At age 24, Brad Grosjean has spent more time carefully considering his life’s path than most people twice his age. Explaining how he thinks about his future, Brad says, “A lot of it has just been trying to figure out a bit of, hey God, how have you wired me when you were thinking of Brad? Why? Like, what was the purpose? What was the goal? What were the strengths? What part of the Body am I here to fulfill? And so a lot of this journey was a ton of exploration during my time in college: figuring out what NOT to do. Hearing God say, Brad, this is not you, my friend. Leave that to your brother and sister in Christ.”

Brad tried on several vocational hats while he was in school. The first was electrical engineering, following in the footsteps of his father and other family members. Next was data analysis followed by the consideration of vocational ministry or finance. As he was ending his college career and graduating, COVID hit. He prayed “all right, God, am I here to do ministry or finance?”

After having some solid internships fall through, Brand received a call from his church, where he had been a summer intern. They asked him if he was looking for a job. He comments, “And so there was a door that opened, and I said all right, God, you open and I’m walking through it.”

His first assignment was as a youth pastor, followed by other roles and responsibilities. He says, “I got to wear a lot hats, which was fun and a great experience. And then after a year, our finance guy stepped down and they said, hey, this is your background. Do you want to take a stab at this? I said, this is a terrible idea! And they said, No, no, you’ll be fine. We won’t let you bring down the church. And so it’s funny how through this whole process I was thinking one or the other, and really it was God just giving me an open door to explore and get to do a few different things.”

When asked when he realized that all work is worship, Brad says “I would say for most of my life. I had a poor theology of work and faith. I always would be so enamored by the people who were doing the big time ministry, people who were on the stage giving massive talks and those who were going overseas to do missionary work. And thank God for those people because I respect it and it’s needed. But there was a part of me that really thought that the other work, quote unquote, to go do all these other vocations, just wasn’t as important. It doesn’t mean people’s value is less important. I just really thought that my work might only be important if I were sharing the gospel with someone. It wasn’t until midway through college that I stumbled across a podcast called Master of One by Jordan Raynor. That changed my thinking. I asked myself, wait a minute, can one person really love the Lord through their work? If it’s not a church job, if it’s not being a missionary, maybe I got this wrong. Then I start seeing scriptural evidence for this way of thinking.”

An experience with a broken pipe last Christmas Eve during extreme outside weather brought home to Brad what he calls a “gut punch, waking me up to what ministry looks like at work. Christmas Eve, as you can imagine for many churches, is one of their biggest services of the year. It’s a time where even some people who don’t really want to go to church will go because it’s important to their family or tradition. And so we don’t want anything to go wrong then.”

As Brad is conversing with a parishioner, he hears a drip, drip, drip, louder and louder, coming from the stairway. As he rushes in with a bucket, the pipe bursts, covering him in sewage. Water is everywhere. Sirens are going off. He says that he called to God “Why? Why now? Why me? Why does this have to be happening? And it was there in that moment that I feel like God just kind of put his hand on my shoulder and says, Kid, this is ministry. I felt like I’m looking at a parable of how this world really is.”

He continues, “And I’m looking at the gospel because I see this place that’s now all of a sudden a wreck. I mean, we try to make our buildings look really nice. It doesn’t look that way anymore. I’m imagining this is the world. This was Eden. Eden was made to be so perfect. God created it. It was good. And then here we go. It’s now messed up because of sin, because of our decision to go away from Him. But I think of 2nd Corinthians 5, which says that we are ambassadors of Christ and how God has invited us into his ministry of reconciliation that goes both into souls, into people, and how we treat them. But the gospel also extends to how we heal the world that is broken and that goes into the physical realm as well.”

He concludes: “So here in this moment where I see something that’s broken, I hear God saying, you’re up, time to go to bat. Bring restoration into this moment. And at no point in doing that did it feel fun. But in doing that, I did feel like I could look at my work life and go, this is ministry. I get it now.”

Brad is the Operations Manager at Horizon Community Church. He is also a key leader for the At Work on Purpose Young Professionals ministry.