I was reading an article in the archives of this wonderful resource called The King’s E-Highway. The article was called The Call. Now, what’s funny is that I had been planning to write on the topic, but with an entirely different flavor. What is The Call? At its basic level, every Christian has it. Ephesians 4:1 says, "I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." 2 Peter 1:10 says, "Be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure." These verses were not written exclusively to pastors, but to all believers. Every believer has a certain level of calling on his or her life.

That calling is to place Jesus first in our lives. It’s about loving God with everything we have inside us, and loving those around us, as we love ourselves. God, others, ourselves, in that order. Every believer – well, every person in the world, for that matter – has a calling in life to love God and work for Him.

After that, things get a little foggy. What comes after this "basic level" call? What is this "upper level" call?

Most would quickly say, "The ministry."

Well, then, what is that?

"Preaching. Pastoring."

So teachers in a Christian school aren’t in the ministry? Church secretaries don’t minister? Chuck Colson and Keith Drury aren’t in the ministry? I can’t actually imagine someone saying any of that. If the word "ministry" means service" (which it does), then is any form of service not a ministry?

For so long we have used the phrase "The Call" as meaning full-time Christian service of some sort. Personally, I find that definition a little vague. If a person is a Christian full-time, and loves God full-time, and serves Him full-time, how is that not full-time Christian service? Not only is the phrase vague, but it’s also demeaning – as if those not working for churches or Christian organizations are only part-time in the service of Christ.

A somewhat antiquated word for this sort of thing is "vocation." The term still shows up in places where they teach hands-on jobs: in vocational schools. The word has Latin roots in the word "voca", which means “to call”. It’s where we get the word "voice".

I wonder if people have traded "vocations" for "jobs". That is, because they did not receive some sort of "special" call to preach and the like, they believe that God has not called them to run a hardware store or cut down trees for lumber or drive school bus. They do it to earn money or they like it, but it’s not The Call. It’s not a vocation. It’s only a paycheck.

Understand that I am not saying there is no such thing as a call to pastor, nor am I saying that every person has it. What I’m saying is that people often assume that what they do is somehow less than what "full-time Christian ministers" do. Somehow their "secular" jobs are of less value than "sacred" ones.

I just can’t buy into this. I can’t possibly believe that a Christian, who teaches at a public high school, has any less importance than a youth worker nor that either one’s respective jobs are ranked one less than the other. Each takes prayer, hard work, perseverance, character, integrity, and all-round "saltiness." Should a teacher feel that his or her job has less calling" on it simply because he or she gets paid by the government instead of by Christians giving tithes and offerings?

Now, in regard to where our salary comes from, the Bible is clear: God gives to everyone. So, whether a Christian teacher is getting paid by the government, or a youth worker is getting paid by generous tithers, either way, it is God providing – regardless of who writes the cheques. People with "vocations" (and not just "jobs") understand that God is their boss. The Call really has nothing to do with the person for whom you work. It’s all about the God for Whom you work.

There is another problem with this "two-tier" spirituality besides demeaning most jobs as something less than special. The other problem is, what does a full-time Christian minister" do when he or she feels a call somewhere else?

A person has been pastoring for some time, but then feels that God is calling elsewhere. The problem is that the person often wonders about their commitment to God. Not to say that a person gets The Call to pastor because he or she is so spiritual – I don’t know if anybody feels that way. But because The Call is upper-level", anything less than that is less than God’s best. To want less than God’s best feels like compromise. To walk away later from something that God once called a person into, at some point… it feels ridiculously like disobedience. Losing The Call feels remarkably like losing your soul.

There is no question: disobedience is serious. The Apostle Paul said to King Agrippa, "I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven." (Acts 26:19) If God calls you, to ignore or neglect that is serious.

I just wonder though. Even if God does not withdraw His primary calling on our lives (in the words of writer Os Guiness, “by Him, to Him and for Him”), perhaps He changes the direction of our secondary calling (that everyone, everywhere, and in everything should think, speak, live, and act entirely for Him). In other words, even though God tells us we should love Him and put Him first, perhaps the areas in which we should put Him first change.

If a young mom feels The Call ("I really feel that this is where God wants me to be right now") to be around for her kids, would not that Call change slightly as the kids move out of the house in a few years? Of course it would, and her soul has nothing to do with it.

Is it possible for someone, who once felt The Call to preach or pastor or lead in some "churchy" way, to get The Call to do something else? Should it feel like losing the faith or losing the soul? If Os Guiness is right – that The Call is first to God, and then to something or somewhere – then it seems to me that doing what you feel God is leading you to do, no matter what you have felt in the past, no matter if it seems contrary to common consensus… that is not losing your soul. It is finding it once again.