What does Tribe teach about calling vs occupation?

At Tribe, the teaching on calling versus occupation starts with a simple but important distinction: your occupation is how you make a living, and your calling is what you were born to do. Brian Tome has walked the congregation through these definitions carefully, adding that a ministry is how you make a difference, and that the New Testament never reserved ministry for a special class of people. Everyone has an occupation, and everyone has an invitation to ministry, often right inside the job they would rather complain about.

A recurring concern in Brian's teaching is what happens when these words get mixed up. When calling and occupation collapse into each other, or when calling gets untethered from God's purposes, people end up swinging harder without making progress. He used the image from Ecclesiastes 10:10 to frame it: a dull axe just takes more effort, and the wisdom move is to stop and sharpen the blade. Confusing your calling with a cause, even a legitimate one, can pull a person away from what Brian described as God's most precious possession, caring for people.

The series also took seriously what happens when identity confusion feeds into calling confusion. When a person builds their whole sense of self around a role, a grievance, or an ideology, it warps how they understand what they were made to do. Brian's point was not that occupations or causes are bad, but that none of them were ever meant to carry the full weight of identity or calling. Getting those words sorted out is, in his framing, the sharpening work.

Taught from Ecclesiastes 10:10 · Psalm 18:6