Chances are that when you hear people talk about 'vocation' in church they are talking about a calling to just that - the Church. Whether as a vicar in Britain or a missionary overseas, the idea of having a vocation has for too long been solely liked with spreading the 'word'.

Matt Bird, whose career has spanned a number of different sectors including the Ministry of Defence, Bible College and now management consulting and politics, is determined that the Church reclaims the word vocation to mean 'calling' in its widest sense. The idea for his latest book, Exploring Vocation (Lifestyle, Paternoster) came to him when he was speaking at a youth festival in Europe. A young couple - he a lawyer, she a doctor - were explaining how they felt called to leave their current work and go overseas to work as missionaries. At the end of the interview the host invited young people to consider whether God was asking them to take up full time Christian work.

"I was horrified" recalled Matt. "The impression was given that if you want to serve God with all you are and with your life, then you need to give you your occupation, or profession to do it, and I don't believe that is the case at all.

"I believe God calls people into law and into medicine, and to media, politics and education and every sphere of society, to make a transforming difference for him."

Matt puts our failure to adopt this holistic way of thinking down to a misunderstanding of the gospel. "We have reduced it to a very Western understanding of buying into a set of conceptual truths that mean a transaction happens between us and God that gets us into heaven when we die. Actually, what I think the gospel is, is something that brings salvation to our souls, homes, relationships, work - to every aspect of our lives. Otherwise, a gospel that will just get us into heaven when we die is really just a religion."

Another reason behind our failure to bring God into our workplace is, Matt believes, "our division of the world between places where we feel close to God and places where we feel distant from Him. In order to build church we have said that the world is evil, and you are far away from God there, and so to experience God you have to go to the worship meeting, or your quiet time. This gives the impression that our working life is secular, that it is 'out there' where God has no interest or influence. That kind of worldview that divides the world into secular and sacred has really immunised the church's effectiveness in the parish and society.

"In reality, work consumes between 40 and 60 per cent of our working lives, whether that is in the home, or hospice or shop or factory. To diminish that and say it is merely secular and somehow beyond God's interest and influence really means that we are wasting nearly 60 per cent of our lives.

"Rather, I believe that work is the primary context in which we serve God and live out our faith. Therefore we need to take our glasses off, give them a good clean, and see the world as God sees it, which is a one integrated reality that is the object of his love, and which he will work to restore his regime. To do that he needs us to be politicians, businessmen, teachers, whatever we are called to, to make that transforming difference to the society in which we live."

Matt Bird is Director of Joshua Generation a charity developing leaders to transform society, a strategic management consultant, author Christian Book of the Year 2002 'Manifesto for life' and Councillor for the London Borough of Merton.

email: mattbird@joshgen.org

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