Research + News | Topic: Community

Vocation: Discerning Your Calling

An article adapted from a leadership training session at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in 2007 by Timothy Keller:

As Christians we are stewards of the resources God gives us for serving the human community. Our vocations are one avenue for doing God’s work in the world.

Download and read the full article here.

The Pandemic’s High – And Largely Overlooked – Toll On ‘In-Betweeners’

The pandemic’s toll on the “In-Betweeners,” those on the cusp between Gen Z and millennials, has been significant — and largely overlooked. Read the article here.

New Study Suggests That College Campuses Are COVID-19 Superspreaders

College campuses are at risk of becoming COVID-19 superspreaders for their entire county, according to a new vast study which shows the striking danger of the first two weeks of school in particular. Read the article here.

Five Conversations You Must Have With Grads Before College

Graduation has come and gone, but your recent high school grads are likely still around for a little longer. What should your final conversations with them be about?

This blog post from Fuller Youth Institute helps address the topic. Read the post here.

Church Membership ‘Back Home’ is Not Enough

What is the role of the local church in the life of a college student? The Gospel Coalition takes a look. Read more here.

How Do We Love a Broken World?

“Knowing what we know about the world, with all its wonder and wounds, what will we do? Do we see ourselves implicated, for love’s sake, in the way the world turns out?” This is a question that all college students should be asking before arriving on campus, while they are engaged in their academic pursuits while on campus, and for their entire lifetime after graduation. It’s also the question that’s at the heart of Steve Garber’s book, Visions of Vocation. Garber encourages readers – young and old alike – to always be asking, “If we know the world the way God knows it and if we love the world the way God loves it, then what, when we confront the brokenness, will we do?” The answer, Garber says, is found in our individual callings. It’s there, he says, that we see the world as it is. And it’s there — with the duties and responsibilities we each have — that we’re able to proactively and redemptively love the people and places around us.

In a recent interview with ByFaith Magazine, Garber says,

“We are called to be salt and light. As John Stott taught us, salt and light are affective commodities; they affect their environments. So we are never to curse rooms that are dark; rather we are to ask, ‘Why wasn’t the light turned on?’ In a culture of whatever, which is oppressive in every way that matters, we are called to enter in — with faith, hope, and love — in and through our vocations, offering visions of what might be, of what could be, of what someday will be.”

Read the rest of the interview here.

David Brooks On The Way to Produce a Person

A fitting article for graduation season, The New York Times columnist David Brooks explains “The Way to Produce a Person.” Brooks reminds readers, “Every hour you spend with others, you become more like the people around you.” And, “If you choose a profession that doesn’t arouse your everyday passion for the sake of serving instead some abstract faraway good, you might end up as a person who values the far over the near.. Instead of seeing yourself as one person deeply embedded in a particular community, you may end up coolly looking across humanity as a detached god.”

Read the full article here.

What College Freshmen Need to Hear from their Youth Pastors

Fuller Youth Institute’s Sticky Faith Research reveals what students thought might have helped them the most transitioning from high school to college. Two of the most consistent responses: (1) students wished someone from their high school youth group would have contacted them after they had entered college and (2) students would have liked more practical training describing the college context and relevant issues they might face.

Read the entire article here.