I’ve been away on a business trip to the Philippines for 2 weeks now. I have been finding time to keep up on my reading, and turned to a book I’ve had on my shelf for quite some time. What Can I Do? Making a Global Difference Right Where You Are by David Livermore (Zondervan, 2011) is a couple years old now, but the message is proving to be as impactful now as ever. I wanted to share this exceprt from one of the opening chapters in this book because it is so true. Conservative evangelical Christians like myself and many of my readers, are instilled from a young age with the idea that somehow full-time Christian ministry is where the big stuff for God gets accomplished. This excerpt displays how this way of thinking is so untrue.

To live out our part of this story as the church means weaving our priestly identity into every part of our lives. Politics are not somehow off-limits for Christians, but they need to be reformed. The domains of art, business, and science should be reclaimed for Christ, not segregated as secular distractions from the “real” work of ministry. My dad used to proudly declare, “Both my sons are in full-time ministry,” and almost as an afterhought he would add, “and my daughter is a nurse.” I realize that “full-time ministry” is sometimes a shorthand way of referring to people who earn their paycheck from full-time employment in a church or ministry. But what could more closely resemble full-time ministry than the work my sister does daily as a nurse, caring for cancer patients and their family members? We have to reject the notion that it’s the really spiritual people who should become the pastors and missionaries. We are all invited to partner with God–as nurses and truck drivers, aunts and uncles, engineers and musicians, and, yes, pastors and missionaries. The problem isn’t that the Christian community lacks doctors, farmers, businesspeople, or musicians in our midst. The problem is that there are so few doctors, farmers, businesspeople, and musicians who are truly living out their priestly identity in their profession. That’s the central idea of this book. Most of us don’t integrate our Christian identity into our daily tasks. While serving as a missionary overseas is one way of fulfilling our priestly calling, so also is serving in a local hospital near home. What matters most is how you live out your unique vocation as a follower of Jesus Christ.

Global mission is something we all get to be inolved in. It might involve uprooting yourself and traveling overseas, but just as likely it might mean making subtle changes in the way you go about your work and life, all without ever pulling out your passport. We all get to be part of this. This is who we were created to be.

— pp. 40-41, What Can I Do? Making a Global Difference Right Where You Are by David Livermore (Zondervan, 2011), emphsis original

Disclaimer: This book was provided by the publisher, via the Amazon Vine program. I was under no oblgation to post a favorable review.