T(r)oy's Marbles

Today's thoughts contain part six of issues related to "being and doing".

To start a series of in-depth thoughts concerning some personal values/convictions, go here.

To start at the beginning of a chain of thoughts on "being and doing", go here.

From there, you'll find links at the end of each post leading you to the next in line.

I hope this is helpful.

--Troy

More thoughts on identity and vocation

God gives everyone a vocation. For starters, there is that work God gives every human by virtue of the stamp of creation. It is the work to care for the world, to tend the land, to name the animals. In a general sense, this is the common human vocation. In a similar way, God calls all humans to worship him. Worship, then, is our eternal vocation and it could be stated that even stewardship is an act of worship.

And then there is a common Christian vocation: to make disciples of Jesus. This is the work Jesus commissions all Christians to perform, regardless of age, sex or occupation.

Yes, we all are commissioned to this “base-line” vocation. But God also invests each person with a unique identity, and this too is a gift. Because of that, the way in which we carry out the common vocations of worship, stewardship and disciple-making varies from one person to the next. Because of God’s freedom, we are free to embody our vocation in unique ways. So, God will also give to each of us, in this sense, a unique vocation.

This is how we can explain the fact that Augustine’s vocation involved theology while Bach’s involved music. Michelangelo’s life-work involved concrete visual art while Immanuel Kant’s involved philosophy, a world of abstraction. See? Each person has a unique vocation, which is to say we express a common vocation within the framework of distinct identities.

At any rate, let it be remembered: vocation (whether general or particular) is a gift of God. And everyone has one.

If you don’t know what yours is, you would do well to begin exploring that soon, for to live without a sense of vocation is to live without a purpose—and aimless living diminishes one’s soul.

In light of that: I concluded yesterday by distinguishing the ideas of “career” and “vocation.” It is unfortunate this distinction must be made between these two concepts. I say this for a couple of reasons:

1. God gives to some, but not all, the gift of convergence when it comes to this. That is, in some instances one’s particular vocation intersects with one’s career.

You can see I’m defining “career” here in a very specific way. We could substitute the word “job” or “occupation” to get a better handle on what I mean.

For example, we have people in our church who would love nothing more than to paint or sculpt or draw for a living. This may be their vocation. But, pure economic necessity dictates they work at something other than what energizes their passions the most. “Career” and “vocation” do not always intersect. When it does, it is tremendously life-giving, a gift of God. But, unfortunately, it does not happen this way for all.

2. It is also unfortunate that career and vocation become separated for another reason. These are the instances when one does have the privilege of working at one’s calling as a life-long occupation, but the “career” aspect of work, in time, overshadows a sense of “vocation”.

Unfortunately, this happens too often among those in “professional ministry.” Were you to ask some ministers who have lost a sense of vocation to relate their story as to how they felt called into ministry, you would hear, no doubt, an authentic narrative of life-changing moments in the prime of life; but, were you to take a look at the state of their sense of vocation 20 years later, you would find, perhaps, an obsession with “promotion” or “success” or perhaps a preoccupation with “how one is doing in one’s career.” Many times, ministers merely stay in the ministry because they feel they have no alternatives and they need to keep their job to provide for themselves, even though the joy of true vocation is gone or waning.

Yes, even ministers forget vocation and calling when faced with the everyday pressures of career and performance. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all. It would be better, in some instances, for them to leave the “professional ministry” for a season in order to reclaim a sense of true vocation, that particular work God called them to do regardless of their job.

I speak this way from personal experience. In fact, tomorrow I’ll share a story of a time when God revived my sense of vocation (that is, my unique calling to minister) while working in the paint department of a hardware store for three years.

See? Career and vocation are two different things. And, from time to time, God gives someone the gift of having those two converge. I do not understand why it does not always happen that way with everyone, and, to be honest, I do find that troubling—but what can one do but trust God in his wisdom and love?

For my part, I feel incredibly blessed that God would give me, in his grace, the chance to work for a living at what I feel is truly my “life-work”, my bigger vocation.

And, it is this specific notion that, to be honest, prompts the conviction: “What you do proceeds from who you are; being precedes doing.” In short, this statement is a reminder to me of vocation. It reminds me, as I think about the future, to ask myself what unique thing God would have me do, what the “fingerprint” of my life-work will look like—what shape my life will take, what patterns will emerge. When I come to the end of my life, what will others say of me that is uniquely “me”? These questions, then, form the basis upon which decisions are made in the present.

And identity, a sense of uniqueness, provides the framework, the grid through which choices are made in the midst of myriad present possibilities. Specifically, I try to come back to the question “Who am I” because, believe it or not, in ministry there are many temptations to begin doing things that lay outside the domain of one’s unique identity. It becomes easy to compare yourself with someone else and think, “Wow. If only I could be like that person” or “If only I could accomplish what that person accomplished.”

But that is foolishness. You can only be who you are. And that is all you should be. When ministers try to do what others do, to accomplish what others accomplish, it is like trying to become someone else. And, in trying to be like someone else, true vocation (genuine calling) is lost.

This is where the issue of “promotion” comes into play. Many people in professional ministry think that a broadened scope of ministry is in itself an inherent good. What they fail to realize is: sometimes a “higher position” or “more followers” serve as distractions to true vocation. Sometimes true vocation can only be realized with deeper levels of obscurity, not with greater fame.

We do God a great injustice, therefore, when we praise leaders or churches for how large they are, how widely read they are, how many CD’s they’ve sold or etc. What we need to remember is that that may be one person’s calling but not another’s. So, the remedy to this compulsion to praise the famous is to learn to applaud the “nameless” minister that pastors a church in a “nameless” rural village among dozens of people (rather than thousands) for the better part of a lifetime. It may be, in fact, that the “nobodies” of the ministry have a better sense of vocation, of passionate calling, than the “somebodies”. After all, what else would keep them going all those years? Yes, it is to these people too that God says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”

So, ask yourself (whether you are in the ministry or not): who is God calling you to be? How has he uniquely "wired" you? And, in light of that, what is he calling you to do? This is identity. This is vocation.

Tomorrow I’ll share my story as to how I formed this conviction in the first place.

Until then,
Troy

journal | Comments (1) | July 05, 2007

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Posted by: Shawn Redwood at July 16, 2007 06:43 PM

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