Abstract
In the first church I served, I remember speaking with a church member who had just lost his job after more than 20 years at the same company. After we talked for a while about applying for unemployment, his future job prospects, and how he would handle expenses in the meantime, he turned to me and in a plaintive voice asked, “But if I’m not working, then who am I?”
The question asked by this parishioner is not a unique one. In fact, it is a question most adults are asking. Their identity is found in their work, rather than in Christ. Consequently, they don’t really know who they are apart from the job they perform. In his book, You Lost Me (Baker, 2011), David Kinnamon laid out a pretty significant case that part of the discipleship problem was that while churches were mass-producing disciples to follow Jesus, they were not doing well in apprenticing them into what their calling was. Kinnamon discovered that only 28% of Christians in the workplace who were interviewed were able to clearly integrate their faith into their work as an act of service to God. Among Millennials, the vast majority don’t know how their faith in Christ on Sunday translates into the other six days of the week.
As I write this editorial, the world is in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. All of us are experiencing various forms of social distancing and stay-at-home protocols. According to John Hopkins University of Medicine, nearly 100,000 deaths have already occurred globally and even conservative projections have over a quarter of a million people worldwide dying. There is a lot of fear, confusion, and concern over the future. Add to this the global economic uncertainties, the millions of people who have lost their jobs, and the businesses which have closed their doors never more to reopen. As a result, there will be lots of Christians asking the same question my parishioner asked: “If I’m not working, who am I?” This crisis we’re all walking through speaks to the need for us to help people better understand vocational discipleship through our teaching ministries in the church.
Therefore, the theme of the 2019 SPCE Conference, “On Vocation and Christian Discipleship,” is needed more now than ever. How do we practice our vocation if we only equate vocation with our job and we no longer have a job? How do we understand the intersection of vocation and discipleship in terms of how we teach? How do we help Christians move beyond the secular/sacred divide and instead live into a holistic faith?
In this edition of the Christian Education Journal, we have several articles that speak to different pieces of this theme, addressing the various ways vocation works itself out in our lives, especially the way we practice our discipleship. One important aspect that needs to be regularly communicated to Christians is that living out our calling is a lifelong process of being open to and listening to God. Dale Lemke, in his article, “Vocation and Lifelong Spiritual Formation: A Christian Integrative Perspective on Calling in Mid-career,” looks at mid-career missionaries to discover how they have continued to live out their vocational call. One of the most important pieces of the research was the reminder that a significant aspect of living out our call is the ability to be open to new futures, new vocational possibilities. This theme can be particularly helpful for adults who have recently experienced significant upheaval in their lives, particularly their occupations, and now need to be reminded that God still calls them to live out their faith in this new arena.
Of course, while we know that the vocational call to discipleship is intended for all, unfortunately sometimes our theologies and/or practices can actually keep some folk from living it out. In her article “Exploration of Christian Women’s Vocational Ministry Leadership and Identity Formation in Evangelical Churches on the West Coast,” Judy Glanz presents research which documents how women, in some cases, are denied the very ability to live out their vocation well due to work experiences which actually impede both their leadership ability as well as their own formation as disciples. Her article reminds us of the necessity of providing opportunities for all God’s people to grow into His image as they integrate their faith into their work.
In her article, “Ordinary, Everyday Discipleship: Banding Together for Faithful Living at Home, Work, and in the World,” author Tammie Grimm pulls from John Wesley, and specifically his Wesleyan bands, as a model for the church to help its congregants learn to live out their vocational discipleship. Integrating these ideas with insights from transformational learning theory, Grimm posits that key practices such as intentional community, critical reflection, and rational dialogue can help people learn to see where God is at work in their everyday work, especially their jobs. These practices allow people to learn to integrate their faith in their work.
Following this, there is an article that specifically addresses vocational discipleship concerns among our older adult population. In his article, “Revisiting Theological Education for Older Adult Ministry 1993–2018,” Ronnie Johnson helpfully reminds us that in our efforts to help people live out their faith in their everyday world, there is a tendency to focus primarily on the young (teenagers, young adults) and to forget that older adults still need continued guidance as they work through their own discipleship. This article revisits the research Johnson did 25 years ago, and unfortunately reveals that not much has changed in our teaching ministry efforts to older adults. The article provides helpful concepts for us to consider as we work to prepare future ministers for how to minister to this age group.
Finally, at this year’s conference we evaluated research presentations by current and recently graduated doctoral students from several different schools. The paper by Youngjun Kim, “A Grounded Theory Study of Burnout among Youth Workers in Korean Immigrant Churches” was awarded top honors and is published here as part of this collection.
As mentioned previously, James K. A. Smith was our keynote speaker for the 2019 conference. Building on the ideas he had previously written about in such books as You Are What You Love (Brazos, 2016) and Desiring the Kingdom (Baker Academic, 2009), Smith reminded conference participants of the necessity of helping our people better understand how normal, everyday rituals and habits have and continue to form them, often in ways they don’t even recognize. Given this, let me suggest that part of our job as Christian educators is to help others see that God is fully invested in all of his creation—not just the religious studies fields, but music, education, science, law, economics and a thousand other disciplines. If we do this well, then the hope is that our people won’t settle for simply being teachers, doctors, plumbers, homemakers, social workers, etc. who are Christian. Instead, they would begin to see their vocations holistically, as ways to honor and glorify God. In other words, they would recognize their primary identity is as Christians whose faith impacts every aspect of their world. If our people can learn to see their work as an act of truly loving God, then perhaps we can transform the way Christians impact the world. May it be so.