2024 marks the 150th Anniversary of our Canadian Baptist Mission movement! We will have an opportunity to celebrate God’s calling on individuals, churches, women’s organizations, conventions and unions in our country as well as the churches and ministry groups we have partnered with across the world.

In 2007, the Board of Trustees of Acadia Divinity College announced that I had been chosen to serve as President and appointed to the Chair of Church Leadership named after two beloved former Principals, Abner J. Langley and Harold L. Mitton. This call was the culmination of many months of personal and corporate discernment. I had joy and peace in the call, but the demands of leadership caused me to throw myself repeatedly on His enabling power and grace. That deep sense of calling, affirmed by God’s people, sustained me through the nearly twelve years of leadership that followed. I discovered that the presence of a pounding heart and sweaty palms at times could co-exist with this call and a heart of deep shalom. This paradox speaks to whatever romanticism and idealism we may have in considering what it means to be called of God. For individuals and for churches, His call is often well outside our comfort circle.

However, my first Christian calling occurred on my 16th Birthday when I experienced baptism. In this public event, I affirmed that I had entrusted myself to the Lordship of Jesus Christ identifying with His life, death, and resurrection. But much more was happening! I recognized that I was forever joined and bound to His body. Whatever gifts the Spirit had given would be called out by His church in the decades to follow. This is not always understood or experienced by some who may have placed an over emphasis on the individual or personal calling. We are bound to Him and joined in baptism to His body, the Church (1 Cor: 12:12-14). Together, we worship at His feet and walk where He walks, going out with Him to serve His world.

Such individual and corporate calling is seen in John McLaurin, the first Canadian Baptist to be sent out solely by Canadians, who arrived in India in 1874. Together, we have been caught up in Christ’s mission, an integral mission of both word and deed since that time, reflected in the expanding partnerships across the world. Matthew 4:23 indicates that “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people.”

Being called requires corporate and careful listening to the Spirit. Sometimes we need to wait before we engage the work, and to worship and pray before we manifest the muscle of our efforts, as good as those efforts might be. Sometimes, it is not only knowing what we are to do, but when and with whom.

Acts 13:1-3 provides helpful insight on being called to mission. The leaders of the church at Antioch worshipped the Lord and fasted. It was in the midst of that, the Holy Spirit spoke, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Knowing what we are to do in the broadest sense is clear from scripture, but a particular calling is born from corporate worship, discerning prayer, and fasting.