FTE "On Call" Blog

Elizabeth Mitchell Clement

Regional Director, Calling Congregations

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November 23, 2009

Jesus and the Next Generation of Leaders

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.

FTE is calling congregations to reclaim practices of “vocation care” and practice them with the next generation of Christian leadership. From our baptism, we are each called and have a Christian vocation. Christian vocation is a life lived in the question, who am I created by God to be and what, then, am I called to do?

How and if we can answer the call to Christian vocation or pastoral ministry will be answered in what Walter Brueggemann recently spoke of as “an endless negotiation” of God choosing a people and the people choosing to be chosen. It is a “summons to a dialogic life” and I would add—together.

What if the role congregations play in God’s call is (simply) to host the long conversation with friends, as we go along, as life happens, between meals—between sacraments?

Hey, it worked once.