Teddy James
AFA Journal staff writer
March 2015 – “Teddy, there is a special class I would like you to take during the summer,” my teacher, Mrs. Conway, told me toward the end of my first grade year. My initial reaction was that summer was for play, not work. But my parents said I was going, so I went.
I spent five days in July going to school. While there, I had the opportunity to read books and meet their authors.
From then on, when asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I never said astronaut, police officer, or firefighter. I always answered, “Writer.” It wasn’t until much later that I learned my desire was authored by God and was His calling for my life.
William Messenger, executive editor of Theology of Work Project, said understanding our deepest desires is one primary way God reveals callings for Christians.
Messenger sat down with AFA Journal to discuss calling, work, and how believers can glorify Christ in their vocations.
AFAJ: What is a calling?
WM: There are two ways to answer that. The first is to define what is meant when we use the word calling. Typically, we are asking what job does God want me to do? And that’s a great question worth a great deal of prayer and discussion. But Paul, who uses the word most often in Scripture, uses it to mean those who have been called to Jesus Christ. And that is the bedrock call to everyone – the call to belong to Jesus. Yet God also calls – or commands – us to work. In Thessalonians, Paul says whoever will not work, let him not eat. Right after creation, God called Adam to work and that work was a blessing.
AFAJ: How do we find the vocation God has called us to?
WM: There are three ways in the Bible. The first is to discover your gifts and skills. The second is to discover the needs of the world you can meet. In other words, what can you do to make the world more like how God wants it to be? There is a terrific picture of how God wants the world to be in the Beatitudes. For you to meet those needs could mean curing malaria or taking a child to the doctor.
The final way is to discover your deepest and truest desires. Historically, the church has been suspect of following our desires because our surface desires can be ungodly. Through discipleship, we can dig below those surface, suspect desires, understand our hearts, and understand what we truly desire to do. And it is through those deep desires, God often speaks.
The Bible is ripe with examples such as Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
AFAJ: How can Christians live out their faith in the workplace?
WM: Fulfill the call of every Christian and glorify Jesus wherever we are. A friend of mine hated her job. But before preparing to leave, she prayed God would keep her there until she found a way to bless everyone she worked with.
Another way is conflict management. Every job has its share of conflict. In Matthew 18, Jesus tells us how to handle it. A CEO once told me how he applied this passage to his business. When employees had a disagreement, they were to talk to one another, making sure they both listened to the other. They worked to find and fix the source of friction together. He said 90% of the conflicts in his business were resolved just by doing this. For the other percentage, employees were to go to a supervisor they trusted. Can you imagine if people knew Christians as people who help solve workplace conflict in a way that is beneficial for everyone?
Lastly, we can ask ourselves a very simple question: How can I bless other people?
We think what God really wants is for us to use our skills effectively and efficiently. But I don’t think that is what God cares most about. I think what God cares most about is how we bless and serve those around us.
AFAJ: What if someone absolutely hates his job and feels he cannot fulfill his call in his current position?
WM: At the end of the day, following Christ is not primarily served by getting the right job. You make more of an impact for Christ by what you do every day than by eventually getting the right position. Find the small ways to be a blessing in your work. It may seem like small, inconsequential things, but the little bit you do every day to make the world more like how God wants it to be adds up over a lifetime to more than you can do by eventually getting the perfect job.
AFAJ: What is the church’s role in helping Christians find their calling?
WM: Throughout much of history, the Christian perspective on work has been skewed. The church itself has perpetuated an artificial divide between sacred and secular work, often implying that sacred work, pastoring or mission work, is blessed, and secular work is secondary. So first, we have to remove that divide. To know if we perpetuate that idea, we can observe how we treat different types of work. We often pray over someone leaving engineering for vocational ministry. But do we pray over someone leaving vocational ministry for engineering? Examining and correcting our theology of work is the first step.
Second is to equip the church for work outside the church. Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York does a great job at this by having small groups that are occupationally focused.
The hardest step is for churches to bless and encourage people when they do work the church can’t see. When a member of the congregation works as a financial analyst and does their work as a service to Christ, the church may never know about that. The analyst may be blessing people with good financial planning, mentoring people, or doing other things that make the world more like God wants it to be, yet no one at church will ever know it. So we need to equip and encourage. 
The mission of Theology of Work Project is to help believers better understand what the Christian faith can contribute to ordinary work by studying the intersection of Christianity and non church-related work.
The website is filled with Bible commentaries covering every book of Scripture and asking what particular scriptural passages contribute to understanding and practicing work. These commentaries are being published in print as the Theology of Work Bible Commentary. A series of TOW-based Bible studies is also in publication (Hendrickson Publishers).
The printed version began with Volume 4: Matthew-Acts in October 2014. It is available online and at national Christian booksellers. Volume 5: Romans-Revelation will be available later this year. The final three volumes will all be published in 2016.
The TOW team has also developed a series of Bible reading plans through the YouVersion Bible app, a free app for Android and Apple devices.
For more information about reading plans, commentaries, and Theology of Work articles, visit theologyofwork.org.
