Vocation and Mission: Are They Different or the Same?

Right after graduating from seminary, I served as a director of children’s ministry in a local church. There, I met a deacon who became a good friend in my life. He and his family loved and served the Lord by pouring out their time and lives to support the ministry of the church. The deacon was also an owner of an education business. He genuinely cared for his students, not just for their academic success but also for their personal and spiritual growth. He invited his students to his home for a time of play and also brought them to the church to hear the words of the Lord. In many ways, the deacon truly lived out his faith in areas of his vocation as a deacon at a church and as a business owner.

But once I heard him expressing to a missionary visiting the church his frustration with not being able to devote his whole life to mission work and his attempt to make up for it by allocating his business profits to mission work. Often, we tend to compartmentalize what we do in the world as secular and what we do in the church as sacred—the true mission work that matters to the kingdom of God. Based on this, we assume the work of mission is something that is disconnected from our daily vocations.

In my recent articles for TWI, I wrote about the stories of vocation as they unfold within the grand story of redemptive history. In the world of creation, God created a covenantal cosmos, that is, a place of revelation, relationship, and responsibility. In this world, the Lord reveals himself through the power and wisdom he displays in all areas of the universe. The Lord also personally reveals himself to us by initiating a covenantal relationship with us. In this relationship, the Lord shows us who he is and what he is like and invites us to walk with him. Our relationship with the Lord also comes with responsibility. Through the working out of our vocations, the Lord calls us to steward, care for, and develop the world in a way that brings out mutual flourishing and prosperity for people, places, and planet—the work through which we fill the world with the presence and praises of the glorious grace of the Lord.

Yet, this design of the covenantal cosmos—where everything that we did in the world would reflect the image of God, and where our work would be an expression of worship to the Lord, filling the whole world with the glory of God—instead became fallen. Our work became selfish and self-centered because of sin that distorted the original design of the covenantal cosmos. As a result, in our world today, we see both the beauty of creation and the brokenness of the Fall expressed in the deep wounds of the world.

The grand story, however, does not end with the Fall. In the grand story of redemptive history, the moment creation fell, our Lord initiated a redemptive project to renew and redeem the broken creation. The Lord continues to unfold this redemptive story through the vocations of ordinary people. Across the Old and New Testaments, the Lord moves the wonderful story of redemption forward by covenanting with his people. In Genesis, the Lord covenants with Noah and Abraham, revealing God’s redemptive plan to save humanity and bless the world through them. In Exodus, God redeems Israel from slavery in Egypt and invites them into the life of covenant to be a holy nation, a kingdom of priests, so that they would truly incarnate and embody the story of redemption in every fabric of their lives and vocations.

Specifically, one way the Israelites were called to embody the story of redemption in their vocations was to practice the economy of Jubilee. Every 50th year, the Lord designated a time of restoration—work would pause, slaves would be freed, debts would be repaid, and land properties would be restored to the families. This was the year of liberty, the year of restoration for the people and the places, for the workers and the world. The intention of the Jubilee economics was that economic and social exploitation and poverty would never persist from one generation to another. Not only at the Jubilee, but also in their day-to-day lives, Israelites were called to be the kingdom of priests that embody the story of redemption in all spheres—social, cultural, economic, and political—for the well-being of the nation and beyond. In a word, Israelites were called to be the kingdom that incarnates the story of redemption and to become part of God’s redemption project to renew the broken design of creation, restoring everything to be as God intended when he created the world. However, throughout the history of Israel, as revealed in the books of Judges, Kings, and the prophets, the people of God failed again and again, just like the rest of us, to embody the life of covenant in the vocations of their lives.

The final covenant in the Bible is the New Covenant of our Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament. John begins his Gospel, using language reminiscent of the creation, “In the beginning…” He continues, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John says the Word, the living God, became flesh and reveals that this Word is the Lamb of God who has come to take away the sins—the very cause of the fall—of the world. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, has dawned in the world—the world that he created in the beginning—and came to become the “covenant incarnate,” that is, our Lord Jesus Christ not only talked about the words and ideas of the covenant, but he fulfilled the covenant himself by fully embodying its obligations. In other words, our Lord Jesus Christ is the Word of God that became flesh. He came incarnate to flesh out the covenant of God in and through his life, to serve and redeem the world, so that we may not only hear about the words of the covenant but also see with our eyes what it was all meant to be when the covenant is actually practiced and lived out.

In the Gospel of Luke (Luke 4:18–19), Jesus begins his ministry by reading from the scroll of Isaiah 61:1–2:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

The phrase “the year of the Lord’s favor” originates from the Year of Jubilee described in Leviticus 25:10.[1] When the Israelites were in exile, it was a touchstone phrase for the return. After reading this passage, Jesus rolls up the scroll and declares to all who are listening, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

In the words of Dr. Steven Garber, “This is the pedagogical insight and genius of our Lord.” As human beings, we never fully learn unless ideas are fleshed out. When I married Esther, I remember reading her a long letter saying with many words how much I loved her and how much I longed to embody that love through the working of our marriage. But words are just words—no matter how beautifully and eloquently they are spoken—unless the ideas of the words are really fleshed out. Only in living out our marriage do I get to show Esther what I really meant when I read the words to her on our wedding day.

This is exactly what our Lord has done. By entering and dwelling in his world, our Lord, the Word of God, has become flesh and has come to the world to flesh out the covenant by embodying the covenant of God with his own life. He came as the covenant incarnate himself. In our Lord Jesus Christ, the promise of Jubilee revealed under the Mosaic Covenant has been fulfilled, bringing restoration and flourishing. This flourishing, however, is not just for spiritual salvation of souls. R. Paul Stevens writes, “Human flourishing is surely one of the most wonderful aspects of the coming of the kingdom, partly now and eventually completely. The flourishing is total: economic, emotional, personal, mental, spiritual, workplace, and ministerial. No wonder that the dominant mood of the passage in Isaiah 61 is joy.”[2]

In the very vocation of Jesus the son of God—revealed in both words and deeds—our Lord brought healing and joy to the people and places of the world wherever he went. Ultimately, his crucifixion, followed by his glorious resurrection and ascension, our Lord the Lamb of God made God’s redemptive plan to restore and renew our fallen covenantal cosmos possible by dealing with the root cause of creation’s fall—sin. Now, our Lord extends the life of the new covenant, the life of new creation, to everyone who believes and submits to him. He calls us to not only walk in renewed relationship with him but also to embody the story of redemption in working out our vocations in our daily, ordinary lives.

In light of this redemptive story, what does it mean to join in the mission of God through our lives and vocations? Like the deacon mentioned earlier, many people compartmentalize their faith and disconnect their vocations from the mission of God. In Matthew 28:19–20, the Lord commands his disciples to go to the ends of the world and make disciples of all nations. Based on the literal reading of these verses, the concept of mission work is often only conceived as the work of going to far and foreign places of the earth and sharing the gospel in those regions. There is no question that the Lord calls many of us to do exactly that—to go to the unknown world and preach the gospel, as there are still more than three billion people in the world who have never had a chance to hear the gospel. But viewing and limiting the mission of God to only one specific task of going overseas may miss the bigger picture of what the Lord meant when he sent out his disciples.

The rest of Matthew 28:20 reads, “…and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…” Here, the word “teaching” in Greek is a participle that describes how the Lord’s followers were to make disciples of nations, which not only includes going but also teaching. This participle implies that joining the work of mission of God—in addition to going to far and foreign places of the world—also involves obeying the teachings of the Lord as revealed in the whole Scripture that tells what our vocation was meant to be in the world of creation, and now in the story of redemption, the life of the new covenant.

In the book Mission: Rethinking Vocation,[3] John Stott and Steven Garber talk about what it means to be sent out into the world as missionaries through our vocations. In John 20:21, Jesus says, “…As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” Stott notes that the vocation of Jesus to serve the world involved more than teaching of the words but also demonstration of the words in deeds, bringing in the kingdom, healing people and places of the world both physically and spiritually, holistically. Based on this, Stott urges us to see the work of being sent out as missionaries of God into the world more holistically; yes, it involves going and proclaiming of the word, but the word also needs to be embodied in the deeds of our lives and worked out through our vocations, as we are now sent out as the people of God, the people of new covenant.

In the foreword Steven Garber writes:

The teaching of Stott has been crucial to me, giving me eyes to see that the mission of Christ must shape my mission, that the work of God addresses the world made by God—in all its complexity and wonder, sorrow and grief—full as it is of good work to be done by butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers, salt and light each one, affecting their places in the world by bringing the good news of the kingdom into the ordinary places of ordinary people…We are not called to curse the world for being the world; rather we are to ask, “Why didn’t we act as salt and light, penetrating the world in and through our vocations?” That is the mission of Christ, and simply said, it is our mission.[4]

Practically speaking, how could this be done? As the Lord sends us out into the world to embody the redemptive story, the Jubilee of God, how could that story become more real in our vocations, considering the real struggles and challenges that we face in the messy world today?

One example may prod our thinking. The Economics of Mutuality (EoM) is a global project that truly reflects the biblical story of Jubilee economics as it seeks to redefine and place the role of economics in relation to people, places, and planet. The project began as a partnership between Mars Corporation (makers of M&M’s and other products) and Oxford University’s Saïd Business School to redefine business’s purpose beyond Milton Friedman’s view that businesses exist solely to maximize shareholder profits. In their book Completing Capitalism: Heal Business to Heal the World, Bruno Roche and Jay Jakub explain how the EoM Project shows that corporations can create mutual value for all stakeholders while pursuing sustainable profits. They write, “Business can simultaneously drive both profits and wider mutual benefits to people and planet through understanding and managing multiple forms of capital, namely human, social, natural, and shared financial capital.”[5] The authors encourage company executives to take a more holistic view of their corporations’ successes. Instead of focusing solely on profit maximization, they propose measuring success through an integrated approach that considers their impacts on people, places, and planet—achieving this not by sacrificing profits but by generating sustainable, right levels of profit, levels that will even maximize long-term gains for the owners themselves. In this way, the EoM encourages companies to see their business activities as a force for good that brings mutual flourishing to the world by not only reallocating profits to charities but actually embedding the principles of Jubilee economics into the very fabric of business systems and operations.

Last year in November, I attended a housing conference in Metro Vancouver. The conference is an annual event that draws thousands of attendees, bringing together industry leaders in housing, government officials, provincial and federal politicians, and many others to discuss solutions for the severe housing affordability crisis affecting metro cities across Canada. Despite much effort, Canada, especially in the major cities of Vancouver and Toronto, faces huge affordability issues, contributing to significant increases in homelessness and poverty. Furthermore, hundreds of homes that were built in the 1980s under Federal Housing policies are aging and need many repairs.

Part of my work as a finance specialist at a development company involves building as well as retrofitting homes and apartments. A few days ago, we had a meeting to discuss how we could potentially continue the work of bringing solutions to the affordability issues facing our own cities. We shared ideas about how we could bring together all different parties’ interests—the government’s as well as industry leaders’—and align them to create solutions that are profitable for all stakeholders, bringing deep transformation to people and places. In this work, I saw that our company’s work is part of a larger covenant story, the redemptive story, that joins the mission of God and reflects the work of our Lord in redeeming his creation.

If this story is true, that our Lord has come into the messy and broken world and initiated the story of redemption, fully fulfilling and embodying the promise of Jubilee of God in himself, bringing total healing of the world of the people, places, and planet—partly now, completely eventually—then the meaning of our vocations, as we are sent out into the world, needs to be reframed within this redemptive history in this now-and-not-yet time.

At uVillage Church, where I serve as a Marketplace Pastor, at the closing of service, we all read aloud from 1 Peter 2:9:

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We read to remind ourselves of our identity in the Lord, of who we have become in him. Now as the Lord’s redeemed, we are called to embody the story of redemption in everything we do. With this reminder, we bless one another with these words of benediction:

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all, the body of Christ, sent out into the places of calling—families, workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. Blessings in Jesus’ name, Amen.

These words are reminders to the congregation that the Lord calls all of us to join in the missio Dei (mission of God) through our daily vocations through which the story of redemption is reflected and revealed to the world.

The whole of Scripture encompasses the grand story of redemptive history from creation to consummation. It teaches us that the Lord works through our daily vocations whether in homes, workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, to bring his healing presence to the world as the works of our vocations reflect the story of redemption and point the world to the Lord, the creator, sustainer, redeemer, and consummator of all things. As Steven Garber often says and writes, our “vocation is essential to that missio Dei, not accidental”—our vocation is the very place within which mission of God continues as we reflect the story of redemption through the works of our hands.

[1] Grudem, Wayne, and Thomas R. Schreiner. “The Gospel According to Luke.” ESV STUDY BIBLE, Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois, 2008, p. 1957.

[2] Stevens, R. Paul. The Kingdom of God in Working Clothes: The Marketplace and Reign of God. Cascade Books, 2022, 23.

[3] Stott, John. Mission: Rethinking Vocation. REGENT COLLEGE PUBLISHING, 2019.

[4] Ibid., 6.

[5] Roche, Bruno, and Jay Jakub. Completing Capitalism: Heal Business to Heal the World. Barrett-Koehler Publishers, a BK Business Book, 2017, 112.