Imperative VI: Life as a Stewardship, Work as a Vocation

They come each fall in packed vehicles with full class schedules and countless questions about the next four years. They wonder about their roommates, their professors, their friends. And they wonder, now that they've finally arrived at college, what they're going to do with the rest of their lives.
The question of vocation, or calling, is one Baylor wants its students to consider seriously, says Dr. Michael Beaty, vice provost for faculty development and philosophy professor. "A university education is not primarily about getting a job. It's about making a life," he says. "It's to give students the opportunity to be formed and transformed in such a way that they see how their gifts help them serve the world, serve their neighbors."
Addressing this issue is Baylor 2012's sixth imperative, which seeks to "guide all students, through academic and student life programming, to understand life as a stewardship and work as a vocation."
Dr. Beaty previously directed the University's Institute for Faith and Learning and was instrumental in Baylor's receipt of a $2 million Lilly Endowment grant in October 2000. Funds from the grant have been used to develop programs that allow students to see their lives -- including their future careers -- as a response to God's call to service, he says. 
The terminology used in the sixth imperative may be unfamiliar to some, Dr. Beaty says. "The word 'vocation' is not as familiar to Protestants and Baptists as 'calling,'" he says. "I grew up in the Baptist church, and you were called to the preaching ministry or to be a missionary. And the rest of us had jobs." 
In his philosophy classes, Dr. Beaty introduces the concept of vocation to students by sharing how he discovered his own calling -- a journey that began with his pursuit of a military career. While attending West Point, he began to have doubts about his career path. He transferred to a Christian liberal arts college in Arkansas, where he was required to take philosophy, a course he says he never would have chosen voluntarily. "In that class, I was challenged to think about my life in ways I had never been challenged to think before. And here I am," says Dr. Beaty, who has been teaching philosophy for 25 years. "I couldn't have imagined at 20 doing what I'm doing now."
Faculty are encouraged to create opportunities for their students to consider God's purpose for their lives, Dr. Beaty says. "We rely on them to work it into their classes in ways that are suitable to the course content, their temperament and their own gifts," he says. 
Not every student will welcome these conversations, but they are invaluable to Dr. Beaty. "There are some students who are from other religious traditions or from nonreligious traditions and even some Christians who don't want to hear about it," he says. "But that's what education is about. An active faith is a faith that has been challenged."
Student life programs at Baylor also play an important role in encouraging this integration of faith and learning, says Dr. Todd Lake, dean for university ministries. "We are preparing people in specific academic disciplines for what they're going to spend most of their waking hours doing for most of the rest of their lives. So if Christ is not at the center of their careers, then Christ is not at the center of a very significant part of their lives," he says. 
One of Dr. Lake's goals when he came to Baylor in 1999 was to broaden Chapel programming, a two-semester required course for all students. At one time, Chapel primarily served as a pulpit for preachers, he says. Now, many different speakers and performers come to campus to share their Christian witness. This academic year alone, guests included a Nobel Prize winner, a dance company, a journalist, musicians, theologians and business leaders.
"It's a chance for all students to find a role model and to realize that whatever gifts God has given them, they can use them in service to Christ and to the building up of Christ's kingdom," says Dr. Lake, who hopes to show students they don't have to work in ministry or be religion majors to serve God. "We're trying to help students see that there's so much more to Christian faith than they might have expected." 
This fall's incoming freshmen will be among the first to benefit from new programming developed to focus on that objective, says Dr. Eileen Hulme, vice president for student life. In the past, incoming freshmen attended summer academic orientation and/or Welcome Week. Students now have the additional option of attending a four-day event held the month before fall classes begin. Piloted successfully last summer on a smaller scale, the program has expanded to four options: an outdoor adventure camp; a "Big Ideas" camp for students who want to discuss great literature with faculty; a camp for students with an interest in service projects; and a camp for students who want to learn about the spirit of tradition at the University. 
"We hope the program gives students a head start on thinking about how to make the most of their college experiences," Dr. Hulme says. "So often in our society, we focus on our weaknesses -- what we don't do well. What we're trying to do in student life is focus on the fact that God made each person a unique individual with unique strengths."
Stevie Crowder, a Cushing, Okla., senior, was one of the upperclassmen who led last summer's pilot program for freshmen. A self-described "people person" who loves Baylor, Crowder wanted to help the new students see how their strengths can complement their education and future careers. 
It's a lesson Crowder, a business-turned-speech communication major, says she learned for herself. She began classes in her new major just weeks after she led her group in the strengths-finder curriculum. Although she had decided the previous spring to change majors, leading the program was affirming: "It definitely assured me. I thought, 'You know what? I need to practice what I preach.'" 
One way for students to put into action what they're learning is through the vocation-specific mission trips Baylor offers, says Steve Graves, director for student missions and ministries. Last summer, Graves accompanied a group of students and a professor from Baylor's Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders to Honduras, where the team helped teach sign language to the deaf. Unlike general mission trips, where groups work on construction projects or lead Vacation Bible School, the specialized nature of the trip allowed the students to be "the valuable resource," Graves says. "Even at the junior level in college, they have a certain expertise that others don't have." Also on the trip were premed majors who worked in a small medical clinic and a telecommunication student who filmed a documentary of the trip. 
The experience, he says, allowed the students to understand calling as a three-part journey: inward (identifying their strengths), upward (recognizing God created them with those specific strengths) and outward (choosing to use those strengths in service to God). 
Foreign mission trips aren't the only options the University offers students, Graves says. Plans are under way to develop mission opportunities that would link local ministry needs to certain residence halls. For example, three residence halls might team up to work with Waco's elderly and youth; other groups might focus on the homeless population. Additionally, students in residence halls would be encouraged to take spring break and weekend mission trips that correspond with their ministry focus. "They're going to have their eyes opened, at least we hope, to the larger issues," Graves says. 
Giving students opportunities to understand their lives and life's work in relation to how God created them is not a new concept for the University, Dr. Beaty says, but it has become a more intentional process. "It's a deepening of what Baylor has been about from the beginning -- and that is the education of the whole student -- head and heart, body and soul." 
 

Visit the Baylor 2012 website for more information on the Vision