Invited by God

In the New Testament, ministry is seen as service to God and to other people in God's name. Each year in January, Reveille celebrates Ministry Sunday, a time when we highlight the invitation God extends to each of us to serve God and others in Christ's name.  While Ministry Sunday is focused on the call to professional and ordained ministry, God invites everyone to participate in that call and calls each of us in various ways.  As a prelude to the 2011 Ministry Sunday on January 23, The Window will offer narratives of how some of our staff, both lay and clergy, have answered God's invitation to serve at Reveille.  This week Administrative Manager Anne Stratton and Associate Pastor Abby Kocher share their stories. 

Anne Stratton:

A sense of "ministry" has always been in the back of my mind.  As I was growing up, my parents taught me the importance of respect and responsibility, to be a person who would look after others before taking care of myself.  That is a mindset that I have always lived with, and I am so thankful for that type of guidance. I came to work at Reveille in 1996 and have been able to put that way of life into my job.  It is a big responsibility to myself to try to be a servant to the members of Reveille and to others that I encounter. I believe people pass on kindness and respect if we treat others with the same kindness and respect.  I also feel that humor is extremely important in our everyday encounters and it can be used to make life a little lighter in stressful situations.  People say that at Reveille we have 2000 bosses (members) but I try to live by the rule that I have one boss and that is God.  He gives me what I need to live a life of dignity and respect and I try to use it daily.  What a great place to work and serve members of Reveille where I have grown to feel a part of the Reveille family.

Abby Kocher:

When I was baptized in the sixth grade, the pastor placed water on my head and whispered in my ear, "Always remember whose you are."  Twenty years later, when I was ordained, the bishop said to me "Always remember your baptism. Remember that your baptism came first." 

I have been ordained as a United Methodist elder due to the faithfulness of communities that showed me how being baptized and later, being ordained, could make possible a life that would not otherwise exist.  I think I am ordained largely because there were people I looked up to, whose lives were different because they were caught up in God's kingdom.  I looked at them and said to God, "I want a life like that."  It was a while before I knew what that would mean.  Even by the time I graduated from college, I didn't think I was on a path to ordained ministry. 

My baptism was made possible by the disciples at First United Methodist Church in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, where I worshipped for the first eighteen years of my life.  My discovery of a calling to ordained ministry was made possible by friendships within my Wesley Fellowship group at Duke, and later by the community at Davidson United Methodist Church, where I worked on staff as a lay person before beginning seminary. I am profoundly grateful for the gracious way in which the church in Davidson helped me to discover that I came alive in local church ministry.  This was an unexpected discovery, and it changed my life.  I still remember that it felt like a big step to say I was even thinking about going into ministry.  I had a deep assurance, which I eventually put into words as I came to believe, "This is what I was made to do." 

God has given me a love for the worship life of the church.  I am grateful for the ways that being baptized and being ordained have changed my life, and for the friends who walked alongside me through years of listening to deeply to God.  I believe that calling to ordination happens in a community of friendship, and my story shows it to be true.