Abstract
We report and analyze undergraduate students’ perceptions of vocation and propose constructive responses that prepare students for purposeful Christian lives. Discussion in focus groups elicited accounts of vocation as oriented toward positive relational impact but shaped by a latent individualism and an underdeveloped sense of the vocational implications of Christian community. We propose expanding on this relational orientation by helping students to “discern the body” in three ways: reflecting on their own embeddedness in the body of Christ, participating in the body through mentoring relationships, and grounding their future vocational journeys as part of a body shaped by Christological hope.
Introduction
This article reports and analyzes the perceptions of vocation held by college juniors at a Christian university and offers constructive proposals for Christian universities that aim to invite students into more robust and theologically grounded visions of life lived with meaning and purpose. Vocational formation, by which we mean formation in both the shared calling to discipleship that pertains to all Christians and the more specific calling to exercise one’s particular spiritual gifts and opportunities in God’s service, is a lifelong process, but the years many young adults spend in university contexts can be particularly consequential. First, students inhabit institutions that typically have explicit vocational aims, articulated in accordance with each institution’s history and affiliations. 1 Second, students occupy an extended liminal stage of life in which questions of both identity and purpose may be particularly acute and open for exploration (Dean and Hearlson, 2016: 51–52). Third, this liminal space of their college years can uniquely provide students with resources that support vocational discernment, resources like time, space, and relationships (Cunningham, 2016b: 5). Moreover, students experience significant benefit across a variety of markers from sustained engagement in the exploration of matters of purpose and vocation (see Clydesdale, 2015).
Analysis of focus groups conducted with third-year college students (most typically classified as juniors) reveals an emerging sense of vocation that is relationally oriented, yet individually and autonomously discerned and enacted. We begin with a brief description of the context and research methodology. Then we report and discuss key findings from qualitative analysis of the focus groups. The argument culminates with three recommendations for Christian universities, all of which draw on the Pauline imagery of the body of Christ as a guiding theological resource and each of which addresses a different arena of campus life.
Description of the research context, design, and methodology
The focus group data were collected in 2019 from 33 third-year undergraduate students during the fall semester at Abilene Christian University, a member university of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities in the southern United States. The university is actively affiliated with the Churches of Christ, a branch of the Stone-Campbell free-church movement that arose in the American context in the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Hollaway and Foster, 2006). While there are some theological distinctions between the Stone-Campbell movement and American Evangelicalism, Churches of Christ fit best in the Evangelical category in the standard sociological taxonomy (Marsden, 1984; Smith, 1998; Steensland et al., 2000). This is mainly due to a high view of scripture and an accompanying biblical literalism, paired with high rates of frequent church attendance and a focus on evangelism and missions. 2 Furthermore, a large majority of the student population belong to other groups within Evangelicalism: along with Churches of Christ, Baptist and nondenominational students comprise 75% of the cohort. 3 Thus, the vocational formation central to the institution’s stated mission (“to prepare students for Christian service and leadership throughout the world”) is influenced by American Evangelicalism. Our interest and suggestions in this article are inflected by the emphasis on scripture present both in the student population’s religious affiliation and the curriculum of the university. All undergraduate students have compulsory chapel requirements and must complete five courses offered by the Department of Bible, Missions, and Ministry, the first three of which are biblical survey courses. Beyond these general spiritual formation requirements, vocational formation is neither the work of any one particular office, nor is there a formal vocational exploration program. Rather, opportunities for vocational formation are diffuse, conducted in conversations with faculty and staff, through sponsored missions opportunities, in some assignments in each department’s Capstone course, and in special programming for students in particular majors.
The focus groups comprise part of a longer three-stage, mixed-methods research project aimed at providing a thick description of students’ spiritual lives and practices when they arrive on campus, at the end of their first year, and as they progress toward graduation. We solicited participation in a survey at each of these points from all students in the classes entering undergraduate study in 2017 and 2018. The study, then, includes two cohorts of student data and will complete in the winter of 2020 when the second cohort of students is in their third year. Focus group participants each completed a survey at the beginning and end of their first year and had the opportunity to complete a follow-up survey at the beginning of their third year. The focus groups aimed to elicit reflections from targeted groups within the university student population as well as the general population. 4
Focus groups were conducted in student life spaces on campus by one of the two lead researchers, who collected both audio and video recordings of the focus groups and used a confidential service to generate transcripts. Content analysis of these transcripts yielded the major themes considered here.
Each focus group discussed several questions about their experience of spiritual formation on campus, two of which elicited direct and indirect reflections on Christian vocation and are the primary focus of this analysis. The question “Imagine that you are nearing the end of your life. What do you want to see when you look back?” came at vocational understanding indirectly, by asking students to think about their ultimate outcomes and values in keeping with the fundamentally teleological nature of Christian vocation (Cunningham, 2016a: 189; Howard, 2016: 231). The second question “In Christian contexts, people sometimes use the language of ‘calling’ or ‘vocation’. What does that language mean to you?” asked students to offer their own definition of the concept.
Our analysis of the focus groups was guided by a central research question about the communal and/or relational elements of vocational formation. We knew from quantitative analysis of the survey data that relationships are a powerful factor in spiritual formation in college (see Appendix 1). Yet, upon their arrival on campus, only 54.9% of students indicated that a peer had helped them in their spiritual life. Given the emphasis on youth group experiences in Evangelical churches, we flagged this statistic as a matter for further investigation. Toward that end, we focused our examination on how and when relationships and Christian community influenced their sense of vocation. Our coding of the focus group data yielded a set of overlapping themes in their understanding of Christian vocation: personal, relational impact on others, discipleship or evangelism, individual passion and particularity, and desire to follow God’s intent for one’s own life.
Description of the findings
We found that students expressed an understanding of vocation that was profoundly relational and often overtly evangelistic in its orientation, while at the same time remaining largely individualistic in its discernment and expression. In their responses, students evidenced an understanding of themselves as people who have a calling, even if they expressed some concerns about how one comes to discern it. A few students described calling primarily in terms of a particular career and the use of one’s distinctive gifts, in which case a person’s emotions, passions, and skills may serve as guides. Others described vocation in much more general terms: as the responsibility of being who God intends them to be or doing what God intends them to do.
Students responded to the question “Imagine you are nearing the end of your life. What do you want to see when you look back?” with a decided focus on positive personal impact. Some students indicated they want to make a difference in the lives of others in a general or unspecified sense. For instance, Katelyn said, “I’d like to see that I made a difference and that sounds really cliché but, even in one person or one situation, just knowing that you did something that helped someone else.” 5 In a different group, Lisa and Cati echoed that sentiment. Lisa stated that she wanted to end her life “knowing that I touch other people’s lives and make them better. Even … in a small way.” Many others in her focus group affirmed her efforts and sentiments. James, who also stated that he hoped to significantly impact others, added, “just smiling at somebody can seem really insignificant to me, but it can be very significant to them.” The significance he hopes for is “not necessarily significance in how big something I actually do is, but that I truly touched people and helped people and made them feel loved.” That desire to look back and see that you have loved others appeared prominently in four out of six focus groups.
In several cases, students expressed their desire for personal and relational impact in explicitly theological and evangelistic terms. Some students stated their intent using New Testament imagery like “ambassador” or “fragrance,” while others used language of sharing the gospel or bringing people to Jesus. Miranda asserted “God reaches out to people through people,” and stated her hope to help people, “know God the way that I know him. If I can do that for other people, when I look back, I don’t think anything else really matters.” Harrison said that he hopes when he looks back to “see the times I either knowingly or unknowingly was able to set someone in more of a direction towards Christ.” Alexis hoped she could look back and see other disciples she made and helped to mature. Ariel put it most directly: “you’re ultimately here to save souls.” Her response was distinctive because in her comments she referenced a sermon from the previous Sunday, having been struck by the line “to whom much is given much is expected” (Luke 12:48).
When students articulated their understanding of vocation more directly in response to the question “What does the language of calling or vocation mean to you?” their responses typically leaned one of two directions. Some students responded in ways that lacked much specificity: to “live out” the Kingdom, for Alexis, Lindsey, and Alexander; to live or do whatever Jesus wants, for Jennifer and Aurora; or to align oneself with God’s will, heart, or purpose, for Lindsey, Lisa, Miranda, and Declan. The strength of these broad and life-encompassing views is also their weakness; their very breadth necessitates much more specific determinations for what this means in practice. Other students linked vocation more specifically with specific features of each person. For example, Harrison said: “ … our different callings are us seeing different areas of the world that are in pain, us seeing different fractures in a broken world … [and] God calling us to use the tools that He’s given us specifically, to fix very specific parts.” Similarly, Lisa said vocation is “what God puts you on this earth to accomplish.” Career was sometimes directly implicated here. For Karen, vocation and occupation were linked by a passion for working with special needs kids like her brother. For three students, Lisa, Jessica, and Kennedy, vocation is a matter of “being who God made you to be,” phrasing that implies that vocation is a matter of actualizing your truest identity or the best version of yourself.
In their answers to both questions, students both named and wrestled with matters of vocational discernment. For some students, their own passions and abilities provided clear guides. Miranda described calling as something that sparked passion, stating “I don’t think God would call anyone to something that they wouldn’t enjoy doing or something that they would not feel peace when doing.” Kennedy shared the sense that vocation would be something that came easily or naturally. Ariel found confirmation of calling in moments when she felt like her “best self.” Still others described vocation as a “gut feeling” (Elizabeth), a magnet (Ashley), or something that all signs seem to point to (Katelyn). For others, matters were more complicated. Howard cautioned that it was hard to differentiate your own voice and wants from the voice of God. Lindsey described vocation as a “sensitive subject” and described the difficulties inherent in remaining undeclared her entire freshman year while she waited in hope for some kind of direct and obvious divine guidance. She named individual prayer, a particular course reading, and resisting pressure from parents as important elements in coming to a new conclusion: she may need to choose while remaining open to God’s direction. Aurora named something similar when she described some peers who seemed paralyzed by choice because they didn’t feel as though they had an undeniable calling from God. Lisa described continued lack of clarity about her own vocation: “how do I find that out? This is a Christian school … but I haven’t ever heard anybody say, ‘Let’s explore. Let’s find out what your purpose is, so you can be operating in what God made you to be’.”
These students, then, primarily defined vocation as relational impact—whether in the generic sense of helping or bringing positivity to others or the more specific sense of bringing others to know Jesus. Some students drew on language from the New Testament to articulate their sense of responsibility to reach others for the sake of Christ, reflecting an evangelistic impulse that is in keeping with their Evangelical upbringing and their Evangelical environment. While some students spoke very broadly of vocation as a matter of faithfulness to God, others offered more specific definitions that highlighted individual distinctiveness. For some students, matters of vocational discernment were fraught with ambiguity or confusion.
Discussion of the focus group findings
There is much to be lauded in these students’ responses. They see themselves as people who are called by God, whose gifts, passions, and careers are implicated in that calling, and who bear personal responsibility. They articulate a clear and very widely shared desire to make a positive difference to others. While that desire was sometimes expressed in general language like showing love or helping others, in other cases students drew explicitly from the New Testament in articulating their responsibility to spread the gospel or make disciples. At the same time, their reflections contain some striking omissions that merit attention.
First, there is a latent but operative individualism undergirding students’ vocational understandings. The kind of relational impact that students describe seems to entail their individual efforts with regard to other individuals. Moreover, the language of vocation as “being who I am called to be” or being one’s “best self” and the importance of one’s own passions and proclivities as determiners of vocation implies that vocational discernment is accomplished through personal introspection. Schell (2016: 246) notes that undergraduate students, “when confronted with questions of vocation … tend to turn inward, assuming that the answers to be found are a function of self-expression” rather than in ongoing commitment communities and shared values. As if to underline this individualism, family appeared rarely: once in reference to other family members sharing the same career path (Katelyn), once as a source of pressure to choose a major (Lindsey), and twice as an actual or potential source of advice regarding a college major (Jessica; Jacob). Even in response to the very broad question about what students hoped to see looking back on their lives, only two students mentioned hoping for the love of family or friends, and there were no references to the potential for spouse or children. Given that previous research demonstrates a strong Evangelical investment in family life (Bartkowski et al., 2000), further research is necessary to consider what factors may explain the dearth of family references. On the whole, when students discuss their desire to impact others through relationships, they appear to conceive of themselves and others more as autonomous individuals who both work and discern with apparent autonomy than as deeply embedded members of relational networks of mutual care and obligation.
That latent individualism coincides with a still nascent understanding of the power and necessity of Christian community, most especially the centrality of the church. While three students briefly mentioned a pastor and one mentioned a particular worship song, these remarks imply individual reception of discrete components of worship rather than broader ecclesial participation. The body of Christ, experienced as a community of interdependent common life and practice across time has no explicit bearing either on their sense of vocational formation or on their hopes for vocational enactment or expression. For example, in terms of vocational enactment, their focus on evangelism suggests that it is a shared Christian responsibility, but there is no indication of shared participation as part of a community of practice. Only four students named mentors or friends in their vocational discernment. Most students made no reference to the role of any broader community in their vocational discernment, even though there is ample evidence of the powerful influence of peer and other relationships on spiritual well-being (see Appendix 1). This omission suggests that their sense of vocation is governed more by contemporary market logics of individual choice and freedom than by a grounded assessment of both personal gifts and limits and the role of community in personal discernment of a calling that comes from outside ourselves (Cary, 2010; Cavanaugh, 2016).
The omission of substantial references to community in students’ explicit vocational reflections points to an emerging sense of vocation as a matter of individual discernment and action with only still nascent recognition that vocation is deeply embedded in the broader “field” of students’ lives—that is, their relationships, their social context, their ecclesial commitments, as well as their individual giftedness. Dean and Hearlson (2016: 37), pointing to the limitations of Buechner’s famous definition of vocation as the place where the world’s deep hunger and a person’s deep gladness meet, assert, “vocation does not belong to or happen inside individuals, nor is it a static object to be discovered, decided upon, and owned.” This analysis suggests the need for opportunities to invite students into the kind of “unfolding dialogue among the Spirit of God, the Christian community, the individual, and, importantly, the cultural setting or society” that Dean and Hearlson (2016: 37) identify as central to vocational discernment (cf. Cary, 2010).
Recommendations
Christian universities have important opportunities to create a powerful ecology for vocational formation that invests students in sustained engagement with Christian community. In this section, we offer three recommendations, each addressing a different component of the university ecology and aiming to expand and deepen students’ vocational imagination beyond the individualistic parameters their responses revealed. Paul’s theological account of the ecclesial community as the body of Christ animates these proposals and provides a fitting resource given the specific features of the students’ views and the centrality of the scriptures to their Evangelical background and context. This theological framework situates individual gifts and particularities within both Christological and communal claims (Clarke, 2008: 133–137; Fee, 2014: 665–667), thus building on the strengths in the students’ responses while creating opportunities for spiritual and vocational growth.
Students need opportunities to “discern the body” of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:29) as a move toward greater practical, vocational wisdom. Universities can support students in this by (1) creating opportunities for reflection wherein students become articulate about their own membership in the body, (2) inviting them into mutual participation in interdependent communities of discernment, and (3) helping them transition with hope and vocational vision beyond the university.
Discerning the body: Articulating one’s own identity as a member of the body
First, we see a need to create opportunities for students to “discern the body” by coming into greater consciousness of themselves as members of that body. In 1 Corinthians, Paul uses the body of Christ language in a sharp critique of the Corinthians’ failure in their gatherings and practices. They neglected to recognize their interconnectedness with all who are part of the body of Christ when they ate the Lord’s Supper (11:17–34; Fee, 2014: 587–603, 622–624). Furthermore, in their worship practices, the Corinthians focused on the expression and elevation of gifts viewed as “greater” or “higher” without due consideration for the true greater good of building up the whole body in love (Dunn, 1998: 548–552; Fee, 2014: 664–692). While the focus groups never indicate these precise issues, students’ explicit articulations of vocation do neglect to “discern the body” in their omission of community as a field of vocation’s development, a space for its enactment, or an ultimate telos. Moreover, as the Corinthians did not recognize their interconnectedness, so also students neglect to mention that membership in the body involves mutual dependence. These omissions are striking because the vast majority of survey respondents indicated that they regularly attend church. 6 The image of the body of Christ, then, provides students a truer self-understanding as members of the church.
We recommend creating structured opportunities to reflect on both their experience and the New Testament’s definition of church, thus leading students to a better articulation of their identity as members of the body of Christ. 7 Within university life, curriculum is one obvious home for this recommendation. In our own context, introductory New Testament courses offer especially compelling opportunities for intellectual engagement with theological resources and foundational texts; in other contexts, those opportunities might be in theology, religion, or spiritual formation courses. Students should be invited to reflect on the meaning, significance, and responsibility of participation in local ecclesial communities in conversation with their own experience, helping them “to see that they are already embedded in webs of relationships and meaning and to move … beyond dwelling in self-expressivism” in their vocational understanding (Schell, 2016: 247). A new sense of oneself as a member of the body of Christ requires, however, more than a new set of ideas about the body of Christ as an abstract entity. This requires new communal practices for discerning vocation.
Discerning the body: Participating in interdependent community
When Paul exhorts the Corinthians to better “discern the body,” he is describing an imminently practical form of reasoning both about and within the context of participation in community life (1 Corinthians 12). In the church, Paul asserts, all members participate together in mutually dependent relationships (Clarke, 2008: 136), as the Spirit both particularizes the body by giving different gifts to each and unifies all together in service to the same Lord (12:7–11; Fee, 2014: 645–673). When it comes to the expression of individual gifts in worship, the issue is not the possession and apprehension of those gifts but their practical expression when the church is gathered. So, Paul invites them into participation in communal life that instantiates and forms a more adequate understanding of both the practice and purpose of their gifts: building up the whole body.
In keeping with that call to renewed practice in the interdependent body of Christ, our second recommendation for helping students “discern the body” is the formation of vocational exploration mentoring groups. Few recommendations appear more frequently in literature on higher education and/or vocational formation than mentoring, and rightly so given its tremendous power in young adult formation (Parks, 2011; Parks and Herrmann, 2018). We follow Wimberly (2016: 85–86) who asserts that mentoring for vocation is best conceived as “hospitable spiritual companionship” rather than growth in technical or professional expertise. This view of mentoring focuses on walking alongside students as they discern matters of broader life significance: identity, purpose, ethical implications, theodicy, and God’s guidance. We recommend that colleges adopt Wimberly’s “multi-level mentoring,” an intentionally intra- and intergenerational form of practice (Wimberly, 2016: 94). A faculty or staff member would have group and one-on-one mentoring relationships with students, students would have relationships with older students, and involved faculty and staff would have peer mentoring relationships with one another. This builds on strengths already present in this context; over the course of their time at Abilene Christian University (ACU), increasing numbers of students reported spiritually formative relationships with both peers and older people (see Appendix 1). This preexisting increase in relational investment can be directed toward countering the latent individualism in students’ sense of vocation and provide explicit opportunity for discernment with both peers and older adults that students may otherwise lack.
Our recommended mentoring practice considers community to be “a learning space with pedagogical agency, which calls for the whole self to engage” (Proffit and Young, 2016: 76, emphasis original), not merely an efficient context for content delivery. Stated differently, we both presume and propose that such practice of Christian community, marked by collegiality, shared vulnerability, mutual care, and collective participation, is not merely the context but the vehicle for vocational formation. More specifically, a mentoring community creates space for mutual commissioning, moments of naming gifts and sharing hopes that can have significant power for young adults in liminal and vulnerable periods of discernment. Furthermore, this kind of community allows space for creativity, exploration, failure, and reorientation by allowing students to “‘try on’ their identities in Christ, to see how it fits” (Douglass, 2016: 111). Practices of spiritual companionship can provide powerful corrections both to the individualistic view of vocational discernment and expression and this view’s presumption of independence. Finally, such practices both convey the abiding value of intentional community and prompt students to seek out similar interdependent Christian community as they leave campus and continue to invest in local congregations. University mentoring practices are not a substitute for intergenerational church involvement but rather a supportive complement to and preparation for future intergenerational involvement.
Discerning the body: The body of Christ at work in the world
However rich the community that a university may provide or support, students’ tenure at universities is intense but short. Universities have a limited window in which to help equip students with the intellectual and spiritual resources for the lifelong journey of their Christian vocations and to shape the vision of the good life that animates and sustains vocation (Wadell, 2016). For Christians, an account of the well-lived life ought to take its cues from the pattern revealed in the incarnate Christ, both in the calling to take up our own crosses and in the hope of the resurrection. Having begun 1 Corinthians by reminding the Corinthians of the countercultural calling of the crucified Lord (deSilva, 2000: 75–76; Fee, 2014: 70–81), Paul concludes the letter with a stirring account of the centrality of Christ’s bodily resurrection for the life of the world and for Christian vocation (Fee, 2014: 793). The corporeal reality of the resurrection makes faith powerful rather than futile, and the hope provided by the resurrection helps to sustain a vocation of self-sacrifice instead of self-satisfaction (i.e. “let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die”; 15:30–32). The necessity of that hope may feel more pressing under the pandemic conditions of COVID-19; at the time of writing, our university is conferring degrees on students graduating into dramatic uncertainty. If the vision of vocation that Christian institutions have imparted to their students is governed and normed more by individual achievement or career opportunities that may or may not exist tomorrow than by the basis of the church’s hope, we have failed to fully equip students for a sustained Christian vocation. 8
The current conditions of the global pandemic, economic uncertainty, and political polarization heighten awareness of what has always been true: universities have powerful, if sometimes missed, opportunities to help students envision their life’s trajectory in a manner that can accommodate the limitations, vicissitudes, and obstacles (as well as opportunities and gifts) that will inevitably occur along students’ vocational journeys (Cavanaugh, 2016: 44). Thus, our final recommendation looks to the rituals of transition that universities employ or might consider as opportunities for “discerning the body.” Such rituals create generative spaces where students might imagine their futures within the “framing narrative” of the pattern of Christ, defined by both the calling to sacrificial love and the hope in the resurrection (Henry, 2016: 172). These community rituals can also build on the strength of both a university mission statement (ACU, n.d.) and the Evangelical culture of commitment to the mission of the church (Smith, 1998: 36–47, 59–61).
University-wide ceremonies such as commencement are obvious and good candidates here. At our own institution, powerful opportunities also reside within academic departments, where networks of relationships between students and professors already exist and create the possibility for more personal and compelling encounters. Our own department has long conducted a day-long senior retreat that holds significant power for vocational formation. For example, in a series of prayer stations, students describe and then pray with faculty about different areas of their future—their family, their immediate plans, their spiritual lives, and what resources they will need to faithfully serve God. Explicit times of blessing and commissioning interweave biblical text, public testimony, autobiographical reflection, and hopes for the future.
Different departments have different transitional rituals for graduating seniors—senior recitals or showcases, summative internship or field placement experiences, retreats or covenant circles. Even beyond their role as celebrations or cumulative academic experiences, these are all opportunities for rituals of transition that invite students to construct a vision for their life beyond the university, grounded in Christian hope and expanding beyond the professional life they will next enter. The kind of transition ritual imagined here would do the following: (1) invite students into shared participation in a community with others, (2) help students begin constructing a vision for their vocation beyond the university that includes attention to their communities and their spiritual lives, (3) incorporate explicit reflection on theological framing narratives that shape a particularly Christian vocation (like the imagery of the body of Christ developed in this article), and (4) celebrate past accomplishments while commissioning and blessing students in their next steps.
Conclusion
In this article, we have explored the vocational understanding of college students and proposed ways universities can deepen students’ vocational imaginations to better include the communal dimensions of Christian formation for a life filled with meaning and purpose. The suggestions offered are intended to be generative rather than exhaustive; each institution, within the particularities of its religious tradition, student body, and institutional strengths and challenges, must determine their own best course of action, supported by the burgeoning literature on vocational formation in higher education and the rich theological resources of the Christian tradition. Universities can create the generative space where undergraduate students intellectually engage and purposefully practice the reality that “vocations are not solitary ventures, each of us solemnly trudging down lonely paths on our own; … our vocational journeys require the presence of friends who can accompany us” (Wadell, 2016: 213). The introduction of the body of Christ as a biblical framework for vocation that balances individual particularity and the expression of personal gifts within the interdependent, Christian community serves to orient students to their place in Christ and to meaningfully connect them to others in that Christian community. These practices of discerning the body form in students a character grounded in hope, and such hope must also ground the work of universities as they employ rituals of transition to prepare students for a life in the body of Christ filled with meaning and purpose.
Footnotes
Acknowledgement
The authors are thankful to Abilene Christian University for providing funding that supported this research.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Abilene Christian University.
