Starting Something You Cannot Finish

By Dr. Albert Mohler

Published: June 11, 2010

Commencements come and commencements go. There will be thousands of graduation ceremonies around the world this season, and each will mark an important turning point in life. We have become so accustomed to these transitions and the need for marking such occasions that many schools now hold something like a commencement for kindergartners ready for first grade.

Still, there is something momentous about a formal commencement ceremony in an institution of higher learning. Before us today are a host of graduates in all their array, and a distinguished faculty in all its regalia. Any passerby would know that something important is going on here, and most will recognize the basic structure of the event. Degrees will be awarded, pictures will be taken, congratulations will be extended, and all the pomp and circumstance will be observed.

Then, what? To the average observer of an academic graduation, that just about sums it all up. The gowns will be put away, the programs will be filed for memory, the degrees will be hung on walls, and life goes on.

That is where this commencement differs from so many others. Most graduates are sent out to the next phase of life, learning, and profession - encouraged by the congratulations and qualified by newly held degrees. But those who graduate from this school today, though rightly congratulated, are being sent out to put everything they have, everything they are, everything they have learned, and everything they hope for, on the line for mission and ministry in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

They are not starting careers. Indeed, this may end their careers. They are not newly-minted professionals. In fact, they may be largely useless in the eyes of the secular world. They are now deployed for a life of ministry that runs counter to the wisdom of the world.

The call to the Christian ministry is a profoundly counter-cultural reality. The conventional wisdom just does not fit. As children, we are taught the adage that we are not to start what we cannot finish. But these ministers of the Gospel will never really finish anything, and they are not very qualified to start anything. As the Apostle Paul told the Corinthians: "According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." [1 Corinthians 3:10-11]

They will take their places in a long line of faithful ministers. They will build upon the foundation laid by the apostles, and that foundation is Jesus Christ. They will toil and serve and witness and teach and preach and lead and build, but they will die with more undone than done. Some will serve long, some may serve only a short time in this earthly life, but they will serve a cause they cannot complete; they will tell a story they cannot conclude.

The American dream does not fit this calling. That dream calls for years of preparation to be followed by formal qualification, decades of professional accomplishment, and a happy retirement. Our hope today must be that these ministers of the Gospel will never retire, for the ministry is never accomplished. They may in due time be redeployed, but never really retired - never ready to rest and merely collect a pension or cash in their retirement accounts and live a life of leisure. They are to serve to the end, learn to the end, teach to the end, and be faithful to the end.

As a matter of fact, the Christian ministry is as concerned about the end as the beginning. With Paul, we look back to the beginning, when Christ declared the establishment of his church, commissioned the church with the Gospel, and promised that the gates of Hell will never prevail against it. But we also look forward to the end, and that ending puts everything into perspective. The Christian ministry is a profoundly eschatological calling.

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Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., serves as president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary-the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention and one of the largest seminaries in the world. Dr. Mohler has been recognized by such influential publications as Time and Christianity Today as a leader among American evangelicals. In fact, Time.com called him the “reigning intellectual of the evangelical movement in the U.S”. For more on Mohler, log onto www.albermohler.com

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