When Christians talk about work, much of the conversation involves discerning God’s plan for their lives. As someone who graduated from a Christian university, I find that faith-based schools and churches often ask young adults to ponder questions like “What is God’s will for your career?”
Yes, these questions are important—discerning one’s calling to a particular vocational path and pursuing it wholeheartedly can lead to a sense of fulfillment and meaning in one’s work. Presumably, it’s also part of the process of doing the good things God prepares for us in advance (Eph. 2:10). But too often when we discern a vocational calling, we assume that all it takes to fulfill it is deciphering God’s plan and finding a job that fits in that.
This assumption is misleading at best, perhaps even harmful. Why? Consider some common issues I’ve come across in my research:
A young college graduate sees music as her calling. After years of playing at one small pay-as-you-go bar venue after another, with no long-term sustainable employment in sight, she gives up. She lands a stable job managing a restaurant. But to her, the work feels subpar, like a waste of her God-given talents. Her elusive big break in music was supposed to have led to the right career.
Another young adult feels called to work with troubled youth, but his parents insist he take a stable job to pay off his student debts. As he walks into the office each morning, he feels like he’s selling out rather than doing what God had so clearly told him to do.
Or think of a dedicated family of missionaries. After experiencing a series of visa challenges outside their control, they return to the United States, feeling like they failed God and their mission.
You too may have experienced some of the initial joys of wholeheartedly pursuing your calling, perhaps even found a job that fulfilled it perfectly. But at times, a calling—especially one left unfulfilled—somehow leads to feelings of burnout, stress, failure, and dissatisfaction.
If vocational calling is such a good and noble thing to pursue, why does it sometimes—often, even—lead to so much trouble?
I believe our understanding of vocational calling is due for an update—one that disentangles it from modern views of career success and broadens our understanding of work and time. If we do this, we might find ourselves with a healthier approach to discerning and pursuing our callings.
In my PhD studies on vocational psychology, I have seen decades of research on the notion of calling and its positive effects. Much of it points to a correlation between a sense of calling and feelings of satisfaction, efficacy, and meaningfulness. Calling can even improve career performance.
But it’s not always such a rosy picture. Academic research has begun to highlight a “dark side” of pursuing a calling.
When we don’t speak accurately about vocational calling, we tend to make false inferences, particularly about necessity and control over the outcome. We often assume that we must identify a vocational calling, or that once we’ve identified a calling, we must find a job that fulfills it.
This is not always true. Christians can glorify God and can listen to his call in other aspects of their lives without having identified a specific vocational calling.
We should not tell each other that discerning a calling—let alone fulfilling it—is a requirement for godliness. Instead, we can emphasize that it is a desirable, valuable goal that depends on the right circumstances. It is more like home ownership (a nice-to-have) than hospitality (a Christian virtue).
Even if someone has identified a calling, there simply may not be enough job opportunities in the desired vocation, or another outside force may keep that person from entering or staying in that field, regardless of how hard he or she tries. This can lead to a sense of overwhelming pressure from unreasonable expectations for a career.
Many people experience regret, stress, or disappointment when they recognize a calling but it goes unfulfilled. In a study of 378 American faculty members, those who felt their calling was unfulfilled by their present job reported worse life, job, and health outcomes than those who did not feel they had a calling at all. The researchers concluded that “having a calling is a benefit only if it is met, but can be a detriment when it is not as compared to having no calling at all.”
Another study surveyed 450 musicians over the course of 11 years and found that those who strongly felt a calling to music were likelier to pursue music professionally. This was despite, ironically, “an intriguing pattern in which the experience of stronger early callings led to greater perceived ability that was not reflected in greater actual ability.” In other words, their sense of calling didn’t align with their level of giftedness.
While trying to break into the field they believe they ought to be in, people may find themselves in, as some researchers put it, “unpleasant states of regret over forgone fulfillment of their unanswered callings and stress due to difficulties in pursuing their unanswered callings.”
What’s more, even when people do find jobs that fulfill their calling, they are often susceptible to work behaviors that lead to burnout and poor work-life balance.
One of the earliest reports of the dark side of vocational calling came from a study focused on US zookeepers in 2009. The researchers found that zookeepers with a strong sense of calling benefited from broader meaningfulness and significance in their work but also suffered by sacrificing pay, time, and comfort. In her 2023 study on Lutheran educators, Newberry College professor Krista E. Hughes called this a “passion tax” that has become “alarmingly high.”
Allowing our sense of calling to trump other real needs seems to be a particularly slippery slope when one’s calling is to low-income, high-
workload, high-stress occupations with few work-life boundaries, such as pastoral work. It’s not uncommon to hear of pastors willingly working long hours, never asking for a fair raise, and ultimately burning out and leaving ministry.
I do want to encourage everyone, both young and old, to think carefully about what they believe God has called them do. We can pray, “Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths” (Ps. 25:4). We can ask God to “teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” and to “establish the work of our hands” (Ps. 90:12, 17). We know that God invites us to participate in his will on earth and in his kingdom, and we ask to be equipped in ways that allow us to perform his will (Heb. 13:20–21).
My colleagues and I published a research paper last year advocating for a new conceptualization of calling. I believe it is especially important for Christians in the US.
The first step may be to disentangle our understanding of calling from modern views of career success. It seems that when we say a given job is our calling, we layer onto it the additional expectation that we ought to “succeed” in that job. Perhaps not financially—especially if a calling is to ministry—but at least in other ways, we often look to measures of success as validation that we are fulfilling our calling. Whether it’s a promotion, cultural influence, or church growth, we see these as evidence that we are doing God’s will effectively, and we expect to see them if we are truly in a role we were called to.
To be clear, signs of success are not bad. But they can be easily twisted into idols that turn noble objectives into pride, unreasonable expectations, and a focus on the world rather than on God. John Piper writes in his book A Hunger for God, “The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. … For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.”
Everyone’s journey of discerning and pursuing a calling looks different and has different outcomes. Realizing this releases us from a schema of what a “fulfilled calling” looks like in our careers, and it allows us to explore, in faith, what God has in store for us.
From here, we need to broaden our understanding of work as well as calling. “Work” can encompass far more than just paid employment. The scope of our calling might be fulfilled not by a single narrowly defined job but by a broad spectrum of activities that may or may not take place in the domain of paid employment.
Perhaps your calling is to be a writer. That doesn’t mean you need to be a professional author whose sole income comes from successful book releases. It could be fulfilled in the short stories you write for your church’s educational resources or in the occasional book you release to bless a handful of readers.
Your primary employment and calling can be pursued simultaneously if they’re not the same. Look at Paul, who was directly called by God on the road to Damascus to serve as a catalyst to the early church’s growth (Acts 9). He also seems to have continued his day job as a tentmaker, a role he used to both support himself and further the kingdom of God through his business (Acts 18:2–3; 1 Thess. 2:9).
We also need to broaden our understanding of the time frame of a calling. When we start to pursue God’s will for our lives through a calling, we seem to assume it is an immediate pursuit. But callings may in reality take time to come to fruition. That is, we might discern God’s calling early on in life, but the path he has set for us could take us through any number of twists and turns for many years before we find an occupation that fulfills our calling.
These years shouldn’t be thought of as distractions or wasted time. They are important stepping stones that God is using to shape and form us in preparation for the future. Take, for example, Joseph’s dreams for his future, first reported in Genesis 37. They were not fulfilled until years later—after countless trials and adversities.
Similarly, after finding work that fulfills our calling, we need to remember that it doesn’t last forever. Some callings may last only a few years, while others may last a lifetime. When your work changes due to factors such as a layoff, your family’s needs, or new technology, it doesn’t mean that you’ve lost your calling. Perhaps you’ve fulfilled this vocational calling, and God is prompting you toward a new calling or a temporary break.
The field of career counseling has already been shifting its approach to the idea of calling. Previously, some counselors were reluctant to help students discern a calling, believing that it could backfire if the students’ circumstances were leading toward a job that lay outside the perceived calling. Then, one 2020 study suggested that career counselors can help young people discern a calling without worrying that their lives will be negatively affected if they don’t pursue it.
The benefits of trying to identify a young person’s calling were especially clear when counselors encouraged individuals to be flexible in what their calling and occupation could look like. This can also mitigate adverse effects such as burnout, poor work-life balance, and unhealthy stress.
But there is still reason for caution. One study of amateur musicians pointed out a notable concern—that those with a stronger sense of calling tended to be more willing to ignore career-related advice from a trusted mentor if it was at odds with their perceived professional calling.
Taken together, these factors lead me to conclude that we must invest in more career counseling studies and resources.
Christians need to discern and pursue vocational callings. However, doing so with a focus on the broader purpose of serving in God’s kingdom may change how we perceive calling—and increase our delight in the ways God has called us into his kingdom in all aspects of our lives, beyond just employment. Perhaps some better questions we should be asking are:
Can my calling be fulfilled only by a specific, full-time job?
Is a job that aligns with my calling available to me now, or might I have to wait?
Am I assuming that my calling will last for all my working years, or might my calling change over time?
For all of us seeking where we can best use the gifts God has given us, I say: Actively pray for and seek wise counsel about calling, knowing that your career and your calling are not one and the same. Fulfillment may be found in the most unlikely of places.
Steven Zhou has a PhD in organizational psychology from George Mason University, where he now teaches as an adjunct faculty member while serving as director of operations for his church.
This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Calling’s Dark Side".
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