It was an unexpected call…an unexpected nudge in the right direction.

Many people serving in the public ministry will reference a moment when they began to consider serving God as a pastor, teacher, or staff minister. For me, it came after an encouraging word from a pastor teaching my Old Testament survey class in high school. It came from the persistence of an MLC admissions counselor who took the time to get to know me and my story. I didn’t come from a ministry family, so this pull I felt towards the pulpit was not something I had ever planned on.

It was an unexpected call . . . an emergency call this time.

Over six years since I first considered ministry—after five years of studying Greek, Hebrew, and theology with the men that had gone from being classmates to my best friends—I had a call: to serve for one year as admissions director at Michigan Lutheran Seminary (MLS), one of our synod’s ministerial education high schools. The same God who had guided my steps to serve him was paving a new way to do just that at Michigan Lutheran Seminary. I was given a few days to think things over, but it wasn’t long before I realized that this was no diversion from the pre- determined path, but the next step in the plan God had for me all along.

It can be an unexpected call . . . my recruitment efforts take all different shapes and sizes.

Sometimes it’s an eager invitation to come watch the MLS basketball team play, my arm around Conrad the Cardinal, our mascot. Sometimes it’s a meeting with a concerned mother who asks me to explain how she could possibly send her son across the country to live in our dorms. Sometimes it’s answering all the questions a room of eighth graders can come up with or explaining to a kindergarten class that a “cemetery” is a very different thing than a “seminary.” But it’s always ministry.

I’ve gotten to try so many new things this year. I’ve had opportunities I never would have imagined, and I’ve had to learn my way through challenges I didn’t know I’d have to navigate. But I’ve realized that no matter what the calling looks like on a given day, it’s ministry. Whether I’m lobbing a free t-shirt to a kid at a grade school or sitting across from a high school senior about to make what she sees as the biggest decision of her young life, I’ve got an open door to tell them how God has opened doors in all the most unexpected places. I get to tell them how he’s shown me again and again that even when I think I’ve got my path figured out, he’s got a better way. I get to tell them that their name is written in the Book of Life too, and that God will use them and their gifts in incredible ways for his kingdom—ways we can’t begin to imagine in the here and now. I get to tell them that their voice matters—to encourage them to use it to sing God’s praises and speak his message of reconciliation to the world.

I didn’t expect to discover that our best recruiters aren’t recruiters at all . . .

There’s a special place for people with a job like mine. It’s good to have people whose job it is to go to a school and do this work every day. But something is lost when I walk into the room wearing a big ol’ cardinal logo on my shirt to tell people to consider ministry. I take the risk of being perceived as some kind of traveling salesman, a purveyor of free merch for the sake of building the “business” of our school. That’s an obstacle I’ve had to learn how to get around, but it’s also a blessing I like to share with people everywhere I go.

You are a far better recruiter than I am. You have these young people in your life—kids that call you grandma or dad or their teacher or their mentor. If I came to town, they probably wouldn’t even know what to call me (as tends to be the problem for a man stuck between junior and middler year at the seminary). But they know you. Your words are as good as gold.

It might be an unexpected call. . . they might not see in themselves what you can see. But you get to make sure they know you see it. It might be an unexpected call . . . they may have never pictured themselves serving in the ministry before. But you can make sure that’s never true again.

God doesn’t always work in the ways we expect, but we can expect him to work. He is faithful, and his Word moves powerfully through the ministry efforts of his chosen messengers. May we all learn to look to him to tell us where he might use us next!

After completing one year at the seminary, Cameron Schroeder received a limited-duration call (in many cases referred to as an “emergency call”) to serve for one year at Michigan Lutheran Seminary in Saginaw, Michigan. Cam returned to the seminary to continue his training in the 2024-2025 school year.