Embodying the Call: ‘Call Narratives’ and the Importance of Encouragement for Progressive Mennonite Pastors

Abstract

ABSTRACT For the progressive Mennonite pastors I met, the process of becoming a pastor is a lengthy and challenging personal journey of recognizing, accepting, and enacting a call to a pastoral vocation, which occurs in conjunction with institutional requirements. Their stories follow a pattern, which I term a ‘call narrative’, in which a person’s call begins with a presentiment that God is guiding in a particular direction. The potential pastors and church leaders face internal and external resistance to fulfiling the call. Other people, purposefully or unwittingly, affirm the call, until the person feels compelled to accept God’s call to formal church ministry. This article addresses factors that impede people from responding to the call and considers how they overcome resistance by receiving affirmations from individuals and institutions. Throughout each phase of the calling, I explore the element of embodiment as people describe various physical and emotional reactions to the call. The discussion is based on personal interviews and focused group meetings with credentialed Mennonite leaders, and it proceeds in four parts. First, I examine how persons define and acknowledge a call, often with noticeable bodily reactions. Next, I consider personal, social, and institutional factors that hindered individuals from fulfiling that call. Then, I explore how people received affirmations from various sources that enabled them to pursue their calling. The article concludes with a case study of one congregation where pastors and staff responded to the call in different ways based on their interactions with people in the congregation.