On my evolving understanding of vocation
I used to think my understanding of “vocation” was fairly developed. I was certain that “vocation” does not equal “occupation” and “call” does not equal “job.” I was pretty sure what I wanted to do when I grew up. I thought I had vocation all figured out. Until, that is, life brought me to understand that my view of vocation was too narrow, too individualistic, and too, well, simple.
Life complicates things. Or, I suppose, God does. My old understanding of vocation was all about me. Well, that’s not quite true. There were three parties in my old vocation thoughts: me, God, and the people with whom I might vocate. This view was influenced by the Buechner quote, “The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” The quote in all its prettiness is really overly simple if you think of it mainly about what one does in one’s job, or how one earns money. Or perhaps it’s thinking about call in terms of “place” that is too specific. Sure, if you’re looking for a job with the quote in mind you might be inspired to meaningful work, but you also might forget about breadth of life. I’ll get back to that in one moment.
A few years ago, when I went before the committee that determines readiness for ordination, several of the clergy members of the committee had a problem with how I described my call to ordained ministry. I told them my faith journey and how I understood my gifts and graces to fit really well with the tasks of a pastor, but that wasn’t enough. One of the members of the committee put it something like this, “Adam, we need to hear from you why you are called to this and nothing else, why this is the only thing you could do to serve God faithfully and fully.”
Well, I caved. I went back to my hotel room and worked on the statement a bit and gave it some stronger language. I’m not sure I should have, though. A candidate is in a horrible position at a point like this. All the power is on the side of the committee and there’s nobody advocating on behalf of the candidate. It’s ten against one and if you want to be a pastor you might as well cave to the ten.
What, with the benefits of a few years of hindsight, I should have said to those picky pastors would have explained a much broader understanding of call than to one office, or to one position which one must do solely. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but my friends and I don’t think of the one job we must do for the rest of our lives, but rather, about the way in which we should live while we do whatever job we happen to have at the time.
In fact, I think it is better never to say “I am called to the office of Minister of Word and Sacrament,” but I am called to the tasks of a minister, “I am called to preach the word and lead the congregation in its worship life including the sacraments.” That latter way of putting it is integral to Presbyterian polity, so I wonder why candidates are pushed to say they’re called to the office instead of called to what one does when holding the office of ministry.
Perhaps this is all too pie-in-the-sky for you. If so, I’m sorry. If you know me well, you’ll probably be able to read between the lines a bit too. But this much is clear to me: the church would do well to stop speaking of vocation in terms of what one does, and move to speaking of how one does.
So now my understanding of vocation now is much more holistic, incorporating my relationship with my wife, a belief that it’s how one lives not just what pays the bills that matters, and a clarity that God is acting in my life beyond the 9 to 5 work week. Vocation, for me, is more than what “I do,” what pays the bills, but — primarily, perhaps — how I live. Vocation is how I live in relationship with my wife, my family, my congregation, my world. Vocation isn’t just what I hope to do one day, but how I live this day.
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I don’t believe there is ONE thing we must find to do in life to fulfill God’s will for our lives. No more than there is ONE person who will complete our lives. I’m sorry your CPM had such a narrow view. And you’re right: to fulfill your call you have to make the gatekeepers happy. Trying to explain is risky business.
I hope that one day you will sit on a CPM and help others discern their call.
Wow. I had the EXACT SAME THING happen to me in my Entrance panel (first meeting with my candidacy committee). It was terrible. They made me cry.
There’s nothing like being told that you don’t have a sense of call…and nothing like being told that if you had just said the words “word and sacrament ministry” things would have been all right.
Thanks, Joan and Melissa. Yes, I’ve made that same analogy to marriage before myself. Ahh, candidacy committees…
I can’t speak for the committees, as I’ve never served on those committees. I wonder if they were pushing for more feeling and passion behind why a person is seeking entry into the gate leading to ordination.
I had nothing but advocates for me in the form of the committee. But, where I’m from we hadn’t had anybody in the process for many years.
I’m reminded of what Einstein posited in his Special Theory of Relativity – that you can measure the relational location of a thing (a particle perhaps), or its speed – but you can’t report both at the same time. Who you are, and where you are, may not be the same when thinking from the eternal perspective.
Maybe you can see this doesn’t exactly fit to what you’ve posted. By thinking about “how” you live, it seems to me that you are looking at yourself as a human doing, rather than as a human being.
I do understand a bit about why they were pushing you in that CPM meeting to speak more clearly about call. I think the question was good. Because if there is something else you could be doing, you should be doing it.
Being a minister encompasses so much more of my life than I ever expected it to–in both good ways and bad–and so if I weren’t called to it, I would be miserable. And I’m not talking about time (although it takes a lot of that as well).
I don’t think their question to you was about the semantics of what you do, versus how you do, although you are right to wrestle with those questions too. I think their question was intended to get you to think more deeply about the what, how, and why you are answering this call.
I think that why you are answering a call is still a different thing than why/how you are called. To have to tell a committee “this is how I know I’m called and this is exactly what I’m called to” is harder (and probably less beneficial) than talking about your response to that call. I wish candidacy committees would talk in those sorts of terms.
Thanks, folks. I disagree with you, Marci, when you say, “if there is something else you could be doing, you should be doing it.” I think our most gifted pastors could be doing many other things — well — and the church would be the worse for it. If we were to push that perspective then wouldn’t we get a pastorate that is way too lopsided and too focused on one thing? And what about tent-making ministry?
I think we should be saying to the best and the brightest, ‘we understand you could do many things with your life, make lots of money, and live happily ever after and we want you to do that (well, maybe not the money part) in this most challenging, all-encompassing, life-giving vocation we call ordained ministry.
I’m thinking of commercials for call like the ones for the army. I don’t know …. just thinking out loud.
Adam, I think this conversation has a lot to do with the same issues as your disdain for the term “bi-vocational.”
Marci, you say “Being a minister encompasses so much more of my life than I ever expected it to–in both good ways and bad–and so if I weren’t called to it, I would be miserable.” This is a very true statement. And I don’t think I’d ever want to have or to be a pastor who wasn’t called to the ministry.
But being called to the ministry doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t also be called to something else. I don’t think that Adam is trying to say that candidacy committees should be approving candidates who don’t feel called to the ministry; he is saying that they should not get so hung up on the “called to this and to no other” sentiment.
I feel called to be a pastor. But I also feel called to be a teacher (which is why I hope to go back for my Ph.D someday and serve the church by teaching at a college or seminary). I am called to be a minister of word and sacrament, but I also feel called to praise God by continuing to find outlets for my music. I don’t see any of those things as being independent vocations, as if I can’t be both pastor and musician, both teacher and preacher, both student and servant.
Also, I think that we have to remember that the act of discerning a call and the act of evaluating a sense of call (as candidacy committees are called to do) are both human endeavors, however spirit-led they are. I’m not convinced that the validity of one’s sense of call is dependent upon their ability to articulate or explain it; or even their ability to understand it. I didn’t feel a distinct “sense of call” until long after I entered the candidacy process. (I suppose that, in some ways, the desire to start the process itself could be considered a strong indication of God’s call, even though I didn’t understand it fully.) Does this mean I am any less called to the ministry than those for whom a sense of call was obvious and distinct? I think there are more gray areas than the candidacy system is equipped to deal with.
I had the same frustrating interaction with my committee. Maybe it is a generational thing – though some of the pastors on my committee were relatively new. I just don’t tend to be that 100% sure about anything – which is a pain for answering committee questions like that one – (but a strength in other areas of my life) so it seems so foreign/full of hubris to me claim I know with 100% God’s will for me for the rest of my life.
I grew up around 2nd generation English speaking immigrants and I never envied their position. In the world, they were free to explore and develop within the breadth of their experience and “call” (now that we’re adults). However, in the home, they returned to stasis, having to interpret their lives into the home language, complete with its traditions and customs. They were aliens, caught in the middle of two worlds that had seemingly little compliment.
As a candidate, this is how I have felt. Well, as an inquirer, too.
I have felt that while I might read Tillich and Volf, I have to quote Calvin and Rogers. While I might think simiilarly as you describe, I have to speak in terms of call and office. It’s living between two worlds.
I think that that has been one of the benefits of the whole process. I have learned that I am uniquely equipped to be inter-terrestrial. So yeah, there’s alot more to what I’ve discovered about myself, but I’ve discovered it in light of those questions I was asked while “in the home.”
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