March ‘Witness’ explores doctrine of vocation

Have you ever worried that your everyday, humdrum work is distracting you from more important things? Maybe you’ve thought, “If I were a pastor or a deaconess, my daily work would keep me in constant contact with God and His Word. But as a lawyer, a mechanic, a doctor, a stay-at-home mother — it can feel like almost all of my time is used up just trying to get through the day’s work. I only have a few minutes here and there to serve God and come to Him in prayer. Did I choose the wrong line of work?”

For such concerns, Scripture and our Lutheran Confessions offer great consolation. “If you perform your daily domestic task, this is better than all the sanctity and ascetic life of monks,” wrote Luther in his Large Catechism (LC I 145). As Dr. Gene Veith writes in the March issue of The Lutheran Witness (LW), vocation was “at the heart of the Christian life” for Martin Luther.

By “vocation,” Luther didn’t refer just to a religious calling. He didn’t even refer only to the various jobs a person might have. Luther considered every God-given role in a Christian’s life as a part of his or her calling — the work of a mother caring for her child is just as God-pleasing as a pastor consecrating the elements. “Let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him,” as Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians (7:17).

This issue of LW explores the Lutheran doctrine of vocation. Veith gives an overview of the doctrine of vocation; David Van Rooy and Dr. Donna Harrison give us a look into how two specific jobs (military and medical service) are God-pleasing vocations; the Rev. Aaron Moldenhauer unpacks the roles of the pastors and laity in the church; and the Rev. Roy Askins challenges the notion that God has one path picked out for our life that we have to discover.

“Making the right choice, in the end, is not a matter of discovering a hidden plan, secreted away in the mind of God, but rather of being in the Word,” Askins writes.

We hope this issue will be a blessing to you as you faithfully forge on in “the life that the Lord has assigned” to you.

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Posted March 12, 2026