David was a physician with distinction. Lauded as one of the most brilliant young physicians of his day, he left the medical field and began pastoring in a small, poor mining community. William was a small-town shoemaker who uprooted his family to India and translated the Bible into more than 30 languages. Lily was an aspiring painter and artist. She put her successful art career aside to move to Northern Africa and reach communities of Muslim women that the men couldn’t access. Bill was an economics student and entrepreneur who started his own candy company. After becoming a Christian, he sold his business and started a campus ministry at the local university that later became one of the largest parachurch organizations in the world.

If you’re familiar with the history of missions, you might recognize these people. All had a given trajectory and direction for their lives. Good and noble vocations were in front of them. Yet each one of them ended up serving vocationally in Christian leadership. If you’d asked them when they were young if they could envision being pastors, global missionaries, or leaders in Christian organizations and ministries, they probably would’ve laughed. Yet God called them into full-time Christian service.

They weren’t leaving ungodly secular occupations in exchange for sacred and holy roles. They were simply following God’s call on their lives to serve him in specific roles within Christian ministry. They surrendered their ambitions and life trajectories to pursue new and God-given ambitions—with worldwide, eternal effects. How would you know if God is directing that same call toward you?

Five Signposts

As I tried to answer that question years ago, I stumbled on a letter John Newton wrote to a younger man wrestling with the same question. Newton said, “My first desires toward the ministry were attended with great uncertainties and difficulties, and the perplexity of my own mind was heightened by the various and opposite judgments of my friends.” Yet he understood what makes for a true calling and followed the Lord in it.

Five signposts he observed stand the test of time and can help us as well.

1. You desire to lead.

Paul told Timothy that one of the first qualifications for a man who’d be an elder or pastor in the church is a desire to serve in that capacity: “The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task” (1 Tim. 3:1). Peter instructs the elders of the early church, “Shepherd God’s flock among you, not overseeing out of compulsion but willingly, as God would have you” (1 Pet. 5:2, CSB).

Leading in ministry shouldn’t be a matter of obligation or of someone forcing you to do it, as if you have no agency. The best leaders in Christian ministry are the ones who want to be in leadership.

Newton said, “I apprehend, the man who is once moved by the Spirit of God to this work, will prefer it, if attainable, to thousands of gold and silver; so that, though he is at times intimidated by a sense of its importance and difficulty, compared with his own great insufficiency . . . yet he cannot give it up.”

I want to stress that this desire is a starting signpost. It’s not the sum of all the marks of a calling. But if you have even a small piquing interest, you’re in a position where a call to serve vocationally may be valid.

2. You’re competent to lead.

Beyond your desires, you need a corresponding competency to labor vocationally in Christian ministry. You must develop the qualifications required to carry out the ministry you’re called to. It’d be absurd for me to claim to be a Christian musician when I can’t play an instrument and my family questions if I can hold a tune. To be a musician, I’d need to gain competency in that area. But there are other competencies for ministry I possess, so I’m qualified to serve as a pastor in my local church.

Beyond your desires, you need a corresponding competency to labor vocationally in Christian ministry.

Before you attain the ability to “do the job,” the bigger competency question is whether you have the character necessary to serve. Being above reproach is a prerequisite for vocational ministry. We represent the Lord as his ambassadors, so we should reflect Christ’s glorious character and integrity (2 Cor. 5:20).

It may feel out of step to say you must be competent in character and abilities to know you’re called to Christian ministry, especially if you’re young and seeking to discern your calling. But again, Newton offers helpful encouragement. He says these competencies “are to appear in due season: they are not to be expected instantaneously, but gradually, in the use of proper means. They are necessary for the discharge of the ministry; but not necessary as pre-requisites to warrant our desires after it. In your case, you are young and have time before you.” You can pray for, pursue, and grow in the competencies of character and ability you’ll need to serve vocationally in Christian leadership.

3. You’re affirmed by the church.

The long-running reality show American Idol searches for aspiring singers to develop and promote to stardom. The best (and most cringey) episodes are the early audition rounds, where anyone can apply and sing before a panel of brutal judges. It never fails that at the audition stage, several applicants can’t carry a tune. When the judges tell them, “No way!” their dreams are crushed.

What often discourages them most is that someone (usually a well-meaning relative) told them they’re a great singer. So when they come to the panel of music industry experts, they’re shocked to find that the affirmation they received back home isn’t equaled by affirmation from the judges. Sometimes we think we’re called and competent because a well-meaning friend told us we’re great, but we’re not.

That’s why legitimate community affirmation is essential for discerning a call to ministry. This doesn’t mean only asking your favorite aunt or best friend if they think you’d be great in Christian leadership (go ahead and ask them—they’ll say yes). You need to ask the right people to speak into your career trajectory: the pastors and leadership of your local church. Do your pastors see both the desire and ability to serve in you? Can those discipling you affirm a trajectory toward Christian ministry? If so, then moving forward in pursuit of the next signpost is valid.

4. There are open doors to serve vocationally.

Have you been offered a ministry job to serve in? This signpost of a calling is essential because it requires our dependence on the Lord’s direction and an invitation into a place. We may have desires and ambitions, but the Lord directs our steps and opens and closes doors. Waiting at this signpost can be frustrating and make us impatient, but asking the Lord to open the doors to fulfill what we’ve desired and been equipped and affirmed for is an act of profound humility.

As Newton wrote, “If it be the Lord’s will to bring you into his ministry, he has already appointed your place and service; and though you know it not at present, you shall at a proper time. If you had the talents of an angel, you could do no good with them till his hour is come, and till he leads you to the people whom he has determined to bless by your means.”

5. You’re compelled to serve.

This final signpost is similar to the first, yet it’s deeper than desire. Some have used the term “unction” to describe it. It’s the internal work of God’s Spirit in your life to make you utterly unsatisfied doing anything else. Charles Spurgeon famously told the students of his Pastors’ College, “Do not enter the ministry if you can help it.” He wasn’t dousing water on the hot fires of these students’ ambitions or saying that ministry isn’t worth going into. He identified that there must be a Spirit-given compulsion within you that says, I must serve the Lord this way.

Asking the Lord to open the doors to fulfill what we’ve desired and been equipped and affirmed for is an act of profound humility.

Paul spoke of this compulsion when he wrote, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all” (2 Cor. 5:14, NIV). That compelling, compulsive desire to spend your life in vocational Christian ministry may feel like a tipping point between obedience and disobedience to the Lord. Nevertheless, it’s an all-out must for your life.

This possibility of full-time ministry may have never seriously crossed your mind. You may think it’s something other people do. But I invite you to consider it. Try to envision spending the best years of your life pastoring a local church, serving on staff with a Christian organization, or seeking to make disciples of Jesus in a foreign context. There’s a need for laborers in ministry, and there’s joy and eternal blessings for those who serve. If you see these signposts in your life, you should make it your ambition to serve vocationally in Christian ministry.