| 1 Corinthians 7:17 “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.”
If you are a Christian, God has called you to the life that you are living. We call this the doctrine of vocation. And it is one of the four values (Faith formation, Family, Historical, Vocation) that we want to emphasize in the church plant.
When we think about each person’s callings, there are a number of spheres we can discuss, but let’s focus on three: family position, occupation, and citizenship. Everyone is a son or daughter, parent, sibling, or grandparent. We are called by God to love others through our specific callings in our families. The way you love your parents is different than the way you love your spouse, but in each relationship God loves people through us. So also in our occupations. We are all an employee, a boss or a coworker. And every legitimate occupation serves people, even if we don’t ever meet the people we serve. This is like a farmer feeding people he never meets by growing his crops. The final calling that we all share is that we are citizens. We can think about loving people as a citizen in a macro sense, like being a citizen of a country. Thus, we love people by voting for good laws and leaders. But we can also be good citizens in our neighborhoods by being a good neighbor. Maybe the way we love our neighbor is by mowing their lawn or simply by smiling and waving.
Vocation is important because it teaches us that we serve God when we are hospitable to our backyard neighbors, when we care for our children, and when we do a quality job as a nurse or an engineer. This is truly serving God.
Sometimes Christians have the wrong idea, that we serve God only when we are doing something in Church. This can be really hard on people because they feel guilty that they don’t have time to teach Sunday school or serve on a committee. They feel like they are not serving God. Churches can compound the issue when they try to have too many different ministries that need lots of volunteers. Even worse, some Christians have been told that they’re not really serving God unless they are in full time ministry.
As an antidote to this wrong idea, we have the doctrine of vocation. St. Paul describes it this way, “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.” (1 Corinthians 7:17) The Lord has called you to your life. Where you live, what you do for work, and who your family members are, is chosen by God. And God loves them through you.
I’m excited to see how God uses this value in the church plant. One way that we have already started to be formed by this value is in the pop-up vacation Bible schools we are doing this summer in area parks. We are not choosing the biggest parks, or the ones that have the most people. Rather we are choosing neighborhood parks that are near to people from the church. We are calling these people the hosts. I see it as a win if the hosts meet even just one neighbor and get to visit with them. This will help them to be loving citizens in their neighborhood, along with loving their neighbors by serving food, and singing and teaching the children. Through these events we will be living out the doctrine of vocation.
Pastor Brandon Marschner
|
