The Decision to Preach

How does one decide to become a preacher?  In evangelical churches the idea of “call” is extremely important.   During my development years, most people within our faith community didn’t think much of the idea of calling.  That doesn’t mean they thought that deciding to preach could be made without serious soul searching.  I don’t ever remember anybody encouraging a young man to preach by saying, “It’s a good line of work to get into, and you don’t have to get your hands dirty.”  A young man approached me one time about wanting to enter a preacher’s training school.  He said that he was a mechanic, and he would like to do something that wouldn’t require him to crawl under cars and get grease all over his hands.  I told him to forget about preaching.

As a matter of fact I remember people saying, “If you can do anything else, don’t preach.”  By that they meant that you felt such a high degree of urgency that you couldn’t see yourself doing anything else.  Not a whole lot different from being called.

I’ve already mentioned our Wednesday night “sermonettes” in West Texas churches, and that experience began to weigh heavily upon my mind.  I may well have exaggerated my ability, but I received so much encouragement that I came to believe that God had gifted me to be a speaker.  Since I generally saw preachers in a speaking role, I figured that’s what they did.  I would find out about the rest of it much later.  I eventually came to the conclusion that since God had gifted me to preach, that’s what he expected me to do.  I guess you could say it was a feeling that I had been called.  I saw no cloud formations.  God didn’t speak in a still small voice (or a loud one either).  I had no dreams or visions.  Those were the things I associated with calling, and I didn’t experience any of them, nor did I expect to.

But there was this overwhelming thought that this was what I was put on the earth to do.  I eventually made my decision, and I’ve never backed away from it.   That was in the summer of 1952.  I was getting ready to enter my senior year at high school.  John Estes asked me if I would like to prepare a full length sermon for a Wednesday night.  I don’t recall the exact date, but one Wednesday night in August of that year I delivered my first full length sermon.  I couldn’t tell you what my topic was.

I wanted to tell somebody about my decision.  Don Rutledge was one of my best friends, so I went to his house and said, “Don I’m going to enroll at ACC when we get out of school next year, and I’m going to become a preacher.”  Don’s response was classic. He said, “You can’t do it. You’re too dumb, and you’re too poor.”   If he wanted to discourage me, he never should have said that, because I was determined to prove him wrong.  I have him to thank every time I’ve thought about throwing in the towel.   When you tell me that I can’t do something, that’s exactly what I intend to do. I think it’s genetic.  There’s a family characteristic known as “Bales Stubborness,” and I’m either blessed or cursed with it.  I’ll let you figure out which one.