Charles Spurgeon, one of the most punk-rock preachers the world has ever seen, once advised a group of young men he was mentoring not to go into the ministry if they could help it. If you can do anything else, he told them, do it! Be a banker, practice law, be a surgeon, and glorify God by doing so. Only become a pastor, he advised, if you literally can’t not. Do it only if, as it was with Jeremiah, God’s Word is a consuming fire inside your bones and you are unable to hold it back.2
