Your Calling Transcends Your Job

I’m a product of 1990s evangelical youth group culture. Growing up, I heard a lot of talk about “calling” from youth ministers, adult volunteers, and the speakers at summer camps and weekend retreats.

While the language of calling was common, its application was narrow. God was calling some of us to be pastors, missionaries, youth directors, worship leaders, and campus ministers. Those thus called were in “vocational” ministry, whether full-time or part-time. Believers can honor God in the context of almost any occupation, but those in “the ministry” work for God himself—and there’s no higher calling.

I later realized how much my understanding of calling echoed traditional Catholicism rather than historic Protestant views. The medieval Catholic Church mostly limited calling to the clergy and members of monastic orders. During the Reformation, the Lutheran and Reformed traditions emphasized the priesthood of all believers. Though not as well known as the reformational recovery of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, the vocational Reformation dramatically changed how Protestants think about the Christian life.

Karen Swallow Prior argues for this biblical and reformational vision of calling in her new book You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful. She isn’t the first evangelical to reclaim the doctrine of vocation. For a quarter century, writers such as Gene Veith, Os Guinness, Gordon Smith, Tim Keller, Steven Garber, and Tom Nelson have tried to help evangelicals recapture the robust view of calling we find in Scripture and the Reformation. Prior engages with many of these authors, and others, as she develops her own account of calling. But she also offers a unique perspective that enhances the evangelical conversation about vocation.

Passion Isn’t Enough

Prior begins by treading ground that will be familiar to those who have encountered the reformational doctrine of vocation. She roots the dignity of human work in the creation account and challenges unbiblical (but common) distinctions between secular and sacred vocations. This approach rejects the modern tendency to narrowly identify someone’s vocation with his or her occupation.

But when we do consider our occupations, our posture and priorities matter. As Prior argues, “Any kind of work can be a calling for one person but just a job for another. The difference isn’t the work itself. The difference is in who you are and who God is calling you to be” (68). Our callings aren’t static but often develop over time.

Our callings aren’t static but often develop over time.

Prior also offers an important caveat that’s sometimes missing in current evangelical discussions about vocation. As someone who has spent considerable time with college students trying to discern their callings, she argues that our desires aren’t the best vocational guide. Too many believers allow their passions to lead them to idolize the ideal. But desires often change. She notes, “Understanding that there is no magical formula or perfect job just waiting for you can be freeing” (43). Callings are often discerned in the doing rather than the longing as God forms us vocationally.

Virtue and Imagination

Prior’s approach goes beyond the basic discussion of vocation. She offers a distinctively moral account of calling, focusing on the classical transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty, which she interprets through the lens of Scripture and the Christian intellectual tradition. She devotes a chapter to each transcendental, though she emphasizes that none can be rightly understood apart from the others. She writes,

I believe that if you pursue truth, goodness, and beauty in all your work, all your play, all your ways, and all your days, you will find your calling. In fact, I think pursuing truth, goodness, and beauty is your calling. It’s my calling. It’s everyone’s calling. (82)

This moral vision of vocation enables believers to glorify God and advance authentic human flourishing in any and every calling.

Too many believers allow their passions to lead them to idolize the ideal.

Another distinguishing feature of this book is that Prior’s calling differs considerably from others who write on this topic. She isn’t a pastor or theologian or leader in the faith-and-work movement. Instead, she has spent decades teaching English literature to undergraduate students. For the most part, she illustrates her arguments not with contemporary case studies but with literary examples. Prior cites novels, short stories, poems, and plays, seeking to provoke her readers’ imaginations. This imaginative vision of vocation invites believers to envision a better way to approach the topic of calling.

Ideal for Undergraduates

Prior’s book will land differently with readers depending—perhaps ironically—on their vocations. Her approach is less “practical” than many other books in this genre. The entrepreneur, politician, or public educator interested in the doctrine of vocation might find the book less helpful than other works on the topic. However, this approach complements the biblical exegesis and practical examples in the writings of the best-known authors on the doctrine of vocation.

This is an excellent book for Christian college students. Like Prior, I teach undergraduates in a Christian liberal arts setting. In one of my classes, a major theme is vocation and its relationship to human flourishing. You Have a Calling will resonate with many of my students precisely because of the way Prior puts a reformational understanding of calling in dialogue with virtue ethics and literature. I look forward to reading the book with them this coming academic year. You Have a Calling is an superb resource for pastors and church leaders to help equip their people to think vocationally.