IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-137-29512-5_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Evolution of Business as a Christian Calling

In: Finding Meaning in Business

Author

Listed:
  • Gary L. Chamberlain

Abstract

I recently asked students in my theology class for the meaning of the words “vocation” and “calling” in an effort to gain a practical understanding of these thematic words among today’s young adults. The class of 30 was evenly divided between men and woman, most in their late teens or early twenties and from differing Christian traditions, Islam, Buddhism, or no religion. Yet, their responses were similar. “Vocation” means: occupation, job, training, skill, profession, career, trade, what you do for a living, even “lack of higher education” as in “vocational training.” On the other hand “calling” had very distinctive meanings: inner direction, following the heart’s desire, duty in life, a force greater than self; what one is meant to do, mission, task God asks you to do; purpose from a higher power. Only one student replied “priest, nun, worker in the church,” and only one student included any notion of a call to service, “God’s drawing me into God’s service.”

Suggested Citation

  • Gary L. Chamberlain, 2012. "The Evolution of Business as a Christian Calling," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Bartholomew C. Okonkwo (ed.), Finding Meaning in Business, chapter 0, pages 33-56, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-29512-5_4
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137295125_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-29512-5_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.