Visions Of Vocation

Foreword Review's Annual INDIEFAB Book of the Year Finalist Outreach Resource of the Year Christianity Today Award of Merit Leadership Journal Best Books for Church Leaders Book of the Year from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore Is it possible to know the world and still love the world? Of all the questions we ask about our calling, this is the most difficult. From marriages to international relations, the more we know, the harder it is to love. We become cynics or stoics, protecting our hearts from the implications of what we know. But what if the vision of vocation can be recovered—allowing us to step into the wounds of the world and for love's sake take up our responsibility for the way the world turns out? For decades Steve Garber has come alongside a wide range of people as they seek to make sense of the world and their lives. With him we meet leaders from the Tiananmen Square protest who want a good reason to still care about China. We also meet with many ordinary people in ordinary places who long for their lives to matter: Jonathan who learned he would rather build houses than study history Todd and Maria who adopted creative schedules so they could parent better and practice medicine D.J. who helped Congress move into the Internet Age Robin who spends her life on behalf of urban justice Hans who makes hamburgers the way they are meant to be made Susan who built a home business of hand-printing stationary using a letterpress Santiago who works with majority-world nations in need of capital George who has given years to teaching students to learn things that matter most Claudius and Deirdre whose openhearted home has always been a place for people Dan who loves Wyoming, the place, its people and its cows Vocation is when we come to know the world in all its joy and pain and still love it. Vocation is following our calling to seek the welfare of the world we live in. And in helping the world to flourish, strangely, mysteriously, we find that we flourish too. Garber offers a book for everyone everywhere—for students, for parents, for those in the arts, in the academy, in public service, in the trades and in commerce—for all who want to discover the virtue of vocation.

How do parents, professors, campus ministers, youth pastors and others help students learn to connect what they believe about the world with how they live in it? Steven Garber answers this question in this revised edition which includes a new chapter on life formation.

We all want to make sense of life, of who we are and why we are, and to know that what we do—day in and day out—matters. But daily demands often lead to a life that feels void of meaning and disjointed from our deepest beliefs. Steven Garber challenges us to move beyond our fragmented sense of reality and begin to see all we are and all we do—our work, play, relationships, worship, and loves—as significant to God. Once we discover that there is no chasm between heaven and earth, we are able to understand the coherence of the work of God and of our lives in the world. This is the seamless life—to see the truest truths of the universe woven into the very meaning of life, labor, learning, and liturgy.

The Protestant doctrine of vocation has had a profound influence on American culture, but in recent years central tenets of this doctrine have come under assault. Vocation: Discerning Our Callings in Life explores current responses to the classic view of vocation and offers a revised statement and application of this doctrine for contemporary North American Christians. According to Douglas Schuurman, many Christians today find it both strange and difficult to interpret their social, economic, political, and cultural lives as responses to God's calling. To renew this biblical perspective, Schuurman argues, Christians must recover the language, meaning, and reality of life as vocation, and his book helps do just that. Developed in dialogue with audiences as diverse as college students, industrial workers, business leaders, church leaders, and professional theologians and ethicists, the book examines the theological and ethical dimensions of vocation as these have been understood historically and in relation to our modern social setting.

Christianity Today Book Award winner Imagine the scenarios: a CEO successfully negotiates a corporate merger, avoiding hundreds of layoffs in the process an artist completes a mosaic for public display at a bank, showcasing neighborhood heroes a contractor creates a work-release program in cooperation with a local prison, growing the business and seeing countless former inmates turn their lives around a high-school principal graduates 20 percent more students than the previous year, and the school's average scores go up by a similar percentage Now imagine a parade in the streets for each event. That's the vision of Proverbs 11:10, in which the tsaddiqim—the people who see everything they have as gifts from God to be stewarded for his purposes—pursue their vocation with an eye to the greater good. Amy Sherman, director of the Center on Faith in Communities and scholar of vocational stewardship, uses the tsaddiqim as a springboard to explore how, through our faith-formed calling, we announce the kingdom of God to our everyday world. But cultural trends toward privatism and materialism threaten to dis-integrate our faith and our work. And the church, in ways large and small, has itself capitulated to those trends, while simultaneously elevating the "special calling" of professional ministry and neglecting the vocational formation of laypeople. In the process, we have, in ways large and small, subverted our kingdom mandate. God is on the move, and he calls each of us, from our various halls of power and privilege, to follow him. Here is your chance, keeping this kingdom calling in view, to steward your faith and work toward righteousness. In so doing, you will bless the world, and as you flourish, the world will celebrate.

There is a new reality for mothers in the 21st century-it's a different world with different goals than it was even a generation ago. As little girls, today's moms didn't grow up with ONLY dolls and toy kitchens and princesses and visions of idyllic domesticity and motherhood behind a white picket fence: they were given these but also a little plastic doctor's bag and a coloring book full of potential careers to choose from. "You can be anything you want, child." It's a message of empowerment and it's beautiful. But, as many of those young girls grew up, a message that was once meant to convey opportunity has begun to feel like a pressure cooker. What once was "You can have it all" has now become "You need to have it all." You need to have the perfect job, the perfect husband, the perfect house, the perfect kids, the perfect play dates and craft nights and date nights and DIY Pinterest projects and #nofilter Instagrams. What does it mean to be a mom in a world like that? Where does vocation fit into all this? What does a holistic idea of self fit in? Many women struggle with the decision to work inside the home or outside the home. How can you maintain a sense of self and motherhood in both decisions? The reality is we can't really have it all - sometimes we will have to make choices. This Barna Frame explores the value and beauty in those constraints. Join Kate Harris, wife, mother, and the executive director of The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation, and Culture, as she unpacks the identity questions, the economic realities, and the role of the church in your life as you feel compelled to be wonder woman.

For people in the workplace, there is a great deal to learn from Joseph in the book of Genesis. He spent time both at the top and at the bottom—as a leader and as a slave in Egypt. In this new book about faith and work, author Albert M. Erisman shares lessons learned from the frontlines of business, government, and education, and how they connect to Joseph’s life. Through the author’s own work experiences and interviews with business leaders across the world, you’ll learn that Joseph dealt with issues that are still common in the business world today. Studying his life can offer guidance and encouragement in any workplace.

Vocational occupations are attractive not so much for their material rewards as for the prestige and self-fulfillment they confer. They require a strong personal commitment, which can be subjectively experienced in terms of passion and selflessness. The choice of a career in the cultural sector provides a good example of this. What are the terms of this calling? What predisposes individuals to answer it? What are the meanings of such a choice? To answer these questions, this book focuses on would-be cultural managers. By identifying their social patterns, by revealing the resources, expectations and visions of the world they invest in their choice, it sheds new light on these occupations. In these intermediary and indeterminate social positions, family heritages intersect with educational strategies, aspirations of upward mobility with tactics against downward mobility, and social critique with adjustment strategies. Ultimately the study of career choices in cultural management suggests a new take on the analysis of social reproduction and on the embodiment of the new spirit of capitalism. The empirical findings of this research conducted in France are set in a broader comparative perspective, at the European level and with the USA.