High Call High Privilege – A Book Review

In her book High Call, High Privilege, Gail MacDonald offers encouragement to women involved in church leadership and/or married to a church leader.  She speaks from her experience of many years of “fishbowl living” as a pastor’s wife, and presents principles she has gleaned over her years in ministry.  She focuses on five key relationships:  a woman’s relationship to the Lord, to herself, to her husband, to her children and to the church and community.  Her main themes are the joys and the privileges of ministry; however, in pursuing those themes, she touches on the realities of life in the ministry, which include pressure, applause and criticism, anger and joy, and failure and success.  In order to have that joy in serving, a woman needs to learn to handle those realities.

If a woman is to survive in the ministry, the author emphasizes the primary importance of “tending the fire” of one’s personal relationship with God. Learning to listen to His voice and spending time intimately communing with the Father is the heart of “tending the fire,” and this prepares us for whatever we face in ministry.  She discusses spiritual disciplines which are key to staying spiritually fresh.  She encourages women to find and use their spiritual gifts.

Much of this book reiterates truths that we know.  But Ms. McDonald’s many personal examples, as well as her honesty about her own struggles and failures, makes this book one that is not only very readable, but one that is also very applicational.  Originally published in 1981, is was revised and updated in a 2000 version.

It is very obvious that this author loves the ministry.  She encourages her readers to have a life of servanthood that is characterized by joy, knowing that God has given us the privilege and calling to ministry.