Faithful in every role
The first session at this year’s Northreach Church Camp looked at David and the many different roles he held throughout his life.
Different roles and seasons, each with something to teach and somewhere to serve.
The featured image brings that message together with my own working journey. It moves from collecting trolleys in Years 10 to 12 through BigPond and Telstra, Townsville Computer Man, GYMP Media and video production, school-based IT at Kirwan State High School, regional systems support and my present work as an IT Manager. Along the bottom, each role is connected as part of one continuing path. Above it is the reminder from 1 Samuel 16:7 that people tend to see the outward role, while God looks at the heart. It isn’t meant to present a ladder of increasingly important jobs. It is a picture of different seasons, each with something to teach and somewhere to serve.
I have reflected on that larger journey in my testimony. Looking back, work, disappointment, illness, recovery, family and service no longer feel like unrelated parts of my life. I can see ways God has used each of them to shape me and teach me to help others.
Ian Hussey, Associate Dean of Bible & Theology in Queensland at Morling College, began in 1 Samuel 16. Samuel visits Jesse’s family looking for the person God has chosen. He notices the sons who look like they should be the obvious choice, but God sees something different:
People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.
1 Samuel 16:7
David isn’t even in the room. He is out looking after the sheep, doing ordinary work away from the important gathering. Yet he is the person God has chosen.
The field wasn’t wasted time
It would be easy to treat David’s years as a shepherd as the unimportant part of his story, before the real work began. The session challenged that idea.
Shepherding taught David to care for what had been entrusted to him. It required patience, courage and responsibility, including when nobody else was watching. The young man who protected sheep from lions and bears was being prepared for challenges he could not yet see.
David would go on to be a musician, worshipper, warrior, commander, fugitive, political leader and king. Some changes looked like progress. Others, particularly his years fleeing from Saul, must have felt like the opposite.
The roles changed, but each one gave David another place to serve.
That doesn’t mean David was faithful in every moment. The Bible doesn’t hide his serious failures, particularly later in his life as king. The point isn’t that every role made David perfect. It is that every role gave him an opportunity to serve faithfully, and that he still needed God’s grace when he failed.
Looking at my own working life
This part of the message made me think about the different jobs and responsibilities I have held myself.
I started out collecting trolleys while I was in Years 10 to 12. From there came BigPond and Telstra, running Townsville Computer Man and GYMP Media, working as a computer technician at Kirwan State High School, supporting schools as a regional systems technician and now working as an IT Manager.
Written as a list, it can look like a fairly conventional career ladder. One role leads to another, with each new title appearing more important than the last.
But that isn’t really how I experienced it, and I don’t think it is the lesson in David’s story.
Collecting trolleys taught me to turn up, work hard and do repetitive jobs properly. Working at BigPond helped me take my first steps into IT and support people trying to connect. Running small businesses required initiative, creativity and responsibility for the outcome. Working in schools gave that technical work a clear community purpose. Regional work broadened my view beyond one site, and management now asks more of me in leadership, strategy and enabling other people.
None of those roles was wasted. Each developed something different, and each placed people and responsibilities in front of me that mattered at the time.
Faithfulness is not a job title
The question I took from the session wasn’t, “What position am I eventually going to reach?”
It was much simpler: What is God asking me to do with where He has placed me today?
Sometimes that means leading. Sometimes it means learning, creating, protecting something entrusted to us or encouraging another person. Sometimes it means doing work that few people notice. It can also mean waiting through a season that does not feel like progress.
David could not see the complete journey from the sheep paddock. The people around him certainly could not see it, but God could.
I don’t need to know every step ahead to be faithful now. I can use the skills, experience and opportunities already in my hands, serve the people God has placed around me and remain open to whatever role comes next.
That is the thought I want to carry home from this first session: whatever the role and whatever the season, serve faithfully where God has placed me.