Vocation and Avocation on the Christian Campus

The last year was big for me as an academic: I received tenure, published a book, and was awarded a sabbatical. Yet my colleagues and students tend not to ask me about these landmarks. They instead know me as a gardener, thanks to the pictures I post to social media. Truth be told, I find it easier to make small talk about my garden than my research or classes since people have more familiarity with fruits and vegetables than medieval history. I used to worry about this imbalance, but I now believe that their interest speaks to something deeper about our need for avocation, as well as the current limits of vocation.

Helping students discern a God-given mission is something that sets Christian education apart from other expressions. It acknowledges both the kingdom of God in the world and provides the means and motivation to participate in that kingdom. Some authors trace the concept to Protestant Reformers who used the concept to project a sacred quality on everyday activities and work. Others see biblical roots for vocation, such as the concepts of divine image bearers and stewardship in Genesis 1. As a medieval historian, I encounter the concept as a way to describe entry into a monastic tradition. Indeed, a cottage industry exists around the notion as scholars write more books each year to help students discern their vocation.

Despite all the ink spilled on this topic, students struggle with a limited sense of vocation that is not easily resolved in the current university environment. They often reduce vocation to ministry or, conversely, view vocation as simply working or living ethically. While we might argue that their confusion stems from a partial understanding of vocation, the overwhelming emphasis on professionalization produces an inherent tension between calling and career. For this reason, I will not offer my own definition of vocation, but submit that a different approach might be necessary for this generation of students.

This notion crystallized for me when I noticed diminishing returns, if not exhaustion, among students regarding vocation. I often start my freshman Great Books classes with a quotation related to the day’s reading which speaks to calling. For example, I use Buechner’s definition of vocation to introduce the tension between “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” While students liked the sentiment, they expressed dismay or fatigue at the gravity he assigns to work. Some indicated that his definition asked too much of them and that they just want a degree. Alarmed at their ambivalence, I assumed I hadn’t explained vocation well and hoped they’d change their minds. I’ve since discovered that student attitudes do not improve as they matriculate, as some seniors report that the pressure to find a vocation creates more problems than it resolves.

The reticence makes sense in light of research on anxiety among young adults. Students are increasingly stressed about school, social life, and future work prospects. Their expectations are exacerbated by social media and a pervasive hustle culture. When you add the pursuit of a divinely-inspired vocation to all this, it can seem like a specific tax on students at Christian institutions—one more (cosmically significant) thing to excel at. No wonder students want to skip the calling and lean into career. Although the rising instances of burn-out and quiet-quitting seem to make the pursuit of vocation more necessary than ever, how do we reclaim this idea without exasperating our anxious students?

Another recent experience hints at a way forward. Two years ago, a student asked me to be a founding faculty advisor for an outdoor club, citing my interest in gardening and hiking. What I thought would be a modest group has grown to a phenomenon that encompasses more than 10% of the undergraduate population, with a waitlist for off-campus events and a slew of university awards. It holds weekly outdoor worship at the unholy hour of 7am—on Fridays! The club clearly hits a nerve despite having no discernible connection to students’ future careers. If anything, it poses a distraction or a threat to student success. But what if the pursuit of hobbies might provide a remedy for the current malaise surrounding vocation?

Like my students, I find that I am a better professor the more I work in the garden. Much like running or a gym workout, I walk away from a weekend of gardening feeling more energized than if I stayed in and tried to get ahead or vegged out by binge-watching or mindlessly scrolling. The activity allows me to see progress or solve problems in ways that are different from grading and writing. It takes me away from my concerns and deadlines by giving me something productive yet completely different to do. As I work, my mind is free to focus on the task at hand or to ruminate on the teaching and research I need to do without immediacy. The time spent doing this activity allows me to gain perspective about how I want to spend my time and why. In the process of becoming a gardener, I learned more about myself and expanded my vocation beyond historian to include someone who loves exploring and explaining systems.

I submit that one way to revitalize vocation is to provide students with the means to pursue avocation, which I define as the work we want to do after the work we have to do is done. Like other forms of work—and gardening is work—hobbies, pastimes, and side hustles can give us a sense of purpose, but without the pressure or anxiety. While avocation shares qualities with vocation, it is distinct because of its connection to Sabbath. Too often we reduce this concept to an indoor sport of dour contemplation. Even while exerting themselves, outdoor activities give my students rest and a different forum to see the creator and creation. Avocations give insight into what we value by providing organic ways to discover where our treasure lies. My outdoor club students have all sorts of majors, but hiking allows them to imagine the connections between business and conservation, nursing and wellness. In this way, hobbies can help us to reverse-engineer a calling and, more importantly, broaden our concept of what a calling is.

While universities offer an increasing number of co-curricular activities, they shy away from talking about how students should spend nights and weekends, let alone connect these activities to the notion of Sabbath. This is a missed opportunity given the investment we’ve made in the concept of vocation and the promises made about developing the whole person. Our students arrive with native interests (sports, baking, music), which we shoehorn awkwardly into a major (sports marketing, nutrition, music education) rather than finding creative outlets for students to become multifaceted people with both vocations and avocations.

What might this look like? Again, an outdoor club seems like a great start, but this cannot be a matter of more programming. What makes this organization compelling is not just being and worshipping outside but, per our charter, discussing the theological implications of “experiencing God’s faithfulness in the outdoors.” Faculty and student affairs would do well to recognize how avocations can serve as a common touchpoint for meeting curricular and co-curricular goals. For this reason, I am excited to be leading a research group on avocation with an interdisciplinary team of scholars at Samford university. In my Great Books seminars, I often struggle to explain the finer points of Aristotle’s virtue ethics, Seneca’s sense of otium (productive leisure), and monastic approaches to communal work and prayer. In these cases, I use examples from various avocations to illustrate these ideas as well as their personal and corporate benefits. Drawing from my experience, I posit that my family and I profit from healthy food, exercise, and time together in the garden, but our community also benefits from our garden in the form of shared produce, knowledge, and beauty, as well as the ability to form connections in an increasingly virtual world. However, there is not currently a place on campus for students to see and experience these abstract observations and their benefits.

My research team will explore ways in which we can better articulate and move these ideas beyond the classroom. Each person will be charged with thinking about how hobbies and passion projects can be worked into classes, research, and the life and mission of the university. We begin with the common understanding that avocations need to be modeled as ends in themselves, not just means. This requires time and space for amateurs to create, engage, and explore, always accompanied by thoughtful discussions led by professionals and hobbyists alike who model the lifelong pursuit of avocation. It’s community gardens, cooking classes, fly-fishing tutorials, and knitting groups elevated to see anew where your deep gladness and world’s hunger might meet. In this way, we help students rethink concepts of worship and sabbath in ways that can travel with them beyond graduation and throughout their lives.