So, you love the Lord and would like to serve Him with all that you have? Great! You’ve got two options.
Option 1: Set aside your career (you’re not gonna need that), get a degree from seminary (you are gonna need that), and then work full-time in a church or as a missionary.
Option 2: Oh, you’d like to keep your career and use the skills you learned in school? You’re sure? I mean, that’s acceptable, but it is the “less spiritual” route. Well, if you’re sure, then… keep your job so you can make money. Give that money to the church and to missions.
I grew up in the church. And while nobody ever actually said this to me, I was never taught otherwise. So this is pretty much how I understood my choices.
How about you? Are these pretty much the only two options you think you have?
Is there another option? One where God takes the way you’ve been wired — as a talented filmmaker or as a tenacious prosecutor or as whatever-you-are — and uses that for His kingdom? I’m not talking about God using the money you make in your industry for His kingdom. I’m talking about God using you in your industry for His kingdom.
I think there is. We just need a little bit of creativity and a conversation.
For the filmmaker, does she have to make “Christian” movies? Is there a place for her to take on projects that are not overtly Christian, but highlight themes of brokenness, justice, redemption, and compassion? Perhaps her work would evoke conversation in the public square. Perhaps her work quality and her work ethic win her a reputation and a platform to be freely known as a follower of Jesus.
God can use her mightily. What a shame it would have been if she had given it all up twenty years ago to “serve Him with all that she has.” This is her serving Him with all that she has.
For the attorney, can he be known in his field for his integrity and his passion to uphold justice even in a world and a system that is so often broken? What would it look like — in his vocation — to “defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow?”
Christ-following attorneys are often in a better position to do this than Christ-following pastors. What a loss for the kingdom if he had abandoned his law degree for a seminary degree.
Regardless of your field of study, there is a place for you to be used by God in your work, for His kingdom. And you can do that work in the city and country that you live in now.
There is nothing “less than” about this choice. You would be embracing, rather than abandoning, the way God has wired you — with your education, your skills, your passions — to serve Him with all that you have.
That seems to me like an attractive third option.