Career v. Calling. Is there a Connection?

Railroad work. Restaurant dishwasher. Factory Worker. Our parents had jobs that paid the bills. Following their passion was not a thing considered in generations passed - as a way to earn an income. Passion following was reserved for hobbies and pastimes.

Today, the millennial is quite fine living in their parent's basement post 25-years-old because they have not found a job that matches their passion. Oi Vey!

While the millennial comes across to us 45+ year olds as 'lazy' and silly about this passion stuff - mostly because we want them out of our homes and functioning like the adults they are - secretly, we envy their drive to match their career with their calling. As their parents, we jump on job searches secretly hoping to stumble onto such a lucky find. The more brave of us have quit jobs to start businesses we believe match our passion, but our mindset for meeting the bills no matter what does not give us the millennial freedom to lay low and live off the prior generation. So, the IRS reports that 50% of us give up those business efforts before year 5, and go back to jobs that pay the bills but suck the passion for life out of us.

Does it really have to be that way?

Jobs

Serial jobbers with no direction can end up with jobs that are random, disconnected and may not build the kind of network or experience that is required for moving up the ladder of expertise in an area.

In the current economy, even though the national unemployment number has dropped, the number of jobs a person has to hold to meet their minimum income needs has increased. When a person has two to three jobs, finding time to pursue their passion is swept under the rug.

Careers

Careers are more than jobs. A career may end up being a collection of jobs that are similar or build toward a specific expertise. So a person pursuing a law career over time may hold several law-type jobs with several firms, Similarly, a person pursuing a medical career may hold several health-related jobs. I knew a kid who went from high-school to EMS school, to Med school, for example.

A person on the career path may be closer to having a career that matches their calling than the serial jobber, but even then - the career path may still miss the mark of placing us square in our calling.

What is Your Calling?

Do you even know?

For the sake of all of us being on the same page regarding this definition, I have defined calling as: the activity that makes you feel most alive, your purpose, the reason why you exist, the higher call of God on your life.

For most adults, we just operate in this weird space where we feel like something is missing or not addressed but we cannot always put our finger on it. The lack of clarity on what your calling is is the single reason why adults have a restlessness that makes us crazy. Identifying our calling is the only way to remove that restlessness, whether we step into the calling or not. Whether we earn an income from that calling or not.

"Knowing with clarity what we are called to do is the first step toward a peaceful reconciliation between our career and our calling." Trudy Beerman

Some of us know exactly what we are called to do but have not found a way to make our calling our career.

Career versus Calling

"I will make you fishers of men" Mathew 4:19

Career - fisherman.

Calling - the higher call of God on their life to be fishers of men.

Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, were fishermen. That was their lifelong career when they met Jesus. Jesus asked them to step into their calling which was clarified as being fishers of men. Fishing for fish and fishing for men was not just an analogy. The disciples simply had different jobs within a career path. Fishing for men was the call they stepped into that was a complete merger of their life's work and their passion.

While the Bible does not tell us about the disciples compensation plan, money is one of the most discussed topics of the Bible and money was necessary to finance their ministries. Money did indeed flow to the Disciples and their ministries. While that would be a post for another day, let me remind you

• Judas had the job of Treasurer of the ministry while Jesus was here on earth
• Luke 8:3 talks about the women in that ministry who were instrumental in financing that ministry, and
• then there is the time Jesus sent the disciples in training out without any supplies showing them that their needs would still be supplied through serving where they went Luke 10:4-9
• the time when Jesus sent the disciples in training out and told them to take their own supplies Luke 22:35-36

Sometimes Career and Calling seem Disconnected

I would remiss if I did not also point your attention to Jesus the carpenter versus Jesus the Savior; or Paul the Tent Maker, versus Paul the Evangelist. These are two examples of career paths that seem disconnected, yet the careers were not antagonistic to the calling - and could be argued that it supported the ability to respond to the calling.

Before you Christians get all huffy on me re Jesus - please do me the favor and hear me out.

For the next few moments I want you to think of the human Jesus for this. I am not denying the God-ness of Jesus, but while he was here, God became flesh and lived among us as Emmanuel, Jesus (Philippians 2:6-8). While Jesus was flesh and blood as we are, he was not omnipotent and had the same human limitations and needs as we do. He also demonstrated the human potential and ideal for us to model within the limitation of our flesh - even if our faith is as tiny as a mustard seed.

Human Jesus was trained as a builder because his human father, Joseph was a builder. I know many Bible translations say Joseph was a carpenter, but the translation of the Greek work 'tekton' can also be more widely translated to mean builder, or handyman as well.

In another example, we know that Paul was a tent maker and that skill financed his evangelical ministry to the gentile world. He acknowledged that the normal compensation model would imply the gentiles should provide a value exchange for the life-changing work Paul was doing in their midst. but Paul also knew these people did not have the Jewish model burned into their ways of the tithe response that supports the leader and infrastructure of the ministry (1 Corinthians 9:7-12). Rather than allow that to be a stumbling block to his work in the region, he made and sold tents, and received support from other converts.

Career and Calling is Merged for Me

As a Christian making the bulk of my income as Life Insurance Agent, these and other verses and stories of the Bible fuel my career and my calling. For me, my career and calling are very much merged. That may seem like luck to some, but honestly - it is not.

The Apparent Obvious...

It seems obvious that a tent making career and a call to evangelism are disconnected. It seems obvious that a construction career and being a calling to be the Savior are disconnected.

Are they though? Can you dig a bit deeper with me?

In my examples above, could the career and the calling have a deeper connection that is not obvious on the surface?

The Career Calling Connection - the NOT SO OBVIOUS Connection

This is where clarity of your calling is so urgent and I invite you to seek that clarity with desperation. I believe Matthew 7:7-8, that if you seek you will find and the eventually after knocking on doors the one with your clarity will open for you.

Paul had absolute clarity that he was called to evangelize the gentile world. That clarity opened his eyes to the how. The why will always precede the how. It is why blogging serves my ministry even though my ministry is not blogging. The how will always come after the clarity of the why.

So you have a choice on how you see Paul's tent making career:

• You can choose to see his tent making as a disconnected way of financing his calling,
• You can choose to see Paul's tent making as instrumental in the structure of his mission execution,
• You can choose to see Paul's tent making as a Biblical strategy for us modern day ministry called Entrepreneurs to possibly follow,
• You can choose to see Paul's tent-making is an analogy for the fact that our existence here is tent-like, very temporary - as we use our temporary existence to feed into a more permanent call of God.

How you interpret this Biblical strategy of career versus calling as I have shared it wih you today is totally up to you, reader. The interpretation and what you do with it is totally up to you.

Here is what I see that clarity brings to this conversation;

"If you are clear about your calling (the why), your career may be the how and then there is no need for a disconnect that causes any restlessness. " Trudy Beerman

Any question of you responding to your passion, any disconnect between your response to your calling and the way you make your income can be resolved with clarity of what your calling is.

I met a man who was an Executive with a Fortune 500 company. For the sake of privacy, I will call him Martin.

Martin felt restless in his job because he felt it was hampering his ability to step into his calling. A Christian, he felt the urgent call to share the gospel with the unsaved. The restlessness got the better of him and he took a sabbatical and started a church. His church grew under his leadership and one day while on his part-time stop in at the company, an employee tapped on his door and with tears asked for his ears. She knew him to be a Christian and she felt that of all the other co-workers, she felt he was someone who may be able to help her.

He listened, prayed, and gave her some advise that was steeped in faith. That girl accepted Christ and her life was changed and in that moment, so was his. He hired a full-time Pastor to replace him at the church and he returned to his Executive position where he felt his career and calling finally merged, The very same career he felt irritable at before. Martin stepped into his calling right in the midst of his career and saw himself as a Marketplace Minister.

If you have clarity on your call then anything you do may be re framed to serve your why via your how - or you may be prompted to change gears that feel more aligned with your calling. Until your career and calling are aligned, your restlessness will continue.

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