Comments on: On my evolving understanding of vocation

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:16:30 +0000

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.”

Rock it!

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:19:24 +0000

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.

By: melissa

melissa — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:39:35 +0000

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.

By: adamjcopeland

adamjcopeland — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:22:07 +0000

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.

By: melissa

melissa — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:34:14 +0000

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.

By: Marci

Marci — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:23:13 +0000

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.

By: DennisS

DennisS — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:41:39 +0000

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.

By: adamjcopeland

adamjcopeland — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:30:38 +0000

Thanks, Joan and Melissa. Yes, I’ve made that same analogy to marriage before myself. Ahh, candidacy committees…

By: melissa

melissa — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:19:43 +0000

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.

By: Joan Calvin

Joan Calvin — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:13:57 +0000

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.