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Ep. 12 - Laying the Groundwork for Two Christian Callings
9 Plays2 days ago
In this episode, Ken Freire and Patrick Lowndes dismantle the myth that Christian calling is reserved only for those in full-time ministry. Together, they lay the biblical groundwork for understanding two kinds of callings every believer has: a general calling that applies to all followers of Christ, and a specific calling that reflects how God uniquely wires each of us to serve in different seasons of life. They unpack what Scripture says about both, offering clarity and encouragement for Christians who want to live out their faith meaningfully in the workplace and beyond.
Resources Mentioned
- Book: The Call by Os Guinness
- Bible Passages: Genesis 1:28 (Creation Mandate), Matthew 22:37–39 (Great Commandment), Matthew 28:19–20 (Great Commission), Colossians 3:23, Romans 8:29, Hebrews 10:25
Timestamps
- 00:00–02:00 – Opening banter and introduction: why this topic matters
- 02:00–03:00 – The false belief: calling is only for those in full-time ministry
- 03:00–05:00 – Understanding the difference between general and specific callings
- 05:00–08:00 – Three core general callings: the Creation Mandate, the Great Commandment, and the Great Commission
- 08:00–10:00 – How general callings shape our specific callings
- 10:00–12:00 – Examples of specific callings changing through life seasons
- 12:00–14:00 – Living out your calling today and previewing the next episode on the RISE framework
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Buried Talent Podcast
00:00:08
Patrick
Welcome back to Buried Talent, the show for young professionals that tears down false beliefs about faith and work so you can unbury your God-given talent right where you are. I'm Patrick Lowndes, and with me my co-host Ken Freire, and today we're talking about laying the groundwork for two Christian callings.
Understanding Christian Callings
00:00:27
Patrick
This will be meaty and good foundational topic for us. But Ken, first, quick check in. How are you feeling? I know you had some time off. This thing they invented in the Midwest called a fall break. Like what the heck is that?
00:00:40
Dan Sanchez
I know it's fantastic, man. My kids and I went hiking in North Carolina for a little bit.
Personal Updates from Ken and Patrick
00:00:46
Dan Sanchez
So it was a ton of fun. And my sister-in-law had their first child. So we got to celebrate with her
00:00:52
Patrick
I like it. I like it. And while you're doing like a fall break, like there's no breaks over here on the West Coast. Like we're just still grinding through it. But that's probably because we had a longer summer. But yeah, we're doing well. Did a ballet competition.
00:01:06
Patrick
did not do the competition. My daughter's at the ballet competition last night.
00:01:08
Dan Sanchez
I was going to say, wow, that would have been great for you, man.
00:01:11
Patrick
I just have a little side hustle. Like I'm a male Valerie. I'm just kidding. All right, cool. But that's it. Let's jump right in.
Challenging Misconceptions about Calling
00:01:16
Patrick
So this topic of just laying the groundwork for two Christian callings, give us the setup here for this, Ken.
00:01:22
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, this is actually probably one of my favorite discussions to have because like most Christians, especially if you're young believer, you get really confused on what you should do with your life. And I remember being young and wondering, what am I supposed to do in my life, in my calling with God? I want to be obedient.
00:01:40
Dan Sanchez
I want to serve Him. And I want to try to figure out how to do that as best as possible. I wanted to make sure that I was following God's will.
00:01:44
Patrick
Yeah.
00:01:47
Dan Sanchez
Now, the problem is that most Christians, when they think about calling, they think that they're called to full-time ministry, right? They're either a pastor or a ministry leader. But that's only half the truth.
00:01:59
Dan Sanchez
The reality is that there's multiple callings, or depending on how you want to frame it, multiple callings that we have.
General vs. Specific Callings
00:02:06
Dan Sanchez
And I love how Oz Guinness talks about it in his book, Calling, where he talks about there's a general calling and a specific calling. And that's kind of what we're going to walk through today.
00:02:16
Patrick
Yeah, I love it. And so if you're kind of listening to this and you've kind of maybe taken this false belief, so every episode we're trying to hit on, like, what is this false belief? Today, it's that Christian calling is only for people in ministry, right?
00:02:29
Patrick
Like, let's just smash that with a giant mallet.
00:02:29
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:02:31
Patrick
And like, we're going to go through a ton of passages today to kind of unpack that a little bit. It sounds a little bit convincing, but like, there are some stuff that we've done in our Christian subculture, like it's just straight up unbiblical.
00:02:43
Patrick
And this is one of them. like saying that calling is only for people in ministry, like full-time ministry. We invented the word ministry in the year 1300 after like way after the other words were used to describe our, our vocation and our work.
00:02:56
Patrick
And so let's just, let's try to get down to the bottom of it. How do we want to kick this off Canon in diving into the topic?
00:03:03
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, I think what's going to be really good is to let's look at scripture and talk about how it exposes what actually calling should look like and how it's multifaceted and show that there's a general calling and a specific calling.
00:03:17
Dan Sanchez
I think that's a good way to go. All right.
00:03:19
Patrick
Yep. Cool, cool. So the three big ones, you want to give us the three big ones? I'll do the seven other ones examples. Let's just jump on in.
00:03:26
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, absolutely. So when you think about general calling, first and foremost, all of us as Christians are called to these. And I think where we get confused many times is we're like, we're thinking about all the specific things we're supposed to do.
00:03:39
Dan Sanchez
But if we actually don't do the general ones first, it's really hard to do the specific one.
00:03:44
Patrick
Yeah.
00:03:45
Dan Sanchez
So let's talk about the general callings and like there's three buckets that you can think about these general callings and what you're called to and how it actually defeats this flaw or this lie of only called to full time vocational ministry, whether it be past pastoring or doing something else.
00:03:46
Patrick
Yeah.
00:04:03
Dan Sanchez
So Genesis 1.28, it says, this is what we would call the creation mandate, right? Where all humanity is called to work, to create, to cultivate. That's the first one.
00:04:14
Dan Sanchez
The second one is the great commandment, right? This is found in Matthew 22 verses 37 through 39, where this is to love your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and then love your neighbor as yourself.
00:04:26
Dan Sanchez
And then the third one is the Great Commission, where you find this in Matthew 28, 19 to 20, where it says, as you're going, go and make disciples of all nations, not just the church, right?
00:04:38
Dan Sanchez
So when you take all three of these things, you got to ask yourself, well, if we're called to work, we're called to create, we're called to love God and love our neighbors, and we're called to make disciples wherever we go,
00:04:49
Dan Sanchez
And another one that you can think about it, right, is that having our being filled with the spirit, being walking in the fruit of the spirit, all these different things about looking like Christ.
00:05:00
Dan Sanchez
If you start doing that stuff.
00:05:02
Dan Sanchez
that God's called us to, it actually makes your specific calling a lot easier to figure out. But first and foremost, you got to talk about the general calling within these three broad categories of like, are you living your life within the creation mandate, great commandment, and the great commission?
00:05:09
Patrick
Yeah.
00:05:14
Patrick
Yeah.
00:05:20
Patrick
Yeah. And I guess this is a really convicting question. Like if somebody asked your coworkers, hey, You work with Ken, right? Yeah, cool. What are a couple things that stand out to you about Ken? What's Ken all about?
00:05:33
Patrick
Imagine somebody interviewed your coworkers and said, oh yeah, well, Ken's just all about this political party and then hanging out on weekends and doing...
00:05:36
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:05:41
Patrick
What if the answers was not at all about the three general... Those big buckets of calling... Right. So that's a sobering thought to just think about, like, what would your coworkers say about you or people around you if you're still student you're still at school? Like, would your classmates say? Like, you just get really excited about you just you kind of get activated, you know, on.
00:06:00
Patrick
But let's just look at a couple other
Importance of General Callings
00:06:02
Patrick
examples of that. mean, and there's so many like we're doing a quick episode here just to say and this probably can. Honestly, this probably should have come before episode three. So episode three, four, five and six, we unpack how to get clarity in your calling.
00:06:15
Patrick
So this episode a bit of a course correction on just making sure we lay that foundation. was talking with this about somebody, and he's like, no, man, we really got to make sure we clarify the difference between these. And so I just want to give a shout out to the brother at Austin Ridge who helped me kind of just step back and look at this. But here are some of these other examples. Christ calls us to himself.
00:06:38
Patrick
In Mark 3, he's talking about, again, you have a relationship with me. Romans 8.29, to be transformed into the image of Christ. This is a calling that we have as Christians. We already talked about the calling to love, the great commandment.
00:06:52
Patrick
But there's lots of elements and lots of layers to that. If you look across, how do you love the least of these? I mean, there's so many different callings within that. The calling to work faithfully is not just in the Genesis 1.28. We see that again in Colossians 3.23, like, everything you do, your work, everything you do, you're called to work faithfully. Like regardless of who you are, if you fog a mirror, know, like then you're alive, then you need to be doing that.
00:07:17
Patrick
Same thing with making disciples. What's unhelpful about the word missionary is like technically, again, you fog a mirror you believe in Jesus, like you are a sent one, regardless of where you are. Forget about titles or where you're going, but just we're all on mission.
00:07:32
Patrick
And then the last two, I think just to call out are we're called the community to belong together, be part of a body. Right. If we're not doing that naturally, if we're not don't see ourselves as part of that, I think a lot of the generations of just especially our generation can the millennials have said, like, you know, hey, we're just going to like listen to the best sermon that we want to listen to and like be engaged however we want to listen or however we want to engage.
00:07:55
Patrick
But no, God calls us to community. Hebrews also talks about don't neglect getting together. Right. And the final one is like calling to persevere. So there's just tons of general callings, going put that in the bucket of general calling.
Exploring Specific Callings in Future Episodes
00:08:09
Patrick
But now we're going turn the corner and the next episode, we're going to go into a lot deeper, but just maybe help us make the transition can into those are things that all Christians are called to. What's what do we see about the specific calling and why that's different, why that's worthy of our attention?
00:08:25
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, so one thing that I want to say is that general calling is a lot about who you're called to be, right? And specific calling tends to sometimes be like the where and the how.
00:08:31
Patrick
Hmm.
00:08:34
Dan Sanchez
We're supposed to live that out. And this is where, even going back to that lie, a lot of people get confused, right? Because they're like, well, I'm supposed to go make disciples. I'm supposed to love people. Well, the best way to do that is in the local church or it's in ministry somehow.
00:08:48
Dan Sanchez
And that's you've got to take a step back and say, no, actually... we're supposed to be called to make disciples at work. If we're in school, wherever we're at, our neighbors, right?
00:09:00
Patrick
Yeah.
00:09:01
Dan Sanchez
That's where we're called to. So I want us to look at these general callings as like, these are permanent things that no matter what season in life you're these are things you're always going to be doing or supposed to be doing, right?
00:09:09
Patrick
Yeah. It's good.
00:09:14
Dan Sanchez
Now, when we talk about specifics, right? And we're going to go a lot deeper in the next episode. So go check out the next episode. But the specifics is that this is all about the unique way how God has wired you, how you express yourself within these general callings.
00:09:32
Patrick
Yeah.
00:09:32
Dan Sanchez
And depending on every season that you're in.
00:09:35
Dan Sanchez
I'll give you a great example. When I was younger, was heavily involved in ministry, vocational ministry. And I was working 50, 60 hours a week. I was a lay elder in my church as well.
00:09:47
Dan Sanchez
I was doing a ton of stuff for God. That scaled back dramatically when I started having kids. Because now all of a sudden I have like mouths to feed and I have like, you know, at the time of this recording, I have four kids and a fifth on the way shortly.
00:10:04
Dan Sanchez
It's like, oh, I don't have as much time.
00:10:07
Patrick
Yeah.
00:10:07
Dan Sanchez
But that doesn't mean my specific calling is not there. It's just different now in this season. And it's like, oh, how do work that out?
00:10:12
Patrick
Yeah.
00:10:14
Dan Sanchez
So recognizing that your specific calling is going to be a little bit more of a progression. It's going to be a journey and it'll evolve over time. What's going to be really important is needing a framework on figuring out in the season that you're in, how does your specific calling get shaped and how do we look at it?
00:10:36
Patrick
Yeah, I'll share one more example about that. So like, again, just good example.
00:10:39
Dan Sanchez
Yep.
00:10:41
Patrick
I, when I was in college, like I was going helping churches think about their plan for like affecting the world and reaching the world. And again, like at 21, 22, with very little experience,
00:10:52
Patrick
And I mentioned this in one of the, think it's episode two, telling my story. God totally redirected me and said, hey, you need to go and like your specific calling for you. this, again, it came through elders at my church, came through a few other mentors. Like you need to put in some time and become the person that you want to call people to be.
00:11:09
Patrick
And so my specific calling was like, you need to go like work at this software company and sell software. Right. And then, and then the challenge was this, Ken is like, Now that I'm here, how at this company pay scale, how can be effective here to love my coworkers, to excel at my work and be excellent as like a pleasing, like love God with all my mind and be really smarter with my job and be effective.
00:11:34
Patrick
And as I started to work that out, like that was my specific calling was just be great at selling software. That shifted about five or six years in when the Lord was like, no, now I want you, now it's gonna change. Now I want you to go figure out pioneer something brand new from zero to one.
00:11:48
Patrick
And I've done that now several times, but that was a specific calling for one season that shifted to another specific calling. So we're going to talk about the nature of specific calling and how that moves. And maybe more practically, if you're listening to this, what are the things that you do to develop it, to discover it, to be in relationship and conversation with God about that? So that's the tee up for the next episode.
00:12:11
Patrick
Any other final thoughts, Ken, before we close on this two different callings?
00:12:15
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, so as we wrap up, I would say go check out for sure the next episode, right? Because we're going to talk about what we call the RISE framework. And it's going fantastic for you to even think about.
00:12:26
Dan Sanchez
But for today, as you're listening to this, you may be wondering, I don't know my specifics. I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. What you do know is the generals.
00:12:37
Dan Sanchez
Like, you know, go be like Christ. Go love like Christ. Go serve like Christ.
00:12:41
Patrick
Yeah.
00:12:42
Dan Sanchez
Go fulfill his great commission. Is there someone that God's called you today to go talk to and impact? Is there someone at work that you could just start gospel conversation?
00:12:52
Dan Sanchez
That doesn't mean you're going to fork the road and have an evangelism conversation and be like, you know, go through the Romans road or anything like that. But you're just asking about the spiritual journey. right you could start those things today and the more you do that man the more exciting life becomes so start walking in those things and realize that we're going to be able to help guide you over the specifics of your calling on the next episode and also if you want to join the community
00:13:22
Patrick
Yep, we could do that too. So yeah, so again, the false belief, calling is not only for people in ministry. There is every believer. We have general callings and we have specific callings. And we look forward to unpacking that a little bit further on the next episode for how we go about discovering that and developing that.
00:13:38
Patrick
So we love you guys. Thanks for listening. Hopefully this is just a good reminder of what you already know, just encouragement in that direction. And let's go deeper and chart some uncharted waters in the next episode.
00:13:48
Patrick
Talk soon. Thanks.