Hope for Creation IACCW – Spring Week Three Summary

Discovering Collective Vocation

In class this past Sunday, we discussed a third regenerative design principle: discovering collective vocation. In the same way that an individual is invited to discern their personal vocation, so too are communities beckoned to seek after, listen for, and embrace a shared calling. “Within human communities, a collective vocation enables people to work intentionally, independently, and in diverse ways toward a common aim. Put another way, a collective vocation provides a context within which people are able to discover their individual vocations. By eliciting a collective vocation, a regenerative project can help a community coalesce around its shared purpose” (Regenerative Development and Design, Mang & Haggard, 63). Theologically, we might affirm Jesus’s call to seek above all other things the Kin-dom of God, the Neighbor-Realm of Loving Justice, for in doing so, everything else is properly aligned for the common good of each and all of our human and other-than-human relations (Matt. 6:33). To begin discerning a collective vocation to guide Hennepin Ave. UMC’s mission/vision for regenerative ministry, we explored a set of questions related to 1) seeing a trajectory within a stream of time, 2) drawing on legacies, 3) identifying iconic events and people, and 4) taking inspiration from the future.