Called...

A friend of mine and I were talking about being called into ministry. I was still thinking about that even a day or two later. "Being called into ministry." Was I called into ministry? Was there a setting apart this life and time to do ministry? Can you even do ministry or do you just minister. It is more than doing but more of ministering.

I have been thinking about my friends Nancy Donat, Phil Skei, and Beth Eckloff. They moved themselves, and in Phil's case his family, into an area to minister. They don't do ministry, they minister. They raise their own funding, buy their own home in the high crime neighborhood of Fresno where they minister. To the neighbors they minister. They don't go to do ministry, they just minister. They talk to people about whom they are ministering and people support them. Their homes are set up to minister. Backyards turned into places people can come to and play. Living rooms turned into homework rooms.

They don't punch out and leave the ministry, they live in it. 24/7/365 (this year it is 366).

I ask myself a lot these days, "would I still do what I do, if I didn't get paid to do it?" Would I start this which I do, if it hadn't been started? Is my identity tied into the organization or into the Savior?

Then I ask myself, "Am I called?"