Jamie Janosz

In junior high, my daughter was given career aptitude tests. They declared she would make a great pharmacist, an idea that repelled her. She wanted to be a fashion designer, an artist, not someone who studied medicine for years and then worked behind a counter distributing pills. At the Bible college where I teach, students are pushed to declare a major. They enroll as a Sports Ministry major or a Pastoral Studies major with an Intercultural Studies emphasis. Their career choices are interwoven with their Christian calling which adds even more pressure to the choice. Some students arrive their freshmen year with career goals oddly defined: I am called to work with orphans in Romania. Really!? How do you know? My own life’s ambitions have rolled out like a tattered carpet littered with failed dreams. I wanted to be a Bible translator in the 7 th grade. Yes, I know it is an odd career choice in junior high. But, I admired a missionary woman who had come to speak at our...

An 18-year-old sat in my freshman orientation class. She had wavy, light brown hair, stood about 5 feet tall, and wore her clothing in a pretty, but not flashy, conservative style. Her classmates were taking turns with introductions, talking about where they were from, why they came to Bible college, and where they saw God leading them in the future. Stephanie was agitated. I noticed she kept staring down at her desk, and that her socially-responsible Tom’s clad foot was wiggling back and forth. When it was her turn to speak, she looked up but cast her eyes down. “I’m not really called to anything,” she said quietly, shrugging her shoulders. “I just want to be a mom and a wife. Nothing else.” The group responded positively encouraging Stephanie that her vocation as wife and mother were appropriate and God-honoring. A few of the guys cast her admiring and speculative glances, wondering if perhaps they had just found the perfect wife to complement their pastoral callin...