March 02, 2010
FTE Calling Congregations is prototyping a new, intergenerational congregational model for exploring vocation care with five gracious, courageous congregations across the country.* In Notice, Name, Nurture: A Season of Vocation CARE (or VoCARE), we suggest “the Vocation Question” is this: “Who am I created by God to be and how, then, am I to live; what am I meant to do?” Yes, but what is vocation care?
Hanging around the copier in our office one day, I chanced upon an excerpt from Called by God: A Theology of Vocation and Lifelong Commitment by Francis Nemeck, O.M.I. and Marie Theresa Coombs, a hermit. What I read struck a resonant chord, one that sounded especially true for our work with the role congregations play in God’s call. The authors understand how complicated call and vocation are to grasp, and (mercifully) offer a framework that might just do what is needed.
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November 23, 2009
The congregational development model Jesus follows in the gospels to prepare the next generation of leaders can be stated this way—a long conversation, on the way together, as life happens, between meals. It’s a simple pattern, so lacking in complexity as to go unseen. It’s also hard to imagine that conversation can be so important (think of Mary and Martha). But this is the way Jesus cared for his own vocation and those who would follow him. That’s it. And it worked.
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March 05, 2009
Some of the best conversations I have ever had happen on this hall, in
the spaces between our offices and our work. The FTE staff is an
amazingly rich assortment of gifts and personalities, all of them
devoted to the church and the next generation of its leaders…
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April 06, 2008
Pastoral theologian Robert K. Martin connects pastoral leadership with gardening. One look at a neighbor’s garden reminds him that the bulbs he took care to put away the previous summer would not be their glorious selves that spring because they were still in the basement. Many other things were done but there would be no blooms for Easter. What is not planted will not grow—nature is clear on this. And we should take it as a lesson for the church and all its leadership.Congregations are to the next generation of pastors what gardens and gardeners are to tulips.
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