You have a job. Maybe a good one. And for months now something has been tugging at you, whether it’s a small church down the road that can’t afford a pastor, or a neighborhood with no gospel witness, or a group of coworkers who keep asking you questions about God. You wonder whether you’re hearing a bi-vocational ministry calling, or whether you just had a good idea on a restless Tuesday.
That question deserves an honest answer before anything else, and I’ll tell you why.
Not everyone is called to this
In a lot of church circles there’s a pressure, mostly unspoken, that says any willing person should be doing more. More serving, more leading, more going. And every Christian is called to witness and to serve. But not every Christian is called to pastoral leadership, and not every pastor is called to the bi-vocational form of it.
I’ve been a bi-vocational pastor for twenty-five years. I run companies by day and lead a church the rest of the time. The single most important thing I can tell you is this: “You can will your way through a difficult season. You cannot will your way through twenty-five years.”
Grit will carry you for a while, but it won’t carry you for decades. The cost is too high and the rewards are too invisible, and the pace never lets up. What holds up is a genuine call.
So how do you tell the difference? I use three tests.
Test one: desire
I don’t mean the desire to be a pastor. That one can get tangled up with all kinds of wrong motives, like wanting to be respected, wanting a platform, or wanting to be needed.
The desire I mean is a specific pull toward people who are far from God. You can’t drive through your town without thinking about the people in it who don’t know Jesus. You get restless when all your time is spent with church people, because your heart is with people who would never set foot in a church.
I learned this the embarrassing way. I spent ten years as a full-time pastor, in church buildings with church people every day, telling other Christians to go reach the lost. Then one day I realized I didn’t actually know any lost people. That realization wasn’t comfortable, but it was a calling.
Paul got a vision in the night of a man from Macedonia begging him to come and help (Acts 16:9–10). Most of us don’t get a vision. We do get something, though. It might be a persistent burden for a specific place, or a prompting that won’t settle down, or a conviction that keeps surfacing no matter how busy life gets.
Ask yourself: Can I describe the specific people I carry a burden for? Not “the lost” in general. These people, in this place.
Test two: affirmation
Does anyone else see this in you?
A genuine calling tends to be visible to others before you fully see it yourself. I’m not only talking about someone noticing that you’re a good speaker or a natural leader. I mean someone noticing your specific desire to reach unchurched people, to serve your community practically, and to show up in ordinary places in ways that open up gospel conversations.
This test protects you from yourself. It’s easy to talk yourself into something. It’s a lot harder to invent the independent testimony of people who know you well and have watched you live.
Ask yourself: Who, besides my spouse, has named this in me? What exactly did they see? If nobody comes to mind, that isn’t a no. It may be a “not yet.” Put yourself in front of people who will tell you the truth, and ask them.
Test three: capacity
This isn’t about whether you have enough hours in the day. You won’t. Nobody in bi-vocational ministry ever feels like they have enough hours.
Capacity means something else. When you imagine doing this for twenty-five years, what rises up in you? Something like purpose? Or mostly dread?
The person who’s called to this won’t tell you it’s easy, but they will tell you it’s worth it. That difference matters more than almost anything else in this decision.
Ask yourself: When I picture year twenty (the 4 AM alarms, the day job, the church, the tired seasons), do I feel a sense of purpose underneath the weariness? Or am I hoping the hard part will pass quickly?
What to do if you’re just curious
Maybe you’re reading this with curiosity more than conviction. That’s fine. Curiosity is how calling begins for a lot of people.
But don’t skip the work. You can start this week, and it’s pretty simple:
- Write down the burden. One paragraph. Who are the people, and where are they?
- Ask two people. Pick two mature believers who know you well. Ask them, separately, what they see in you when it comes to reaching people far from God. Don’t lead the witness.
- Sit with the twenty-five-year question. Picture it honestly and pay attention to what you feel.
- Talk with your spouse. The point is to listen, not to convince them. If you’re married, this isn’t a call you can answer alone.
The call will clarify, or it won’t, and either answer is okay. What isn’t okay is going ahead without doing the discernment, because the cost is too real to pay for something that isn’t actually yours to carry.
Discern it together
I wrote Second Fiddle for exactly this moment, a pastor and spouse sitting with a cup of coffee, trying to figure out whether God is calling them into bi-vocational ministry. It’s honest about the cost, and it has discussion questions written for couples at the back.
If you want to start the conversation tonight, the free discussion guide for couples walks through those questions in thirteen conversations. The first one begins right where this post does: is this actually a calling?
Take your time. A yes that’s been tested will hold up far better than one that hasn’t.
Enjoyed this article?