Interruptions are not distractions by Laura Meitzner Yoder

Laura Meitzner Yoder here challenges us to consider how our professional work brings forth the kingdom of God. She specifically highlights those times when we need to set aside our own plans and priorities to take hold of the God-given interruptions which present themselves so that we can play our part in God’s kingdom story.

No matter where we are in the world or what our professional positions, reflecting on vocation may prompt us to ask, “How does my work today, in this particular context, with these specific people, both express and bring forth the Kingdom of God?”  This question has accompanied me as I have pursued my vocation of university teaching and community-based research on environmental issues in far-flung areas of Southeast Asia.

My teaching and my relationships improved as I increasingly took local circumstances into account, based our studies on local examples, and fully employed elicitive, question-based teaching methods.  This built my appreciation for the ministry of interruptability: a willingness to look beyond my own content-oriented goals in order to improve the educational outcomes, and personal healing opportunities, among my students.  While these circumstances may seem more extreme than those typically found in a North American university classroom, we should be attentive and alert to the potential range of background experiences that students and colleagues may be invisibly carrying into their educational settings.  Compassion and listening are central to an educator’s work.

What differentiates God-given interruptions from distractions is whether they contribute to or detract from our overall purpose.  Here is where being able to distil our core motivations is helpful: articulating a professional life purpose that relocates the center of our universe from our own academic accolades and accomplishments to our supporting roles in God’s Kingdom story is startling in a world obsessed with personal aggrandizement.  The biblical story of the Kingdom of God is so riddled with reversals, inversions, and unexpected outcomes that we should not be surprised to find that God’s Something Big is at odds with the accepted order of things in secular society.  Defining our professional purpose and our life vision in terms of the glimpses we have for God’s agenda in this world releases us from following a standard script for success, and allows us to define the opportunities that come our way in different terms.  We may view Jesus’ call to leave nets and to follow as a nonsensical abandonment of one’s obvious first professional calling and a foolhardy inattention to safeguarding and developing the key tools of the trade--until we are able to put that action in a larger perspective.

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Author Biography

Laura Meitzner Yoder enjoys learning and teaching about how people make claims to the natural world and how human societies negotiate using and sharing what we claim.  She draws inspiration and hope from over a decade spent with smallholder farmers and forest dwellers in Latin America and Southeast Asia, as they work out their access to land, forests, and seeds.  Most of her overseas positions have bridged the worlds of rural villages and a local university, teaching plant sciences, field research methods, social forestry, political ecology, and environmental anthropology.  Since 2011, she is Associate Professor and Director of the field-based Sustainability Semester at the Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College, Indiana, USA, and continues to spend some months each year in Asia with her husband and young son.  Her publications cover a range of topics including interaction of state and customary authorities in resource regulation, agricultural improvements in marginal production areas, approaches to plant breeding, environmental justice, and institutions that govern the commons.

Full Time Life by Dan Jukanovich

In the following selection from the chapter by Dano Jukanovich, Dano describes the “full time” life that God has called us to. He notes that “God has created us for a full-time, life-long relationship with him that integrates all aspects of who we are, where we live, what we do, and who we do it with.” When God calls us to “full time” life, God calls us over the course of our lives, and perhaps through different careers. Dano’s life reflects a clear calling but this has involved multiple careers. The calling has been consistent but the careers have changed and God has used the successes and failures and experiences to prepare him and shape him for what he is doing now and may do in the future as part of God’s continued calling.

Where I am now is not where I would have planned 15 years ago, but cliché as it may be, where I am is much better than what I could have asked for or imagined. God has continued to develop my character and reveal my interests in ways that align with His will and are incredibly fulfilling to me. There has been a popular movement among mid-life successful Christian business people in the US called “Half-time.” And I reference it in no way disparagingly because it has had enormous positive impact in many peoples’ lives for God’s purposes. I reference it in comparison to what I’m calling “Full-time.” God has created us for a full-time, life-long relationship with him that integrates all aspects of who we are, where we live, what we do, and who we do it with.

My career to-date has evolved through approximately four five-year cycles: military service, large corporation mid-management, small business ownership, and international economic development. I can say confidently that one consistent theme throughout various less-than perfect career decisions has been a genuine seeking of God’s will and endeavouring to do what I thought He wanted me to do. It is this career-long seeking of God’s will for my vocation that I am referring to as a Full-time career.

Today I am in Rwanda continuing to become more of who God has called me to be. The above is only a cursory overview of twenty years that were filled with some very high and very low points from a career satisfaction standpoint. I struggled throughout with pride and insecurity, made significant decisions that were motivated by fear and greed, and spent a fair amount of time generally self-absorbed. But a significant common theme throughout the major decision points was a faithful attempt to discern and follow God’s will often at the exclusion of what was safe and secure. God wants every aspect of our careers to be always (lifelong) and entirely (our whole selves) abandoned to His gracious, life giving, abundantly, joy-filled and masterful plan.
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Author Biography
Dano Jukanovich is a co-founder and Partner with Karisimbi Business Partners in Kigali, Rwanda, a socially motivated management consulting and private equity firm focused on small and mid-size enterprise development. With more than 18 years of experience, Dano has held responsibility for business development and finance for start-ups and established companies including AT&T Wireless before accepting the role of CEO for a mid-sized US Construction company. His background includes five years of service as a US Army Airborne Ranger and Senior Intelligence Officer prior to application of his leadership to a variety of companies. Dano received his Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1993. As part of his military service, Dano lived in Seoul, Korea and learned Mandarin Chinese while studying in Beijing, China. He also earned his MBA degree with a specialty in Finance at Wharton. That same year, Dano earned a Master of Arts in International Economics & China Studies at the Johns Hopkins Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Dano also continues in the West Point “soldier-athlete” tradition having recently completed the 2012 Ironman in South Africa.

Spiritual dependency in the messiness of life- Dr Harvey Louthan

This third post contains an exert from the chapter by Prof Howard Louthan.  Prof Louthan discusses the complexity of maintaining a balance amongst the many demands of work and life.  His experiences shed light on the challenges of striving to be a successful Christian academic, father, husband and son.  He cautions against thinking we can do everything just because we are Christians and instead we often need to lower our sights.   After decades struggling with these issues he concludes we may need to accept that more often than not we exist in the “messiness of life” which forces us depend on God’s adequacy and turn to Him continually.

Spiritual dependency in the messiness of life

The past two decades of marriage, family and professional life have been a blur of movement too often occurring at breakneck speed.  Though I have attempted to control the pace of life, to balance out my various responsibilities, more often than not I feel that it is all getting beyond me.  Though I have tried to act prudently, to reflect carefully before taking on a project, I do not always succeed and frequently end up over-committed.  Spiritually as well, I have faced parallel challenges.  I entered graduate school with tidy theological categories that though helpful for a time could not in the end encompass and explain the complexities of life.   Without jettisoning Christian essentials, I have come to appreciate the messiness of faith where not all issues are resolved, and ambiguity often remains.

More often than not, I feel hopelessly compromised as a scholar and teacher, as a father, husband and son.   How do I stay faithful with all these demands?   Too often I have responded in one of two ways.  When tired or exhausted at the end of a busy day or a particularly difficult stretch of work, I have given into feelings of hopelessness and guilt, of knowing that I can never measure up to impossibly high standards.  On the other hand, when I am fresher and more energetic, I deceive myself into thinking that I can somehow manage it all.   Neither response is of course appropriate or accurately reflects our true situation.  I am slowly coming to realize that when God calls us to be faithful, he is also calling us to embrace the messiness of life.  Indeed, God wants us to be in a position of spiritual dependency, to acknowledge our inadequacies, limitations and failures.   To feel off-balance is not a bad thing, for it forces all of us to turn daily if not hourly to the one source of adequacy there is in life.

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Howard Louthan (Harvey ‘92) is professor of history at the University of Florida where he teaches with his wife, Andrea Sterk who is also a member of the history faculty.   He specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of Renaissance and Reformation Europe with a particular focus on religion.  His most recent books include Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge, 2009) and an edited collection of essays Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World (Oxford, 2012).  Howard and Andrea have a family of three children.

The Difficulty Discerning Calling by Dr. Bryan McGraw

In this second post from his chapter Dr. Bryan McGraw discusses how we are called. Are we called once for all and then just execute this calling? Or, is calling more fluid and difficult to discern? McGraw argues that for many of us our notion of calling has changed over time. We have not ended up where we thought but this process has not been a deviation from God's plan. Rather, it is has been part of it.

How do we discern our calling?

For many (perhaps most), discerning calling means trying to get a long-range vision for your life and a detailed, executable plan for how to get there. To discern one’s vocational calling is to get as clear-eyed as possible about our gifts, talents and goals and then envision a path toward their realization. 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.  Few of us, I suspect, have this student’s drive or organizational acumen, but we nonetheless see in her perspicuity a kind of ideal in relation to vocation.  To discern one’s vocational calling is to get as clear-eyed as possible about our gifts, talents and goals and then envision a path toward their realization.  

The difficulty with this idea of calling is that almost none of us (at least those of us with a certain, ahem, maturity) can cast a look back ten years or more and not be a bit amazed at life’s twists and turns.  Do we ever really have clarity of vision?  Or, perhaps more to the point, does our supposed clarity ever work out just as we had planned?  I’m rather doubtful.  What seems more likely to me is that we are all almost always stuck in that muddle, but that it’s not always a bog, a trap for the unwary, but it is in reality a set of opportunities for rethinking and living out our vocation.  We might even say that our circumstances, especially the unexpected ones, can be particularly important to our vocational call.

The truth is that we are not in control of where we end up (at least not entirely, maybe not even mostly) and we should reflect seriously on how where we end up ought to shape our vocational vision. To the degree that I think of my current context as standing in the way of what I am supposed to be doing, I am missing my actual vocational call precisely because I have misconceived how I am to discern that call. To be faithful in a particular context is, first, to recognize that context for what it is and then ask, given that context, how we might best act with an eye (maybe two!) on what we take to be God’s call then and there.  This does not simplify our discernment—probably quite the opposite.  But I think it avoids the error of believing that a proper understanding of one’s vocational call at a particular time emerges out of constructing some clear, final vision for life that all too typically sees current circumstances as mere obstacles to its fulfillment.

How are We to Think About Vocation? by Dr. Bryan McGraw

Our second author is Dr. Bryan McGraw. This is the first of two blog posts from his chapter. In the first post Dr. McGraw addresses the question: why integrate faith and vocation?  

Author Biography

Bryan McGraw is Associate Professor Politics at Wheaton College. Bryan has always had an interest in the normative and philosophical aspects of politics and discovered political theory only in graduate school. He is particularly interested in the ways modern states seek to establish and enforce their own normative visions and how religion plays into that process. He has taught previously at the University of Georgia, Notre Dame and Pepperdine University. His first book, Faith in Politics: Religion and Liberal Democracy, was published by Cambridge University Press, and he is beginning a project on pluralism, law and religion, and political theology. He earned an AM in Political Science from Brown University, an MA in Russian Area Studies from Georgetown, and his PhD in Political Science from Harvard University. Bryan and his wife Martha, a practicing Neurologist, live in Wheaton with their three children. They enjoy gardening, all manners of outdoor activities, and perfecting the art of pulled-pork BBQ sandwiches.

How are We to Think About Vocation?

All Christians understand that our deepest calling is to live faithfully as recipients of God’s grace and mercy, but we heirs of the Reformation should understand especially well that such a calling includes our everyday lives.  Living faithfully is not just a matter of proper worship or affirming the right doctrines (though those are important).  It is also a matter of living out our “secular” lives, the parts of our lives we share with all.  How to be a banker, a lawyer, a nurse or a carpenter is part of the life of faith, not something to the side of it.  So to think about vocation is to consider what we should be doing with ourselves in spheres of life that we share with all, concerns that often do not differ from what our neighbors and friends outside the faith share with us when thinking about their careers and life choices.  But what makes vocation different for the Christian, distinguishing it from mere career, is that it is freighted with our sense of participation in God’s work, His kingdom-work.  To think about vocation is to consider how our secular lives ought to reflect and participate in God’s providential care in the world at large: what are we called to do in the world as part of what God is already doing?

What is powerful about McGraw's statement here is that it suggests that when God calls Christians to specific vocations, he wants those in vocations to think about how they can do what they do “Christianly” and creatively explore what difference being a Christian makes in different vocations. God’s redemptive work in the world includes the social and cultural institutions that provide the context of our lives, including vocations and professions. Unless Christians think consciously about the integration of their faith into their work, they will adopt the patterns and norms of work in the world around them. They will also miss out on the creative opportunity rethink their work world in a beautiful way. 

Failing Faithfully by Dr. Justin Denholm

This the first in a series of posts, where we will be profiling each author and providing an excerpt of their chapter. Blogs are about engagement and interaction, and we are hoping that our small, but growing, readership will engage with each author in the comments. Our first author is Dr. Justin Denholm, who asks the question: is it right for Christians to seek success? 

Author Biography

Justin Denholm lives in Brunswick, Australia with his wife, three children and two chickens, where he has many challenging conversations about faith and life. Since 2008, he has coordinated the Centre for Applied Christian Ethics at Ridley Melbourne Mission and Ministry College, which concentrates on providing resources and support for Christians to engage with ethical issues in all aspects of life. Justin also works as an infectious diseases physician and epidemiologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia, where his clinical and research interests are focused on tuberculosis and other communicable diseases. He holds degrees in medicine, ethics, public health and epidemiology, and is actively involved in teaching programs for these subjects at the University of Melbourne. He has written or edited several books, including most recently a Christian guide to having better ethical discussions; Talking About Ethics: Negotiating the Maze (Acorn Press, 2011).

Is it right for Christians to seek success?

It is extremely tempting to approach our fields with a desire to reform them for God. This is particularly the case for those of us who inhabit workplaces and locations that are heavily secular in nature. Many of us long for increasing power and influence in these fields, with which we intend to shape them in ways that glorify God and attract people to him. We need to understand, though, that our ability to accomplish these goals is limited, and our motivation to do so is mixed.

We commonly look to examples like Daniel and Joseph as faithful people of God who succeed in the world. Clearly, there are times when God's purposes coincide with worldly success and influence. God can certainly use us as the CEO of a major corporation or as Nobel-winning scientists. Such people have served him faithfully before, and he can surely use them again. The problem I have, though, is that it doesn't seem at all clear to me that God intends for us to seek to serve him in these ways. Think of Daniel, kidnapped and press-ganged into service, or Joseph, sold into slavery. These men rose to power obliquely; they sought to follow God faithfully regardless of circumstance, and were used in ways that seem 'successful' to us. For every Daniel or Joseph, though, is a Jeremiah or Hosea; people who follow God's call in ways that lead them to suffer ridicule and be sidelined. God's call may not lead to the corner office that I think would suit my talents perfectly, but to caring for my disabled neighbour. Perhaps even more difficult is the idea that I may be asked to continue to serve God in my field of work but be “mediocre” in order to devote myself to the work of the local church or some other end.

In some situations, faithfulness may be rewarded in worldly pursuits. Traits like honesty may be recognised and lead to advancement in some fields. It seems to me far from inevitable that this will be the case, however. It is at least as likely that following Christ will lead us to worldly failure. Our priorities for serving our families and our churches may mean that we are less committed to our workplaces than others, and in some fields honesty may not be a pathway to career development! More fundamentally, though, we follow a crucified God and walk the road to Calvary. We serve a God who is most glorified in us when we are weak and powerless. We are people who are told we should be pitied if we do not have resurrection and vindication to look forward to. The question I ask myself, then, is 'how likely is it that faithful abandonment to his service will lead to a life of worldly influence and respect'?

So what does this mean for me as a Christian who aspires to lead? Well, most bluntly, it leads me to distrust my reasons for wanting to lead and influence. As much as I tell myself that my motivation is to serve God, to influence others in ways that glorify him, to lead my field towards aims that please him, I don't believe me. While Christian faith should not mean that we can never lead or be successful in worldly terms, I am increasingly convinced that these things should be thrust upon us reluctantly rather than be things we strive for.

Getting Involved...

Welcome to our book project! We are exploring with a group of authors how faith and vocation can come together in to meaningful careers. This group of authors contemplates the nature of our callings, the place of ambition and drive in our lives, and also how integrating our faith can change specific fields.

And thanks for your interest in supporting us through this process.  Whether you found out about us from an email, Urbana or some other missions conference, or a personal recommendation, we are glad you are here.

In this blog we will be  posting excerpts from the book, and are possibly going to tie this in with a series of blog posts with our friends at the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) blog.

Your involvement is very important to us. It gives us a way to understand our future audience and test content before we go to print. This content is for people just like you, and we want to know how you are receiving what we are putting together.

Here is how you can get involved right now and help us to our goals:

1. Signing up for future updates using the box on the upper-right of this webpage.

2. Sharing this blog to people in your network that would be interested in the book.

3. Giving your feedback on the project, either publicly through comments on the blog, or privately with an email to me.

4. Letting one of the editors know if you are open to be part of our "focus-group" to help refine the content.

In particular, we are curious what you will think of the excerpts we will be posting in the coming weeks, and also the outline that is already up for you to see. Give us your comments and we will be in touch soon.