CHAPTER 1
Why Am I Here?
WANTED: Persons for a vocation that leads God'speople in bearing witness to God's new creationrevealed in Jesus Christ by the power of the HolySpirit. Work schedule is shaped by relationships,focusing on what is important in people's lives, anddepends on regular rhythms of work, rest and play.Compensation is shaped by a mutual discernment ofwhat is necessary in order for the persons (and,where appropriate, their families) to have an appropriatelywell-lived life. The vocation involves cultivatingholy dispositions, preaching and teaching,nurturing rigorous study and shaping practices offaithful living in church and world. Lifelong educationand formation is expected in order to enableothers also to grow throughout their lives. Thesuccessful candidate will collaborate with otherstoward the same ends. The person with thisvocation reports to God.
— Gregory Jones, "Job Description,"in The Christian Century (10 January 2006)
Vocational discernment has in some circles becomenearly as lively an interest, and as nebulous a subject,as spirituality. And like spirituality, considerations of vocationaldiscernment have tended toward a rather narrowtreatment, suggesting that vocational discernment islimited to an elite or specialized few, and that those whoundertake it are, or ought to be, set apart. Little considerationis given to vocational discernment outside the realmof ordained ministry in the church.
This book aims to encourage a renewed commitmentto the ageless Christian discipline of vocational discernmentas the foundation of all ministry, a discipline andresponsibility of all the baptized, individually and collectively.With few exceptions, I have drawn most heavilyupon the most reliable source I know, which is my ownexperience of more than thirty years in active ministry.Nearly all of those years were devoted to a campusministry, a context aptly described by one former divinityschool student as "a little laboratory" within which one cantry things much more difficult to attempt in a parish.Those years also include a stint in a small mission congregation,its transition to self-supporting parish status, andsix years as associate to the rector of a large, complexcongregation with over one thousand members. Moreover,extensive supply and consulting work have allowed me toestablish abiding relationships with a variety of congregationsin the urban, small town, and rural communities ofnorthern Illinois, and several states beyond.
Those experiences and relationships are used herein toframe, illustrate, or punctuate a text primarily aimed atstimulating consideration of and conversation about vocationaldiscernment. These stories are frequently and intentionallycast without specific identification. By treatingthem generically, I emphasize that what distinguishesthese stories are principles that are hardly unique to oneplace or parish and may be articulated in varied practices.They are thus, like the parables of Jesus, more likely toprovide a point of entry or identification for the reader.And they remind us that discernment is not imitation.
Discernment is an aspect of the Christian life andexperience that pervaded my ministry to such an extentthat it constitutes a significant portion of my own vocation.In Inquiring and Discerning Hearts: Vocation andMinistry with Young Adults on Campus, Gary Peluso and Iidentified vocational discernment as a significant andsubstantive portion of ministry on campus. In Crossing theJordan: Meditations on Vocation, I reflected upon the life ofJesus and his vocational discernment revealed in scriptureas a guide to contemplating our own vocational journeys.
This book, in returning to a subject so central to myown thought and ministry, allows me opportunity forgreater scope. It reaches more deeply into Christianhistory, scripture, and experience, locating a biblical andtheological foundation for vocation in Genesis. It likewisereaches farther than my previous work into Christianpractice, expanding some of my learnings in campusministry beyond that context to find application incongregations. Written in the first years of my retirementfrom the institutional responsibilities of ministry, thisbook has been shaped by my own discernment and transitioninto a new vocation in an ever-unfolding ministry.Though still very much an ordained priest, my daily lifelooks and feels more akin to that of the first order ofministry, the laity. I am aware once again that the boundariesof one's identity and vocation are more fluid than amore narrow interpretation of vocation would allow, andthat the best laid plans are subject always to change.Vocation is boundless, freely traversing the categories ofsacred and profane, church and world.
Wresting vocational discernment from its narrow andnear exclusive confinement to professional ordained officesand restoring it to the whole church is a priority forministry in and beyond the twenty-first century. For whilethere is precious little warrant in scripture for a church thatgathers and keeps its members unto itself, there is abundantcommission for a church which, through its scatteredmembers and their varied gifts, extends to the farthestreaches the compelling love of God. Vocational discernmentis not just how the institutional church finds itsordained leadership. Vocational discernment is the mostbasic and essential expression of the church's mission.
the big question
Experience has taught me that in any process of vocationaldiscernment attention must first and always be paid to theBIG questions, which are really only ONE big question:Why am I here? This essential question has many dimensions.It can be posed in any moment and in everyinstance beckons the asker into deeper reflection even as itoffers insight. It is cast in three dimensions—the threedimensions of human life in all its fullness:
* Why did God make me? (past)
* What am I to do with my life and love?How do I fit in here? (present)
* What and where will I be tomorrow? (future)
What kind of work will I do, to whom will I commit mylove, and what kind of shape and meaning will my lifetake? For Christians, the answers to these questions—andthe journey to those answers—is the subject of some of ourmost fervent and sincere prayer. The journey to thoseanswers takes us through our riskiest and richest relationships,animates our anxiety and our exhilaration, traversesour deepest sadness and our most substantive satisfactions.
Moreover, the natural processes of aging and maturationonly renew and reshape these challenges, framing thequestions within the changing context of our personallives as the web of relationships and responsibilities grows.As I grow older, what meaningful work can I do, whatshape and expression will my love take?
The church has a name for this process. Its called vocationaldiscernment.
Practically speaking, it means separating and setting apartthe desires of God for my life from all the competingdesires and demands thrust at and upon me. And sometimes,clarifying and embracing the challenge of diminishedoptions.
Throughout the journey of vocational discernment weare accompanied by the big question of why I am here, butthe question takes on a particular urgency when a povertyof possibilities leaves us stranded on an unfamiliarthreshold. This was the case in my senior year of college,when my intention to pursue graduate study in English wasdashed by President Nixon s order canceling all educationaldraft deferments except for students of medicine, dentistry,or ministry. Once the shock of this news settled into reality,I was plunged into an intense introspection, surfacing onlyon the rare occasion when in the company of friends insimilar circumstances.
Pondering my fate, I set out on an aimless walk oneafternoon and was soon lost in deep thought. My feetknew the campus well, so on I walked, like a humanpointer on a cosmic Ouija board, giving no thought todestination. I had no clue where my life's path was tendingexcept, perhaps, an early death in some distant SoutheastAsian jungle. I was thus surprised to find myself in therector's office at the Episcopal church, where for three anda half years I'd lurked in a pew pretty regularly on Sundaymornings. I was even more surprised to hear myself say, "Ithink I want to be a priest."
Suddenly my life was radically reoriented. Withdizzying speed I was propelled into a new and totallyunexpected future. Within six weeks I was confirmed. Ihurtled through the postulancy process and a few shortmonths later, I began seminary. Safe and secure in thenotion that I had found my vocation, it was not longbefore all those hibernating impulses to control rousedfrom slumber and moved back into action. But in thecourse of three years in seminary there were many occasionsof challenge, confrontation, and change, and onceagain, on the brink of graduation a number of experiencesbrought the realization that I could not move forward. Iwent to my faculty advisor and then to my bishop and Iclosed the book on the ordination process.
The search for employment did not go well. Thenation was in economic recession and all the logical leadsto which I applied, like education and social services,deemed me overqualified, an assessment less flatteringthan frustrating. In desperation I turned to an employmentagency and was astonished, and grateful, to be hiredas corporate general manager of a family-owned women'swear retailer. Why, I asked the owner, was he hiring me? Ihad no experience to suggest any preparation—much lessaptitude—for this position.
The answer he offered was simple. "Our previousmanager had an MBA and was a promiscuous womanizerwhose numerous affairs, some with employees, destroyedstaff morale and, in turn, ruined our business. We've firedour entire management team and are starting fresh. We'vejust hired a new floor manager, a young woman with anundergraduate degree in religion and a certificate infashion merchandising. We'd like you to be our generalmanager. We can teach you everything you need to knowabout this business in six weeks, but you can't teach aperson how to be moral."
I did indeed learn much about the business in a fewshort weeks and discovered the pastoral dimensions ofsupervising and overseeing more than sixty employees anda complex organization. Then, just over a year into thejob, I developed a near-fatal illness that left me literally allby myself, quarantined and flat on my back for days onend, providing ample opportunity to get deeply in touchwith myself, and with God. Later I would find compellingparallels with the vocational discernment of Ignatius ofLoyola, a sixteenth-century Basque noble who had beendestined for a career in the military and nobility. His lifewas radically changed when a severe wound at the battleof Pamplona in 1521 ended his military career, andduring his long and painful convalescence he struggled todiscover what his heart's desire truly was.
Miraculously, I survived the illness. Nearly two yearsafter graduation from seminary I went to my bishop. I didnot ask to be ordained; I simply offered myself to thepossibility. My first assignment was to a small missioncongregation in a southern mill town whose majoremployer, a textile factory, had recently closed. In thatpost and every one that followed I discovered that inGod's economy no experience is ever wasted. My briefhiatus in the retail world had completed my educationand preparation for my ministry. I had learned and wascalled to use all I knew of financial management, publicrelations, promotion, and communications in service tothe church. And the time eventually came when languageand writing skills honed in college and integral to mywork in management and ministry became a prominentpart of my vocation. This dynamic process of vocationaldiscernment is the heart of each believer's life journey, yetdespite the foundational theology of the laity developed inrecent decades, the church in the beginning of the twenty-firstcentury offers few resources to assist any except thoseexamining a call to ordained service.
orders of ministry reconsidered
Interest in a "theology of the laity" emerged in Europeafter World War II, notably in the works of the DutchReformed scholar Hendrik Kraemer, the first director ofthe Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland, whoseTheology of the Laity appeared in 1958, and of the FrenchDominican Yves Marie Joseph Cardinal Congar, whopublished Lay People in the Church: A Study for a Theologyof the Laity in the same year. Both men opened seriousinquiry into the role and vocation of the laity in the mid-1950sand their work was succeeded and amplified in the1960s by another Catholic scholar, Hans Urs vonBalthasar. These three European theologians, two of themRoman Catholics whose influence was strongly felt in thework of the Second Vatican Council convened in 1962,pioneered a new consideration of lay life and vocation.
The changing nature of ministry and its orders haslifted the laity to new prominence and has at the sametime prompted a reconsideration of the servanthood ofthe episcopal, presbyteral, and diaconal orders. Yet onemore time in Christian history, in ways reminiscent of thesixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, after a longseason (in some cases amounting to centuries) in whichthe laity toiled to raise edifices, salary administrators andsacramentalists, and support programs in a system thatinvited and encouraged their passive acquiescence to anagenda not their own, the tables are being turned.
At present, however, we are in the midst of the turning.As in any massive reformation, the middle state is markedmore by chaos than not. The dismantling of old systemsonly partly done, and orderly transition into a newmanner of living incomplete, we are still sorting what todiscard, what to keep, what is sufficient, what is stillneeded. Hints do, however, emerge.
The revision of the American Book of CommonPrayer in 1979 added a clearly articulated BaptismalCovenant that has become for many Episcopalians ahelpful and clarifying expression of the baptized life. Inthis covenant we are asked to make these affirmationsabout the way we will live:
* Will you continue in the apostles' teaching andfellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in theprayers?
* Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, wheneveryou fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
* Will you proclaim by word and example the GoodNews of God in Christ?
* Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons,loving your neighbor as yourself?
* Will you strive for justice and peace among allpeople, and respect the dignity of every humanbeing? (BCP 304–305)
With the Prayer Books emphasis on baptism as a publicrite, especially in the prominent celebrations of Easter andPentecost, the Baptismal Covenant has become familiar tomany. Its language is often repeated in sermons and makesits way into diocesan and parish mission statements. Thenotion and expression of "living into our baptism" arefairly common in Episcopal contexts. Yet while theconcepts of baptismal promise and responsibility are morewidely evident in such repetition, the practical realitysuggests that the Episcopal Church has lagged in its provisionof vocational discernment and support for and amongthe laity, the frontline laborers called and commissioned tobear the fullness of God in and to the world.
The canons of the Episcopal Church likewise point toa renewed appreciation for the ministry of the laity, thefullness of which the church has not yet lived into. It wasnot until 1988, for example, that the General Conventionamended its canons on ministry even to acknowledge "theMinistry of All Baptized Persons," directing that "EachDiocese shall make provision for the development andaffirmation of the ministry of all baptized persons in theChurch and in the world." Another fifteen years (fivetriennial conventions) lapsed before canonical revisionsmandated specific attention to resources for vocationaldiscernment for the laity:
Canon 1: Of the Ministry of All Baptized PersonsSec. 1. Each Diocese shall make provision for theaffirmation and development of the ministry of allbaptized persons, including:
(a) Assistance in understanding that all baptizedpersons are called to minister in Christ's name,to identify their gifts with the help of the Churchand to serve Christ's mission at all times and inall places.
