When the horn sounds

The horn sounded through the trees. It was not music. It was a cry for help.
Boromir was alone beneath the trees of Amon Hen, surrounded by enemies and fighting a battle he could not win. Merry and Pippin were behind him. Orcs were closing in. Arrows had already found him, but still he stood. And somewhere in the distance, Aragorn heard the horn. He knew that sound. He ran toward it.
I have always loved that scene in The Fellowship of the Ring. Maybe because Tolkien understood something ancient about a horn. You don't sound one because you have something interesting to say. You sound it because someone needs to hear. A horn is a summons. A cry across the distance that says: Come.
C.S. Lewis understood that kind of call too. In The Last Battle, when Narnia has grown dark and the faithful few are scattered and hiding, Aslan calls his own. His call is not merely an invitation to change locations. It is a summons toward himself, and ultimately beyond the crumbling world they have known into something larger and more real than they imagined.
Perhaps that is why these stories have stayed with me. There is something buried deep within us that understands the idea of being called. Someone speaks our name. A horn sounds in the distance. A voice comes from somewhere beyond where we are standing, and somehow, we know it is meant for us. Come. Follow. This way.
I've been thinking a lot about calling lately. Maybe it is because I am in a season of life when I find myself looking backward and forward at the same time. I can look back across more than three decades of ministry and see places where I was certain God was calling me, places where I thought I understood what He was doing, and a few places where I clearly didn't.
But I'm looking forward too. I'm increasingly spending time with younger men and women who are just beginning to ask the questions I have been asking most of my life. Am I called? Called to what? How do I know? And perhaps the hardest question of all: What exactly does it mean to be called?
That question became much more personal recently when I found myself sitting across from a young man I've come to know. There are almost three decades between us, but grief has a strange way of collapsing distance. His father is gone. So is mine.
His father was a pastor and a friend of mine. He died far too young. I conducted his funeral, and it remains one of the hardest funerals I have ever done. I knew the man. I had spent hours talking with him. I knew his faith. I knew his love for Christ. I knew something of his heart. And I also saw something of myself in him.
His death forced me to think about my own mortality in ways I would rather not. Then, sitting with his son years later, we found ourselves talking about fathers, loss, life and eventually calling. Grief is strange. My father has been gone for nearly ten years now, and I suppose I once imagined that grief eventually disappears. It doesn't.
For me, it has become something like a scab over an old wound. Most days I leave it alone. Sometimes I pick gently around the edges and find clean pink skin underneath. Healing. Sometimes I pick too much. And it bleeds again. I think that young man and I were both picking at the edges that day.
Then he said something I haven't been able to shake. "I never heard Dad say how he was called to ministry." His father had pastored for years. He was a good preacher. He loved the Lord; I knew this without any doubt. But his son had never heard the story of his father's call. I encouraged him to ask his mother and his siblings. Maybe his father had told them. Maybe somewhere in the family there was a story he had simply never heard.
But the conversation followed me home as it raised a larger question. What do we mean when we say someone is called? I grew up in a church world where that word carried considerable weight. Someone was "called to preach," or "called to missions." A pastor was "called to a church."
I believe God does call people into particular ministries and places of service. I can look backward across my own life and see moments when I knew, sometimes with remarkable clarity and sometimes only in retrospect, that God was leading me somewhere. But I wonder whether we have occasionally made the call too small.
We have treated calling almost like a divine job offer: pastor, missionary, teacher, church planter. And without intending to, we may have created two categories of Christians: those who are called and everybody else.
Scripture seems to tell a different story. Jesus walked along the Sea of Galilee and called, "Follow me." That was the call. They didn't receive a career plan. Peter wasn't handed a job description. Jesus didn't explain Pentecost, Jerusalem, persecution, church leadership or how Peter would eventually die.
There was a Person. There was a voice. There was a call. Follow me. Everything else came later. The Christian call is not first a call to something. It is a call to Someone.
Before God calls us to something or somewhere, He calls us to Himself. Before occupation, geography, ministry or assignment, it is about relationship. Allegiance. Obedience. Jesus did not begin with Peter by saying, "I have a ministry position for you." He said simply, "Follow me." The first question of calling, then, is not, "What am I supposed to do with my life?" It is, "Whose voice am I following?"
Our culture loves the idea of "finding your calling," but usually what we mean is discovering the thing that makes us feel most fulfilled. We search for that sweet spot where our abilities, passions and opportunities come together perfectly. There is some wisdom in that. God gives gifts. He shapes personalities. He gives us experiences and abilities that can point us toward places where we can serve well.
But Christian calling cannot be about self-discovery. It is a response. Someone has called. We answer. And that means the call may not always lead toward the place where we are most comfortable or even the place where we feel most competent. Sometimes the call of God leads directly into our strengths. Sometimes it exposes our weakness. Sometimes it leads somewhere exciting. Sometimes it leads somewhere lonely. Sometimes it leads to a pulpit. Sometimes it leads to a classroom, a construction site, a hospital room, a kitchen table or a neighbor's front porch. Sometimes the assignment lasts thirty years, sometimes thirty minutes.
The assignments change. The Caller does not. I can see that more clearly now than I could when I was younger. I have been a missionary. A pastor. A teacher. A chaplain. Now I serve churches and pastors in another role altogether. For years I might have described each transition by saying, "God called me to..." Maybe that's true. But increasingly I wonder whether these have been less like separate calls and more like different stretches of road following the same voice, saying “Follow me.” The road changes. The Voice doesn't. And sometimes following that Voice requires courage.
That may be another reason Boromir's horn has stayed with me. He does not sound it from a place of safety. By the time the horn sounds beneath those trees, Boromir has already failed badly. He has tried to take the Ring from Frodo. He knows what he has done. But when Merry and Pippin are threatened, he stands and fights. He is wounded. And still he stands.
The horn sounds not because Boromir knows he will win, but because faithfulness requires him to stand where he is and do what is before him. There is something about calling in that too. We sometimes tell stories of calling as though answering God means finally discovering the path on which everything fits and sometimes, they do.
But Scripture is filled with people whose obedience took them into places they would never have chosen. Calling does not come with a promise that the road will be easy. It comes with the promise that the One who called us is worth following. Perhaps that is why I find myself thinking so much these days about younger leaders. There are young men and women sitting in our churches right now who hear something but don't yet know what it is.
Maybe one can't stop thinking about planting a church. Another keeps noticing children in his community who have no father in their lives. Someone else has an inexplicable burden for foster families. Another loves Scripture and feels something stir every time she teaches it. Someone keeps thinking about missions. Someone keeps seeing a neighborhood everyone else drives past. Someone is twenty-two years old, sitting across a table from an older Christian and finally gathering enough courage to say: "I think God may be calling me to something." Our first instinct may be to help define the something. But maybe our first task is to help them recognize the Someone.
Before we ask where the call is taking them, perhaps we should help them ask whether the voice they hear is drawing them closer to Christ. There will be time for internships, education and mentoring. There will be time to talk about gifts, theology, and opportunity. But we are not simply trying to fill pulpits or ministry positions. We are trying to raise up people who know the Voice well enough to follow wherever He leads.
And those of us who have been walking this road for a while have a particular responsibility. We know something about the sound. We also know how easy it is to misunderstand. We know about doors we were certain God would open that remained stubbornly closed. We know about assignments we thought would last forever that ended. We know about seasons when the voice seemed unmistakable and others when we walked mostly by faith. We know, too, that following Christ has sometimes taken us places we never would have chosen for ourselves.
Perhaps part of our calling now is helping another generation listen. I don't know exactly how my friend's father would have described his call to ministry. I wish I could ask him. There are a great many things I wish I could still ask my own father. Perhaps that is one of the strange gifts that grief offers. It reminds us that there are conversations we should have while there is still time to have them.
So, tell your children the story. Not merely the story of how you became what you are. Tell them about the Caller. Tell them why you followed Christ. Tell them about the moments when you sensed God leading you somewhere you had not planned to go. Tell them about the times you got it wrong. Tell them about the doors that closed and the ones that opened. Tell them about the seasons when following required more courage than you thought you had.
Tell them about the Voice you have spent a lifetime learning to recognize. And when someone younger sits across the table from you and says, "I think God may be calling me, but I'm not sure," resist the temptation to immediately hand them a map. Sit with them. Listen. Pray. Help them listen past all the other noise for the Voice that first said: Follow me.
Because somewhere in the distance, a horn may already be sounding. And when it sounds, perhaps those of us who have heard it before should remember Aragorn. He did not hear Boromir's horn and analyze it from a distance. He ran toward it. Maybe that is part of our calling now. When we hear the sound in another generation, run toward it. Come alongside them.
Help them discern the Voice. Help them find the courage to answer. And if the road ahead is long, uncertain and costly, remind them that the call was never about where they were going. It was about Who was calling.
The horn is sounding. May we have the courage to answer. And may we have the wisdom to help others recognize the sound.