Vocare: A Spiritual Practice for the Spaces Between

From the Editor: So That We, Too, May Flourish

Colleen Windham-Hughes

Windham-Hughes introduces the 2023 VLHE conference theme of educator flourishing, drawing on Dr. Monica Smith’s plenary challenge — “How can we flourish if only some are centered and others are at the margins?” — and invites readers to ground themselves in Us/We, the cover art by Augustana graduate William Hatchet, and join the conversation.

Maintaining Our Lutheran Identity: A Source of Strength

Lamont Anthony Wells

Wells reflects on the well-being of staff, faculty, and administration in Lutheran higher education across four pillars — rest, creativity and innovation, religious diversity and pluralism, and the preservation of Lutheran identity — and addresses the painful reality of Finlandia University’s closure as a reminder of the network’s shared mission.

A Lutheran Call for Educator Flourishing

Krista E. Hughes

Hughes argues that without educator flourishing there is no student flourishing, traces how an exploitative “passion tax” can distort vocation, and offers seven Lutheran “third-way” value pairings — including Metrics/Grace, Efficiency/Kairos, and DEI/Priesthood of All Believers — to reframe institutional success at NECU campuses.

Do One Thing: Academic Vocation in the Age of Burnout

Jonathan Malesic

Malesic draws on Oliver Burkeman’s 4,000 Weeks and Søren Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing to argue that academic burnout is fundamentally institutional — a widening gap between mission ideals and working conditions — and urges colleges to resist “projectitis” by focusing on the one thing that matters most.

Cultivating Staff Flourishing in Lutheran Higher Education: A Framework for Advocacy and Engagement

Laree Winer

Winer narrates her own “love affair” with Lutheran Higher Education to argue that the heart of the tradition — vocation, de-emphasized hierarchy, and shared humanity — equips NECU institutions to advocate for staff flourishing through data collection, professional development, and ongoing relational commitment.

Staff Governance at St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN

Don Ezra Cruz Plemons

Cruz Plemons describes how staff at St. Olaf, in the wake of a decade of difficult events, have built a three-year, glacier-paced effort toward a Staff Governance model — through affinity groups, the Council for Equity and Inclusion, and the Task Force to Confront Structural Racism — that gives staff a voice alongside faculty and students.

The Importance of Connection

Alex Piedras

Piedras reflects on the 2023 “So that We, Too, May Flourish” Conference at Augsburg as a refreshing space for a weary DEI advocate — surfacing burnout, the Talking Circle on Indigenous Issues, and Dr. Monica Smith’s Racial Healing Circle as opportunities to recharge the soul and build authentic connections for the long journey.

“A Decolonizing Conversation”: Indigenous Engagement at Luther College at the University of Regina

Marc Jerry, Sarah Dymund

Jerry and Dymund describe Luther College at the University of Regina’s response to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission — Land Acknowledgments, a Starblanket ceremony, the Project of Heart, an Elder in Residence, and the unedited video conversation with Elder Lorna Standingready that anchored their 2023 VLHE keynote.

Beyond Deep Gladness: Coming to Terms with Vocations We Don’t Choose

Deanna Thompson

Thompson, living with incurable cancer, expands Frederick Buechner’s definition of vocation to make room for deep sadness — drawing on Arthur Frank, Shelly Rambo, Beverly Wallace, and Ross Gay to argue that practices of lament, including the public lament of Friday Flowers at St. Olaf, open space for gladness, joy, and even flourishing to emerge.

The Breadth and the Depth: Dimensions of Christian-Muslim Relations at Educational Institutions of the ELCA

Mark N. Swanson

No. 33 · Spring 2011

Swanson reflects on the spatial metaphors of depth and breadth that shape Lutheran higher education and argues that the study of Islam and real conversation between Christians and Muslims can contribute to both the broadening of horizons and the deepening of faith, drawing on his experience at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and pointing to hospitality as a Christian practice in which depth and breadth come together.

From the Editor

Tom Christenson

No. 8 · Winter 2000

Christenson marks the eighth edition of Intersections, expresses gratitude to the ELCA Division for Higher Education and Schools and especially to the soon-retiring Bob Sorenson for backing the journal, the Vocation of a Lutheran College Conferences, and the Lutheran Academy of Scholars, and introduces an issue that gathers analyses and arguments from both insiders to Lutheran theology and outsiders, from veterans of the institutions and recent arrivals—voices that together remind us that what is and what ought to be need to inform each other.

Ecotones of Faith

Tracy Paschke-Johannes

No. 61 · Spring 2025

Paschke-Johannes draws on the ecological metaphor of the ecotone — the life-teeming transitional space between two ecosystems — to claim that we are not called to minister in the world of the past or one fifty years hence, but to nurture the kairos moments God is creating in the freshwater-to-saltwater present.

A Lutheran Dialectical Model for Higher Education

Ernest L. Simmons

No. 37 · Spring 2013

Drawing on “The Freedom of a Christian,” simul justus et peccator, Richard Hughes, Joseph Sittler, Martha Nussbaum, and Tom Christenson, Simmons argues that the Lutheran tradition informs an open, dialectical educational model that holds Christian and academic freedom together. He locates vocation at the intersection of the practical (why are you here?) and the existential (why are you here?) and proposes Lutheran higher education as education for self-transcendence and leadership Soli Deo Gloria.

The Musician's Vocation

Jeffrey Bell-Hanson

No. 48 · Fall 2018

Bell-Hanson argues that musicians, who exercise profound influence over the emotional flavor of a moment, are called not merely to technical proficiency but to a sense of vocation: understanding their art well enough to use it responsibly, to intend truthfulness rather than manipulation, and to articulate its significance in dialog with other disciplines.

The Lutheran Theological Tradition and Recruiting Lutheran Students

Ernest L. Simmons

No. 13 · Winter 2002

Simmons opens with an Abraham-and-Isaac “Windows 98” joke to illustrate the dialectic of faith and learning, then argues that in a new market era of limited religious background, intentional mission and marketing go together. Drawing on Levine and Cureton’s When Hope and Fear Collide for the Millennial Generation born in 1982 and Tom Beaudoin’s Virtual Faith for their GenX parents, he reads “Reclaiming Lutheran Students” survey results showing 86% strong community at ELCA colleges versus 54% at flagship publics and 61% alumni mentoring versus 39%. He then develops three areas where the Lutheran tradition uniquely equips its colleges—community, mentoring and vocation, and the integration of faith and values—using Luther’s “two kingdoms” image of the “Left Hand” (reason) and “Right Hand” (faith) of God, with academic freedom as a product of Ahlstrom’s “Critical Current” in the tradition, and closes with three challenges: recruiting and retaining mentoring faculty, educating church leaders, and reaching potential students and parents.