Yesterday I encouraged us to start believing that we are all ministers, no matter our occupational setting. If we would start thinking of ourselves as the “chaplain” or “workplace pastor” of our office or school or neighborhood, we might begin to change how we operate in our occupation.
God wants you to be a minister. I don’t mean that He wants you on a church staff payroll – but rather He wants you to consider yourself as the office minister in your workplace on their payroll! God doesn’t want you focused on YOUR job. What He wants is for you to be focused on HIS job.
I think as Christians we could reword a quote about our professions (from early American entrepreneur Charles Kettering) as if was from God speaking to us about our Christian Vocation to serve Him. Maybe it would look something like this –
“I don’t want any fellow working for me who has tried to put his Christianity into his occupation. What I want is a fellow whom the Christian Vocation has taken hold of. I want the Christian Vocation to get the fellow and not the fellow to try to work Christianity into His occupation. And I want the Christian Vocation to get hold of this person so hard that no matter where he is the Christian Vocation has got him for keeps. I want the Christian Vocation to have him in its clutches when he goes to bed at night, and in the morning I want that same Christian Vocation to be sitting on the foot of his bed telling him it’s time to get up and come work WITH ME. And when the Christian Vocation gets a fellow that way he’ll amount to something.”
If we could reorient our thinking so that our occupation is not what we are getting up to do each day and trying to put some of our Christian life into, if we could instead think about life as “today I am getting up to go minister and I will pray, counsel, teach, preach, study, & communicate the gospel to those who around me at work or school” then we would have a better grasp on the Christian life…this Christian vocation. So today I am getting up to go minister in the factory where God has placed me, in the office God has placed me, in the neighborhood God has placed me. I am first and foremost a minister, and wherever God places me in whatever occupation or situation, I never lose sight of the fact that God has CALLED me to be a minister first.
Even if you never asked Him about your occupational ‘calling,’ your vocational calling has never changed from the moment you call Him Savior & Lord – your calling is “minister,” “missionary,” “messenger of His gospel!” The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of each of us considering ourselves the God-appointed chaplain for our workplace, school, family, and neighborhood.
God is calling us to live out the Christian vocation and to change our minds to look at ministry as not just the church pastor’s role, but our role. Pastors just do their chaplaincy in the church building while you are the chaplain at the bank or the office or with your clients or on the golf course.
The world’s model says to chase your dreams, go after your goals, reach for the stars. But here’s the truth from God’s word – If your goals are not God’s goals, then you are never really going to be a success in His eyes – and isn’t how we are viewed by God really the only thing that matters?
Start viewing yourself as your office’s pastor and chaplain. Because they might never step into the office of a church pastor. You become the pastor that they need! What roles do you expect your pastor to do for you? Do the same for them! Start today.