{"id":30125,"date":"2025-08-25T10:46:32","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T15:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pts.edu\/blog\/?p=30125"},"modified":"2025-08-25T10:46:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T15:46:32","slug":"henderson-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pts.edu\/blog\/henderson-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"God Invites Me In: A Lay Leader’s Call Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re reading this, it\u2019s because God has an incredible sense of humor.<\/p>\r\n

When I was five years old, I began playing the piano in the living room of my family\u2019s house. Ten years later, when questioned by my piano teacher about my lack of commitment to practicing, I told him that soccer practice was far more important to me than practicing the piano since I had no interest in playing music in front of anyone, or in pursuing music as a profession. Three years after that, I sat down at the piano as my church\u2019s choir accompanist for the first Sunday of what would become 21 years of Sundays.<\/p>\r\n

In the years leading up to that role, I\u2019d grown pretty skeptical of the church. The God I\u2019d been taught to love and trust in my youth was not being represented well in the places, or by the people I most associated with \u201cchurch\u201d at the time. I believed in God, but what I\u2019d learned in Sunday school and sung in the pews didn\u2019t match what I was seeing or hearing around me, and I lost interest in showing up for weekly services, or youth group, or anything else church-related. I left for college with a very clear idea of what the future held for me, and church didn\u2019t factor into it at all. And then everything about my life changed.<\/p>\r\n

Rediscovering Connection<\/h2>\r\n

\"\"I ended up getting very sick and doctors didn\u2019t know why. The amount of pain I was in caused my short term and working memory to fail. My brain was so busy trying to navigate what was happening physically, that all it held on to day-to-day were the memories I needed to survive. I ended up having to move back home and figure out how to adjust to what life has become for me, while letting go of all of the assumptions I\u2019d made about the future, my future. Finding things that my long-term memory could carry me through became a priority, which eventually led me to join my church choir. I\u2019d sung in choirs and played the piano my entire life. The making of music was a core memory for me, and I sight read well enough that the short term memory problems didn\u2019t matter. After a couple of weeks with the choir, I was asked to accompany them.<\/p>\r\n

Me.<\/p>\r\n

Someone not entirely convinced that church was what I thought it should be.<\/p>\r\n

Someone entirely convinced that playing the piano in front of anyone, let alone a whole congregation of “someones,” was a terrible idea and scared the bejeezus out of me.<\/p>\r\n

Someone just trying to slog my way through the medical mystery that had become my life.<\/p>\r\n

Me?<\/p>\r\n

They asked me to fill a role that would commit me to going to church every Sunday. They asked me to fill a role that pushed me way outside of my comfort zone. They asked me to do one of the very few things that I still had the capability to do. Despite my physical pain and the many doubts I was experiencing about both the church and playing the piano in public, I begrudgingly said yes. In the years that passed, the church changed around me, and the church changed me. Accompanying the choir re-introduced me to a community I\u2019d known my whole life, but could engage with and get to know in new ways. Serving as the accompanist grew into a part-time communications role with my church, which grew into a full-time ministry coordinator position.<\/p>\r\n

\"\"In conversation shortly after accepting the full-time position, my pastor made a comment about me living into my \u201ccall to ministry.\u201d It was a simple statement, a momentary part of a broader dialogue, but it shifted everything. It was the first time a pastor specifically named my commitment and work within the church as my call to ministry. It was like a spiritual lightbulb being lit. It shifted my understanding of and appreciation for the ways I was responding to God\u2019s invitation to use my God-given gifts for the broader work of the Spirit.<\/p>\r\n

In the years that have followed, I have been nominated to serve as a member of the council on finance and administration and the connectional leadership table. I traveled to St. Louis to serve as a page at the Special Called Session of General Conference. I\u2019ve trained as an emergency response team leader and led a hurricane recovery team to Puerto Rico. I spoke at the Zimbabwe Episcopal Area Lay Leadership Conference. I was certified as a facilitator for Community Action Poverty Simulations. And, because of an acquaintance formed at my best friend\u2019s church when I was 10 years old, I am now the director of communications and publications for The Fellowship of Worship Artists, where I spend every day working to resource professional worship leaders.<\/p>\r\n

Me.<\/p>\r\n

God certainly has a sense of humor . . .<\/p>\r\n

God Invites Me: Doing the Next Thing<\/h2>\r\n

In the last two and a half decades, I\u2019ve become everything I never, ever imagined I\u2019d be. I\u2019ve served in ways I never anticipated, and in some ways that I wholeheartedly resisted at first. I\u2019ve been to incredible places and have met the best people as a result. What I\u2019ve learned along the way is that God doesn\u2019t expect me to know everything, or understand everything, or lead everything, or fix everything. God doesn\u2019t expect everything from me. God invites me in.<\/p>\r\n

God invites me to respond to God\u2019s call in ways that I never could have imagined, and in ways that I am uniquely positioned to fulfill. God invites me to do things I don\u2019t really feel prepared for, and uses the voices and promptings of those I know, and love, and trust to draw me into those opportunities. God doesn\u2019t expect me to know everything that is going to happen in the future, but God does invite me to trust God and do the next thing God puts in my path. Not every thing. Just the next thing, which has led me to this moment: serving as a presenter on the topic “Answering the Call to Lay Leadership” at the 2025 Henderson Leadership Conference at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. My presentation is for laity, whose ministry helps mold and sustain the church. It is also for clergy, whose support and encouragement of the laity often creates a sacred space in which calling can be discerned. It is a discussion and an invitation.<\/p>\r\n

I hope you\u2019ll join me for this next thing.<\/p>\r\n

Join Erica at the 2025 Henderson Leadership Conference!<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n

Join Erica and other ministry leaders for workshops on these topics:<\/p>\r\n