Several evocative phrases in our current issue of "Calling" describe the discernment of vocation and the practice of ministry:

• Being formed as a child whose faith "blurred into" the faith of a caring congregation;
• Struggling to "discover our own goodness;"
• Audaciously "bearing the divine presence;"
• Distinguishing voices that invite, confront and encourage from those which diminish or discourage.

They speak of struggles to accept a call that is extraordinary and daring but one that is heard in the context of the everyday lives and practices of a congregation. For it is the congregation that is the trellis to which each of the lives witnessed here was attached in order to flourish.

Being planted in or membered to a congregation does not mean a diminishment of will and individual gifts but rather their magnification. And receiving these gifts and callings is not always convenient or easy. As Peter Luckey, a United Church of Christ minister and one of our writers on Leadership and Vocation suggests, "We need to remember that young people don't want to be pawns in solving someone else's problem . . . What is on their radar screen is a search for authentic spirituality, for making a difference in the world and for discerning how God could be calling forth their gifts." Like us, they are creatures in the new creation and are listening for that Voice as it calls to them uniquely.

The accounts of vocation that are featured in this issue speak more than anything of the something that was already there and proved blessedly inescapable or too delectable to pass up - all because congregations remained faithful to the tasks of nurturing and patiently waiting for the hidden harvest in members' lives.

"The hearing of the divine voice as it resounds within each of us." This line from John Neafsey's book, "A Sacred Voice is Calling" (reviewed herein), invites us as individual hearers. His observation is that listening for this Voice can't help but aid our hearing of and connection to other voices in the world, especially those that witness to the suffering and captivity that Christ said the Spirit was sent forth to free. Our being grafted to the Vine is life-saving not only for ourselves: it also is for the awakening of the world to "Christ among us . . . our hope for glory." When that truth is no longer a secret, the world truly will be transformed.