Dr. Dwight Hopkins

 1984 FTE Doctoral Fellow

		Dr. Dwight Hopkins Professor of Theology The University of Chicago Divinity School

I grew up around the belief that education should be for service, community should be for service and church should be for service—from service to the family to petitioning for justice and even marching for justice. That was the spark that lit the fire or lit the fuse of me seeing how I’m actually called by God for this particular ministry to train young minds theologically, to serve the church through education and also to continue my work globally. I’d say I still have the same passion and fire burning that I had when I entered seminary in the fall of 1981.

Interestingly enough, Karl Barth said we should have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, and I think he meant at least two things. First, that studying the Bible and following the Gospel of Jesus Christ have to engage us in contemporary issues. And second, Barth is suggesting to us that each day, the global context and the local context challenge us to be conscious of what God is calling us to do.

For me, vocation is the ongoing narrative of the human quest to be receptive to what God is calling us to do in the contemporary moment. It’s very concrete—clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, visiting those who are in prison, and freeing those who are oppressed.

I think one of the things that the church needs today, if not the primary thing, is for leaders to have backbone and speak truth to power. We need leaders who will stand up and say, “I will stand in the gap for those in the margins of our society, and come what may, I will stand there.”