The VocationCARE practices have many points of intersection with the process presented in the Candidacy Guidebook. We invite you to bring these resources together in ways that fit your context’s needs. Below are some suggestions for practices/exercises where these two resources intersect well.
Building a Christian narrative, including Scripture, history and tradition is a process that could be useful in helping group members initially get to know one another and their contexts. The River of Life exercise that you completed in order to prepare for this event is one way to engage candidates in a conversation around building a Christian narrative.
Page numbers cited below are from the Candidacy Guidebook.
p. 13 – Conversation on Confidentiality
The Covenants of Presence exercise could be a good tool for determining the bounds of confidentiality in the group.
p. 18 – Wesleyan Dimensions of Calling – Use Wesley’s Covenant Prayer as a way to explore the different ways in which God calls us.
p. 34 – Recognizing and Experiencing Grace – Self-Awakening Questions
Self-awakening questions provide the opportunity to share life experiences and hear questions in a new way. Use this exercise to help participants think about their gifts and times they’ve been affirmed in responding to God’s call.
p. 46 – Silence and Stillness for Meditation – Letting Go/Letting Come
The Letting Go/Letting Come exercise provides a meditative way for participants to imagine and respond to how God is calling them and to realize what changes may need to be made in their lives to respond to God’s call.
p. 68 – The Gift of Others for Self-Understanding – Self-Awakening Questions
See explanation above from p. 34.
p. 91 – Diversity – A Gift to the Church – In Creating Space, we start with stories. Stories have a way of leading into the heart of our distinctive contexts (racially, ethnically, socio-economically, etc.) As we bring our various "homeplaces" into the story space, we begin to see the ways in which we become more complete as a community the more we welcome one another's differences.
p. 101 – Discerning Your Fruit through Successes and Failures – Story Prompts in VocationCARE can be crafted to help people tell stories about times when their gifts bore hoped-for fruit and times of failure. Self-Awakening questions can become an opportunity to think more deeply about what we learn from moments of recognizing our human fallibility.
p. 105 – From Exploring to Declared Candidate and p. 133 – Making Decisions – Next Steps
Letting Go/Letting Come – This exercise is good for any transition points where decisions need to be made.
p. 128-129 – The District Committee will ask candidates to share their formative experiences, gifts for ministry, and understanding of one's call to ministry. The VocationCARE practices teach a process of theological reflection called L.I.V.E. Thinking through formative life events through this process can help candidates become fluent in naming the connection between parts of one's journey and the Christian narrative, including Scripture, history and tradition. (This process could also be useful in helping group members initially get to know one another and their contexts.)
p. 169 – A Developing Tradition talks about conversations about ministry as continually in process. This connects with Design Studio as we take on the challenge of designing new shapes of ministry/church and leadership styles, particularly in times of rapid transition.
p. 176 – God Be With You talks about the ongoing relationship with the Mentor after the formal relationship has ended. VocationCARE teaches us to create space that mentoring circles might want to covenant to continue, or at least consider covenanting to create new spaces where mutual support around ongoing vocational discernment can take place.
p.191 – Outlines a calling retreat – would be easy to build the VocationCARE practices into a retreat setting.
Resources:
The Barefoot Way: A Faith Guide for Youth and the People who Walk With Them. (Westminster John Knox, 2012). This resource shows how to lead theological reflection on life stories to cultivate conversations around call and vocation.
Fulfilling God’s Call: Guidelines for Candidacy, 2009 Edition (GBHEM, 2009).
Greenhouses of Hope: Congregations Growing Young People who Change the World. (Alban, 2010)
This research, developed by FTE, shows the CARE practices operating in six diverse congregations.