evangelical 360°

Ep. 22 / Your Calling: How to Hear God's Voice in Your Life Journey ► Jim Cantelon

• Host Brian Stiller • Season 1 • Episode 22

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What lights your fire? This might be the most important question in discovering your divine purpose, according to Jim Cantelon, whose remarkable faith journey has taken him from youth pastor to church planter in Jerusalem to founder of an international NGO serving orphans and widows.

In this profound conversation with Brian Stiller, Cantelon reveals a refreshingly practical approach to discerning God's will. Rather than waiting for perfect clarity or divine roadmaps, he advocates recognizing what you're naturally good at and taking faithful action. "The will of God will and should flow seamlessly through your life and never be something that challenges you to be what you're not," Cantelon explains, dismantling the perfectionism that often paralyzes believers.

Through vivid storytelling, Cantelon shares how his ministries emerged not from strategic planning but from faithful response to divine prompting—what he describes as visceral, sometimes irrational nudges from God. His nautical metaphor perfectly captures this philosophy: many Christians keep their "ships" docked, loading them with contingencies while waiting for perfect direction, but "God can make a midcourse correction for a moving vessel but can do nothing with a ship that remains docked."

Particularly moving is Cantelon's account of founding WOW (Working for Orphans and Widows), sparked by encountering devastating poverty while pastoring a wealthy church. This organization has since helped hundreds of thousands affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India, transforming entire communities. Now at 77, while peers have long retired, Cantelon continues active ministry with "the biggest horizon I've ever had in my life."

Whether you're questioning your purpose, considering ministry, or seeking fresh direction in retirement years, this episode offers wisdom that liberates from analysis-paralysis and inspires faithful action today. Subscribe to Evangelical 360 for more conversations that explore contemporary issues impacting Christian life worldwide.

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Brian Stiller:

Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. My name is Brian Stiller, global Ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance and host of this new podcast series. On Evangelical 360, I interview leaders, writers and influencers about contemporary issues which are impacting Christian life around the world. My hope is that it will not only be a global meeting place where faith is explored from different perspectives, but that each person listening will come away informed, encouraged, challenged and inspired. Have you ever wondered what God's will for you is, for your vocation or calling at your particular age or stage in life? These are questions I've asked myself over the years and these are the questions my guest is joining me to discuss today on Evangelical 360.

Brian Stiller:

Pastor, author, broadcaster, church planter and founder of an NGO, Jim Cantelon has wisdom on how our narrative fits into the larger story of creation. If you're interested in making sense of life's calling and opportunities, you'll want to listen in today. Jim Cantlin, thank you so much for joining me today on Evangelical 360. , thank you so much for joining me today on Evangelical 360. Jim, wonderful to have you on this podcast Pleasure. I think I need to disclose to our viewership that we do have a bit of a history together.

Jim Cantelon:

Yeah, since you were 10 and I was 5. That's a lot of years.

Brian Stiller:

Well, I'm interested today in talking about how we hear the voice of God as we discern what's God's will for me. So I look at your life. We were raised together as pastor's kids in Saskatchewan. You went to college, became a youth pastor, a pastor, and then you did broadcasting. You became an author. You planted a church in Israel. You started an NGO, WOW, working with orphans and widows, and now you're doing a weekly Bible television program. Now, how does that evolve? How did you move from that early stage to where you are today?

Jim Cantelon:

I think the first thing that is really critical. You know, formative stages are always vital, and I remember as a preacher's kid. You know I tell people I cut my teeth on a Pentecostal church pew. You know I'm hearing my dad preaching every Sunday. I'm hearing visiting evangelists, missionaries and so on, and I had a very powerful encounter with the Lord when I was five years of age. I've always had a very powerful encounter with the Lord. When I was five years of age, I've always had a worldview, and that worldview has seen me, as I've taken it personally, living a life that has meaning, not just for now but for the eternities. And so I've always lived with this sense that there's more to life than just living. There is investing, as the Bible would say, in the kingdom of heaven, and as a kid I just assumed that's what you did. And so I've always had a bent, if you will, to vision and to far horizon and to risk-taking, and that has been consistently the case for me for the course of my entire life.

Brian Stiller:

Now, when you started out, were you self-conscious of that worldview as you began, or did that evolve? Did that emerge in your life? Right from the get-go.

Jim Cantelon:

You know it's interesting. I mentioned this encounter I had with the Lord and you are very familiar with where it happened Living Waters Camp in Watrous, saskatchewan, in a children's meeting led by a wonderful woman whose name was Grace Brown, who was doing a master's degree at that time at the University of Saskatchewan, and she was taking us through a child-sized version of Pilgrim's Progress. And after one of these sessions she closed the meeting. I couldn't leave, so I sat there and she came up to me and said Jimmy, can I help you? And I started to cry. I'd never cried like this in my life before I'm five years of age. I said, ms Brown, I need to get saved. I mean, what's that mean? I didn't know what it meant, I just knew that there was something going on in me. She took me into a little back alcove and prayed with me. And as she prayed with me, then she asked me to pray. It was the most profound moment of my little life. She left me wisely and I wept and wept, and wept and finally I snuck out to the back of the granary with the grass this high, sat with my back against the hot clapboards. I didn't want you to see me with red eyes and a running nose and some of our other friends there, and so I kind of gathered myself for about an hour. I came out and there was nobody there, but a few adults.

Jim Cantelon:

And as I was walking across to where we were staying, I heard this young pastor saying Jimmy, jimmy, catlin. I turned it was a fellow by the name of Bill Cornelius. He was a pastor in Kenwood, saskatchewan, and he was in charge of missions for the Saskatchewan district. He said Jimmy, on Sunday afternoon in the Big Tabernacle, which was just a shack, we're having our missions meeting. There are going to be about 500 people there. I'd like you to ask your dad to write you a five-minute sermon. You memorize it and then I'm going to call you to preach it, why we should go into all the world and preach the gospel. Would you do that? I said absolutely, I'll do that and I did it. What really is fascinating, brian, is that in the course of about an hour and a half, I had this soul-saving encounter with the Lord and I was called to preach at five years of age. And so when did it start? It started then, and I've had this driving vision for doing my part in presenting the gospel to the world ever since.

Brian Stiller:

Your life story is somewhat dramatic. It's varied. You have moved into a number of areas in your ministry establishing a church, an NGO, publishing, doing television. But for someone who has a narrative that doesn't have that kind of dynamic or explosive quality to it, how do they begin perceiving what God might be leading them to or to become?

Jim Cantelon:

I've been asked this question scores of times over the course of my life as a pastor, and I always respond the same way as I will to you.

Brian Stiller:

What are you good?

Jim Cantelon:

at what am I good at? I say what are you good at? Do you have administrative skills? Do you have communication skills? Do you have an interest in making money? Are you sociable or are you an introvert? What are you good at? What is your makeup? And so they'll start to tell me know, tell me.

Jim Cantelon:

Responding to those questions, and I said that's where you start. You have been invested with your creator with certain predispositions and tendencies and in terms of the will of God in your life, it will be consistent with those tendencies. It will not be inconsistent. The will of God will and should flow seamlessly through your life and never be something that challenges you to be what you're not. And that's where I start. And in terms of my own life, I've known what I'm good at. You know from a very early age, and I've just done what I'm good at. You know the old adage age and I've just done what I'm good at. You know the old adage do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. I really believe that's true, and so to me the will of God is no great mystery. He puts a certain bent in you, a certain tendency in you, a certain interest, appetite, vision for something, and I say well be true to that today. Don't be concerned about where it's leading, Don't be concerned about the future and don't expect that God's going to give you a roadmap, because he won't.

Jim Cantelon:

Faith is an action word. Faithfulness is certainly an action word. Faithfulness is certainly an action word, and the Lord speaks to us in what we do, and so you know, Soren Kierkegaard, the famous Danish theologian philosopher, talked about taking a leap in the dark. We walk by faith and not by sight. I've been taking leaps in the dark my whole life, creating things, passing them on to others, going back and starting a square one with something new, as you know. But in every case, I've had a sense that I'm taking a leap in the dark with the giftings that I'm aware of that the Lord has given me. So I don't get insecure, I don't get fearful, I just do it.

Brian Stiller:

But as I listen to you and the will of God manifest within the personality of , what about for someone else who is more timid, more laid back, more unsure of themselves or the world? How do they go about looking at what God might have for them?

Jim Cantelon:

Sometimes we just need to stop our compulsion to do great things for God and just take stock of what we have now and what we have been doing to this point in time. To me, the clue there will lead you to the next step. You know, people get all perfectionist about the will of god. They, well, I just want the perfect will of god. I say well then, I'm so sorry to hear that you'll never have the perfect will of god because you're not perfect, you're flawed. Well, you know I. So what happens is people they take more courses, more books, more studies, more degrees, more this, more that. It's like you know. It's like their life is a ship at the dock and they're loading that boat with every kind of contingency because they want to do the perfect will of God. Basically, what they're doing is they're avoiding the issue.

Jim Cantelon:

I say get on the ship and get out of the harbor and start sailing somewhere, and then they come back to me right away. But what if I sail in the wrong direction? I said good for you. If you sail in the wrong direction, god can make a midcourse correction, but he can't do a blessed thing with a ship that's not moving until you take action. I mean, what's the Lord gonna do? Yeah, you're nothing but a frog on a lily pad with his tongue out hoping an insect will land on it. It's a total passive position. So I say, find out what you're good at, what have you been good at? On the basis of that dream, a dream, take small steps and get going and be amazed 10, 15, 20 years from now, what the Lord did with that decision.

Brian Stiller:

Let's go to Israel. You were pastor of my family and you and I not planning. We ended up in Israel one day and that was your introduction. But you went back there and you established what is now the King of Kings, which is the large church downtown Jerusalem. How did that emerge, did you?

Jim Cantelon:

plan on that? No, no, no, no. I was invited to do some broadcasting in southern Lebanon in a war zone back in 1981. And it was a very dangerous thing to do. I had three little kids and a beautiful wife, but I figured the Lord wanted me to do it and by the way, how?

Jim Cantelon:

do. I know the Lord wants me to do it. Gut instinct, the Lord speaks to me in my gut, visceral. It's super irrational, it's not something that's reasonable and it's definitely not something that comes out of a strategic plan. It's not even tactical, it's just boom.

Jim Cantelon:

And I had this sense when I was invited to do some interim broadcasting in this little station in southern Lebanon that I should do it and that's a whole. It takes an hour to tell a story. But that led me eventually to a meeting with the government of Israel, with the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Religion, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, all together together. And I came to them with this concept that I had come up with while I was broadcasting in southern Lebanon, called Kibbutz Shalom, where I would bring young Canadian adults over to live and work as volunteers in the Kibbutzim of Israel for two and three months at a time. And so I was there to meet with these government officials. They knew me from my broadcasting in southern Lebanon. Everybody knew me from that. They had done the research. I wasn't aware of this, but they had done their. They wasn't aware of this, but they had done their. They knew me better than I knew myself.

Jim Cantelon:

So I presented the kibbutz shalom plan to them. I wanted their endorsement, and there was a pause. And then the spokesperson. Her name was Haya Fisher. You know, jim, this is a very good idea, this Kibbutz Shalom, but you cannot be coordinating it from Toronto. You must be living here in Yerushalayim. Pause. And, by the way, would you consider planting an?

Brian Stiller:

international church in Jerusalem with our blessing. That's where it began.

Jim Cantelon:

It was an offer I couldn't refuse. I had a sense from the Lord in my gut that this was from him, and so I said yes, came back to Toronto, as you know, and resigned Cedarview. And a few months later November 1981, we moved to Jerusalem, not knowing how this would happen. You know, I had no strategic plan. I had no. I didn't have any committee meetings, you know. I said now, what should I do? First I said, since the Lord wants me to do this, we're gonna go and we're just gonna do it. You're gonna do what I don't know. I'm gonna show up and I tell, tell people, when it comes to the will of god, the very first step is showing up. You gotta show up here. Am I send me? You know, like isaiah in isaiah 6. Um, and one thing led to another, and I invited wayne and ann hilston, who pastored the church for many years after we left and still are there, to come and join us a few years later and we started with what we called Jerusalem Christian Assembly.

Jim Cantelon:

It morphed into King of Kings and within four months it was the biggest Protestant evangelical Christian church in Jerusalem. And now you've been there. It's a beautiful, beautiful situation. A gorgeous auditorium called the Pavilion, very high profile in Israel. Everybody trusts King of Kings and it's all the Lord's work.

Jim Cantelon:

And you know I've had a lot of pastor friends say to me Jim, why did you ever leave there? You know, most preachers would give their eye teeth to preach in Jerusalem once and you're doing it every week. And I said, hey, this is his work, not mine. And in the Lord's work you've got to know when to start, you've got to know when to stop. And in our case I was prepared to spend the next 20 years there. The Lord had me six years in. I had a sense viscerally from the Lord that I should work myself out of a job over that next year, which I did. Handed it over to the Hilsdens. We trained Jewish believers to pastor and today, as you know, it's a huge story. It's massive, not just the church but the various ministries the church is doing, and I feel like a grandfather.

Brian Stiller:

You got into publishing. Here's one of your latest Cantelon's Casual Commentary A 21st century guide to the life of Jesus for the internet generation. Do you like the cover? Jesus with an iPad? Very good, pretty cool, eh. How did this begin in your life?

Jim Cantelon:

I was so concerned about the flakes that were coming through town and I had more than my share of them, and for the first few years, you know, I tried to be nice to these people. And then I had a moment of revelation Nice is not a fruit of the Spirit, hallelujah. I started asking hard questions and being tough on some of these wackos, but it was very clear to me that people were woefully uninformed about the prophetic content of Scripture. And so I did a year-long study on every prophetic passage in the Bible and I'm not very good in Hebrew, but I did it in Hebrew and I ended up writing a book called Theology for Non-Theologians, which, by the way, as I speak, is about to be republished next week. I've had a lot of requests for it. It went out of print after several years, but that introduced me to writing on a large scale, and since then until now, including this book that you've just shown your audience I've written, I think, 10 books. I haven't written as many as you have yet.

Brian Stiller:

How does that evolve? Again, we're thinking about how does God lead us in life? You start out as a preacher's kid, you start as a youth pastor and then you pastor a couple of churches. How does that grow from those small beginnings to today?

Jim Cantelon:

Through faithfulness, being faithful to what it is you sense the Lord wants you to do today. Don't worry about tomorrow. Even Jesus said that Think not what the moral bringeth. He said Sufficient unto the day is evil. You've got enough on your plate. Just be faithful today. You've got enough on your plate, just be faithful today.

Jim Cantelon:

And it's interesting faithfulness in the Hebrew language, emunah, basically means showing up for work. Just show up for work, day in and day out, seven times out of ten. You don't want to show up for work, but you do. You just keep doing it. And as you keep doing it, you keep growing. Your capacity expands. You develop momentum. You, you, you develop wisdom. You know, if I have a regret or a failure, a sense of disappointment, it's that I knew so little, so soon. I mean, when I think back to some of the sermons I preached way back then, I'm embarrassed. But you know that as I get older, you know the too soon old and too late smart. But as you're faithful and just keep grinding it out, we're laborers after all. You know we're not co-regents, we're laborers with the look with the Lord and you do the grunt work he calls you to do. You develop momentum and one thing leads to another.

Jim Cantelon:

A lot of young men and women going into the ministry. They want to have everything settled now. They want to have the right salary, they want to have the right benefits, they want to have this and they want to have that in order for them to agree to go to this church or that ministry. Whatever my view is, that is all secondary stuff. What does God want you to do? And if it means no salary, do it with gratitude, and the Lord, who owns a cattle in a thousand hills, will not see you starving. You've done it, as have I, especially in the early days, living basically with nothing but a fiery vision and faithfulness. Just doing it, doing it, sticking to it, that's how you build a life.

Brian Stiller:

We understand that we live our lives regardless of what we do. We are His ministering servants, but there is a particular calling for pastoral church leadership that seems to be on the wane today. So for younger people who are finishing their high school or in the early years of college, or people who are in a particular vocation and they're wondering whether this might be a calling for them, what might be those signs that would indicate to them they should think about particular service in pastoral ministry?

Jim Cantelon:

What lights your fire?

Brian Stiller:

You go back to that again. What lights your?

Jim Cantelon:

fire. What gives you that fire in your belly? What ignites energy and daring and risk-taking and courage and vision. What does that to you? You got to start with that, otherwise you end up serving someone else's vision and you know, not everyone is called to be a visionary. I know that. I mean, I started out, you know, working as a youth pastor with a pastor in Montreal who you know, who knew very well. I worked with you and you for Christ. You know, you were my senior leader, so it wasn't a case of, you know, doing everything on my own. I had to learn, I had to be mentored, I had to be trained.

Brian Stiller:

In my eyes, but was vision a part of that? Like I'm hearing, two things come through vision and risk-taking as important components.

Jim Cantelon:

Well, that church that I pastored in Montreal as a youth pastor paid me 25 bucks a week. Even then, kathy and I just newly married. We couldn't live in 25 bucks a week, but I accepted that as God's call, and so the risk I took was to take my young wife to a humble little apartment in Montreal that we paid $110 a month for and believe that God would not only make a way for us in ministry but also supply our needs according to His riches and glory. So was vision a part of that. I had a vision for the harvest field. I had a vision for the lost and this church with its youth ministry. You remember what happened there? A little group of 15 people's meeting in the basement. I took him out into the local park where there everybody was smoking up and doing LSD and all these hippies during the hippie generation. They were all there and I said we're gonna sit in the middle of that park with a guitar, we're gonna sing songs about Jesus and I'm gonna preach. Well, they were totally shocked by this, but they did it. But I took that huge risk and we got mocked. And these poor kids, they'd never faced anything like it in their life. But what happened was. That youth group grew from 15 to 150 in a matter of six weeks and many of those kids who came to the Lord in that park are in the ministry to this day.

Jim Cantelon:

If I hadn't taken the risk if I didn't have the vision for that, of course, it wouldn't have happened. I wasn't concerned about 25 bucks a week. I was concerned about being in the sweet spot of God's calling on my life and I just assumed that everything else would fall into place. You know, my dad, who was a pastor, when he was going to new churches, never once asked how much he'd be paid. I pastor, when he was going to new churches, never once asked how much he'd be paid. I asked him about that one day. I said well, jim, this is the lord's work, not mine, and if he wants me there, he'll look after me.

Brian Stiller:

Jim, in more recent years recent years I suppose we're talking about decades, but decades are still recent years you developed a ministry that started in Africa and now in India, called WOW Working for Orphans and Widows. Working for Orphans and Widows how did that emerge? Did that come from vision or from risk-taking, or was there an opportunity? All of the above?

Jim Cantelon:

I was pastoring a very large church in Vancouver, broadway Church. It was one of the biggest churches in Canada, smack dab in the middle of the poorest postal code in all of Vancouver. Vancouver has great poverty but it looks good. They hide it well and I was surrounded by all these underprivileged homes and just six blocks from where I sat in my office I'd walked to East Vancouver, walked the alleyways and I saw mainly Aboriginal sex workers, just like skeletons, all HIV positive, hyperderbic needles, condoms on the ground and nearly destroyed me. And I found little ministries in East Vancouver that were trying to help these people and I began to bring them into Broadway and meet with them once a month and encourage them and give them a good meal. And how can I pray for them? Anyway, there I am, passing this very wealthy church in the midst of this sorrow.

Jim Cantelon:

At that point in time I cared nothing about HIV and AIDS, but I knew that I had to care about it now. So I began to research it and discovered that HIV and AIDS was the biggest orphan and widow-maker in the history of mankind and the epicenter of it at that time was in KwaZulu-Natal, which is southeast South Africa. Now I had connections in South Africa, because when I was in Jerusalem, the South African Assemblies of God used to bring me down to do major conferences and conventions for them all across South Africa. So I knew hundreds of people there. And so what did I have in my hand? I had this Connections people there. And so what did I have in my hand? I had this Connections. I had a sense of concern, heartbreak really, for people dying of HIV. I've got to do something about it. It's the biggest orphan and widow maker in history. God is a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows. I've got to do something about it. And so I resigned.

Jim Cantelon:

My church formed well, kathy and I lived out of suitcases for eight months. I had no income. I had a 10-year-old car someone gave me. I went to Africa on a very strict budget and some of my ministry colleagues thought that I'd lost it. One of them asked me a very rude question Remember the Wendy's ad Where's the Beef? So, jimmy, where's the beef? So, jimmy, where's the beef? You know, there you are fine over, but where's the beef? What are you doing? And I just say I don't know. I just have a sense of word. Wants me to do something about orphans and widows impact of HIV and AIDS, especially those who are dying.

Jim Cantelon:

Now, 25 years later. As you know, brian, we have dealt with hundreds of thousands of dying orphans and widows. When I go over there now I was just there a few months ago I met with 100, 150 young adults who were all studying various things, who were little orphans when I met them. Today they're thriving, loving Jesus. I go into communities of thousands of people who have been impacted by our work there and now in India as well.

Jim Cantelon:

But it all began with seeing those desiccated Aboriginal women in the alleyways of East Vancouver and I had no sense then that I'd ever one day be here sitting with you talking about it, with a great sense of amazement in my heart that the Lord has done what he's done. So now, at my age, while many of my peers have retired, sometimes 10 years ago, they look at me quizzically and say so, canlon, when are you retiring? And I said why would I retire, retire? I have the biggest horizon I've ever had in my life, with Wow, with television, books, everything's predicated on health and strength, of course, but I'm just gonna live until I die, and I know you're the same kind of guy. So the will of God is just as relevant for me at 77 years of age as it was when I was 17. Only now it's much bigger than I ever imagined.

Brian Stiller:

Jim Catlin. Thank you for being with us today. Pleasure pleasure. Thank you, brian, jim. Thanks for helping us see the contours of God's will as it relates to our own lives in the gifting and opportunities that come our way. We're so grateful that you took time to be with us today. If you have found this valuable, please take a moment to subscribe and give us a like. We would appreciate it if you would share it with your friends and colleagues as well. You'll find links in the show notes of this episode for anything we've discussed today and if you haven't signed up yet to receive my free dispatches from the Global Village, it's an opportunity to join me and meet leaders in many different countries around the world. It's also a wonderful way to stay in touch with upcoming episodes and guests. Just go to brianstillercom. Thank you for listening. Until next time.