As in most things, the task of making life-changing decisions and sticking to a commitment is hard.However, unlike a decision to eat fast food or lean meat, deciding n to devote your life to the Lord as a pastor or a priest is much more difficult.
For some, although the decision is said to be a manifestation of life-long dreams, for others it is simply the end result of a dream developed after years of becoming closer with Christ.
But regardless of how the decision is made, the fact remains that for many the decision to fully commit their lives to serving God and his people is sometimes the most difficult step of all.
This is especially true for persons like Father Elvado Turnquest, a young Catholic priest, who is required to sacrifice much more than others.
In the Catholic faith, priests are asked to give up all hopes of having a family — both marriage and kids, and some even choose to take a vow of poverty.
Although all religious denominations do not promote such strict vows, each one does require a pastor or priest to constantly make life changing sacrifices.
According to Turnquest, an associate priest at St. Francis/Xavier Cathedral, West and West Hill Streets, his decision is just that, a decision.
"It has been over 10 years now since I consciously began my journey toward the priesthood. I have been asked many times: 'How do you know that you have a calling to be a priest?'' or 'when did you receive your call?'
And truth be told, at first I did not know. It was not until I had completed several years of seminary studies that it became clear to me that God was directing me to the priesthood," said Turnquest.
But he said that the seminary is the best place for a young man to be to help him understand whether or not God is calling him to the priesthood.
"You know, it is funny, but when I entered the seminary most people thought that the priesthood had to be the only result. But this is not an accurate picture, although it is the hope and prayer. But, a seminary is the best place to be when discerning a vocation to the priesthood and a life of celibacy in the Catholic Church," he said.
When asked about his vow of celibacy, Turnquest said that in short, it is just a commitment. "You have to understand intimacy in a new way," he said.
"And as a celibate priest you understand that it's a sacrifice but it doesn't take away from being human. You just have to be more cautious of the barriers. Even a married person has to understand that. It's a commitment. It's an ordinary struggle. But the desire for family and children does not go away. It's natural to have those feelings," he said.
But the young priest, who is in his early 30's said the life he now leads is what he wanted."I wanted to be different and be challenged, and like any other profession it has its challenges, but the good times do out-weigh the negative."
For Reverend Ulric Smith, a full-time associate minister at Zion Baptist Church, Shirley Street, making his decision came at the price of his engineering passion.
Smith, 29, had been pursuing a degree at The College of The Bahamas at the time of his calling, and he said answering God's call was "difficult."
"It was period of struggle me. It was 1995, I was at The College of The Bahamas, so ministry was not my focus. I wasn't thinking about ministry, and at the time I was doing engineering. I had no ambition to be a minister, and I just wanted to be a good Christian," he said.
"But I think in my Christian journey I started to feel God calling me, not only to be a better Christian, but into full-time ministry, and that was a struggle. Mainly because, you're looking at your own inadequacy and you're like that's probably just my mind because I'm not really that unique so God can't be calling me."
"Additionally no one I knew in my family at the time, in terms of my father or my grandfather, none of them ever had an ambition for it. It didn't look appealing to me, and I wasn't the one sitting and saying I want to be a pastor," he said.
But the calling got so strong, that Smith had trouble coming to grips with the fact that God was actually calling him, and he struggled for a number of years.
"In the end my breaking point was in 1998 when I started to recognize that God was really calling me, and as that call became very, very strong to me, I made that decision to be full-time in the church."
"Now the truth is that at the time I gave my 'yes' to God I knew that there was nothing else I could be doing and that even if I played crazy and fooled around with other stuff, the truth is that I knew I wouldn't feel the same sense of fulfillment. So the sense of calling has always been there, but even in preparing for ministry you have your ups and your downs, or times when you feel inadequate. You may feel like you're not good enough or saved enough, and these are some of the things that ministers say to people but we feel it. And the truth is that as ministers we struggle with ourselves sometimes."
Adding to the debate, 28-year-old Father Carlton Turner of All Saints Anglican Church, Joans Heights, South Beach, said that for him it was a little different as he always wanted to be a priest.
"My decision was something that grew with me as I grew," he said. "I grew up in Mangrove Cay, Andros and I grew up in the Church, and I always had a calling on my life. I knew this from the age of seven. I knew that the only two things that I wanted to do or be in this life was a teacher or a priest," he said.
The young man of God who had gotten his career in teaching started, actually taught for three years at A. F. Adderly, before he became a pastor, but he said he knew he would one day become one of God's disciples.
"Everything in my life pushed me here," said Turner, who comes from a strong teaching and Church-going background.
"My grand-aunt was a Cathecus and I lived in her house, so I had her influence in every aspect of my life. Therefore I couldn't run from the church," he said.
"Plus I always had this sense of connection with God. I was the child who would go in Church and spend time in prayer from a very young age, so as I said this has always been with me. But as I grew up and moved to Nassau to go to The College of the Bahamas, I was advised to take up teaching and I did that. But the sense of the calling never left me."
Every ordination service he attended for others left him feeling like the spirit was speaking to him and waiting on him. And he said there were many times when he wanted to run.
"I'm a trained Spanish teacher, and I had this wonderful dream about being a lecturer at the College but in 1999/2000 at a language teachers conference in Mexico, everything on that trip went wrong, and I had a sense of not belonging there and that's when I understood that I needed to stop running."
But according to Turner, like Rev. Smith, although he has committed himself to the church, there are still struggles that he has to face.
"Recently I moved churches, and I've found that it was a bit difficult. I had spent a year at Saint Gregory's Parish on Carmichael Road, and now I'm here at All Saints, and I found that that switch left me bewildered because I was finding my way, and building relationships with the people and then it changed," he said.
The constant starting over, he said has been his struggle, but he said it is something all men of God have to prepare for, because they are sent wherever they are needed.
In terms of marriage, he said it is long past due.
"I find that aspect of it all to be a struggle," he said. "The more I go on as a priest I find that I need that martial nurture and I live in a real world, but I do plan to deal with that in short order."
Turner said that he doesn't believe he has given up a lot for his calling because it had always been apart of him, and that it was only a matter of him accepting it.
"I always knew this would happen," he said.
"And after a while I just accepted it, and embraced my faith. My decision was a long time coming, but it's something that I knew I was for me."
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