Regional Director, Calling Congregations
May 01, 2009
This issue of Calling focuses on seminary programs for high school youth. Several theological institutions have had the support of Lilly Endowment in recent years for their work in summer programs that support young people in their first adult forays into using theological language and applying the language of vocation to their lives. It is nothing short of an initiation of power for many of these youth—the power the Holy Spirit brings when young people recognize themselves and their unique role in the life of God’s people.
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Asst Professor, Christian Education and Formation, Seminary of the Southwest
April 11, 2009
What is the role of family when nurturing the sense of vocation with its members? What are the practices, home rituals, and stories that help a person to draw contours of his or her vocational destiny? Reflecting back on the years of my own vocational formation, I recall a large oak table at my aunt’s living room where my family gathered on Sundays. We gathered for a table fellowship which included food but also stories from the family history, the life of community, politics, jokes, etc. It was in this context of table fellowship that a family narrative had been passed on to me and other youth in my family. I learned early on that my family had a history of intellectual leadership and pastoral service in the community, and this narrative shaped my sense of vocation around the values of emancipation, justice, and leadership.
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Boston College Campus Ministry; Boston College Inter-Religious Study on Ethical Identity
March 06, 2009
“I’m coming to a place in my life where things are no longer happening to me. I’m part of making them happen.” This was an insight that a senior came to in my office. I responded to the caution in her voice as she recognized the impact of the choices and decisions in her life but, inwardly, I smiled because I knew that she was wonderfully close to developing discernment as a spiritual practice.
When I served as a lay Catholic minister at Boston College, I was privileged frequently with hearing the students’ experiences of relationships and transitions that engaged the central questions of their lives. In this role, my essential ministry was the practice of introducing, coaching and affirming a practice of discernment with them.
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Regional Director, Calling Congregations
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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Regional Director, Calling Congregations
March 01, 2009
Drawing on the title of one of our books in review, I want to offer a theme for this issue—the way the world works, for individuals and for congregations attentive to the movements of God. As each of our features will attest, none of this is an automatic process but requires our intentioned looking for the face of God in the members of our communities, in those who come to us with questions, and those to whom we pose our questions, as well as in our individual lives. Catherine Brunell states, in our main feature, that the particular challenge we each face in the heavy lifting of discernment or “finding our way” is openness. Openness to God, she says, is the place where we will spend most of our time, perhaps because we are apt to un-learn some presumptions about the way the world works and the ways in which God continues to speak. We may move closer to the processes of nature, which uses everything, even death (think of seeds), to generate new life and growth.
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Executive Director, The Pastors Institute, Anderson, IN
October 11, 2008
I often wonder how different my own ministry would have been had someone introduced me early to a dynamic sense of call. My call at age 13 was sudden and powerful, and it thrust me on a trajectory that would shape much of my future. During my mid-forties, however, I began to lose momentum. Pastoring became a dreaded duty, and I soon insulated myself from my congregants’ needs and support. I eventually exited church ministry.
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Regional Director, Calling Congregations
October 06, 2008
A battle of wits and research has been going on in psychology journals and other media over whether young people today are more self-absorbed than their parents and grandparents. According to Stephanie Rosenbloom (NY TIMES, 1/17/08),“Conventional wisdom, supported by academic studies using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) maintains that today’s young people—schooled in the church of self-esteem, vying for spots on reality TV, promoting themselves on YouTube—are more narcissistic than their predecessors.” A Pew Research Study of 2007 named this crop of youth the “Look at Me” generation. The crowning thesis for this perspective comes from Dr. Jean Twenge of San Diego State University in her book, Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before (2006, Free Press).
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