The Strange Calling

What does it mean to be “called” to the ministry? At the age of fourteen, John Robert McFarland traded his life for his sister’s. “Save her from death,” he prayed to God, “and I’ll be a minister.” It wasn’t what he wanted to do, but it was the only bargain he could think of that would get God’s attention. For forty years, he worked to see if his “strange calling” was really to the “high calling,” the ministry. That calling has taken him to Alabama to march with Martin Luther King, Jr., to the chaos of university campuses in the 1960s, to the families of murder victims, to the homes of “tall-girl brides,” through a cancer diagnosis, to the grave of ambition. 

For anyone who has ever felt “called,” for anyone who has ever been a minister or contemplated it, for anyone who has ever experienced the care of those who answer the “strange call,” for anyone who has ever wondered who ministers are and why they do what they do, this book tells the story of every minister by telling the stories of one ministry.

McFarland’s anecdotes and reflections on his vocation take us on a journey that is packed with an emotional punch. This is a book of short stories, but they are true stories, not fiction.


John Robert McFarland is a former writer for Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” radio show. He is a United Methodist minister, a speaker, the author of Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole and An Ordinary Man, and a past president of the Academy of Parish Clergy. McFarland resides in Mason City, Iowa, with his wife Helen.