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Discovering Your Calling


What’s your calling?  I think that more Christians are becoming aware that they have a calling even if they are not clergy.  The observation that “our baptism is our ordination to ministry” has taken on new meaning for many people in the pew as they have rediscovered the concept of “vocation” as a personal calling from God.

As individuals discover their calling or vocation, they are also becoming aware that not every person fulfills his or her calling within the faith community.  In Growing an Engaged Church, Albert Winseman points out that “there are far more opportunities to discover one’s calling outside the walls of the congregation or parish.”  I think what he is saying that our calling does not necessarily have to be in a traditional place of service within the congregation.

Winseman suggests that there are three questions that spiritual leaders need to ask to help believers turn their dreams or inclinations into callings.

What are your talents or strengths?
What do you love to do?
If time and money were no object, what would you do for God?

Good questions and ones that I would like to unpack a bit in my next three postings.
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Larry Beasley said…
I concur; this is essential knowledge, and a must for believers today. The alternative is to be ever tossed about in a swelling sea of "opinion." While it's not scriptural, I do hold that there is much truth in the adage (attributed to Alexander Hamilton) that "Those who stand for nothing fall for anything."

While many facets of the Kingdom of God may not be our personal and individual calling--we're not all gifted in all areas--it is crucial in this day and time that we discover who we are (what are our gifts and our call) and whose we are (who those gifts are meant to feed.)

Parker Palmer also has a good deal to say on this subject, and I believe it to be valid.

Having said what I have said about us as individuals, the same is, I believe, also true of churches. Our churches also have a call to be found.
12:25 PM
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