“Vocation” is one of my favorite concepts in theology. Stemming from the Latin word vocare, “to call,” it means the calling of God to all Christians (and, some would say, all people) to participate in the care of the world and people God loves so much. Often when we talk about vocation, we are referring to someone’s job or profession. I know a great real estate agent, for instance, who feels her calling is to help people find a home in which they can flourish. But as this very example indicates, even when we talk about a job as one’s vocation, it’s never just the job or even what the job accomplishes. It’s about...

For the last four years I have the pleasure of overseeing a grant project that seeks to help seminaries train pastors to better equip their people to recognize God’s calling in everyday life. The grant arose, in part, because of a peculiar and somewhat troubling inconsistency in two groups of research. In the first survey, we discovered that the graduates of five seminaries from five different Christian traditions all highly value vocation and name it as a central theological category in their preaching and teaching. In a second study, composed of surveys and literature reviews, we discovered that most of the people in congregations served...

I’m a huge fan of the Christian concept of vocation: that God calls each and all of us to serve God by serving our neighbor in whatever roles we may have. So whether you’re working or volunteering or a parent or sibling or student or friend or citizen – whatever role you have you can serve God by serving others. I’m attracted to this idea because it elevates our daily work and effort. In the middle ages, Christian lives within a spiritual hierarchy. Yes, it was good to be a mother or father or bricklayer or whatever. But it was better to be a priest and even better to be a monk, and so forth. One of the things Martin Luther protested...