My theological sense of vocation is best summed up by Katie Geneva Cannon’s directive to “do the work your soul must have.” Every person’s vocation, in my belief, is intimately connected to the way their desires orient themselves to the world around them. God’s fingerprints may be found on every person’s vocation. Ordination, then, confirms that your vocation must be covenantal, meet the needs of the Church, and demonstrate mutuality in ministry between the minister and the community to which the minister is called. When you receive an ordainable call, you are entering into a covenanted agreement with the community you will be serving, the Conference – as the authoritative ordaining body – and the Local Church that supports you. An ordainable call must be a good fit for someone who possesses the Marks of Faithful and Effective Authorized Ministers. It also needs to have a position description and scope of work that reflects those Marks.

I cannot imagine my future vocation without reflecting on how my sense of vocation has developed over the last several years. In 2020, I wrote this:

God is inviting me to bring about Kin-dom living by building bigger tables. I spent a lot of time feeling the need to earn my spot at the table. Jesus tells a parable about a great feast that was empty, so they extended the invitation, bringing in the marginalized, the outcasts, the “least of these” they found on the street. There was plenty of room for everyone at the table. When we come together, offering each other intimacy and solidarity, we bring the kingdom of heaven closer to our earthly experience. In youth ministry, I get to participate in God’s redemptive work of connecting people through love and healing. If I could do anything for Jesus, I would live in a way that indiscriminately invites everyone to the love feast at God’s table.

A lot of it still rings true for me, and it looks different now than it did then. Now, in the context of the United Church of Christ, I feel much more empowered to love the marginalized and the outcast and the church-traumatized. Sometimes, our vocation finds us. Sometimes, life prepares us for the next right step that we could never have seen coming.

I am fully alive when I am fully myself; I am a whole person, and my desires deserve to be heard. I want to find wholeness for myself. I want to help other people find wholeness. I want people to recognize that their spiritual selves are just as real and important as their physical, emotional, and mental selves. This is when I feel the most alive: connecting people to themselves, to others, to God, and to their whole lives. Now, that is within the context of Christian formation, pursuing ordination in the United Church of Christ to deepen myself into this ministry. Someday, it might look different, but I will be bringing about wholeness and healing.