Ministry people [usually accidentally] make it seem like theirs is the only vocation with a calling, not so.
One of the things I love about where we go to church is that it’s full of men and women who might get featured on Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs.
- Builders
- Military, ex-military
- Metal shop peeps
- HVAC experts
- Dry wallers
- Plumbers
- Landscapers
- Car mechanics
- People who work on ships and boats
- On and on…
These folks get their hands dirty, work alongside ordinary folks, and many of them are absolutely called to ministry right where they are.
They are doing what God made them to do. Our community needs folks like them, skilled laborers, hard working people with integrity, who serve their clientele with pride.
I Corinthians 10:31-33 says,
So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.
Yup, you can sling grease or fix pick-ups or lay tile or roof houses to the glory of God. When you hang out with these folks and ask them about what they do… it’s so much more than a job: It’s a vocational calling!
It’s kind of a pet peeve of mine when people pick up the idea that if they are serious about ministry they’ll work in a church. (I should say that our church does a pretty good job of avoiding this trap.) It happens accidentally… of course, the preacher doesn’t really believe that his is a vocational calling to ministry and the plumber isn’t a vocational calling to ministry. But when the preacher talks a lot about his own life and not the life of the plumber… the congregation seems to pick up a narrative that the pastor is called to ministry and the plumber is not.
Yes, working in a church is one way to minister to people… absolutely. But let’s acknowledge that 9 out of 10 people aren’t going to walk into a church in order to connect to Jesus… so instead of hyper-inflating the calling of the role of the pastor, who might have access to 10% of the population, we should instead intentionally hyper-inflate, lift up, equip, and send out the ordinary folks in our congregations doing ordinary (yet, important) jobs in our community who have access to the other 90% of the population day in and day out.
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