“THIS IS MY STORY - THIS IS MY SONG” Part Two: “Now the Lord said to Abram “Go Forth”

Readings: Genesis 12:1-8, Exodus 3:1-6, Mark 1:16-20, 1 Timothy 3:1-7
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, October 17th 2010

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Last week I was explaining how there have been three questions that I have been asked a number of times since moving to Baldwin. Firstly, “How did you come to faith? Secondly, “What made you want to be a minister?” and thirdly, “What made you decide to come to America?” Last Sunday I was sharing how through an unlikely combination of Rock Music, Youth Retreats, chocolate bars and the unmerited grace of God I came to be embraced by the Christian Faith in my late teens. This week I’m approaching the question; “What made you want to be a minister?” My hope is that as I share how God called me, that you’ll consider where God may be leading you.

I’d like you to picture me as a 19 year old. After High School I landed in a dead end job stocking shelves in a supermarket. So I’ve been back to college to obtain some qualifications and I am now working on a Government funded job creation scheme. It isn’t the best job in the world, but it’s a job.

The work involves helping elderly and disabled people with their gardening alongside working out in the countryside maintaining footpaths. I’m working with a mixed bag of people, including some young offenders whom I have become friends with despite myself being ‘that weird kid who goes to a church’. What’s really good is that the hours are very flexible, so I’m able to give a lot of time to what was becoming my real passion, playing in a rock band.

I spoke last time about how coming from Liverpool I cherished a dream that, like one of the Beatles, whose music I grew up with, I could make it through life writing songs and playing music. Like Jake or Elwood from that film ‘The Blues Brothers’, I was “on a mission from God”, because my band was no ordinary band. I was playing in a gospel Rock Band and we didn’t want to just be famous throughout the world, we wanted to save the world.

Never mind that some of the church folk said we were playing the Devils music whilst some of the un-churched said, “We like your music, but why do you have to keep bringing Jesus into it?” God was opening doors. There is talk of record contracts, festival appearances, slots on prime-time T.V. Now bear in mind this is back in the Mid-1970’s, before the days when there even was a category known as ‘Contemporary Christian Rock Music”. I’m blazing a trail!

On top of it all ‘I am nineteen going on twenty’ and I’ve fallen in love. I’ll be honest. One of the reasons I was attracted to church was that some of the girls looked good. And at 19 I was engaged to one of them. (I have my wife’s permission to say that because it was her and after over 32 years of marriage I still think she’s lovely.)

So for a near 20 year old lad things couldn’t be much better. Great job, great band, great times, great fiance, great expectations. Yet throughout it all, when I stopped to listen … there was this little voice, somewhere deep inside that said, “You should go into the ministry”. And every time I became aware of it I would say “But Lord I have a ministry, my work, my music, my relationships. I’m doing fine.” Which brings me to my text for today…

Genesis 12:1 “Now the Lord said to Abram, Go forth....”

I often wonder how many times the Lord told Abram to ‘go forth’ before he went? Over the next two years my comfortable world fell apart. The band, my dream, my mission from God, broke up. It seems my musical skills were far more impressive to myself than to anybody else! Two of the band members I was playing with came and told me they had received a better offer. ‘Ouch’ that hurt my ego.

Yvonne and I had set our wedding date and obtained a loan on this lovely corner house in a nice area of town near the sea front. The week before we were due to be married the bank informed us the loan was no longer available.

The day before we were due to be married the works manager called me into the office. ‘Got a problem’ he said. ‘According to the governmental guidelines, we have to pay you a higher wage as a married person, and we don’t have that extra cash in the budget. Bottom line is…”If you get married, we can’t pay you, ad you are out of a job”.

Yvonne and I went ahead and were married. That scripture about Abram and Sarai leaving their Fathers house and going out not knowing where they were heading took on a special significance. I had lost my job, I’d lost my place to live, and my musical ministry dreams were shattered. The frightening thing was that I’d been trying so hard to do the right thing, to do what I thought God was calling me to do, except of course for that little voice about ‘the’ ministry.

I learnt however that when God is on your case, things work out. Against all the odds a place became available at a ludicrously cheap rent just a few doors down from where we’d first tried to purchase a home. Yvonne still had her work and after a while I managed to land a position in the Civil Service. A few months after I was dismissed from the Government scheme that wouldn’t pay me if I was married, the whole project collapsed. If we’d have had a loan to pay back on that corner house we could have ended up in serious debt. It is amazing how different things can turn out in retrospect!

And my musical dreams of saving the world with Christian rock music? Well, sometimes there is a very thin dividing line between “Doing the will of God” and “Doing what I’d like the will of God to be for me”. And anyway God was saying to me the words He spoke to Abram…“go forth”.

There were reasons why I didn’t want to ‘go forth’ and be a minister. In Great Britain most of the clergy I knew were a lot older than I was, seemed to have a strange attraction to wearing dark suits that smelt of mothballs, and they didn’t seem at all interested in the things that excited me.

Whilst it was one thing going to a church, becoming an official part of that authoritarian, established and frankly sometimes incredibly boring institution was a different matter. As Groucho Marx once said, I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to be part of any club that would have me as a member.

After we were married Yvonne and I started attending a church that had been the Welsh Presbyterian Church, but had become an Elim Pentecostal Church. We became pretty active and they even allowed me be their volunteer youth leader for a while. One night they had a youth mission rally. It was great. They even let me play my guitar.

During the prayer time, I was sitting in the pew, head down, eyes closed, not really seeking God for anything in particular, and there started to come over me an overwhelming sense that I should offer myself as a candidate for the ministry of the Welsh Presbyterian Church. There was no audible voice, no blinding light or messages from the pulpit or sky, just an incredibly intense feeling that this was something that I had to act upon, then and there, and until I did there would be no peace in my life.

After the service I went to see the preacher. I told him, “I think I’ve had a call to the ministry”. “PRAISE THE LORD!” he said. I added “Of the Welsh Presbyterian Church”. Now the Welsh Presbyterians and the Elim Pentecostals hadn’t exactly had a positive history of good relationships. The pastor said “I think we better talk about this.”

After what seemed like an endless evening as he explained to me the errors of Welsh Presbyterianism I gained the impression that, in his opinion, Presbyterians were slightly to the left of Satan. The strange thing was, the more he talked, the louder the voice inside of me seemed to be telling me to offer myself as a candidate for the Welsh Presbyterian ministry.

I thought I better tell Yvonne. “Yvonne” I said (Using that voice husbands use when they tell their wives something that they are not sure how they will react to), “Yvonne, I think I’ve had a call to be a Presbyterian Minister”. Yvonne replied, “Well God hasn’t said anything to me about it!” She was even less enthused at the prospect of being a minister’s wife than I was about being a minister.

We arranged to see Rev Barrie Redmore, the Presbyterian minister who had married us. He listened carefully and then told us to and come back in a year’s time if I still felt a sense of calling. A year later the feeling was stronger than ever. The process of becoming a candidate for the Presbyterian ministry was set in motion. At the age of 23, after taking nearly five years to come to terms with the notion that God may be calling me to the ministry, I finally went forth to Aberystwyth, on the coast of Mid-Wales, where I attended theological college.

So to answer the question, “What made you want to be a minister?” the fact is that I never wanted to be a minister but it became a question of obedience to what God was showing me. These days as I look back at nearly thirty years of ministry on two continents, I am forced to swallow my pride and begrudgingly acknowledge that God knows best!

As I said at the start of this brief series my aim in sharing these things is not to put myself on a pedestal, but simply to share with you how God has worked in the life of one of God’s reluctant disciples. And if God can work in my life, then I am confident God also has great plans for yours! To God be the Glory. Amen.