Crisis of Faith or Call to Action?
As published in Trinity College Dublin Theological Society’s Theo-Poetica Vol II, April 2026, and lovingly posted to my home with my sincere thanks.
CRISIS OF FAITH or CALL TO ACTION?
by Rev. April L. Kling
This is a postcard to you I am writing from the shores of my own existential crisis. I, a pastor, have run out of pithy quotes to offer you, and instead, I sit on a massive pile of uncomfortable truths that don’t fit easily into an envelope. Otherwise, this would be a love letter to you, but it is in fact a more fervent beckoning.
So you say you are experiencing a crisis of faith. If that’s true, I invite you to join my experiment: what happens when we stop referring to this as a crisis of faith, and refer to it as our soul’s call-to-action?
I have observed that the very nature of my own crisis of faith is indecision. We have lost our trusty frameworks. Our moral compasses spin like a top rather than pointing us true north. It seems like if we are not putting all of our energies into pursuing, or better yet amassing, power and wealth for ourselves as individuals, we threaten our very own survival.
If this is a call-to-action, you ask, what is it you’re supposed to be doing? My darling, I do not know.
You and I? We can start by asking ourselves very different questions than what our faith has previously asked of us. Not only that, but we can assure ourselves that we are allowed to ask these questions, and that our faith will only become better for it.
Here are some questions I am testing in my own experiment in call-to-action:
- What is right in front of me, right now, at this moment?
- What is purely analog in my midst, untouched by the perils of more ephemeral digital realities?
- WHO (OR WHAT) MOST NEEDS MY HELP? (Specifically, more within this analog dimension than beyond it.)
- What is the help that I can deliver most immediately, to someone who will feel its effects most readily, within my abilities and capacity?
And then, once I’ve answered such a call-to-action, and delivered on my task-at-hand to be helpful, I can ask myself:
- How did that feel?
- How do I feel differently from before I lent my hand?
- Who am I that I was not before I offered aid?
- HAVE I CHANGED?
- HAVE I CREATED CHANGE?
It feels important also to remind myself of something at the core of my understanding, even as I fully question it, that I know when my ego is speaking to me when it refers to me as something separate from the world and everything and everyone in it– all the oligarchs, all the burning cities, all the starving families, all the exploited children and those who exploit them, all the blustering world leaders then, now, and rising through the nepotistic ranks: they are me, and I am them, and I am choosing to steer this ship in a different direction if I feel we collectively must. I am grasping the needle of my moral compass and pointing it to what is right in front of me, in this moment, as the best and most correct and most moral step I can take right now.
I cannot claim to behold the fullness of the essence of God. My mortal mind is too limited to do that. However, if I am helping someone or something who needs and wants my help? I feel God working through me in that. I am helping them, and they are helping me, because we are the same.
In this, I begin to address my crisis of faith as a mere limitation of my understanding, and I know for certain that such humility is a step in the right direction. I only have to keep that momentum to remain on the journey to fully uncovering the mysteries of God someday, one gentle step at a time through such darkness.
As a woman of faith honoring my own deep calling, I always aim to be of service to you whether you are in a crisis of faith, you wish to honor a call to action, or some combination of both. What if there were a way we could work together to get out of your own mess and start to make meaningful changes in your lives that might eventually have radical global effects?
IYKYK… don’t ignore what your heart knows is true for your future.
Let’s talk about it. Click here to schedule a time for you and I to chat.
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It may feel to you as if today’s major global conflicts are too overwhelming or too far away for you to have an impact, and that only extremely powerful or wealthy people have the ability to do anything about peace, who frustratingly choose not to do so.
You may have found that this line of thinking has led you to feel utter hopelessness, which then can lead to your own inaction and possibly unhelpful coping mechanisms such as performativism, dissassociation… even stirring up drama (and calling it ‘activism’) to feel as if you’re ‘doing something.’
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