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Professor Chase

Senior Seminar

10 November 2022

Essay #1

The question of vocational calling is a big one and one that, as we’ve discussed in class,

might even be impossible to answer at this time in our lives with relatively little “real-world”

experience. But nonetheless, I’ll attempt to parse out what my vocational calling could be by

breaking the question down to its foundation and examining important factors that are often left

out of the discussion when it comes to vocation. In this essay, I’ll examine questions to do with,

temperament, and long-term fulfillment, along with the practice of balancing trust in God’s plan

with an attempt to pre-empt it.

The first key component to answering this question of my vocational calling is the

baseline question of what kind of person I am. This is often a foundational question that is left

overlooked and unexamined within vocation discourse. There is an emphasis placed on taking

into account factors such as what you’re good at, or what fits your ideal life plan, while the

question of temperament is largely discarded. The question of not just what you would be able to

do, but what would be life-giving and enjoyable, and tenable for your unique temperament and

persona. So, with this in mind, I would first begin interrogating what my vocational calling is by

first assessing my temperament, and what I’m disposed to excel and thrive at doing. I know that

I’m, as a person, catered toward working with others in a collaborative setting. And I also know

that I like roaming around and not having to be tied down to one spot when I’m working. When I

take this information into account, along with my general desires for what industry I feel called
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to, and where I believe God wants me to be, I’m able to more accurately assess what my

vocational calling is.

Another important thing to note is the importance of, as Wright would say, “anticipating”

God’s divine plan for our lives, while still trusting in it. As Wright says in our class reading,

anticipation, in this theological sense, means altering our behavior to pre-empt and actively

prepare for the oncoming events that fall within God’s determined plan. So, in this way, it seems

that we must use what we know about our temperament to find our vocational calling and then

begin actively “anticipating” that calling by working towards it tangibly.

In an attempt to anticipate my vocation, I have to assess what I believe it to be, and then

pursue that ardently, trusting that God will provide a course correction if I happen to be

misguided. So I believe that, broadly, I’m called to tell stories. I’ve been thinking about this as

recently as last night at the Emmet Till event where Dr. Tell echoed notions of Walter Fisher,

saying, “we are the stories we tell.” I’ve been both fascinated and blessed with some amount of

gifting for visual storytelling, specifically in the form of video. I see a need for the stories of

many unheard and marginalized individuals to be told. The art form of filmmaking is one that

has massive Kingdom potential, specifically through its ability to communicate to an audience a

message that would perhaps otherwise be more easily neglected or perceptually daunting in a

more direct form of communication. Tolstoy speaks to this conception of art as an instrument of

communicative empathy, saying, “The business of art lies just in this, to make that understood

and felt which, in the form of argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.” So I

believe I am called to embrace this artmaking process, using the medium of video to tell stories

that connect with others, shape identity, and inform convictions.

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Work Cited

Tell, Dave “Remembering Emmet Till - Wheaton Event” November 1, 2022

Tolstoy, Leo “What is Art?” 1897.

Wright, N. T. “Six.” After You Believe, HarperOne, New York, NY, 2012.