Thursday, December 01, 2011

Vocations and leavers

Two more items in the occasional posts to this blog...

Jason Goroncy alerted me to a post by Michael Jinkins that asks the question; “What sustains you in your vocation?”

Jinkins begins by noting: 
John Calvin believed that it is the vocation itself, the fact of having been called by God which sustains us. That’s a great response, and I’m sure it is true. But, in the day-to-day slog and grind of living our vocations, beyond the assurance that we are where God called us (which is no small thing!), are there other things that sustain us? Prayer, regular Bible study, worship, the practice of Sabbath?  [I'm currently reading, at long last, Eugene Peterson's Working the Angles - it relates strongly to this question.]

The second item is the third post by Bradley Wright and his research team on the question of why people leave church.  In this post he asks, Does Christians’ bad behavior cause people to leave the faith?
This is a very useful series of posts, asking the right questions, attempting to find some answers - and of course, as always, the comments are as interesting as the posts themselves.

1 comment:

Snowbrush said...

"The way that Christians react to the doubts of others can, inadvertently, amplify existing doubt."

This is 100% true. A brief and nonspecific "crisis of faith" might be allowed to squeak by, but if you're a churchgoer who is having deep, broad, and continued doubts about your faith, it becomes clear very soon that you're no longer welcome at church. This was one of the things that led me to conclude that
Christianity is a very shallow religion.