Did You Make a Career Out of Your Calling?

I'm 72, and I don't feel the need to retire.

I think the reason comes down to the difference between a career and a calling. Have you ever thought about that difference? I think many church leaders have made a career out of what they once identified as a calling.

Here are three differences I see between the two.

1. What You're Paid For vs. What You're Made For

The first difference is simple. Your career is what you're paid for. Your calling is what you're made for. (Thank you, Steve Harvey.)

2. A Calling Has Self-Correction Built In

The second difference is that a calling has self-correction built into it. A career will seldom feel like enough.

In other words, when you're working within your calling, you know when to walk away and rest. That isn't true of many careers.

Now, some people working within their passion lack this, and they burn out. But let me suggest that in many of these cases, passion isn't the only thing driving them. It's mixed with insecurity: a need to prove themselves, or to earn respect, fame, or fortune.

When passion is aligned with a calling, it's governed by a healthiness that passion alone lacks. A real calling is built on a solid foundation of identity. Knowing who you are. Your value doesn't come from your passion. It comes from your identity.

The first part of your calling has to do with your Being, not your Doing.

This is what creates the self-correcting mechanism. If you see your calling first as being who God called you to be, the doing stays in check.

Once that foundation of a healthy identity in Christ is in place, you can work within your passion to fulfill your calling, in both Being and Doing, and that self-correcting

mechanism keeps you in a healthy zone. That doesn't mean you're always running at medium. We all push hard from time to time. But there's a sense of knowing when to shut down and recover.

3. It Doesn't Feel Like Work

The third difference is the synergy that comes when all your faculties are working together. There's an alignment of energy and resources that simply doesn't feel like work.

That's why I don't feel the need to retire. I am slowing down, and I need to keep doing so, simply because my energy and resources are more limited at 72 than they were at 52 or 32. But I don't mind working late and hard at times, and it remains healthy.

I think this is also why a lot of pastors do retire. Somewhere along the way, pastoring became a career. The deeper calling underneath it, things like making disciples and leaders, got tied to the role. And when the role ends, it can feel like the calling ends with it.

But a calling is so much deeper than a role.

That's easy to forget, especially after years of faithful service in one. If you're a pastor, it might be worth asking yourself whether you've been living out a career or a calling.