Part IV Spiritual Formation and The Integration of Faith and Vocation

An Example: "Respectable Businesses"

Without A Redemptive Christian Approach

I am mindful of C.S. Lewis' book: The Screwtape Letters, in which he is often noted for his comments on evil with the following statement:

"The greatest evil is not done those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."

Lewis' point is well taken if we were to examine the origin and promotion of Pornography in our culture. For example, in a fascinating article in the Sunday, October 29, 2000 Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette an article in its Commentary section featuring the following:

General Motor Corp., the world's largest company, now sells more graphic sex films every year than does Larry Flint owner of the Hustler Empire. The 8.7 million Americans who subscribe to DirecTV, A GM subsidiary, buy nearly $200 million a year in pay-per-view sex films from satilite…"

EchoStar Communications Corp., the number 2 satellite provider, whose chief financial backers include Murdoch (chairman of News Corp.,), makes more money selling graphic adult films through its satellite subsidiary than Playboy…"

AT&T Corp., the nations biggest communications company… also owns a company that sells sex videos to nearly a million hotel rooms

The article goes on to say: " For all the money being made on sex – legally – by mainstream corporations, the topic remains taboo outside the boardroom. The major satellite and cable companies do very little marketing of the X-rated products, and they are not mentioned in annual reports except in the vaguest of euphemisms… None of the corporate leaders of AT&T, Time Warner, General Motors, EchoStar, Liberty Media, Marriott International, the Hilton, On Command, LodgeNet Entertainment or News Corp. – all companies that have a big financial stake in adult films and are held by millions of shareholders – were willing to speak publicly about the sex side of their businesses."

To the astonishment of Flynt… his competitors in the 10 billion annual adult market are mainstream corporations whose board members are among the American elite."

Clearly these large "respectable" corporations described above have great need of a redemptive Christian influence. But, where was it? At the risk of appearing to moralize, are there not Christians associated with those corporations who have voting and policy power? Were there no influential Christians in management or on the Board of Directors, who would govern with the mind of Christ? If so, did any of those Christians have a faith and vocation integration perspective and commitment, or is their worldview compartmentalized? Or perhaps there simply are not enough of them and they are simply too outnumbered to make that much of a substantive difference… Of those who might be there, did any of them come from a strong Christian background and/or Christian Liberal Arts Colleges like Geneva College? If so, what was their approach to procuring their various positions? More specifically, did they get their position with the idea that they would keep the toxic parts of the job from infecting them; or did they take the job with the idea of infecting it for Christ?

Could it be possible that there were no Christians there, who intentionally chose that kind of work, that career path because they felt called by God to penetrate it as a Mission Field and use their calling and gifts to create a "good infection" that C.S. Lewis discusses in yet another book Mere Christianity? And because they did so, what they have, is not really a job but rather, a "vocation" that they are committed to? A powerful sense of God's design and purpose for them; a passionate calling, desire and commitment to transform this part of society for Christ, that the Apostle Paul encourages us with from Ephesians 2:10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

Higher Education Students and the Practice of "Individualism" by Default…

Recalling that many young Christians choose their perspective majors for: First, not out of a sense of "calling," but because it will meet their lifestyle wants and "needs;" and secondly because those same students often engage in the subtle interplay of vacillating between "vocation" and "livelihood." In other words, they choose their livelihood predicated on wants and needs and then declare it their vocation!
Third, perhaps, even before Christian students come to Colleges and/or Universities, they really haven't been given the necessary experiences or diagnostic tools to be able to ascertain their vocational calling. Therefore the "individualism" practiced here is the kind that comes by default. They default and do, and act, on only what they know and have experienced.

As a Youth Minister involved in numerous churches and communities, it was no secret that most students spend the lion's share of their time and energy doing those activities that reap the most rewards socially; and through which their parents cold live vicariously. Over time this often resulted in emphasizing the development of secondary gifts and talents and not so much their innate and primary ones… In High School, a student can function reasonably well with this approach. But when they go to College or University, they discover that their secondary gifts are not weighty enough to allow them to perform at the next level. Conversely, their primary gifts, the ones that are directly related to their vocation and calling, withered, became truncated and are often grossly underdeveloped. This condition as well, will not permit them to perform at the next level… As a result they are often lost and confused about how their faith can work with their vocation - whatever that may be… The resulting primary objective becomes social and financial "survival."

This situation is exacerbated all the more, when they receive pressure from family members about choosing a particular major that will enable them to pursue a specific and narrow career path for the rest of their lives! I recall reading a number of years ago, that of those students who graduate from a college or university, only half go into a field of their particular major; and of that half, another half of them move out of that field altogether within five years. In addition, the average person changes, not their job, but their career 3-5 times in their life-time.

My thought is that those of us who do Youth Ministry, as well as those of us who are involved in Christian Higher Education, have a significant if not vital role to play in guiding students in this thought process. Clearly, what we have been doing so far is not working. As of today, there is not one major institution in our culture in which the Christian community has any significant influence. We are indeed in a Post-Christian Culture. This despite the fact that Christianity and those who embraced it are either responsible for and/or shaped significantly things like: Hospitals, Schools and Universities, Democracy/Politics, Business, Non-Profits etc. etc. We have lost our way from the faith and vocational integration principle - because over time, like the proverbial frog in the kettle, we were wooed into a highly privatized, intellectualized and compartmentalized expression of our faith. How odd it is that what we fail to recognize that what we build in life, is actually what we live in. Soren Kierkegaard once said:

"Most systematizers stand in the same relation to their systems as the man who builds
a great castle and lives in an adjoining shack; they do not live in their great systematic
structure. Metaphorically speaking, a person's ideas must be the building he lives in ---
otherwise there is something terribly wrong

We always do what we always are, because we can only do what we only are….

Spiritual Formation

And The Integration of Faith and Vocation

Part I
In the early 1990's, as a Student Minister, I would often take my Student's to a Young Life camp up in the state of New York. In order to save a day's traveling, we would all board a charter bus at 11:00 p.m. and drive the entire night (the thought being that everyone would be sleeping!) and arrive about 10:00 a.m. in the morning good-to-go for our next eight-day camping experience.
One particular event I recall vividly, during one of these adventures, was waking up in the deep dark hours of the morning and needing desperately to use the "facility." Sitting in the very front seat, I stood up and groggily noted through the semi-darkness a veritable wasteland of sleeping human bodies, grotesquely arranged across the aisle, seats and even the overhead luggage racks. Swaying precariously while I picked my way carefully to the restroom in the back, I noted four or five students who were still awake and playing cards right across the aisle from the bathroom. We all took a brief moment to stare at each other for a moment without saying any words, and then I opened the door and disappeared inside.
Upon completing my essential task, I made my way to the door only to discover that I could not open it! Immediately it came to mind that the students just outside the door must have barricaded themselves against it. Confident in my physical size and strength, I determined to push them away from the door by placing right foot against the toilet and my left foot against the opposite wall. Bracing my shoulders against the door and turning the knob at the same time, pushed against the door with all of my might. Sweat beaded itself on my forehead and my legs shook violently, but try as I might I could not budge the door. I stopped suddenly when it occurred to me that the loud punctuating grunts and groans emanating from the restroom, from all of my exertions would have made great laughing fodder for my adversaries outside the door. Nonplussed, I devised another plan of escape. Crossing to the other side of the room (I use this phrase very generously), ran at the door full-force like an enraged bull hoping to jar them loose and hopefully get a foothold and force my way out. Again, my efforts netted me only a loud fruitless thump; a nanosecond of brilliant stars and a sore shoulder that bounced me back to where I started. Becoming concerned, I craftily resorted to one final cannot-fail-plan: I placed my face near the door crack and begged to be let out – promising everything but my first-born son. Regrettably, like all my other preceding efforts no results!
Backing up from the door, I began to pace around attempting to devise some other plan that would render my escape from the gross confines in which I had been trapped for over twenty minutes. "Wait!" I said to myself. "Ohhhh…" Trembling with hope and anticipation, I turned the knob of the door hopefully. Pulling it INWARD the door opened up silently… The students that I thought had trapped me in the restroom were across the aisle were sleeping. Twenty minutes in that place when I only needed to be there for two – just because I lost perspective on which way the door moved!!! Flushed with humiliation, I made my way back to the front of the bus resolute that I would NEVER let anyone know what had happened!

The Moral of the Story:

Admittedly, I often get trapped spiritually speaking in the restroom of life. I get stuck because my lack of vision and perspective keeps me there and nothing else. I find this lost perspective leaves me with a bored, complacent and uninspired Christian life. I am convinced in the field of Youth Ministry, or even Spiritual Formation, much of it has to do with my lack of practicing a comprehensive sense of intentionally -- the integrating of a vibrant faith into my vocation. I know also that I am not alone in the struggle to integrate faith and vocation.

My Personal Responsibility

How easy it is to settle into the predictable machinations and responsibilities of my office without ever really insisting on energizing and perfecting my particular vocation as Christ would have it be. I know that I should never be free of the need to model to my students the very same things that I am calling and challenging them with as well. I should want my teaching and praxis of Student Ministry and Spiritual formation to be evident in my life still, even as I, at the same time, demand that it be evident in their life as well. In secret moments of hidden honestly, I ask myself: "What compelling evidence do I have in my own life that gives me the credibility to make the demands that I make on how they should be and act personally and professionally?" Can I say to them with integrity: "You can do this!" Because I have actually seen or done or am doing it myself?
My mind and heart are often needled with the disturbing thought that my constant challenge to students to include their faith in their vocation, (in ways that are substantive and meaningful) must first of all begin with the personal witness and observable evidence in my own life. Again and again, those sanctifying questions from the Holy Spirit: "Have I - am I - taking similar kind's risks, making similar kinds of sacrifices that I am asking them to make?" Have I instead contented myself to fall back on the practice that it's ok to, quote, instruct and present only theoretical material based on what some "expert" wrote, who happened to read what someone else wrote, who in turn read about still someone else – generations removed from real life experience?
I cringe inwardly when I recognize that I have not honored teachable spirits by making sure my anecdotes fresh? I become troubled when my selected personal stories related to the material that I am teaching, might not be authentic and compelling? I feel frustrated when I run short of illustrations, honed by real life experiences that have the ability to motivate and inspire. Is there any good reason why I should give up being committed as a scholar-practitioner (participator)?
At the root of it all, I believe that God calls me to use my gifts and to live life on the edge as a divine, sometimes wild, adventure; yet inwardly haunts the subtle but terrible fear, that I faithfully practice that all-too-true old and unpleasant adage: "Those who can't do teach."
In my more honest and reflective times, I find a literary figure like Gandalf - that enigmatic character from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings - fascinating. Like him I want to always be out THERE, - in the world… mixing it up…. I want to always truly be aware of the danger that is before us and ACTING in a manner that demands the full use of my calling (vocation) and gifts, combating whatever evil the Lord has prepared in advance for me to engage. I want vocationally, with godly love, if circumstances demand it, to be able to stand courageously before the demonic Balrogs of this age, and declare with resolute passion "you shall not pass!" because I belong to a higher order. But this will be impossible with my faith and vocation if I am constantly hanging out within the dim, narrow, polluted and unimaginative confines of a restroom. Balrogs don't seem to have established their domicile in restrooms and for obvious reasons – nobody lives there.
Living in the restrooms of life results in my having very little credibility because the nature and quality of my life will speak more loudly than any amount of countervailing words that I have to give them. With muffled voice, from a cramped contaminated room, through the crack of a closed door, I will attempt to give them material, that from every appearance, seems to have a dubious and uninspiring origin. The most powerful thing that I will really communicate is: "live as I live, but not as I say…." The greatest teacher of all time, in a conversation with a young, affluent aristocrat, was noted for saying: "Come, follow me…"