I became a fan of the Lutheran doctrine of vocation decades ago. It happened while I was a first year student (we were still freshmen back then) at St. Olaf in conversations stemming from reading An Open Letter to the German Nobility in the old Dillenberger collection of Luther’s treatises of 1520. In the intervening decades, educational leaders have deeply embraced the concept and rhetoric of vocation. For example, Parker Palmer has made his living for twenty years by traveling the lecture circuit, frequently addressing groups of educators on the theme of vocation. Private higher education has been an avid participant in the larger conversation about vocation. References to the theme appear repeatedly. A recent example is a reference in a Chronicle of Higher Education (January 29, 2010, page B8) essay about the Mark C. Taylor, the highly regarded professor of religion at Columbia University, who has written (in Field Notes from Elsewhere: Reflections on Dying and Living) that he has struggled with coming to terms with “the meaning of vocation in his life and his career—what it means to receive something like a religious calling when you in fact ‘don’t believe in the one who calls.’”
Since the Lutheran church’s theological tradition is a primary source for the current conversations in the USA about vocation, some leaders in Lutheran higher education (including myself) believe all ELCA-related colleges and universities should claim vocation as the defining mark of a school rooted in the Lutheran tradition. Embracing this doctrine provides an answer to the neuralgic question, “How can a college be Lutheran if it is no longer a college where all the Lutherans are?” Persons of good will from any background can join Lutherans and our institutions in education for vocation even if, like Mark Taylor, they cannot join with Lutherans (and other Christians) in believing that God in Jesus Christ is the one who calls us.
There is, however, no consensus about naming “education for vocation” as the defining mark of Lutheran higher education. The articles in this issue of Intersections reflect the widespread engagement with the theme of vocation by ELCA colleges and universities. The standing, annual “Vocation of a Lutheran College” conference further testifies to emphasis that the theme of vocation receives in our community, and a special conference this fall will explore the many programs (Lilly Endowment-supported and others) on education for vocation. Yet I fear that “vocation” remains for many merely the higher education program du jour instead of a permanent and enlivening hallmark of Lutheran higher education. All ELCA colleges and universities have received invitations to participate in the special fall conference, October 31-November 2 at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. I hope the event helps move us further along the way from du jour to hallmark!
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Article
Called for Life — Affirming Vocational Discernment
Richard L. Torgerson
Torgerson introduces the “Called for Life” project, a three-year, $278,437 Lilly Endowment-funded collaboration among Luther, Augsburg, and Augustana that—in partnership with Luther Seminary’s Centered Life initiative and Wilder Research—rigorously assessed the effectiveness of campus vocation programs, examining whether students’ exposure to and understanding of calling had increased, and what program elements were most effective in shaping discernment.
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Article
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.
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Article
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.
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Article
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).
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Article
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.
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Article
Why All This Talk About Understanding the Mission of NECU Member Institutions as a Vocation?
Mark Wilhelm
No. 56 · Fall 2022
In his valedictory keynote, retiring NECU Executive Director Mark Wilhelm argues that Lutheran higher education is, properly understood, vocation-based education — outlining four core practices recovered over the past fifty years and naming the constructive and corrective work still to be done, including a fuller embrace of DEIJ and of the diverse vocations of NECU’s 27 institutions.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 55 · Spring 2022
Wilhelm announces his planned retirement on January 31, 2023, after serving as the founding executive director of the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities, and gives thanks for the privilege of helping NECU articulate a shared vision for Lutheran higher education in twenty-first-century North America.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 53 · Spring 2021
Wilhelm reflects on an NPR report of teenagers’ pandemic diaries and the fraught Christian history of struggling to live out Jesus’s ethic of love, framing the issue as a record of NECU institutions working out how to act for the common good through the pandemic of 2020–2021.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 52 · Fall 2020
Wilhelm argues that the “hackneyed” expressions of higher education — “you are not just a number,” “the college experience,” “risen to the challenge” — tell the simple truth about NECU institutions even as the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed budgets, employees, and campus life to the breaking point.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 51 · Spring 2020
Wilhelm frames the issue by tracing how Lutheran educational ideals — once a primary source of contemporary higher education — were masked in the United States, and introduces a NECU initiative that uses the case of business ethics to explore Lutheran social teaching as an academic resource.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 50 · Fall 2019
Wilhelm frames the issue by noting that a federal court’s vindication of Harvard’s race-conscious admissions process is a win for higher education’s commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion — and argues that for Lutheran higher education, the commitment to diversity is an old and foundational claim, rooted in Christianity’s openness to all and reflected in the four diverse gospels of the New Testament.
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Article
Seeking the Common Good: Lutheran Contributions to Global Citizenship
Wanda Deifelt
No. 29 · Spring 2009
Deifelt draws on Luther’s account of neighborly love in “The Freedom of a Christian” and on his Two Kingdoms theology to argue that a Lutheran ethics of care fosters a sense of responsibility, accountability, and compassion that broadens citizenship beyond rights and virtues. Engaging William Galston’s typology of civic virtues, Sylvia Walby on women’s citizenship, Serene Jones on communitarianism, and Manuel Castells on globalization, she proposes that Lutheran theology equips the church to educate for transformative participation in world affairs.
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Article
Gen Z is Made for Lutheran Higher Education
W. Kent Barnds
No. 51 · Spring 2020
Barnds argues that Generation Z’s defining traits — socially responsible, purpose-driven, cost-conscious, culturally open, and tech-expectant — align almost perfectly with the missions of NECU institutions, and offers concrete suggestions (from replacing “vocation” with “purpose” to embracing Gen X parents as co-pilots) for Lutheran colleges seeking to attract and serve this generation.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Tom Christenson
No. 13 · Winter 2002
Christenson previews a varied issue—Darrell Jodock’s Bernhardson inaugural lecture, Ernie Simmons’ Valparaiso conference talk on student/parent attitudes, two South Africa travel pieces by Brian Wallace and Corin Wesner, and reviews of Richard Hughes’s and Robert Benne’s recent books—and tells the story of “the church lady from hell,” a mid-fifties returning student who condemned everyone in the class with “God and I think…,” to ask what a religious tradition without a sense of humor would look like.
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Article
Preaching in Christ Chapel on Yom HaShoah: Reflections on Interfaith Relations at a Lutheran College
Sarah Ruble
No. 53 · Spring 2021
Ruble shares her 2019 Holocaust Remembrance Day homily preached before the cross in Christ Chapel at Gustavus Adolphus, then reflects on whether “professional Christians” on Lutheran campuses might practice a non-mutual, witnessed confession before colleagues of other traditions as a check on Christian self-deceit.
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Article
In a Diverse Society, Why Should Lutheran Colleges/Universities Claim their Theological Roots?
Darrell Jodock
No. 49 · Spring 2019
Jodock develops his “third path” account of the Lutheran college — neither sectarian nor non-sectarian but both rooted and open — analogizing the college to a bridge whose deck of daily activities rests on pillars of shared educational priorities, which in turn rest on theological footings; he then answers six common objections to claiming Lutheran roots and explains why those footings still matter.
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Reflection
John 3:16-17
Richard Priggie
No. 27 · Spring 2008
Preached at the Vocation of the Lutheran College conference in August 2007, Priggie’s sermon on John 3:16-17 reads the Greek word “cosmos” as evidence that “God was into globalism long before we were” and calls Lutheran colleges to embrace Matthew Fox’s “deep ecumenism” — an embrace of and care for all created things. Drawing on J.B. Philipps’s Your God Is Too Small and the movie Pleasantville, he invites his hearers to come to Rock Island in order to leave Rock Island, to be Christian in order to be more than Christian, and to find the places where the roads don’t go in a circle but just keep going.