Overview

The powers of death are closer than we thought. Their perils appear in the forms of increased gun violence, racism, economic disparity, and global warming, to name but a few. Faced with these threats, Christians in this self-absorbed culture tend to use their faith as a kind of palliative comfort that protects them from the truths of what these powers are doing to us as a human community, and the sufferings they are inflicting on others, particularly the poor and the disenfranchised. Moreover, it is used to shield them from responding to the gospel's call to leave survival for vocation. Using Luther's theology of the cross and the instruction he imparts in his Large Catechism, this book asserts that in the face of the sufferings in which we are situated, the gospel news of Jesus's resurrection is a call to stand in its hope and power to resist these devastations and the dehumanization, exploitation, and domination they inflict. The hope of God's life-giving creativity in the face of the powers of death is given witness when Christians leave survival modes of existence to be in their baptismal vocation of loving neighbors as themselves.

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9781666736489

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"""In traumatic, fearful times when public discourse gives license to narcissism and sows a culture of death, Wayne Menking calls things what they are under the sign of the cross. The God of life now beckons us to reset. Through these pastoral and prophetic reflections on Luther's Catechisms, we recur to ancient wisdom: worshiping God above things, living sacramentally, and serving vulnerable neighbors."" --Craig L. Nessan, professor of contextual theology and ethics, Wartburg Theological Seminary ""Wayne Menking brings spiritual insight, life experience, and theological passion to engage with the crisis of our times. This book is a bracing call to honesty and faith."" --Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, dean and president, Seminary of the Southwest ""In From Survival to Vocation, Wayne Menking affirms the radical life-giving and life-creating vocation that emerges from the waters of our baptism as a call of the Spirit. Living as we are in uncertain and chaotic times, Menking invites us to move beyond survival to a vocational life under the cross and grounded in hope. This is a book that will challenge the reader to leave the comfort zone of untested faith for the unchartered waters of life in the Spirit!"" --Javier Alanis, pastor, St. John Lutheran Church, San Juan, Texas"

In traumatic, fearful times when public discourse gives license to narcissism and sows a culture of death, Wayne Menking calls things what they are under the sign of the cross. The God of life now beckons us to reset. Through these pastoral and prophetic reflections on Luther's Catechisms, we recur to ancient wisdom: worshiping God above things, living sacramentally, and serving vulnerable neighbors. --Craig L. Nessan, professor of contextual theology and ethics, Wartburg Theological Seminary Wayne Menking brings spiritual insight, life experience, and theological passion to engage with the crisis of our times. This book is a bracing call to honesty and faith. --Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, dean and president, Seminary of the Southwest In From Survival to Vocation, Wayne Menking affirms the radical life-giving and life-creating vocation that emerges from the waters of our baptism as a call of the Spirit. Living as we are in uncertain and chaotic times, Menking invites us to move beyond survival to a vocational life under the cross and grounded in hope. This is a book that will challenge the reader to leave the comfort zone of untested faith for the unchartered waters of life in the Spirit! --Javier Alanis, pastor, St. John Lutheran Church, San Juan, Texas

Author Information

Wayne L. Menking is a retired pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and an Emeritus ACPE Certified Educator. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with his spouse, Nancy and is currently an adjunct instructor in clinical pastoral education at Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. He is the author of When All Else Fails: Rethinking our Pastoral Vocation in Times of Stuck (2013).

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