It was 9:45 Sunday morning and I was on my way to the pastor's office. As a high school senior, this felt somewhat akin to heading to the principal's office. Questions abounded—What would this conversation be about? Had I done anything recently that merited this meeting?
I later learned that Pastor Melvin Sylvester made it an annual practice to have a serious conversation with each of his church's high school seniors to talk about their future. His intended take-away from that session was that each senior would have Christian vocation on his or her mind, along with all the other career options they had in front of them.
That session with the pastor, the shepherd of souls, served to make space for the questions?Might God want me in full-time Christian ministry? And if he does, how should I best prepare?
So there I was—17 years old, in the pastor's office, having him look me in the eye and ask me serious and pointed questions. My answers would determine how I would spend the rest of my life.
Various events had led up to that meeting in Mel Sylvester's office. Sylvester, himself, had been shaped for the ministry by significant input from influential people in his life. His mother, who was raised in The Salvation Army in Calgary, had birthed two daughters. She then prayed to her heavenly Father in the words of Hannah, "If you give me a son, I'll covenant to raise him as best I can, to be your servant."
Sylvester had not known that story and we can only imagine his great surprise when, many years later, he heard his mother, visiting him in the very first church he pastored, tell this story to a Sunday school class.
Some years after his mother's prayer, one of the early church planters of the Alliance in Western Canada, a woman named Mavis Anderson, had noticed young Sylvester in the church at Beaverlodge, Alberta. One day when Anderson ran into him at a youth rally, she said, "Melvin, you need to go to our Alliance School in Regina (Western Canadian Bible Institute). I believe God has great plans for you and it needs to start with Bible school." Two years later he enrolled. (Forgotten Voices: Women in Ministry in The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, by Barbara Howe.)
Mel Sylvester had also been impacted by Gerald McGarvey, a young missionary candidate doing home service in Beaverlodge, who would encourage him and friend, Neill Foster, to always speak to students. McGarvey said, "Covet students for the Lord and for the ministry."
The influence of his mother, the encouragement of Anderson and the challenge by McGarvey shaped Mel Sylvester, but there were other notable influences in his life who mentored him along these same lines.
There was Rev. Lowell Young who came one time for a week of meetings when Sylvester was pastoring in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. Young's philosophy was to begin recruiting full-time workers in churches and to meet with Grade 12 students and challenge them to Christian vocations.
He saw great value in being able to say, with integrity, "I see potential in you," and then challenge them to prepare for ministry. Lowell Young felt that affirming youth was huge. It was the pastor who should be proactive in this way.
Sylvester remembers an old quote from the Alliance Witness (now alife): "Missionaries are made at home." This truth motivated him and his wife Marion to encourage each of their children to know God's will for their lives. There was never pressure to enter the ministry but there was always encouragement to know and follow God's will for each of them.
Not surprisingly, Sylvester made the affirmation of students a part of his ministry. One day, this decision to affirm caused him to have a coffee with Ben Elliott, a college freshman. He said to Ben, "I feel prompted to tell you that you seriously need to consider vocational ministry." (Elliott and his wife are currently International Workers in Indonesia.)
