group or to people with a certain need or characteristic, but it is always unmistakable and almost always involves a struggle followed by submission and peace. Sometimes there is a quick fast forward in the story to the arrival on the mission field, without highlighting the application process, the request for references, the health and psychological tests, the discernment process, or the time taken to raise their funds: all things that were as essential as the call itself.
Where do these stories of “successful” calls leave the disappointed? That is, the people who were just as sure they had been called but weren’t able ever to go, perhaps because their church or a missionary society didn’t agree with them, or they fell in love with someone who didn’t have a call, or they or a family member got sick, or they couldn’t raise the funds, or a civil war or an epidemic broke out in the country they felt called to, or a suitable placement just couldn’t be found? These stories don’t tend to get made into missionary biographies but perhaps have just as much to teach us about faith and obedience as any of the dramatic stories which missionaries have to tell. To sense a call, to take the required steps to test it, to submit to the judgement of others and to accept one’s vocation as a missionary sender and supporter is no failure.
I met lots of young people in a Colombia who thought they had a call to somewhere far away. To Sweden, to India, to Afghanistan, even someone who told me they were called to India AND China. In that case I had to bite my tongue not to retort, “I don’t think that’s very likely.” After all, what did I know? God can do anything he chooses. But not one of these delightful youngsters has made it (yet) to where they thought God wanted them to go. Easy to dismiss this as just youthful enthusiasm and unwise discipling. Why didn’t they go? Because it’s very difficult to raise the funds to be a missionary in Europe in Latin America. Because the missionary structures and networks necessary to make mission possible are developing at different rates throughout the continent. Because the people in question realized there was plenty of work to be done closer to home.
Later in my time in Colombia I got the opportunity to support people in their process of discerning their call to mission. It wasn’t straight-forward. As one of my colleagues said, “Just because I am a missionary doesn’t mean I know how to be a missionary sender.” We did what we could. Basically, anyone who was prepared to jump through the not inconsiderable hoops we put in place had a good chance of being accepted. The initial conversation with me was usually enough to put people off!
But maybe all this talk of an individual’s call as the centre of the missionary enterprise has distorted the church’s view of mission. It has given the impression that the mission of God is only furthered by individual and families, one by one, sensing and responding to God’s call. In the meantime, the local church can get on with the central task of attending to its own people and reaching out locally until every so often someone comes along with a story of a call. The church can then leap into action to help the candidate discern the validity of their experience and fundraise to let them go. All practical details can be left to the relevant mission agency. This is not what we see in the book of Acts. Apart from the fact that missionary agencies are a relatively modern development, it seems that the Holy Spirit directly instructed the church to set aside individuals for a particular task (see for Acts13 v.2 example). It was the church that got the call, not Barnabas and Saul.
This model of mission that puts the individual’s call at the heart of the story ignores the fact that through history the good news of Jesus has spread organically as people migrated or were forcibly displaced. Migration has played a huge part in the growth of the church and will continue to do so in the future, as the individual Western missionary, fully-funded for a lifetime of trips back and forward to their passport country, becomes increasingly rare.
I became a missionary because a friend asked me if I would set up an English course at the Bible Seminary he was leading at the time in Medellín, Colombia. As I considered the possibility of going to Colombia, I heard talks at a conference that helped to bring the reality of the situation into focus. “There are no guarantees,” said one of the speakers, basing his tasks on the story of Abraham (something I should have taken more seriously as I was blindsided by being quite unhappy at the beginning of my missionary career). But mainly, I was ready for a career change; I had already fallen in love with Colombia; it felt more like an invitation to an incredible adventure than a classical missionary call.
Eighteen months into my missionary placement, when I was 40 years old, a kind and wise counsellor who was helping me to make sense of everything I was feeling, asked, “Is it possible that God is calling you to serve the poor?” “I think so,” I replied. How could she tell? Just because when I had described the events of the previous year and a half, it was the trips to Colombia’s Caribbean Coast, working with the destitute recently displaced, that had clearly brought me the most life.
A few years later, I was asked to consider leading the Colombia Latin Link team. The first time it was mooted to me, I said, “Please stop, you are giving me a stomach ache already.” A little later, I was having dinner with a former minister of mine, who was then the leader of a mission organization. I was telling him about this invitation to consider being the team leader and I finished by saying, “I’m just not called to this.” He responded, “I’m fed up of missionaries telling me they are not called to certain things. There are some things that just need to be done and leading a local mission team, being the conduit of information between the team and head office is one of them.” Ouch! That was me told. I duly took on the role and struggled through four years at the helm.
But if I hadn’t taken it on, I would have missed out on some of the most significant experiences of my life: seeing the team grow to include several highly-gifted Colombians, sending the first Colombian missionary to the UK and welcoming many short-termers from the UK and Switzerland. When I handed the leadership over shortly before I left Colombia, I had the sweetest moment at the mission’s international assembly in Guatemala City. The team had found a lovely café and each individual and couple gave me a gift with some kind words. I have all these gifts still.
Of course, it is not just missionaries and ministers who feel called. Work can be seen as a vocation (from the Latin vocare, to call) and that sense of call and purpose sustains and empowers. I was struck by the number of people in my previous organization, a ministry supporting people with learning disabilities, who saw their work in terms of God’s call. What a way to transcend the view of care work as unskilled and low-paid, and to dignify and honour it!
But there is no call in the story of Elijah. Does that mean anything? Perhaps just this: the call doesn’t matter nearly as much as getting the job done.