Sarah Blake LaRose

Recently a seminary student asked me how I hear God and how I know what I am called to do. I wasn’t surprised by these questions. Many seminary classes open at the beginning of the semester with times of introduction when students share their sense of their call to ministry. In other words, they share their understanding of where God is leading them to serve in ministry. In some classes, students write papers about their experience of being called to ministry in response to particular biblical passages (e.g. prophetic call passages such as Jer. 2 or Isa. 6). I have very mixed feelings about this practice. Certainly I believe that some people experience a very specific call to a particular place of ministry. However, I also believe that other people–and perhaps most–experience a general call and are led by God in faith to places where ministry happend. For these people, there is not one place of ministry that is best. The environment of sharing among the other students can feel very competitive, especially for the student who does not have a particular ministry direction.

The only commission that Jesus gave to his disciples was to “go and make disciples.” There is no higher calling. Many people who faithfully served the Lord had what we might view as undefined calls. Still they answered faithfully, led by the Holy Spirit in everything they did. There is no shame in being uncertain about one’s ministry direction. The real call is to serve the Lord, to love Him and to go and make disciples… Everything else is a matter of the leading of the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit can certainly take care of that in tine.

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About Sarah Blake LaRose

Sarah Blake LaRose teaches Biblical Hebrew and Greek at Anderson University School of Theology and Christian Ministry in Anderson, Indiana. She is one of three blind academic scholars who received the Jacob Bolotin Award from the National Federation of the Blind in 2016 in recognition of innovative work in the field of access to biblical language texts and tools for people who are blind. In addition to her work as a professor, she provides braille transcription services specializing in ancient languages. Her research interests concern the intersection of disability, poverty, and biblical studies.

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