The Summons

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?

Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown? Will you let my name be known,

will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

Will you love the "you" you hide if I but call your name?


Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?


Will you use the faith you've found to reshape the world around,


through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?

(The Summons, Evangelical Lutheran Worship 798)

It has been a crazy rollercoaster of a week at Orientation. A week full of laughter, tears, deep conversations and jokes. But most of all, it has been a week of growing in community and getting to know each other, only to be scattered to the four corners of the earth. Yet, despite the scattering, we go knowing that the community we have formed this week will be a large part of our support system for the next year.

At our closing worship on Tuesday night, our hands were anointed, we sang one of my favorite hymns in the ELW, Will You Follow Me? (The Summons). I love the questions that it asks and the challenges it poses.

They are also the questions that I have been asking myself as I prepare to leave for Jerusalem. Am I ready to answer this call? Am I ready to go to another new place? Am I ready to grow and be changed? Am I ready to face my fears? Am I ready to follow the ELCA’s motto of “God’s Work, Our Hands”?

With these questions in mind, I said my good-byes to the 42 YAGMs who left yesterday as they boarded the shuttle to O’Hare. As I said these good-byes , the closing stanza of this song echoed in my head and it serves as my prayer, both for myself and for my fellow YAGMs, for the next year:

Lord your summons echoes true when you but call my name.

Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.

In Your company I'll go where Your love and footsteps show.

Thus I'll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

Listen to the full song on Youtube here.

Read the full lyrics here: Gospel Music Lyrics.