Literature and Bibliographic Resources
& Signifies resources appearing on multiple Theological Exploration of Vocation campus booklists
! Signifies resources designed as workbooks and/or study guides.
Calling
&Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, Gregg Lavoy
Practical, spiritual and psychological guidance are offered in this resource that outlines the many ways individuals are directed to follow their authentic work.
Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God Given Potential,Gordon T. Smith
Provides a theological foundation for identifying vocation and is recommended to those seeking vocational guidance in early adulthood or during a midlife re-evaluation.
Find Your Calling, Love Your Life, Martha Finney, Deborah Dasch
Find out how people with good jobs went about getting them is the question. The twenty interviews in this text include the powerful answers.
In Search of a Calling, Thomas Buford
This teacher who has an interest in the character of his students extends the idea of a calling to all who want to make their lives meaningful
&The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, Os Guinness
Far bigger than jobs and accomplishments and higher than ideas of self-fulfillment, calling does more than give purpose and meaning to lives – it completes God’s plan.
& !Whistle While You Work: Heeding Your Life’s Calling, R.J. Leider , D.A. Shapiro
This is a guide uses stories and exercises to help people discover and heed their callings as they journey to find work that is consistent with their values and preferences.
Career
!Career and Calling: A Guide for Counselors, Youth and Young Adults, Ginny Ward Holderness
Written for students, young adult, and those who work with them, this book contains a six session small group career counseling program that focuses on God’s calling, individual gifts and talents, and the world of work.
How to Find the Work You Love, Laurence Boldt
This resource explains how to find a new and rewarding career, introducing simply hob-hunting strategies that emphasize four key elements – integrity, service, enjoyment, and excellence.
Majoring in the Rest of Your Life, Carol Carter
Carter believes that college students who want to succeed after graduation must start preparing as soon as they begin their collegiate education. She presents a series of practical suggestions to help students move from their unfocused freshman years to landing the job of their dreams.
&Making a Living While Making A Difference: A Guide to Creating Careers with a Conscience,Melissa Everett
A guide for job-seekers who want careers that express their ethics and spiritual values. Identifies emerging, stable career fields around the world that are environmentally friendly, meet long-term needs, and reflect social values.
&What Color is Your Parachute?, Richard N. Bolles
This resource continues to be a best-seller and helps job-hunters define their interests, experience, goals, and state of mind, then points them in the direction of a suitable, satisfying and profitable career.
Discernment
& !Lifekeys: Discovering Who You Are, Why You’re Here and What You Do Best, Jane Kise
This workbook program is designed to help people discover their talents, spiritual gifts, passions, values, and personality.
Inventing a Life: The Journey Through College and Beyond, Richard McBride
Intertwines personal narratives of college-age students with the ‘inspiring-guiding’ input of Richard McBride, chaplain at Elon University.
!The Life You’ve Always Wanted, John Ortberg
This expanded edition includes a small group study guide discusses the Christian disciplines.
Faith and Discipleship
Faith in Leadership: How Leaders Live Out Their Faith in Their Work – And Why it Matters, Robert Banks and Kimberly Powell
Leaders from various fields provide examples to demonstrate that faithfulness and leadership can be successfully combined.
& !If Jesus Were a Senior: Last-Minute Preparations for Post-College Life, Bruce Main
The final years of college can be a difficult for students committed to a life of Christian discipleship. How does a student begin to prepared for the “real world,” so that it will not end in a collapse of faith or a slow series of compromises? Main argues that students should imagine Jesus as a human being who too had to go through various states in development. Each chapter includes study and devotional material.
If Jesus Were a Sophomore: Discipleship for College Students, Bruce Main
This resources challenges college students to actively embrace young adulthood as a time for identity formation, and to intentionally begin to establish habits of discipleship that will create a foundation for a life of radical faithfulness. This text responds to the questions, “How might Jesus want a young adult to use their college years?”
&The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity and Caring, Parker Palmer
Telling stories from a variety of religious traditions, Palmer show that the spiritual life does not mean abandoning the world but engaging it more deeply thought life-giving action.
Meaning, Mattering, and Purpose
&Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Young Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose and Faith, Sharon Daloz Parks
Looks at the challenges young adults face in their search for meaning, integrity, and contribution. A call to thoughtful adults to mentor actively the next generation.
How to Find Your Mission in Life, Richard N. Bolles
An exploration of the spiritual aspects of finding one’s place in the world, originally an appendix to “What Color is Your Parachute”.
Leading with Soul: An Uncommon Journey of Spirit, Lee Bolman, Terrence Deal
This contemporary parable chronicles the journey of a dispirited leader in search of something more than the bottom line.
&Living the Life that Matters, Harold S. Kushner
A practical and spiritual book showing “how even our smallest daily actions can become stepping stones toward integrity”. Persistent dilemmas of the human condition, such as “How can we turn our relationships with family and friends into genuine sources of meaning?” are addressed in this book.
Making a Life, Making a Living, Mark Albion
Drawing on interviews with fast-trackers, Albion shares how these men and women found the courage and motivation to recreate successful professional lives guided by passion.
Selling Ourselves Short: Why We Struggle to Earn a Living and Have a Life, Catherine M. Wallace
A combination of personal reflections, pieces of autobiography, and shrewd analysis are what make this book a wonderfully thoughtful attempt to help women understand what confronts them – and live it with faith and grace.
The Long Journey Home: A Guide to Your Search for the Meaning of Life, Os Guinness
Described as a “seeker roadmap for the quest for meaning” this book explores some of the great philosophies of life in order to understand the journey towards meaning and some of the quests individuals have taken in the search for meaning.
&The Power of Purpose: Creating Meaning in Your Life and Work, Richard Leider
A practical resource for finding your calling, this is a guide focusing on living and working; grounding the common sense of soul work in the common practice of living everyday life.
The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren
In 40 brief chapters (each of which can be used as a devotional), Rick Warren answers the age old questions; Why am I here? What is my purpose?
The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection, Compassion, and Character at School,R. Kessler (staff oriented)
This is a guide for helping young people find meaning and purpose in life as well as connect with their spiritual yearnings.
&To Know as We are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey, Parker Palmer
This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possess and can share to benefit others.
Mentoring
Athena’s Disguises: Mentors in Everyday Life, Susan Ford Wiltshire
Explores the multitude of ways mentoring occurs in our lives using inspiring examples of several remarkable women who touched the author’s own life.
Connecting: The Mentoring Relationships You Need to Succeed in Life, Paul D. Stanley
Because the concept of a mentor is misunderstood, many miss out on mentoring possibilities. This book is designed to help you connect with others, either to be a mentor or to be mentored.
!Mentoring: How to Develop Successful Mentoring Behaviors, Gordon F. Shea
Part of Crisp publications “50 Minute Book” series, this is designed as an introductory workbook suggesting behaviors to adopt and behaviors to avoid.
Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
This is the true story of a college professor, Morrie, who develops a mentoring relationship with Mitch, his student of 20 years ago. Mitch visits Morrie every Tuesday until Morrie’s death and this story captures the “big questions” and offers advice about how to live fully.
Myers-Briggs Resources
&Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type, Paul D. Tieger, Barbara Barron-Tieger
Knowing Me, Knowing God: Exploring Your Spirituality with Myers-Briggs, Malcolm Goldsmith (staff oriented)
This resources helps counselors explore the spiritual expressions of type.
Looking at Type and Spirituality, Sandra Krebs Hirsh, Jane A. G. Kise…
An overview of the MBTI as it relates to spirituality. Includes two-page descriptions of each type’s approach to defining spirituality, finding one’s path, common stumbling blocks, and paths for renewal and reflection.
Vocation
Crossing the Jordan: Meditations on Vocation, Sam Portaro
This book began as a set of essays used for student retreats on vocation. Portero suggests themes that will apply to all.
&Forgetting Ourselves on Purpose: Vocation and the Ethics of Ambition, Brian Mahan
This is a book about claiming our vocation in the spiritual sense of finding a purpose for our lives that is part of the purposes of God.
&Getting a Life: How to Find Your True Vocation, Renee M. LaReau
LaReau began this book following her experience as a facilitator for the University of Notre Dame’s Vocare retreats for young alumni/ae, a part of the Notre Dame Vocation Initiative. The first chapter begins with, “I never used to think the word ‘vocation’ applied to me, or to any of my friends for that matter.”
&Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, Parker Palmer
The title is derived from a Quaker admonition to allow vocation to come from listening to and accepting “true self” rather than from willfulness. Palmer begins a meditation on finding one’s true calling.
Now and Them: A Memoir of Vocation, Frederick Buechner
In this volume, Buechner begins with his education at Union Theological Seminary, where he studied under Paul Tillich and others. He tells of years as a minister and teacher, concluding with his move to Vermont and decision to become a full-time writer.
The Way of Life: A Theology of Christian Vocation, Gary Badcock
Badcock develops a constructive theology of Christian vocation where vocation is not about what one does, but who one is.
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