“Our occupation is how we make a living… Our
vocation, on the other hand, is what we’re inherently wired for. It’s less
likely to consist of a set of tasks and more likely to consist of a set of
themes.” – The Accidental
Creative p. 210
“An unfulfilled vocation drains the color
from a man's entire existence” - Honore’
de Balzac
The English language is full of words that, while seemingly
synonymous, actually communicate radically different things. For instance, take
“politician” and “public servant.” While both could be used interchangeably,
the latter is, by definition, focused on others, while it seems that the former
is often focused on his or herself. Another set of false synonyms is
“occupation” and “vocation.” While both words refer to something that we
do, a job or profession, the similarities stop there.
An occupation, from the Latin occupatio, means "to occupy or fill a position." Doesn’t
sound all that glamorous, does it? It’s just a big word for “taking up
space.” And that’s just what most
occupations do—they take up your time and energy in exchange for a paycheck. Occupations are those things that we do to pay the bills;
those things we have to do, but which we dream of retiring from. In contrast, a vocation is something that we
do for the joy of it, whether we’re paid for it or not. It’s an activity that
we happily invest our life into and never think about retiring from.
While an occupation is a job, a vocation is a calling. In
fact, the word “vocation,” from the Latin vocare, means “calling.” When we take our God-given
skills, abilities and values into consideration, a vocation is that thing we
find ourselves naturally drawn towards, that thing that we do because we love it,
because it matters deeply to us, and that that we would do if money weren’t an
issue.
Though our vocation may be tied to a job or career
choice, it’s not necessarily the same thing. Consider the Apostle Paul.
Paul’s occupation was tent-making; His vocation was living
as an ambassador of Jesus Christ. His occupation allowed him to make money to
support his vocation. I suspect that he never questioned whether his tent-making
made him happy. I’m sure he was a great tent maker, but that’s not what defined
him, that’s not what got him out of bed in the morning. His vocation defined
and motivated him. He was a minister of the Gospel, and that’s what kept him
going even when he encountered opposition, even when he faced persecution and
imprisonment.
I remember the first time that I considered the
difference between an occupation and a vocation. I was just out of college and
working at an agency doing public relations for the surfing industry. In other
words, I got paid to go to surf contests and then write about them. Sounds like
every kid’s dream job, right? And for a little while it was. But before too
long, I began to get bored. I guess I just didn’t care all that much about who
won or lost, and I began to lose my motivation. During one contest, I thought
about the surfers I was writing about; whether they won or lost, they were
doing what they loved. They would go out and surf even if no one was there
watching, even if they never got paid a cent for it. In that moment, I decided
that’s what I wanted to do: not surfing, I wanted to find what I loved to do
and focus on doing that for the rest of my life.
I began to consider what I liked to do when I didn’t
have something to do; I paid attention to the ways I spent my free time. And
before too long I noticed a pattern. I was spending a large part of my free
time sitting down with other guys, either being mentored by them or investing
into them. Multiple times a week, I would get together with someone to discuss
life, where they were going, what they were striving to accomplish and why. I
loved it; it never felt like work. Just the opposite – I actually got energized
from these conversations.
Around this time, I discovered a little book by
Laurie Beth Jones called The Path, which guided me through the process
of writing a personal mission statement for my life. Here’s what I came up
with:
“I want to
invest my life inspiring, encouraging and equipping those who are truly hungry
for maturity to pursue a more intimate, transformative relationship with
Christ and to live lives that are marked by intentionality and fruitfulness.”
To boil it down into a word, I felt called to
“disciple.”Armed with this new lens, I began to examine the myriad options
before me. I considered getting a teaching credential, since I figured teaching
was one profession that would allow me to talk with impressionable students all
day long. But then I realized that if I were going to walk with other people as
they wrestled with what they believed, I should probably figure out what I
believed so that I wasn’t just taking my parents’ and pastor’s word for it. So I wound up going to grad
school to get a masters degree in Theology.
Fast-forward about a decade. I found myself working
as a pastor and teaching some classes at the local Christian college down the
street. I had arrived, right? I was finally fulfilling my vocational calling,
right? Possibly, but then why was I feeling the same sort of boredom and lack
of motivation that I’d felt in my previous “secular” jobs? While my jobs (pastoring and teaching) were
certainly more aligned with my vocation than they had been when I was doing PR
for the surfing industry, they still weren’t my vocation. They were my
occupation; they paid the bills. Discipleship was my vocation. And yet, I found
myself pouring all of my time and energy into my classes, into my sermons, into
the myriad responsibilities I had, and my passion to disciple got lost in the
shuffle. As I revisited my vocational mission statement, I realized that I’d
been focusing on the occupational responsibilities and forgetting to be
intentional about my vocational calling to disciple.
As I began to realign my focus, I began to make time
to disciple. My church and my classrooms became my fishing ponds where I went
looking for new disciples who were hungry to grow in their maturity. In
hindsight, I realize that I could have been just as intentional (and possibly
just as fruitful) in my previous “secular” occupations, but this was simply
part of my development process.
The point is, don’t waste your life filling a space;
don’t trade the precious days, months and years God entrusts you with for nothing
but a simple paycheck. Don’t spend another day looking for your purpose and
fulfillment in an occupation; Ask God to help you discover your vocational
calling and invest your life into that, even if you never collect a single
paycheck for it.
