Lent is a time of self-denial, a chance to remember and identify with the sufferings of our Lord. It is also an opportunity to make do with less and in this way to identify also with all those who have so little, those with whom our Lord identified. That gets increasingly more difficult – and simultaneously more important – in a word that seems to grow more materialistic by the day. It is challenging to watch the ads of television and across the media and not succumb to believing that we just can’t get buy without that new ______________ (fill in the blank). In this light, Lent and its call to self-denial is a gift, an opportunity to...

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...