This is the fourth (and for the moment, final) post in a series of posts around the theme of Calling and Vocation, particularly focused around my own experiences of formation for ordained ministry, but also seeking to be broader in recognising the calling and vocation of all God’s people.

You can see the previous blogs in the series here:

Calling and Vocation (1): Risk-Takers

Calling and Vocation (2): Hope-Builders

Calling and Vocation (3): Discernment

Rooted in God

Why wait until the fourth and final (for now) post to talk about God? In fairness I don’t think I have, all my reflections had been based on an assumption that God is central and primary in our exploring of and responding to calling and vocation. To take risks that enable others to explore and realise their own God given talents and abilities, to build hope, that others can see the God in the future as well as in today, and encouraging and modelling discernment as a process of seeking to respond it, test out and talk about hat God is saying and doing in our lives.

However, I’ve come to a point in my reflections where I’ve come to recognise that, with all good and Godly intentions, it can be too easy to go by or own steam, or God to be moved to the periphery and us to take centre stage. One of the aspects of faith I’ve sometimes found a challenge to sustain over the last 3 years is a sense of spirituality which keeps me rooted in relationship with God, rather than in ideas, institutions and ideologies. It’s something I continue to work at, and recently with some friends feel that I have made some significant headway.

With so many worldly distractions around us, the temptations of materialism, the draw of commercialism, the culture of instant gratification we live in, it seems is too easy to become distant from God, distant from what matters. In his book exploring vocational holiness, Eugene Peterson recognises some of these tensions. Exploring the book of Jonah, he parallels life encounters with the storm Jonah faces, as a place for re-orientation [1] a time to wake-up [2] and take note of God, when Jonah was doing all he could to escape God.

Of course, these thoughts are in no way isolated to the topic of calling and vocation. This is about Christian life, living out the faith we profess. Yet it is from the seeking to live out faith that calling and vocation emerge – one feeds the other, gives life to other. Calling and Vocation cannot be separated from faith. Peterson appears to suggest that when such a separation happens, we fall from spirituality into religiosity, from pursuing vocation to fulfilling a career. [3]

So whether exploring vocation yourself, our thinking about ways to help others think about vocation, I think it is important to never neglect the importance of bring rooted in God. Calling and vocation becomes a fallacy, for it hides a self-focused careerism, separated from the faith in which we profess.

Even more so now than when I went through the process, I greatly appreciate the emphasis on the call of God which was present throughout my own candidating experience. I appreciate that not everyone’s experience is the same, but for me, the emphasis on the call of God left me feeling assured and at peace that God’s will would be, working in and through the many conversations, panels and meetings I had, all the while feeling and knowing in my spirit that they were soaked in prayer and God’s Spirit. The emphasis also helped me to know it wasn’t all about me, it wasn’t about what I do or could/would do, but about who I am, as a child of God, feeling and responding to the call of God and allowing others to journey with me in exploring and eventually confirming that call.

In a sense then, this series of blogs therefore finishes at the place where calling and vocation needs to start, and always be: rooted in God – who loves, calls and equips, listening and responding to God call, and in the company of others, pursing vocation with God at the centre.

[1] Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness (Eerdmans, 1992) p.46

[2] Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness (Eerdmans, 1992) p.35

[3] Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness (Eerdmans, 1992) see p.3-5; 20.