Awakened to a Calling: Reflections on the Vocation of Ministry

"For anyone responding to a call to the ministry, this book will be an excellent guide." --Jimmy Carter, Thirty-ninth President of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize Winner

The Fund for Theological Education (FTE) annually invites our nation's premier preachers to address a group of young adults who are considering a vocation in pastoral ministry. As part of the FTE's honoring of their outgoing president, Dr. James Waits, for his remarkable service, they have collected these superb sermons. These eight sermons on vocation offer an important resource for high school and college students making vocational decisions, for older adults considering vocational changes, and for all who teach and mentor in the area of vocational discernment and who help others sort out a commitment to professional ministry.

The purpose of the Ministry Conference, and the sermons delivered at the event, intersects well with Abingdon's mission to help form pastors who will serve the church faithfully and effectively. The preachers are highly recognizable and respected individuals who will serve as trusted and wise guides for discerning a ministry vocation. They include Fred Craddock, Walter Brueggemann, Tom Long, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Brad Braxton.

The volume includes an annotated bibliography of publications on ministry as a vocation, and a foreword by Dr. James T. Laney, former Ambassador to South Korea, President of Emory University, and Dean of Candler School of Theology. He is currently a faculty member of Emory's Center for Ethics. He chairs the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, is a trustee of the Henry Luce Foundation, and chairs (with Andrew Young) The Faith and The City Program in Atlanta.

As Director of Ministry Programs and the Partnership for Excellence of the Fund for Theological Education, Melissa Wiginton has listened to the lives of hundreds of young people who are discerning their vocations and helped create programs and interventions that have been important in many young leaders hearing a call to ministry. Ms. Wiginton holds a M.Div. degree from Candler School of Theology and a B.A. and J.D. from the University of Texas. She and her daughter co-wrote the chapter "Truth" in Way to Live: Christian Practices for Teens and she is currently working on a book with young pastors about hearing and responding to the call to ministry.

Ann Svennungsen followed Dr. James Waits as the eighth President of The Fund for Theological Education in Atlanta, GA. Prior to her election to this position, she was Senior Pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, a 3,700-member congregation in Moorhead, MN. During her seven years at Trinity, Svennungsen served the largest ELCA congregation to be led by a woman senior pastor. Her twenty-two years of ministry also included pastorates in Iowa City, IA and Minneapolis, MN. Often invited to speak and write, Svennungsen has also served as a mentor to younger pastors and was the principal grant writer and administrator of her congregation's "Transition into Ministry Pastoral Residency Program," funded by a $750,000 Lilly Endowment grant. She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Mathematics from Concordia College in Minnesota, and received her Master of Divinity degree from Luther Seminary in 1981. She is married to Dr. William Russell and is the mother of three chil