“Your Job Is Your Mission Field”
by brian rushing
No matter who you are, where you live, or the type of work you do, God has a mission for you.
The “Blues Brothers” were on a mission from God, and so are you!
And you don’t have to be ordained, licensed, or commissioned during a church service in order to complete your mission. In fact, where you work – in the secular job you have – you have a mission to complete.
John Piper reminds us:
“Please don’t hear in the phrase “secular vocation” any unspiritual or inferior comparison to “church vocation” or “mission vocation” or “spiritual vocation.” I simply mean the vocations that are not structurally connected to the church. There is such a thing as being in the world but not of the world…. Jesus’ intention is that his disciples remain in the world (which is what I mean by “secular jobs”), but that they not be “of the world” (which is why I say we are in a war).”
Martin Luther said it this way:
It is pure invention that pope, bishops, priests and monks are the only ones to be called the “spiritual estate”; while princes, lords, artisans and farmers the “temporal estate.” That is indeed a fine bit of lying and hypocrisy…. All Christians are truly of the “spiritual estate,” and there is among them no difference at all but that of office…. To make it still clearer. If a little group of pious Christian laymen were taken captive and set down in a wilderness, and had among them no priest consecrated by a bishop, and if there in the wilderness they were to agree in choosing one of themselves, married or unmarried, and were to charge him with the office of baptizing, saying mass, absolving and preaching, such a man would be as truly a priest as though all bishops and popes had consecrated him…. There is really no difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, “spirituals” and “temporals,” as they call them, except that of office and work…. A cobbler, a smith, a farmer, each has the work and office of his trade, and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops, and everyone by means of his own work or office must benefit and serve every other, that in this way many kinds of work may be done for the bodily and spiritual welfare of the community, even as all the members of the body serve one another.”
“The Bible makes it plain that God’s will is for his people to be scattered like salt and light among the whole range of secular vocations. Clusters of Christians living only with Christians and working only with Christians would not accomplish God’s whole purpose in the world. That does not mean Christian orders or ministries or mission outposts are wrong. It means they are exceptional. The vast majority of Christians are meant to live in the world and work among unbelievers. This is their “office,” their “calling,” as Luther would say.”
My prayer is that as you go out into your workplace today, you won’t think of your work as secular, but as strategic. That you would consider where God has placed you and how He wants to use you to make a difference in the lives of those you will encounter today as their workplace pastor.
(Quotes in today’s post are from Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper)
