Before leaders are called to serve within a congregation in ordained ministry, they profess their faith and make commitments about becoming a member of Christ’s church reflected in their community. Within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), membership includes promises about living within the congregational community.

The PC(USA) Book of Order says this about membership, “In Jesus Christ, God calls people to faith and to membership in the Church, the body of Christ” (G-1.0301). The Book of Order also states:

Letty M. Russell, a twentieth century Presbyterian theologian, recognizes that some churches do not take seriously the purpose of the church or the call of individual members when they do not affirm the full humanity of all people. She envisions a church that empowers members and recognizes Christ as the host. The metaphor she uses is that of a round table in a “household of freedom”[1] where all people gather around as partners in ministry connecting to the world and each other in faith and for a life of reflection and action. The table is “a symbol of hospitality and a metaphor for gathering for sharing and dialogue.”[2]

Russell describes leadership around that table in terms of 1 Corinthians 12 and a Pauline understanding of a distribution of spiritual gifts in the community of faith. Each gift comes with power, not one greater than the other.[3] Leaders, in this interdependent paradigm, have authority of purpose rather than authority of position. The community identifies and empowers leaders and “assist(s) members of the congregation in making use of their gifts in the service of Christ’s love in the world.”[4] The power the leader with purpose exercises, in this model, is in personal relation. It is power that is grounded in concepts like interdependence, intentionality, and persuasion.[5] Leaders with authority grounded in purpose humbly recognize that they are servant leaders not leaders with servants.[6]

For Reflection and Discussion:

Think about some of the roles that you have held in your life, volunteer and paid, chosen by self and chosen by others, and the stories remembered vividly from those roles. Consider some abilities or learnings in one or more of those roles.

Identify a time in your life that clearly embodies when you have “come alive” and/or pleased yourself and God. What did you notice? What stands out to you about that experience?

Baptism is the Reformed theological affirmation that each person is a gift from God, beloved and chosen for service. Through baptism we become a part of a priesthood of all believers, a concept developed by Martin Luther during the Reformation. A priesthood of all believers might now be best understood as an interdependent network of people of faith, each commissioned for service for the common good.

The Sacrament of Baptism, pp. 404–406 in the Book of Common Worship

For Reflection and Discussion:

Think about your own baptism. This may be based on stories you have been told about the day or you might have been of an age to be able to recall the day.

In what ways is the Sacrament of Baptism the beginning of our call to service in Christ?

How do your baptism and church membership connect directly to the call and ordination as a ruling elder or deacon in the church?

I Corinthians 12:4–12

This Scripture reveals an understanding of vocation as the gifts each person is given that are needed for common good. The audience of 1 Corinthians was quite diverse economically, socially, ethnically, educationally, theologically, and, therefore, culturally.[1] On numerous occasions in the letter, Paul addresses conflict in the Corinthian church by appealing to the metaphor of the body of Christ.[2] Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church is clear: the church is the body of Christ, not like the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27).[3] The church is one body with many members (1 Cor 12:12). Each member is needed and each needs the others.[4] C.K. Barrett highlights that the allotment of the gifts is done with great intention. According to Barrett, when Paul uses the Greek word diairesis in 1 Corinthians 12:4, “differences” or “varieties” are not as helpful a translation as “distribution.”

Presbyterian pastor, Gary Charles, reveals the possibilities of an interdependent community of faith, grounded in baptism and connected with vocational discernment of spiritual gifts. He thinks that 1 Corinthians 12:1–13 is a call to “all baptized who drink of the same Spirit”[6] to break down hierarchies and cultural norms of individualism and to create a community of diversity able to establish an enduring unity by believing that “each member is gifted and invaluable to the spiritual health of the community.” [7] Charles reaffirms vocations theological grounding in baptism and the discernment or calling forth spiritual gifts of each community member.

Reformed Theology of Vocation: Discerning God’s Call in Community

Vocation and the journey it implies are understood in a variety of ways. The word vocation is derived from the Latin vocare, meaning to call or to summon; it “suggests that vocation is a calling from someone to someone for some purpose.”[8] Taking seriously the distinctiveness of this term in contrast to language of careers, occupations, placements, or even jobs, we are invited “to reflect on the theological meaning of our chosen daily work by emphasizing how we serve and give … rather than on what we receive for our labors.”[9]

Humanists understand vocation as a question of identity or integrity. Hasidic Jews call this a search for the spark of the divine. Buddhists talk about exploring our original nature or big self. Quakers describe the journey of discovery of the self as seeking the inner light or inner teacher. Catholic theologian Thomas Merton encouraged students and readers to find their true selves.[10] Reformed theologians like John Calvin urge persons to search for their vocation;[11] the searching, the journeying, the seeking, the exploring and the discovering all constitute a process of discernment.

Discerning one's vocation is not merely an economic inquiry, nor is it fully addressed as an educational problem. Discerning vocation is a personal, spiritual, religious, and theological journey, and, for Reformed Christians, it is a communal process. Ideally, each member of the community travels with the others. God’s call begins as we are called into life as infants. In the Christian community, our first call is publicly recognized in baptism. Through the Presbyterian practice of infant baptism, the Christian community vows to nurture each child’s call, including her or his faith in Jesus Christ. God’s call is something lived out in solidarity. Christians live out their call in discipleship wherever they find themselves at work and at play, in word, in thought, and in deed. So where do we hear God’s call? God’s call is to be experienced through life and worship in the community of faith. Our call is by God through our community and into community.

In addition to affirming that God’s call is discovered in community, Presbyterians have also noted that it is a way to overcome barriers, including cultural ones. “The Confession of 1967,” one of the twelve confessions in the PC(USA) Book of Confessions, confirms these theological and practical beliefs.

When Presbyterians fail to uphold one another in all relationships; when the community of faith fails to “bring, receive, and uphold” one another in our vocational process, we are refusing to practice what we say we believe about who God is and who God intends for us to be. When the church does not distinguish the gifts of marginalized peoples it is missing the mark and falling short of a summons by God.[13]

A Presbyterian Ecclesiology: A Community of the Called

The Reformed Tradition has a communal ecclesiology. Throughout our history, this point has been reaffirmed. The sixteenth-century Reformers defined church as “an assembly of the faithful called or gathered out of the world; a communion, I say, of all saints … .”[14] They assumed that church was a community of people who were called. Thus, our Reformed notion of church is interwoven with questions of vocation, what God calls or summons us to do and to be as individual members of a larger community.

H. Richard Niebuhr grappled with the relationship of ecclesiology to vocation. In The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry, he defines church and what it means to be called by God. For Niebuhr, the Church is more of a community directed to God through Jesus Christ. The Church is local and universal, Protestant and catholic.[15] All seeking Christians find their call as they learn from the church to love God and neighbor. The individual Christian’s quest is linked to the church being able to fulfill one’s call.[16]

The New Testament vision of community is of koinonia, that is, a community of belonging, not a society of opposition and competition. A Reformed theological perspective of the church as a community of believers values each person’s individual gifts and helps each member of the community to express her or his gifts fully and freely to the betterment of the whole.

The 216th General Assembly (2004) commissioned a study on the relationship of baptism and ministry.[17] Specifically, the assembly approved an overture to “create a study document that would set forth [a] Reformed-Presbyterian understanding of the relationship between Baptism and the ministry of all church members both ordained and not ordained. …”[18] The rationale for the action states that

For Reflection and Discussion:

Look at what our own Book of Order says about participation in Christ’s ministry and the ordered ministries of the church by reviewing and reading G-2.0101, G-2.0102, G-2.0103, and G-2.0104.

What does it mean to be called as a ruling elder or deacon in the body of Christ, the Church?

Identify a mentor who has served as a spiritual leader in your life. What are some qualities that they possess? How can you keep these qualities in mind as you go out to serve as a ruling elder or deacon, serving in the leadership of Christ’s Church?

An Altar in the World, by Barbara Brown Taylor—Chapter 6: “The Practice of Encountering Others: Community” and Chapter 7: “The Practice of Living with Purpose: Vocation”

Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for Searching People, edited by Dorothy Bass, Chapter 9: Shaping Communities by Larry Rasmussen.

1)   In 1937, the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., published a poem by the Reverend Howard Thurman, an African American Baptist minister, professor of theology, and dean of the chapel at Howard University. The title of the poem was “O God, I Need Thee.” Thurman poetically describes our need of God’s sense for time, order, and future.

“O God, I Need Thee”

I Need Thy Sense of Time

Always I have an underlying anxiety about things.

Sometimes I am in a hurry to achieve my ends

And am completely without patience. It is hard for me

To realize that some growth is slow,

That all processes are not swift. I cannot always discriminate

Between what takes time to develop and what can be rushed,

Because my sense of time is dulled.

I measure things in terms of happenings.

O to understand the meaning of perspective

That I may do all things with a profound sense of leisure–of time.

—Howard Thurman (1899–1981), in Conversations with God: Two Centuries of Prayers by African Americans

In 1953, Thurman published Meditations of the Heart, the second in a volume of meditations that were originally written for personal and congregational use at Church of the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, where he served as co-pastor from 1944–1953 with Alfred G. Fisk, a European American Presbyterian minister and professor of philosophy. Both Thurman and Fisk were deeply concerned about building bridges of understanding among varied races, cultures, and faiths, and their multicultural congregation embodied this hope. The purpose of the meditations is, as Thurman puts it, “[T]o focus the mind and the heart upon God as the Eternal Source and Goal of life.” One hundred and fifty-two short meditations in this 210-page book provide a significant source of insight, centering prayer, and nourishment for faith journeys. Meditations are the type of sustenance that fed civil rights leaders, including the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was mentored by Thurman.

2)   A community of discernment/mentoring community:

Sharon Daloz Parks, a faith development expert and director of leadership for the New Commons, discourages competition in the discernment process and encourages communities of support and nurture as opposed to communities that adopt competitive models for vocational discernment. Families, churches, and even worksites can be mentoring communities. She believes that a mentoring environment and culture is essential for young adults to discover their vocation.[1] Mentoring environments provide “network[s] of belonging … [and] promise a place of nurture for the potential self.”[2]

According to Parks, young adults in 2005 understand the church as local and not as a national entity. She makes this point in Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Young Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith. Drawing on the best sociological, psychological, and faith development theories, Parks boils down the adult questions to one of trust.[3] Answering this question of who and what is authoritative in life is the journey into young adulthood. In fact, she says, “One becomes a young adult in faith (at whatever age) when one begins to take self-conscious responsibility for one’s own knowing, becoming, and moral action, even at the level of ultimate meaning making.”[4] In other words, adults in search of purpose and meaning and, ultimately, vocation, have to decide for themselves whom they will trust. They cannot be told in whom and what to trust. Parks is convinced that young adults trust mentoring communities such as colleges, professional educators, workplaces, travel, the natural environment, families, and religious faith communities. In other words, a whole culture of mentors already exists with the potential to nurture the Christian vocational discernment of young adults.

Lee Hinson-Hasty is senior director for Theological Education Funds Development at the Presbyterian Foundation, in support of future ministers and our PC(USA) seminaries. A former campus minister, pastor, and college administrator in Virginia and North Carolina, Lee builds bridges between the church and academy including on his Leading Theologically podcast and Theological Education Matters blog. A graduate of Wake Forest University, Louisville Seminary, and McCormick Theological Seminary, Lee welcomes invitations to preach, partner, and lead workshops.

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