Age | think and let think

Devotional:

Jeremiah 1.6-7

Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.”

Weekly Devotional Image

I was out in my front yard when the two young men wheeled up with their too tight helmets and their too long black skinny ties.

Mormons.

I had seen them around the neighborhood on a number of occasions but always in passing and they never seemed to notice me. But now here we were, standing on the sidewalk when the taller of the two introduced himself and immediately began with, “Excuse me, but do you know Jesus?”

Do I know Jesus?

For a moment I thought about lying, I thought about pretending I had never ever heard of the man, just to see what kind of lecture I was going to receive.

But I was tired, and in no mood to be evangelized. So I simply said, “I sure do, and I tell people about him every Sunday, I’m a pastor.”

The two monochromatically dressed missionaries stared at me in disbelief until the smaller one said, “Gee, I thought pastors had to be old.”

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It has amazed me how much my age in relation to my vocation is brought up on a regular basis. And, to be perfectly honest, I don’t even look very young. I’m losing my hair and I have a fairly sizable beard.

And yet, there is this strange expectation that to be involved in the duties of pastoral ministry requires a look of weathering!

When called called Jeremiah to his vocation of being a prophet, Jeremiah promptly responded with doubts about his usefulness precisely because of his age. And God hears none of it: “This isn’t about you or your age or your experience; it’s about what I’m going to do through you!”

Throughout my varied experiences in varied churches there is this limiting belief that God can only call certain kinds of people to certain kinds of tasks. Churches want extraverted people leading worship, but they also wanted introverted people to visit them in the hospital. They want young ministers to help bring in young families, but they want old pastors who can work from experience.

In the church, almost more than anywhere else, age is nothing but a number. Time and time again throughout the Bible God calls upon people regardless of their age, or their experience, or even their talents simply because God is the one who will work through them.

Do you feel unqualified for something that’s happening in church? Do you believe your abilities might be best suited elsewhere? Has God called you to something that you think is impossible?

These are important questions, but like Jeremiah, we do well to remember that it’s not really about us; it’s about what God can do through us.

Genesis 12.1-4

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those you bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

“When you get appointed to a church the worst thing you can do is go visit the shut-ins,” said a professor of mine in seminary (who will remain nameless). “I am sick and tired of hearing about new clergy full of vibrant passion and energy wasting it on visiting the people who have already had their faith developed. Pastors form the past were responsible for them. The best thing you can do when you get appointed to a new church is not to visit the older shut-in members, but go visit all the members under the age of thirty. Now there won’t be many younger than thirty so it shouldn’t take you very long. That’s mission.”

I was flabbergasted. Here I was sitting in the hallowed halls of Duke Divinity listening to a professor telling us to do exactly the opposite of what I imagined my first few weeks at a new appointment would look like.

I believe he was wrong. The best thing that a pastor can do when he/she enters a new appointment is to visit the shut-ins and all the members under 30. In fact the best thing a pastor can do is visit with all the people that make up the local church community. The idea that the older congregants have already had their ministry does a disservice the goodness of God’s creation and the understanding that all of us make up the body of Christ regardless of age and experience.

I love the call of Abram as described in Genesis 12. Abram is called to abandon the security of his homeland, the comfort that comes with social and family support. Abram would need to rely on the Lord for guidance because this call upon his life tested, as John Wesley said, “whether [Abram] could trust God farther than he could see him.” And notice how short his obedience is described in the passage: “So Abram went.” No indecision, no debating the outcome, no weighing the pros and cons, just go. But even more than this I love the fact the the story ends with the simple affirmation that Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.

If God chose to establish the covenant with a 75 year old man who dropped everything to follow in obedience, just imagine what God can do with you, whether you’re 5 or 85 years old. Christian discipleship is not dependent on our age, but instead on our willingness to hear God’s call and go.

No matter where you are on your faith journey, whether you deeply committed and active in a local church, or if you feel like you’re on the fringes of a church community, whether you’re young in the faith, or you’ve been attending church for as long as you can remember, God has a place and a call for you. It takes all of us to make up the body of Christ.

So, what is God calling you to? What might you have to drop in order to go where God needs you?