Called into Ministry

When I felt the call into ministry, I was selling high-end furniture. My days would consist of hauling sofas off the back of a truck, inspecting the furniture for any damages, making claims with the company on said damages, and then welcoming people into the store and helping them with their decor needs. Whether it be a bar of soap as a hostess gift or outfitting a whole room, I was happy to help.

And I genuinely was happy to help. The fact that any person would decide to come into the store was, in my mind, a step in the right direction. The store was beautiful, the team working there was friendly, and we genuinely cared about the client and the furniture. It was an easy relationship to facilitate because we believed in both.

But we also believed in the power of design and the way spaces make us feel. We were a team that could verbally express an emotional feeling that could only be fully understood in a beautiful space. As a team of creatives, we lived and breathed beauty and wanted others to come to know the power that a well-curated space can provide for the soul.

However, it’s not that simple. And this is what I started to notice a few years into the industry. Yes, a well-curated space can provide respite for the soul, but only temporarily if the soul is not rooted in something deeper. From the business side, trends are always changing, new fabrics, configurations and wallpapers are constantly being made available. As supply and demand fluctuate, so do prices. As for helping the customer who is on the receiving end of trends seen on social media, magazines, and television shows, and being constantly told that their space is not good enough, I began to feel helpless. It soon became clear that there was a greater and deeper need being expressed under the desire for something “new”. Or, in other words, a yearning for a change of environment without having to change oneself. There was a major spiritual problem afoot, and I was seeing it everywhere.

This was when I began to feel convicted by the Holy Spirit. I felt that I knew the truth about where life and beauty and joy and sorrow derived from and, while I could demonstrate God’s love, I could not profess it in my work setting. If I worked in a setting where I could not freely share Jesus in moments where the Spirit was clearly prompting me, then something had to change. My options were to either thwart the Spirit’s plans and continue as I was or to dramatically change my path and see where I was being led. And, as we know, nothing stops the Holy Spirit.

When I quietly accepted the Spirit’s movement to follow its lead, I knew immediately that I was being called into parish ministry. I began to have visions of myself wearing a collar. I realized that those “impromptu sermons” I would subject my husband to were a clear indicator of the path God had laid out for me. The only way I know how to describe this is that my life, all of a sudden, made sense.

The decision to pursue ministry was not unlike my decision to pursue interiors; the desire to share with people the beauty of the world. And, as a Christian, the most hospitable way I know how to share the beauty of the world is through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Ellen Kelly is an ordinand in the Anglican Diocese of Fredericton. Hailing from all over Canada, Ellen now calls Saint John, New Brunswick, home. She has just completed her Master of Divinity at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto and looks forward to beginning her curacy in September.