Anyone who has served on a nominating committee knows how crucial talented leadership is to any group, including the body of Christ. God, our story reminds us, shares that concern. God is unhappy with Saul’s leadership and sends Samuel on a mission to secure a replacement.

Look Who Is Doing the Calling

Perhaps the most salient features of this story is the fact that it is God who is doing the calling, with Samuel as his agent. Leaders in the church vary in their understanding of the call to ministry, but all would agree that in church vocations (vocation comes from a Latin derivative meaning “to call”) there needs to be some sense of being summoned to a particular ministry and summoned to that ministry by God. It is that underlying sense of having been summoned that makes Christian leaders…