Name: Calling in Context: Social Location and Vocational Formation
ISBN: 9781514001448

"Rarely do experts on calling urge people to consider how God's action in our lives is shaped by race, gender, class, and much more. In honest, profound, and biblically informed prose, Susan Maros opens up a whole new horizon on calling, revealing its complexity and brilliantly translating complicated concepts into everyday language so that all of us can grapple with vocation in more culturally sensitive and faithful ways. An invaluable addition to literature on calling!"--Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair and Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, emerita, Vanderbilt University, and coeditor of Calling All Years Good: Christian Vocation Throughout Life's Seasons

"Before the end of the introduction you will discover why Dr. Susan Maros is one of Fuller Seminary's most respected and popular professors. By the end of the book, you will realize that almost all your assumptions about how God calls a person will be challenged. Filled with biblical reflections that will cause you to reconsider what you think you know, and stories and studies that will encourage you to rethink what you believe to be settled about the way vocation is formed, this book disturbs and deconstructs, and then provides wisdom and a way for reconstructing perhaps the most personal moments in a Christian's life. I heartily recommend it."--Tod Bolsinger, Fuller Seminary and the De Pree Center for Leadership, author of Canoeing the Mountains

"How we talk about things matters, and how we address the subject of calling and vocation matters in its proper context. This work by Susan Maros is a much-needed text to help us understand how social location informs and shapes our understanding and experience of what calling and vocation actually mean. This meaning making allows the reader to step out of their own social location and create connection to a greater community seeking to honor the God who calls in their lives and their work. This is a formational text for scholars, practitioners, pastors, and workers in the global field."--Joy E. A. Qualls, associate dean of the Division of Communication at Biola University

"In Calling in Context Susan Maros counters the popular notion of vocation as an individual's calling discovered outside of time and place with a fresh, communal understanding that is grounded in God's action in the world and discerned in the midst of personal intersections and diverse experiences. Claiming vocational discernment is contextual and lifelong, Maros seeks to deepen awareness and awakening unconscious assumptions by inviting readers into a reflective process. Well written with personal stories, rich connections to Scripture, and challenging reflection questions, this book is a great resource for Christian leaders as it recognizes the importance of social location and directly addresses the impact racial-ethnic-cultural identity, socioeconomic status, sex/gender, power, and privilege play in vocation."--Terri Martinson Elton, professor of leadership at Luther Seminary

"Creatively critical, Calling in Context fills a much-needed space in the literature on Christian vocation, engaging ways in which gender, racial and ethnic identity, economic status, and social class shape people's vocational possibilities and practices of discernment. The book challenges individualist and idealist assumptions present in dominant North American understandings of vocation, inviting readers into richer conversation and vocational practice that is more attuned to the variety of ways in which vocation is experienced globally, more faithful to the range of biblical narratives of vocation, and more attentive to God's interaction with human beings over time."--Jane Lancaster Patterson, professor emerita of New Testament at Seminary of the Southwest, Austin, Texas, and director of the Communities of Calling Initiative at the Collegeville Institute

"Rarely do experts on calling urge people to consider how God's action in our lives is shaped by race, gender, class, and much more. In honest, profound, and biblically informed prose, Susan Maros opens up a whole new horizon on calling, revealing its complexity and brilliantly translating complicated concepts into everyday language so that all of us can grapple with vocation in more culturally sensitive and faithful ways. An invaluable addition to literature on calling!"

"Before the end of the introduction you will discover why Dr. Susan Maros is one of Fuller Seminary's most respected and popular professors. By the end of the book, you will realize that almost all your assumptions about how God calls a person will be challenged. Filled with biblical reflections that will cause you to reconsider what you think you know, and stories and studies that will encourage you to rethink what you believe to be settled about the way vocation is formed, this book disturbs and deconstructs, and then provides wisdom and a way for reconstructing perhaps the most personal moments in a Christian's life. I heartily recommend it."

"How we talk about things matters, and how we address the subject of calling and vocation matters in its proper context. This work by Susan Maros is a much-needed text to help us understand how social location informs and shapes our understanding and experience of what calling and vocation actually mean. This meaning making allows the reader to step out of their own social location and create connection to a greater community seeking to honor the God who calls in their lives and their work. This is a formational text for scholars, practitioners, pastors, and workers in the global field."

"In Calling in Context Susan Maros counters the popular notion of vocation as an individual's calling discovered outside of time and place with a fresh, communal understanding that is grounded in God's action in the world and discerned in the midst of personal intersections and diverse experiences. Claiming vocational discernment is contextual and lifelong, Maros seeks to deepen awareness and awakening unconscious assumptions by inviting readers into a reflective process. Well written with personal stories, rich connections to Scripture, and challenging reflection questions, this book is a great resource for Christian leaders as it recognizes the importance of social location and directly addresses the impact racial-ethnic-cultural identity, socioeconomic status, sex/gender, power, and privilege play in vocation."

"Creatively critical, Calling in Context fills a much-needed space in the literature on Christian vocation, engaging ways in which gender, racial and ethnic identity, economic status, and social class shape people's vocational possibilities and practices of discernment. The book challenges individualist and idealist assumptions present in dominant North American understandings of vocation, inviting readers into richer conversation and vocational practice that is more attuned to the variety of ways in which vocation is experienced globally, more faithful to the range of biblical narratives of vocation, and more attentive to God's interaction with human beings over time."

Calling in Context: Social Location and Vocational Formation

Susan L. Maros

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