Perhaps our calling is not our occupation but something that happens within and beyond it.

I was sitting at a lunch table in my high school cafeteria across from a pretty blond girl whom I hoped would take a greater interest in me. “I’m thinking about becoming a pastor,” I told her.

“Have you received a calling from God?” she asked me.

“What do you mean?”

“Has God given you a sign that he wants you to be a pastor?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t be a pastor—not unless you get a special calling from God.”

I had never heard of such an idea. I thought a divine calling was mostly limited to prophets in the Old Testament. Couldn’t I be a pastor simply because I wanted to be? Did I have to be knocked down by a blinding light or see a burning bush before I could legitimately pursue pastoral training?

I wanted to be a pastor because the job looked appealing to me. While in high school and college, various people, including my pastors, encouraged me. They said I’d be good at it. I never received divine confirmation of that opinion but went to seminary anyway.

During my first year in seminary, in a class called Personality and Religious Experience, the professor gave us a form to fill out. One of the questions was, “What have been your numinous experiences?” Numinous experiences? I had to look up “numinous” in the dictionary, and even then I wasn’t sure I understood the question. Were visions or mystical experiences part of the prerequisites for becoming a proper pastor? Couldn’t I just want to be a pastor?

Actually, no. It wasn’t enough just for me to want to be a pastor; other people had to want me to be a pastor, too—otherwise I’d never find a church to pastor or receive credentials. But it seems to me that the support of my pastors, congregation and conference was a bit different from what’s usually meant by a “divine calling.”

In my first pastorate I learned that believing one has a divine calling to pastoral ministry can be a curse. Matt began attending my church to find healing for his wounds. He was under a perpetual cloud of guilt. As he told me, “When I was in Bible college, they were always pushing us to become missionaries or pastors. They convinced us this was God’s calling on our lives. But I ran away from that calling. I didn’t want to be a missionary or a pastor. But all these years I’ve felt like I’ve let God down and my life is a failure.”

Matt worked at a job that made use of his natural talents, but he still felt guilty. Time and again he would investigate going to seminary to become trained as a pastor, but he could never bring himself to follow through with his plans. He was in an eternal bind: unable to force himself into ministry and unable to accept the occupation he was in. So he continued a sad, shadow existence, incapable of becoming whole.

Finally I told Matt the truth about his pastoral calling. We sat in a rundown Dairy Queen, sipping chocolate shakes, while he rehearsed his old lament. Then I said to him, “Matt, let me tell you something I’ve never told you before: Thank God you never became a pastor. If you had become a pastor—knowing you the way I do—you would have been a disaster. Believe me: You were not called by God to become a pastor.”

Matt looked at me, stunned. “You know, no one has ever told me that. Thank you.”

I wonder if we haven’t gotten this concept of God’s calling all turned around. Perhaps our calling (in the divine sense) is not our occupation. Instead, we choose our occupation. We “follow our bliss,” as Joseph Campbell said. We pursue an occupation that will express our deepest passions and interests. But our divine calling is something that happens within that occupation and beyond it. Our divine calling is Christ’s calling: to be his disciples in whatever circumstances or occupations we may be in.

When I was a teenager, I believed God had one woman picked out for me somewhere in the world whom I was supposed to marry. I was filled with anxiety over how I was going to correctly identify “the one,” because if I made a mistake, my God-ordained life would be ruined. But during a course in Marriage and Family Therapy in seminary, my professor said, “We are not designed for one particular marriage partner. There are any number of people we will meet in our lives with whom we could be happily married.” I have come to believe this is also true for our occupations. There are a number of occupations I might have chosen: archeologist, high school teacher, college professor or writer. I would have been good at any of them and been content, and God would have been pleased.

I chose to become a pastor, but my divine calling has been to ask myself each day, “What kind of pastor should I be? What does God want me to do as each situation comes up?”

When I graduated from seminary, I began looking for a pastorate. But I was dating a divorced woman at the time, and no Mennonite congregation would hire me. I ended up being hired by a Bible study group that was exploring becoming a church plant. And so my first pastorate involved doing what I had never intended or been trained to do: plant a church. When I had imagined my first pastorate, I had pictured an impressive building with a sizable congregation, and me sitting in my office being—comfortable. Instead my calling was to do the grunt work of helping start a church from scratch.

While ministering in my next pastorate, I received a letter from a stranger—an inmate at the local county jail. He had met some Menno­nites who impressed him, so he wondered if a Mennonite pastor could come visit him. I did so, and that began three years of visiting John every other week. When he was released, I was relieved. I was looking forward to not visiting the jail anymore. I didn’t like those metal doors clanging shut behind me. I didn’t like the unfriendly guards and colorless walls. Visiting jail was always a soul-sucking experience for me.

But John said to me, “Ryan, I have a friend in here who doesn’t get any visitors and I think he’d really appreciate your visits. Would you visit him?” I said yes. So I began visiting Dan on a regular basis; and when Dan was released, he asked me if I would visit his friend Brian. And so it went on. Over the years I have been inside 15 jails and prisons. I never intended to have a jail ministry. I never wanted a jail ministry. But these are the people God put in my path, and as a disciple of Jesus it was my calling to respond faithfully to each. In addition, five members of my congregation have spent time in jail or prison while I’ve been their pastor. All those previous jail visits prepared me for caring for my own sheep.

When those great heroes in the Bible heard the calling of God, it usually did not change their occupations; it changed how they lived their lives within and beyond those occupations. Isaiah and Ezekiel remained priests, but now they had a calling to be priests in a new way. Peter was still a fisherman and Paul a tentmaker, but their calling clarified the mission of their lives.

God’s call on everyone is to live for God and each other. God’s calling on the Christian is to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ in every aspect and occupation of life. What exactly this will entail we cannot know ahead of time. We often pick our occupation, but we do not pick our calling. Our calling is the unseen need around the next blind corner of our lives. When we meet it, it may scare us; we may claim, like Moses and Jeremiah, that we are not trained or gifted for the task. Or it may delight us; we may, like Isaiah, shout, “Here am I, send me.” But of one thing I am convinced: Our calling is not our calculation; it is God’s surprise.

From time to time I ask my children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Over the years their assorted answers have included zookeeper, veterinarian, naturalist, computer game designer and interior designer. I confess, each time I hope one of them will say, “A pastor.” But those words have never been spoken and almost certainly never will be. I must restrain myself from placing on the shoulders of one of them the mantle of the pastor, of subtle hints to hear the call of God saying, “Pursue pastoral ministry.”

Instead, I model for my congregation a pastor who enjoys his work. Hopefully some will be attracted to this crucial role within the church, and I will encourage those who have the unique gifts this role requires. But more importantly, I hope all in the congregation (including my children) hear the daily call of God to love when the unexpected shows up on the doorstep.

Ryan Ahlgrim is pastor of First Mennonite Church in Indianapolis.