Practical Ideas for Church Leaders Encouraging Vocational Faithfulness<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There's a lot of talk about vocation these days. The church is waking up to the need to equip parishioners not just on Sundays, but throughout the week.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markdroberts\/2014\/02\/07\/practical-ideas-for-church-leaders-encouraging-vocational-faithfulness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Practical Ideas for Church Leaders Encouraging Vocational Faithfulness\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There's a lot of talk about vocation these days. 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{"id":5792,"date":"2014-02-07T09:06:07","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T15:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markdroberts\/?p=5792"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:27:13","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T20:27:13","slug":"practical-ideas-for-church-leaders-encouraging-vocational-faithfulness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markdroberts\/2014\/02\/07\/practical-ideas-for-church-leaders-encouraging-vocational-faithfulness\/","title":{"rendered":"Practical Ideas for Church Leaders Encouraging Vocational Faithfulness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It\u2019s critical for church leaders to become what pastor Tom Nelson (author of\u00a0Work Matters<\/em>) calls \u201clanguage police.\u201d Although our orthodox theology may eschew the notion of a sacred\/secular hierarchy of work, statements like, \u201cDid you hear that John left his job at the law firm and went into ministry with Young Life?\u201d betray that, deep down, we\u2019re uncertain whether work in a law firm is ministry in its own right.<\/p>\n

Practices such as publicly commissioning missionaries and Sunday School teachers\u2014but not business entrepreneurs and public school teachers\u2014can also send mixed signals to congregants. Pastors in our Learning Community began doing some things differently: praying during Sunday services for individuals in different occupations; celebrating congregants who\u2019d created new jobs; incorporating more workplace illustrations into their sermons; and visiting parishioners at their workplaces. These practices sent a message that marketplace lay people were not \u201csecond class\u201d citizens in the Kingdom, but ministers and missionaries in their own fields of endeavor.<\/p>\n