There Are No Small Assignments
In business and in ministry, we sometimes feel that our roles, titles, or assignments fit our potential. Everyone has felt that way at some point.
However, there really are no small assignments. Everything matters.
Are you "stuck" in work you feel is insignificant and at the lowest place on the chain of importance?
Are you doing menial work when you feel you have a greater calling?
Look at David. His entire schooling was doing what kids do in a family like his - chasing ewes, shepherding sheep. He had the lowest job status in the family.
Yet David, apparently, grasped the parallels. He realized that the lowest work was really at the heart of the greatest work. To serve, to lead, to protect a great people was really just a larger context of what he had been doing in his youth - shepherding people, like he shepherded sheep.
He emerges from obscurity from among hundreds of thousands who had great potential.
He emerges from obscurity to leadership. His significance was not hindered by his lowly position. He did his entry level work faithfully. The greater work came later --- yet sooner than he expected.
He was taken from the sheepfolds.
"He chose David his servant and took him from the sheepfolds; from following the nursing ewes he brought him to shepherd Jacob his people, Israel his inheritance. With upright heart he shepherded them and guided them with his skillful hand." -Psalm 78:70-72 ESV
?Keep this in mind when you are tempted to feel like a small person in a small work. You are either doing something that no one else has been called to do in quite the same way at quite the same time and place or you are being prepared for that sort of work.
Or BOTH!
Either way, it is up to God to assign and up to us to accept the assignment. I can think of no greater honor than to be ...? a Servant.
Therefore:
This is your moment. It may not seem like it is, but whatever you are doing, you can dedicate it to God and God's kingdom
My first church job was as an assistant to the assistant janitor for a summer. My second was as a $5 a week song leader in a mission church.
Titles do not matter. Service does.
Theologian. Educator. Activist
1 周Thank you Tom. I appreciate this! This article resonates with me, I too have had a David-like experience...and am still on the path of service. Thank you!