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See also
current and
past Comment
Are You Kidding? God is Calling!
Since September 2002 when I joined Augsburg
Fortress, the ministry of publishing for the ELCA, I have had the opportunity to
share my "call story" at synod assemblies and on ELCA college campuses. I enjoy
telling it in these settings where there are large groups of lay people because
I just didn't "get it" until the spring of 2002.
Didn't get what? That I (as a lay person) could
be called!
Now, you might wonder how someone who was active
in Lutheran congregations throughout her life wouldn't understand the concept of
call. But, to me, it was just a theory. I simply hadn't internalized it in my
life.
I don't think that I'm the only actively engaged
Lutheran lay person who has missed this lesson. It's one of the many reasons
that I'm so delighted with the Book of Faith initiative
being launched throughout this church.
But, I am getting ahead of the story of
recognizing my own sense of call to lead this ministry of this church!
Corporate Nomad
Most of my career has been spent in the world of secular publishing. I was a
corporate nomad working in Fortune 500 publishing companies. I always felt good
about my work in the development and marketing of college textbooks because it
felt like the products had intrinsic value. But, I never expressed it as a
"call."
After 22 years of corporate life, I left
publishing and became the owner of a technology career school in Boca Raton,
Florida. Once again, I felt good about the value of the "product" I was
offering: education to assist unemployed and under-employed people gain computer
skills to help them move forward in their careers. Again, it felt good to help
others, but I didn't express it as a "call."
Each winter, my parents would visit me in Florida
for six weeks to get away from their somewhat chillier home in Lexington,
Kentucky. In February 2002, they came to visit and had their mail forwarded to
my home. In late March, they went back to Kentucky and their mail stopped being
forwarded.
A couple of weeks after I had seen the last of
their mail, I went home one evening to find that my parents' copy of
The Lutheran magazine had been
forwarded. I took it in and flipped through it. Then, I did something that I'm
sure I had never done before; I looked at the classified ads in the back of
The Lutheran. There was a small ad for "President and CEO of Augsburg
Fortress."
As a life-long Lutheran who had spent most of her
career in publishing, I was naturally curious about it. So, I looked up the
posting on the Augsburg Fortress
website.
I was stunned. It was as if someone had posted my
resume. And, I had an overwhelming sense of "I'm supposed to do this" (quickly
followed by "Are you kidding?").
I was not looking for a job! I was not interested
in selling my house, selling my business, and moving from Florida to Minnesota!
But that annoying sense of "I'm supposed to do this" just wouldn't go away.
Prayer and Charts
So, I sat in my home office and prayed. It still wouldn't go away. "Are you
kidding?" kept flooding my mind.
I decided to think logically about this. I pulled
up a blank Word document on my computer and created a chart. On the left side, I
listed the background, skills, and experience outlined in the job description.
On the right side, I typed in my background, skills, and experience for each
item.
A perfect fit. "Are you kidding?"
But God is persistent and the sense of "I'm
supposed to do this" wouldn't go away. Later that night, I e-mailed my resume to
the recruiter. I promptly forgot about it and went on with my life.
Two weeks later, my phone rang. The recruiter
wanted me to come to an interview. "Are you kidding?" I still wasn't really
interested, but I found that I couldn't say "no."
After the interview, I knew that I was supposed
to be in this role. I knew that the choices I had made in my life had led me to
this place: life-long active Lutheran, experience in a wide variety of
publishing roles, and entrepreneurial familiarity with the world of technology.
I knew that God wasn't kidding and finally understood that this was what people
mean when they talk about being called.
Of course, it wasn't quite that simple. I knew,
but the interview team did not! The interviews continued over five months.
Twelve candidates, then six, then three, then two; the pace wasn't exactly what
I was accustomed to in the world of business! Finally, in mid-August, I was
offered the position and started two weeks later.
Every time I tell this story to a group of lay
people, several visit with me afterward to tell me that they are going through a
similar experience of that "Are you kidding?" sense of call. I love having the
opportunity to affirm and encourage them.
As leaders, it is so critical that we share our
stories of listening to God's call. It also is essential that we tell others how
God's Word has shaped our lives. It's the promise of the Book of Faith
initiative I mentioned earlier: that through the study of Scripture and the
sharing of our own faith stories we will help others answer the "Are you
kidding?" questions in their lives.
The first Book of Faith resource that Augsburg
Fortress will publish, Opening
the Book of Faith: Lutheran Insights for Bible Study, will help fill in
the gaps for others like me. Available April 1, this brief book will serve as a
summary statement about why we as Lutherans talk about the Bible as a "book of
faith." It will also provide key Lutheran theological insights for reading and
studying the Bible and an integrated methodology for studying the Bible.
In early 2009, the next two Book of Faith
resources will be published; a Lutheran Study Bible and a very exciting,
comprehensive new adult Bible study curriculum.
And, of course, God just might be using the Book
of Faith initiative to invite us into new or additional calls in the various
aspects of our lives. Are you kidding?
Beth Lewis is the president and CEO of
Augsburg Fortress Publishers, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her e-mail address is
beth.lewis@augsburgfortress.org.
Gladness and
Hunger
We all have a story to tell. Turn these pages,
and you will meet several people who will tell you how they are forging a
partnership between their work and their God-given vocation, or calling.
An Editor's Confession
Have you ever looked at something but managed to not really
"see" it?It reminds me of
the Lord's terse words to the prophet Isaiah as he was about to
share the Word:
"Go and say to this people: Keep
listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking but do not
understand" (6:9). Jesus used these words, as recorded in the
Synoptics, as he was explaining the purpose of the parables:
 "[T]hat
they may indeed look, but not perceive, and indeed listen, but
not understand" (Mark 4: 12).
Somehow, the word "Lutheran"
disappeared from the Jan./Feb. 2008 cover. It was actually
"there," but it was buried underneath the bar of color. It was
somehow inadvertently transposed during the proofing process. On
earlier proofs, the cover did read "Lutheran Partners." Then it
moved and went unnoticed at further proofing stages.
As the cover on this issue shows,
we do wish to keep the magazine's name as "Lutheran Partners." I
would ask you to pray for our eyes.
As well as the ability to recall.
In my
January /
February Comment, I cited the names of many individuals who
have had and are having a vital hand in the publication of this
magazine.
There's always a danger in
listing people whom you wish to thank because of the possibility
of omitting some key names.
Well, I forgot to mention a
couple of key players responsible for getting the ball rolling
in the early days of the redesign project. Working with the
Research and Evaluation arm of the churchwide organization,
Jackie Skrypek, Rebecca Sims, and Victoria Flood all helped
provide foundational research gleaned from focus groups and
random surveys and lots of mailings.
And they worked with many of you
from among our readership who filled out the surveys and
participated in the focus groups.
Thanks again for your partnership
in the ministry of this publication.
William Decker |
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Since this issue doubles as our "Higher
Education" issue, our vocational stories mostly all told by individuals associated
with seminaries, colleges and universities, and campus ministries. Their stories
are related to such occupations as teaching, campus ministry, rostered ministry,
engineering, economics, architecture, and public school administration.
But what is vocation? Without any special coaxing
from myself, several of our authors cited a richly-worded definition of vocation
from preacher and writer Frederick Buechner as meaningful to their lives:
"The place God calls you to is the place where
your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meets" (Wishful Thinking: A
Theological ABC [San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1973], p. 95).
We all have vocations/callings where, hopefully,
our deep gladnesses and the world's deep hungers are integrated. Those who daily
serve our neighbors through the institutional church have vocations. Those who
daily serve our neighbors in myriad ways have vocations too.
I am currently reading or re-reading resources
which underscore our faith tradition's major emphasis on vocation.
Here's a short list: Race back to 1975, and pick
up a very fine work by Herman G. Stuempfle Jr., Theological and Biblical
Perspectives on the Laity (New York: Division for Mission in North
America/Lutheran Church in America, 1973). A current, short (at just under 100
pages) and compelling volume is Listen! God is Calling: Luther Speaks of
Vocation, Faith, and Work (Augsburg Fortress: Minneapolis, 2003) by D.
Michael Bennethum, part of the "Lutheran Voices" series.
Earlier in my life, my thoughts on vocation were
sharpened through the writing and teaching of Prof. Marc Kolden, of Luther
Seminary (check out
www.luthersem.edu/mkolden for some resources on the Christian life and
vocation).
William C. Placher is editor of a wonderful
volume entitled Callings: Twenty centuries of Christian wisdom on vocation
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2005).
And, of course, there is the monumental work by
Gustav Wingren, Luther on Vocation, published in 1957, for those who wish
to go deep — very deep.
With vocation, there is much to ponder for both
yourself and for those in settings where you serve and lead.
William Decker is editor of
Lutheran Partners magazine and Lutheran Partners Online, Chicago, Illinois.
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