BERRY: Well, I hear from readers a good deal, and I try to answer every letter. I think, because of my commitment to issues of conservation and good agriculture and peaceableness, they find something hopeful in my work.
TANYA BERRY: They’re looking for a life instead of a career.
LEACH: What are the principles you encourage, then?
BERRY: When they say they’re planning to take up farming, I encourage them to be awfully careful. I have received a lot of letters saying, “I don’t like my job. I don’t like where I’m living. I’m going to sell out, and move to the country, and be a farmer.” It seems to me that the only responsible thing, then, is to write back some version of “Be careful” or even “Don’t do it.”
TANYA BERRY: Or “Keep your job.”
BERRY: Yes. Buy a place in the country if you want to and live on it, but keep your job. Don’t put your marriage at risk. Don’t put your livelihood at risk. Because there’s a lot to learn, and why should somebody who has a lot to learn try to take up farming when experienced farmers are failing? So, in writing favorably about farming, I’ve assumed a considerable responsibility that I’ve tried to live up to. People say, sometimes in alarm, “You’re discouraging me.” And I say, “Well, yes, to some extent. I’m obliged to encourage you to be thoughtful.”
(From: "It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture & Other Essays" by Wendell Berry.)
It struck me on reading it that, given the avalanche of encouragement to younger men and women to enter ministry, to become church-planters or assistants or [insert your choice of title]...that there is much wisdom in being, as Berry suggests, more thoughtful. His question, "Why should somebody who has a lot to learn try to take up farming when experienced farmers are failing?" feels especially pertinent. And "Don't put your marriage at risk" is an utterly haunting statement.
This isn't of course to discourage new ministry workers - very many are and will be needed - but is simply to encourage a greater open-eyed realism, a realism that will include a greater consideration of and attentiveness to the subject of 'a call to the ministry' and the slowing down of the process of discernment and decision.
