“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine? Could you be mine?
…I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you,
I’ve always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.
So let’s make the most of this beautiful day; since we’re together we might as well say,
Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won’t you be my neighbor?”1
The lyrics of the theme song to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood shaped my worldview and have served as a sort of walk-up song for my work in higher education. I resonate with the language of neighbor and the effort to find beauty and belonging in each neighbor and neighborhood. Mister Rogers seemed to know everyone in his neighborhood, and he was genuinely interested in them. He asked about their work and their lives, their hobbies and skills, what brought them joy and how they worked through difficulties they faced.
To me Fred Rogers’ show is an example–a living embodiment in televisual form–of a Lutheran understanding of vocation: to see dignity, beauty, and worth in each person you encounter; to offer your gifts generously, and with as much confidence, joy, and humility as you can muster; and to believe that the well-being of the neighborhood is intrinsically connected to the well-being of all of the neighbors.
Mister Rogers knew people my parents did not know and was willing to talk about experiences that adults often dismiss, either because they do not think children can handle it or because they think children should just get over it. In Mister Rogers I encountered an adult who was honest about the realities of death, sadness, anger, and fear. He also showed curiosity and wonder, which first required him to say something like, “I don’t know; let’s find out together.” Hopeful, humble, connected, and brave, Fred Rogers insisted that children need a place of belonging, where they can feel loved and practice loving others across all kinds of differences.
As I child I experienced a lot of firsts through Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: my first tour through a factory, my first conversation about racism, my first explanation of the postal service, my first honest conversation about death, my first encounter with a child who used a wheelchair, my first interaction with a police officer, and many others. My mom did not like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood; it moved too slowly for her. My dad liked the Land of Make-Believe, which was never my favorite. Both parents, however, witnessed my intense focus when Mister Rogers addressed the children, and they trusted his efforts to describe what it’s like to be human in the world.
Right now we are the ones who are trusted to describe what it’s like to be human in the world and to offer ourselves generously, with as much confidence, joy, and humility we can muster to the students we serve. It is our vocation to draw deeply on our values to offer our gifts in support collective flourishing.
Endnote
1. https://misterrogers.org/videos/wont-you-be-my-neighbor/
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Lamont Anthony Wells
Wells introduces So That All May Belong: Lutheran Roots for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice as a theological and institutional articulation of NECU’s commitments, and previews four accompanying essays that frame vocation as a societal responsibility rooted in justice and not solely an individual pursuit.
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Institutional Focus
So That All May Belong: Lutheran Roots for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice
Altheia Richardson, Angie Hambrick, Caryn Riswold, Colleen Windham-Hughes, Deanna Thompson, Marcia Bunge, Robert Clay
The full NECU statement grounds DEIJ work in Luther’s 16th-century reforms and Lutheran theological claims about the image of God, equal dignity, and the limits of human knowing — offering definitions, Lutheran roots, and calls to action for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, with belonging as the outcome of DEIJ at work.
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Institutional Focus
Scriptures That Inspire Work for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice
Altheia Richardson, Angie Hambrick, Caryn Riswold, Colleen Windham-Hughes, Deanna Thompson, Marcia Bunge, Robert Clay
A companion list of biblical verses — from Genesis 1:27 and Galatians 3:28 to Micah 6:8 and Luke 4:18-19 — that grounded NECU’s drafting of So That All May Belong, organized by the four DEIJ commitments and offered as an invitation to share other texts that ground and sustain the work.
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Institutional Focus
So That All May Belong: Lutheran Roots for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice [abridged]
Altheia Richardson, Angie Hambrick, Caryn Riswold, Colleen Windham-Hughes, Deanna Thompson, Marcia Bunge, Robert Clay
A condensed version of the NECU statement that consolidates Lutheran theological grounding for DEIJ and a single combined call to action for Lutheran colleges and universities — offered as a shareable summary alongside the complete document.
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Article
Vocation at Full Stretch: Reflections on Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling and its Use among College Students
Jason A. Mahn
Mahn engages Bonnie Miller-McLemore’s Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling as required reading in a sophomore religion course, showing how her categories of missed, blocked, conflicted, fractured, unexpected, and relinquished callings empower young adults to perceive embodied, unplanned, and often painful dimensions of life as essential parts of vocation — and help close the gap between mission-driven and tuition-driven realities.
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Article
How Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood Reminds Us About Work
Than Oo
Drawing on a Season 15 arc of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in which residents redirect pool funds to fix a plumbing problem, Oo finds in Fred Rogers’ vocation-honoring storytelling a reminder that limited resources are an invitation to creativity, perseverance, and optimism in higher education.
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Reflection
Ecotones of Faith
Tracy Paschke-Johannes
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.
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Article
Finding the Miracle in the Intersection of Mission and Limitations: Lessons from Latin America
Kat Peters
Peters draws on her time interning with Lutheran World Relief and leading a study abroad program in Central America — including a Costa Rican women’s farm cooperative whose ecotourism project was “unprofitable” but life-giving — to argue that the intersection of God’s preference for struggle and God’s desire for abundant life is itself the miracle higher education can claim amid scarcity.
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Editorial
From the Publisher & Editor
Colleen Windham-Hughes, Lamont Anthony Wells
No. 63 · Spring 2026
6 min audio
Wells and Windham-Hughes frame vocation as “ground game” — the practical, public living-out of faith through civic engagement — and introduce the issue’s focus on how Lutheran higher education equips students to repair the world.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 62 · Fall 2025
5 min audio
Windham-Hughes plays on the shared Latin root of “education” and “seduction” (ducere, to lead) to warn against the No-saying seductions of giving up or condemnation, and to call educators to the riskier Yes of showing up to build third-space communities of truth-telling and hope.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 60 · Fall 2024
Windham-Hughes welcomes newcomers and seasoned colleagues to the conversation, lifts up Mary Elise Lowe’s three Lutheran “whys” for educational access, and commends Rev. Jen Rude’s “Sacred Pause” practice as a way to humanize one another and make opening access both easier and more joyful.
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Editorial
From the Editor: Vocation as Action in the Affirmative
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 59 · Spring 2024
Windham-Hughes frames vocation as practicing “at the borders of our incompetence” — every small yes to the callings we experience, every effort made in the direction of life, is action in the affirmative — and previews the issue’s essays on diversity, transformation, AI, championship team culture, and dreaming big within and beyond our limitations.
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Article
Team Culture is Key to Success: Learning from Student-Athletes
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 59 · Spring 2024
On a December weekend in “Championship City” Salem, Virginia, both California Lutheran’s Women’s Soccer Team and St. Olaf College’s Men’s Soccer Team won NCAA Division III national titles. Windham-Hughes talks with coaches, faculty mentors, and student-athletes about how off-the-field team culture — built on trust, relationships, and shared why — translates onto the pitch and into liberal arts and sciences education.
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Editorial
From the Editor: So That We, Too, May Flourish
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 58 · Fall 2023
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.
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Article
Necessary Disruptions: Centering Vocation in the Common Good
Erin VanLaningham
No. 57 · Spring 2023
VanLaningham previews the forthcoming NetVUE volume Called Beyond Our Selves: Vocation and the Common Good, arguing that vocation, common, and good all need to be disrupted and expanded so that students might arrive at a wider sense of individual purpose and collective well-being.
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Article
Why Diversity and Civic Engagement Don't Talk to Each Other on College Campuses: The Need for Public Work
Jose Marichal
No. 25 · Spring 2007
Marichal opens with Thurgood Marshall’s line from Milliken v. Bradley and traces the “decoupling” of campus diversity and civic engagement initiatives back to their shared grounding in Benjamin Barber’s “thin” or pluralist democracy. Reviewing CIRCLE data on youth political disengagement, the limits of mandatory volunteerism, and persistent residential segregation, and drawing on Mary Ann Glendon, Lani Guinier, Caryn McTighe Musil, and Richard Rorty, he argues that only Harry Boyte’s notion of “public work” can bind diversity and civic engagement together—and contends that Lutheran colleges, with their understanding of vocation as call into the world, are uniquely positioned to build that infrastructure.
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Editorial
From the Publisher & Editor
Colleen Windham-Hughes, Lamont Anthony Wells
No. 63 · Spring 2026
6 min audio
Wells and Windham-Hughes frame vocation as “ground game” — the practical, public living-out of faith through civic engagement — and introduce the issue’s focus on how Lutheran higher education equips students to repair the world.
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Article
Called to Compassion over the Course of a Life: A Buddhist Perspective
Florence D. Amamoto
No. 47 · Spring 2018
Amamoto, an associate professor at Gustavus Adolphus shaped by Jodo Shin Shu Buddhism, argues that although Buddhism has no “caller” God, it has a strong sense of calling — we are called by the world to respond to the suffering around us with mindfulness, egolessness, and compassion — and that this lifelong journey is enriched by encounter with the Lutheran vocational tradition.
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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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Editorial
From the Publisher
W. Robert Sorensen
No. 5 · Summer 1998
Sorenson frames Intersections and the Vocation of a Lutheran College Conference as vehicles for widening the scope of inquiry that the separation of mind from spirit has curtailed, citing Ernest Boyer on probing “the deep places of the mind and the deep longings of the human spirit.” He previews an announcement at the 1998 conference of the Conrad Bergendoff Series—named for the late scholar and former Augustana College president—whose first volume, by Ernest Simmons of Concordia College, will support an Academy of Scholars in Lutheran Higher Education.