After a large Sunday dinner, family and friends gathered in the living room of my grandmother’s rambling house for the event that made me a Christian. Lifting a silver bowl filled with water, the preacher said some ritual words, made some promises and then baptized me.
I have always envied people with a spectacular sense of call. I once had a job that involved reading applications for admission to a Methodist seminary. One of the questions on the standard form was, “Why are you applying to this school of theology?” The answers were often fantastic, many of them involving car wrecks in which the applicant’s narrow escape resulted in a call to preach.