Nurturing the Call

I'm on a sabbatical from writing for the United Methodist Reporter right now, as I'm getting ready for some big exams coming up in the month of December.

There has been a lot of good content in the Reporter of late, though. Allow me to point you toward some of it, gentle reader.

My friend and colleague Eric Van Meter, a campus minister at the Wesley Foundation at Arkansas State University, has a recent column looking at the importance of nurturing the call to ministry in youth and young adults. Eric has the ability to speak hard truths that are, nevertheless, expressed in great hope for what the church could be.

He writes, "The call to ordained ministry begins with catching the breath of God beneath our wings and seeing where it will take us. In the best of settings, we hear others shouting encouragement throughout the journey."

Eric reflects on the possibility of his own son someday following his footsteps into ministry. He wonders whether the church can move toward a fuller understanding of ordained ministry and a healthier process for those called into that form of service. This is a topic I've taken up myself recently, both in an article on structural change of the ordination process and an article on the reform of personal attitudes in the church.

I think Eric is right on when he directs us to look at our own approach to discipleship and ministry as the best way to set an example for future generations: "We have to be the ones who set positive examples. We have to be the ones to offer them opportunities for meaningful leadership. We have to be the ones who, despite our desire to protect them, go with them to encounter desperate and hurting humanity. We have to step up and be the disciples we want them to emulate."

Eric is good at expressing both frustration with the status quo and a guarded optimism that we can still follow the Holy Spirit's leading toward a more robust church. I think we all need a healthy dose of both of those qualities: the frustration to drive us to seek a more faithful path, and the hope that God ain't done with us yet.

Vocatus Dei - Called of God

In the midst of the blogging I've been doing around the issue of vocation, I came across a wonderful piece of counsel in Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ. It speaks of the great honor and joy, as well as the freedom, to be found in serving God:

"It is a great honor, a great glory to serve You and to despise all things for Your sake. They who give themselves gladly to Your most holy service will possess great grace. They who cast aside all carnal delights for Your love will find the most sweet consolation of the Holy Ghost They who enter upon the narrow way for Your name and cast aside all worldly care will attain great freedom of mind" (III.10).

There is really so much in Kempis about the calling of the Christian life that it makes me wonder if all these thoughts and conversations I've been having recently are somehow arising from my meditations on the Imitation of Christ.

If you'd like to read the other recent posts on Christian vocation, you can find them here and here. The

Do you have a calling?

Do you have a calling? Have you thought about your daily work and tasks not just as your job or your hobby, but as your vocation?

This is a question that has been on my mind a lot lately. And for some reason, I find myself in a lot of conversations about it as well.

The English word vocation comes from the Latin verb vocare, which means to call, to summon, or to name. Thinking about what we do in terms of a vocation instead of just a job or an occupation makes a difference. It causes us to approach our daily work not from the standpoint of what we choose, but rather from the standpoint of how we are called by God.

One of the biggest obstacles for the church to overcome when thinking about vocation is the assumption on the part of many that it is only ministers who are called. But when you get a chance, read the material from the Apostle Paul on spiritual gifts: Romans 12:4-8; 1 Corinthians 12:1-31; Ephesians 4:1-16.

It's clear from the New Testament that spiritual gifts are given to all members of the body of Christ. They "are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each on individually just as the Spirit chooses" (1 Cor 12:11).

When I was in ministry in Searcy, Arkansas, I led our congregation through a study on spiritual gifts where the authors of the study tried to fit all Christians into one of the gifts specifically mentioned in those three Scripture passages. But I don't think Paul is trying to give us an exhaustive list at all. (That's part of the reason the lists differ in each place.) Instead, Paul is showing us a sample of the diversity of gifts that God gives to the church. That's why the Scripture mentions such things as encouraging, helping, and administration. These are expressions of gifts that admit of a great deal of particularity in expression, exactly because the Holy Spirit uses many different means to build up the church.

I firmly believe that God calls every woman and man. We see that visibly in baptism, but the promise of Jesus is that we will also receive a new birth through the Spirit. In that same Spirit, we can - with patience and discernment - discover the gifts that God gives each of us to bear witness to the gospel and build up the body of Christ.

Here's a prayer for discernment, from the United Methodist Book of Worship (p.510):

Almighty God, in a world of change you placed eternity in our hearts and gave us power to discern good from evil. Grant us sincerity, that we may persistently seek the things that endure, refusing those which perish, and that, amid things vanishing and deceptive, we may see the truth steadily, follow the light faithfully, and grow ever richer in that love which is the life of all people; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

I think sharing about our Christian vocation can be a fruitful form of mutual witness. I shared about my own sense of vocation a few days ago in this post. If you'd like to share about yours, please feel free to do so in the comments section.

Putting my vocation into words

I was filling out a 'profile' statement this morning, and I found myself wanting to name my sense of calling in a few short sentences. For me, that calling is both to academic research & writing and practical ministry. And the substance of the calling is the same in both areas, even if it gets expressed in somewhat different ways given the different contexts of university classroom and local church.

Here's what I settled on:

My vocation is centered around exploring and reflecting on how the church can live into a more faithful way of being through disciplined participation in the means of grace. I try to embrace that vocation personally through reading and study, writing for both academic and church audiences, teaching and preaching in both university and church settings, and - perhaps most importantly - through the practical ministry to which I am dedicated as a presbyter in the church of Jesus Christ.

I am drawn to this vocation out of a strong belief that it can help the church live into its calling to be the people of God. That is, I believe most challenges that Christians face in the present era - from the need to embrace fully our identity as disciples of Jesus to the calling to renew the church in its witness and ministry - are dependent on our willingness to pattern our lives in those graced practices given to us by God for our sanctification in faith and the mutual upbuilding of our common life.

I have known of people who spend their entire working lives in occupations they dislike but feel compelled to pursue for one reason or another. In fact, that might describe the majority of the population. And so I'm doubly grateful to be able to approach each day's work as a labor of love, finding great joy and fulfillment in that which God is giving me to do.