Where Do Pastors Come From?

May 21

A Story of Calling, Recognition, and the Long Work of God

I’ve been asked a lot of questions over the years as a pastor. Some are theological. Some are practical. Some are deeply personal. But there’s one question that people almost never ask out loud, even though I suspect many have wondered it:

Where do pastors actually come from?

Do they grow somewhere?

Are there orchards in Washington State where, under the right conditions, pastors begin to sprout like apple blossoms — subtle at first, then increasingly noticeable until, by late summer, they’re fully formed, slightly awkward, and ready for harvest?

Or maybe they’re mined out of the hills of Kentucky. Deep underground, teams of seasoned clergy descending into the earth with lanterns in hand, calling back up to the surface:

“We’ve struck a vein of youth pastors. Send down more coffee.”

Or perhaps they’re manufactured. A perfectly ordinary college student goes into seminary — undecided, mildly anxious about the future — and after a few years of Greek, theology, and caffeine, out comes a pastor. Fully credentialed. Slightly sleep-deprived. Ready to preach.

Some people actually believe something like that. Ministry as Plan B. The place you end up when Plan A didn’t quite come together.

And then there’s another theory — one I’ve observed often enough to smile at it. Maybe pastors are simply inherited.

You ever notice how many of them are named John, Charles, Wesley…?

You begin to wonder if somewhere along the way a quiet agreement was made:

“Let’s just keep this going through the family line.”

To be fair, sometimes it does look that way.

But if I’m honest — if I strip away the humor and assumptions — none of those explanations really answers the question.

Because when I ask, “Where do pastors come from?” I don’t think about orchards or seminaries or family trees.

I think about a little boy in a Roman Catholic church.

A Boy at the Altar

I grew up in the Roman Catholic Church. I was an altar boy throughout my childhood and teenage years. I rang the bells. I assisted with the Mass. I learned the rhythms and rituals of something ancient and holy.

But more than that, I was aware.

Sensitive, even as a child, to something I couldn’t fully explain. There was a sense of the divine hovering just beyond my understanding, but not beyond my perception.

I asked questions — lots of them. The kind that don’t always fit neatly into liturgy or catechism. I asked priests detailed things as we prepared for and completed the Mass. I read the only Bible our family had, often lingering over the pictures, trying to understand the stories behind them.

I spent long stretches of time alone — in the woods, at a hobby bench, thinking, wondering, tinkering.

By most social measures, I was a bit awkward. Maybe more than a bit. I relied heavily on a very small number of authentic friendships where I could be myself without explanation.

And in all of that, God was there.

I didn’t know it at the time, but He was already calling.

A Stranger in a New Land

When I was sixteen, we moved to Oklahoma — a mall Bible Belt town that might as well have been another country.

Suddenly I was surrounded by Protestants.

Not just people who went to church, but people who talked about faith in ways that were new, confident, and often directed at me.

To them, I was something of a curiosity. A Catholic. From “the East.” A theological foreigner.

I began attending Wednesday night services. I listened to arguments against Catholicism. I heard carefully constructed presentations of the Gospel — sincere, well-meaning, but often spiritually immature.

If I’m honest, I probably got “saved” a couple of times.

Mostly so the girl who brought me to the altar could tell her parents it was okay to go on a date with me.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what I was doing. I thought maybe I was praying for the weather or something. Covering all the bases.

But underneath all of that, I was attentive. I was prayerful. I was listening.

I was introduced to contemporary Christian music and spent hours absorbing it. Something new began forming inside me — not a rejection of what I had known, but an expansion of it.

God was still there.

Still calling.

Resistance and the Long Road Back

At one point, my father became convinced I should become a priest.

I considered it.

For about five minutes.

The more he wanted it, the less I did. Not because the calling wasn’t real, but because the pressure behind it pushed me away. By that point, my faith had also taken on another dimension: truth-seeking. There were aspects of Catholic tradition I could not fully reconcile. Questions I could not simply set aside.

As I finished high school, I struggled to find myself. I rebelled, experimented, drifted.

Church and Christian things went on hiatus for long stretches.

But I always found my way back.

Even my rebellion had limits. My nature — straight arrow at its core — never fully abandoned me. Still, I was not yet living with clarity or direction.

Love, Roots, and the Slow Work of Formation

Like many young men, my hopes centered around finding a wife, building a life, and becoming independent.

I married a Methodist girl from my graduating class. Through her family, I encountered something that felt both unfamiliar and strangely recognizable at the same time.

They were deeply rooted in their church.

Not merely attendees. Their Methodist congregation shaped family rhythms, relationships, social life, identity, traditions, holidays, friendships, and loyalties. Church dinners, gatherings, customs, and expectations all flowed naturally from that shared congregational life together. In many ways, they were every bit as formed by their Methodist world as my own family had been formed by Roman Catholicism.

That made an impression on me.

Much of what I had encountered in broader Protestant culture up to that point had felt fragmented, reactive, or disconnected from rooted identity and history. But through marriage and family integration, I was no longer observing Methodism from a distance or through theological debate. I was living close enough to see another Christian tradition from the inside.

I saw ordinary people sincerely shaped by inherited faith, congregational life, and longstanding religious culture.

I did not fully understand it at the time, but those experiences quietly broadened my understanding of the Church itself.

We eventually moved back to southern Indiana — my birthplace — and spent several years trying to build a life together as many young couples do: sincerely, imperfectly, and with more optimism than wisdom. In time, the marriage ended painfully, and life entered a difficult and disorienting season.

But even there, God had not disappeared.

Not dramatically.
Not all at once.
But steadily — and often painfully — He continued His work.

It felt something like stepping into the world described in The Great Divorce — a reality more solid than the one I had been living in. Light no longer merely illuminated things; it exposed them. My identity, misshapen by confusion and brokenness, slowly began to be rebuilt.

Redemption and Recognition

In time, God redeemed even the choices that had emerged from brokenness.

Laura came into my life, along with her son. We became a family.

Parenthood changed everything.

I wanted to be a good father.
I knew that meant becoming a good husband.
I knew that meant becoming a different man.

We began attending a Methodist church. Over time, through spiritual guidance, pastoral care, and community life, God continued His work.

Eventually, a pastor in Corydon, Indiana, asked me a question I could no longer ignore:

“Do you ever think God might be calling you into ministry?”

He wasn’t the first person to ask it.

But he was the one I could no longer dismiss.

Each time I heard that question, something in me recognized it before I was ready to admit it.

The Moment

I remember sitting in our rural driveway one night.

It was quiet. Still.

I had been praying day and night for clarity.

And then, across the sky, a comet blazed overhead.

The next morning, before dawn, a gust of wind blew open the storm door at our kitchen. I stepped out onto the porch.

The world was dark. The stars stretched overhead.

And I asked aloud:

“God… are You calling me?”

The wind stopped.

Instantly.

Now, I don’t build my theology on comets and wind.

But I do know this: