Love’s Unfolding Call

“For the sake of the world, God calls all followers of Jesus to Christian ministry. To embody God’s love in the world, the work of the church requires the ministry and discipleship of all believers.”

—A Song of Faith
The United Church of Canada

What does it mean to be called? How does it work in real life? What does it feel like in our bodies? If we believe, as we do in The United Church of Canada, that all Christians are called to ministry, how do we understand our own calling, especially in relationship to others? And how do we allow for the space for the Holy Spirit to work in and through us, changing and challenging our call in each new ebb and flow of life? There is both a theology and a lived experience of call underway in all of us and in the church, leading us in Love’s direction.

Calling is personal and relational. It is an embodied demonstration of the community of the Trinity: involving a person, but not just a person—a person within the community of the whole people of God, held within and guided by the Love of God. It is never complete, but always being born anew. Each member of the Trinity has their unique work and identity, giving way for the Other to be Other in Love, while claiming their own space, complete yet incomplete outside of the community of three.

Love brought me into the household of God, in the way that freshly baked bread draws people to the kitchen in irresistible desire and deep hunger.

As individual disciples, we experience our sense of call in our own bodies, in our own way. Fully experienced, fully embodied, complete … yet incomplete outside of the community of the church and the community of the Divine. Our call is only fully realised in relationship.

Calling is about Love. Each call in my faith journey has been birthed in Love, the product of pain, struggle, and forces at play beyond my own understanding. Every call has been messy and miraculous, the emergence of a new thing that God created.

The Love that is Christ called to me as a struggling teenager, drawing me into a community of the church that affirmed my belovedness no matter what the world said about my past and my present. Love brought me into the household of God, in the way that freshly baked bread draws people to the kitchen in irresistible desire and deep hunger.

My transformation into a Christian (a process still underway) began with the body of Christ known as the church around me and the body of Christ received in bread and juice within me. I was called to Love and drawn into belonging, then called to discipleship through the waters of baptism, my place in the family confirmed with my words, affirmed by the church, and sanctified by God.

Years later I was called again, back to life, by Jesus who came to fetch me from the margins once again. In that healing from isolation, addiction, and despair, I was nourished and replenished, returned to wellness and belonging in myriad ways. That work by God within me and facilitated by the community of believers around me made space for the Spirit to call me in a new way: to ministry.

Calling is a story still being written, in all disciples and in the church itself. I was baptised into a small rural United Church and affirmed and discipled as a young adult in an expanding evangelical church plant in New York City. My vocational call was affirmed by that same small rural church and I was sent out in urban and suburban communities throughout my time at the Vancouver School of Theology. I thought I knew what my calling was in ministry. And I did, for that time.

As graduation and ordination drew near I was given a new vision for my ministry. The next call was situated in the clearing between the wilds of the forest and the structural bridge into the institutional church. Several years later, as the founding Minister of Weird Church, a thriving church plant on Vancouver Island that holds that in-between space, I understand the vision given to me and the call to serve in this way. Last year, a call came for me to level up my leadership and build the skills I need to take this fledgling community into the future—a call I felt personally and in community, affirmed by the church and supported by God to live into.

How do we continue to affirm the call of God, unfolding in new and exciting, sometimes terrifying, and always life changing ways in us and the people we serve? In my denominational context, The United Church of Canada turns 100 in 2025 and preparations for the centennial have long been underway nationally, with local preparations being dreamed up and planned out as I write this article. As a denomination we have been transformed by the renewing of our call by the Holy Spirit many times in our history. It has rarely been easy, many times painful, and has always borne fruit beyond our imagining. As an expression of the ekklesia, bound together with siblings in Christ across time and geography, our church is being invited by the Spirit into a new calling.

Calling is a story still being written, in all disciples and in the church itself.

As we consider the 100 years behind and the 100 years ahead, I challenge all of us, in and beyond The United Church of Canada, to remember that the church has a story still unfolding, work we are being called to anew, alongside the worldwide body of Christ and led by the Spirit, to work towards God’s dream for the healing and reconciling of all Creation in this time and place.

As individual Christians, as communities of faith, as denominations, and as the global church, our call is ours but not only ours. It is born out of a Love so big and beautiful it cannot be contained or restrained, but must always be understood as unfolding and alive. Our work is to continually be discerning God’s new and renewed call in us, our communities, and the world, trusting that as we are rooted in history and tradition, new buds will always be emerging and expanding into blossoms yet unseen.

Ingrid Brown (she/her/elle) is the founding Minister of Weird Church in Cumberland, BC. Her faith formation and love of the earth was nurtured in the forests of Bowen Island and solidified in the concrete jungle of NYC, where she studied performing arts. Those roots of love grew deeper and were well nourished at VST, where she completed her Master of Divinity degree. Along with the Rev. Ryan Slifka, Rev. Ingrid was the inaugural recipient of the Thoughtful, Engaged, and Generous Award in 2019.