Pizza as metaphor for vocation

In our house group we’ve been talking about vocation and employment recently. (Actually we’ve been using a book of studies somewhat variable in quality). Last week we were talking about the difference between vocation or calling and paid employment – what overlap is there between each of those?

It was my turn to lead things so I was looking for an interesting way to talk about vocation. I’ve been influenced by Richard Bolles little book “How to find your mission in life” (also part of “What color is your parachute?”) and like his three-fold approach to this. In a nutshell it’s like this:

• Your first mission in life is to love, worship and serve God.
• Your second mission is to love one another.
• Your third mission is to go that which you have been uniquely gifted to do and enthuses you while carrying out your first two missions.

So your vocation is always framed by loving God and loving one another.

Pizza works well to demonstate this. The base is like Jesus Christ – the bread of life. The love of God like the tomato base that covers the base and undergirds all. The cheese is the love of one another that holds all the rest in place. And then we can add on what we like within that context to create a pizza or vocation that is uniquely ours.

So we talked and then we ate different pizzas. If we’d had more time I’d have had us make them as well.

(Sometime I’ll blog why the emergent church is like a pizza)
Bon appetit!