“God Only Calls People To Ministry” and Other Lies I Once Believed

Ben Dockery | Est. 5 minutes

8 Misunderstandings around Vocation and Calling

I have always struggled with the idea that God is calling me to do something. I understood the primary calling to follow Jesus, and to walk in the ways of the Lord. This is often referred to as a ‘general calling.’ God clearly beckons people in this way, over and over.

The challenge for me came in what the Puritans named the ‘particular calling’ – the idea that an individual had a specific assignment from God. Known as a vocation, a particular calling is a match between someone’s personal gifts and their society’s need.

Vocations come with all the accouterments of gifting, deep joy, opportunity, and validation by a community. The sequence goes like this: God calls a person. The individual senses God’s direction. Those around the person affirm it. The world benefits when the person answers the call with faithful action.

I knew the formula, or at least read about it, but I still experienced confusion. I don’t think I’m the only one. 

Below are 8 common misunderstandings that might impact someone you know as they think about God’s call and direction in their vocation.

1. God only calls people to become a priest (or pastor).

This was one of the great conflicts during the Reformation era. Luther believed that “God is milking the cows through the vocation of the milkmaid.” He also insisted that the milkmaid and the farmer were doing ministry like the preacher. If God engineered creation to include human mediation, then our daily work of bringing cultivated goods from created raw material is an act of obedience. God gives us the cows. We collect the milk. Within this structure, each person receives particular gifts from God and responsibilities to their neighbor. God invites more than the priests to serve.

2. God only calls people with an audible voice.

You might be different, but I am certainly one of those people who thought only Moses and Samuel and Isaiah had ‘callings’ because they heard directly from God. Similarly, some of us assume that if we haven’t had a dramatic moment (could even be a still small voice), we don’t have a calling. This isn’t the case. Many times, God’s call to us involves the ordinary means of prayer, the everyday conversations with others, and the normal affirmation of our work. These mundane moments often reveal God’s assignment in our lives.

3. God only calls the Righteous.

Perhaps you believe that you’re not good enough at the Christian life for God to put you in the game.You’re not a varsity player; you don’t even think you are invited to tryouts. Mt. 9:13 reminds us though that Jesus did not come to call the righteous but the sick. If this is true about salvation, it is equally true about who gets to do God’s work in all spheres of society. The invitation hasn’t changed: come as you are.

4. God’s calling only refers to salvation.

Now, it is true (and important) to note the Bible primarily talks about “calling” as a call to Christ. God calls to salvation, hope, repentance, feasting, fasting, fellowship, forgiveness – to follow him. (Mk. 1:16-20; Acts 2:39; I Cor 1:26; I Cor 7:7-14; 2 Tim 1:9, etc). Still, God’s original command to “be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it,” (Genesis 1:28-29) is a calling. Add to it other passages (Exod. 20:9, Jer 29:4-9, etc.) and the call of God on all humans is to take responsibility for tending and cultivating the world. Work remains God’s good idea. 

5. God’s calling only refers to career.

When preachers or business leaders emphasize God’s call to work, we (yes, I’m guilty) subtly imply compensation. Work equals what we are paid to do. Thankfully, people like Tom Nelson and others have properly reframed work as contribution, not simply compensation. [1] This validates those working in unpaid roles such as caring for young children, physically disabled, or aging parents. It also implicates those who are ‘retired’ or in a life stage where finances are no longer a consideration. All the relationships, roles, and responsibilities God has providentially placed me in at this time are within the scope of his calling. Don’t look past those arenas.

(The first 5 misunderstandings are largely fostered in church contexts. They were for me. The final 3 misunderstandings grow out of a modern secular influence.)

6.  Calling is another form of self-actualization.

Modern people discover meaning and fulfillment through an endless variety of means. Lee Hardy simplifies the cultural taxonomy of sociologist Robert Bellah by describing two distinct roadmaps. [2] First, the Utilitarian Individualists are the success driven, outcome oriented, climbers who locate the meaning of life in the world of work. Often they will sacrifice private life or family for the sake of career advancement. Expressivist Individualists turn away from the world of work, bow out of the rat race for relationships, leisure activities, or experiences to find meaning. Hardy (and Bellah) shows how both are twists on the Christian version of work as a call to serve the common good, not fulfill one’s inner needs. Christians don’t work for themselves, but for others and ultimately for God. 

7.  Calling requires you to leave faith at home.

The modern secular workplace discourages inviting faith to join you at work, erecting a wall of separation between private values and public activities. [3] Secularism’s wall is a legal facade. The first amendment was not intended to drop personal values from public life. When misinterpreted, the result is a privatized faith and a misunderstanding of calling. This secular instinct muddles the Christian impulse to bring faith to work. Vocation is not limited to private spaces. 

8.  Calling means ‘You are what you do.”

Not a modern innovation, this idea has been around for a while. Most people’s identity was so tied to their work that they added surnames like Miller or Baker or Semiconductor-Chipmaker (maybe not the last one). Attaching your work to your identity is a fatal move. When work becomes everything, disorientation is inevitable. Job loss, sickness, and retirement leave us empty. We’re left nameless. In one sense, since we are created to work and find we can’t work, it is worth lamenting. In another sense, Christians always work from their name – ‘my beloved son or daughter’ –not for their name. 

These common misunderstanding keep us from seeing God’s work in our lives. Os Guinness, who set many people on a journey to rightly understand God’s Call, helps frame our second callings (our vocation) in light of our first calling. I’ll give him the last word:

He writes, “First and foremost, we are called to someone (God), not to something (such as motherhood, politics, or teaching) or to somewhere (such as the inner city or Outer Mongolia). Our secondary calling, considering who God is as sovereign, is that everyone everywhere, and in everything should think, speak, live, and act entirely for him. We can therefore properly say as a matter of secondary calling that we are called to homemaking or to law or to the practice of art history. But these and other things are always the secondary, never the primary calling. They are ‘callings’ rather than the ‘calling.’ They are our personal answer to God’s address, our response to God’s summons. Secondary calling matters, but only because primary calling matters most.” [4]

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1.  Tom Nelson, Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work. Crossway (2011).

2. Lee Hardy, The Fabric of The Fabric of This World: Inquiries into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work. Eerdmans (1990).

3. An interesting development to follow are the growing number of ERGs that now include faith alongside other identity markers or backgrounds that have typically characterized such employee groups.

4.  Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, Thomas Nelson (2003).

© Ben Dockery | This article was first published in Lakelight Monthly, February 2024 Edition