Called for Life — Affirming Vocational Discernment

From the Publisher

Mark Wilhelm

Wilhelm traces his decades-long enthusiasm for the Lutheran doctrine of vocation from his St. Olaf days reading Luther’s Open Letter to the German Nobility, notes Parker Palmer’s lecture-circuit ministry and Mark C. Taylor’s reflections on calling, and argues that ELCA colleges should claim vocation as the defining mark of Lutheran higher education—yet warns that vocation risks becoming “the program du jour” rather than a permanent hallmark.

Called for Life

Brian Pittman, Ellen Shelton, Greg Owen

Owen, Shelton, and Pittman of Wilder Research present the key findings of the Called for Life study, comparing the class of 2007 “Lilly graduates” from Luther, Augsburg, and Augustana to a pre-Lilly cohort from the class of 2001. They report that Lilly graduates were more than twice as likely to associate vocation with “calling” rather than “just a job,” and they identify four common ingredients of effective programming: relationships with caring adults, experiential learning outside the classroom, vocation-infused courses, and peer relationships within a pervasive campus culture of vocational exploration.

A College with a Calling: Vocation at Augsburg

Mark D. Tranvik

Tranvik narrates Augsburg’s decade of deep engagement with vocation—from President William Frame’s 1997 visioning process and the 2002 two-million-dollar Lilly grant for Exploring Our Gifts, through five Lutheran theological principles (vocation includes the whole life, lives for the sake of others, ranks all callings equal, cannot be reduced to ethics, and engages public life), to the Wilder Foundation’s Called for Life assessment and the 2008 founding of the Augsburg Center for Faith and Learning under Dr. Tom Morgan and the Bernhard Christensen Chair held by Dr. David Tiede.

Sense of Vocation

Ruth R. Kath

Kath describes Luther College’s Sense of Vocation program, organized into three components: General Program Initiatives (Vocation Visitors such as Parker Palmer, the Faith and Learning Workshop, self-directed reading grants, publications, and travel funds), the Church Ministry Program (Vocation Fellowships, the DIAKONOS discernment group, seminary visits, alumni discernment retreats, church leader workshops, clergy renewal, and the WIYLDE youth initiative), and the All-Student Vocation Program (Paideia I orientation, Peer Mentors, Capstone curriculum development grants, the Vocation Advising Workshop, and a Vocation Advising Handbook).

Called to Serve

Robert D. Haak

Haak describes Augustana’s Center for Vocational Reflection (CVR) and its threefold framework of skills/gifts/talents, passions/values, and needs of the community. He surveys the CVR’s Working with Faith group, seminary visits, spiritual companioning, Servant Leader Internships, international travel reflection, and the major Senior Inquiry curriculum revision—then reports the lessons learned at Augustana: that multiple exposures matter more than any single program, that the language of vocation works even for non-religious students, that student-initiated ideas (like Erin Blecha’s Athletes Giving Back) often succeed most, and that the CVR will soon merge into a new Community Engagement Center.

Teaching and Mentoring in Service of Civic Engagement

Haco Hoang

No. 63 · Spring 2026

6 min audio

Hoang describes how her teaching, mentoring, and research at California Lutheran University — including a multi-year collaboration with the Lutheran Office of Public Policy on Lutheran Lobby Day — cultivate civic skills grounded in ELCA social statements and the Lutheran tradition of faith and reason.

Well, Well…Plumbing Our Depths, Telling Our Stories

Ann Boaden

No. 40 · Fall 2014

Beginning with a college visit that turned into a grieving mother’s confidence about her daughter’s last moments, Boaden uses John 4’s well of living water to argue that an interfaith education worthy of the name requires Lutherans to plumb the depths of their own tradition’s wells — with rituals, stories, and seasons intact — before they can see, respectfully, into the wells from which others drink.

Negotiating Legitimate and Conflicting Values

Eboo Patel, Katie Bringman Baxter, Mark S. Hanson

No. 44 · Fall 2016

In a closing-day conversation at the 2016 Vocation of a Lutheran College Conference, Mark Hanson and Eboo Patel — moderated by Katie Bringman Baxter of Interfaith Youth Core — share case studies in which legitimate religious values come into tension with one another, and make the case that Lutheran colleges should teach interfaith leadership through the hard cases rather than the easy ones.

Freedom, Humor, and Community: A Lutheran Vision for Higher Education

Darrell Jodock

No. 13 · Winter 2002

Jodock’s inaugural lecture for the Bernhardson chair at Gustavus Adolphus develops three interlocking themes drawn from the Lutheran tradition as a deeper grounding for the liberal arts college than contemporary American assumptions. A sense of humor rests on Luther’s discovery that God takes the initiative—Luther could call himself a beggar, joke about the epistle of James, and credit Wittenberg beer for the Reformation—and underwrites the freedom of inquiry that John Updike traces to Grace Lutheran Sunday School in Shillington. Community, grounded in Augsburg Confession VII and Luther’s 1524 letter to the German city councils, makes the college a community of discourse pursuing wisdom rather than “the same old blockheads.” Freedom is both “freedom from” and “freedom for,” illustrated by Nechama Tec’s Polish Holocaust rescuers and by Jodock’s Holocaust-class corporate role-play in which students voted to build a factory in a death camp rather than risk losing their board seats—a vivid case for educating toward “a passion for justice.”

Making the Common Good Common

René Johnson

No. 42 · Fall 2015

Johnson reflects on the Servant Leadership House for women at Finlandia University — from a sweaty trip to the local landfill to weekly habits of campus presence — to argue that the common good becomes truly common when it is embedded in the ordinary details of vocational living, and that Luther’s sense of neighbor calls servant leaders to “little bits of good” as well as to more radical pursuits of justice.

A New Image for an Ancient Call: Lutheran Higher Education Amidst Pandemics Today

Caryn Riswold

No. 52 · Fall 2020

Pairing Wartburg’s Lebenskreuz sculpture with the Matthew 25 acts of mercy and the commitments of Rooted and Open, Riswold reads the calls to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and care for the sick as urgent summons for Lutheran higher education in a year of overlapping pandemics — and as a call to dismantle the structures that produced them.