What If You're Called to the Marketplace?
by Jonathan Hansen
Perhaps God is calling you to the marketplace (the “secular” workplace), but you’re struggling because it doesn’t seem as spiritual or important as going overseas as a church planter or Bible translator.
Being called to the marketplace is no less of a call. God calls some people to plant churches and translate the Bible among unreached people groups, and he calls others to be computer programmers, lawyers and carpenters. The purpose is the same: to serve, honor, and be in relationship with him, and to call others to Christ.
Making the decision to work in the marketplace or elsewhere should flow out of the particular skills and abilities that you have. You glorify God when you use the gifts that God has given you. After all, what good is a gift that is not used?
A good place to begin discovering your gifts and abilities is to ask your friends, family, pastor, staff worker and professors. Ask God to show you where he wants you to be at this particular time. Very often, opportunity is right at our door and we miss it because we are looking past the door.
Making
“good tables”
If
you are called to the marketplace it is important to see the value and
significance in the actual work that you do. Dorothy Sayers says, “The
Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined
to exhorting him to not be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours,
and to come to church on Sundays. What the church should be telling him
is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is
that he should make good tables.” (A Matter of Eternity: Selections
from the writings of Dorothy L. Sayers, Eerdmans, c. 1973, p. 103.)
For every kind of work there is an opportunity to make “good tables.” In other words, by pursuing excellence in the work that you do, you bring honor to God. “The secular vocation is sacred,” in Sayers’ words. We can probably rest assured that Jesus’ work as a carpenter was not just a side job until he got on to his “real” ministry. It is in our ordinary daily life that Christ calls us to be his witnesses.
Perhaps the most challenging part of Acts 1:8 is one little word at the end of the verse: “...and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, AND to the ends of the earth.” (NRSV) Jesus did not say “OR to the ends of the earth.” We are not given a choice as to whether we will be witnesses to the world or not. It is not an either/or situation.
Through prayer, encouragement, and financial support we can be Christ’s witnesses to the world while serving him in the marketplace of “Jerusalem” and “Samaria.”
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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