As the oldest of three children in a single-parent family, I remember we struggled to cover the rent most months and still have enough for groceries. We moved so often that, by the time I reached middle school, I no longer bothered to put away the moving boxes in my closet. As a teenager I craved stability. So it surprised even me when, a few years after college, I willingly left a stable career with a cardboard box in my hands and tears in my eyes.
At age 25, I was enjoying the kind of security I had longed for. I had married my high-school sweetheart and was the youngest account manager at a marketing firm where I helped clients to tell their stories. Yet I sensed a pull down a different path. Instead of telling my clients’ stories, I thought, maybe God wants me to tell his story—the story of his in-breaking kingdom.
After much prayer and many conversations, my wife and I liquidated our retirement accounts, left our jobs, and moved 6,000 miles to England so I could study theology at Oxford University. I saw this education as a way to enrich my writing, to help others see the world through the lens of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Yet even as I was confident that God had called me in this direction, part of me wondered what it even meant to be called.
Having spent the past few years writing about calling, I have realized I’m not alone.
Let Your Life Speak
My quest to understand calling began when I was an anxious college freshman. Reading Parker J. Palmer’s classic Let Your Life Speak, I was struck by his description of vocation: “something I can’t not do, for reasons I’m unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself but that ...
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Dozens of leaders from the preacher’s former congregation are calling for him to resign from The Trinity Church, where departing members are raising familiar concerns.
You have reached the end of this Article Preview
Dozens of leaders from the preacher’s former congregation are calling for him to resign from The Trinity Church, where departing members are raising familiar concerns.
After the 2020 election, a remnant of charismatic leaders are trying to revive their movement from within.
As new tensions divide the country, the men’s movement leaders wonders what they could have done differently.
The Rise and Fall of Mars HillEpisode 5|56 minThe Things We Do To WomenWhen churches use sexuality to foster and motivate male commitment, women find themselves on the losing end.
