God first began nudging me toward full-time Christian service during the summer of 1967. This nudge came the last night of Royal Ambassador camp at Camp McCall in the mountains of South Carolina. During the hymn of invitation, I felt God’s presence calling me to a personal response. I left my seat and walked innocently to the front of the chapel.

            After the close of the service, a counselor asked me about my decision. Following the form approved by the Southern Baptist Convention, he inquired: “Have you come forward to confess Jesus Christ as your Savior?” I answered, “No,” for I had been baptized on Easter Sunday morning in 1964. He moved to the next item, “Have you come to rededicate your life?” I replied, “I don’t think so.” The third question was all that was left, “Have you come to surrender to full time Christian service?” I simply responded, “I guess.”

            After that summer night, God was silent for many years about my calling to full time Christian service. Quietly, in the arms of the church called First Baptist Church of Cowpens, I was growing and maturing as a follower of Jesus. I do not recall the earth shaking or fantastic visions during those years. I trudged through the routine of Sunday School, Training Union, youth choir, and summer camps.

            My whole world was shaken on Sunday, 7 December 1969. It began as an ordinary Sunday. I stood in the vestibule and talked with my friends. I slid in the pew next to my grandparents. Yet, as our pastor entered the sanctuary, somehow I knew this was to be a day of significance for me. I knew, from the very beginning of the service, that I was being called to respond personally to God. I understood, too, that this calling involved my vocation—what I would do with my life. Truthfully, I do not remember many of the particulars of that day. During the invitational hymn, I made my way to the front to declare my willingness to dedicate my life to the service of Christ. At that time, I wanted to be a doctor, and I was reading the biography of Bill Wallace, a medical missionary to China. On that day, I interpreted this calling to be to become a medical missionary.

            I took off to college. My understanding of my call became focused. I moved from medical missionary to minister. I took seriously my studies in college, and I was involved in churches that allowed me to explore my gifts. Seeking to be certain about my call, I took a year off before going to seminary. At Southern, I loved my studies, and I prepared to serve the great Church of Jesus Christ.

            In January 1981, I headed north of God to New York state to become pastor of Ridgecrest Baptist Church. In my innocence, I believed I was going to serve the people of God as they sought to live like Jesus and to seek first the kingdom of God. I possessed idealistic expectations of what the church could be. Almost immediately upon my arrival, people and events sought to convince me to lay aside my expectations for the people of God and of myself as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They wanted me to accept certain undeniable realities they believed were entrenched within the church beyond the possibility of change.

            Across more than 25 years of serving one congregation of people or another, I recognize that there are some entrenched realties. In every church, there are personalities and forces that resist being church. There are people who see the church in political terms with individuals and groups seeking power and influence. For them, church becomes a game of manipulation. There are people who demand that the fulfillment of their needs be the focus of the church. These folks are usually unhappy with the church. All kinds of contrived distractions emerge to keep the people of God from living like Jesus and seeking first the kingdom of God. I have wrestled with these entrenched realities and more.

            Now, almost 30 years into this journey of following Jesus as a minister of the gospel, I discovered that I have come full circle. I am more convinced than ever that the people of God ought to be about living like Jesus and seeking first the kingdom of God. There are entrenched realities that we cannot deny. Yet, we cannot give the great church of Jesus Christ away to such life-diminishing realities. We must ask ourselves why we resist Jesus and his kingdom life. We must explore our motives for turning the church into a political contest. In some way, we must embrace the truth that Jesus did not come to meet our needs but to liberate us from the crippling power of our needs. We must acknowledge that the church does not belong to us. It never has! The church belongs to Jesus Christ, and the church is simply a tool in the hand of God, as He does his bidding in the world.

            Having come around after all these years, it seems to me it is our responsibility as ministers and church members to tell Jesus why we will not live as he lives. We must come clean about why we resist seeking first the kingdom of God. It is time to stop breaking the wills of ministers and those passionate for the faith so they will succumb to the life-diminishing realities of churches that resist the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It is time for accountability, and it is time for a personal accounting by ministers and members. Do we love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, or have we settled for a lesser god—our needy selves? How we respond, as ministers and members, will say more about us than God.jamie