Today's blog is written by Ben Welby, who was involved in the early days of Fusion when he was a student. Now he has a job he is still passionate about graduating well.
Last month Luke Smith tweeted about his recent blog post by asking the question ‘does God call people into ‘normal’ jobs?’ The answer’s obvious, right? Or perhaps our experience tells us something else.
In our churches we inevitably equate size with success and so take for granted the idea that staff teams are necessary to facilitate active community and serve dynamic ministry. In our teaching we dissect the lives of Biblical heroes that challenge and encourage us to seek God’s calling in our lives but we sometimes forget that those men and women were often doing very ordinary jobs.
Despite the decline of church attendance during the last century there has been a marked increase in the number of people employed by individual churches. We’ve professionalised almost every aspect of what we do because it is important for the Church to do things well and for us to be serving our communities on multiple fronts.
But we need to be careful that doesn’t give people an excuse for laziness and mean everything gets done by the professionals. We also need to be wary about how much we spend on servicing our own structures. And we definitely need to think long and hard about what we say about an individual’s worth when we don’t pay a living wage. And most of all we need to avoid making ‘normal’ jobs appear to be second-class.
Jesus lived as a Rabbi but his disciples had trades. The people he ate with had professions. Paul made tents to fund his ministry. Ordinary people doing ordinary jobs whilst still serving God and transforming lives.
Belonging to a church community is about more than filling a seat. Equally, none of us go to work just to sit at a desk. But sometimes the two seem disconnected. Whilst an excellent Church will do brilliant things the world outside our buildings needs Christians employed in every sphere of life more. It’s about being church with a small c.
I’ve got reservations about people spending their entire working lives in a Christian bubble. We need to have experienced the world. We need to be able to bring external insights into what we do. We need to be well-rounded and credible.
The trouble is that we’re a pretty impatient generation. We’re desperate to see our communities transformed by God’s love. School, university and the world around us shouts at us to dream big and hunt them down. We’re fearless and we’re confident. We believe we can achieve anything so why not big things for God too?
And if that’s your ambition it doesn’t matter whether God is directly your employer: just get on with it.
