What is Your Calling?

Jesus calls his disciples in Matthew 4

And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. ~ Matthew 4:19-20 (ESV)

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

I remember two particularly impactful assignments from my seminary days. For the first, we had to write a personal mission statement using seven words or less in a verb-subject-outcome format.

• Verb — What will I do?

• Subject — Who will I do this with or for?

• Outcome — What is the intended result?

The objective was to seek God’s direction and purpose for your life and try to capture it in a simple, easy-to-remember statement. I came up with this:

• Verb — Engineering

• Subject — the church

• Outcome — to create kingdom glimpses

Engineering the church to create kingdom glimpses. My “personal mission” is to order, structure, and organize a local church to be the kind of spiritual community that embodies the kingdom of Heaven (at least a preview of it).

Throughout Christian history, we have referred to these personal mission statements as our calling. Calling is closely related to vocation. In society, vocation is generally synonymous with a career. However, in Christian thought, vocation is how one carries out one’s calling. This may or may not be through a paid job or career path. In my case, my calling is to lead a church to become a glimpse of God’s kingdom, and my vocation—how I do that—is serving as a pastor, which is also my career. If God had directed me to a different job, then I would need to pursue a different vocation to fulfill my calling, perhaps volunteering as a worship leader, deacon, or elder in my church.

God has not called everyone to ministry in the church, even though we are all instructed to serve in some capacity (see 1 Peter 4:10-11). I had a friend whose calling was different. I don’t recall exactly how he worded his statement, but it was something like “fixing cars for single moms to empower them to meet life’s challenges.” He was a mechanic who volunteered to repair cars for single moms. I have known farmers who believed God was calling them to produce food, little league coaches who felt called to teach and encourage kids through sports, and cooks who hosted others for dinner because they were called to help people feel loved. God calls people to all sorts of things needed for human flourishing. Sometimes, these are careers, and sometimes, they’re not.

I started this post by referring to two impactful seminary assignments. I will get to the second one in a future post. But I will leave you with this question. What is your calling? Could you write it down in verb-subject-outcome format? Next week, I will share some ideas for how to do that. But this week, I want to ask you to pray about it. Ask the Lord what his calling is for you and what he would have you do.