Pathway One

Pathway 1: Blooming

The primary and most important avenue for deploying one’s vocational power is in and through one’s current work. The first place believers should look to conduct their “Kingdom-foretaste-bringing” mission is right at the current job they hold. I call this “blooming where you’re planted.” It’s about being salt and light right where you are now. It’s about being as creative, strategic, and intentional as you can be in deploying your gifts and influence to bring in foretastes of the Kingdom.

You can “bloom” whether you work in a secular or Christian setting. It’s imperative that we stop thinking that “full time Christian service” is more godly than being a banker, a veterinarian, an engineer, a scientist or a [fill in the blank with your vocation]. Whether right now you are in exactly the “right” job for you, I cannot say. But I can certainly say that you shouldn’t think you’re in the wrong one solely because your job is “secular.”

We bloom when we conduct our work in functional, daily reliance on the Spirit. We bloom when we honor God through our ethical practice. We bloom when we relate lovingly with co-workers, as winsome witnesses to the transforming power of a personal relationship with Jesus. We bloom when we intentionally and creatively seek to advance shalom for all of our organization’s or firm’s stakeholders. And we bloom when we act as what Rev. Tim Keller has called “intra-preneurs”—people who innovate needed reform within their company or industry sector.

Click here to read about how Christians in fields as diverse as real estate development, city government, filmmaking, and interior design are blooming for the common good.

The temptations in this pathway are two (at least). One might be called pietism; the other, triumphalism.

Return to 4 Pathways.