There are important historical reasons for making a distinction between ministry and vocation.
Is It Cake? on Netflix is a minor hit reality show hosted by longtime Saturday Night Live cast member, Mikey Day. Like the movie Snakes on a Plane, the show’s premise is right there in its name. Among an array of ordinary objects — say, boots, bowling balls, or boxing gloves — is one object that is actually a lookalike edible construction made by a master baker.
Competing bakers have eight hours to complete a challenge and present their cakes to a panel of judges. The verisimilitude of the resulting cakes is nothing short of amazing. In other words, they look so real the judges can’t believe their eyes. All the cakes are worthy, but only one baker wins the episode's cash prize, which I suppose could be spent on more plain fondant, food coloring gels, air brushes, and silicon sheet pan liners.
The premise of Is It Cake is helpful in considering what ministry is. Is something an actual duffle bag or is it a “duffle bag” (with air quotes)? Nowadays many things are called ministry, but not everything called “ministry” is ministry. Most often something church people attach the ministry label to is something different but just as important: run-of-the-mill, everyday, inglorious vocation. There are important historical reasons for making a distinction between ministry and vocation.
This month marks the anniversary for when Martin Luther’s fellow reformers were called to the city of Augsburg in 1530 to defend their teaching and preaching before the Holy Roman Emperor and the pope’s representatives. Ever since Luther’s appearance at an imperial Diet almost a decade earlier, the reformer himself along with his teaching had been outlawed in the empire under the Edict of Worms. Everywhere outside of the territory of Frederick III (Luther’s ruling sovereign or prince), teaching Luther’s theology was a life-and-death affair. So Luther had to stay in Frederick’s castle and under his protection 130 miles away at Coburg.
On June 25, the reformers did a public reading, in both Latin and German, of twenty-eight articles written by Luther’s colleague, Philip Melanchthon. What came to be known as the Augsburg Confession was rejected out of hand by Rome, but years after Augsburg, under agreements called “Interims,” whether your prince signed onto the Confession (or the “Augustana”) determined if you were able to teach and preach with any freedom. For the reformers’ allowed through the centuries, it has become a roadmap to delivery of the gospel, organization of church, and understanding the life of faith. Almost every Lutheran congregation still includes it in their constitution.
It’s in the Confession that we get some direction for how to think about ministry and vocation. Article V of the Augustana talks about how God brings about saving faith in Christ’s work. It says that God is the actor who creates faith through means, that is, through tools. The means the article points to are the gospel and sacraments. Because the Confession was read publicly at Augsburg in both Latin and German, the two languages use different vocabulary to name the means.
For the reformers, ministry and preaching were synonymous.
In Latin, Melanchthon names the article “De Ministerio Ecclesiastico” or in English “On the Church’s Ministry.” In German, the article is named “Vom Predigamt” or “On the Office of Preaching.” For the reformers, ministry and preaching were synonymous. Ministry is God’s action in delivering Christ’s benefits in the proclamation of the gospel (in preaching and absolution) and the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
Ministry isn’t something Christians do. Human beings are the vessels through whom God does ministry. Strictly speaking, in the Augustana it’s not accurate to talk about the church’s various ministries, because they don’t belong to the church. The church is merely the place God’s ministry happens. All those times in my thirty-six years as a pastor when I’ve talked about “my ministry,” I should have been called out for breaking the Seventh Commandment by appropriating the Holy Spirit's job.
If ministry is described in Article V as Word and sacrament, vocation comes up in Article VI, “On the New Obedience.” There Melanchthon says that the saving faith produces a life in line with God’s will by doing good works. Within each of our webs of relationships God has established connections with others so we might serve them and they in turn might serve us. Our many vocations stem from those relationships, many of them long-lasting (parents and children, siblings) but some fleeting (other drivers on the road, your supermarket checkout clerk).
We can’t assume vocations are easy. The giving of yourself for the sake of another in our vocations is costly — even deadly (I remember this as I write on Memorial Day). Because of sin, we turn in on ourselves and away from others. But when the faith mentioned in previous articles of the Augustana happens, we’re freed to turn outward again in obedience to God’s will within our vocations.
Justification requires that Christ be preached, and vocation happens because of God’s ministry in gospel and sacraments.
Most people point to justification by faith (found in Article IV of the Confession) as the central teaching of the Reformation. But vocation is its equally weighty partner. They’re like two sides of a set of scales, with ministry in Article V as their balancing point. Justification requires that Christ be preached, and vocation happens because of God’s ministry in gospel and sacraments. We can serve others unbound by the ulterior motives of sin, because we’ve been freed by the good news of Christ.
We can find vocation in many other places in Luther’s works. In his 1520 On the Freedom of a Christian, he argued that Christians do good works for two reasons. First, we serve because our neighbors need our good works. Second, we do them because, in faith, we see how our sinful core hates letting go of control and we respond with good works as self-discipline. But in neither case does the “New Obedience” merit salvation. The Office of Ministry already declared that done by Jesus.
In On the Councils and the Church in 1539, Luther provided a list of seven marks of the church: the presence of the Word, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, forgiveness of sins, people set apart for the preaching office, worship, and suffering. It’s in that final item that Luther argues vocation is found: in our possession of the cross. All giving requires us to give up a piece of ourselves, to let go. Giving is always somehow dying.
In education circles it’s common to hear talk of vocation in secular terms. Usually it’s spun as a kind of self-fulfillment, a thing to be enjoyed or relished. But for Christians, vocation is where we heed Jesus’ call to pick up our crosses and follow him. The mark of suffering in the church could look like persecution and martyrdom, but it could just as well be found in nighttime comforting of your crying baby, paying your taxes, or waving another driver through a four-way stop.
With a distinction between ministry and vocation in place, we might ask where preachers fit in the scheme. They’re there among the seven marks. We set people apart who are apt mouthpieces for God, master bakers of a sort. They know who Christ is and what he’s done, and we call them to serve God’s ministry. When someone is ordained, they’re established in a relationship with those who receive the Gospel and sacraments. Thus, being a preacher is a significant calling but is not one greater than other vocations or different in substance. It’s simply one your pastor has been given to add to the rest of their God-given web of relationships.
Now you can play the church version of Is It Cake? by asking “Is it ministry?” Here’s a list to test yourself to see if you can tell the difference between ministry and “ministry.”
- Announcing the forgiveness of sin on account of Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, and ascended.
- Everything else we do to serve others.
Both are vocations, but the first is ministry. If you chose the first as Christ’s ministry cake, there’s no prize, because that was already given on the cross. But you can still revel in the unsung theological secret power of vocation and see your own many callings as Christ working in you. It’s mighty tasty, too.
