When God Changes Your Calling
It was the week between Christmas and New Years of 2020. It had been a hard year, and I was on the edge of burn out. As I was taking stock of the year and planning for what’s next, I realized I was missing something.
As I planned out my kidmin calendar for 2021, it looked remarkably like the 2020 plan before COVID. I didn’t have any new ideas or initiatives. Nothing was waking me up early excited about what to do next. Children’s ministry just didn’t motivate me as much as before.
So, I went to God in prayer to rediscover my passion and see what I was missing. As I finished praying, I came to the realization that my time in children’s ministry was done.
Now looking back 5 years later, I see God’s hand moving me toward what’s next, the Lead Pastor role at Encounter Church in Toccoa, GA.
That prayer time was the first step. But there were many in between that brought me here. In this post, I’ll outline the steps and hopefully guide you on a similar path.
1. Discover God’s Calling
When I started in ministry school, I was dead set on becoming a youth pastor. But after a kid cussed me out on my first Wednesday night, I realized that youth ministry wasn’t for me. Over the next several years, I tried several different ministries but found my passion in kidmin.
Sometimes God calls us to specific ministries and other times it’s more general. For me, I was called to ministry in general, not kids specifically. However, God gives us clues to find his calling. Mainly our personalities, spiritual gifts, and passions.
I’ve taught Growth Track for many years, and my favorite has always been Discover 301. In it, we lead believers to discover how God made them. (I loved it so much, I added it to my kids lead team curriculum.) I tell my students that God designed us uniquely with our own personalities. He also gave us gifts to minister to His church and the world. However, it’s our passions that direct us.
Our Passions are the things that get us excited. They wake us up early in the morning ready for what’s next. It’s the thing we do for free every day. Getting paid is a bonus.
For years, my passions like many of yours, lie in kidmin. But on that day in 2020, I realized that my kidmin passion had waned while others had grown. I still care deeply for children’s ministry buy my heart yearned to help the whole church.
So, when looking for God’s calling, look for your passions. What excites you? What do you love to do that serves the Kingdom? That may be where God is calling you.
2. Serve faithfully where you are
Just because my passion for kidmin had changed didn’t mean I went to my pastor and turned in my 2-week notice. Rather, I needed to stay put and explore. I needed to find where my passions would lead first in role, and if necessary, a place.
At first, I thought God was leading me to be an executive pastor. However, as I continued to prayerfully seek God’s will, I discovered that the lead position is where God wanted me.
But I wasn’t ready yet. God had to prepare me for what’s next. So, I did the only thing I could do. Serve faithfully where I was. My pastors, volunteers, and kids had no idea I was looking for something else until it was time to tell them.
Since then, my journey has led me to two other churches in a youth and executive pastor role. At each place, God prepared me, taught me, and stretched me.
If you feel like your time is done, don’t throw in the towel just yet. God may still have work for you to do. Even if the next place isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, it may be exactly where God is sending you.
In the meantime, serve faithfully. Do everything you did as before. Don’t quiet quit. Your ministry impact will be greatly diminished if you leave poorly. Rather serve with all your heart where God has you. The right place will come when you’re ready.
3. Gather mentors who can walk you through
As I searched for my next place, I didn’t walk alone. I talked to my pastor, my parents, and spiritual advisors. Men like Jim Wideman and Sam Farina were invaluable to me. They listened to my whining and incessant questions. They guided my thinking and prayed for me in the good and bad times.
You were never meant to do this walk with Jesus alone. You need to have people around you that can guide you. Moses had Jethro, Joshua had Moses, David had Samuel, and Paul had Barnabas.
Find people in your life that can speak into it. People with God-given wisdom who know and love you. They can guide you along the way as those two men and many others have done for me.
4. Stay patient in the waiting
When I left the church I was serving in 2020, I thought God had sent me to the place I’d spend the next 20 years. However, after 18 months, I came to the painful realization that it wasn’t. I went to some dark places in the following 6 months that I wrote about here.
However, I’ve realized now that I’d never be where I am now if I hadn’t walked through that. I never would have become bi-vocational and taught high school. I never would have accepted an executive pastor role at a church that was smaller than my 2020 kidmin.
But God had other plans. I needed to wait.
You need to wait too. We live in a microwave society where everything is brought to us in an instant. But God has never worked that way and won’t with you now. His timing is perfect and more often than not, slower than we think.
So, in this waiting time, be patient. Grow closer to God. Ask what he’s teaching you. Apply it to your life. Serve faithfully where you are. And when the time is right, God will open the door.
5. God may take you places you’d never thought you’d go
As I said in the last point, if you had told 2020 me that I’d teach high school and be bi-vocational in 2025, I wouldn’t have believed you. You could have said that to me in 2023 and I still wouldn’t have believed you.
But that’s what God does. He takes you places you’d never thought you’d go.
Years ago, Carrie Underwood sang a song called “Jesus Take the Wheel.” It’s about a young mom who loses control of her car on an icy road and asks Jesus to “take the wheel.” It’s a metaphor for our lives.
I’m not crazy about the song or the theology, but as I walked through my dark season, I realized that the premise is wrong too. We’re not in the driver’s seat of our lives. We’re not even in the passenger seat. We’re in the backseat. And backseat drivers rarely get a say in the direction.
I thought God was taking me to that church in 2023. But as I thought we were pulling into the driveway, Jesus took a hard left the other direction.
All we can do is trust that God’s way is better. As God said in Isaiah 55:8-9
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
A backseat driver can question where the driver is going, but they’re not the ones in control. The driver is. God is our driver and we’re just along for the ride.
Sometimes God’s calling is specific and permanent. We stay in the ministry he’s called us for a long, long time. However, other times His calling changes. We change and so do our passions. And that’s ok. We’re never going to be where we are forever. God knows that. He’s moving us all around to continue his plan. Thankfully we all get to play a small part of it. And for me at least that’s enough.
