Vocational Discernment

Bill Hendricks:

Hello, I'm Bill Hendricks, Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center. I want to welcome you to today's Table podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. The number one question on any young adults mind is, what should I do with my life? In theological terms, it's the issue of calling, which is really the question of purpose. Why am I here? To help us to discuss these matters, we're joined today by Dr. Paul Pettit, Director of Placement and Career Services at Dallas Seminary. Paul, welcome to the Table.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Hey, Bill, thanks for having me on.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, I know it happens to me every spring, as I'm sure it happens to you, a student comes into your office, sits down, says, "Dr. Pettit, I'm getting ready to graduate here in a few weeks. I really need to figure out what I'm going to do after I graduate." Two questions, first of all, what goes through your mind when they say that? Secondly, what is it that you then say in response to that question?

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Wow, great question. I talked to a young person the other day and they said they were going to do an internship. They said they were so excited and so relieved. I said, "Why is that?" They said, "Well, I'm getting ready to go to Thanksgiving dinner. I know all the relatives are going to say, what are you going to do when you graduate?" He said, "I'm so excited, I got an internship. Now I can just look at him and tell him I already got this lined up." It does weigh on people. First of all, a lot of people are giving of themselves in the ministry. They're pouring out themselves.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

They're giving of themselves. Oftentimes, they don't take a look inside and slow down and really self-evaluate. They're so busy serving others. That when I'll say to them the same question you just asked, "Hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? Or what do you want to do when you graduate?" They'll say, "I'm not really sure. That's why I'm here." Either that, or maybe they've done a couple of things, they don't really like it. They've served in a couple ways over a period of time. They say, "I know I don't want to do that." We do have some starting points normally.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

We do have some ways of getting at what they're really passionate about and how they've been wired and what they're gifted to do. A lot of people in Bible College, Christian College, seminaries, they've …

Bill Hendricks:

In colleges in general.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Yeah, any kind of service industry, especially. They're giving of themselves. They're pouring themselves out. A lot of times, they do have a question about what they're really good at and what they're really gifted at. We like to help students do that.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, and I think it's become an issue in our culture over the last few generations. It certainly was an issue for the boomers, this question, what should I do with my life? Everybody, somewhere along the way, they assume that college is going to help you figure that out. Of course, they don't realize colleges really have no vested interest in helping somebody figure that out. For the college's part, my assumption is they assume that the students and their parents have figured out what they're going to do. They're accessing the resources of the school to figure that out.

Bill Hendricks:

The reality is that we have millions of young adults graduating lost of lambs as far as what should I do with my life. Then, of course, they'll circuit the field, maybe get entry level job, and that's not really appealing. They think, well, maybe I need to go back to school, get another degree. Of course, here at Dallas Seminary, they're coming back to get a degree that prepares them often for work in a church. Again, it's that feeling like, well, I don't know what I'm going to do. Somehow when I get through seminary, I'll know.

Bill Hendricks:

Begin to give us what's a framework that the person, particularly a young adult, can begin to use to think about in order to answer that question, what is it that I need to do? Or what is it that I need to know?

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Yeah, I like to think of two different witnesses. One would be an internal witness, what are you jazzed about? What pulls your chain? What gets you up in the morning? What are you really passionate about doing? There was a megachurch pastor that said, "What is it that you can't stand anymore? What is it that makes you cry, that you look at an issue and you go, oh, that needs to be solved? I want to have a part in that." That would be an internal witness. We all know what we like doing or we all have a vague idea of what we want to do.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

We might not be able to articulate that, but then equally important or maybe even more important is an external witness. Are other people affirming that in your life? Are there three or four people that are close to you that would tell you the truth that would say, I can see you doing that, or when you do that, you do that really well? We want to get those witnesses to line up. It's not just grandma. I've had a lot of young people …

Bill Hendricks:

Right, right. She's just paid to tell you nice things about yourself.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Yeah. I've had a lot of people in my office say, "Grandma keeps telling me, I'm our little preacher in the family." The guy says, "I hate preaching." In fact, I had a guy the other day, he said, "Bill," he wanted to plant a church. He's been talking about church planting. I've known him for a couple years. He was talking about church planting when I first met him. Recently, he talked about becoming a children's pastor. I said, "Man, you hate children. What are you talking about?" He said, "Well, you're right. There was an opening and I'm scared of church planting.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

I'm not sure if I can really pull it off. Maybe I thought I could just settle and just do this children's pastor job." I said, "Man, let's talk about this. I don't want you to be frustrated. You're going to do this for two or three years, but the whole time in the back of your mind, you're going to say, what if I would have church planted. Look at that, my buddy over there church planting, I wish I could go join him." We go slow. We ask them to tell us what they want to do. Then we also look for signs from mature believers or other healthy adults that would speak into their life and confirm that.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, that external witness is very important. It's also important that when you get that, you receive that. I knew a gentleman once, a young man who was absolutely convinced that church planting was God's strategy for winning the world. I don't disagree with that necessarily. This fellow, on the basis of that, said, "So if that's his strategy, that's what I need to go do." Well, unfortunately, he didn't really have the gifts to do that. He had the heart to do it and he felt like that was a viable strategy. He just concluded, if that's the case, I automatically must go do that.

Bill Hendricks:

He had adults who had known him since he was a child and said, "Boy, are you sure? We're not seeing that." To make matters worse, he picked a part of the country which was one of the most difficult areas in which to reach people with the Gospel to begin with. He moved himself and his wife and bound and determined that he was going to plant churches. I mean, to his credit, he hung in there for 12, 15 years. I don't think he ever planted a church. I think he got like a couple of Bible studies started, and neither one of them turned into a church.

Bill Hendricks:

Finally, he came back to Texas with his tail between his legs. He was kind of a broken man. I always felt badly for him. It was in part because he hadn't really listened to that wise counsel. He also hadn't asked a good question, which is, even if church planting is the best strategy, what's my best use in light of that strategy? Because he might have found that maybe he's the guy who works with a young adult, the young person in high school and disciples that young kid who, when they grow up, they've got the gifts to go be a church planter and he's gotten them on the way. God has room for everybody in his overall plan.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Absolutely. When I get frustrated with the church, Bill, I remember that Jesus said, I will build my church. I take comfort in that. Even when I look around and I think, man, the church is not doing it right or this church over here is definitely not doing it right. I know that Jesus is the head of the church and he's calling people to himself and he's moving gifted people around in the body of Christ. It reminds me of, again, the young guy that says, "Well, grandma says I'm going to be the little family preacher. She's been telling me this ever since I'm in third grade." I remember Dr. Swindoll one time said, "A guy might be called to preach, but nobody is called to listen to him."

Bill Hendricks:

That's a good way to put it.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

That's, again, the emphasis of that external witness. When you do ministry, when you do things in the church, what do you do really well where people are helped by it or people come to you later and say, hey, I really enjoyed that devotional you gave. Or the way you led that meeting, I saw you, you were just in your element. You're using your gift of administration. You followed up on that. You called another meeting later. Man, when you do administration, you do that really well. There's lots of roles and lots of openings and lots of opportunities.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

What are you going to do where it's a great fit? What are you going to do where you're using your gifts and you see fruit being produced and also other people recognizing that? If you can get a lot of those things to line up, and if you're happy about it, if you're feeling full of joy, nowhere in the Bible are we told to grit our teeth and suffer and move to a foreign country and drive an old Volkswagen. We're not just suffering so that we, one day, look at God and say, hey, God, I did what you told me to do. I suffered for 80 years. We're supposed to be also full of joy. We're supposed to be giving ourselves, and we're supposed to be seeing impact. I tell people, you don't get extra points just for suffering in this role for many years.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, do you think, and here, I'm speaking specifically with reference to occupations, jobs within a body, a local congregation. It would appear to me that we end up with something of a hierarchy of gifts in terms of what people think as far as "ministry jobs." Obviously, a senior teaching pastor, that's the ultimate, at least in some congregations. In others, it's a missionary. Those are the people that have sacrificed as it were to go overseas. In that congregation, there's a senior teaching pastor and then there's other pastors under them, and then you get down to some of the administrative roles.

Bill Hendricks:

Is it possible that because we kind of … It's just like 1 Corinthians 12 says, we give more room to some gifts than the other gifts, that the gifts that don't seem, and the roles that don't seem to be as influential, people aren't as interested in those, even though that may be where their gifts lie? How do you help somebody navigate those waters?

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Absolutely. We talked about the face of the ministry or the voice of the ministry. Oftentimes, those gifts are prominent, someone who's on a stage, someone who's on a platform. Boy, we look at our own body and we say, I really need these opposable digits, these thumbs. I really need these big toes. If I don't have some of my internal organs, this thing is going nowhere. It takes the whole body and all the different gifts and all the different passions to move ministries forward, to move workplaces forward. We say it this way here in our office, Bill, you can go faster by yourself, but you can go farther with a team.

Bill Hendricks:

That's good.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

I like to tell people that, because sometimes we get frustrated and we go, that's it, forget it, I'm starting my own thing, I'm leaving. Man, if you can work on a team, if you can build trust, if you can build a great group, you think of someone like Coach Tom Landry or some of the Vince Lombardi's of the world who took the time to get to know each member of the team, to pour into them, they can go a lot farther with a great team and a lots of variety of gifts than just a super springing and a superstar or trying to do it all by myself.

Bill Hendricks:

I'd be curious to get your perspective on the landscape of, I guess, I'd say jobs within churches these days. The culture has shifted significantly in the last 10 or 20 years. Of course, when the pandemic hit, many churches, most churches, like everything else in this society, got quarantined. We don't really know what the long term effects of that much time away from meetings on Sundays and so forth is going to mean. We don't really know exactly what it's going to mean in terms of staffing and so forth.

Bill Hendricks:

The trend lines are definitely there in which, churches … Well, let's just put it bluntly, churches may not have the same resources to work with in the years to come that they have had traditionally. I'm wondering what that's going to mean for people trying to find work as a paid employee of a congregation and what your counsel is to somebody who's hoping to make a living in a church related job, but may not be able to do it or may only be able to do it part time.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Yeah. We are seeing that, for sure. We're seeing the tech movement where when you and I were younger, Bill, someone ran an overhead projector and we just oohed and aahed. Wow, that's amazing. Look how they can use that overhead projector. I mean, now we're seeing satellite campuses. We're seeing small groups using curriculum that they download. We're seeing staff getting hired that are maybe part time teachers, but also part time running some kind of program online. We're definitely seeing a move toward tech.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

When we look across the whole church landscape, there's a variety of churches, small churches, rural churches, they may be a little bit behind. I've got some people that are telling me, "Hey, a lot of my people aren't on online every day. They're not logging in every day." Maybe they're having a problem reaching, especially something like this pandemic. We're seeing more niched roles, pastor of spiritual formation, pastor of next gen, the old days of just a senior pastor, a CE pastor, and a youth pastor, maybe a worship pastor.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Those roles are really getting split at now into a really specific type things, mentorships, discipleship programs, small groups. What I see, one of the big trends, Bill, is for ministry people, men and women who are very authentic, who know themselves really well. We're moving into an era where you can't fake it. You have to be yourself. People, young people, especially can sniff inauthenticity. They want to see, are you real? Do you take this home with you? Do you live this in your own life? Not just the skillset, but the kind of person we're seeing that's flourishing in ministry today is the person who can build small groups, who can build teams, who can use spiritual formation and be real with people and be authentic with people and really attract people.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, you mentioned the word mentoring, and as you know, that's a heartbeat for me. It's really a life message for me. Talk to us about the role of mentoring in people, not only thinking about the purpose for their life and what kind of career they need to pursue, but then as they move forward into careers, the role of mentoring and helping them make tracks in that career.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Bill, I get so many young people in my office and they say, "I'm ready to go. I want to go work somewhere. I want to go serve somewhere." Then they add this caveat, "But I would like to serve for another three or four years under an older, wiser person." I'm happy for that. I'm glad for that. I just hope they get connected with the right person. So often, this person is 27, 28, 29 years old and they still have that sense that I'm ready to maybe go teach this information.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

I really would like an older, wiser person to pour into my life and get me started into this career of ministerial work or maybe parachurch non-profit work. I still want an older, wiser person, someone who's been there and done that to take me under their wing and mentor me and really pour into me some of the lessons they've learned. I like that because it's saying, "Hey, I don't want to pay the stupid tax," I don't want to go out there and make a bunch of dumb mistakes that I know someone could really pour into my life and show me, hey, this is the way walk in it.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, and that really speaks to older listeners of this podcast or viewers of this podcast. If you're in a position of any responsibility and you've been at the game for 10, 15, 20 years of whatever career you have, you have a real opportunity to invest in the life of a younger person, not telling them what to do, as much as letting them participate in what is already going on, giving them some responsibility, debriefing with them on how things are going, and treating them like an adult.

Bill Hendricks:

If there's one thing I find, Paul, that young adults desperately want, it's for an older adult to come alongside them, and essentially invite them into the adult world by treating them like an adult, which means giving them responsibility, letting them deal with consequences of decisions and choices they make, but also share in the successes that the person has, and really build them up and praise them when things are going well and they've achieved something. Mentoring is got to be, I think, the church's secret weapon, if you will, because we've …

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Absolutely.

Bill Hendricks:

… built a lot of discipleship for 2000 years or more, and mentoring and discipleship are really joined at the hip.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Absolutely. I mean, every Paul needs to have a Timothy.

Bill Hendricks:

Exactly.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

We need to be working ourselves out of a job. Bill, one of the things I see what pastoral succession, it's a hot topic right now, is pastoral succession, because a lot of baby boomers are 60 years old, 65, and the like. The ones I see, they're doing it really well. They've got some younger people underneath them that they've been pouring themselves into. They call and they say, "Hey, we've got two or three candidates. We like some advice. It's people that we've raised up. They're almost homegrown."

Dr. Paul Pettit:

The ones who are they have a struggle, sometimes it's like, hey, I'm 65 years old, I'm ready for you to send me a candidate. Oftentimes, my partner here, Greg Hatteberg says, "You've been there 30 years and you haven't raised up two or three young people?" I like that approach. Who are you grooming? Who are you mentoring? Who are you pouring yourself into? We don't want you to get to 70 years old and say, "Okay, send me some fresh candidates. I'm done. I've spent my time here."

Dr. Paul Pettit:

We want you to pour yourself out into three or four key younger people that everybody in the community knows. Wow, this person is ready. They've been sitting in this seat for 10, 15 years. They've been an associate pastor, assistant pastor, a student pastor, and they are really ready to move up. Because we know our senior leadership has been pouring into this person, that's a better approach.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, and it's a safer approach. It always is safer to go with a known quantity that you have some history with and you've seen this person in action over time. You know their strengths, you know their limitations. As much as anything, you know their heart. Because, hopefully, if they've been with your body any length of time, they've adopted the core values by which this congregation operates. Whereas to bring in somebody from the outside, yeah, it's going to be a learning curve on both sides. You also may discover that this person bring some things that you hadn't seen when you hire them.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Even the culture of the organization, the DNA of the organization. When you've been somewhere and serve somewhere, you get to know those families, you get to know that geography. Eugene Peterson was the one that said, "Ministry is always done in a particular place." There's a big difference between doing ministry in maybe a major metropolitan city and maybe in a rural area or a small town. All of those things have their quirks. They have their different senses of what's going to work well and what's not going to work well.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

I like the idea of someone going somewhere and trying to say, "Hey, I'm going to drive a stake in the ground, I'm going to do ministry here as long as I can and let the Lord use me in this particular area." Now, it doesn't have to be that someone has to stay in the same place. Obviously, people move, people relocate. Oftentimes, unfortunately, we see someone who's moved too many times or moved a lot. We're back to that question that we started with, a person can be 50, 60 years old, 30 years in the ministry, and may not know themselves really well.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Maybe bumping their head up into the same problems over and over again with several different boards or several different deacon groups or elder groups. I can see on my software, Bill, I can see on my chart, every three or four years, this person moves, and that breaks your heart as well. You think, man, this person is learning the same lesson every three, four years,

Bill Hendricks:

Or not learning is the case maybe.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Yeah, unfortunately.

Bill Hendricks:

I might interject here, if I can advertise on behalf of the Hendricks Center. We actually have a program for those who are serving in vocational Christian work, who face that problem of they keep running into the same problem again and again and again, and they can't seem to get past it. We call it LEAD. It's a five-day intensive leadership development exercise for a couple. We put them together with four different kinds of coaches, a personal and marriage coach, a giftedness coach, a ministry coach, which is really about their vocation, and then what we call a life dream coach.

Bill Hendricks:

Over five days, it's very intensive set of interactions with these coaches, to go all the way back into their family of origin, into their marriage, into things that may be holding them back, but also through that giftedness piece to really nail down in clarity, what has God given you by way of making a contribution? Out of all, that, they begin to get some new horizons as to some strategies for beginning to get past some of these issues that have held them back, but also to get a fresh perspective on what God might have for them in the days to come.

Bill Hendricks:

I mentioned that for the very reason that you pointed out, people running into that same roadblock again and again, that doesn't need to continue. I would encourage people to contact the Hendricks Center and find out more about that LEAD program, if that's the situation for them.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Let me second that, unsolicited advertisement here. I went through LEAD, and I loved it. I'll never forget my label. I was an orchestrating organizer with people. I remember hearing that for the first time and saying, "Okay, you're going to have to break that down for me. I have no idea what you're talking about." You're an orchestrating organizer. You love organizing things. You don't love organizing figures or facts. You love organizing people and orchestrating. For 12 years, they gave me 300 students and they said, "Bill, put all these people into small groups."

Dr. Paul Pettit:

I said, "Oh, I would love to do that." Then when Greg Hatteburg called, he said, "Do you want to serve as the director of placement?" I said, "Well, tell me about it. What does that … " "Well, you'll take all the graduates and quite a few of the alumni and you'll figure out where they should serve in ministry." He didn't have to talk me into it. LEAD had helped prepare me for that. I knew what I might be good at and I knew what I should stay away from. When he said you'll be organizing people and putting people into churches and ministries, I knew I was gifted for that.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

I'll never forget that phrase. I need to get it tattooed on my arm. I'm an orchestrating organizer with people. Boy, when you go through something like LEAD, it really brings some clarity. It really brings some focus. I am asking people several times a month to consider that. I love promoting the LEAD program.

Bill Hendricks:

Yeah, what you put your finger on there is to have some real specificity, some real definition around what your core strengths really are. I find many people are very vague on that. You ask them, "Well, what are your strengths?" "I don't know, I'm a people person." "Well, what does that mean?" "I love to teach." "Well, that's great, but that's pretty vague." What you're giving there is a very specific … It's almost like describing the design and therefore the use of a tool. Therefore, you know what has your name on it and you also know what doesn't have your name on it.

Bill Hendricks:

I think that tells us something when we talk about, how do I find my purpose, vocationally? When you say, well, let's start with your strengths, we get it down to that kind of robust description of what you're really designed to do.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Absolutely. I remember your father always had a plaque on his desk, it said, "As now, so then." He used to joke this student he had was always five minutes late to class. He said, "It wasn't just the first day, it was all semester. He was always five minutes late to class." He joked, "He's probably going to be five minutes late to his wedding." Then he'd always say, "You're probably going to be five minutes late for the rapture." As now, so then. I talked to students, I said, "What did you love doing in middle school, in high school? Or what have you done well in the past."

Dr. Paul Pettit:

They'll come back and say, "Well, I guess I was good at that. I just thought I did that naturally." I'm like, "Yeah, well, let's move that forward. What if you can do that in the future?" Sometimes we don't see our own giftedness, we don't see what we're really good at. We have to slow down. Now, some people have said, "Pettit, man, that's way too expensive. I can't afford that. Or I don't know if the church will pay for that." I tell people, "Look, you're unemployed right now, or this is your fifth church and nine years.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Would you pay $3,000 to get a $60,000, $70,000 per year position?" Obviously, they go, "Oh yeah, yeah, I guess you're right." It's worth it to avoid more pain in the future and more searching for, well, I'm just going to switch jobs, or I'm just going to try something completely different. Take that time to get to know yourself. Let other people speak into your life, fill out some surveys, do some phone interviews, and really, it feels selfish too, Bill, for a lot of us. When they talk to me about it, I was like, "Yeah, I don't need that. I don't want to sit and talk about myself.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

It feels selfish." It's really a gift to the church. It's a gift to other people to know yourself well and to know what you're good at. When you interview and you're trying to fake it or you're just trying to answer questions that the job description matches, you're going to fall apart a year from now. Because you're going to go, "To be honest, I never really wanted to do this anyway. I just needed a position."

Bill Hendricks:

That's right.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

You're doing your friends and the employer a favor when you know yourself really well and you say, "Hey, I can do these things really well, but don't ask me to do that. I'll mess that up." It's not really pride, it's really a form of humility to know what you're good at and to not to be bragging about that or to always put yourself first, but to see yourself accurately, to see yourself for how God has made you.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, the illustration I use is imagine a hammer that grew up as a hammer, but somehow doesn't know that it's a hammer. However that happened, maybe the hammer's parents were, I don't know, a screwdriver and an egg beater. They didn't know what they were looking at. They never helped that hammer figure out it was a hammer. However that happened, the hammer grows up, but doesn't know it's a hammer. Well, what's going to happen? Well, hammers are going to do what hammers do. They hammer beats on furniture and it marks it.

Bill Hendricks:

The hammer beats on windshields and breaks them. The hammer hits somebody on the head and hurts them, because that's what hammers do. They deliver blunt force. What that hammer most needs is somebody, as you point out, from the outside, to come along and say, "Hey, see this?" This is what we call a nail, hit that. The hammer does with the hammer does, which is to bring blunt force down in the head of that nail and knock it in. The hammer goes, wow, that felt great. Well, from then on, any nail will do. That hammer now knows what it's designed to do.

Bill Hendricks:

Really, again, I think what you're beginning to highlight here is that among many things that need to happen, as people discern their direction, they've really got to have somebody help them get in touch with what is that thing that they are designed to do. Yes, we do that as part of the LEAD program. We have some other tools over at the Hendricks Center. We have what we call a giftedness discovery workshop in which it's a very fun exercise. We have people tell some stories from their life to another person.

Bill Hendricks:

Out of that, they discover there's a pattern of behavior that's unique to them that describes a lot of their core strengths. Then they get to meet with a coach for four or five times throughout the rest of the semester. It's aimed at that thing of, let's figure out what God has put you here to do that you can start to …

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Yeah, absolutely.

Bill Hendricks:

… pursue that.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Absolutely. Because, again, ministry, nonprofits, parachurch, it takes a variety of gifts. We've got now counselors, Christian educators, missionaries, fundraisers, and now we're seeing tech people, online people. We're seeing facilities types of people. It takes a wide variety of giftedness to do the work in the world.

Bill Hendricks:

Yeah, ministry has come a long way from the early church where it's a handful of people meeting in a room. That's still taking place in many places around the world. Certainly, in our culture, churches are able, in many cases, to operate at a fairly elevated level. I wanted to ask about some traditions, faith traditions, have what is called vocational discernment. You probably heard that phrase, where they've got a group of people who this is for somebody who senses that they may be called into vocational Christian work.

Bill Hendricks:

Before they pull the trigger on that, a group of people meets with them over some period of time to pray, to talk, to talk through some of the realities and issues for this person, if they're married with their spouse, or they both called to this direction, and so forth. How might a strategy like that work, let's say in an institutional setting like the seminary or perhaps in a church setting where people are trying to discern their life direction?

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Well, what a great question. Because the New Testament warns us, don't lay hands on too quickly. We know that to not mean don't do it by 2:00 P.M. We know it doesn't mean don't do it. Someone's come to Christ, someone's made a public profession of faith through baptism, and then usually that afternoon, we sign them up. I think that emphasis there is take a season, take several seasons before you bring them into the life of the church as a vocational minister to see them in action and to see them prove their calling. One would be volunteering.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Volunteer at a church, serve in a lay ministry for a season, and see, how does that work? Did it work well? Were you energized by that? Did other people confirm your gifts? Another thing that I see a lot, Bill, in those faith traditions are retreats, retreats. To many busy evangelicals, a retreat is like a dirty word. I remember, when we were, for 12 years at the Hendricks Center doing the spiritual formation retreats, they started off as like three-day events, almost four-day events. Toward the end, people would say, "Wait, are you kidding?

Dr. Paul Pettit:

You want me to spend three days at Pine Cove? Three days you're saying?" We've gotten to the point, our busy evangelicals are in such a hurry, that I think retreats are a powerful way to get away from the noise of the world and maybe do several of those, a spring retreat, a fall retreat. Then also, maybe journaling. Journaling is a powerful way to capture your own emotions. What did you feel like? What did you sense when you were doing those ministry roles? Going back and looking at your notes, "Hey, I did this today in ministry and I hated it", with four exclamation points.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

You forget about that. You look back and go, oh, that's right, I did that and I told myself I'll never do that again. Or you look back at a journal entry and you say, counseled four young men today, loved it. You see that smiley face and you're like, man, I need to get back to that. I've gotten so far away from my original job description. This mission creep has come in. I'm not even doing what I'm passionate about anymore. Journaling, retreats, and also small groups, where there's a real sense of transparency, a real sense of authenticity.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

A small group where people like you, but they love you enough to tell you the truth about yourself. They want to influence you, but they're not impressed by you. They're able to say, "Hey, Pettit, let's face it, you're not a theologian. I like your popular stuff, but when you get involved in systematic theology, you really need some help there." Those things are the things I'm seeing, and usually more of a high church background where there's retreats, there's seasons of small groups with discernment groups for the purpose of that, some journaling, and then also people who love you enough to tell you the truth.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

It's kind of a series of events over time where you start to say, I really want to do this, I'm not just testing the waters, I'm not just going to sign up for a year, I'm going to really make this a life calling.

Bill Hendricks:

Let me ask you about a trend that I have noticed. It certainly has been something that I've seen in the LEAD program, but I've certainly run into it in other contexts. Somebody grows up and comes to faith as a teenager, gets involved with a youth group or something like YoungLife in college, maybe a parachurch ministry and so forth, but they really enjoy getting in there and helping other people learn about Jesus and start to grow in Jesus. Somebody comes along and says, you really love people and you have a great heart for developing people.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, you ought to think about going into the ministry? They think, huh, I hadn't thought of that, but I guess you're right. If you're going to go into ministry, you might as well go to seminary and get trained to do that. They come to Dallas Seminary and they go through the training and then they get out and they get into a church. Sure enough, they get hired onto a staff to say work with young people. Only now, what they're asked to do is not to work directly with the young people per se, but to recruit adult volunteers who are going to do that life on life work with a young person.

Bill Hendricks:

In that one off relationship, suddenly, things aren't going as well. Because, really, to work with those volunteers, it's a more administrative kind of task. Furthermore, as I say, it's a one off. You're not seeing directly the light and the kids' eyes when they finally get it. They're very frustrated. They're wondering, am I really called in the ministry? It's made me think at times, I wonder if we sometimes encourage people to "go into the ministry" when, if they really want to do that kind of ministry, life on life, they're almost be better going into some other line of work that then frees up their evenings and weekends to do what?

Bill Hendricks:

Why they go be one of those adult volunteers with the youth group or to get involved with young adults and help them figure out what to do with their life and mentor them and so forth. Have we missed something along the way when it comes to "ministry"?

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Well, absolutely. Ministry is not simply working at a church or working at a parachurch. We think you can do ministry in all different types of vocations. We believe you can do ministry. I think Martin Luther was the one who said taking care of small child is ministry.

Bill Hendricks:

Absolutely.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Yeah. We put that capital M on the label and say, oh, he's going into the ministry. Wow, what an impact in the marketplace. What an impact in the professions of medicine and law. You don't have to be working inside the four walls of a church full time, getting a paycheck from the church to be doing incredible ministry. In fact, I like the way you started that story, because it reminds me of the athlete. A lot of times, an athlete will be, oh, he was a quarterback. Surely, let's make him a head coach. A lot of times, in college, they find out, well, he's so far away from football.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

He's spending so much time in the media interviews, the recruiting, spending time with the AD, spending time with the board, he's so far removed from football, he's not even … That's exactly your story. Because, again, somebody flourishes in a local youth ministry. Next thing you know, they're trying to figure out budgets and boards and they're so far removed from doing ministry with people that they wonder how did they get to this place. We definitely need to broaden our definition of ministry.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Sure, some people may be sensing a call to full time vocational ministry and we welcome that. It really needs to be affirmed by other people. It needs to be practiced by that person for several years. Don't just rush into ministry and then get frustrated. Also, the life of ministry can be fairly frustrating. It's probably, most often, lower pay, and it's long hours. It's sometimes frustrating. We know there's incredible reward serving Jesus Christ and seeing that joy in our life and seeing that fulfilment of God using us. Sometimes I think people think it's an extended Bible study, Bill.

Dr. Paul Pettit:

They think, oh, I'll just go into ministry, what do you do? You just have a Bible study all day, don't you? Or, hey, I see you've got it, you just work one day a week. Really, sometimes that older mentor, that older, wiser mentor can help in this too to say, hey, let me walk you through what it's like being in ministry. There's some highs, there's some joys, there's some wonderful moments of getting returns on your investment, and then there's some times where you're really frustrated or you really feel like discouragement comes in. They need a balanced view of ministry and know that it's not all just Sunday mornings and getting your hand shook on the back door and people telling you how wonderful you are.

Bill Hendricks:

Yeah. Well, this whole issue of calling, which is theologically what we're talking about here today, it's a huge issue for the church. Just to put a context to it, back in 2014, the Barna organization pulled a representative sample of what it called active Christians. It asked them basically two questions, number one, do you believe that God has a calling for your life? It was basically about 100% of people said, "Well, yeah". Then it asked the question, do you know what that calling is? About 40% of people said, "Yeah, I think I have a pretty good idea of it."

Bill Hendricks:

60% basically said, I don't have a clue what it is. You think about that, here, we're telling people, from eternity, God has made you and placed you here and gifted you for specific purposes, for which he's prepared you to be the answer to those purposes, to be the answer to those prayers. In other words, you're here by divine appointment. That's essentially what Ephesians 2:10, among other passages, teaches us. Then we don't arm people with any means to figure out what that is. It seems criminal to me.

Bill Hendricks:

It feels like what our friend, Tom Nelson, would call pastoral malpractice. It's raising an expectation, but then not delivering on it. Any thoughts about what churches, as bodies of Christ and those who actually are working with everyday Christians, could do to speak into that?

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Yeah, we need to help bring down that divide, that secular versus sacred divide. Some person is doing a research in the marketplace. Maybe they're writing curriculum or doing some pretty involved educational stuff. Then we say, yeah, we might let you teach the third graders. You'll have to go through a two-year training. Let's get rid of some of that secular sacred divide. Let's train people in our churches for what can you do where you're at, how can you bloom where you're planted? Who are the people you can most influence, your neighbors, your coworkers?

Dr. Paul Pettit:

They're spending 50, 60 hours a week at the marketplace, in their job, in their worksite, and that's their mission field. That's the people that they can really influence. I hope we're seeing that revival in a lot of our churches now, where we're realizing you don't have to be serving inside the four walls of the church just to be doing some type of ministry. We can be using our gifts in lots of different ways in the world. We need to be salt and light in our communities.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, I don't know if the name Ray Stedman means anything to you. He was a very close friend of my father's, a DTS grad. He was a pastor out in Pasadena for many years. Really, the father of, I guess, you'd call it the Body Life Church. Anyway, a recording of him in 1984 at DTS and he's speaking on Ephesians 4, and he's talking about the pastoral gift. He was making the point that the pastoral gift in which we tend to think is the paid professionals at the church. He said, "Oh no, that gift is actually more widely distributed throughout the body of Christ than we realize."

Bill Hendricks:

For good reason, he said, "There's so many pastoral needs in the world. God's got his people in workplaces, in neighborhoods, in homes, in communities, in schools. He's got his people all around out there and all around us are people with pastoral needs. They're in a relationship that's troubled. They're worried about their child. They're going through a conflict with a friend. They're in need emotionally or spiritually of some sort. These are all kinds of pastoral needs, things that deal with people's spirit." He said, "We have an opportunity to be a pastor to people all over the place and God has given us that opportunity in so many places around us."

Dr. Paul Pettit:

Absolutely, I agree.

Bill Hendricks:

Paul, thank you for being with us today on the Table podcast to talk about this whole issue of calling and vocational discernment. I want to thank you, as a listener, for being with us today. I would encourage you to subscribe to the Table podcast on whatever service or device that you're on, so that you'll be kept in touch with the different themes and topics that we talk about here. We always talk about issues of God and culture. Thanks, again, for being with us. I'm Bill Hendricks. Have a great day.