Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

Driven Pilgrim

Interruptions are not distractions for the driven pilgrim?

Laura Meitzner Yoder, Associate Professor in the Sustainability and Environmental Education Department (SEED) at Goshen College

The contributors to Faithful is Successful, Notes to a Driven Pilgrim are very much interested in feedback from and interaction with Emerging Scholars. That’s why they’re sharing their material with a volunteer ESN writer team to review and respond to via an ESN blog series. Andy Walsh kicked off the series with In Response to “The Difficulty Discerning Calling”. In Following Jesus in the “Real World”, Kate Peterson explored material from the first two chapters. Andy and I invite you to join our interaction with Interruptions are not distractions by Laura Meitzner Yoder. Note: In Seeking Environmental Justice in Southeast Asia (The Well), Laura Meitzner Yoder provides an inside look at some of her university teaching and field work. ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Editor.

First from Andy Walsh:

Laura Meitzner Yoder’s comments on interruptions reminded me of the NY Times profile of Adam Grant that Mike referenced in an earlier ESN post. There’s certainly a common thread of being open to interruptions and recognizing them as potential vehicles of success, rather than obstacles to it. Now, I suspect that Yoder and Grant might have different notions of what constitutes success, or at least the scope of their definitions may not overlap completely. But the more interesting difference to me is in discernment about the interruptions. Grant is depicted as essentially not exercising any discernment; he is shown to never say ‘no.’ Yoder proposes that “what differentiates God-given interruptions from distractions is whether they contribute to or detract from our overall purpose.” However, there isn’t much elaboration on how to make this distinction. Instead, there seems to be the typical post hoc analysis that frames whatever interruptions are encountered in terms of furthering God’s kingdom.

[Read more…] about Interruptions are not distractions for the driven pilgrim?

Following Jesus in the “Real World”

Wrestling with vocation and our call to follow Jesus in the “Real World”? Let’s have a conversation . . .

The contributors to Faithful is Successful, Notes to a Driven Pilgrim are very much interested in feedback from and interaction with Emerging Scholars. That’s why they’re sharing their material with a volunteer ESN writer team to review and respond to via an ESN blog series. As you may remember, Andy Walsh kicked off the series with In Response to “The Difficulty Discerning Calling”. Please join the on-going conversation. . . . ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Editor.

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I’m having an unexpected emotional reaction to the chapters I’ve read so far from the book project, Faithful is Successful: Notes to the Driven Pilgrim. I emphasize emotional, because this isn’t a rational response. I can convince myself rationally that I shouldn’t feel this way. But I do, and I’m not completely sure why. When Tom Grosh asked me a while back to consider responding to draft chapters on the ESN blog, I thought it looked like a great idea. Vocation is something I believe in. Following God’s calling. Faithfulness. Supporting Christians in careers that lack a significant Christian presence. Dialog about all this on a site for Christian students and scholars sounded ideal.

But frankly, as I’m reading through the table of contents and initial chapters (I have read drafts of the first two chapters in full), I’m finding myself uncomfortable. The chapters are testimonies of successful men stepping out in faith, letting go of their own plans and allowing God to direct their steps. Bryan McGraw describes giving up youthful dreams of adventure to follow God into academia, and then leaving a tenure-track position to prioritize family and “Kingdom work.” He explains how his view of vocation changed as his position at a “small Midwestern Christian liberal arts college” made worldly success “wildly elusive.” Dano Jukanovich, who wrote the second chapter, was likewise a (self-described) “young, goal-oriented, relatively successful, type-A male,” a recipient of the Harvey Fellowship awarded to Christian graduate students at premier institutions in hopes that they make a difference in their field. He gave up a lucrative position in corporate finance to open a consulting firm in Rwanda aiming to “alleviate poverty, improve community, shape industry and inspire others.” Both are stories of God’s faithfulness as men who had made it in worldly terms re-evaluated their idea of vocation. These are the kind of men I’ve been raised to see as role models, and whose lives I’ve sought to emulate.

But that may be the problem. (Bear with me as I try to think through this. I may still change my mind.) These are exactly the kind of people that the American evangelical middle-class subculture—my subculture—designates as role models. This is what I wanted to be when I grew up. They are successful, well-educated, middle-class white men, married with children, respected in their careers. They made it! And beyond that, they trusted God enough to give up excellent positions to follow His calling on their lives. Appropriately, God has blessed them in new ways. They were chosen to contribute to this book for that very reason: the book project website explains that “We asked a group of ambitious, driven people—professors, scientists, artists, investment bankers and more—to give us their stories….”

I’m not trying to be cynical. Their stories are inspiring and challenging. But it stings a bit—reinforcing an ideal that I now know I’ll never achieve.  [Read more…] about Following Jesus in the “Real World”

In Response to “The Difficulty Discerning Calling”

Dr. Bryan McGraw, Driven Pilgrim contributor and author of today's excerpt
Dr. Bryan McGraw, Driven Pilgrim contributor and author of today’s excerpt

This article is part of series looking at chapters from a book being developed called Faithful is Successful, Notes to a Driven Pilgrim. Every two weeks are are responding to excerpts posted at drivenpilgrim.blogspot.com, considering how these issues might relate to emerging scholars. Today, we are looking at The Difficulty Discerning Calling by Dr. Bryan McGraw.

I once had a student who in her first advising session here at Wheaton sat down in a chair opposite me, flipped open a laptop and proceeded to describe how her color-coded Excel spreadsheet showed how she could complete a double-major in three years and set herself up for a career in the State Department.  She knew exactly what she wanted to do career-wise and what she needed to do to get there.

I was never organized enough for a spreadsheet, but I do know a thing or two about trying to plan one’s life around a specific career goal. I still remember preteen-me reading about HIV in an issue of Discover and being struck both by the human cost of the growing epidemic and the intellectual challenge of outwitting a virus that had learned to infiltrate the very cells of our body that were meant to keep out foreign invaders. That fascination with viruses and desire to help those afflicted by them guided my decision making for a solid decade thereafter.

[Read more…] about In Response to “The Difficulty Discerning Calling”