What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

Somebody asked me what I was planning to do before I became a pastor. You know, "So, when you were going to college, what did you want to be?"

Well, it all started out as a professional baseball player. As with all athletics and artistic pursuits, that decision is usually left to what God gave you and the predjudices of others. Either God didn't give me enough or others were REALLY predjudiced. Smart money's on the former.

I went to Auburn and my first major was engineering. Oddly enough, finishing in the bottom 3% in the country on the math section of the American College Test wasn't a clue that wasn't the place for me. I changed major & schedule within two class periods of my first week at college.

To business. The plan was that I might just major in accounting and take over my grandfather's tax business upon graduation. One quarter later, I was a liberal arts major. Two factors contributed to that: I wasn't wired like the rest of the people in the business classes...they all seemed like type-A go-getters who wanted to take the world by the tail and shake the money out of it's pockets. And, I was really enjoying my Bible study as well as volunteering with a student ministry.

Turns out that there's a job that lets you do both.

And ever since my sophomore year of university I was geared towards being a youth minister. Sure, I bounced around five more majors in the liberal arts department (you could substitute philosophy classes for math requirements and you didn't lose hours, you just shuffled electives around). I graduated early and headed off to seminary (the first time--but that's another blog entry). I was in youth ministry eight months later.

And I've been there ever since.

But I've thought about what I'd have done if I wasn't planning on going to grad school to train for youth ministry, and as best I can discern, if I'd been remotely thinking and had advisors/disciplers telling me to follow what I'd enjoy doing and have a passion for I think I'd have done one or two things:

First, I think I'd have tried to get into the Auburn football broadcast thing. My fantasy dream job would be to have been play-by-play radio announcer for football and basketball...and I bet if I'd really gotten into the communications department I could've done something with Auburn radio/video/communications.

More likely, I would've majored in education, minored in English & physical education, and likely been teaching senior English, creative writing, and coaching baseball at public high school. If a private high school, I probably would teach a Bible class or two. Really, I think that would've been my path.

What would yours have been?