At the Christensen Center for Vocation, we believe every person deserves to thrive—a common thread woven through our stories, our struggles, and our joys. We accompany students, faculty, and staff as they listen deeply to their lives, ask courageous questions, and step boldly into the work of mutual thriving. Through high-impact learning, storytelling, mentorship, and community, we cultivate the imagination and practices that lead to more just, sustainable, and thriving lives and communities.

Augsburg University is a university of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Our commitment to helping our students and our world thrive is rooted in the university’s Lutheran theological heritage, particularly its understanding of vocation. This theological understanding of vocation can best be summarized with these words from Martin Luther’s The Freedom of a Christian (1520).

“. . . we should be guided in all our works by this one thought alone—that we may strive and benefit others in everything that is done, having nothing else before our eyes except the need and advantage of the neighbor.”

What is vocation?

The origin of the word “vocation” is the Latin word vocatio, which means “calling.” One way to think about vocation is as your calling or those things in life you just can’t not do because they are so important to you and integral to your life and values. In order to understand this word more fully, it is important to briefly look at the context in which it arose and the person who gave the word importance.

Martin Luther was a 16th-century German monk who became the leader of what is known as the Protestant Reformation, or the movement that broke off from the Roman Catholic Church during the early 1500s. Luther’s theology of vocation was one of the key ideas that caused this split.

During Luther’s time, the church taught that people could earn their salvation and God’s favor by doing good works. These good works were often in the form of donations to the church or buying indulgences—slips of paper intended to lessen the punishment you or your loved ones would receive for your sins. In this context, the church often used “vocation” to refer only to those who were fully committed to the religious life, such as monks, nuns, and priests. In this viewpoint, the purpose of vocation was to serve the church or to serve God by serving the church. Martin Luther flipped this teaching on its head.

According to Luther and the other reformers, everyone has a vocation. Luther’s argument was that we do not need to earn God’s favor; it is a free gift given to us, not something we need to purchase through the church. Therefore, vocation should be directed toward serving the neighbor, not serving the church or God. One of Martin Luther’s interpreters, Gustaf Wingren, said, “God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does.”

From this perspective, our vocations are the ways we do God’s work by serving our neighbors in all the ordinary roles we play in life. Luther identified three main areas of life where we live out our vocation: within the family, through our work, and in civic life as engaged citizens. It is in these ordinary, daily, mundane roles that we live out our vocations as students, roommates, employees, partners, parents, siblings, offspring, friends, and neighbors. If the work we do in these roles brings about healing and wholeness for others, then it is considered to be our vocation. According to Luther, this ordinary, mundane, daily work was just as sacred as the work done by monks, nuns, and priests. Luther’s thoughts on vocation brought God’s work and spiritual meaning into the daily tasks of our lives—how we study, how we work, how we shop, how we drive, how we parent, how we befriend, etc.

Vocation serves as a corrective against a culture that values wealth, possessions, and status above all else. It frames our lives as an act of service rather than a rat race toward status. College is not only about earning a degree to get a job; it is also an opportunity to learn what you have to offer in service to the world. Our careers are not only sources of income, but opportunities for us to use our unique gifts to make our world more just and sustainable for all living things. Our vocations are the way we will all work in collaboration with one another to heal our planet and our collective lives.

Why does vocation matter today at Augsburg University?

The centrality of our collective well-being or thriving (particularly among those who are most vulnerable) is a central focal point of higher education within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and at Augsburg University. Therefore, you could say the purpose of a college education is to (1) develop the mindset and skills necessary to discover what our neighbors need in order to thrive, and (2) develop the mindset and skills necessary to pragmatically meet those needs. Every single discipline at Augsburg University—including literature, business, history, sociology, philosophy, economics, theater, political science, etc.—can and will increase our ability to “benefit others in everything we do.”

How do we explore vocation at Augsburg University?

One does not need to understand or even subscribe to the Lutheran theological origins of vocation in order for it to be useful in their life. Our goal is for every student, faculty member, and staff member at Augsburg University to have a deeper sense of how they are called – uniquely inspired, equipped, and empowered to help our world thrive. Therefore, you will hear the word “thrive” more often than you will hear “vocation” these days at Augsburg.

Augsburg University’s vision statement proclaims “we educate students to thrive in their lives.” Every student graduating from Augsburg University will understand what it takes for them to thrive, for their communities to thrive, and for our world to thrive. Our students thrive when they are actively expressing the unique ways they are inspired, equipped, and empowered to create a more just and sustainable world.

Vocation is our commitment to thriving—our own personal thriving, our neighbors’ thriving, our community’s thriving, and our planet’s thriving. Thriving is never something that happens in isolation from others. We thrive in community, we thrive as community, we thrive with community. I am only thriving if you are also thriving. We are only thriving if they are also thriving. Thriving is always something we do together.

THRIVE is an acronym that breaks vocation down into various components that help us understand our vocations more clearly. Traits – Health – Responsibility – Inspiration – Voice – Empathy

Our vocations are the ways in which we incorporate these components into our philosophy of life, our daily work, and all the various roles we play. The Christensen Center for Vocation is committed to helping every member of our community learn to thrive by exploring these six components through high-impact learning, storytelling, mentorship, and community. Through these efforts, we cultivate the imagination and practices that lead to more just, sustainable, and thriving lives and communities.

You can learn more and support this work at our website: The Christensen Center for Vocation.

This blog post is bittersweet. We want to both celebrate our successful Confluence event which happened in June and we also want to say farewell to Gretchen Roeck, our Program Director.  

Thank you, Gretchen!

Gretchen has led the Confluence for the last two summers and has stewarded this program incredibly well. She is most grateful for the relationships and connections she has made with folks in and outside of Augsburg. 

But Gretchen won’t be going far! Starting in September she’ll be joining the Riverside Innovation Hub here at Augsburg University as their Certificate Programs Development Specialist. In this new role she’ll be responsible for researching, developing, and implementing educational programs for congregational members, community leaders and the Augsburg young adult community under the Riverside Innovation Hub.

Celebrating The 2025 Confluence

The Confluence 2025 is in the books! It was a fabulous week filled with learning in and outside the classroom, new friendships, and personal insights about ourselves and the communities we come from and live in. 

The week was a celebration of difference and the way our differences bring us together. Our participants and Augsburg student mentors spoke four different languages and hailed from six different countries and nations. They came from seven different congregations in Minnesota, Iowa and Texas and six Christian denominations. They identified as queer and gender fluid, differently abled and neurodivergent. In all of these differences they made space for each other’s voices, experiences, gifts and growing edges. They connected through laughter and games, prayer and singing, deep listening and conversation.

We took more steps towards being a fully bilingual program thatwelcomes both Spanish and English speakers. This work was possible through the ministry of Pastor Yesenia Morales Bahena who served as our onsite language and cultural interpreter in the classroom and in worship. Pastor Yesenia also translated many classroom and worship materials before the program began. Thank you Pastor Yesenia for helping us expand the reach of the Confluence and explore its depth. 

At the Confluence we think of vocation as the confluence or intersection of God’s story, the world’s story and our personal stories. Every day we explored these three different stories with hugely gifted team of teachers, professors, pastors, storytellers and community leaders. As we studied each story we asked participants to consider the themes and spaces of resistance and resilience. We asked them: As you learn about God’s story, the world’s story and your own stories, what are the people, places, biblical stories, poetry, music and art that gives you life? – that strengthens your resilience and supports you in following God’s call? At the same time, what breaks your heart? What are you called to resist and work against?

At the Confluence, we learned about the God of life who defeats death. We learned that God stands with people and communities struggling to live on the margins. We learned that God calls us to resist the death-dealing practices of the world and to fill up our cups with joyful and serious resilience. We learned that we are never alone and we are always in community. God calls us to build communities where all people are seen and heard, valued and respected – and each of us has a role to play in building up that beloved community. 

Many thanks to all the people in and outside of Augsburg who helped make this week happen: Professor Jeremy Myers (Executive Director of the Christensen Center for Vocation), Pastor John Schwehn (Augsburg Campus Ministry), Lucus Carlson (Augsburg Campus Ministry Pastoral Intern), Professor Chris Stedman (Augsburg Department of Religion and Philosophy), Dr. Jimmy Hoke (Biblical scholar, teacher and writer), Pastor Yesenia Morales Bahena (Nokomis Heights Lutheran Church), Jim Bear Jacobs (Healing Minnesota Stories), Jenean Gilmer (Sabo Center at Augsburg University), Alyssa Schwitzer, Kent Goodroad and company (our fabulous musicians), Nate Crary (Christ the King Lutheran Church), Grace Porter (Immanuel Lutheran Church), Sarah Runck (Mt. Olivet Careview Home) and our Augsburg student mentors who brought the magic: Stephen Nushann, Klaus Solko, Danielle Roberson, Michelle Kulah and Tegest Asmare.

A special thanks to Shannon Obey and Brittney Brown in Augsburg Events and Leah Durnin Hoover in Augsburg Residence Life, Augsburg Catering and the Department of Public Safety, who made all the behind the scenes details happen.

On the evening of June 28 – at Augsburg University and on the interwebs of zoom technology – the Riverside Innovation Hub Learning Community gathered folks from over a dozen congregations for a hybrid learning event. These congregational members are currently involved in RIH’s two year partnership of exploring the call to be neighbor in our places. The learning arc of this partnership includes moving through and practicing the artforms of what we call the Public Church Framework. 

The flow of this process begins with accompaniment – which is listening in relationships and in our neighborhoods without an agenda but simply to hear our neighbor’ hopes and heartaches. Teams spent a good portion of the fall and winter focused on this artform, seeking out listening posts in their neighborhoods, doing prayer walks, inviting neighbors to one-to-ones and simply bringing curiosity to the geographical places near their churches. 

Next they began wondering about those stories alongside of their core theological convictions – we call this artform interpretation. Through the winter and spring teams asked the questions: What do the things we believe to be true about God have to say about our neighbors’ stories? What do our neighbors’ stories have to say about the things we believe to be true about God? Many of them began sharing these insights with other leaders in their congregations. 

This most recent gathering on a warm evening in June marked our fourth large group gathering and the midway point of our intentional learning relationships together around this neighborhood-oriented work. We spent time reflecting with one another about what we have been learning so far in accompaniment and interpretation. We shared encouragement with one another around the challenges and impact of this work. We also introduced a third artform – discernment. This is a communal process of listening for the nudge of the Spirit towards the right next faithful step, given what we have been learning so far from our neighbors’ and God’s story.   Continue reading “An Evening of Discernment by Kristina Frugé” →