What is the Church’s Calling?

The church in the USA (no need to generalize too much here) is being put to the test in a number of ways today. Perhaps the way to look at this test is to see how the church has responded. Mark Labberton, President of Fuller seminary, in his new book Called: The Crisis and Promise of the Following Jesus Today, sketches a number of ways the church has shaped itself in our culture —

I am wondering what you would add or subtract from this?

Many experience the church as these, how about you?

1. The self-absorbed church
2. The oppressive church (or offensive church)
3. The siloed church (segregated)
4. The bad news church
5. The no-news church
6. The good-news church: What is that good news? To what is the church called?

One of the major challenges for the church to meet its test in our culture is to understand that culture, and Labberton has a few categories for our culture too — themes that mark our culture and to which the church is called to respond:

1. People live a free floating life
2. Some live a vertigo life, or a free-fall
3. Others have a “pinged” life: a perpetual onslaught of distractions.
4. Some have a lonely life
5. The imposter’s life: appearance more than substance.
6. The ironic life
7. The consumer life

What, then, is the call of our life? Mark Labberton — and I have to like this — contends the call for each of us is very simple, very challenging, and altogether pervasive: we are to love God and to love others. Labberton calls us to be more alert to those around us with a number of practices.

Labberton covers the important themes for a book about our vocation, our calling: where are we called? how are we called? to whom and to what are we called? But he envelops these themes with focusing on the Beloved, wisdom and suffering — and he is very church-oriented as well. This is not just about our public vocation but about our vocation as Christians, regardless of our vocation.