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Understanding Vocation: Discerning and Responding to God's Call

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Leaven
Volume 11
Article 11
Issue 1 Vocation

3-6-2012

Understanding Vocation: Discerning and

Responding to God's Call
Don Thompson
[email protected]

Cindy Miller-Perrin
[email protected]

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11: Iss. 1, Article 11.
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 Thompson and Miller-Perrin: Understanding Vocation: Discerning and Responding to God's Call

Understanding Vocation:
Discerning and Responding to God's Call
DON THOMPSON & CINDY MILLER-PERRIN

I have been crucified with Christ; and

it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives inme.
Gal2:l9-20

V
ocation is a concept familiar to both the sacred and secular constituents of society. Those holding
the secular perspective define vocation as one's work, career, or occupation. In contrast, Christians
view vocation as a calling from God.
God calls a person "with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose
and grace" (2 Tim 1:9). This holy calling refers to hearing and understanding God's voice in one's life and
obeying the summons given. Thus, vocation-or one's calling-brings divine meaning and purpose to the
life of a Christian.
In this article, we provide an overview of our understanding of Christian vocation based on a number of
recent resources including books, book chapters, and articles published primarily since 1990. Initially, we
focus on understanding the concept of Christian vocation itself, attempting to provide a view that does jus-
tice to the magnitude of the concept. We then discuss the process of discerning one's vocation as well as the
potential barriers that may hinder an individual from hearing and responding to his or her calling. We con-
clude with a discussion of the costs associated with both discerning and embracing one's Christian vocation.

UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF CHRISTIAN VOCATION

Most authors who attempt to define the concept of Christian vocation state that it is first and foremost a
general call to the religious life, and secondly a more specific call to a particular occupation. Although many
authors acknowledge that in defining vocation we should be careful not to equate it with occupation, job, or
career, the clear emphasis in many sources is on Christian vocation as one's particular occupation, One such
popular resource is Lee Hardy's The Fabric of This World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), which states,
"The particular calling, on the other hand, is the call to a specific occupation-an occupation to which not
all Christians are called."
The concept of Christian vocation, however, extends far beyond career or occupation to virtually every
domain of one's life. As Farnham and her colleagues note in Listening Hearts,

God calls the entirety of my life ... A call might lead us to pursue a certain occupation or
career ... But a call can never be reduced to such activities ... The same counselor may
also be called to care for family, friends, and community as well as clients and thus must
balance all of these in order to be faithful to the call. (Suzanne Farnham, Joseph Gill,
Taylor Mcl.ean, Susan Ward, Listening Hearts: Discerning Call in Community, Harrisburg:
Morehouse, 1991)

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VOCATION LEAVEN 49

Indeed, Jesus was a carpenter (Mark 6:3) and Paul a

tentmaker (Acts 18:3), but these occupations were nei-
ther man's vocation.
In Courage and Calling (Downer's Grove:
Intervarsity, 1999), Gordon Smith makes a distinc-
tion between three levels of vocational calling:
general, specific, and immediate. According to
this conceptualization, Christians receive a gen-
eral calling to know and love God and to love and
serve others. A Christian's specific calling refers to
his or her defining mission or purpose in life. Finally,
an immediate calling refers to one's immediate duties
and responsibilities-those things placed before an individual each day by God.
Accordingly, Christians receive from God one call having many levels and forms of response.
In understanding one's vocational callings, then, the key question is, 'What am I supposed to do with
my life?" Paul addresses this very question in 1 Cor 15:58: " ... be steadfast, immovable; always excelling
in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." Here the focus is on
the work of the Lord. Work in this context is not necessarily equivalent to job or career. Vocation, broadly
defined, refers to one's lifework, a term coined by Harvey Huntley-in his chapter in Connections Between
Spirit and Work in Career Development-to include any human activity that gives meaning, purpose, and
direction to life (eds. Deborah Bloch and Lee Richmond, Palo Alto: Davies-Black, 1997).
In addition to recognizing the multidimensional nature of Christian vocation, authors also frequently
mention two other critical elements important to understanding the concept of vocation. First is the com-
mand to love and serve others, and second, the imperative to use the gifts that God has bestowed upon us
(Farnham et al., 1991; Hardy, 1990; Huntley, 1997; Smith, 1999). Smith discusses the importance of recog-
nizing the world's need by identifying specific forms of pain and brokenness that move us. Thus, Christian
vocation includes a calling from God to love and serve others in their specific needs. This moves the calling
away from our personal motives and will to the unmet needs present in our neighborhoods.
Frederick Buechner eloquently describes this view in Wishful Thinking, stating, "The place God calls
you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet" (San Francisco: Harper San
Francisco, 1993). With regard to the second common element of giftedness, each of us is able to address
uniquely the needs of the world through our specific gifts and abilities. Most sources on vocation empha-
size the interplay between recognizing our gifts and talents and the process of discovering our self-identities
(Farnham, 1991; Hardy, 1990; Smith, 1999).

THE PROCESS OF VOCATIONAL DISCERNMENT

Vocational discernment is the core of living within God's call. In essence, it is a complex process made
up of three distinct components: listening for God's purpose and will for our lives, acting upon it through
service to others, and maintaining vocational integrity through interaction with our earthly mentors. Indeed,
God calls us by first speaking to us. God vocalizes his will for our life, and thus, we must be attentive to his
VOice.
Vocational discernment is a dynamic process that involves participating in God's call through active lis-
tening aimed at understanding the nature of the call followed by verification of our understanding through
active obedience. The momentum of the discernment process is then sustained by mentoring via God's
earthly messengers and encouragers.
Hearing is a deceptively simple practice when it comes to music, the spoken word, or common noises
in our daily lives. By contrast, this is not the case when it comes to God's voice, for God chooses to speak

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 Thompson and Miller-Perrin: Understanding Vocation: Discerning and Responding to God's Call

50 LEAVEN First Quarter 2003

to us in subtle yet focused ways. In order to follow God's call we must hear it, which means we need to
acquire the skills of listening. This type of hearing and listening is largely foreign to our senses and so takes
practice and continual awareness. Because God calls each of us in a unique, individual way, it is clear that
his voice must be able to speak to only one set of eardrums with pinpoint accuracy. This is not a problem for
God, but it may be a problem for us if we are unable to tune into the frequency unique to our giftedness and
life purpose. We must learn to tune in to discern his instructions and expectations.
One of the most accessible resources on this kind of hearing-both in terms of the discussion of what
God's voice sounds like and how we are to practice our ear training-is Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000). Palmer elucidates the importance of listening to one's life:

Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life
and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be
about---or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my
intentions.

For Palmer, listening requires the rigorous Quaker practice of silence, which is "God's first language." It
is in the language of silence that we ultimately hear his voice. Thus, we must learn to pray silently and con-
templatively, anticipating God's speech within our inner, poised silence. This inner journey requires that we
await God's voice by asking what he wants of us, and then practice the discipline of prayer to hear the direc-
tive. Often, this silent voice will itself be silent, demanding our greatest patience as we take the downward
journey of humility, of emptying, in order to be filled by his word.
Silence would be enough of a challenge to maintain and to "hear" even without the background din of
competing voices. Another accessible resource on hearing is Farnham and colleagues' Listening Hearts,
which provides the reader with the tools to discern God's call over the noisy background of the world's
myriad voices and sounds. These authors write that the "ability to discern comes from living the life of the
Spirit, a process of growth involving an ever-greater integration of desires, feelings, reactions, and choices
with a continuing commitment to abide in Christ." Discernment is a function of faith and subsequent obedi-
ence. "Ultimately, discernment requires our willingness to act in faith on our sense of what God wants us to
do." If we can recommend a single, comprehensive work on discernment, this is the one. This work covers
many perspectives and experiences of discernment, drawing from a bibliography of such spiritual guides as
St. Benedict, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Buber, T.S. Eliot, St. John of the Cross, Rainer Maria Rilke, and
dozens more. This is the discernment encyclopedia.
Vocational discernment is not a passive process. Hearing and understanding God's call means moving
from contemplation to action. Vocational discernment, therefore, must result in action that serves others'
needs and provides a means of testing the validity of the call, as God will bless the work that is carried out.
The best resource we have found that deals with this critical "get involved" step is Michael 1. Himes' Doing
the Truth in Love (New York: Paulist, 1995). He writes,

But how do we find the best way to give ourselves away? What are some criteria that we can
use in decision making? How do we discern our individual vocations? How do we discover
what the call to service means for each of us concretely?

Himes answers his own questions about verifying our discernment by stating that as we live within our
call, we receive joy, growth, and agape. Another definitive feature of living within one's call, according to
Himes, is service. Without service, there is no calling. Unless we are moved to acton behalf of those who
are hungry, thirsty, and estranged, we are not heeding God's call. In this regard, Himes challenges the reader
by provocative reflections on such passages as Matt 25:31-46~ the account of the sheep and goats at the final

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VOCATION LEAVEN 51

judgment. These are tough words, but they describe still tougher consequences for those of us goats who do
not listen and heed God's call.
Beyond understanding God's call through hearing his voice and verifying the call through action, God
places in our lives wise elders, men and women of vision who encourage us to pursue the call and who
offer counsel when we need feedback and prod-
ding to continue. These individuals are our mentors. ... our calling's quest requires
Although there are no "how to be a mentor" or "how us to listen to earthly men tor
to work with a mentor" resources to mention here,
figures who sustain God's
there are works and life examples that provide mod-
els of the mentoring relationship.
message to us through daily
Prime examples are evident in the great mythol- encouragemen t and guidance.
ogies and allegories of the grail legend. Both Arthur
and Parzival engaged in searches for the holy grail that were impossible without their mentors (Merlyn for
Arthur, and Gournamand for Parzival) to guide their internal and external paths. Similarly, our calling's
quest requires us to listen to earthly mentor figures who sustain God's message to us through daily encour-
agement and guidance.
A wonderful contemporary example of this is the mentoring relationship between Martin Luther King
Jr. and Howard Thurman. Thurman was King's spiritual adviser in body, spirit, and word. King reportedly
read Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1949) at critical moments
before his own civil rights marches and events. Thus, King's call and subsequent actions were informed by
Thurman's guidance and earthly voice. Without mentors, we are left alone in God's echo-chamber, wonder-
ing if his voice is true and if we are doing the right thing.

BARRIERS TO VOCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Several of the authors who address the process of vocational discernment also describe various barriers
that may potentially interfere with our ability to discern vocational calling at the levels of hearing, under-
standing, and responding to the call. Discussions about these various barriers can be found in many of the
aforementioned resources such as Hardy's The Fabric of This World, Farnham and colleagues' Listening
Hearts, and Smith's Courage and Calling. Carole Rayburn also describes various barriers to vocational call-
ing in her chapter on vocation as calling in Connections Between Spirit and Work in Career Development.
Barriers to hearing and understanding our vocational calling include a variety of obstacles such as per-
sonal values and beliefs that may obscure our ability to hear God's voice. A central barrier in this regard may
be our disbelief that God even plays a role in our vocational discernment. If we cling to a secular view of
vocation-vocation as simply one's work or career
in the absence of a divine summons-we eliminate [One] potential barrier to
the impact of any divine guidance along our journey.
responding to our vocational
In addition to disbelief in divine guidance,
another barrier may be our failure to recognize that calling is a sense of fear.
the Christian call involves a life of service to oth-
ers. This lack of recognition may increase our vulnerability to barriers created through personal values and
beliefs such as self-interest, self-absorption, and self-righteousness, further hampering our ability to hear
God (Farnham et al., 1991; Hardy, 1990; Rayburn, 1997).
Other personal values and beliefs may also serve as barriers to vocational discernment according to
Farnham and her colleagues (1991). Self-doubt, for example, can serve as an obstacle when we doubt our
own abilities or believe that we are not good enough to be useful for God's purposes. In addition, our human
perspectives on the appropriate timing for the events in our lives might reduce our flexibility and thus our
ability to discern God's divine timing for our call to purpose and service.

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52 LEAVEN First Quarter 2003

Various cultural values may also serve as barriers to hearing and understanding our call. Cultural values
that place importance on material success, competition, and productivity may impede our ability to discern
God's call (Farnham et al., 1991; Hardy, 1990; Smith, 1999), perhaps because such values are antithetical
to the Christian message. Western values of self-sufficiency and individualism may also limit our ability to
heed our Christian call to community and service to others.
Several authors mention the potential for personal or psychological needs to interfere with our ability to
discern our calling. Our human needs for security, control, and certainty can limit our willingness and free-
dom to hear God's call (Farnham et al., 1991). Both Hardy (1990) and Smith (1999) also note our personal
needs for power and social prestige as potential barriers. We may miss God's calling because we are more
concerned with our own needs for respect, praise,
The cost of following God's call admiration, fame, and status. Smith (1999) reminds
is change in both location and us that the temptations of power and prestige are the
self. We will be asked to move very same temptations that Jesus faced in the desert
(Luke 4: 1-13) and warns that these temptations may
to where God wants us, where be the death of our vocation.
he calls us, and we will be Barriers to responding to our vocational call-
asked to give our selves, ing also exist. Indeed, it is possible that barriers
our lifelong selves. might limit our ability to respond to vocational
calling, despite our ability to effectively hear and
understand. Undue influence by authority figures (e.g., parents) or various social mores (e.g., gender and
racial stereotypes) may obstruct, for example, our ability to embrace our vocational calling (Rayburn, 1997).
Parents who control the purse strings for their children's college educations may subtly pressure their sons
and daughters to take specific vocational paths that are not consistent with their personal calling.
Men as well as women may be hindered from carrying out a particular vocation because of the impact of
gender stereotypes that make it difficult for individuals to deviate from traditional roles. As a result, women
may not respond to a vocational call to a historically male-dominated occupation such as ministry. Likewise,
men may not respond to vocational callings related to occupations and activities typically dominated by
women, activities such as nursing or being a primary child care provider.
Another potential barrier to responding to our vocational calling is a sense of fear. We may fear the
rejection or disappointment of family and friends should our vocational path fail to meet their expectations
(Hardy, 1990; Rayburn, 1997). We may also fear the sacrifices that might be associated with a particular
vocation, such as an undesirable job location, limited social prestige, or low income. As Rayburn (1997)
notes, we may fear "following in faith, hesitating to go along spiritual paths because of feeling unworthy of
such a vocation ... or feeling that the world would not reward such a vocation ... very highly."

THE PRICE OF LIVING ONE'S CALLING

The genre of vocation literature changes when we consider how a person's life changes in response to
God's call. Indeed, where else would we expect this journey to lead, if not to the individual human being,
the unique and singular frequency to which God tunes in order to deliver his call and to which we respond.
There are certainly universal qualities about the way God conveys the call and what the call will entail, but
eventually, it is a personal matter. It is ultimately not about the life of a group, denomination, institution, or
enterprise. God inhabits souls and individual lives as stated in the Galatians 2 passage at the opening of this
article. What will happen to my life if I hear, listen, and respond to the call? What can I expect? What can I
count on?
All of the biographical evidence from great testimonial journeys, such as Dorothy Day's The Long
Loneliness (New York: Harper, 1952), Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan,
1963), or Helen Prejean's Dead Man Walking (New York: Vintage, 1993), show that there are two ingre-

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 Leaven, Vol. 11 [2003], Iss. 1, Art. 11

VOCATION LEAVEN 53

dients to the life change that God brings about with his call. The cost of following God's call is change in
both location and self. We will be asked to move to where God wants us, where he calls us, and we will be
asked to give our selves, our lifelong selves. We must count on giving up both of these in response to God's
personal broadcast to our soul. In return, these challenges come with the wonderful benefit that we are paid
back in full.
Dorothy Day found her calling in the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement. This required her liv-
ing and working and serving in New York, away from her Berkeley roots. Her life currency was her back
and her energy, poured into the lives of the poor and uneducated. In losing herself this way, she gained
God's richest blessings.
Bonhoeffer also describes the costly grace that God bestows upon us as a part of the call to discipleship.
He writes: 'The call goes forth, and is at once followed by the response of obedience. The response of the
disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus." Bonhoeffer's obedience cost him his life
as he gave it up in martyrdom in response to God's call.
Finally, Sister Helen Prejean describes her own journey from New Orleans parishes to its prisons and
ultimately to the death row cells of prisons across America, including that of Patrick Sonnier. She sacrificed
her own safety and now sacrifices her own privacy and time as she fights for the repeal of capital punish-
ment at the national level. Her epiphanal moment describes how God changed her life forever: "there was
a flash and I realized that my spiritual life had been too ethereal, too disconnected. I left the meeting and
began seeking out the poor." Her subsequent ministry with death row inmates is also wonderfully chronicled
in the 1995 Polygram film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. Sister Prejean pours out her life as a
drink offering, while God continually replenishes her empty jar.
Jesus tells us that in order to gain life we must lose our own. The vocational paths of all three of these
authors share common elements of such sacrifice: a change in location and the spending of selves. Such sac-
rifice requires great faith.
The vocational journey requires us to lose our lives, our selves, in God's echo chamber, an echo cham-
ber that resonates within our souls. Although the price of living one's calling is high, the benefit is that God
saves us through his call. Our calling is always personal and always costly. Indeed, following our vocational
calling means sacrificing our life. The payoff is a life surrendered, obedient, and at work in him.

DON THOMPSON
Dr. Thompson teaches mathematics and serves as the associate dean of Seaver College at Pepperdine University,
Malibu, California.

CINDY MILLER-PERRIN
Dr. Miller-Perrin teaches psychology at Pepperdine University and is a licensed clinical psychologist.

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