When we’re not working in our sweet spot, we feel restless because we’re not living life to the fullest. At the height of my discontent, I sensed God telling me, “The fullness of life I made you for is directly related to this entrepreneurial spirit I placed in you.”
Two Callings
In my research on personal calling, I discovered that church historians identify two parts to calling: primary and secondary. Both enable us to take hold of abundant life. With primary calling, we don’t have to discover it. We all share the same one: God has called us to be his disciples, overflowing with the fullness of Jesus and carrying that fullness to others by making disciples wherever we go. Our primary calling unites us through the generations. In a recent interview with pastor and author Francis Chan, he focused on our primary calling, saying, “Our No. 1 calling is to know him and to know him deeply.”
Our secondary calling—where we find our sweet spot—is rooted in Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” God gives each of us a unique calling so that we can play our unique role in carrying the fullness of Jesus into every corner of society.
When our primary and secondary callings work together, we experience abundant life. To pour out (secondary calling), we must be filled (primary calling). In the same way, to be filled again, we must pour out. Obviously, we will never be completely content on this side of heaven. But God the Creator has uniquely designed each of us to function in ways that bring us purpose and significance.
The 15th-century Puritan minister Cotton Mather illustrated this using a boat with two oars. One oar is primary calling; the other is secondary calling. To move the boat in a specific direction, you need both oars in the water working together. If no oars are in the water, you’ll just drift, shaped by the influence of society. If only one oar is in the water, you’ll spin in circles, never accomplishing the mission you were made for. God uses discontent to compel us to put both oars in the water.
Bob Buford highlights this synergy with two questions he says we’ll have to face someday before Jesus:
1. What did you do with who Jesus said he was? Did you respond and surrender to his Lordship? (The fullness of Jesus in us—our primary calling.)
2. What did you do with what Jesus uniquely gave you to work with? (Pouring out the fullness of Jesus on other people—our secondary calling.)
The answer to Bob’s second question only finds true meaning and significance when it grows out of our answer to his first question. If we want to move from “having life” to “having abundant life,” our primary and secondary callings must work together.
Can you honestly say to yourself, “Yes, I’m being filled up with the fullness of God and pouring it out onto others”?
A Blueprint for Reassessment
If the answer to that question is “no,” it may be time to reassess your personal calling. Your be, do and go are misaligned, and that’s why you may be feeling this sense of restless discontent. You’re not taking hold of the abundant life Jesus offers.
How do you determine which area is out of alignment? More times than not, it’s the be part of our calling—our unique identity. Our be should influence our do and go.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of church leaders don’t understand their be. You may have a strong sense of the do part of your calling. In fact, you may see your calling through the lens of do and go: You’ve been trained for ministry (the do) in a church (the go). But because you don’t have clarity on your unique identity or have confused it with one of the other two, the “who God has created you to be” doesn’t line up with the “what you’re doing” and the context you’re doing it in. When that happens, restless discontent is the natural response.
In a recent interview with LifeWay Christian Resources President and CEO Thom Rainer, he shared his journey of discovering his unique identity. Thom was groomed to be a fifth-generation banker in his family but always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Still, he went into banking and then received his call to vocational ministry. Looking back at the various experiences in the churches he led—all of his do’s and go’s—he realizes that in three of those churches, his be, his unique identity, never aligned.
“Three of the four churches I led squelched my identity,” Thom says.
At the fourth church in Birmingham, Alabama, to reach more people he took the church multisite in 1994 when it was a relatively new movement. From there, he became the founding dean for the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The school soon allowed him to start his own consulting practice. See the pattern here? Now he’s at LifeWay, developing new initiatives that bridge the gap between business and ministry. Thom had to consistently reassess the alignment of his be, do and go and then reposition himself in jobs and places that aligned with his unique entrepreneurial identity. Consistently ask yourself, “Am I doing something that’s allowing my unique identity to show itself?”
Clues to Your Unique Identity
While there’s no silver bullet for identifying your unique identity, important clues are all around you. Our job is to be an investigator who looks for clues and puts them together. One note: Don’t overlook your spouse in this process. The leaders I’ve interviewed about personal calling have been very clear that their spouse played a key role in identifying both their unique identity and their sweet spot. In a sense, your spouse acts as your assistant investigator.
In my coaching using the Paterson LifePlan Process, I suggest leaders do three things to help them identify these clues and integrate them together:
1. Look at your life as a book. Identify the story God has already started writing. Previous awards, jobs, what you’re drawn to—all of these factors tell you something about who you were created to be.