Wellbeing specialist Ruth Johnston explores how the Holy Spirit calls us to lives of purpose, inviting pastors and church leaders to reconnect with what makes them come alive and discern God’s ongoing call.
Ruth Johnston is a wellbeing specialist for The Corinthian Plan. She is ordained in Mennonite Church USA and has been a hospital chaplain, hospice grief counselor and spiritual director. Johnston loves to garden, knit, bake, write and travel. She lives in North Liberty, Iowa, with her spouse and son and attends First Mennonite Church in Iowa City, Iowa.
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.
–Howard Thurman
When the Holy Spirit calls us, that call contains a genuine and deep love so intense we are willing to take risks for it. It brings with it energy and makes us come alive. As pastors and leaders, if we feel bored, stressed out or more duty-bound than love-infused, we may be disconnected from our spiritual call – that particular place of love to which our soul is tuned and where we are called to give and receive life.
If this is the case, here a few ways to begin to address it:
- Make a new commitment to read, reflect, journal and pray. What does your heart feel passionate about and how is God calling you to use your passion and your own “aliveness” for the sake of others? (Perhaps read scripture via the way of Lectio Divina or Dwelling in the Word, or read authors or poets who have filled your heart and given guidance in the past.)
- Visit with a spiritual director with whom you can explore your call. (Mennonite Spiritual Directors Network or Spiritual Directors International are two online resources). Perhaps your call has changed or evolved. As you explore, you may realize that external pressures have overshadowed your internal call from God. With a spiritual director, you can have honest conversations about what is emerging, what’s holding you back, and what may need to change.
- Consider working within your own family, a small group or the congregation to take stock of what the larger call is for you as a body working together. What new energy is bubbling up? Where might you step out in faith? Where do you discern, as a group, a way to pour more love into the world, to love neighbors as yourselves?
Spiritual director, Scott McRae, recently wrote, “Jesus wasn’t asking people to believe harder. He was inviting them to see differently.” Often, in our lives, the answer is not to push harder, but to notice what is waiting to be born anew. We can do this by asking honest questions, spending time listening and opening up to the Spirit’s movement.
“Jesus wasn’t asking people to believe harder. He was inviting them to see differently.”
As I speak to pastors in my role as wellbeing specialist, I often hear what makes them come alive and also what does not. What is it that makes you “come alive?” Where would you love to invest yourself more fully? And, what would it look like to answer Howard Thurman’s mandate to “go do it?”