Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Vocation in the Church

“I sometimes had to stand up against the simplistic equation of ‘vocation’ with the parish ministry of the Church. Therefore, I was repeatedly obliged to explain how scholarship, too, could be a sacred vocation, and one that was needed by the Church — even though, as it happened, I had to leave the employ of the Church thirty-one years ago in order to carry out this church vocation.” 

(Pelikan, Jaroslav. “The Vocation of Scholarship in the Church,” Academy: Lutherans in Profession. 45:3-4, pages 10-17.)

I’ve felt like I always had to stand against that simplistic equation. The Missouri Synod I came up in was hurting for parish pastors (even moreso now) and, even though my personal path did not but bump up against parish ministry except on Sunday mornings, I felt I was an outsider and either ignored or looked down upon because I had no full-time parish experience. I certainly did not know ordained peers whose vocation in the Church was not parish-focused.

And, so, around 20 years ago I, too, left the employ of the Church. Not that anyone anywhere would ever suggest that I’m a scholar in any way like Pelikan was.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

theologians all

Note: And building on yesterday’s post about theology, it’s not just ‘Everyone a Minister’! (ISBN 13: 9780570031840) And it never was.

Part of being a priesthood of all believers is that we all are (need to be) theologians. At least to some extent. Certainly some more and some less, depending on our spiritual gifts, but all as we are able.

Quote:
“This is the work of theology: to comprehend the mystery of the Christian faith. And every Christian is called to be a theologian, that is, to endeavor to penetrate God’s mystery. For this reason, without theology we cannot do lectio divina well.”

Source: Barban, Alessandro. “Lectio Divina and Monastic Theology in Camaldolese Life” in Belisle, Peter-Damian, editor. The Privilege of Love: Camaldolese Benedictine Spirituality. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002, p. 49.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

commonplace

“My life has always been more or less detached from the life about me. I have not been a hermit, but my temperament and love of solitude, and a certain constitutional timidity and shrinking from all kinds of strife, have kept me in the by-paths rather than on the great highways of life. My talent, such as it is, is distinctly a by-path talent, or at most, a talent for green lanes and sequestered roadsides; but that which has most interested me in life, nature, can be seen from lanes and by-paths better even than from the turnpike, where the dust and noise and the fast driving obscure the view or distract the attention.”

John Burroughs. “The Summit of the Years.” The Writings of John Burroughs. 15 vols. The Riverby Edition. (Boston and NY: Houghton Mifflin Co., The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1904-1913) Vol. 15, pages 1-2.