Christian vocation can be framed as our individual and corporate call to bear witness to the Good News of Jesus Christ in our particular time and place. While true of disciples throughout the ages, the present realities of the twenty-first century dare us to embrace a renewed, adaptive, and intersectional understanding of our vocation rooted in a conversant theological traditioning of our faith that speaks into our cities, neighborhoods, and larger world. This work invites all to reimagine how our gifts, talents,passions, entrepreneurial ideas, artistic expressions, and public professions can be pursued in light of our central identity as the people of God called and sent into the world.
www.gregklimovitz.blogspot.com
@gklimovitz
greg.klimovitz@gmail.com
2. MY VOCATIONAL CRISIS…
➤ Aren’t you too old to want to
do that with your life?
➤ Defaulted to ministry,
assuming highest call for the
Christian was to become a
pastor
➤ Lacked an alternative arena to
discern my sense of giftedness
and possibilities to intersect
passions and interests with
gospel witness
3. WHAT’S YOUR CALL STORY?
A question not to be reserved for clergy alone…
4. DEFINING OF TERMS
➤ Vocation: To love God and love
neighbor as we follow Jesus in
this world in anticipation of
the new world yet to come.
➤ Calling: A community's or
individual disciple's unique
incarnation of their Christian
vocation within a given
context.
➤ Career: What we do to earn a
living so to afford a community
or individual disciple's ability
to live into their calling and
Christian vocation.
8. WHAT’S YOUR CALL STORY?
A question not to be reserved for clergy alone…
9. A primary purpose of the Church is
to help us discover and develop our
gifts and, in the face of our fears, to
hold us accountable for them so that
we can enter into the joy of creating.
The major obligation of the Church
to children is to enjoy them and to
listen to them so that each can grow
according to the design which is
written into the being of each and
emerges only under the care and
warmth of another.
Elizabeth O’Connor
Eighth Day of Creation
13. “
Here, therefore, let us stand fast: our life shall best conform to God’s will and
the prescription of the law when it is in every respect most fruitful for our
bretheren. In the entire law we do not read one syllable that lays a rule upon as
regards those things which he may or may not do, for the advantage of his own
flesh. And obviously, since men were born in such a state that they are all too
much inclined to self-love- and, however much they deviate from truth, they still
keep self-love- there was no need of a law that would increase or rather enkindle
this already excessive love. Hence it is very clear that we keep the
commandments not by loving ourselves but by loving God and neighbor; that
he lives the best and holiest life who lives and strives for himself as little as
he can, and that no one lives in a worse or more evil manner than he who lives and
strives for himself alone, and thinks about and seeks only his own advantage.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion VIII. 54
18. “As the church ministers to people who are
discovering Christian vocation, so it offers
nurture to those who are living out Christian
vocation in public, active life [one’s call].
Book of Order: The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Part II,
p. 140
21. WE ARE THE VASES
➤ 2 Corinthians 4:7, clay jars
➤ Ephesians 2:10, work of art
➤ Vocational discernment
cultivates creative and beautiful
expressions of the gospel;
➤ Vocational discernment
generates life-giving witnesses
to God’s dreams for the world;
➤ Vocational discernment moves
our vases (calling) from
adorning the sanctuary to being
scattered in our neighborhoods
and communities, near and far.
23. CALL AS SACRED & LOCAL CRAFT
➤ No two breweries/callings are
exactly the same
➤ Barrels/callings rotate and change;
reformed and reforming?
➤ Value the local flavor and hops
➤ Nurture rather than rush the process
➤ Be playful, risky, and zesty
➤ Listen to what people would
consider good (news) and create it
together
➤ Partner with and celebrate local
neighbors
➤ Restore what is perceived as dead
24. “If the church in our day has a few
prophetic voices to sound above the
noises of the street, perhaps join large
part it is because the pioneering spirit
has become foreign to it. It shows little
willingness to explore new ways.
Where it does it has often been called
an experiment, but whenever that
church is true to its mission it will
be experimenting, pioneering,
blazing new paths, seeking how to
speak the reconciling Word of God to
its own age. It cannot do this if it is
held captive by the structures of
another day or is slave to its own
structures.”
Elizabeth O’Connor
Call to Commitment
25. 10 QUESTIONS FOR BREWING YOUR VOCATIONAL CALL
➤ What place and/or people frequently rise to the surface of your prayers?
➤ What issues and/or causes are stirring within you and agitating your conscience?
➤ What gifts and talents do you possess to engage these issues and/or causes?
➤ What work do you find both life-giving and life-generating?
➤ How can the intersection of your passions and giftedness elevate the cause of those
on the margins and those whose stories are either unheard or untold?
➤ Is there something you can join in or are you being called to create something new?
➤ What relationships have you developed in church and local community to help
explore and live into your call?
➤ What does your faith community say about you and your discerned calling?
➤ What, if anything, are you willing to risk to live into your sense of call?
➤ How will you (financially) sustain your ability to live into your call?
26. "At this point in my life, and at this point in
our world's life, I am asking what is to be my
focus- to what am I to be giving my limited
time and energy? What is the new thing, the
genuine thing, that God wants me to be
learning, doing, being now?
For me the central question is what it means
to be the authentic church of Jesus Christ,
crucified and resurrected. What is its nature?
Its essence? And how can that essence be
structured and expressed so as to become a
healing agent in the world?”
N. Gordon Cosby
Becoming the Authentic Church