When Calling Weighs More Than Culture.
“No one goes into ministry for the money.”
I can’t tell you how many times someone’s said this to me with a weird smirk on their face.
It’s half-joke, half-truth. If wealth, influence, and prestige were my hope, vocational ministry wouldn’t be the most efficient route.
But the longer I live, the more that smirk feels revealing.
What if following Jesus, whether in ministry, medicine, business, teaching, art, engineering, or parenting, means living under a weight that culture doesn’t recognize as valuable? What if calling carries more gravity than accolades?
The Weight That Forms Us
Every culture has a gravitational pull. It tells us what matters. It whispers what success looks like and subtly trains our loves: Get the degree. Build the brand. Climb the ladder. Curate the life. Maximize comfort. Stay relevant.
These things aren’t inherently evil. But they’re also never neutral. They shape our desires and define what kind of life seems worth living.
The Christian tradition has long understood that the deepest spiritual struggle isn’t first about behavior, but about love. Augustine of Hippo famously said that our problem isn’t that we love too much, but that we love the wrong things, in the wrong order.
Culture constantly attempts to reorder our loves. It teaches us to prize recognition over faithfulness, comfort over sacrifice, and autonomy over obedience.
By contrast, calling reorders our loves around God. And when that happens, there will inevitably be friction.
Calling Is Not a Strategy for Success
Calling can sound romantic, inspiring, and significant. But biblically, it’s less about self-actualization and more about obedience.
When Jesus calls the disciples, he doesn’t hand them five-year plans and a money-back guarantee. He says, “Follow me.” And that call leads them into misunderstanding, marginalization, suffering, and ultimately martyrdom (for most of them, at least). Calling isn’t a strategy for platform-building. Which is why Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned that when Christ calls a person, he bids them “come and die.” Bonhoeffer knew this wasn’t metaphorical poetry. He resisted the cultural accommodation of the German church under Nazism and paid for it with his life.
When culture says, “Protect yourself,” calling says, “Lose your life to find it.”
When culture says, “Blend in,” calling says, “Stand firm.”
When culture says, “Make sure you’re on the right side of history,” calling says, “Be faithful on the right side of eternity.”
Vocation Beyond Ministry
We often limit the idea of calling to pastors and missionaries. But the Protestant reformers insisted that vocation belongs to every believer. Martin Luther argued that changing diapers, governing cities, baking bread, and preaching sermons can all be holy work when done in faith and love.
In other words, the question isn’t: “Is my job impressive?” Rather, “Is my life aligned with the One who called me?”
A young professional may feel pressure to compromise integrity to move ahead.
A student may feel pressure to curate a persona rather than cultivate character.
An artist may feel pressure to create what sells rather than what is true.
Calling will not always align with what advances you fastest. Sometimes it’ll cost you promotions, popularity, or even relationships. But it will never cost you your soul — because calling is aimed at what you were made for.
Approval That Shapes Us
One of the most subtle cultural pressures is the desire for recognition. We want our lives to matter. That longing isn’t wrong. It’s deeply human.
But calling is not about achieving glory. It’s about living for the pleasure of God.
In The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis writes that what we truly want is to hear, “Well done.” Not applause — but approval. Culture trains us to live before an audience of peers; calling teaches us to live before the face of the Father. The tragedy is not that we want our lives to matter. The tragedy is that we measure mattering by visibility instead of faithfulness.
The Slow Work of Faithfulness
Our world is optimized for speed: viral growth, rapid scaling, and instant feedback. But the kingdom of God often grows slowly, like a seed underground.
John Wesley organized societies and class meetings not for spectacle but for sustained holiness. His focus wasn’t momentary excitement but transformed lives over time. His ministry was methodical, patient, and frequently criticized.
Calling is slow. It’s showing up again. Forgiving again. Serving again. Praying when no one sees. Staying when leaving would be easier.
Culture celebrates the breakthrough moment; calling is formed in the hidden years and in what Eugene Peterson called, a long obedience in the same direction.
When the Two Collide
Let’s be honest: sometimes culture and calling do align. Excellence, creativity, justice, compassion…none of these are foreign to the kingdom of God.
But when they diverge, the divergence reveals what has greater weight in your life.
Will you choose generosity when accumulation feels safer? Tell the truth when spin would protect you? Refuse to participate in dehumanizing humor at work? Step toward the lonely when social capital is on the line? Embrace obscurity when self-promotion would be easy?
These aren’t abstract dilemmas. They are daily decisions. And each one reveals which voice carries more authority.
Listening for What’s Genuine
One of the challenges, especially for young adults, is discerning whether what you feel is truly calling—or merely preference dressed up in spiritual language. Howard Thurman spoke about listening for “the sound of the genuine” in your life—the deep place where the voice of God resonates with who you were created to be.
Calling isn’t about ego inflation. It’s about alignment with God’s redemptive purposes. And sometimes that alignment will lead you into places culture simply doesn’t understand. Perhaps you’ll choose a lower salary for meaningful work or choose to live in a hard neighborhood in order to love your neighbors in tangible ways. Maybe you’ll turn down opportunities that would fragment your spiritual life or pursue reconciliation when everyone expects retaliation.
When you make those choices, people may not applaud. They may question your ambition or think you’re naïve. But faithfulness is not naïveté. It’s conviction about what is ultimately real.
Re-Imagining Success
What if obedience is success? What if the most significant lives are the least celebrated?
The early church grew not because it controlled cultural power, but because ordinary believers lived in ways that were strange and compelling: radical generosity, care for the poor, courage under persecution.
They lived as if another kingdom was more real than Rome. And that’s the invitation before us to today as well. To live as if the kingdom of God is more substantial than market trends. To live as if holiness is more beautiful than hype. To live as if eternal joy outweighs temporary applause.
The Center That Holds
If you try to resist culture by sheer willpower, you’ll likely either become self-righteous or exhausted. The Christian answer isn’t willpower or grit. It’s formation and the slow reshaping of our loves in the presence of Jesus.
Calling is sustained by intimacy more than intensity.
When your calling is rooted in communion with Jesus and when prayer, Scripture, worship, and community shape you, culture loses some of its seduction. You begin to see its promises as thinner than they first appeared. The goal isn’t withdrawal. It’s clarity.
You’re sent into the world but not owned by it. You work within culture, but you’re not defined by it. You participate—but you don’t worship what it worships.
Living Under a Greater Weight
To say that calling carries more weight than culture isn’t to despise culture. It’s to recognize that it’s not ultimate. You’ll feel the pull of both. And so, the question isn’t whether tension will come. I guarantee you, it will.
The question is: Which voice has final authority?
At the end of your life, followers, résumés, and polished images won’t matter.
What will matter is whether you were faithful to the One who called you.
No one follows Jesus for the money. We follow him for something far greater: the joy of belonging to God, the privilege of participating in his redemption, and the hope of hearing, at the end, the only words that truly satisfy: “Well done.”
When that voice speaks, every lesser applause falls silent.
For Further Reading:
Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Augustine of Hippo. The City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Translated by R. H. Fuller. New York: Macmillan, 1959.
Lewis, C. S. The Weight of Glory. New York: HarperOne, 2001.
Luther, Martin. Three Treatises. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970.
Peterson, Eugene H. A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Grand Rapids: InterVarsity Press, 1980.
Smith, James K. A. You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016.
Thurman, Howard. The Inward Journey. New York: Harper & Row, 1961.
Wesley, John. The Works of John Wesley. Vol. 9. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989.
Wingren, Gustaf. Luther on Vocation. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1957.
Rev. Dr. Emily Vermilya serves as Executive Pastor at College Wesleyan Church, where she helps guide the vision and life of the church with wisdom and care. Over the years, she has also served as a worship pastor and even coached swim—reflecting her heart for both spiritual formation and everyday leadership. Emily is the proud parent of two adult children and shares life and ministry with her husband, Jim.