Calling and Vocation PowerPoint – Don Payne
Summary of a few points from today’s discussion:
- The range of vocational choices available to us is historically unprecedented. Most people in the world do not have or have not had the luxury of thinking about their sense of “fulfillment” in what they do. They are preoccupied with surviving or getting by.
- Having to work apart from a sense of value or calling can be experienced as a tremendous loss or “death” when we have previously known the joy of that integration.
- It is easy to avoid taking responsibility for our lives and decisions by hiding behind passionate requests that God show us what to do.
- God has given some the gift of simply enjoying or delighting in what we do. As Christians we can come to a place of thinking differently about others and ourselves in the context of what we do, as well as our tasks in and of themselves.
Question for continued reflection: In what way(s) does our understanding of calling and vocation reflect or affect our understanding of God?
Denver Seminary\'s Christian Thought Student Fellowship 
September 7, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Because I understand God to be Creator, and as such, a God who is creative I understand calling and vocation as part of God’s redemptive and creative activity. I see part of God’s redemptive work in the world as having to do with freeing people from the bondage of “meaningless” work, by restoring them and refreshing and equipping them for new things all together, or for the same things but done in fresh new ways and with new attitudes. I believe part of our Christian heritage in America is that we are a people who value calling and vocation, because we know that being created in the image of God means, in part, that there is an inherent joy to be found, a happiness to be pursued, in doing “what we were made for” not only here on earth, but for eternity.
This should motivate us not only to understand our own calling, but to share the Gospel with others so that they, too, can live lives that honor God and in so doing, they find real joy.
September 8, 2006 at 8:17 am
Very well said, Susan! Your comments remind me of a very good new book out by Darrell Cosden entitled, “The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work”. Cosden is a Denver Seminary grad (M.Div., ’89) who now teaches at International Christian College in Glasgow, Scotland.
Cosden argues (similar to Miroslav Volf in “Work in the Spirit”) for continuity between this world and the eschaton, with God’s coming judgment on the fallen created order serving to purge the effects of sin. That liberates us in our current work (however much we may experience alienation from it due to the Fall) to see that there is lasting value to anything we contribute through our work to the kind of world God intended.
God’s promise (e.g. Col. 1) that the scope of Christ’s redemption/reconciliation includes the created order establishes this continuity and mitigates the dualism so pervasive in evangelical thought. That dualism, curiously, is what propels many Christians into vocational ministry. That is, they want to do work that has “eternal value”; a noble sentiment, but one that reflects the very alienation that Christ came to overcome. Of course, I think there are very good reasons for many people to enter ministry vocationally, but the “eternal value” argument is not among them. That, however, would be another discussion!
September 8, 2006 at 12:22 pm
Here’s another angle on vocation. If we run with the word “vocation” and consider it as a beckoning from Person to person, vocation is never really fulfilled until the eschaton, i.e. until we are really, finally Home. In the current order, we are ever fulfilling, ever moving through and further into our vocations. Vocations are not static but continually and increasingly realized.
In one sense, a vocation is the progressive unfolding of one’s life into God’s image, expressed in the particularities of one’s life, as boundaried by all the opportunities and constraints of that “located” existence. So, a practical vocation question is “Am I moving closer to grasping and living out the core of who I am in my world?”