“Don’t step in the swale!” yelled the foreman. Fresh out of seminary in 1987, I paid the bills for my young family by “helping” with cement work. I didn’t even know what a swale was, but I was smart enough to move when my foreman yelled at me. So I moved and he quit yelling.

It took me only a few minutes to learn what the swale of a concrete parking lot was (the low spot that facilitates drainage), but it has taken me years to learn a far more important lesson: work is about much more than paying the bills.

For many years, I viewed work as inferior to ministry. It’s what most people did to pay the bills, and their only chance at ministry was helping at church on a Sunday morning or Wednesday night. But real ministry was what a few lucky people like missionaries and pastors got to do full time. Work was work, and ministry was ministry. I wish someone had yelled at me in 1987 about that blind spot.

I wish someone had explained that cement work was not a stepping stone to real ministry, but it was real ministry. The guy whom God made to be a construction worker had no less a calling or ministry than I did as a vocational religious worker.

Whatever God made you for is about far more than paying the bills. You bring God’s love to life as a full-time minister when you do what He designed you to do with joy and excellence.

Secular vocational ministry has no geographical boundaries. God is calling men and women from all professions to use their God-given skills as a means of ministry in places where Christ is still not known. Could He use your skills cross-culturally? Let’s talk.