Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good

Foreword Review's Annual INDIEFAB Book of the Year Finalist

Outreach Resource of the Year

Christianity Today Award of Merit

Leadership Journal Best Books for Church Leaders

Book of the Year from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore

Is it possible to know the world and still love the world?

Of all the questions we ask about our calling, this is the most difficult. From marriages to international relations, the more we know, the harder it is to love. We become cynics or stoics, protecting our hearts from the implications of what we know. But what if the vision of vocation can be recovered--allowing us to step into the wounds of the world and for love's sake take up our responsibility for the way the world turns out?

For decades Steve Garber has come alongside a wide range of people as they seek to make sense of the world and their lives. With him we meet leaders from the Tiananmen Square protest who want a good reason to still care about China. We also meet with many ordinary people in ordinary places who long for their lives to matter:

• Jonathan who learned he would rather build houses than study history
• Todd and Maria who adopted creative schedules so they could parent better and practice medicine
• D.J. who helped Congress move into the Internet Age
• Robin who spends her life on behalf of urban justice
• Hans who makes hamburgers the way they are meant to be made
• Susan who built a home business of hand-printing stationary using a letterpress
• Santiago who works with majority-world nations in need of capital
• George who has given years to teaching students to learn things that matter most
• Claudius and Deirdre whose openhearted home has always been a place for people
• Dan who loves Wyoming, the place, its people and its cows

Vocation is when we come to know the world in all its joy and pain and still love it. Vocation is following our calling to seek the welfare of the world we live in. And in helping the world to flourish, strangely, mysteriously, we find that we flourish too. Garber offers a book for everyone everywhere--for students, for parents, for those in the arts, in the academy, in public service, in the trades and in commerce--for all who want to discover the virtue of vocation.

Steven Garber is professor of marketplace theology and leadership at Regent College, Vancouver, and the principal of The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation & Culture. A consultant to foundations, corporations, and schools, he is a teacher of many people in many places. His books include Visions of Vocation and The Fabric of Faithfulness, and he is a contributor to the books Faith Goes to Work: Reflections from the Marketplace and Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalogue. He is married to Meg. They have five grown children and several grandchildren.