Did you know that 90 percent of people who enter vocational ministry will end up in another field? Truth is, vocational ministry is not only an arduous vocation, it’s a brutal spiritual war zone; a war zone that’s sending countless ministry leaders and pastors across America into premature retirements… piling up casualties of Kingdom laborers.

I want all of my pastor friends and those who are in vocational ministry to read the following article by John Ortberg. We need to constantly be reminded of the divine, sacred, and eternal implications of our calling. If we are to finish strong, we must guard our “calling” on a daily basis. Spend adequate time with the Caller, get the right people on your team, surround yourself with people who understand your calling and will fight for you. Fuel your calling with inspiration. Your calling matters… you must post a sentry around it!

Thank you W. Ryan Melson for posting this earlier in the week.

“But you have been chosen,” Gandalf says to Frodo. “And you must therefore use such strength and hearts and wits as you have.” You have been chosen. I don’t know if you (or I) am in exactly the perfect fitting job. But that’s not the issue. You have been chosen… And this sense of having been called—the worthiness of it, the glorious goodness of a life lived beyond an individual’s agenda—is a precious thing. It is sometimes subverted into grandiosity. It is perhaps more often lost in the ministry of the mundane. It needs to be guarded… People with the strongest and healthiest sense of calling are not obsessed with their calling. They are preoccupied with the Caller. With a clear vision of a good and competent and loving God before me, the significance of my own tiny part in his world is safely and manageably held.

– John Ortberg

Read the full article here.