I was 17 years old the first time I decided to read the Bible through “from cover to cover.” I started in Genesis and slogged straight through Revelation. It took me less than a year because I read as many chapters as possible before falling asleep at night.

Back then, I thought a lot about what I was going to do when I grew up. When I was 15, I wanted to own my own motorcycle repair shop. I talked about becoming a physician for a few months because I was smart and figured smart people were supposed to become doctors. I soon dumped that idea because I did not enjoy science classes or the idea of dealing with blood. Nonetheless, a handful of people called me MD for a while.

The biggest characters in the first half of the Bible were prophets. After reading through the call of a bunch of them, I began to wonder if God might be calling me to be a prophet. One night at church, when the pastor was extending what Baptists back then called an Invitation, I walked down the aisle to tell him that God was calling me to be a prophet.

What I did not understand was that even though the Bible was full of prophets, there was no longer a place in Baptist life for prophets. At least not any new ones. They recognized all the dead ones, but they weren’t taking any new ones. The pastor asked me to which church-related vocation God was calling me. The closest thing the church had to a prophet that I could think of standing there while the piano and organ played and the congregation sang “Just as I am,” was preacher, so I told him that God was calling me to be a preacher. The pastor – Brother Don – and the church – Hillcrest Baptist – welcomed me warmly as their newest “preacher boy” and I preached my first sermon on a Sunday night within just a few months.

I preached a lot while in college and became pastor of a small church while in seminary earning a Master of Divinity degree, but never saw myself as pastoring a church after graduation. At least not on a permanent, full-time basis. I saw myself as a traveling evangelist preaching revivals when I was still in college. While in seminary, I saw myself as a seminary professor. I preached one or two revivals along the way, but only as a visiting preacher and not as a full-time evangelist. And I never got around to completing a doctoral program, so never became a seminary professor.

I stumbled into pastoral care and counseling after seminary. I thought the people I met in seminary who were training for pastoral care and counseling were weird, so it was a surprise to a fair number of people, including me, that I became a chaplain and then a pastoral counselor instead of earning a Ph.D. and teaching.

I have not made my living from church work or care or counseling since 1997, but still wonder about the possibility that I heard God right at age 17 and am supposed to be a prophet. As best I can tell, a prophet is someone most people don’t understand, don’t pay attention to, don’t want to hear from, and prophets die without accomplishing anything beyond writing a short book that few people ever take seriously. So far, I can’t rule out that I am a prophet or a prophet in training.