Vocation

Most Recently Published

Like runners, ministers benefit when they learn healthy habits that allow them to pause and experience restoration from concerns and fatigue and be refilled by the spirit of God. Bigstock/Dean Drobot

Christian Leadership, Pastoral leadership, Health & Well-being, Vocation

Mike Cope: Contemplation, relationships, emotional maturity and self-care are key to pastoral thriving

Theological training doesn’t offer ministers everything they need to flourish. Pastoral peer groups that develop additional competencies can fill the gap, writes a minister who is director of ministry outreach at Pepperdine University.

BigStock / VectorFusionArt

Education, K-12, Vocation

David I. Smith: What being Christian has to do with how we teach

Formation happens not only from what students are taught but also from how they are taught, says a scholar of faith and learning. What are the implications for teachers who are Christian?

Photo courtesy of the Ford Foundation

Money, Philanthropy, Vocation

Hilary Pennington: When there is deep inequality and prejudice, everyone suffers

Being born in South Africa, growing up in segregated St. Louis and going to divinity school have all influenced the Ford Foundation executive vice president for program, who works to combat inequality.

Vocation, Education, Higher education

Neichelle Guidry: Leading the vocational journey through the lens of sisterhood

The Dean of Chapel at Spelman College talks about her vocation -- helping form Black millennial women in ministry and faith.

Bigstock / M Image Photography

Health & Well-being, Vocation

Chanequa Walker-Barnes: The purpose of rest is to enable us to work more, right?

Deeply and faithfully loving and caring for oneself is enough -- it’s not just a pause between activities, writes a seminary professor and psychologist.

Bigstock / Cascoly

Vocation, Discernment

Ellen Clark Clémot: A former Wall Street lawyer finds a new and richer life in ministry

She found working on Wall Street exhilarating -- until the day she began to sense an emptiness in the canyons of power and money, says a former corporate lawyer who now leads a very different life as a PCUSA pastor.

iStock / Composite Illustration

Christian Leadership, Vocation

Johnathan C. Richardson: How can we understand our authority as Christian leaders?

Leaders must rely on an authority grounded in Christ as prophet, priest and king, writes an AME pastor in North Carolina.

Bigstock / Solo91

Sermons, Vocation, Baptism

Samuel Chuin Ming Oo: What does it mean to be baptized in the name of God?

This baptism that Jesus called us to is fundamentally a call for allegiance -- a “pickling” in the ways of Christ, the English pastor of the Chinese Christian Mission Church in Durham, North Carolina, says in this sermon.

Cover detail from "Tracking Down the Holy Ghost" by Frank T. Griswold

Vocation, Practices

Gretchen E. Ziegenhals: A prayer to begin the day

An ancient prayer helps today’s Christian leaders remember that God is already with us in our work, blessing, guiding and teaching us, writes a managing director at Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.

Before reciting her vows, Sister Joanna kneels before Sister Anne Marie, superior of Valley of Our Lady Monastery. Photos by Kevin Clark

Vocation, Discernment, Practices

Sister Joanna takes the final step to monastic life

After years of discernment, a young Catholic woman enters the monastery -- and a life of prayer as a cloistered nun.

A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity