InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network
In celebration of Labor Day and in preparation for Scholar’s Call, please take a few minutes to join me in considering how you define/embrace vocation and what resources you’ve found of particular value (please keep sending suggestions and filling out the writer survey).
For inspiration, Steve Garber offers in Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good (InterVarsity Press, 2014): [Read more…] about Visions of Vocation on Labor Day
I recently wrote about themes of calling and vocation in Chaim Potok’s My Name Is Asher Lev. This got me to thinking:
What are the best books on calling and vocation?
Here are a few that occur to me. What books would you add to the list? These below are all Christian nonfiction books, but novels, secular guides, poetry, anything, is welcome as suggestions.
Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life One of the classics on calling and vocation, this book is made up of many short, reflective chapters that make for good meditative reading. It also features a passage that I’ve quoted more than probably anything else I’ve read:
Our primary calling as followers of Christ is by him, to him, and for him. First and foremost we are called to Someone (God), not to something (such as motherhood, politics, or teaching) or to somewhere (such as the inner city or Outer Mongolia).
Our secondary calling, considering who God is as sovereign, is that everyone, everywhere, and in everything should think, speak, live, and act entirely for him. We can therefore properly say as a matter of secondary calling that we are called to homemaking or to the practice of law or to art history. But these and other things are always the secondary, never the primary calling. They are “callings†rather than the “calling.†They are our personal answer to God’s address, our response to God’s summons. Secondary callings matter, but only because the primary calling matters most. (The Call, p. 31)
Gordon Smith, Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential. If Guinness is reflective, I would characterize Smith as analytical. I go to Smith when I’m looking for a good definition for a concept, or a discussion of some specific issue, such as matching your personal calling with the corporate calling of an organization or business.
Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. The two books above deal directly with an individual’s personal calling. Crouch’s, in contrast, deals the questions of human calling in general: Why do we work? How do we approach culture? Do the artifacts of human culture have eternal value? Editor’s note (12/7/2013, 6:18 pm): Click here for a post focused on Culture Making.
Steven Garber, The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior. Someone — I think it was David McNeill — gave me this book when I transitioning from college to career, and it had a profound influence over my life for many years. Garber explores the issue of living a consistent life, in which our actions, decisions, career, etc., match what we say we believe. This integrity is central to understanding calling and vocation.
Those are a few of my choices. What books would you add? Please add your recommendations to the comments.
Part II of Byron Borger‘s evening chat with Steve Garber, author of Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior (InterVarsity Press. Revised Edition, 2007) — click here for Part I. Let’s pick up with Steve’s priceless realization of the importance not only of asking Who am I? but also of finding a place and a mentor with whom to ask an honest question and get an honest answer. *
While at L’Abri and wrestling with the question “Who I am?”, Steve watched his first film with Donald Drew. Donald, author of Images of man: A critique of the contemporary cinema (InterVarsity Press. 1974), pulled out his notebook and started taking notes as the movie began to show. Steve asked him, “Why?” Donald’s response, “You can’t leave your brains at the box office.†Donald’s love for truth and for people inspired Steve. So much so, he explored whether he should write a book. Donald cautioned him, “You should live for awhile.”
As Steve journeyed through campus ministry in various places, helped to organize conferences (e.g., Jubilee**), taught classes, and discussed the relationship of faith-career, a question “grew” in him. He considers, “What does it take for me to keep on keeping on with life?” an autobiographical question which everyone wrestles with in this very broken world. For Steve, the challenge emerged from [Read more…] about What is the point of learning? – Steve Garber’s Journey (Part II)
Last week I had the opportunity to hear “the one and only” Byron Borger (owner of Hearts & Minds Bookstore) spend a night informally chatting with his good friend Steve Garber, director of the Washington Institute and author of Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior (IVP. 2007). What did Byron and Steve explore on a Friday night over coffee with a 100+ friends from South Central PA?*
Steve started by sharing his story of growing up in the large agricultural valley of San Joaquin, California, and how the orientation of the Appalachians confuse him. With a smile Steve remarked
“Jesus choose to be incarnate in a place much more like California than here” [i.e., Pennsylvania]. Note: He mentioned this more than once 😉
Not surprisingly, Steve quickly turned to worldview:
About the time I met my wife I heard the word “worldview” for the first time, about 17 or 18 years old. My whole world could be made sense of by what was true. … If faith could shape anything, then it had to shape how I treated girls. …. I was drawn into what it would mean to relate to women. … I found it hard to find anyone who agreed with me. …
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, that’s romantic material for Emerging Scholars. Don’t worry, more to come on this topic 😉
To wrap his mind around “worldview,” Steve dropped out of college. [Read more…] about What is the point of learning? – Steve Garber’s Journey (Part I)
Last fall Anthony Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale, kicked off the academic year with a Boston Globe op-ed entitled Why are we here? Colleges ignore life’s biggest questions, and we all pay the price.  In response, Comment hosted an excellent on-line mini-symposium with several scholars including Steven Garber (Director, Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation and Culture), Dr. James K. A. Smith (Associate Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College), and Greg Veltman (Ph.D. Student, University of Pittsburgh).  As you enter the new term and consider the role of higher education, take some time to read and briefly respond to these short pieces and Kronman’s response. …
To whet your appetite, below’s part of Dr. James K. A. Smith‘s response to Why are we here? Colleges ignore life’s biggest questions, and we all pay the price:
While I think his diagnosis of the commodification of knowledge in University, Inc. is right on the money; and while I’m all for a more robust role for the humanities in a university education; and while I’m downright enthusiastic about a university education that actually grapples with “the big questions” about what it means to be human and what it looks like to live “the good life” — the fact is Kronman’s lament points out the need for so much more than he proposes. What’s needed is for the university to recover an understanding of education as formation.
But Kronman’s liberalism won’t let him imagine that. In order for education to be formative — in order for education to actually mold and shape students into certain kinds of people who are primed to live out a vision of the good life — such education needs to be shaped by a story, grounded by a tradition, and oriented toward a particular vision of the Good. But that would entail a violation of cherished liberal principles of the modern university — the stories it tells itself about its alleged neutrality, its supposed tolerant largesse, and its respect for human autonomy and self-determination. This is why he demonizes a “religious” education as the worst possible threat. So Kronman really just imagines a liberal, modern bastardization of a formative education: a syllabus that “raises the big questions,” but then leaves the sophomore in the place of lord and master, free to make her own decisions about the good life. (In this respect, his pedagogical memory is selective: the rich tradition of education that he points toward was not just unabashedly formative. It was, at times, positively dogmatic!) — Dr. James K.A. Smith, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College.
Note: Anthony Kronman‘s Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life was released last September by Yale University Press. For Micheal Hickerson‘s exploration of Education’s End, follow the Education’s End tag.