White Collar to Blue Collar

Tomorrow morning I begin my new job with JCB.  Although I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing, I do know that I'll be in assembly. I'm thrilled about the schedule because I'll have my evenings and weekends (at least Sundays) free to be with my family. The only downside is that the mornings will be early (waking up at 4:30), but I'll adjust.

I'm moving from white collar back to blue collar, from being a salaried pastor to working on an assembly line.  This has sort of been the story of my life.  I move from blue collar to white collar to blue collar to white collar, etc.  After working a variety of blue collar jobs in college, I jumped into the white collar world as a school psychologist.  When I went to seminary, I was employed at blue collar UPS.  Upon graduation, we moved overseas into the sort of white/blue collar world of missions work.  After returning home and dealing with my son's cancer, I was hired into the white collar world of pastoral work.  Now I'm going to JCB.  I even bought a couple of blue collar shirts to start.

The beauty of all this is that God doesn't care whether we work a white collar or blue collar job. In fact, this dichotomy is a man-made one. The bible never suggests that one type of job is superior to another. The keys, from a scriptural perspective, are that we are working wherever God has us to the glory of God. This may be in a corporate office, on a dump truck, or at home. Whatever our work, we should do the best we can at it in order to bring God the glory.

I'm extremely thankful to God for providing me with this job.  As with any new occupation, I'm sure it will be full of opportunities and challenges.  I'd appreciate your prayers that I would shine as a light of Christ's kingdom while I'm there.

Related to this, I'm sure that my blogging frequency will begin to decline. I'm probably going to be working well over 40 hours per week. Although that is not a ton, it is certainly more than I have done lately. Therefore, I hope to blog three to four times per week. I'm hoping that a reduction in quantity will lead to an increase in quality.

Thanks.