Calling, Career, and God's Glory

Justin Taylor had a posting on Piper's pre-pastorate years and his calling to move from serving as a seminary professor to a church minister. Here is the highlight, which I think is key in helping all of us, clergy or otherwise, to make career-related decisions or even any major decision in our lives.

One of the ways God has said to me “Move Piper,” is this: when I read Philippians 1:19-26, there is in me a tremendous longing. Last October it became an irresistible longing to be an instrument in God’s hands to fulfill these goals in a local church.

At this point in my life I say, and I believe God is saying to me, “The potential, Piper, for magnifying me is greater now in the pastorate than in the professorship.” That’s why the move. When I become a pastor, I am going to have one all-encompassing goal, a very simple goal, that in nothing I might be ashamed but that in everything I might magnify Christ whether by life or by death.

If we believe that, as Wolterstorff wrote in his book Until Justice and Peace Embrace, "A career turned toward this world with God behind one’s back is not inferior to a career turned toward God", then it does not matter what career choice we take in this life as long as its major activities in that career are not evil. The key question for us then (as Piper showed above) is which career magnifies God in a greater way. If our career is a means to response to the larger-than-life call of God then we should prayerfully deliberate on the career that will make God's glory be manifested in its brightest spark through our temporary life.