For years I prayed and sought godly counsel. I received conflicting advice. Making a choice seemed like giving up on a dream, or even a calling.

I didn’t know whether to pursue the vocation of a pastor or professor.

Now that I teach at Beeson Divinity School, I often meet with students at the same crossroads. They do well in their classes. They look up to their professors. But they feel responsible for exercising their leadership and teaching gifts in the local church.

How can they choose?

In his new article, Ronni Kurtz argues that pastor vs. professor is less of a binary and more of a spectrum. Pastors benefit from the writing of professors. Some will even produce high-level scholarship from the trenches of pastoral ministry. Meanwhile, many professors teach and preach in local churches.

Kurtz cautions church leaders to avoid the extremes, where pastors never bother with academic theology, and professors don’t care about local churches. And he counsels us to respect and embrace how God gifts others in different ways.

“There may be times when the Lord changes an individual’s ministry context, moving a person from pastoral ministry to academic ministry, or from the academy to the local church,” writes Kurtz, who teaches at Cedarville University. “But in keeping with our gifts, there are several noble paths that can be followed to glorify the Lord and serve our neighbors.”

In fact, I never did follow any single path. The Lord blazed a trail for me to serve as a journalist, pastor, and professor in my work for TGC. It’s not a plan I could have anticipated. Whatever role we fill, we serve at God’s pleasure, for his glory and the good of his church.