101 gospel jobs Ben Pfahlert

This post confused me.

You asked people to think of “someone who is dedicated to prayerfully passing on the message of Christ to people”.

This is what every Christian should be. So I expected a post saying “look, you can do gospel ministry whatever your job and position in society”. The first two options on the list (mother and father) back up that principle.

But then most of the list is about people in salaried ministry/church/mission jobs. Are you trying to encourage everyone into overtly “Christian” work, whatever that is? Or have I misunderstood this post?

<i>So I expected a post saying “look, you can do gospel ministry whatever your job and position in society”. </i>

I’m not Ben, but the thought occurs that his list involves any job where the speaking of the gospel is the prime responsibility—which helps explain why ‘mother’ and ‘father’, although in my experience unpaid jobs, top the list.

The job of being a neurosurgeon or a street sweeper may well provide opportunities for speaking the gospel, but speaking the gospel is not one of the core responsibilities of such jobs. Indeed, when you sign on for some jobs it is quite possible that doing them diligently will involve not speaking at all.

Imagine what consequences might befall if the street sweeper was distracted by speaking. Her hand might slip just as she was about to remove a particular juicy dog offering, with terrible implications for health and safety.

(I was all set to give a non-sexist illustration involving a female neurosurgeon, but the last time someone operated on me they gabbled away to the nurse the whole time. Not to mention that being a street sweeper is much more important for public health).

Hi Ben,

Thanks for this post - it has prompted me to think again about something thats been wandering around in my mind for a while.

That is, why do we feel we have to ‘footnote’ mission as ‘homeland and overseas’? (#83). Why can’t we just have ‘overseas missionary’ as a distinct category?

I’m thinking on this list the ‘homeland and overseas’ category is a bit redundant - what is the difference between being a homeland pastor (83) and a church pastor (5)? 

But the bigger issue is not one of ‘list consistency’ - I know this list serves as a brainstorm and thats fine. I’m wondering why we feel the need to somehow say that overseas mission can’t be a distinct category?

Is there possibly a sense of ‘everything we do is mission’ creeping in here, which means the distinctive nature of overseas missionary work is being lost?

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