By Adam Miller

Interstate 25 is a main vein running from Colorados borders north and south through Fort Collins, through Denvers heart and into Colorado Springs, connecting the dots along a mile-high plain of industry and life in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. The air is clean and cool, the people warm and open, and you begin to get the impression the sky may not be the limit. It is a free-thinking place.

College towns abound within a short drive of one another. The University of Colorado at Boulder is often called the Berkeley of the Rockies not only for its high academic standards but for its famously non-Christian atmosphere. During any season, people in Colorado devote themselves to hiking, biking, climbing and other outdoor sports. In Colorado, the thinking might go, no matter what path you take, the sun will still light your way. The state has many Christ-followers, but still too many souls are wandering into dark woods.

Thank God He has sprinkled His salt and light among Colorados slopes and skyscrapers. Yes, God is building His church beneath steeples. But Hes also building His church in corporate cubicles, hospitals, classrooms, on the faculties of colleges, in the offices of law firms ... on the assembly lines of major manufacturers. Gods followers clearly recognize their call to become engineers, librarians, pharmacists, technicians, biochemists, nurses mechanics. In all parts of the continent, as along this strip of highway in Colorado, Gods people are following His path, setting up camp, pursuing excellence and giving Him the glory as they seek to make disciples of all peoplein the North American marketplace.

What does Gods call sound like or feel like? Maybe the call is the desire He has placed in your heart to help people straighten out their finances, to heal people through medicine or to counsel people who cant decipher the legal system.

Many believers are drawn into the mission field as full-time pastors and missionaries. Still others are led into classrooms as teachers, into boardrooms as executives and into courtrooms as lawyers. God sees no partitions between the sacred and the secular callings. His voice is sacred enough to make every calling even those deemed secularmeaningful and divine. Its how we answer the call that determines whether were working for Gods kingdom or our own.

Christian apologist Francis Shaeffer wrote in The God Who Is There that it was philosophers, not theologians and certainly not Holy Scripture, who began to distinguish between the sacred and the secular callings. And it was at this point that North American culture began to drift below what he coined as the line of despair. Below this line, the sacred life had little to nothing to do with the secular life, and the mindset of the Christian culture became one of faith isolated from thinking and, in some cases, doing. In other words, if you could think about it rationally and logically, it must be unsound theologically. This has never been true in Gods economy.

God has called all believers to a life that glorifies Him, and He can do that through a psychologist, a respiratory therapist or a sociologist just as He can with a church planter or other ministry professional.

Case in point? Enter Hewlett Packard employee Mark Anspach who works 63 miles north of Denver.

Mark Anspach, psychologist, makes it easier to use Hewlett Packard products. A portion of his job is asking customers about software. His calling is the transformation of company through transformed hearts. PHOTOS BY ADAM MILLER

Mark Anspach, 38, is on a 10 a.m. conference call at the Hewlett Packard work site in Fort Collins, Colorado. His monitor is filled with jargoned text documenting a product review. Im ready. Go ahead. Then Mark is silent and reading in his cubicle amid pictures of family, friends hes discipling and two engraved plaques for helping establish patents in his field. He stops to ask a question of others on the call, then continues reading. His job requires detailed research, continuous feedback such as this phone call, meticulous questioning of computer users and the know-how to ask the right questionsquestions a psychologist would think to ask. Hes a mediator between the developer of HPs software and the people who use it, and he loves it.

This is where God has called me, he says later. If Mark had followed his original intent, he would probably be a college professor right now. He was pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology, and he already had a  job opportunity at a liberal arts university. For some reason, however, he felt uneasy about pursuing the position.

I thought I was supposed to finish my Ph.D., so I decided to postpone taking the job, Mark says. Then on a whim he applied for a job posting a classmate had seen on the web. The rest is history. A couple of months later he flew into Colorado for interviews, was offered a job sought by nine other candidates and presented with the salary he and his wife had been praying for. For a grad student, it was beyond what we thought could ever be possible.

This is an example, Mark says, of how God uses circumstances to speak. And Mark is an example, you could say, of how God uses the abilities of a top-notch psychologist to speak to lost people in a scientific profession. Of course, Mark has had his deepest spiritual discussions with co-workers after putting the algorithms to bed.

Logic can win a debate, but helping someone on moving day or going on a hunting or fishing trip can develop a friendship, Mark says. Friendships can change lives. And changed lives can mean a changed marketplace.

Mark says God is also using him to change his workplace by bringing Christ-like principles to the job. While hes had many opportunities to jump into workplace politics and return fire in his competitive environment, instead of making life difficult for my enemies, he has helped build people up and improve products.

People often have you in their crosshairs, Mark says. Resolving an issue with integrity and excellence can have a real impact on people you may or may not know are watching you.

How do we know when God is calling us into places that need not only professional leadership, but genuine love? In other words, how do we know when were being called?

When you think of someone who is called by God, its easy to picture someone committing to seminary, pastoring a church or becoming a missionary far, far from home. Its not as natural to think of the Mark Anspachs of the world who serve God by helping lead a company to the cutting edge.

Travel further south from Fort Collins to Denver and youll find people like Greg Bennett, whom God is speaking through even in places that may not be comfortable all the time.

Greg Bennet, respiratory therapist, breathes life into crisis. I wanted to do something where I could help people, Greg adds. When I decided that, the word medicine was like an echo in my head.

Greg Bennetts pager goes off. Its a stat call to the ER, which means hed better hurry. Only minutes earlier he took two pages in

the childrens unit at Littleton Adventist Hospitalboth were children suffering from breathing disorders intensified by the dry air.

Now Greg is rushing to the Emergency Room. He disappears into a room blinded by runaround curtains. Moments later he reappears with his chart and clipboard making notes and breathing easy. When I first started respiratory therapy, I would get flustered when

I heard the word stat. Now I just take my time, do my job and try to become familiar with the patient.

People are the reason Greg is in this profession. Greg originally studied at Texas Tech to work in marketing. Then he went into finance looking for a bigger paycheck, but he found this was not the place for him either.

I was just watching people go deeper into debt and seeing families fall apart, Greg says. My own wife left me during that time for a guy she worked with, and I found myself in a life I knew God didnt want for me.

I wanted to do something where I could help people, Greg adds. When I decided that, the word medicine was like an echo in my head.

Greg researched the medical profession, originally thought of becoming a paramedic and finally settled on respiratory therapy.

Paramedics have one of the hardest jobs in the world, but they get very little time with patients, Greg says. I wanted to build relationships and let patients know that God is using me to meet their need.

Greg remarried, spent two years earning his degree in respiratory therapy and began his career helping people breathe. Hes treated everyone from infants to the elderly and has seen God do some amazing things during times when patients families were in the waiting room wondering if their loved ones would live.

Whats ironic is that Greg has been trying to go into full-time ministry for a few years. He even earned a degree from Southwestern Seminary while working as a therapist in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

At one point I thought God would take me out of this field and put me in a church. I was skeptical about bi-vocational ministry, and I was eager to become a full-time church planter, Greg says. God has continued to close doors. At the same time, He has opened my heart to continuing this work while also opening opportunities to plant churches in the Denver area.

Greg has seen Gods plan in all the doors closed to vocational ministry. Because of his line of work, he has been at the bedsides with patients and loved ones, sometimes for weeks and months. He understands their medical condition and the emotional and spiritual turmoil that come with crisis.

Theres a perceived credibility in the patients mindset, Greg says. They will give me an audience secondary to my real world job, whereas they might feel intimidated or wary of a religious person such as a chaplain or vocational minister.

Still, Greg isnt giving up on his dream of becoming a church planter. In fact, this past summer he participated in opening house churches in Littleton and other Denver suburbs. His unique opportunity there is that hes able to speak to people as a person working in the real world who's also spending his time outside of work as a minister caring for the spiritual journeys of people in Denver communities.

I dont plan on quitting either role anytime soon, Greg says. Theres too much God is doing to reach this area and hes just getting started.

Heres a man whose journey took him from home to the Marines at age 18 and who now, at age 28, is studying sociology, because he knows God is calling him to effect social change.

Don Pence, sociology student, cant wait to get to graduate school. He wants to help society understand a unifying elementJesus Christ. Social cohesion is important to me. I want to help Christians earn a hearing with the world.

Don Pence has just finished his final exams, and hes about to sit down over a plate of spaghetti with his wife and a friend from out of town. His study area, the dining room table, is still cluttered with books on social structure and human behavior, his laptop screen is peppered with shortcuts

to term papers. This ex-Marine running on very little sleep and an adrenaline reserve would pass as any other college student in Colorado except that The Message Bible has been left open amid all the disarray. It seems to symbolize his academic pursuit of helping promote what he calls social cohesion.

Five years in the Marine Corps changed the way he viewed reality. Don worked in a Reconnaissance unit, which means he often worked behind enemy lines gathering data and executing covert operations. He seems to be far removed from such a fast-paced, testosterone-driven culture. However, as a student in sociology and an aspiring agent of social change, Don sees himself as still patrolling critical territory. He views himself as being called to understand a lost world and help others to understand it as well.

Don is in the perfect age range to rub elbows with those who doubt even as fundamental a common ground as language. For example, whats the meaning of the word marriage? Less than a year ago, Don accepted the biblical definition of the word and married his wife Lisa. Members of Vanguard Church, a Southern Baptist fellowship in Colorado Springs, the couple has seen the power Gods love has over differences in lifestyle, dress and background.

What Don wants to do with his degree, his interest in womens studies and his experience in the military is to begin understanding where people develop their mindsets. He plans to move onto graduate studies and possibly even seminary in an attempt to open up a conversation in a world where language is muddled by social norms and undermined by personal interest. In other words, if were interested in stopping moral decay and seeing a world come to Christ, we need to hear the stories of others and guide them by their own experience to a loving Savior.

For Don, this could mean entering the world of teaching, writing or counseling. With a brief stint in womens studies, a far cry from when he eagerly signed the dotted line, Don has even tossed around the idea of working in pregnancy crisis centers or as a mediator between opposing political interests.

I feel like the direction God is pushing me is to go deeper into the trenches yet, Don says. I want to rub elbows with people facing a few more obstacles than those who already have a relationship with God.

Adam Miller is associate editor of On Mission.

Finding the sacred in the secular
By Carolyn Curtis

Whats God up to in the marketplace? Seems theres an eruption of high-profile people claiming that their relationship with Christ is the driving force behind their professional pursuits. Just a few: one of Hollywoods top actors, the son of a beloved U.S. President and the couple who head Americas fastest growing franchise. All three credit Christ with filling the hole that money and fame cannot; with salvation from the pain of sexual abuse, loneliness and rejection; and with pulling them up from bankruptcy to profitability beyond their wildest dreamseven providing money for Gods work.

Mel Gibson
Who expected this actor, dubbed by People as the magazines first Sexiest Man Alive, to provide evangelicals with a movie and a personal witness so stirring that Jesus sacrifice has been on the lips of both the media and the public? The Passion of the Christ, at first the subject of ridicule as nothing more than film folly, became an instant blockbuster with box-office receipts topping $125 million after its first weekend and with reports of audiences sobbing, applauding and even breaking into prayer. Dick Ryan of Newsday said The Passion isnt merely a movie, its a meditation. Said Claudia Puig in USA Today: Mel Gibson has made a movie for the ages. And Joe Morgenstern wrote in The Wall Street Journal about Gibson speaking openly of the personal despair he felt in the midst of vast fame and wealth. No doubt about itthis Hollywood phenom is already among the top 10 highest grossing films of all time. And its director, Gibson, one of the handful of actors to command $20 million per movie, told ABCs Diane Sawyer that he hopes the movie makes people want to read the book. Mel means The Book, of course.

Michael Reagan
This radio talk-show host was born out of wedlock, then adopted by two people. One parent would become an Academy Award-winning actress, and the other would become President of the United States. His adoptive parents told him he was chosen, but the kids at school harassed him. At seven he read one verse in the Bible that made him think he was going to hell. He wouldnt open a Bible again until he was in his thirties. When Michael was eight, a camp counselor sexually molested him. Soon he hated himself and believed God hated him too. As he grew from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, he sabotaged every relationship he cared about because of shame and self-hatred. Michael Reagan did not find his true identity until he found Christ. In his book Twice Adopted (Broadman & Holman, October 1, 2004), he tells about his journey with the refreshing candor he used during the state funeral of his father, President Ronald Reagan. In that setting Michael told princes, prime ministers, congressmen and actorsplus ordinary citizens watching by televisionabout the Presidents deep faith and the sons reassuring comfort at knowing his father now resides with his Lord and Savior Jesus.

Gary and Diane Heavin
Entrepreneur magazine says Curves is the fastest-growing franchise in Americaone Curves for every two McDonaldswith a new fitness center opening every four hours. Who could predict such success? Certainly not its founder, Gary Heavin, who slightly more than a decade ago was bankrupt and sitting behind bars for failure to pay child support. Although Heavin claimed Christ as Savior when he was 13, while incarcerated he rededicated his life (theres a big difference between being saved and allowing God to transform you, hes quick to explain). He and second wife, Diane, founded the fitness franchise for women and now donate millions of dollars to a variety of causesincluding pro-lifedrawing criticism from liberals for being anti-choice. But the Heavins are devoted to womens health, spiritual as well as physical, which is why the exercise beat in many Curves facilitiesby choice of their franchise ownersis praise music. Theres nothing healthy about abortion, says Heavin. The investment of their faith and business philosophy is paying huge dividends by penetrating the culture through the marketplace.

Carolyn Curtis is the editor of On Mission magazine.