Crisis and Calling: Discipleship after Desolation

I learned what feels like to be called growing up in the Texas hill country. We lived in a small town that was just country enough where kids could roam, but just close enough to the city where we couldn’t get into any real trouble. We would wander, climb trees, play in a creek, run over to a friend’s house down the hill, but we knew we always had to listen for mom’s call. She would walk outside, put two fingers in her mouth, and perform that miracle it seems only mothers can do: whistle. She would call us home.

I learned early on this is what it means to be called: it is to be invited home, beckoned into a place of belonging. To know that all you can do is come.

It was not until much later, through my own life experience and others, that I learned what it means to face crises. The crisis of your mother’s medical diagnosis. The crisis of the loss of a friend. The crisis of church closures. The crisis of unemployment. The crisis of grief. The crisis of COVID-19. The crisis of loneliness. The crisis of childlessness. The crisis of uncertainty. The crisis of failure. The crisis of mental health. To borrow a line from Les Misérables, I learned what it means to live “with empty chairs and empty tables.”

Crisis is an experience that brings us up short.[1] We feel it in our bones long before we can express it; it is that ache, the anxiousness that slowly grows, this unspoken sense that we are already stretched too thin and cannot possibly bend any more. We are weary and heavy laden; we need rest, but do not know where to find it.

Crisis, in its barest form, comes when we have an unshakeable encounter with desolation.

As a seminary professor who studies how communities of faith navigate uncertainty, I’ve spent the last two years in the space where crisis and calling converge. Many of my students enter my classes because of some sense of call, or in search of a call. Our work together involves trying to train to “live a life worthy of the calling [they] have received,” as Paul writes in Ephesians (4:1). For the organizations I study or serve, they have spent the last twenty-four months trying to discern faithful mission and ministry on the edge of certainty. Many students and pastors are crisis weary, but many remain resilient and hopeful.

But what happens when students’ and leaders’ training for or pursuit of their call is formed in the forge of crisis? What happens when those who are searching for a call or confirmation of a call are cast into the fires of crisis? What happens when a community’s prolonged sojourn through crisis brands its collective imagine with this experience?

For many of us who journey through the shadow of crisis, we cannot always keep the questions crisis poses to us at arm’s length. The convergence of crisis and calling is acute for my students and the leaders I study, but the questions they face in this moment are questions we all share: Who has God called me to be? Where do a belong? Where do I turn when I find myself crisis weary?

And for each of us, no matter where we serve or how we articulate our sense of call, these question probe and expose how we understand our existence in light of the reality and possibilities of God.  They invite us to imagine the structure of discipleship after desolation.

To this end, I want to describe five different forms of crises that confront us and two modes of response. We’re past the point of prescriptive answers in this particular spot of time; nevertheless, our collective response to desolation now requires a kind of (theo)logical form(ation) where crisis and calling converge.

Crisis comes as flood[2]

This is the type of crisis that comes unexpectedly and sweeps us off our feet. When the rain starts, you’re grateful, but then it continues and the water starts rising. What started out as a good gift to a parched land, suddenly becomes too much to manage. Something that intended to nourish the land and refresh our bodies, suddenly becomes too much to manage. In extreme cases, this deluge becomes a space of desolation, as flooding water desecrates anything in its way. When struck by the crisis that comes as a flood, you cannot swim, you cannot stand, you can only hope to be taken up carried by the waters, hoping God will carry you forward.

For some of us, crisis can come like a flood. Like water spilling through a breached dam, the collective traumas of crisis wash over us with unrelenting force. And just as floods do not affect all equally, the floods of some crises leave some untouched. Others find their lives and livelihood destroyed. As the waters reside across our flooded lives, we begin to assess what has been lost. We’ll try to pick up the pieces of lives, dreams, and memories that cannot be rebuilt.

The crisis of a flood can certainly come suddenly, but it can also come after we’ve said yes to too many good things. When we’ve tried to build and grow a ministry too quickly, but find ourselves knocked off our feet by the abundance that comes before us. When we erode our lives in ways where we no longer have the margins for anything extra. These are the preconditions for the flood of crisis.

Crisis comes as a famine

Sometimes crisis comes as famine. While some crises come suddenly, others slowly build. We sense the fragility that surrounds us. We carry inherited burdens from those who came before us. We know the arid places of our lives and communities that leave us felling cracked, without reserves, and dreading what will come next. And as the crisis deepens, these isolated sites of vulnerability spread. As the unimaginable costs of crisis grow, they gradually consume our remaining reserves. If the crisis of flood picks us up and carries us to an unknown end, the crisis of famine leaves us stranded right where we are. Stuck. Weary. Tired. Parched. Angry. Unsure of when help or healing will come.

This is the story of so many of us who are crisis weary. This is also the story of the people of God in Egypt. God had called them, delivered them from famine, but then there was only silence. And then when God’s call did come again through Moses, they were forced to continue service in a space of scarcity. “Let them go and gather straw for themselves,” Pharaoh said (Exodus 5:11).

For those who are training for their call or trying to pursue their call in the belly of crisis, many have been formed in close proximity to the scarcity this kind of crisis will bring.

For ministers and ministry leaders, it is first a question of finances: will my congregation or ministry survive the next week, month, year? But then it is a question of resilience: after ministering for so long on the edge of scarcity, how can I, how can we, marshal a little more to serve a depleted community? How do I keep making bricks (or bread) to feed our people without straw?

For students, it is first a question of capacity: how can I continue to study and serve with such narrow margins? But then it is a question of future aspirations: how do I prepare for a ministerial vocation when the communities I will serve will likely look very different from the community that nurtured my call?

Although many of us do not know the aridity of physical famine, this form of crisis is not far from our lives.

Crisis comes as a fire

Sometimes crisis also comes as a fire, consuming everything in its path. If the crisis of flood comes from excess and the crisis of famine comes from scarcity, the crisis of fire comes from compounding conditions that consume our lives when there is a sudden an unexpectable combustion. This type of crisis is unique because it comes as a surprise. Although the crisis of flood is severe, we know it could be coming when the rains won’t stop falling. And even though the crisis of famine leaves us arid, we experience it after prolonged scarcity.

The crisis of fire, however, comes unexpectedly. We cannot know when or how the fire of crisis will come. We can only try to prevent it from spreading when something in our lives or communities catch fire. Much like a forest fire that ravages an ancient forest, a spark is needed to start a fire that grows into crisis, but it also requires fragility. An ecosystem must be dry and weary from misuse or lack of resource. But then it needs a spark. And much like the fires that annually destroy forests, this form of crisis, once started, only spreads. Sometimes it is a comment. Sometimes it is violence. Sometimes it is thoughtlessness. But in each case, this form of crisis can undo the good and beautiful work of a community that took years to grow. And in the most severe forms, the crisis that come as a fire levels a generation. We cannot rebuild, we can only wait for God to restore our communities.

For so many of us, this describes the state of our communities. We are weary, parched, and stretched thin. That which we once could navigate easily, grows in magnitude. And when our own anxiety or lack of reserves renders our lives and spirits arid, a simple spark can quickly grow, spreading to consume the work of a generation.

Crisis as family

Sometimes family is the crisis we face. These spaces that can create space for connection and belonging do not always hear the call of God on our lives. These holy communions can become sites of confusion, question, and uncertainty. For some students, families and communities can obscure God’s call instead of creating space of discernment. God’s call comes in and through our human communities, but then these communities can also fracture under the weight of God’s call. When those nearest and dearest to us do not affirm our call, how do we respond to God’s call on our lives?

This is the story Jerena Lee, a lay woman in the AME church who heard God’s call to preach in 1807. She was convinced that God had called her. She shared:

An impressive silence fell upon me, and I stood as if someone was about to speak to me, yet I had no such thought in my heart.—But to my utter surprise there seemed to sound a voice which I thought I distinctly heard, and most certainly understood, which said to me, “Go preach the Gospel!” I immediately replied aloud “No one will believe me.” Again, I listened, and again the same voice seemed re-say—“Preach the Gospel; I will put words in your mouth, and will turn your enemies to become your friends.”

Even though God’s call was upon her life, her community did not immediately believe here. She started to doubt. But then she recalled this story of God’s call upon Mary: “Did not Mary first preach the risen Saviour…Then did not Mary, a woman, preach the gospel?” she wondered.

God’s call had gone forth, but the family of God became the site of crisis for her calling. When crisis comes in the form of family, in the form of those nearest and deepest to us, it can cause us to question God’s call upon our life.

Crisis as faint

Despite Lee’s witness to God’s call going out, sometimes the real crisis is not the clarity of the call, but the presence of a call at all. Sometimes crisis comes in the absence of God’s call, or when we can’t hear that whistle calling us home to a space a belonging. For some students and leaders in this moment, we can no longer sense God’s call on our lives, and even wonder if God calls us at all.

This is the fifth form of crisis: when the call is faint.

Severe crisis comes in the form of famine, or a flood, or a fire, or even family, but this fifth form, when the call is faint, may be the most severe at all. When we sit in the belly of crisis, longing for a way out, we begin to doubt God’s call. When students come to seminary, where everyone talks with certainty about their call, but cannot marshal that certainty for themselves, they wonder if and where they belong. When leaders pray, for deliverance, hope, a word from God, but silence is our only companion, we question ourselves and our decisions. Sometimes we wonder if God calls at all.

Discipleship after Desolation

For those who teach or preach, we serve in the shadow of crisis; it is never far from our classroom, and our students carry numerous crises—both seen and unseen—into our educational community. It is never far from our congregations, and those in our pews show up on Sunday waiting for a word to address the crises that they carry. For those who lead communities of faith, we know the reality of crisis far too well. And for those of us who are trying to pattern our lives after the way of Jesus, we know the crisis of faith.

We cannot avoid crisis, and we cannot will our way out of the crises of this moment. The convergence of crisis and calling in this moment, however, invites us to consider the kind of discipleship that can carry us forward in the wake of desolation. I’ll offer two practices drawn from my students and the communities I’ve studied.

Waiting

When crisis comes like a flood, it sweeps us off our feet. When crisis comes like a famine, it leaves us feeling parched. When crisis comes like a fire, it scorches our lives and communities. In some cases, the call of God on our lives leads us to crisis. In others, it is only in crisis that we received God’s call on our life.

The storyline of Christian scriptures tells us that in these moments of grave crisis God is near. The God of Israel is a God who knows crisis so well. God is a God who makes covenant with Abraham by walking through the dismembered pieces of creation; a God who calls a people through the waters of Egypt; a God who provides Manna to fend off the threats of famine; a God who delivers Daniel out of the fires that threatens to consume.

A God whose call continues to go out into the world: calling to Moses, to Daniel, to Deborah, to Mary, to Martha, to Paul, to Cornelius, and to each of us.

Even when our teaching or learning is besieged by crisis, God’s call persists. It is a call to life; it is a call to a hope; it is a call that God will not leave us nor forsake us. It is a call to come home. Precisely in the space of humanity’s grave crisis, God’s call springs forth. It is a call that will not leave us as we are, a call that invites us into a new form of being human.

Even though the story reminds us we serve a God who calls, we cannot call ourselves. When we are besieged by crisis, we long for God’s call to calm the flood, to ease the famine, to squelch the fire.

All we can do is wait.

The German pastor-theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, knew something both about crisis and about God’s calling. On December 2, 1928 he wrote in an Advent sermon: “Celebrating advent means learning how to wait.” Several years later, now writing from a prison cell and a crisis of his own, he shared: “[A] prison cell like this is a good analogy for Advent; one waits, hopes, does this or that—ultimately negligible things—the door is locked and can only be opened from the outside.”[3] When we find ourselves in crisis, sometimes all we can do is recall God’s call on our lives and wait for God to call us again. We can hope, but we ultimately need God to remake our fractured lives and communities.

While some accounts of discipleship accentuate an active life, crisis invites us to linger in the silence and solitude that desolation brings. And precisely in the silence we can only hear in crisis, we may learn to hear God’s call on our lives yet again. We can learn how to follow Jesus and discern God’s call on our lives.

Creating a More Beautiful Song

Finally, I want to offer a hopeful invitation. When the crisis and calling converge in our lives, we are also invited to create a more beautiful song. Mary’s Magnificat emerges in the space where crisis and calling converge. God’s call upon her life had the capacity to catalyze each of the five forms of crisis named here. Like a flood, God’s call carried Mary to a place she could not imagine. Like a famine, God’s call drove her into places of isolation. Like a fire, the call of God on her life consumed everything she had known or done up to that moment. When confronted with the crisis of family, Mary recounts the story of God’s relentless call upon the world. And when the others threaten to silence God’s call, ensuring that the call is faint, Mary bears creative protest to the crisis that threatens to silence the call of God on her life, and the God of life she carries.

When we find ourselves in crisis, we can still create a more beautiful song.

As we consider the kind of discipleship that emerges in the wake of desolation, we can discern God’s ongoing work in the space where crisis and calling converge: to wait upon God and to create something good and beautiful, even in the space of desolation.

When family is the site of crisis, we’re invited to craft something that bears witness to God’s ongoing call on our lives and our communities. When crisis comes like a flood, we’re invited to combine the scattered pieces of our lives and communities into something new. When crisis comes like a famine, we can tell stories about God’s previous deliverance. When crisis comes like a fire, we can scour the scorched places of our lives for signs of new life. And when the crisis is that the call is faint, this same creative work is itself a way of waiting on God. It is a form of holy attention, holding space for the spirit. Saying, with Mary, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.”

And while we wait, creating and crafting what only we can offer into the world, we can receive the good news once again: God’s call goes out into the world, meeting us precisely in the space of our crisis.

While we wait, we can sing a more beautiful song.

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References

[1] The phrase “brought up short” comes from Richard Osmer’s Practical Theology: An Introduction (Eerdmans, 2008), 21. Robert Creech directed my attention to Osmer’s language.

[2] I first introduced and explored these first two forms of crisis alongside my colleague, Erin Weber-Johnson, in the Introduction to Crisis and Care: Meditations on Faith and Philanthropy (Cascade, 2021).

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. John de Gruchy, trans. Isabel Best, Lisa Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens, Vol. 8 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Fortress Press, 2010), 188.

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© Dustin D. Benac, 2022.

This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Cover Image: “Desert Drought Dehydrated Arid Badlands Erosion” by _Marion is licensed under the Pixabay License.