Nik Ripken in The Insanity of God (an interesting read by the way) tells this story of being interviewed by a mission board in the USA:
“The committee members were clearly impressed with Ruth [his wife] from the start. She told her story of being called to serve God overseas as a thirdgrader, how her sixth-grade writing project had helped confirm a specific calling to Africa, and how her summer experience in Zambia during college had given her a realistic picture of third-world living and erased any doubts that she might have had about her career plans.
When they asked me the same question about when I had received my call, I looked around the meeting room and simply said, “I read Matthew 28.”
They thought that maybe I had misunderstood the question. They patiently explained that a special calling was required before someone could go out into the world and do this kind of work. I was not trying to be clever or disrespectful, but I responded, “No, you don’t understand. I read Matthew 28 where Jesus told his followers, ‘GO!’ So I’m here trying to go.”
That prompted a thirty-minute explanation about the distinction between the call to salvation and the call to ministry. What was required, I was told, was then a call to take the gospel out into the world, and perhaps even a fourth call to a specific place in the world. Then they asked me what I thought about what they had said.
I was young and naïve enough to think that when they asked me that, they really wanted my opinion. So I gave them my opinion. “Well, it appears to me,” I told them, “that you all have created a ‘call’ to missions that allows people to be disobedient to what Jesus has already commanded all of us to do.”
That wasn’t the best thing to say. When no one seemed to want to respond to my statement, I looked over at my wife, and I saw that she was quietly crying. I suddenly thought, “Oh no, I may have just cheated Ruth out of ever getting to fulfill her calling to Africa–because I didn’t know the denominational code words.”
Somehow the committee voted to approve our appointment anyway. I was thrilled about that, but I simply couldn’t understand the distinction that they were making between these different calls.
And, honestly, I still don’t understand that.
When I share with churches today, I often suggest that people read Matthew 28. When I read that chapter, I notice that Jesus never says if or whether you go; He simply talks about where you go! God may have to give instructions about the location—the where. But there is nothing to negotiate about the command to go—God has already made our primary task perfectly clear. When I tried to explain that to the appointment committee in 1983, I just about ended our appointment process on the spot.
As I read I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.