Call or Calls?

I spent the past three days interviewing candidates for the ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church. My task was to discern and confirm a person's call to ministry. It was an interesting, and tiring, process.

About 2/3 of the 15 candidates we interviewed were beginning their second or even third careers. Having more than one career in today's rapidly changing work environment is very common. I've read that those in college now will have and average of 3 different careers and 9 different jobs.

When we're at the beginning of the work phase of our lives, we often struggle with the question: What am I called to do? This vocational question is important to answer if we are to thrive in life. However, it might be more appropriate to speak of calls rather than a single call.

The pattern I've often seen in candidates for ordained ministry is that they heard a call to ministry early in life, but ignored it or delayed responding to it. Then, in midlife, the call to ministry comes again and it is answered.

I like the idea that we have more than one call in life to respond to. As we grow and change, so can our understanding of what we are called to do and to be. The key is to listen-- to our deepest self, to the voices of others and to the voice of God.

What Is Your Calling?

For the past three days, I've been interviewing candidates for the ordained ministry. One of the things I carefully listened for is a sense of being called to the ordained ministry. I heard a variety of "call" stories, ranging from those who heard an audible voice to those who felt a gravitational pull to ministry.

From a spiritual viewpoint, there is a belief that our life-work can choose us. This work-that-chooses-us is captured in the concept of vocation. The Latin root of vocation is vocare, which means “to call.” A vocation is a calling, a calling not to a job but to one’s life-work. The “voices” that call us to our life-work can come from outside of us and from inside as well.

What are these “voices”? There are the voices of our parents who let us know, subtly or overtly, what they think we should do with our lives. There is the internal voice of reason that enables us to evaluate our strengths and match them with a likely career. There is the voice of emotion that lets us know whether the work we are doing brings us joy and gladness. There is also the voice of our society telling us, “Choose a career in which you’ll make the most money.”

Deciding which voice we listen to and obey makes a huge difference in finding the right vocation. In his sermon, “The Calling of Voices,” Frederick Buechner writes,

"The world is full of people who seem to have listened to the wrong voice and are now engaged in life-work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing someday that they have spent the only years that they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or to anyone else."

Among the many voices that beckon us to one vocation or another is the voice of our soul. This inner voice comes from our deepest self and is, perhaps, the most important voice to listen to when it comes to our life-work. How do we listen to this voice? I'll try to answer in tomorrow's blog.