Tomorrow’s Sunday!

When we meet someone for the first time, we exchange names and then comes the question: “What do you do?” We ask this question because we intuitively know that our vocations shape who we are. Whether you're a small business owner, a factory worker, a doctor, a cashier, or a teacher, your vocation affects nearly every area of your life. It commandeers your time. You can’t be somewhere else while you're at work. It decides your budget. You can’t very well spend money you don’t earn. It determines where you live. Most of us don’t choose to commute two hours to work. It colors your family relationships. If you have to be “captain personality” at work all day, the family at home is going to get a bit less of that personality. 

Vocation historically and biblically isn’t limited to what we do for work but includes who God has called us to be. We are Christians, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers and more. These vocations or identities certainly aren’t sterilely separated; they impact and influence one another. If you're a mom who is also a tax accountant, your life from January 1st to April 15th will look very different from a single woman without children doing the same job or from a mom that doesn’t work outside the home. If you're a dad with ten brothers and sisters, your holidays are probably fuller than most. So what does all this talk of vocation have to do with our gathering as a church tomorrow? 

Though we usually don’t think of it this way, church membership is a vocation, church member an identity. I once heard Sinclair Ferguson say that when he’s asked how living in the United States differs from living in Scotland where he’s from, he commonly quips, “Just about everything is a little bit different.” Likewise envisioning ourselves as members of a local church instead of only as Christians and of church membership as a vocation changes just about everything. In the coming weeks we will explore the biblical foundations and practical implications of thinking of our membership in the local church as one of our identities and vocations. 

Tomorrow’s Sunday!