Callings for Life

00:00
Dr. Jeff Leininger
When we want to serve God and love God and respond to the Gospel in good works and sanctification, we don’t exit away from this world, we enter back into it. 

00:18
Rich Rudowske
Welcome to the Essentially Translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible Translators. I’m Rich Rudowske. 

00:24
Emily Wilson
And I’m Emily Wilson. And you can tell by my voice that I’m a little under the weather, but that’s why Rich took over this particular interview, so that you didn’t have to hear this for 45 minutes. 

00:36
Rich Rudowske
But it is also New Year’s, so we want to say Happy New Year. 

00:40
Emily Wilson
Happy New Year. 

00:41
Rich Rudowske
Welcome. We are stepping lively into 2024, and as we step into 2024, tell the folks a little bit about what’s on your mind for moving into the new year. 

00:52
Emily Wilson
So, as you all know, for Giving Tuesday we focused in on prayer partnership because “Prayer Is The Strategy” for Bible translation ministry, having God’s word reach out into the nations in every language. And so we want to encourage you that it’s not too late for you to become a prayer partner. So if you would sign up on our website, lbt.org, you can become a prayer partner today and receive a prayer calendar. For each day of the month there’s a different prayer request from a missionary partner or a staff member, a program. So I want to encourage you to get involved in praying for the organization. It is so enriching to walk alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ and to pray for one another. 

01:41
Rich Rudowske
And we are rolling into the final year of the more than words campaign for scripture impact. We had a great event back last October at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, and one of our speakers was today’s guest, Dr. Jeff Leininger, and we’re going to talk with him about “Callings For Life”. That’s the title of his book, but also just a really nicely done, accessible conversation about God’s callings on our lives. Dr. Jeff Leininger is a pastor at First St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Chicago. He served for 21 years as the campus pastor and director for pre-seminary program at Concordia University in Chicago. He’s got a background in theater and did his doctoral work on the English Reformation. He’s a lot of fun, and I hope you enjoy this conversation with Dr. Jeff Leininger. 

02:31
Rich Rudowske
This morning we’re talking with Pastor Jeff Leininger, longtime Bible translation advocate and proponent of the work of Lutheran Bible Translators. And he recently was part of our More Than Words Gathering in Washington, DC, where he talked about “Callings For Life”, and he’s the author of a book by the same title, and so we are going to dig into that a little bit. Welcome to the podcast. 

02:53
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Thanks Rich. I’m so glad to be here with you and really glad to be supporting the work of Lutheran Bible Translators. 

03:00
Rich Rudowske
So tell us a little bit about your background first so our audience can get to know you and where you came from and how you’ve been serving all these years. 

03:09
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Originally from a place called Minnesota, ya sure, you betcha. Grew up in the Twin Cities, St. Paul area and my dad was at Concordia St. Paul. So I went through Lutheran schools throughout my time in Minnesota, including going to Concordia St. Paul. And I was a theater major and very involved in music, but also did pre-seminary studies. After my time at Concordia St. Paul, I spent a little bit of time in theater, working in theater, and then eventually made my way to Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. And during that time, a pretty formative year for me was spending a year over in Cambridge, England, at Westfield House, which is a little Lutheran college seminary there and overseas program there really opened up my eyes to global Christian witness and global Lutheranism also got me interested in more graduate work. 

04:07
Dr. Jeff Leininger
So I returned to the University of Cambridge with my wife, Rachel, and we spent the first six years of our married life on this wonderful rainy island in England and did a master’s and a Ph.D there. My area of specialty is the English Reformation and the use of plays or theater in the English Reformation. First callback to the United States was to Concordia Chicago, then River Forest. It’s still in River Forest. And for 21 years I was the campus pastor and the director of the preseminary program and then supported the university’s church relations and was very much a part of that place and just more recently had this nudge and call from the Spirit to get back into traditional parish life. And so I’ve just been for a few months the pastor at First St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, north side of Chicago. 

05:06
Dr. Jeff Leininger
It is the first Lutheran church in the city of Chicago and also historic in that the documents forming the Missouri Synod were actually signed at my congregation’s previous building way back before the Chicago Fire, and am really enjoying loving being at First St. Paul’s in Chicago. 

05:27
Rich Rudowske
That’s awesome. So during your time then as campus pastor, over 21 years too, you worked with a lot of students, both forming for pastoral or other church work, ministry, and also just as campus pastor, student body in general. So I imagine that’s part of the fuel for what led you to write the book we’re going to talk about, talk a little bit about why you wrote this book. 

05:49
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah, I loved my time working with college age students at Concordia Chicago, and many church professional students, of course, and that was a particular delight just to get to know those students, but then also students from all different backgrounds that are studying all different things and preparing for different types of, you know, our theology of vocation, which is a biblical teaching, but also one of the most important things. When Martin Luther rediscovers the Gospel, that’s, of course, the most important thing. And of course, gets us back to the word and the translation of the Word, making it accessible in different languages. But I think his insights about vocation, or as we’ll learn, vocations is one of the top things in terms of his influence, even in Western civilization. 

06:40
Dr. Jeff Leininger
But my time at Concordia working with college students sort of got me thinking more and more about this topic. 

06:47
Rich Rudowske
All right, so we’re going to jump into some of the aspects of “Callings For Life”, which, again, as you mentioned, is based on Luther’s writing and thoughts about vocation or calling. And I really love the way that you’ve brought this topic into the 21st century in some easily digestible but yet profoundly complex things to think about and chew on here. But we’ve got five different aspects of vocation or callings. So I’m just going to introduce what you say in these various things and ask you to unpack that a little bit. So first you say it’s callings, not calling. Our calling in life is better understood in the plural rather than the singular. 

07:29
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah, callings or vocations always like to put an s at the end of that. There’s this myth out there, and it’s an exciting myth, and I call it the myth of the one great thing. And it sort of affects not only just the world, but even many christian circles, many people, well meaning, have this idea that there’s this one great thing sent me from God that I’m meant to do on this planet. And if I can only discern it somehow, pray about it, go to college and take a really inspiring class, meet a really important professor or influential person in my life, and then I’m going to find it, and then I’m going to have full fulfillment, true fulfillment, because I found this one great thing that God has placed me on this earth to do. 

08:25
Dr. Jeff Leininger
And so I like to encourage people when they think about what are they called to do or their vocation. I like to just say, let’s put an ‘s’ at the end of it. Vocations. Callings. And that’s what I mean by our calling in life is better understood in the plural rather than the singular. 

08:49
Rich Rudowske
Right. So then how have you seen that the myth of the one great thing becomes problematical? 

08:55
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah. And I think this applies to, of course, my time working with college students, but many other people, whatever their age or station or season in life, I talk about a couple of things. I talk about neglect and regret. Neglect would be, well, hey, if there’s only one really important thing that I’m meant to do on this earth, I can ignore all the other callings that I have in my life. In pursuit of that, everything else becomes less important or even distracting or almost even diabolical in a way that pulls me away from that one great thing. 

09:32
Dr. Jeff Leininger
So the neglect would be like, for example, you can have maybe a college student that they’re meant to do this important thing, such as maybe solve the AIDS crisis in Africa, but then they neglect their studies, their day to day studies, or their family or boyfriend or girlfriend or even their prayer life, all in deference to this thing that they’re supposed to do. So one would be neglect. We tend to neglect the little things around us that seem really unimportant. The other is regret. As you get a little bit older and you’ve done a few things in your life, but you look back and you think, maybe I missed it. Wait a minute. I just ended up being a mom. Quote, just a mom, as if that’s not important. 

10:17
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Or I worked at this job and I made some money and took care of my family and lived as a good neighbor and was a good son and good brother, but I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. And so you look back on your life with this regret that maybe I missed it, and there can be a lot of guilt associated with that. 

10:42
Rich Rudowske
So then what you’re saying is, if you think of calling in the plural, then what’s considered a calling? 

10:50
Dr. Jeff Leininger
I tell people to look at the faces and the places and the spaces of their life. Faces, that is, the people that you meet when you wake up in the morning. There’s a calling attached to the people in your own household, in your own bedroom. Each person that we encounter has a calling attached to them. So the faces, the places. Where do you live? Work, play, study? I’m at first St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. I have seen a lot of people already today. Those people have a calling attached. This place has a calling attached to it. I’m on planet Earth. I’m a citizen of the United States. I’m a neighbor, I drive down the, know all of those places have callings attached, and then I talk about the faces and the places and then the spaces. 

11:42
Dr. Jeff Leininger
That is maybe the roles that I have in my life, whether I’m a manager or a student or a teammate or a coworker or a fellow teacher, all of those kind of roles and responsibilities that I have in life have callings attached to them. And, of course, these three faces and places and spaces are kind of three overlapping circles. They’re all connected. But I just tell people, open up your eyes and look to the people that you meet, the places where you work, live, play, and study, and the spaces that you occupy, and all of. 

12:21
Rich Rudowske
Those have a calling attached to them. Yeah, that’s awesome. The next thing you talk about is presence, and the statement is, our calling in life is better understood in the present rather than the future. 

12:35
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah, this is a little. Not really controversial, but I think maybe provocative in a way, because when you think about your calling, you even probably even ask people that, what’s your calling in life? Sure, that sounds very important, and it sounds very sacred, even. It’s a kind of interesting way to talk about it. You’re usually thinking about what you’re going to do in the future. That’s certainly the case when you’re in school. You’re in high school or college, and you think, I don’t think people ask maybe as crassly anymore, what do you want to be when you grow up? Oh, they might ask you that, but they say, what are you called to do? But you’re thinking one thing, and then you’re thinking future tense. 

13:19
Dr. Jeff Leininger
But when you think about the plurality of the things that God has placed in our lives, most of that stuff you have right now, most of the stuff that God asks you to do is happening right now in your life. So I’ll challenge you about this. Give me a few callings that you have right now that aren’t even anywhere in the future. 

13:42
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. Right now, I’m called to lead an organization and shepherd people. Then in that process, called to be a husband to my wife. I’m a father to five young adults who are all very recently out of the nest. So then called to be a husband to a wife in an empty nest in this community. I’m recognized as a pastor in this small town, even though I don’t pastor a church. It was definitely eye opening living in such a small town, to know that no matter whether I know folks or not, they know me. And once I stood in that pulpit. So, yeah, those are a few of the rich. 

14:22
Dr. Jeff Leininger
When you think about the present tense, most of the stuff’s not going to change. Right now I’m a brother and I’m a son, and again, I’m a citizen of planet Earth. I’m a member of a community. I’m a child of God. The most important thing, right. So we can be fixated on what is this one great thing in the future that we’re supposed to be doing, rather than saying, wait a minute, there’s already things right now. Most of the stuff right now is already happening and unfolding. And in order to kind of illustrate this, I talk about this ancient Roman god. I think the Greeks had a version as well. His name is Janus or Janus. Quick quiz, Rich. Which month we name after this guy? 

15:12
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, January. 

15:13
Dr. Jeff Leininger
January. Very good. Boy, you’re really sharp. He must have gone to seminary. 

15:17
Rich Rudowske
I got the book here. 

15:21
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Janus. Your listeners can look this guy up, super popular Roman god, because he’s two-faced. He’s looking backwards and forwards at the same time. And that’s super useful for commerce and combat. He was the god of doorways, entrances and exits. Right. And then so obviously, January, you’re kind of looking back at the past and forward in the future. But I use this as an illustration of the way that sometimes the past can be a false God, an idol when we over focus upon it, and then sometimes the future can be as well. We get too far ahead of ourselves. We’re always thinking about this great thing I’m supposed to down the line, and we forget that, hey, God’s got stuff for me to do right now. 

16:10
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. Yeah. As you were saying, and I was thinking whether it’s the right thought or not, it reminds me of the Star wars movie the Empire strikes back. One of the biggest criticisms Yoda has of Luke is this guy that’s always got his mind somewhere else, never on where he is at and what he’s supposed to be doing now. And the image of Janus also in that in-between and transition space, I think we can feel like a lot of our life is in that waiting space and we are either looking forward to something’s better that’s coming. And so I’m really looking and putting a lot into that. Or, boy, it sure was good before. And so I guess you’re saying that even if those things may be true, there’s an important aspect of what’s happening right now. 

16:58
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yes. And I thought about that same Yoda quote, and we should be talking about the Bible, of course. 

17:03
Rich Rudowske
Of course. 

17:04
Dr. Jeff Leininger
But I thought that the rights to put it in the book would probably be too expensive. And of course we want people to do great things. And of course, every church and organization’s got a plan for the future. And of course, when you raise your kids, you want them to hopefully get jobs and do great things and make a difference. And that is all true. But there can be the danger of neglecting and forgetting about the present tense callings. What has God given me to do today? As opposed to always looking ahead? And sometimes the God of the future is anxiety ridden, too, because you can’t control it and you’re always worrying about it and always thinking about it. So, yeah, I think it’s an important point. 

17:56
Dr. Jeff Leininger
And Martin Luther, when he talked about this theology vocation, he said, what do you think you’re not called? Remember that the late medieval world, the word vocation, or vocazio, was singular, and it was only applied to those who would be in professional church work, that is, priests and monks and nuns. They’re the only ones that had a calling. So Martin Luther takes this and applies it to the Christian life. And he even says, well, how can you say that you’re not called? You feel like you’re not called? Consider your place in life according to the Ten Commandments. Are you a father, a mother, a son, daughter, husband, wife or worker? Have you been obedient, unfaithful, or lazy? Have you hurt someone? Have you stolen? So just take a look at what you’re doing right now. 

18:45
Dr. Jeff Leininger
And then he’s got this great line about saying, hey, if you had two heads and ten hands, something like that, anyway, you wouldn’t be able to keep up with all the stuff that you got to do just for today, right? 

18:55
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And it’s, of course, very Biblical that the Christian is depicted in Scripture as, now, this person that’s been redeemed by Christ walks in the way that he’s called to, right? And that calling is to essentially serve other and to walk in, as Ephesians 2:10 says in various translations. But one of them is to God prepared, works ahead for us. To do that, we should walk in them. Present tense. 

19:20
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Present tense. Where’s my road today? What are the faces and the places and the spaces of my life today? 

19:28
Rich Rudowske
And listening to you also, when I was thinking about the God of the future, I guess my normal thought is like, yeah, it’s going to be so much better then, but I guess there’s a lot of folks that are wrapped up, and it’s going to be a lot worse than we don’t know what’s going to happen then. And that can really be very distracting and lead us away from focusing on where God’s got us right now. 

19:49
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah. The false God of the. And as we maybe will just remind people, Martin Luther’s great definition of a false God is anything you fear to love and trust in above the one true God. And that can be the past or the future, even the present too, of course. But yeah, you think about the uncertainty about it and could even cause you to collapse into inactivity because I can’t control it and there’s just so much. So I’m just not going to do anything. And then it can also be this thing that causes you to neglect what you have to do for today. Yeah. So it’s an interesting way of looking at it. In what way is the past a false God? That is maybe guilt and glorification. Right. Guilt would be, you can’t get past what you’ve done, even though you’ve been forgiven. 

20:41
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Glorification would be always looking to the past about what we did then and how great it was. And then the future, of course, is both the anxiety and that collapsing into inactivity. 

20:52
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. So then all these things build on each other. The next section you talk about, it’s a great title, diapers and sippy cups. And the key thought, our calling in life is better understood in the ordinary rather than the dramatic. 

21:05
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah, diapers and sippy cups. If there are any moms that are on the podcast, I’m sure that there are. They might be in the middle of this right now if they’ve got young children at home. And this was really inspired by Martin Luther’s theology. That reminds us that we’re more masks of God. That is, when you look at us serving or doing activities, it looks like us, but God is really behind it. I describe it also as the gloves of know. It might be my hand helping somebody or changing a diaper, but it’s really God is behind it. It looks like my hand, but God’s behind it. And think about the ordinary rather than the dramatic. And of course we want to do dramatic things and we want to inspire our children and our young people and our congregations to think big. 

21:56
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Of course that’s part of it. But we can be distracted by the dramatic and forget about most of the stuff we’re asked to do. Not going to get a ribbon for it, not going to get an honorary doctorate. Oftentimes nobody’s going to even know. 

22:13
Rich Rudowske
Right. 

22:15
Dr. Jeff Leininger
The little things of caring for children or being a good colleague or coworker or helping somebody out on the team or putting in a little extra time after practice or being kind to your neighbor, taking the garbage out for your neighbor. I mean, that’s all very ordinary. That’s where most of Christian life happens, honestly. And that’s where Christ becomes alive by his spirit in us for other people. And again, not that we don’t want to do great things for God, but it is noteworthy when you take a look at many people that did great things, hardly any of them started out planning just, I think I’m going to do great things in my life. 

22:57
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Most people start out with the small stuff, and I talk about, like, sweating the small stuff, they’re being conscientious about the little things and let God worrying about the dramatic. 

23:07
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, you talk a little bit about some All Stars here in this chapter, and how did they become All Stars, if you will. 

23:15
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah, yeah. I talk about a few different examples of the Lutheran All Stars. Luther himself, obviously world changing, one of the most influential people in western civilization, certainly the top two or three. Most historians would agree, even secular historians would agree. But he didn’t start out to change the world, defy Christendom, defy papacy – he started out just studying the Word of God and trying to be a good monk, not being very good at being, well, being really good at being a good monk, but being sort of captured by that guilt. He just started out with a very simple thing is, what does God’s Word say to me? Know another person that I talk about in this book? I talk about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who, again, is a quite well known Lutheran All Star. 

24:07
Dr. Jeff Leininger
He is a theologian and pastor in Nazi Germany and was one of the few Lutheran pastors, sadly, and one of the few clergymen that really had the strength and the insight to resist Adolf Hitler and very controversially, even joined eventually into the assassination attempt. But a great theologian, and I consider him a martyr for the Christian faith. But he didn’t start out one day just thinking, I’m going to defy the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler. He started out being faithful in teaching the Word and studying the Word and helping Jewish people escape from Germany. It was very little stuff that he started out with, and then he ended up doing pretty dramatic things. And then we talk about Rosa Parks. We’ve heard of Rosa Parks, who’s the great civil rights leader. 

24:56
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Rosa Young was a Lutheran teacher in rural Alabama who ends up founding dozens of schools and influencing thousands of people for education down in Selma, Alabama area. And she also didn’t start out, wake up one day thinking, I’m going to be one of the most influential Lutherans ever in the state of Alabama. She just started out, here are these kids that need education. I’m going to just start with the small stuff. And then I also talk about another all star, Dima Tumsa from the Ethiopian Lutheran church, the Mekane Yesu Lutheran Church. He was a pastor and leader of the church when the Marxists of Ethiopia were trying to take over the church and usurp it for their ideological purposes. And he resisted that and was martyred for that, very sadly and tragically. And his family also suffered much for that. 

25:53
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Another example of he just started to be just a good pastor, helping people, teaching God’s Word. What do these people need? Who are the people right around me? The places, the spaces and the places. I just use those examples of people that did dramatic things. None of them started out thinking, I’m going to do this one great thing in my life. They all started out with the ordinary. 

26:17
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, that’s a really great perspective. Because ultimately, at the bottom of all of that is none of them thought, I want to be sure I do something dramatic. Just they responded to, this is the situation I’m in. This is who I am in Christ. And that’s the love of Christ compels me to act in these ways, to be this way, to say and do these things. And the Lord used that, and I love that. This section is called diapers and sippy cups. If anybody has yourself been through that stage with children or help care for children, to help someone. Just immediately when I hear the thought, I think of being tired, more tired than I’ve ever been in my life, and feeling like this is the furthest thing away from something great. 

27:02
Rich Rudowske
And yet, yeah, the Lord looks upon this stuff and says, that is great. I can remember reading the large catechism with Luther again, all drawn from scripture. But he really makes the point there in talking about the fourth commandment. Just if all we ever did was be sure that there was homes with families, that the parents honor each other, the children honor the parents, I mean, that would be a very great work. And better than anything else that we could have ever imagined, was a dramatically good calling. 

27:31
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah. I say that for the Lord, the mundane matters, your mundane moments matter to God. Those, quote, ordinary things are often the most dramatic things we can do. And they’re sacred, too. They are sacred. They’re not disconnected from God. It’s like I’m a pastor and I’m preaching and teaching and that’s a sacred work. But all the other stuff isn’t sacred. That’s like more mundane thing. No, they’re sacred because they’re done out of faith and response to God’s love and God is the almighty. God’s breath is active through us in those little things. Day to day things. 

28:09
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. So what looks ordinary in God’s economy is actually quite dramatic. 

28:15
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Amen. 

28:16
Rich Rudowske
All right, next section, God loves dirt, where you say our calling in life is better understood as this worldly rather than otherworldly. So why is that so important? 

28:28
Dr. Jeff Leininger
It sounds a little provocative, doesn’t it, that you should think about this worldly stuff? And what I mean by that is when we want to serve God and love God and respond to the Gospel in good works and sanctification, we don’t exit away from this world. We enter back into it. Our callings are found in this world. It’s part of what the scriptures mean when it talks about that we are living sacrifices. Of course we’re the sacrifices, unlike those of the Old Testament, which are consumed, whether they’re burned or eaten or something. So we’re still alive. But it also means in life that we are sacrifices that are happening in life. I entitle it God loves dirt. 

29:15
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Because there’s many movements within Christianity and outside of Christianity over the history of the church that have really emphasized that in order to get close to God, you got to leave this world, ascend up higher to God. Don’t be consumed with the muck and mire of this everyday existence. This stuff, the physical life is bad. Earthly life is bad. Farming and banking and children and families and being a soldier or being a garbage collector or practicing law, whatever it is, the misunderstanding in some Christian circles is that, well, that stuff’s fine because can we need it to kind of survive and we need people to grow food, right? Otherwise we’ll die. But it’s not the real thing. The real thing is, the thing is the higher level spirituality. 

30:11
Dr. Jeff Leininger
And you can see kind of that some of the difficulties of that would be, well, in the ancient world, when the early church, it’s called gnosticism. It’s this idea that the world is inherently corrupt and sinful and lower than just by the fact that it’s created, just by the fact that it’s made, it’s less than. And so you want to try to escape out of that and get up closer to God. Or you can think of maybe certain forms of medieval monasticism where, well, yeah, you all peasants are kind of doing okay, but we’re doing the real work by escaping from the world and entering the monastic life. That’s the real calling, that’s the real vocation. And then there’s sort of contemporary forms of spiritual escapism. These things can be good. 

31:06
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Going on a retreat is a good thing, and taking some time off is very important, but that can almost become more important than just living life. And so the idea here, God loves dirt, that if the created world is also redeemed, the flesh is also redeemed, not just the spirit or the mind. 

31:27
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, I can remember as now my family joined a Lutheran church and sent me to Lutheran school starting from when I was in fourth grade. And it was not very hard for me to get the idea and the message like, okay, I’m a sinful person and I’ve been forgiven through the blood of Jesus, and I have peace with God. But there was a part of my life for quite a while that I was like, okay, so then what now? And just at a certain point, the light kind of clicking on that. I guess that is all very important. But if there is a rest of the story, the rest of the story is God says, okay, so we’re fine. So go out and live your life in light of the fact that, hey, we’re good. 

32:06
Rich Rudowske
And you have my abounding, unending love flowing within you to give to other people and to serve. And it’s just in that normal, everyday stuff that you do that you’re doing that. But it’s also that you’re just not kind of treading water waiting for death or something like that either. I don’t know. 

32:24
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Right. Yeah. One section of the book talks about the quest for the super spiritual, okay, being like God. And of course we should be godly and godlike in terms of trying to follow his law, especially the law of love. And in having been forgiven by God’s grace, we want to think about how we can grow as Christians. So we should be like God in that sense. But you think back to the original temptation in the garden. What is it? You shall be like God. So instead of just being content to be a creature, you got to look for something super spiritual to be real. The real Christian. 

33:06
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, it’s pretty, again, provocative and makes you think. I think that the people I know that sometimes are kind of skeptical about Christianity or about Christians will say or point to what looks to them like the pursuit of things like this at the expense of caring for family and taking care of other things like that. 

33:26
Dr. Jeff Leininger
The pie in the sky, by and by. That’s the Christian message, is that, hey, I’ve got heaven, it’s all good. And now what? Right. Some people might mistakenly spend their whole life trying to recapture that moment or become more and more spiritual. And that sounds really good. And I know there’s an understanding that is true scripturally. But you think about more and more spiritual. Is that really the goal? Or might we say, maybe I need to be more and more physical in a godly way. Right. 

34:01
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. 

34:01
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Maybe I need to hug more or dig more or help people more or enter. The whole idea is the response of the christian life is to enter back into the world, not to escape from it. 

34:15
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And in our American society, I think the thing that people value and are looking for, they’re not lists, they’re looking in the right places sometimes. But the thing that keeps getting brought up is we need people to be present and embodied and invested in now. And that speaks right into these callings that come from God. 

34:35
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah. We also know that in the end, there’s going to be a bodily resurrection. So if physical is the problem as opposed to the spiritual, then, well, why is God going to remake us physically? 

34:50
Rich Rudowske
Just ask him for trouble then. 

34:51
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah. 

34:53
Rich Rudowske
Right. But of course that’s not the case. Yeah. He is going to remake us physically because it’s all redeemed and that’s a major part of the point. And then you say that our callings in life are better understood as God given rather than self chosen. So I’m imagining you’ve got a lot of experience and conversations that lead you to say that’s an important aspect to bring out. 

35:17
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah. Thinking about your callings as God given rather than self chosen. I know we pick things, and those things can be really important. You have to decide where you’re going to live, maybe if you’re going to get married and who you’re going to marry and are you going to have children, and you might decide, I’m going to go to law school or I’m going to go into one of the trades. You decide which college you’re going to go to. And those are important decisions. But I think along with this myth of this dramatic thing, which is future driven, it’s also this, you’ve got to figure this out. Otherwise you’re really going to make God mad and you’re going to really be an unhappy person. Right. If you don’t pick the right thing, you’re going to be miserable. 

36:13
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. 

36:14
Dr. Jeff Leininger
And so think about the pressure on a young person. Right. 

36:16
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. God’s got this thing picked out, you need to somehow figure out what it is. If you’re not just lined up perfectly with it, then you’re always going to be struggling. I’ve heard it expressed or seen it manifest that way of people just really questioning. Like, I must not have quite got in tune with what God had planned out for me to do. That’s a difficult thing. 

36:37
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah. And then it’s either God’s fault or your fault. And I’m not sure which one’s worth, like, what is God doing? Why is he messing with me like that? Or, man, I must be a lousy Christian or maybe didn’t pray hard enough or maybe fast or choose the right Christian college to go to. I know that we do make choices and they’re important, but when you think about it, most of the stuff you’re asked to do, you didn’t pick. And even the stuff you do pick usually changes. I mean, Rich, did you think, hey, I’ll be doing a podcast with a major Bible translation group when you were in college? 

37:18
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, not at all. None of this stuff even existed then, but yeah, anyway. 

37:27
Dr. Jeff Leininger
And so we can be fascinated and fixated upon these choices, which seem so huge and earth shaking and super spiritual, rather than thinking about, well, what are the things that God has asked me to do that I didn’t pick? Well, I didn’t pick my siblings. Maybe I’d like to unpick them sometimes, but I didn’t know. I love my siblings. But you didn’t pick your parents. Now most of us don’t pick our coworkers. When you’re in 7th grade, did you get to decide who was in your class with you? 

38:00
Rich Rudowske
Not at all. That’s a tough year. Particularly, actually. 

38:05
Dr. Jeff Leininger
You don’t pick your teachers. Even when you think about church work. I mean, I don’t pick my parishioners. God gave them to me. God gives us these things. Your neighbors. Think about your neighbors. Like, okay, you might decide which neighborhood you want to move into and are you going to rent, are you going to own a house? But most of that stuff God just gives you. And that can also be some of the more difficult things in life. I use an example in my book about somebody caring for a dying spouse. Did you decide that? Did you pick, like, okay, when you’re getting married, you make these vows. So most of the stuff you didn’t pick and then. 

38:48
Dr. Jeff Leininger
So the implication would be, rich, maybe just thinking out loud with you on that, what are the implications if I start to think about callings, plural, that God gave me rather than I chose what comes to mind for you. 

39:03
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, I spent some time early in my marriage sort of thinking, oh, man, there’s some things going on here that I didn’t choose that are really troubling and bothersome, and my wife would be okay with me saying that, and just things with her mental health that became more apparent. And I can remember a particular moment just realizing, hey, this is part of what God has called me to. I mean, I didn’t choose this, but this is a calling on my life. And once you reframe it that way and it came from God. If it came from God, then, yeah, that just changes the perspective. 

39:43
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah, I think about that. If the person in your life, God gave you, people in your life, God gave you, whether it’s your spouse or your children. I mean, we choose to have children, but we don’t pick our kids. Really? 

39:57
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. Right. 

39:59
Dr. Jeff Leininger
But if you think about those people that God gave you, whether it’s your coworkers or your spouse, your children, your fellow members on the team, on the baseball team, God gave them to you, then they’ve got value. In fact, they’ve got infinite value. 

40:16
Rich Rudowske
Right. 

40:17
Dr. Jeff Leininger
And if God gave it these callings to you, he will also give you the strength to fulfill them. If there’s stuff you chose, you picked. I mean, maybe you’ll make it, maybe you won’t. 

40:31
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. That is so profound. Just thinking of all of the implications of that. If you walk into your office or place of work and if you look at all the people that are there and you think, hey, these are the people God has put in my life, that’s just going to change how you go about what you’re doing, how you interact with folks, the level of patience and grace that you may need to give. 

40:55
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Yeah. You thinking about it in that way means that there’s some assurance and promise attached to those callings, God’s going to give you the strength to fulfill them. God’s going to give you the grace. When you fail, you’re going to fail. We all fail. That’s one of the kind of things that we discovered. When I was writing this book and I was working a lot with Concordia students, kind of workshopping it with them. And a couple of times people would come up to me and say, okay, wow, I’ve got callings. They’re plural. They’re happening right now. God gave them to me. Man, am I a screw up. Right? 

41:30
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. 

41:33
Dr. Jeff Leininger
I’m not just failing at one great thing now I’m failing at, like, 100. And so it takes us back to grace, how important our baptismal waters are and how God forgives us, not just in the one thing, but in the many things. So there’s God giving grace attached to them, and then if they’re given to us by God, I think maybe we can also discover a joy in fulfilling them. 

41:55
Rich Rudowske
Absolutely. 

41:56
Dr. Jeff Leininger
It’s not just something that we decided to do, but God gave us, and he will give us strength and grace to fulfill them and hopefully a sense of joy that as we seek to be his hands and heart and feet to those around us. 

42:11
Rich Rudowske
So as we’re releasing this podcast episode, the first episode of 2024, really hoping to have some reflective moments and think about as I enter into a new year, what has been the future is now becoming the present. What’s in the past is now past. It’s really great perspective, I think, to frame out our callings, and again, just covering what we’ve covered here, our callings are plural, more than one. They are better understood as the present. They’re happening now, and they are multiple. They are ordinary rather than dramatic. They happen in this world, very embodied, not looking for something in the future, and they’re given by God. So as you think about this moment, as our listeners are also thinking about, hey, I’m ready to step into what’s next. And what’s next is about to become. Now, what would you say? 

43:03
Dr. Jeff Leininger
I would say in this new year, don’t seek out to do great things. Seek out to do little things, greatly. Sweat the small stuff. Find meaning and purpose and joy in the everyday, ordinary things that God has given you to do this year, and the dramatic stuff will happen. Let him worry about the drama. 

43:27
Rich Rudowske
I love it. All right, thank you very much. We’ve been talking with Pastor Jeff Leininger and talking about callings for life. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. 

43:36
Dr. Jeff Leininger
Thanks. Happy to be here, Rich. 

43:43
Emily Wilson
So I’ve known Jeff for a number of years, serving as the mission mobilization coordinator. I would get to visit Concordia University, Chicago and see his enthusiasm, working alongside the university students there as their campus pastor and being able to shepherd them and encourage them that their callings are multiple and that this gift that we have been given from God, that our identity resting in him, our callings are not limited to that one big thing. There are many things that the Lord has planned for us and that we don’t have to live in regret or the what ifs. It’s just been really encouraging for him to walk alongside the Bible translation movement in that particular way. 

44:36
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, he’s been a real great advocate for Bible translation. And the ideas that we talk about with how God’s calling on your life are ultimately drawn from the Bible. And I just think it’s really great opportunity as we move into a new year, to reflect on where we’ve been, where we’re going as individuals, as communities, and recognize how God has put callings on our life and the joy that’s part of that. 

45:04
Emily Wilson
So I guess this is one of those strategic episode placements for you as our listeners to think about. There’s so many times that a New Year’s resolution is at hand with the new year, but just as an opportunity for you to meditate on the ways that the Lord has called you, the many ways in your vocations, whether it’s brother, sister, husband, wife, child, pastor or teacher, there are so many callings that we all have. Some of them might not feel glamorous. It might be those moments when you throw up your hands and say, really, Lord? Are you working through this? Absolutely he is. And to be enriched by that and to really lean into that, this 2024 and how the Lord is leading you. 

45:57
Rich Rudowske
The book, “Callings For Life” is available, along with some great bonus content that helps you unpack it in small groups or Bible class from Concordia Publishing House cph.org or you can also find it on Amazon in paperback or the Kindle format. So we encourage you to pick up your copy of “Callings For Life”. 

Thank you for listening to the Essentially Translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible Translators. You can find past episodes of the podcast lbt.org/podcast or subscribe on Audible, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow Lutheran Bible Translators’ social media channels on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter or go to lbt.org to find out how you can get involved in the Bible translation movement and put God’s Word in their hands. 

The Essentially Translatable podcast is edited and produced by Audrey Seider. Our executive producer is Emily Wilson. Artwork designed by Sarah Rudowske. Music written and performed by Rob Veith. I’m Rich Rudowske. So long for now.