Vocation
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Vocation
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The single most important thing distracting faithful people from being the church is our culture’s views on jobs and vocation. We get so busy with our jobs that we have little time left over for being the people of God. And much of the problem grows out of the Reformation.
The standard Roman Catholic position in the Middle Ages was that God calls people only to jobs in the church. . . . The Reformers reacted to the Catholic position by saying that since God created the whole universe, all legitimate work is God’s work. Being a farmer or soldier is just as good as being clergy, just as much a calling of God. The only question is whether you’re trying to do God’s will, whether you’re caring for God’s creation. Within this perspective, the work you do can be a primary avenue for serving God and transforming the world.
By contrast, Anabaptists taught that our only calling is to be disciples of Christ in a local church. We’re not called to be shoemakers, farmers, doctors, or even professional clergy; we’re called to be fully functioning members of the body of Christ. Of course, Christians have to earn a living, but we are not called to particular trades, careers, or jobs. So Christians should choose those jobs that will best let them serve the body of Christ (where the body of Christ is understood as local churches). Our actual employment is of limited importance.
Which view of vocation are we to take? The Anabaptist argument is that in the New Testament, “calling” or “vocation” doesn’t refer to employment but to what we are to be spiritually. We are called, for example, to “eternal life” (1 Tim. 6:12), “into the fellowship of his Son” (1 Cor. 1:9), “out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9), not “to impurity but in holiness” (1 Thess. 4:7). God “called us with a holy calling” (2 Tim. 1:9), and “Those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified” (Rom. 8:30).
Nowhere in the Bible is anyone called to a trade or job outside the church: Paul was called to be an apostle (Rom. 1:1; 1 Cor. 1:1), and he and Barnabas were called to be missionaries (Acts 13:2–3). Meanwhile, the Bible records that Paul was a tentmaker (Acts 18:3), but nowhere does it say or imply that Paul was called to be a tentmaker. . . .
Of course, though the Bible doesn’t use the word we translate “call” in relation to standard jobs, it might use some other word for the same meaning. It might use a word like sent, ordained, placed, set apart, anointed, or chosen. Such words would convey God’s special choice of a job for a person. However, a study of such words gives the same conclusion. In the Bible people aren’t set apart for jobs except in the church. . . . No one is ever said to have anything remotely resembling a vocation to be a farm laborer, craftsman, tax collector, doctor, or shepherd. Occasionally people are told to give up such work (Matt. 4:18–22; 9:9; Luke 5:27–28) but never to take it up. . . .
If the primary way people are meant to do God’s work today is through local churches, then taking secular jobs seriously will distract us from our main task. Everything except church is secondary, or maybe even tertiary – career, family, politics, financial aid to the poor, learning, creating great music, inventing a cure for AIDS, personal holiness, whatever. Then church is 95 percent of what God plans for us to do; everything else combined is only 5 percent, so to speak. So in the view I’m spelling out, people are doing God’s work in direct proportion to their faithfulness in using their gifts in a local church. And insofar as they are not doing that, they are not doing God’s work. So those who are not part of a local church can scarcely be doing anything substantial for God.
In this view the primary way to influence society is to call people into some church and nurture them and ourselves into increasing maturity. So the primary way to fight oppression is to call the oppressed and the oppressor to repent and become part of the church. Demonstrations against oppression have a place, but primarily as a way of calling oppressed and oppressor into the church. The way to transform political structures is not primarily by lobbying, but by inviting people into some church (that is, evangelism). Lobbying has a place, but primarily as a way of calling people into the church. That’s why Paul didn’t attack slavery as an institution. He didn’t consider it acceptable, but he believed that the way to do away with slavery was by getting as many people as possible into church and understanding that their master is in heaven.
The Reformation view, by contrast, is that the church universal and invisible is one of many ways God intends us to do his work. It is the most important way, but business, family, politics, financial aid to poor non-Christians, learning – all are significant in their own right. The church is 55 percent of God’s plan for people, so to speak, but the rest combined is nearly as important. If people are Christian, then they’re automatically part of the church universal, and if they are pursuing their employment with integrity and to the best of their ability, then they are to that extent making a substantial contribution to the kingdom. . . .
For the Reformation, your employment is meant to be a major way of serving God. Whether it intersects with a church or not, it’s something sacred. People who believe that would be unlikely to give up a successful career to become full-time overseers in their local church, and they would think careers in politics or medicine are considerably more significant than driving a taxi.
But from an Anabaptist perspective, employment is of no great significance; it’s not a calling of God, but a way to put food on the table, like Paul’s tent making. A physicist might well be called to give up her career if her gifts were seen to be at overseeing the local church. She might end up driving a taxi at night if that facilitated her oversight. If this seems bizarre, it may merely show our skewed priorities. This makes more sense if you believe that all important problems are at bottom spiritual, and that church is the center of spirituality. Then your role in church is more important than any job outside church, no matter how “important” the outside job may seem. . . .
But how could anyone think that being church is such a big deal? How much time does it take to be an usher? Church is only a few hours a week. What are you supposed to do when no meeting is in process?
Such questions suggest that we don’t know what church is. Church is more than a building or the meetings in the building, and working in church is more than ushering or teaching Sunday school or attending weekly meetings of the session. Church is lying awake at night trying to figure out how to help your brothers and sisters in your church grow into “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’’ (Eph. 4:13). It means eating and drinking and breathing ways to encourage others in your church in their walks as Christians. . . .
So what is our work? First, our most important work is living in reconciliation with our sisters and brothers in a church, and lying awake at night trying to figure out how to help others do the same. Second, we should take whatever paid or unpaid employment will do most to help our brothers and sisters live in unity.
From this it follows that many of us will be freed to work less than full time. Ideally, we’re so devoted to our brothers and sisters and those who may become our brothers and sisters that our material concerns will be rather minimal, and we will therefore be free to spend little time earning money. That, I suggest, is the primary reason why Jesus and the New Testament are so concerned about money. They want us to be free from serving money so it won’t take our time and energy away from serving the people of God.
To look at it differently, we’ll choose work that pays as much as possible so that we can spend minimum time and energy at work and maximum time and energy with our brothers and sisters. If I can get $100 an hour as a lawyer or $5 an hour as a delivery boy, I will (other things being equal) choose the job as a lawyer. Then I can work fewer hours or give more money to God’s people. Or perhaps I’ll work full time, and my large income will allow me to share money with my brothers and sisters so they won’t have to work as much.
But many professional careers present real problems. Some careers tend to demand heart and soul and therefore get in the way of a person’s role in the church. So Christians with professional careers need to hold them loosely. And that in itself rules out some careers. After all, those serious about the church won’t be available at work for repeated fifty-hour weeks; we won’t be available to move at the behest of our career; we won’t be available for travel that has us away from our church so much that being reconciled scarcely means anything. The point is simply that our minds and hearts won’t be on our career (they’ll be on our church), and so our attention will wander from work. And some careers and professional jobs just won’t tolerate that.
Whereas being a delivery boy doesn’t require as much concentration. . . .
But the main point is that our vocation is to live as a reconciled people. ◆