Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions.

I’m so glad you’ve decided to join us today. Thank you for the opportunity to encourage you. This is episode 248 of Missions on Point. We are concerned about the centrality of the church in everything that might be called a Christian ministry. In our current series, we’ve made a distinction between the church and the parachurch, and we’ve defined the parachurch as any Christian ministry other than the essentials of the church. So, as we saw last time, even the church engages in parachurch ministry. Today and next time, I want us to consider everything that the church does not do. In the diagram that we are using, the church is involved in the first two columns, what we’ve called essential ministry and support ministry. And we’ve acknowledged that many parachurch ministries fall into that second column of support, whether the church runs that ministry or not. Today, I want us to consider the fourth column of ministry, and that is Christian vocation.

To begin with, I want to remind us of a pervasive emphasis found in scripture, and I’ll read three passages for us, although I could read many more like them.

Here is 1 Thessalonians 4:1, “Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.”

Also, consider 1 Timothy 4:16, the Apostle Paul speaking to his protégé Timothy saying, “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching…”

Finally, James 1:22, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only,”

Scripture regularly encourages us to consider both our life and doctrine. It is not good enough to simply have all the right answers.  If we get the gospel right it will necessarily change our answer to the question, “who is my neighbor?”  We must be hearers and doers of the word, showing our faith by what we do.  We don’t just think about doctrine all day. But equally dangerous is the cry that is often heard these days to just do something. The reality is, we are always doing something.  What matters though is whether our faith is displayed by our works or not. 

For the Christian, all of life is lived as a living sacrifice to God. All of life, in one sense, is ministry. And for us to live lives of integrity, what we say must match what we do. We must “walk the talk.” Many Christians wrongly think that in order to be really spiritual, they have to go into some kind of full-time ministry, maybe even be a missionary. The mission field is full of Christians who are doing all sorts of humanitarian jobs: doctors, well-drillers, construction workers, and IT technicians. And churches often give from their missions funds for these workers. Business as Mission is a popular notion in recent years, and the idea is noble. If you are working a job, maybe you could do that job in a place where the gospel is needed more than in suburban America, with churches on every street corner. But the question I am most interested in is whether or not your church should be sending you to the other side of the world to mostly be just doing your job. Once again, when everything is missions, then missions loses its unique significance.

As we’ve said many times already, clear definitions and distinctions are really important. This extends to how Christians are supposed to think about their vocation in life. Most Christians are not full-time ministers of the gospel: pastors, church staff, or missionaries, whose job is to be part of a ministry. Those Christians are not extra spiritual, while everyone else in a quote-unquote “secular” job is less spiritual. Christians must conceive of their jobs as a working out of their faith.

And that’s what our verses we read earlier point out. There is both truth and life, what we hear and what we do. There is a gospel message, and then there are the implications of the gospel on our lives. There is an ‘evangel’ and an ethic. And I believe this distinction between the truth and our lives corresponds to the distinction between the church and the Christian. What does the church do and what do Christians do? Unfortunately, that distinction is rather muddy for many. We can expect too much from the church, asking it to do what Christians in general are called to do, to run Christian businesses and do evangelistic and humanitarian outreach. Many people look to the church to do these things because they are not doing those things themselves. The church does not need to organize itself to evangelize your neighbors or coworkers, that’s what you are meant to do. The church doesn’t spend its efforts in doing good to society in Jesus’ name, that’s what Christians do. The church can preach the truth and the need for Christians to love their neighbors, but the church doesn’t do the loving of neighbors for the Christian. We need the church to preach the truth, to ensure that God’s word is both rightly divided and rightly applied to our lives. But it’s up to the Christian to be the doer of the word. And this is the challenge for the Christian. If you want to think of your job in spiritual terms, you do not have to turn it into a ministry of the church. The church does not do your job.

And we can see once again the collateral damage of a bad ecclesiology spilling over into our thinking about Christian vocation. The idea of Christian vocation is important, but if we do not rightly understand what we are doing as a church, then we will be confused about what we are supposed to do as a Christian as well.  For the Christian, there is no divide between “the secular” and “the sacred.”  But there is a distinction between what the church does and what the Christian does. The church is the pillar and buttress of the truth. The church preaches the word. It has dedicated personnel whose main job is to rightly divide the word of truth. The Christian then is the light of the life that is transformed by that truth. But many Christians don’t live this way. They think of their jobs and live their lives just like any non-believer would, and then the spiritual stuff is what happens at church. Church work or missions work gains an elevated status in their mind and people start to feel guilty for spending so much time in their vocation and not enough time doing “real ministry.” And they begin to think that if they want to be really spiritual then they’ll quit their job and become a missionary. But this is not a dichotomy that God makes. Every Christian should consider their vocation as a calling by God.

And as a Christian, you ought to move your job, as you are able, to be more in line with God’s purposes in the world. I highly encourage Christians to consider packing up and moving to another country and using your job there to help support the work of the advancement of the gospel. But let’s be clear about a distinction we should make. This is what a Christian does. It is not what a missionary does. The work of the missionary is the same work as your pastor, but cross-culturally, building up the church through the proclamation of the gospel.

This is the first important distinction we need to make, that there is a difference between what the church does and what the Christian does. It would go a long way if churches made this distinction with their missionaries. There are many Christians out there that call themselves missionaries, but in reality, they are simply doing what a Christian does, but cross-culturally. There is a world of opportunities for Christians to use their God-given abilities for his glory and kingdom. Christians should pursue jobs with the support of global missions in mind. But the Christian in his vocation is always mindful that his work is not his church’s work or the missionary’s work. And being a Christian uniquely changes how and even what he does for work.  Being a Christian means that our work should always be a testimony to who Jesus is and how the gospel changes our lives.

And this is the second helpful distinction that needs to be made. Not only do we make a distinction between what the church does and what a Christian does, but we also need to make a distinction between the gospel and the implications of the gospel. It’s a common catchphrase that gets thrown around all too flippantly. I’ve heard it said many times that such and such is a “gospel issue”. And what is meant by that is that this issue or activity is really important and even biblically mandated. But unfortunately, this phrase gets thrown around too much. Not everything is a gospel issue. If it is directly related to the message of the gospel, then it is a gospel issue. Like, the Trinity is a gospel issue, because you can’t have the gospel without the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Substitutionary Atonement is a gospel issue. But the way in which we love our neighbor is not a gospel issue. Like we said before, we have to make a distinction between the evangel and the ethic. Gospel truth produces gospel duty, but they are not the same. The implications of the gospel are not themselves the gospel.

With that in mind, the gospel is of first importance, but it is also not of sole importance. Those implications are vitally important too. The doing of justice in our society is not itself the gospel, but for those who know the justification of the cross, we are eager to take up our cross for the sake of others, to love the fatherless and the widow, to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. This is what a Christian does with their vocation.

Christians are new creatures in Jesus Christ.  He changes how we think and how we act.  Everything we do is different now.  Jesus is Lord over all of life.  And that means that the gospel will have implications for how we farm, engineer, educate, or whatever we are doing to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue and have dominion over it.  As disciples of Jesus this ought to be one of our primary discussions.  In our discipleship of one another, I expect that we often talk about how we might do our jobs as Christians.  The church gathers together so that it may submit to the Lord in his word. And the church makes disciples of one another so that they may go out from the church and live all of life to his glory. And don’t underestimate the value of Christians living Christianly in this world. The vast majority of Christians should be employed this way. And when they do this well, they highlight, by way of contrast, the unique value of the church and the pastor or missionary that is sent to do church work. The church and the missionary are committed to preaching the truth of God’s word. Christians then live out that faith in their jobs.

I pray that you are encouraged as you think carefully about the vocation of a Christian in contrast to the ministry of the church, and that God’s glory will increase in both realms.

Thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point. We trust that you'll find more help and resources on our websites at Propempo.com and missioserve.org. We are so thankful for those who support us, enabling us to produce this podcast. Now to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.