Find Your Calling

This Leap of Faith was developed in 2010 by Dave Schmelzer, Brian Housman, and the Greater Boston Vineyard. All available resources for this faith experience can be downloaded at the bottom of this page. This Leap of Faith builds off of and follows "The World Awaits." If you have never done a Leap of Faith before, we recommend you start with "Crossing the Moat" and try this one in a subsequent year.

Here is a brief overview:

THEME: This Leap of Faith is focused on finding and pursuing your "calling" and how that directly ties in with a life committed to persistent leadership in the things of God. The sermon series progresses through the stages of leadership development based on J. Robert Clinton's book The Making of a Leader and is designed to encourage participants to "hang in there" in whatever stage they find themselves in and gives them practical tips on how to make it to "convergence" (realizing your destiny) and "afterglow" (fallout effects of a life well lived). The dream for the church in this season is to become a community dedicated to reaching afterglow.

Thematic Scriptures:

Actualizing your destiny requires a life committed to persistent leadership in the things of God (Matthew 7:13-14) -- Very few followers of Jesus actually reach the stages of convergence and afterglow because they are constantly hit by feelings of disappointment, jadedness, and a lack of support which causes them to drop out. These people can still have a good life in God, but convergence and afterglow are now off the table.

Matthew 7:13-14 (TNIV)

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Few people actually reach this stage and the focus here is on navigating the pitfalls that come with each stage to live the life God has called us to.

The Call of God (entire Bible) -- The Bible Guide for this Leap of Faith follows the theme of "Calling" and focus on two different senses of the word:

1) Receiving a calling -- having someone or something invite us into an endeavor

2) Fulfilling a calling -- reaching our unique destiny

Here's an excerpt from the intro:

The Bible is fundamentally a collection of stories about people encountering God, and it seems like almost all of those stories involve this idea of calling in one way or the other. God is constantly calling human beings into life-changing, world-altering missions. Over the next six weeks, we’ll look at many moments when people first hear a call, and some when they see their calling fulfilled. We’ll ponder together why people would say ‘yes’ to the call, and why they’d be tempted to say ‘no.’ We’ll consider what kinds of missions God calls people into, how, and why. We’ll discuss why so many of the people in the Bible give up somewhere between receiving their call and fulfilling it, and why many others come to the point where they at least want to give up. We’ll consider the surprising prominence of hardship as a feature of God’s calling--and why people might choose to embrace that calling anyway. We’ll look at some amazing pictures of the satisfaction of a destiny fulfilled. And we’ll take (particularly as the six weeks come to a close in the traditional commemoration of Jesus’ imprisonment, punishment, death, and resurrection) an especially close look at Jesus as our primary example of someone who hears a calling, embraces it, pursues it, and fulfills it.

Available Resources (on the Leap of Faith Files page):

Find Your Calling User's Manual -- This 17 page document (edited for easy adaptability) provides the reader with everything they will need to know before entering this faith experiment.
Find Your Calling Bible Guide -- This six week in depth Bible Guide (unedited) walks readers through select portions of the entire Bible following the theme that God's attention is on the Nations, on everyone, everywhere. This Bible Guide provides daily insight into each passage and gives helpful suggestions of how the reader can get the most out of their Leap of Faith experience.
Find Your Calling Sermon Transcripts -- There are sermon notes
Find Your Calling Sermon Audio -- Audio versions of all six sermons are available on the Greater Boston Vineyard sermons page. The first sermon is titled "Find Your Calling" and starts on February 21, 2010. The last sermon is titled "Our Next Ten Years: Life In A Community of Lifelong Leaders" and ends on March 28th, 2010.
Envisioning the Next 10 Years -- A brochure the Greater Boston Vineyard created to show how far they've come and where they hope to be in the next 10 years.