There Are No Small Assignments

In business and in ministry, we sometimes feel that our roles, titles, or assignments fit our potential. Everyone has felt that way at some point.

However, there really are no small assignments. Everything matters.

Are you "stuck" in work you feel is insignificant and at the lowest place on the chain of importance?

Are you doing menial work when you feel you have a greater calling?

Look at David. His entire schooling was doing what kids do in a family like his - chasing ewes, shepherding sheep. He had the lowest job status in the family.

Yet David, apparently, grasped the parallels. He realized that the lowest work was really at the heart of the greatest work. To serve, to lead, to protect a great people was really just a larger context of what he had been doing in his youth - shepherding people, like he shepherded sheep.

He emerges from obscurity from among hundreds of thousands who had great potential.

He emerges from obscurity to leadership. His significance was not hindered by his lowly position. He did his entry level work faithfully. The greater work came later --- yet sooner than he expected.

He was taken from the sheepfolds.

"He chose David his servant and took him from the sheepfolds; from following the nursing ewes he brought him to shepherd Jacob his people, Israel his inheritance. With upright heart he shepherded them and guided them with his skillful hand." -Psalm 78:70-72 ESV

 Keep this in mind when you are tempted to feel like a small person in a small work. You are either doing something that no one else has been called to do in quite the same way at quite the same time and place or you are being prepared for that sort of work.

Or BOTH!

Either way, it is up to God to assign and up to us to accept the assignment. I can think of no greater honor than to be ...  a Servant.

Therefore:

• Take every assignment seriously and preform it with diligence and integrity. Maximize your potential for excellence in every task.
• Hold your head up high. Dignify your assignment and role with the dignity that is a characteristic of your own professionalism and commitment.
• See your part of the job and a component of the greater whole. You are not sorting bricks, you are building a great edifice,
• Learn as you go and grow. Find out everything you can learn about your current role and specialty, even if you do not consider it to be your greatest interest or life calling.
• Find ways to reward yourself in your work. Set goals, accomplish them, and celebrate.

This is your moment. It may not seem like it is, but whatever you are doing, you can dedicate it to God and God's kingdom

My first church job was as an assistant to the assistant janitor for a summer. My second was as a $5 a week song leader in a mission church.

Titles do not matter. Service does.