Vocational Training

Everyone knows that smart, successful people get an education, a college degree, and move on to the "honorable" professions and the ... less smart and successful people don't. If you can't afford a degree or can't tolerate college, you're stuck with the curse of vocational training of some sort. Too bad for you. If you want to get by in this world -- if you want to succeed -- you need a college education. Then you can have a career and not merely a vocation.

This, of course, is nonsense. It is a failure to comprehend "get by in this world" or "succeed". Worse, it misses a very important concept.

The dictionary says "vocation" refers to "a particular occupation, business, or profession." And then it adds "calling." What? Dig into the root of the word and you'll find that this indeed is the concept. It comes letter by letter from Latin's "vocation" meaning "a calling or summons". Now, that puts a different twist on it, doesn't it? I mean, how many of us view our occupation, business, or profession as a calling?

Perhaps you've heard of the Puritans. Yeah, those folk that came over and founded our country. And maybe you've heard of the Puritan work ethic. Maybe. We've pretty much covered that one up these days. In our culture we've fully embraced offensive four-letter words and rejected helpful ones like "work". That's a necessary evil ... at best. But the Puritan work ethic viewed work precisely from the notion of a calling rather than a job.

You see, they rejected the "separation of Church and State" or, to be more accurate, the separation of the sacred and the secular. In today's world you can be religious on Sundays but please don't take your religion into the public square with you. In their view, all things were sacred. Even their jobs. So they emphasized hard work, integrity, responsibility, and reliability as a sacred duty to God, not as a means to pay the bills. They believed that the work we were given was work that was given. They had this silly notion that "we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Eph 2:10). They believed that their work was their calling, and their calling was their ministry. So the shoemaker made shoes as a ministry of God to the people around him and the blacksmith made shoes for horses as a ministry of God to the people around him and ... well, you get the idea. Work was not a nasty word, a necessary evil, a simple means to pay for the good stuff. It was the good stuff -- God's divine calling.

Imagine if you had that view in life. Imagine if your perception of the work you do -- whatever the work that you do is -- was not merely a job or a vocation or even "a career". It was a calling of God, your ministry. It was the arena you have in which to do the good works that cause people to glorify your Father in heaven. It was the consistent place you had to serve God and minister to people. And you don't have to be a pastor! Would that change how you view your work? Would it change how you view your responsibilities at work? Would it change how you do your work? What kind of an attitude shift would this perspective bring about in your everyday vocation? Since everything we do is supposed to be done to the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31), it might be worth considering.