Thinking About God's Calling

Darrell Bock: 

Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And I am suspicious you'll recognize both the people sitting with me at the table because they also work at the Center. We've got Milyce Pipkin here who's going to help me in having conversation with Bill Hendricks, who is executive director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center. So we're having a Hendricks Center party today. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

There you go. 

Darrell Bock: 

And our topic is God's calling, in general, and then more specifically in thinking about the way in which God leads and guides various Christians in the variety of relationships that one has. And our expert is going to be Bill Hendricks and Milyce- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Then we're in big trouble. 

Darrell Bock: 

We are in trouble, but we prayed beforehand, we'll pray afterwards, and then we'll let the listeners deal with the damage. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Sounds good to me. 

Darrell Bock: 

So does that sound like a plan? 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's kind of how we usually do it. 

Darrell Bock: 

Exactly right, exactly right. So Bill, the standard question I always ask at the beginning of every podcast that I do, how did a guy like you get into a gig like this? 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, I got into the issue of calling through my work with giftedness, and people want to know what is my calling, which in today's parlance means what should I do when I grow up, is the simplest way to put it. And because I've been doing that for the last 25, 30 years, I've had to sort of think deeply theologically about, well, what do we mean by calling? And if we do have a calling how do we figure that out? And then you get into this murky thing that I know we'll get into, which is, wait a minute, the word call and calling seems to be used in many different ways, not only in scripture but even more so just in the church in general. 

Darrell Bock: 

Right, exactly. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And how do we sort all that out? 

Darrell Bock: 

So let's move from giftedness to callings. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, let's start there. 

Darrell Bock: 

So let me start with giftedness first. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Oh, okay. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay? That is, so what drew you into- 

Bill Hendricks: 

What is giftedness? 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, and what drew you into that conversation? 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, that's easy. A week after graduating from Dallas Seminary my wife said, "Look, I'm tired of putting you through school." It was my second master's degree. And she said, "I want to start a family." 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Enough already. 

Bill Hendricks: 

"Get out there and make some money." And I didn't really know what I wanted to do. 

Darrell Bock: 

Now that's called a calling. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

The one you better answer. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So it was at that time that somebody really helped me discover my own giftedness, which it was a sea change, a transformation for me in terms of direction in life. And it was about 10 years after that I decided to, I started a consulting practice and I reinvented it to help other people discover their giftedness. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay, so you were headed in one direction and then someone helped you with your- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, I was headed in no direction. That was the problem. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay, all right. Well, we'll take that. You're on an open road, right? 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, no, I'm confused. 

Darrell Bock: 

On an open road to nowhere, right? 

Bill Hendricks: 

Which is like a lot of people. 

Darrell Bock: 

Exactly right. How did this person help you think about giftedness, just as a starting point? Because I'm assuming the move into giftedness helps a person with the idea of call. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, I think it's massively important, but I didn't realize all the significance at the time. Giftedness, quite simply, the simple definition is it's what you're born to do. Everybody's born to do something. One person, they want to solve a problem. Somebody else, they want to understand something at a very deep level. Somebody else, they want to get people to respond to them. Everybody has a particular way of behaving or functioning. And this is a phenomenon about human beings. In other words, quite apart from any theology that's involved. This is just true about people. When I say a phenomenon, like gravity's a phenomenon, you don't have to know anything about gravity to take advantage of it. It's just the way the world is. 

And we can demonstrate that there's this very consistent phenomenon about people and it applies to every human. But what's interesting is that it shows up really, as near as we can tell, from birth, certainly very early in life. And when you see that and it's a very consistent pattern of behavior, and then you come to passages like Psalm 139 where David says, "You weaved me together in my mother's womb. All the days were yet saw were formed, fashioned, designed for me before there was one of them," you go, wait a minute, here's a Bible truth about God designing us as people individually, why by golly, here's a phenomenon that kind of validates what that's saying. And you start to think, okay, there's something here. 

Darrell Bock: 

So you say you're made for this. 

Bill Hendricks: 

You're made for this. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

And I've had the opportunity to actually go through Bill's giftedness program and experience that as a participant, and I can certainly see how your gifting is so important for you to know what that is, and I'm glad that you have that. I mean, it was through that I learned my own giftedness. I realized the pattern of being a person who loves to create and recreate, and I'm a composer who does that. And I do it to love people well, for the glory of God and for other people's goodness. And I learned that through your giftedness program, when you end up taking all of those patterns and just basically bringing it into one sentence. And I can certainly see how that is parlayed into my calling. I know we'll get into just the calling, which is what this podcast is about in general, but I just wanted to insert that and just say that I can certainly see where they're different but I can also see how they come together. 

Darrell Bock: 

So one more question about the past and then we'll shift gears. And that is, so how did it happen for you? In other words, you said someone kind of helped you catch onto your giftedness, was it a conversation, was it a time of reflection? How'd that happen? 

Bill Hendricks: 

No, the process is if giftedness is indeed a pattern in one's life, then it makes sense that you go back to moments when the person was using their giftedness, which the way we know what those moments were or those activities were, is that you were gaining energy or satisfaction from the doing of it. So you get six or eight of those activities and you have the person tell stories. So this guy interviewed me for an hour and a half, two hours, around different stories about activities I had done that I enjoyed doing and I accomplished something. And then they did an analysis across those stories and they see all these dots that connect, and there's a very consistent pattern of behavior that leaps out from it. That's what points to your giftedness. 

Darrell Bock: 

You actually went through a process where they kind of inventoried your giftedness? 

Bill Hendricks: 

Exactly. 

Darrell Bock: 

And you basically have developed that since. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And what I did was learn that methodology and just have practiced it and used it with thousands of people. 

Darrell Bock: 

Now, I am assuming by this line of questioning, and not that I'm a lawyer, but I am assuming that there's a relationship between giftedness and calling. 

Bill Hendricks: 

It makes sense that there is. 

Darrell Bock: 

You would think there would be. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, because if you take that premise that God has made people in His image and he's not just made them he's designed them in His image, and I know there's a lot we could say about the image of God in humans, but it certainly gets down to the individual level. And so like you said, you were made for this. Well, quite literally you were made for this. God made you, and this kind of segues into a point I was going to make. If we're going to talk about calling, then that implies that there's a voice that's calling. And in Genesis 1, we hear a voice say in the beginning, and the voice calls and the universe springs into existence and all the creatures and humans, okay, somewhere along the way someone called me into existence. 

I assume that person was God. And then when I discovered that giftedness is in a very personal, intimate way, the unique way in which He made me to live in His image, that's not all of living in His image but it's a big part of it, I'm like, "Huh, God seems to have called me to do this thing that I do." 

Darrell Bock: 

So I'm made as a human being on the one hand, made in the image of God in that sense, but I'm also made for something. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, a purpose. Ephesians 2:10 says, "You're made for good works." But what's made, it doesn't use the word giftedness it uses the word workmanship, a crafted thing like a potter who's putting pottery together. And that potter can fashion the clay in different ways and get different vessels that are fit for certain purposes. And so the verse quite literally says that we are made by God for good works but those aren't just generic good works, and a lot of that word workmanship, those are specific good works tied to the nature of the workmanship. So if you figure out somebody's workmanship, what I call their giftedness, you have a lot of clues as to the good works that they've literally been called to do. 

Darrell Bock: 

So we're in the book of Ephesians when you mentioned that, and of course- 

Bill Hendricks: 

You know something about Ephesians. 

Darrell Bock: 

So the first good work obviously that God does is He forms a community of Jew and Gentile in Christ, but two chapters later he's discussing the fact that people have been given gifts. 

Bill Hendricks: 

To do the work of the church. 

Darrell Bock: 

Exactly right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's right. And that just doesn't mean the work of the church in the four walls of the church, it's the work of... I mean, the word that's used there is the saints, which means the everyday Christians... the people that are Christ followers who go out into the world Monday through Saturday, and they work in businesses and they work in homes, they work in communities, and the things that they do out there, they can use their giftedness to bring Christ into those domains. 

Darrell Bock: 

So I have a sense that we're kind of walking up a bridge and we are going from just being made in the image of God and issued giftedness to calling. So let's talk about that. So when I was thinking about this and talking to you about it, I thought, "Well, I remember a section in my DTS application as a student back in the 1970s." Okay, I just want to make clear how old I am. 

Bill Hendricks: 

As dad would say, back when the earth was cooling. 

Darrell Bock: 

Exactly right, exactly right, yeah. Well, your dad lived with the dinosaurs. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yes, right. 

Darrell Bock: 

And there was a section that asked us to define our sense of call. And I thought to myself, "Well, this is interesting because no one's phoned me and said go to DTS." 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Right. 

Darrell Bock: 

And so in the midst of thinking through that, we use call in a variety of ways. Usually it's termed a call to vocational ministry. I would say in our popular parlance, that's how it's used. And yet when you look at scripture, the best that I can tell, except for maybe one example where Paul is called in as an apostle, which is a very specific role that he's been called to- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, we'll come back to that but go ahead. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay. The term calling has to do with calling into basically your relationship with God. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Exactly. 

Darrell Bock: 

Which is a wide open field. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Right, right, that would apply to everybody. 

Darrell Bock: 

All of us, whether we've ended up in vocational ministry or not, in one sense our called. Just like, and this usually surprises people, I like to tease people with this, just like every believer is a saint. Most people think sainthood is something you've got to work your way towards and eventually if you get high enough and bright enough, then if you shine your light large enough then you get called to be a saint. But everybody's a saint. So I'm assuming that part of what you're dealing with is everybody is called. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Absolutely. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

And I love that because everybody is called, that's what Jesus... He commands us all to be busy making disciples. And I think that Bill and I discussed this just briefly, just texting about this podcast, and we were talking about... and I don't want to take words from his mouth... but oftentimes called is just used in so many ways that it's almost either watered down or it's just beefed up to be too big. And God just means it's to be, I think, just simple, that we're all called. Everyone under the belief of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior is called to ministry, called to love the Lord, called to shine your light for the Lord. And I think when we get into you've been called to ministry itself, then I think we get into that saint conversation you just had just then when you were saying that we're all saints, when in fact a saint is a sinner who fell down and got back up. 

And yet we put ourselves on these pedestals when we say I've been called as this or that or the other thing into the ministry, and I think sometimes, not all the time, we put ourselves on a pedestal with God and God doesn't want us on a pedestal. He wants us to be humble and to lead by being an example, by being willing to get into the trenches and to help other followers and believers to come to know Him. And so I just think it's overstated. It's overrated. I mean, it's a good thing to be called, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I just think we just need to understand that you don't have to have a special thing other than God just calls you to know Him. God calls you to ministry, to minister to other people about His love. 

Darrell Bock: 

So the challenge can be that we can make call so narrow that we actually cut out a lot of the calls that God does offer. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Absolutely. And frankly, we've just over the centuries totally overcomplicated the whole matter and now you've got a lot of people confused and there's people in the church that absolutely insist that if you don't have a call to the ministry you don't belong in the ministry. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

There you go. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And then there's people that are, well, I'm in sales, are you saying God called me to sales? I've never heard that before. And so just a lot of confusion. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay, so we've now introduced the fog, so let's deal with that. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, and just to add to the confusion, you mentioned the one possibility where Paul says he's called as an apostle, which sounds different somehow from being called into faith with Christ, in a relationship with Christ. But in Romans 1 he says, "Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ," and he says a bunch of other things, and then verse six to the saints who are in Rome, among whom you also are the called. Same word within the same sentence. And you have the same thing in 1 Corinthians, "Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus." You've got call used three times in two verses there and there's a similar pattern elsewhere. So there's clearly something related there. 

Darrell Bock: 

So I'm called, everyone's called, those who believe are all called into the relationship with God. They're all called saints. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Yes. 

Darrell Bock: 

Not everyone's an apostle. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Correct. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

There you go. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So you've got a general calling, if I can say it that way, and you've got a specific calling. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

There you go. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And I would submit, yes, I think I generally would agree with you. I think calling gets down to our very identity. I think Paul recognized that in being called by Christ, and we can go back to Acts and see it right there when he has the vision and Ananias goes to visit him and so forth, and he talks about it in Galatians, et cetera. He realized that God plucked him out of darkness and had a very specific path for him as a Christ follower. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, in fact, Ananias told him what the calling was. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Exactly. But I believe that that's true for every believer. All of us who sort of nebulously supposed to follow Jesus, but some people get special callings. And there for many years has been a view that that's not the norm, that people get specific calls, that's for a special few. But giftedness, as I'm using the term, seems to mitigate against that. It's like, oh no, every single person, once you do some discovery, you discover, wow, they've got something that they really do that is unique to them. 

Darrell Bock: 

And they were made for this. 

Bill Hendricks: 

They were made for this. 

Darrell Bock: 

And then you just have to fill in what the "this" is. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And so Paul, it's like he's saying, it's his calling card, "Hey, it's Paul the Apostle." Just like, hey, it's Darrell, the leader for cultural engagement or it's Bill the executive director. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, exactly. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

There are some ministers whom you'll see... when we talk about the Apostle Paul and we're talking about a ministry on that level... then there are some ministers that you see, even teachers in the classroom here at DTS, you sit at their feet and you realize this person is called to do what they're doing. This is a part of the gifting that God has given them and they're using it to glorify God for the benefit of the church. And you know that. They don't even have to say, "I'm called." They don't have to say, "I'm called and I'm the cloth of Jesus," or anything like that, a minister. They don't have to wear the collar. We know, we see, we know by how they live their lives, by how they preach the word, by how they lead, we know that you've been called. 

But I think that's a level of what we're talking about when we say the Apostle Paul's calling or the disciples calling from Jesus, then we see those are the callings that call men and women to ministries in ways that they're going to fulfill what God has for them. But then there's the general calling that we're talking about that I believe that as a believer we are called to believe in Christ. 

Bill Hendricks: 

It's called a relationship with Christ. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Called into a relationship with Christ. 

Darrell Bock: 

And most of the passages on calling are that more generic sense of the call, but having said that, what I sense you're saying is that everyone's made for this. Ephesians 4 says this clearly that with regard to giftedness for the body in serving the body and ministering, there is a particular skill or set of skills that you've been given for equipping the saints and functioning in the world. And one of those callings is evangelist, which obviously moves outside the church. So you've got that dimension. So I guess the question that this raises is, there are a lot of people out there with a calling that they may or may not have recognized beyond the fact that they have been called into the faith. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, I think the word a lot is an understatement. I think it's a vast majority of believers, and frankly the vast majority of human beings do not know, A, what their giftedness is and, B, a result of that what their calling is. 

Darrell Bock: 

Or they have a sense of what their calling is and what their giftedness is but they haven't connected it to their relationship to God. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

There you go. I think that both of those scenarios. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Absolutely, absolutely. 

Darrell Bock: 

I know a lot of people outside the faith who said, "I'm doing what I'm built to do," but how it connects to what goes on in the world, that they're less clear about other than this is what I'm called to do. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well see, and that adds yet another layer of sort of complication. And I specialize in complicating things. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, that's right, that's right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Giftedness, as I say, it's a phenomenon about humans, which means it's part of what we call common grace. Whether you're a believer in Christ or not, whether you've responded to God's invitation to a relationship or not, you have some form of giftedness by virtue of the fact that He created you. And it's part of common grace. And we need that common grace because it's those gifts, that giftedness, that allows our cultures, our communities, our societies to function. We need people that are gifted to the task of causing healing. We call them doctors and nurses. We need people who are gifted to the task of causing people to learn. We call them teachers. People who are gifted to the task of creating jobs, we call them entrepreneurs. I mean, that's Genesis 1, and it's what I call the good truth about people. 

Now, Genesis 3, there's a bad truth about people and there's no question the world needs a savior. We all need a savior. But we need to sort of think back prior to that fall, that God gave to every current human being that He put into the world by means of Genesis 1, making the world fruitful, making the world and its people flourish. 

Darrell Bock: 

This will sound strange, but the passage that jumped in my mind are passages in Exodus where certain people are described as craftsman in order that a tabernacle can be built and eventually a temple. So it covers a wide array of abilities. That's what we're talking about. And there's an impact of being able to match up who you're made to be with what you're doing. 

Bill Hendricks: 

We call that job fit, and that's kind of what I specialize in helping- 

Darrell Bock: 

So that is the round peg going in the round hole. Right? 

Bill Hendricks: 

Exactly. 

Darrell Bock: 

Because a lot of people have square pegs going in round holes and that produces some rough edges. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, according to the Gallup organization or the polling organization, they actually keep track of what they call employee engagement, which means the extent to which a worker is engaged with their work, they feel a sense of connection to the work and it means something to them and we would say they like if not love their job. And the good news is in United States, roughly 30% of the workforce, about a third, are classified as engaged with their work. But that means 70% are not engaged. But when you look at it worldwide, Gallup says 87% of workers globally are not engaged with their work, which means a whole lot of people out there are probably in the wrong job by virtue of what they're made to do. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

That's good. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And there's a lot of reasons for that. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

That's good. 

Darrell Bock: 

So I'm kind of uncertain which way to go here, but let me try it this way. So let's assume you've scratched someone's interest and they go, "I'm not sure whether I understand what my calling is in that more narrow sense. I mean, I understand, I'm a believer, I've been called into faith, but I don't understand what is my made for this." How do you get there? 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, I mean there's a variety of ways, and of course the formal method that I use, and I use it here at the seminary with students and others, is to go through that storytelling process with another person to come up with a list of what we call our giftedness stories, activities I've done that I've enjoyed doing and done well all the way back to childhood to the present. And then find a partner and you tell those stories in detail what you did, how you did it, not why you did it, you just exhaust your memory like a video camera was rolling while you were doing it. And you tell this other person, you narrate through what they would've seen if they would've been there. And then together you get what we call the keywords and then you write those down and you've got about seven or eight stories, and you look across those to find that pattern. 

Now, all of this is laid out in the book that I wrote, The Person Called You: Why You're Here, Why You Matter, and What You Should Do With Your Life. There's an exercise in the back of that book. But traditionally, the ways that people have figured out they're calling to the extent they have is, for thousands of years probably, they just get feedback from other people. Wow, you're really good at this and you kind of have a knack for that. But we never had to worry about any of this until about a hundred years ago, because prior to that all the work in the world was farms and factories. And if you were a man or boy, you basically did whatever your dad did. And if you're a girl, you basically got married and had babies. I mean, that's an overgeneralization, but that's basically how it worked. Nobody worried about- 

Darrell Bock: 

The choices they had. 

Bill Hendricks: 

The choices they had to make. You and I are in the first generation in history that ever had to ask the question what should I do with my life, because we had options. And that's because the nature of work changed after World War II into what we call knowledge work. So that's why this is at a boil now, as you've got rising generations more and more struggling to figure out what am I here for? What should I do with my life? And most of them are very confused about that. 

Darrell Bock: 

And so a key way at the seminary in the center, we've often talked about as an institution, as an organization, what are our golden moments? The places where we felt like what we did went well and were well received. 

Bill Hendricks: 

You can feel it. There's an energy and things are working. 

Darrell Bock: 

You go, "That fits." Yeah. And I'm assuming that finding your gift is the same kind of story. 

Bill Hendricks: 

We call it the sweet spot. A baseball bat, a tennis racket, a golf club, there's a sweet spot where if the player connects with the ball in this sweet spot, all the forces vector together to give the most power and control. And like a baseball batter knocks the ball out of the park, and the golfer can feel the vibration go through not only the club but the golfer themself and they can feel how they put the shot right where they wanted, and that's the sweet spot. And everybody has a sweet spot. They get that thing that when the problem solver solves that problem and finally gets the answer, it's like, "Yes." We see it occasionally here at the seminary because we've got a lot of comprehenders, people that want to understand something at a very deep level, and they finally kind of get to the bottom of some doctrinal theological thing, and they're all excited because they finally felt a breakthrough. That's the sweet spot. 

Darrell Bock: 

So the sweet spot is when the dots connect, the dots of who we are connect with what we're doing. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Absolutely, absolutely. When the teacher, the person who wants to see the student get the math that they've been trying to help, and then suddenly the kid goes, "Oh, I got it, I got it." And they're like, "Yes." 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Let's complicate this even further. Let's be reminded that people are called at different times in different ways. I mean, that's God's privilege, right? And so that just adds another layer to someone questioning these things. But what comes to my mind, Bill, and I'm not trying to throw you a curve, but here's a question that I'm sure people will ask about calling. They'll say if God has called me why is there a question about my calling? Because God can do this. God is able to do all of that at one time. To me, my answer to that is, if He called you, you will know because you will be doing things that look like God in what you're doing for Him. But what do you think about that? 

If God, and God does call us, he's called all of us, John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son," that's for everybody, right? "That whoever would believe in him would have everlasting life." That's everybody, that's a gift to everyone who receives it. So my thing to you is just, again, not to throw a curve ball, but if God is calling us, then why don't we know or why do we have such a question about our calling? How do we respond? How do we get there? 

Bill Hendricks: 

I think a lot of it, frankly, is the fall, I think in a fallen world... I mean, this a thought experiment, I'm not saying this is the way it would've been, but just imagine the fall had not happened. And so we start doing what God told us to do, which was to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and rule over it. And we start all the things that humans do. We pave roads and put vehicles over them and we raise babies and we do healthcare and we grow food and all. So let's just take growing food. Two guys are working and one guy says, "It's just amazing to me that every year your crops just seem to come out with just better produce than anybody else's. Man, you seem to have a real gift for that." 

And the guy goes, "Huh, I hadn't thought of that but now that you point it out, I see what you're saying. Man, that's amazing. I don't know how that is." "Well, I think God made you to do that." And he goes, "Well, I think you're right. What an amazing God we have. Thanks for letting me know that." We would find out from each other as we notice people using their giftedness. But of course we don't have that. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

No, we live in a fallen world, as you say. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And then the nature of giftedness itself, the way I put it is, each of us lives inside our skin which means it's a physical impossibility to see our own face. We see every other face in the world, the one face we can't see is our own face. Well, the same thing's true with our giftedness. We live inside our skin. We see other people use their giftedness, and oftentimes it looks pretty impressive. But when we use our own giftedness we don't think about using it, we just use it. So unless somebody from the outside holds up a mirror and says, "Oh, here's what you're doing," and celebrates it, here's the value of what you're doing, it just proves a bit elusive. 

Darrell Bock: 

I actually think that one of the reasons we did the podcast is because there's a lot of confusion about the term call. And I can't find something I'm not looking for. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Correct. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Oh, that's good. 

Darrell Bock: 

I mean, if I'm sitting there and I've never thought about the need to look for this or why I should look for it, et cetera, and I just go through life, then it's no wonder that some people have trouble discovering their call unless they're really sensitive to what it is that they enjoy doing in life. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, the way the question usually manifests itself is through angst and pain where the person says, "I don't know what to do with my life, what I should be doing. I don't like what I'm in right now. I went to college, I got this degree, I got a job that that degree opened the door for, and now I've discovered I don't like this." 

Darrell Bock: 

I hear that about lawyers all the time. They go to law school and they start practicing law and they say, "I'm not sure I want to do this for the rest of my life." 

Bill Hendricks: 

You say that and we laugh, the truth of the matter is, I could probably make a full-time practice just in Dallas of all the lawyers who just can't stand their job, but they don't know what else they could do. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Exactly. 

Darrell Bock: 

But there are some people are called to be lawyers. I mean, I don't want to- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Oh no, thank God for that. And there's one other answer to your question, Milyce, so if God gave us the call, why should I question the call? Why should anybody question the call? 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Right, right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And I like to say, well, I don't like to say it, it's just a harsh reality. I like to say that on the road to purpose there are many off ramps. And one of the biggest ones, it's like a three lane off ramp, are parental expectations. Where the parents have an agenda, a plan for this child, here's what you're going to be, or it's more likely, here's the set, which is usually a limited set of the acceptable paths for you. And if your giftedness doesn't really fit you to fit into those paths and it's over here, that's not right. That's not good. And many people who come my way, I mean, they come to grips with the fact that I agree this giftedness that I have, this is exactly what I should be doing, but you don't understand, Bill, my parents, they never wanted me to do it. 

Darrell Bock: 

They built a road for me in this direction and I took it. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Absolutely, absolutely. And you see what's in clash here is the parent is basically saying, "My will be done for your life," not His will be done for your life. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Oh, that's good. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And I think that's really sad. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

It is sad. 

Darrell Bock: 

So another thing I want to be clear about is that when we talk about this sense of calling, it applies to a wide variety of roles and possibilities. It's not just a vocational- 

Bill Hendricks: 

It's not just paid work, nor is it limited to the work or the things that we do that we get paid, it extends to the whole of your life. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay, and actually I was going to broaden it in a different way, which is, and it isn't just what you do for the church. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Correct, correct. 

Darrell Bock: 

So you're on a wide open field here when you're thinking about if I'm called and gifted to be a writer, I'm writing for everyone. If I'm called and gifted to be an entrepreneur, I'm creating a business for everybody, at least in the niche that I'm in, et cetera. This is who you were made to be, period. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, again, we're going back to Genesis 1. The mandate that was given, the very first words God said to human beings after He created them, amount to their marching orders. Here's why I put you here. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, rule over it. That's a lot more than about having babies. It means make the world fruitful. The world on its own is not very fruitful. It just gives us raw resources and only human beings can add value to the world and its resources that cause the world and its people to flourish. And to each and every person God has given a means of adding that value. We call that their giftedness. And that mandate has not ever been set aside. The earth was cursed, which made the work more laborious and toilsome, created a lot of problems, but the work itself is still inherently good. God wants us to still make the world and His people flourish. Not just within the church, but through the church. 

Darrell Bock: 

Exactly right. And so I like to say, I really love the way in which the first two chapters of Genesis present male and female because what it says is, He made Adam male, okay, a human being, a class all his own. And then He paraded all the rest of the creation in front of him and Adam goes, "Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope." 

Bill Hendricks: 

And meanwhile God's saying, "This isn't good." 

Darrell Bock: 

And God's going, "Oh, do I have something for you." 

Bill Hendricks: 

But I've got something really good for you. 

Darrell Bock: 

So He creates a female and he went, "Whoa, okay, that's a yes." 

Milyce Pipkin: 

I'll take it. 

Darrell Bock: 

So there's this complimentary relationship. Complimentary here is being used in a very positive way. It is I recognize that what this person brings is bringing something that I lack. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

That's good. 

Darrell Bock: 

And together we are better than either of us is individually. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Correct. 

Darrell Bock: 

And there's a collaboration that's built into that creative moment, which then promotes the creation from good to very good. And the one thing I learned in school is an A is better than a B. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yes. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay? And so you look at that whole thing that's going on there, and you go, "That's the way." And the word that comes to mind when I think of this is it isn't just a stewardship, but it's a functional stewardship. It's a collaborative functional stewardship. We were made to cooperate together and we've managed to turn gender into a thing where we compete against one another. And so I think that's a reflection of the fall, frankly. What we're talking about is God gifting each person in which their role in the creation provides a compliment to what the creation needs. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Absolutely. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Thank you for adding that to the conversation. I appreciate that. It's very much so needed. Bill, I just want to turn to you and I just want to say, as our time gets set to wind down, I want to make sure that the point that you want to make about this for this podcast is very well understood. So I'm just going to say to you before it's over, what do you want a viewer or listener to take away and know about their calling? 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, I want everybody to know that they have been designed in God's image and that as a key part of that God has, first of all, for a mystery that we really don't understand, God delights to see Himself in human form. I like to say that giftedness is incarnational truth. My view is that when God designs a human being, He takes some dimension of Himself that He does in an infinite way, He fashions a human being to do that exact same thing only in a finite way. And He's an infinite God so He could create an infinite number of human beings and every one of them would image Him and do something He does in a unique way. But that's kind of intrinsic value, but as I said earlier, there's an instrumental value. There's a purpose for that creation. God is wanting to see us do that for which He made us. 

I believe that by doing that, we actually dispense His grace into the world. Every day people pray all these prayers, and I believe God hears them, 90% of the time when God answers prayer He does so through people who are gifted to the task. I call Ephesians 2:10 the toolbox of God's grace because it's the tools He uses. We are the tools He uses many times to dispense His grace into the world, which means we're basically are answers to somebody's prayer. This isn't to make us proud, this is to make us be like David in Psalm 139, "Lord, when I think about how you've put me together and what you've called me to do, I am fearful. You are wonderful. You're amazing." He's worshiping God. 

Darrell Bock: 

And you get as a side benefit what real estate calls location. I know why I'm here, what I'm supposed to be about. The purpose is congruent with the way I'm made. And you have your sense of where you fit and how you contribute. And with as many people who are trying to find themselves or figure out why they're here and all those kinds of things- 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's good news. 

Darrell Bock: 

That's a huge interpersonal hole that's being plugged. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And that is good news to share to people because if people begin to discover their giftedness, I believe they see themselves much more in alignment with how God sees them. So even if they're not a believer yet, they've taken one giant step closer to their creator. And so if then by God's grace He shows them more light so they see my need for a savior, that's very consistent with everything they've seen to that point. 

Darrell Bock: 

So I would think you would say that understanding your calling is important. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, I'll put it this way, Darrell, for my own life next, to my salvation in Christ... which for me happened at age four and a half, yes, with a four and a half year old's understanding but I knew what I was doing... nothing has made a more profound difference in my life than coming to an awareness of what my giftedness was and therefore what my calling is. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

And again, we see that in your work, Bill. We see it at the Hendricks Center with you and your leadership and development at the center and all that you do in your giftedness programs and what you're trying to do to just help people to realize who they are in Christ through their giftedness and what that gift is going to look like to the church and to the world, to their world of influence. And I, for one, can appreciate it because it helped set me on a course to understand how I'm made and what I'm made to do. And when I saw the pattern come together in my life and in my story, and it comes down to the sentence and the one phrase, it gave me power and it made me cry, because it was like, "I can't believe this is who I am for the Lord." 

And I wasn't as, I don't know if I should say as blessed as you, to have come into my calling at four years old, I think I was one of the runners. I think there was a calling on my life, but I wasn't trying to answer the phone as Dr. Bock said earlier. But I thank God that I have come into that and I don't even know, I think the timing of it had probably more to do with my responding to the call. And I think I probably would call that responding to the call probably came at 45, and I'm not going to tell you how old I am now. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, you know what, of course- 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Which is late, that's really late, 45 years old. 

Darrell Bock: 

But what that reflects is what we were saying earlier, which is I'm not likely to find something I'm not looking for. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Correct. 

Darrell Bock: 

And so if I'm not sensitive to the fact that this is something to be pursued and thought about, then the likelihood of my finding it becomes more difficult. I may find what I enjoy in life. And there are a lot of people who find what they enjoy in life by what they do, but they don't have the whole package put together because they don't understand how it connects to the way God made them. 

Bill Hendricks: 

They've got the gift without the gift giver. 

Darrell Bock: 

Exactly. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

Oh, I love that. And I also think you have to realize there's a time sometimes between the call and the response. And so you can have a call but you have to be obedient. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, you've got to respond. 

Milyce Pipkin: 

You have to respond. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, which is a whole nother element. So once I know what to look for, then I have to also connect it to the one who I'm serving and looking for it, and so that's the other part- 

Milyce Pipkin: 

And that's what Bill just said. I mean, you've got the gift but now you have to look at the giver and you have to respond. So that's important. 

Darrell Bock: 

So Bill, I want to thank you for coming in and talking about- 

Bill Hendricks: 

You're welcome. 

Darrell Bock: 

... about calling and gifting us- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Darrell, you know I will get up out of bed anytime of the day or night to come talk about giftedness. 

Darrell Bock: 

You've been doing it since you were four years old, right? 

Milyce Pipkin: 

It's his calling. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, that's a lot of mornings. Anyway, and we thank you for joining us on The Table. Hope you'll join us again. If you want to see other episodes of The Table, you can go to voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast where you will find a myriad of episodes on The Table. We have over 600 hours of material for you there that range anything having to do with God and culture, which means it's a nice way of saying anything and everything. We hope you'll join us again soon.