Vocation as a Vessel: Sharing Christ Through Your Calling

Vocation as a Vessel: Sharing Christ Through Your Calling

May 30, 2025

Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett

Co-host: Dr. Gary Dull

Guest: Nathan Crockett

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 5/30/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Isaac Crockett:

Well, welcome to this Friday edition of Stand In the Gap Today. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and I’m coming from just over the Pennsylvania border and New York state. Our producer Tim is down at our normal studio between Reading and Philadelphia, and my co-host today is Dr. Gary Dull, the senior pastor of the Faith Baptist Church, and he’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. So Gary, thanks so much for being on this program today. Kind of spread out and we’ll introduce our guest in just a moment. But thank you, Gary, for being on with us.

Gary Dull:

A delight to be with you, Isaac, and I should call my name Crockett because our guest is a Crockett. You’re a Crockett. I’m just a Dull. So

Isaac Crockett:

I’m

Gary Dull:

Completed two pieces of bread.

Isaac Crockett:

I should have asked Tim to play the Davy Crockett theme song and see how many people recognize

Gary Dull:

That. Yeah, I would recognize it,

Isaac Crockett:

But you’re right. The other Crockett today is my brother. There’s four of us brothers pretty close in age. One of my older brothers, Dr. Nathan Crockett, and he’s been on this program before a couple of years ago, was the last time he was on, and we discussed business as missions. And Nathan is a professor actually of theology and Bible, but he’s also an entrepreneur and has a lot of businesses. And so we looked at that. But today I want to talk with him about how any vocation, any work can be something that we are called to do, to be used for ministry. So Nathan, thanks for coming back on the program and thanks for taking time to be with us today.

Nathan Crockett:

Yeah, yeah, my privilege, and I’m on Dusky Island here in South Carolina, so looking out at the ocean right now, it’s a beautiful little island with no bridge you get here by boat. So yeah, we’re, all of us talking on this call are in all different parts of the nation, but it’s a privilege to be with you today on the radio.

Isaac Crockett:

Well, thanks Nathan. And yeah, thanks for rubbing that in where I am in New York State normally the summer is beautiful and it is beautiful up here, but it’s been wet and colder than normal in the forties and fifties a lot of days, so being down on the ocean sounds great. But Nathan, I want to start by asking you the last time you were on this program, again, I think that was back in 2023, Sam Rohrera and I were talking to you and we went into this idea of using business as missions. It’s something you have spoken on and you’ve helped with retreats about that and things, but today I want to get a little more general with any vocation anywhere you are. We spend so much of our day at work and sometimes as Christians, we can almost compartmentalize it and almost think of that as a spiritual waste of time and it doesn’t need to be and it shouldn’t be. Can you tell us a little bit about your day job though, because your day job is different than most people listening. You’re a professor at a Christian university, and so maybe you could just tell us a little bit about your first calling to the job of being professor.

Nathan Crockett:

Yeah, that’s a great question, Isaac, and I think you’re exactly right that often we formed this invalid dichotomy, oh, are you going into ministry? Are you going into business as if you’re in the ministry? You don’t have to have any business sense, which would be false. Or if you’re in business, you’re not even thinking about ministry, which no matter, whatever God calls us to do, we should see it as our ministry. As far as being at Bob Jones University, I’ve really enjoyed being there. I just received a few weeks ago the 20 year teaching award, which I think the first six years was a graduate assistant and those count for half or something like that. So I think I’ve been teaching since 2002, so about 23 years in some role and then started the businesses while I did that, and the Lord really blessed our business and real estate investments.

So yeah, I mean one of the things I like about it, I don’t know if it makes me feel old young because I’m double the age. I’m 45, so I’m more than the age of my students, but I like just the constant daily interaction with young Christian students who the vast majority of them are pretty serious about serving the Lord and just talking to them. And I get privilege of teaching not just Bible majors, but I teach accounting majors and history majors and pre-med majors and teach a lot of their general Bible classes like hermeneutics how to study the Bible and the Bible doctrines and just trying to encourage them that, look, you’re going into ministry, even if you’re going to be an accountant, you’re going into ministry even as a pre-med major. And that doesn’t mean that you have to go do it in Africa.

I that’s great if some of the students do, but even if you’re in a Hilton Head, South Carolina or you’re up in Corning, New York or wherever you’re at, God has called us to live lives on mission and to be in ministry. And so we have five kids. Our youngest is seven years old, our oldest is 14, I guess we really have seven kids. We started with two miscarriages. So we have a couple of kids in heaven, but we want them, maybe God will call some of them to be a pastor or a missionary in the typical sense of the term, but whatever God calls them to do, we want them to realize their life should be on mission and all of us are about ministry. And so even in that term, I’ve talked to some missions friends of mine about the term business as missions. Well, we all really should be on mission no matter what we’re doing. So I think you make a really good point about that. We often slice them as if they’re two separate things and I realize people are talking about full-time vocational ministry, but really whatever God calls us to do, we should try to do it to the best of our ability and see the people around us as a mission field.

Gary Dull:

Well, Nathan, let me say congratulations on 20 years of teaching, actually 23 years of teaching there at Bob Jones University. And you say you’re 45, my, you’re just a child, yet my dear friend, you’ve got a long way to go. Wait till you’re 72 or 73 like I am. And I will say to you, the best is yet to come. But thank the Lord for the ministry that God has given you there. And I’m wondering if you can tell us about a practice that you started off offering Bible study bibles to your students, which is a part of what led you into entrepreneurship so that you could have funds to purchase these bibles. Explain to our audience how that all came together.

Nathan Crockett:

Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, when I grew up, so I was born in 1980 I think for maybe my, this would be similar, I’m sure for Isaac, but I feel like probably in the sixth graders. So I got a Thompson chain reference Bible I really like. I remember it wasn’t very well bound, it was like a hardback. And one time in a rainstorm I looked and I blew pink all over my pan suit coat or whatever because the diet had not set very well on that particular Bible. I think I sent that Bible and I believe from my eighth grade graduation, I got a black leather Schofield Reference Bible with my name and boss on it, but probably I think it was my junior or senior year of high school that the MacArthur Study Bible came out. And at least in my opinion, and not, I mean I like Thompson Chamber reference Bible, I like the Scofield reference Bible, but those were more referenced Bibles with maybe a few hundred notes about the passage.

And when the MacArthur study Bible came out, it had thousands of study notes. And then not too long after that, the ESV study Bible came out and just a lot of the publishers, Thomas Cross, others started coming out with a huge variety of really helpful study bible apologetic study Bible. While during this time after MacArthur study Bible was published, I’m teaching a class in hermeneutic how to study the Bible. And it’s hard to encourage students to go out and spend a couple thousand dollars on a big commentary set. And again, 23 years ago, there’s not much with Bible software and so on or the Bible software that’s out. There’s really expensive. And so I started encouraging students. I was like, look, if you have a birthday coming up or when I would teach in the fall semester, we’d have final exams a couple weeks before Christmas.

I would say, you need to ask for study Bible for Christmas. You need to ask for study Bible for your birthday. And some students did, and I would get emails back from them or I next year. And if you Bible, as I read the Bible now I can look down at the bottom and see all these notes and I’m just understanding the Bible better and it’s so much more enjoyable. Thank you for recommending that. But I would also get emailed saying, I wish I could study Bible, but a nice letter study Bible, 50 70 bucks my parents,

Isaac Crockett:

I’m going to cut in right here, Nathan, and let’s finish that story on the other side of this break, but the importance of having a Bible that you can study these study Bible notes, it led you to some thinking. We’re going to talk about that when we come back from this brief timeout. Welcome back to the program. We’re talking about vocation as a vessel sharing Christ through your calling on Pastor Isaac Crockett and Pastor Gary Dull is on as my co-host today. And we’re talking to my brother Nathan Crockett, a professor at Bob Jones University, but also businessman and an entrepreneur. And Nathan, you were just answering Gary’s question, but you were talking about the importance of giving these study bibles to your students and the expense was involved and we had to cut you off to go to the break, but I want to have you finish that story because I think it’s a very helpful learning story.

Nathan Crockett:

Yeah, thanks for following up on that, Isaac. As students would come and say, boy, my parents can’t really afford a $60 leather study Bible or whatever, I started, I talked it over with Abigail. I’m like, Hey, maybe for some of these students who can’t afford it, we would be able to buy one for them and kind of give it to them. And so we started out with a handful of students and then as the Lord started blessing our businesses, we started realizing like, Hey, maybe we can make that available for all the students. So I guess I’ve maybe kind become known for that a little bit about James University with each student that takes a class and now offer them a study bible and a journaling Bible and a reading bible. So we’ve had the privilege of, I don’t know the exact number, but I think I’ve had probably about 20,000 students.

Some of them have probably got more than one Bible, some probably haven’t got a Bible at all, but to give out thousands of study bibles. And then some of our businesses, we’ve tried to give out just regular Bibles as well with several of our businesses. So we’ve been able to give out several thousand regular Bibles to people who are either believers or not believers that give out a number of study Bibles students at Bob Jones University. And I feel like that’s been a privilege to do that. And one of the benefits of reward blessing our businesses,

Isaac Crockett:

And I love that story because you as a professor saw this need and then the Lord used your entrepreneurial mindedness and started saying, Hey, you made a little money doing this or that, and that money could go towards this need of purchasing these bibles. Sometimes we might sacrifice to purchase something for missions group overseas, but in your case for people you were working with these college students that you were helping to teach and mentor. I also know, and again, this kind of goes back to a couple of years ago when you were on talking about the entrepreneurial things, but back in 2020 when the COVID shutdowns hit, I had a lot of ministry friends that started contacting me because they had seen that I had started working on the side doing a lot of work with you really, that had led me to be able to get more involved here at the American Pastors Network.

And I moved up to Corning and they were saying, Hey, Isaac, is there anything you could do to help me find some supplemental work at this difficult time? Maybe their wife lost their job or as the pastor, the church wasn’t able to support them or a camp ministry, they couldn’t work anymore. There was no camps allowed with all these shutdowns. It’s just very chaotic, especially in the northeast. And so many of them were happy to start working free, working hard, weren’t just giving things out, but working for a Christian employer with Christian people. And it was neat to see how many times friends of mine, pastors and different ministry guys that started doing this other type of work, they got back with me and said, oh, this is so exciting. I got opportunities to pray with customers. Or somebody was really struggling with all these shutdowns and things and I prayed with them, or somebody wanted to know about my faith.

Why am I giving them a Bible as a customer and why am I so happy at scary times or just sharing verses in God’s word while working? And that’s what is so cool about how we can be a Christian all the time no matter where we are. And so I just love to start this segment. Nathan, if you could give us, and we can keep it brief for the radio, but just maybe some of the practical steps that you’ve come across that whatever profession we’re called to, we can use it intentionally to look to meet spiritual needs around us.

Nathan Crockett:

Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’ve found, because we have several hundred team members and employees between over a dozen different businesses, and most of them, probably 95% of them are believers. And so that’s a great opportunity to help support a family of believers. But in some cases, particularly if I’m looking at buying a business, maybe I’m meeting with someone who’s not a Christian. We have a number of commercial and residential real estate properties. So a lot of times I’m maybe doing a lunch with an unsaved commercial realtor. One of the easiest things that I’ve found is just to ask them an unsafe person either, Hey, how can I pray for you about something? Or for me, oftentimes if I’m at lunch with someone, I just say, Hey, you know what? I’m a Christian. I’m going to pray before I eat. I can either do that silently or I can pray for both of us out loud, which do you prefer?

And most of the time, probably 90% of the time they say, oh, yeah, yeah, please pray for me as well. Or they say, oh, I grew up going to church, or it just leads. And sometimes I find out someone that I didn’t even know as a believer, they’ll say, oh, I’m a Christian too. I just didn’t want to say anything. So I think a lot of times just asking someone, how can I pray for you? Or even rather than you’re out to eat. And it’s kind of awkward because there’s a number of people there and most of them are saved, and you kind of quietly pray by yourself in the corner just being upfront about it and saying, Hey, I’m a Christian, and I always pray before I eat because I think everything comes from God. Do you want me to do that for everyone or else I’m happy just to pray silently right here. So that’s just a very small thing, but it’s a way that I found has been quite effective in opening up gospel conversations in the US and even in things I’ve done over in Europe with the soccer team in Belgium. So people who otherwise you wouldn’t normally just go and say, Hey, can I pray you? But before you eat, it’s just a common thing that often can open up an inroad to sharing the gospel.

Gary Dull:

That’s very practical thinking. Nathan, I’m glad you shared that with our audience. But as a business owner, how do you balance the demands of running a business with the desire to be a good testimony and have mission and ministry opportunities along with that?

Nathan Crockett:

Yeah, that’s a fantastic question. And where we’re at now by God’s grace is a little different than 20 years ago, whatever, when I was starting the first several businesses because I started a number of businesses primarily in the pet industry, and then just my wife and I just celebrated 20 years of marriage, and we’ve bought two to three properties on average each year we’ve been married. So built up a portfolio of about four basically residential real estate, multifamily and some commercial shopping centers that we own. But the other businesses like the aerospace, I bought into that tarps.com. A lot of my retail businesses, the restaurants that I own, we just bought, but sometimes people say, wow, you have a lot of different businesses. And I’ll say, well, I try to do what Warren Buffet does, but he does it in the billions and I do it in the millions, so I’m a much smaller player than him, but in the same way that Buffet does, each of my businesses has somebody running a CE president who runs it.

So I’m more like navigating with them or a guide or almost you can look at it like an investor owner but not the operator who’s running the business. And that gives me time to spend time with my wife and my five kids and more just checking up on them. And I have a management team that oversees the businesses and I try to meet with them once or twice a week on a Zoom call. So I don’t want people to think that, oh, I’m running all these businesses. I have incredible people that work with me who are wonderful teams that run the businesses that I own. I think particularly for those who are unsaved in the businesses, which again is maybe five to 6%, they know that I’m a Christian, I’m really open about that. Some of them probably think, oh, he’s this weird Christian Guy, and that number actually would be higher than 5% if I thought about the football called in Belgium, because we have a youth academy with about 500 and there’s probably 30 or 40 coaches there.

And then most of the players are either unbelievers or on the professional team or Muslim, but they all know that I’m a Christian, they know that I pray for things, they give me a hard time about not drinking or smoking, whatever whenever I’m over there. So I think just trying to live a consistent Christian life before them. And then most of our businesses, the majority people are Christians anyway. So if someone works for the business and they’re an believer, they would kind of be the odd man out in that sense because they’re working at something that’s very openly a Christian business. But we don’t typically have that as part of our hiring thing or you have to be a Christian to work here. But most of the people that apply or want to work at most of our businesses are believers. Anyways, I don’t know if that directly answers the question or not,

Isaac Crockett:

And I think we might get into some of this too in the next segment too, but just that balance of being a Christian at work, and I’m thinking even your website that goes through some of the business opportunities you have. We just have a little bit of time here, but maybe you could kind of talk about something like if someone is looking at how can I use what I do for ministry? Or maybe they’re looking to be an entrepreneur to get into something, I don’t know if your website, seven crocketts.com or something like that would be something that you might want to talk about or use as a resource.

Nathan Crockett:

And sometimes it’s thinking I might buy their business or they’re just interested in the types of businesses I own. I’ll send them to seven Crockett’s initially with a family site because my wife and I have two kids in heaven, but five kids here. So there’s seven of us. So seven crocketts.com, and right there on the website we have our mission statement. The Crockett family mission is to steward our God-given resources, abilities and opportunities to love God supremely and serve others sacrificially in the United statement. Why do we have a family mission statement? And particularly I found through social media especially, I do three posts a day on LinkedIn and lately as I’ve been doing that pretty consistently, I’ve got maybe I think 43,000 followers on LinkedIn and I get about 1.5 million impressions a week. So a million and a half eyeballs on whatever I’m posting.

And instead of putting all my business websites there, I just put that family website. So I have Hindus and Muslims and other people say, Hey, I went to a family website. I see you’re a Christian. What’s that? I believe in God or Allah, how is that different than what you believe? Or I’ll have Christians reach out and say, boy, I was scared to share my faith online, but you have a following and you’re very upfront about it. And that gave me a lot of boldness to share my faith. So I get to see some pretty neat direct messages come through even on social media of opportunities just to being a Christian, this is who we are. Just like if someone is a Georgia Bulldog fan or Indiana Pacers fan or whatever, they’re very upfront about that. I think as a Christian, it’s just like, Hey, this is a part of who I am and I’m happy to talk with you about it.

Isaac Crockett:

I love that intentionality of it. It seems so simple. And someone listening, maybe you have a small business that you own, maybe you’re a private contractor or something, and you have a Facebook or social media site or a website. I love the idea of putting that mission statement on there, putting it out there, your intention to serve the Lord by doing a good job of what you’re doing. We want to talk more about that, especially you were bringing up social media and the power of social media for good or for bad, but using that kind of with the same vocational idea, using that as ministry. We’ll talk about that when we come back from this break to hear from our partners. We’ll be right back on Stand in the Gap. Well, welcome back to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and Dr. Gary Dull is with me as my co-host today on this Friday edition of Stand In the Gap Today.

And we’re talking to my brother, Nathan, Dr. Nathan Crockett. We’re all preachers. Nathan’s a professor of Bible, but Nathan is also involved with a lot of different businesses, and we’ve talked to him about that in the past. But today in particular, and if you’re just tuning in, we’re talking about how we can share Christ wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, how we can use our vocation as a vessel for ministry, to minister to other people, to see our coworkers, our customers, the people around us as people made an image of God with souls that we’ll spend eternity somewhere. And whether it’s a Christian we bump into that we can encourage or an unsafe person that we can witness to. There are many, many opportunities throughout the workday, whether you’re working from home or a stay at home parent or retired or you’re a contractor, self-employed, job owner, a manager just working at a factory.

And I know we even have some factories that during their lunch break, they listen to stand in the gap today. And some of you’re maybe just now tuning in. I would encourage you if you’re just now tuning in, if you get a chance to go to our website and to listen to the whole program, listen to the parts you may have missed or re-listen to some parts that we’ve been talking about. And I love that we have a really good website, and I love that we have Facebook and Twitter. It used to be called Twitter x, YouTube. We have several YouTube channels that you can use for your own sake, but I use those social media outlets with American Pastors Network and stand in the gap today. I use those many times to share things on my social media to interact with people that use those.

And I find it very helpful and that, Nathan, you mentioned using social media, it’s something you use for business and yet on there making it known that you’re also a Christian and you have a website that gives a mission statement about your family, about you and about being Christians. And this is a calling of God that whatever you do, you do it to the glory of God. And so I would just like to talk to you about this. If we’re talking about work and things like that for ministry, what about social media? And of course we all know that social media can be used for bad things. You’re a professor of young people, you’re a father of young people. You preach all over the country and a lot of the people you preach to are teenagers or college students. Yet at the same time, we are using it here at American Pastors Network and stand in the Gap media. There’s some neat things that can be done with it. So could you maybe share some of what you have found out about using social media as a ministry opportunity?

Nathan Crockett:

That’s a great question. And one way you can almost think of social media or I guess the internet as a whole would be a gigantic buffet. And on that buffet, there’s things that are bad for you that are really fattening. There’s, let’s say there’s a lot of feeds on there that are poisonous, that are actually lethal. They can kill you, but then there’s other really, really healthy good food there. So obviously there are great things we can do with the internet and there are terrible things we can do with the internet. I’d say the same thing with ai. I think AI can be used as a great tool or it can be used in a lot of wrong ways. So there’s that statement. If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time. I think particularly when it comes to social media, and I realize some families have probably just chosen not to be on it at all.

And I get that, especially if you have teenagers and middle schoolers or elementary kids to just completely restrict it because of the poor thing that’s out there. But if you can be intentional and really set a target, here’s how I want to use Facebook or Instagram or X or Pinterest or LinkedIn, whatever, YouTube, whatever social media platform you are on, it can become a remarkable way to get a message out to a lot of people. And I think if you’re a believer, at least part of your message should be that you’re a believer. And again, if you have business, maybe you’re a plumber and you have a little YouTube channel talking about plumbing and you’re part of Springfield, Illinois or wherever you’re at, that’s great. And I’m not saying you need to start every YouTube video of John three 15, but maybe somewhere when you talk about who you are, you just include that.

And what I’ve found is sometimes just by including that, Hey, I’m an unashamed follower of Jesus Christ. Like I say this on my social media when it talks about me. And then I’ll say I welcome followers of any different religion because for instance, I have a lot of Orthodox Jews from New York or from Israel that follow me on a couple of the platforms. But yeah, I’ll say this is who I am and I’m happy. I actually say on there, I love discussing with other people the difference between Christianity and other religions. And so I think some Christians and certainly not all, but sometimes we feel, and I think even some points in my life, I felt almost embarrassed or like, well, if I tell someone I’m a Christian, will that make it awkward for trying to do business together? But I think as Christians, we live in a really dark world and we need to be the light and salt and we need to just be really, really open about who we are. And I think it’s good for our kids to see that and so on. So a lot of dangers with social media, but it also can be used for a lot of good.

Gary Dull:

Nathan, you’re an amazing fellow. I’ve really not really had the opportunity of following you down through the years, but you’re gifted. You’re a gifted teacher, you’re a gifted preacher, you are a gifted entrepreneur. God is using you in a tremendous way, and I’m just impressed here listening to what you have to say and what you’re sharing with our audience. And I thank you for your testimony and your commitment to Christ and for using the gifts and the talents and the abilities that God has given you to serve him. And as it relates to you and your business, I’m sure that in your businesses as well as on your social media from time to time, if not a whole lot of the time, you may have people who do not really appreciate your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as well as your Christian witness. I’m wondering how you handle negative pushback to that witness.

I hear at the Faith Baptist Church of Altoona where I serve, I have a ministry class. It’s a class of about 12 students who have told me, and they’ve told the church that they will be willing to follow the Lord in the ministry as he leads them. And one of the things I do with them is take them out on the regular basis or from time to time anyway to pass out gospel literature. And one of the things that I’ve tried to teach them is how to respond or react to those who reject them when they go to give them a gospel track or whatever. How do you handle that rejection in a positive way? So my question to you, and I’m certain that there are many people who are associating with this matter, how do you handle negative pushback to your witness? Because no doubt you’re working out there with a lot of unsafe secular minded people.

Nathan Crockett:

Yes, that is a fantastic question. And I think just in general, people who’ve been in business, I know a believer here in my area who owns a granite shop has been very successful, one of the largest granite shops in our state, I think. And a few years ago we had a doctor come in who was a Hindu who asked him to carve an idle out of granite. And he respectfully declined doing that. And the guy really pushed it and put on better business bureau and was threatening to sue him and trying to shut down his business. But he stood firm and said, I’m a Christian. I’m not going to carve an idol. There are other granite fabricators that will. And so I think for us, it’s been like some of our businesses that we give Bibles, probably 95% of the time people take it, probably 5% of the time people reject it.

And probably 1% of the time people get really upset when they reject it. I’m an Orthodox Jew, how dare you offer this to me. I think it tends to be the people that reject usually are really avowed, atheist, orthodox Jews or just, it tends to be like people from California or someplace. They’re just very, very liberal and say, boy, you offer me a Bible as you trying to shove religion down my throat. I don’t need any of that. I think religion’s what’s wrong with this world? So we do get that. And again, that at this point is more the people operating my businesses. Similar thing, like I talk about prayer. Many of, for instance, with Crockett Doodles or Crockett pups, people will come from all over the US off into South Carolina or New York where Isaac is to pick up a puppy that’s been raised in this person’s home.

And many of our guardian homes will say, Hey, I know you’re driving back 12 hours or whatever with this new puppy. Is it okay if I pray with you that God will bless this new puppy in your home and you have this Bible now and I’m the Christian and our founders are Christian? Can we pray with you? And I talked to the families that do that. Most people, even if they’re not a Christian, are really thankful for that. Oh yeah, yeah, pray a blessing on this puppy. Pray a blessing on our trip. But there are some people who say, no, I’d rather not. And there are others that get upset about that. And we have very, very few negative reviews that some of the negative reviews are about. They tried to shove a Bible down my throat and so on. We try to do it in a nice way and we try to just respond in kindness.

Or we’ve had people that say, oh, I was planning to get a puppy from you, or I was on tarps.com, but I see that you’re a Christian, so I’m sure you won’t sell a pup to a whatever family that’s a trans or homosexual or whatever. And we say, Hey, we’ll sell our product to whoever. We will let someone adopt a puppy as long as you’re going to provide this puppy with a really good home. But we do believe what the Bible teaches about marriage and so on. So we try to be bold but kind. And when people reject that, that shouldn’t surprise us. Sometimes I’m surprised that we don’t have more people reject it. And same thing with social media. Most of the things I get back are really kind, but some people are like, don’t show religion down my faith. And I’ll usually try to say, I was not trying to do it in that kind of way.

This is what I believe. You’re a Muslim, you’re a Hindu. I really haven’t on social media, have as much pushback from other religions as more from the secular mindset. The atheistic don’t talk about religion at all other religions. It’s more like, Hey, can I try to convince you of why I’m a Jehovah’s witness or why I’m Muslim? But it seems like the really, the worst pushback I usually get are just from the secularists who think you shouldn’t talk about religion at all. That’s your private life. Keep it private. Please don’t talk to us about that.

Isaac Crockett:

I find that very interesting. And Paul, who was a tradesman, he was a brilliant theologian, the apostle Paul, but he decided to support himself by making and selling tents, which I think is a really interesting conversation to have some time. But he says in Romans 1416, let not your good be evil spoken of. And he talks about going the extra mile and trying to help a weaker brother and things. But that’s very interesting. I think we have to be prepared. There can be pushback when we are a Christian testimony even at work, but be prepared to handle it with grace and kindness. Well, we’re going to take our final break to hear from our partners one more time, and then we’re going to come back and kind of wrap things up here with my brother Nathan Crockett, my co-host Gary Dull. We’ll be right back on Stand in the Gap today.

Welcome back to the program. If you’ve been listening to the whole program, you know that there’s three of us preachers talking today, and two of us are brothers biologically and all three of us brothers in the Lord. But I’m a pastor Isaac Crockett, pastor Gary Dull is with me as my co-host and my brother, Dr. Nathan Crockett, a Bible professor and entrepreneur. We’ve all been talking and discussing how we can use the vocation to which we’ve been called to work as a vessel for the gospel that we can see all of our life as ministry, stewarding our time and our livelihoods for God’s kingdom and sharing Christ through our calling. And whether you’re at home or at a business place or a factory or in a vehicle driving somewhere, whatever you are doing and whatever you’ve been called to do, God can use that. In fact, I’m preaching this Sunday on Zacchaeus who was a tax collector, seems to be maybe a self-made wealthy man, and yet God calls him, gets a hold of his heart and could use him.

So some very interesting things that we’ve talked through. If you’ve only been able to get part of this program, I would highly encourage you to go back, especially using our app, our Stand in the Gap app. It has an archive of all of our radio and television programs. It has highlights of the programs. If you don’t have time to listen to all of them, it has transcripts, all kinds of really helpful information, and it’s also really easy to use that to share it with maybe a grandson or a niece or a friend or a neighbor, a coworker, church member that you’d like to share some of this information with. But as we come to this last part of our program, Nathan, we’re kind of wrapping things up. I’d just like to give you a chance for any kind of final thoughts. Maybe somebody who’s listening and he or she really never thought about using the workday as an opportunity to glorify God as an opportunity to encourage other believers and to be a witness even just by the way we live.

I found that out sometimes working in places where I was the only Christian or studying with people where I was mostly the only Christian student, that just having a testimony God’s light can shine through us and attract people at least get their attention. And so maybe some ideas, ways that somebody who’s not been working about how they could use their work, maybe a hobby that they have, maybe a side hustle, maybe social media, any of these things that we enjoy doing, any thoughts of how we can use that to redeem the time. Our dad, his favorite passage was out of Ephesians five 16 where it talks about redeeming the time because the days are evil. So Nathan, just some ideas of how we can take the things we’re doing and also use them to be redemptive and intentional. I think that’s a word you’ve been using, but being intentional about being a Christian.

Nathan Crockett:

Yeah, thanks for that question, Isaac. And I guess I want to say too, just so I’m not a hypocrite that I don’t at all feel like I’m perfect in this. I feel like I’m still learning and trying to do better and frequently convicted that I didn’t take opportunities that maybe were presented to me and I did not take those to be evangelistic. I think as a kid, and you would notice Isaac with our dad being a pastor and us going every Wednesday night door to door soul and getting to share the gospel with a lot of people, but it almost to me witnessing felt like this. Climbing a mountain, it was something I need to do, and I enjoy it after I’ve done it. But it’s almost difficult. It’s rigorous, it’s so hard, it’s embarrassing. I’m knocking on someone’s door, I’m sharing the gospel with them.

And that’s certainly one way to do it, and I’m thankful for churches that have those kind of ministries. But I think the older I get, I see it more as this is a part of who I am and just like it’s not hard for me to talk about my wife and my five kids because I love them. So they make their way into illustrations in my theology classes or if I’m preaching at Bob Jones or preaching at camps or preaching at churches, I naturally tend to, people don’t know me very well before they know that I’ve got five kids that I love because I love them, and so I just naturally talk about them. So I think being strategic, I think it would be weird to have a social media account and people not know that I’m a dad, and I think it’d be weird to have a social media account and people not know that I’m a Christian.

If this is a central part of who I am, why wouldn’t I talk about it? So I think there are strategies. I think there are specific things that I know often just asking a wait or waitress, what can I pray for you about? I’m a Christian and trying to leave a generous tip, things like that, that are specific strategies. But for a lot of it’s, maybe it’s a mindset shift. It’s not, oh, I’m a Christian on Sunday and Wednesday night and then the rest of the week I’m just at my job. This is part of who I am, and so I’m naturally going to talk about it. I don’t want to be obnoxious or annoying about it, but it’s just overflow of what God’s doing in my life. I’m trying to share that with others.

Isaac Crockett:

I love that. That’s such an encouraging for all of us, whether you’re going out and intentionally handing out tracks at a busy street corner or knocking on doors or going to a community festival. But wherever you are, even on social media with complete strangers, even with family members at a family reunion or at work with your coworkers, letting it be known what you believe. Gary, I want to go to you because you’re in full-time Christian ministry as a pastor, and you have so many ministries that you work with, so many different ministries with the missions and radio and other media that you’re involved with in Capitol Hill and Harrisburg. But you also are a father and as a father, you’re the father of a pastor, you’re the father of an entrepreneur, a businessman who has many people working for him, and you’re the father of a military expert who is teaching and training our young troops. As you reflect on how Christians from all vocations, from all walks of life are called to use their callings, what they do for God, what are some of your final thoughts as we close out this program on these ideas?

Gary Dull:

Isaac, something that’s been going through my mind as we’ve been talking with your brother Nathan, is the word vocation and the word avocation. And I’ve always taught this and I believe it, that our vocation as Christians is our Christian life experience and ministry. Paul says in Ephesians chapter four, verse one, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseeched you, that you walk worthy of the vocation, wherewith you are called. What is that vocation? It is our Christian life, our Christian experience, and our ministry. Some of us have the privilege of seeing that our avocation and our vocation are the same thing. In other words, you and I and your brother Nathan, we get paid as it were for the ministry that we are involved in. Our vocation isn’t necessarily the fact that we are a pastor or a teacher or a Bible college professor or whatever the case is.

Our vocation is who we are in Christ and what God has called us to do. Our avocation is how we make a living in our day by day life. And I’ve thought about that many times down through the years because a number of years ago, Isaac, I knew a printer and he went to work every day and was involved with printing mostly secular material. But I remember one day in talking with him, and he said to me, he said, pastor Gary, my printing press is my pulpit. And I use that printing press as my pulpit to proclaim Christ in every opportunity that I have. And I think that goes along with what Nathan was talking about there. Our pulpit is what we do. Maybe our pulpit is to own businesses. Maybe our pulpit is to take care of animals. Maybe our pulpit is to be an attorney or whatever the case may be.

But as Christians, we all have spiritual gifts. We’ve been saved by the grace of God. We’ve been indwelt by the Holy Spirit. We’ve been given spiritual gifts, and sometimes we’re called into full-time vocational ministry, and sometimes we’re called to be a plumber or a mechanic or a doctor or a lawyer. But wherever we are, we are first and foremost Christians, and we are called to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. And like I said, some in full-time vocational ministry and some in secular vocations. But the spiritual values are to be seen in our lives everywhere. We are ministers of Christ. And so wherever the Lord has put us and whatever our avocation may be, let’s do what God would have us to be and be faithful to him and watch how he will bless us and use us for his honor and glory. I’m greatly thrilled to have been a part of this broadcast today to hear how God is using Nathan, and I think that he can be a tremendous testimony to many people under the sound of our voices today.

Isaac Crockett:

I like what you said there, Gary, and I like that word testimony. I hope that this conversation today, all that is a testimony to you, just kind of something that you can tuck it away and find out little bits and pieces of it that you can apply to your life. Well, Gary, thank you so much for co-hosting today. Nathan, thanks so much for being on today. And Tim, thanks for producing there in the background. On behalf of everybody here at Stand In the Gap Media, thank you for listening, for praying and for supporting this program. Until next time, I pray that you will stand in the gap for the Lord wherever you are today.