Southern Stories
The Intersection of Faith and Public Service
December 6, 2007
"In Christ we are given everything; in Christ we can give everything."
Dan Bell heard the call to teach the faith long before he heard the call to ordained ministry.
Since high school, he "felt the call to teach the faith." But, he had no interest in ordained ministry because he was turned off by what he saw as "apparent complacency" in the congregation in which he grew up.
Two things happened to change his view. First, in college, as a religion major, he encountered a professor for whom teaching was clearly a ministry.
"I learned from him that teaching was not simply about getting to wrestle with fascinating facts about God, but rather teaching was at its best a spiritual discipline or direction meant to aid our journey in love with God and others."
Second, Bell encountered a pastor who would not accept his "no." During his senior year, Bell was called into the office of his home pastor. He "basically told me he did not care what I thought, that I should go to seminary and explore a call to ordained ministry.
"So I did. And, to my surprise, and not without the requisite suffering, The United Methodist Church called and ordained me to teach."
The call experience is the first prong of his teaching ministry. The second, he says, is in the way the teaching ministry has taken shape in activities like prison ministry, cross cultural trips to Honduras, and ministry to victims of domestic violence.
To Bell, ministry is a shared experience. "Any description of my ministry has to begin with the ministry of all Christians. This is the case because it is the church that has led me to this ministry and because it is the church that makes this ministry possible – particularly all the folks who make the work of Southern Seminary possible.
"So 'my' ministry is not mine; it is ours."
In one sense, Bell's journey began in high school when he "got hung up on" the book of James. "Faith without works is dead," he read.
In college, he read a few pages from various liberation theologians. "I am sure I did not understand them, but I did catch on that God cares particularly for the downtrodden."
The pastor who would not accept his "no" to ordained ministry connected him with a congregation in Miami, where he spent the summer before seminary working with the homeless and others who wandered into the downtown church office. "All summer, I walked past the bullet hole in the front window of that church and stepped over homeless people to get in the door."
"I began to see things that I had somehow managed not to see for so long. Here were needs that clearly should be met; here were people whom God loves that I, growing up in the church, managed to not even see, much less give a rat's behind about."
Back at seminary, he was required by a class to visit three ministries with which he was not familiar. He visited the homeless shelter in Durham and ended up volunteering there for the 10 years he was Durham.
He volunteered in part because of the example of John Wesley, a founder of the Methodist tradition, and in part because of the influence of his seminary studies, including liberation theology.
But, he also volunteered "because the lives I was granted a glimpse of reminded me that books and papers and academic worries really are not that significant.
"And I did it because in the midst of serving chocolate covered cherries and figs; or breaking up another fight; or holding up someone who smelled of urine, Wild Irish Rose, and body odor; or listening to the latest scam being run on the street; or being berated for my arrogant attitude, I knew as sure as I have ever known anything, that that is where I should be because that is where Christ is."
In graduate school, he became involved in a local prison ministry, again because of Wesley's example.
"Then a friend asked me to write and eventually visit a client of hers who was on death row, which I have been doing for twelve years now."
During this period, he also was asked by a friend to take a group of seminarians and alums to Mexico to visit poor Christian communities and folks working with the poor. After two trips to Mexico, he was asked to co-lead seminarians and undergraduates on trips to Honduras.
"Each time I go, I am reminded of what is truly important, of what is truly needful. From the folks we work and live with I learn, I see, taste, touch and smell what faith, hope and love look like.
"I figure that is not a bad thing for a seminary professor to be exposed to every once in a while."
Although despair is a temptation, "there is no substitute for prayer," Bell says. He is sustained by accountable and supportive relationships in a Covenant Discipleship group and by the words of a pastor shared many years ago: "We are called to labor, to sow, and trust that God will reap in God's time."
He also is sustained by the witness of others and by "the deep gratitude and amazing fidelity of students."
And, he is sustained by "the gift of assurance that accompanies being among those whom Jesus is among" – in Honduras, at the Oliver Gospel Mission in Columbia, on a Habitat for Humanity work site, among death row inmates.
"There, in those places, among the least, only hope makes sense," he says. "Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again. Maranatha. Lord Come."
Dr. Daniel M. Bell Jr. is associate professor of theological ethics. He earned Master of Divinity and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Duke University.
