Challenges to my call

by Jim Lester

edited by Bob Terwilliger, fall 2023

Linda is my awesome wife and life companion of 55 years.

We started dating in our senior year of high school. It was through her and her family’s influence that I came to the Lord. After we married, I landed a mid-level job with the National Park Service. It was all God’s hand at work in my life.

Being a park ranger was a wonderful, but relatively short, career. We were at Rocky Mountain National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Golden Gate National Recreation Area around San Francisco, and Everglades National Park. I loved my career but it was interrupted by my being drafted into the

U.S. Army during the Vietnam era. By God’s providence, I was assigned the role of chaplain’s assistant at a chapel at Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, Texas.

A few years beyond active duty with the Army, and while I was an area manager at the Everglades, I realized the Lord had different plans for me. By then, we were a family of four. Our daughter was born in San Francisco, our son in Miami.

The transition from the National Park Service to Western Theological Seminary took over a year, but it was affirmed several times.

The summer after my first year of seminary, my ministry experience was with an organization called A Christian Ministry in the National Parks. I was assigned to Glacier National Park as the leader of the ministry in the park. I worked Monday through Friday as a back-country patrol ranger. On Saturday and Sunday, as the ministry supervisor, I visited the teams of college and seminary students leading worship in campgrounds and the lodges around the park. My responsibility was to work out problems and encourage the teams. During the summer, I developed a good relationship with the chief park ranger. This was the first of three challenges to my calling. He and I discussed my staying at Glacier, picking up my career where I’d ended it a year before. I decided to return to seminary for a second year.

Finishing the second year, I accepted a summer internship at an RCA church without a pastor. The main responsibility was preaching twice weekly. During the following winter months of my third year, that church asked if I would accept a promise of a call upon graduation. I did and a few months later was ordained. On the first anniversary of being their pastor, a group of elders invited me to a restaurant for lunch. As we ate, they each told me how I was not meeting their expectations. Upon reflection, they made some good points. But, at the time, I was thinking they weren’t meeting my expectations either.

This was the second challenge to my calling into full time ministry. Back at my office that afternoon, I recalled that just before leaving the National Park Service, the Superintendent of the Everglades drove an hour to my district just to say goodbye. He assured me I’d be missed. He gave his card and phone number and told me that if ministry didn’t work out to give him a call and he’d have a place for me. Then I prayed about it. I stayed at that church for 16 more years. The Lord had more for me to do and learn there.

After ten years at that first church, I learned the founder and director of A Christian Ministry in the National Parks was retiring. I applied for the job. Six weeks later, I received a phone call from the chairman of the board of directors inviting me to New York City, along with three other candidates, to interview for the job. I was interviewed on a Thursday afternoon and was told the board would make their decision the following Saturday evening. All the candidates were to stay until Sunday morning.

For two days, I meditated over the interview and where I would best serve the Lord. Before Saturday evening, I concluded that, if chosen, I would decline. When the chairman called my room, he told me I was not selected. I responded by saying I was relieved and that I wanted to talk personally to him about the process as I experienced it. We discussed my retreat resulting in a renewed calling to continue pastoral ministry. I called Linda, told her what happened, and flew home on Sunday. Back home on Monday morning, I received a phone call from him, saying, “Last night we fired the person we chose just the night before.” He then offered me the job. Thus, the third challenge to my calling ended when I told him, “No, thank you.”

This has been an important time of reflection for me. In sharing it with you, my hope is you will do likewise. These three challenges were not crisis events. Each was a fork in my road of life. Contemplating how the Lord has moved in our lives can be helpful in understanding how he’s with us now.

Perhaps your path through ministry was never challenged. If so, you have been spared that particular testing. As in Robert Frost’s famous poem, I’m “sorry I could not travel both” paths in life. Yes, looking back, it appears to be a series of tests about continuing on the road “less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” If you can relate to any part of my story, or even if your challenges were different, then I pray the Lord has or will encounter you in a retreat, a personal “Peniel” (the place where Jacob wrestled with God).

The Lord has equipped and placed us into ministries. Retirement is not the end of our calling. The first four years after retirement, Linda and I focused on ministry to her parents. I still preach some and teach adults at church and in the community. It is a blessing the Lord grants me, even though now I serve with a limp (Genesis 32:31).

Resolve to be involved. Each of us brings much value to the kingdom. Press on, sisters and brothers. Nothing done in obedience to Jesus will be wasted. Even the smallest things matter.

Jim received a BS from Michigan State University, an MDiv from Western Theological Seminary, and a DMin from Western Theological Seminary. He served in the National Park Service, in the U.S. Army as a chaplain’s assistant, and at North Park Reformed in Kalamazoo, Michigan; Peace Christian Reformed in South Holland, Illinois; and Hager Park Reformed in Jenison, Michigan. He and his wife, Linda, live in Hudsonville, Michigan. jimdeelester@gmail.com