When I began truly following Jesus as a junior in college, I had no desire for pursuing pastoral ministry. I was very excited about my faith and held pastors in high regard, but I was enjoying studying finance and excited to start serving Jesus in the business world.
Thankfully, I had great models of what that service would look like. When I graduated from the University of Delaware, I accepted a job in corporate finance at Sunoco, the oil company headquartered in Philadelphia. With a legacy of Christian principles at the core of its founding (thanks to the Pew family), Sunoco had retained a culture of hard work and ethical practices, and there were several strong Christian men in executive leadership.
Fourteen years later, I transitioned to pastoral ministry, with invaluable experience that has continued to serve me in the 14 years since. Today, I serve as the pastor of a small, vibrant PCA church in New Jersey. The details of my professional transition, seminary studies, and sense of call make for a longer story. But here are three main takeaways from the path I’ve travelled.
#1: God is in Charge of Your Calling
You can’t plan all the details of your life. I chose my undergraduate major and my first job with care and consideration, but I could never have anticipated the providential circumstances God would arrange. People often remark what a big change it must have been to move from corporate finance to pastoral ministry. Looking back, though, I’m not so sure.
The roles I filled at Sunoco were primarily related to performance analysis, strategic planning, and investor relations. In other words, I was neither a technical accountant nor a chemical engineer. But I was able to develop the skill of digesting complex details (explained by people smarter than me) and then summarizing that into actionable information for business leaders and investors (also people smarter than me) to make decisions.
In God’s providence, I have found that local church pastoral ministry often requires skills similar to what I learned at Sunoco. The subject matter, of course, is vastly different. Petroleum refining is very different from the Gospel of John. But what I find myself doing is summarizing what many find complex into actionable information for members in the local church. The subject is different, but the skill set is providentially similar.
God planned that. Not me.
#2: My Calling isn’t a Higher Calling
Leaving the corporate world, pastoral ministry became my calling, but I needed to make it clear that it wasn’t a higher calling. When it was announced that I was leaving Sunoco to join the staff of my local church, many of my co-workers told me how wonderful it was that I was pursuing a “higher” calling.
For some, the sentiment came from a sincere appreciation for clergy, rooted in their Philadelphia-area Roman Catholic upbringing. But for others, there was a tinge of regret, almost embarrassed for their own failure to progress to something more “important” than an accountant, an engineer, or a business manager.
On several occasions I had great conversations about the value of honest, productive work and the need for God’s people to serve in different roles with equal dignity. It is the same conversation I now regularly have in pastoral ministry. Our world desperately needs men and women who approach their secular vocation as a true calling.
This does not diminish the importance of pastors, but Paul in Ephesians 4 helps us understand that ours is an equipping role – enabling the work of ministry through our people. And that work is only accomplished in lay ministry in our churches. It happens as God works through them in every sphere of life—whether it’s a factory, a farm, or a family.
#3: One Calling with Multiple Paths
I learned that God intentionally calls men to pastoral ministry at different times from different backgrounds. A simple survey of teaching elders in the PCA would reveal that we have all taken different paths to get where we are. And we should be careful not to over-romanticize one path over another.
For years after I began to sense a call to pastoring in the local church, I harbored a low-grade envy toward my younger brother, David. He sensed his call to ministry in college and then he went straight to full-time seminary study. He was formally called and ordained as a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He would go on to marry and have children. In contrast, it felt like I had done things in the wrong order. I was engaged in part-time seminary studies while working and being married with kids. My brother’s way seemed very much like the better way.
On the other hand, I’ve had many others tell me how they wish everyone in pastoral ministry had the kind of business and secular employment background I do. In some cases, some have suggested to me that secular employment after college be a requirement for pastors. In other words, in affirming the very providential benefits I’ve seen in my path, they take it step farther and try to argue that it is the better way.
But we only need to read the gospels to see how God calls different men at different stages of their lives to follow him. And they come with different experiences and gifts. Matthew was a white-collar finance type. Peter was a blue-collar fisherman. Paul was a scholar and religious leader. I actually think that is intentional.
And Presbyterians especially should see the benefits of God working like this. I regularly consult pastors (like my brother) with far more ministry experience than me. This comes from years of accumulated wisdom. And on the flip side, I frequently draw on my non-ministry experience to help them. This complementary sharing of experience is not a concession. It is beautiful when elders share their unique experiences and gifts to strengthen the overall ministry of the church. In fact, we should provide institutional structures for that to happen… maybe call them “presbyteries.”
Rejoicing in God’s Plan
In the last 10 years, I have had numerous opportunities to share my experience with men exploring a call to pastoral ministry. No situation is the same, but our gracious God is the constant. He writes each of our stories uniquely, but with the same goal—to know him more deeply and serve him more passionately in the local church. That’s the higher calling.
Tom Harr has been the pastor of Calvary Presbyterian Church in Allenwood, New Jersey, since October 2018. Previously, he spent 14 years working in corporate finance, performance analysis and investor relations for Sunoco, Inc., in Philadelphia.