Upon returning home, making money became McCloskey's career plan.
After earning a master's degree in international business and
returning to
Japan as a well-paid consultant, he eventually settled
in
New York City to try a
Wall Street job, followed by a stint as a
management consultant at Hay Group in
Philadelphia. He quickly
realized it was a poor fit. Concerned about the meaning of his
career and his reluctance to commit to marriage, McCloskey sought
direction through religion.
He returned to Philadelphia, where he told only one person about
the pull of faith - the Reverend Richard Streeter, who was minister
of Paoli Presbyterian Church. Streeter's preaching "compelled one
to serve others, and the only person I had been serving was
myself," McCloskey recalls. His epiphany arrived when he decided
the corporate life felt exploitative.
"If I was going to be exploited by anybody, I wanted to be
exploited by God, not by a corporation," he says. McCloskey began
exploring entry into the ministry. Some moments, he says, "I
thought I was crazy. Me, in the ministry? If my friends and family
ever discovered that, they'd think I was a fool, and a hypocrite."
When he gave notice at his consulting firm, his boss said, "Gee,
Jim, I didn't even know you went to church."
At age 37, McCloskey entered the Master of Divinity program at
Princeton Theological Seminary. Required to undertake his field
education in a church, a nursing home, or a prison, he recalled an
interesting luncheon talk years earlier by a prison chaplain. For
no better reason than that, McCloskey asked for an available
student chaplaincy. His assignment: Trenton State Prison. There, in
1980, he met Jorge De Los Santos, a convicted murderer proclaiming
his innocence.