Böcker av Will Willimon

Your job is not your vocation.Everyone hungers for work that has meaning and purpose. But what gives work meaning? Vocation, or ¿calling,¿ is the answer Protestant Christianity offers: each person is called by God to serve the common good in a particular line of work. Your vocation, evidently, might be almost anything: as a nurse, a wilderness guide, a calligrapher, a missionary, an activist, a venture capitalist, a politician, an executioner¿ Yet, as Will Willimon writes in this issue, the New Testament knows only one form of vocation: discipleship. And discipleship is far more likely to mean leaving father and mother, houses and land, than it is to mean embracing one¿s identity as a fisherman or tax collector.This issue of Plough focuses on people who lived their lives with that sense of vocation. Such a life demands self-sacrifice and a willingness to recognize one¿s own supposed strengths as weaknesses, as it did for the Canadian philosopher Jean Vanier. It involves a lifelong commitment to a flesh-and-blood church, as Coptic Archbishop Angaelos describes. It may even require a readiness to give up one¿s life, as it did for Annalena Tonelli, an Italian humanitarian who pioneered the treatment of tuberculosis in the Horn of Africa. But as these stories also testify, it brings a gladness deeper than any self-chosen path.Also in this issue: - Scott Beauchamp on mercenaries- Nathan Schneider on cryptocurrencies- Stephanie Saldaña on Syrian refugee art- Peter Biles on loneliness at college- Phil Christman on Bible translation- Michael Brendan Dougherty on fatherhood- Insights on vocation from C. S. Lewis, Thérèse of Lisieux, Mother Teresa, Eberhard Arnold, Dorothy Sayers, Jean Vanier, and Gerard Manley Hopkins- poetry by Devon Balwit and Carl Sandburg- reviews of books by Robert Alter, Edwidge Danticat, Matthew D. Hockenos, Amy Waldman, and Jeremy Courtney- art and photography by Pola Rader, Dean Mitchell, Mark Freear, Timothy Jones, Pawe¿ Filipczak, Mary Pal, Harley Manifold, Sami Lalu Jahola, Marc Chagall, and Russell Bain.Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus¿ message into practice and find common cause with others.

A seasoned pastor and church leader reflects on aging as a spiritual journey and offers practical advice on helping others with the challenges of retirement, aging, caring for the aging, and finding faith in the last quarter of life.

With I''m Not from Here, popular writer Will Willimon returns to fiction with a story of spiritual discovery set in a Southern town. Will takes us on a Don Quixote-like journey during which young Felix Goforth Luckie learns a great deal about the world, about other people, and about a God who shows up in the oddest places, in the strangest times, and among the unlikeliest people. On a quest to discover himself, Felix is discovered by the grace of God.In homage to Dostoevsky, Cervantes, and the Bible, Willimon creates a world that is thoroughly believable, realistic, and ordinary, yet at the same time fantastic, strange, and funny. In Galilee, Georgia, young Felix finds that things are not as they first appear, people are wonderfully mysterious, and God is unavoidable. At times odd, frequently very funny, both satirical and poignant, I''m Not from Here is a rollicking tale, a light-hearted parable with serious intent.Willimon''s first novel, Incorporation, was widely acclaimed for its satire, honesty, and theological depth. While this his second novel differs considerably, I''m Not from Here is equally surprising and entertaining, showing Willimon''s gifts as a masterful storyteller. Even as the parables of Jesus reveal things to us that could not be seen except through fiction, so this novel is not only engaging but also revealing.""Willimon''s fiction is brilliant. I''m Not from Here is a pitch-perfect rendering of a flawed community lurching toward an understanding of what it means to be fully alive in an ugly world. Willimon renders the tiniest details of the fictitious town of Galilee, Georgia, with spot-on Garrison Keilloresque accuracy: the six-person choir; a Schopenhauer-quoting parson; fornication against an accounts receivable filing cabinet; and a gallon jar of preserved rabbits. I''m not sure if I laughed harder at the characters'' foibles or my own flawed theology that I recognized through this stunningly rendered parable.""--Best-selling author Allegra Jordan, The End of InnocenceWill Willimon is a widely read author whose previous novel, Incorporation, was widely acclaimed. He is Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina, and is a retired United Methodist bishop.

Description:Hope Church--its clergy and its people--are quite a congregation, an unforgettable cast of saints and sinners. While serving a heavenly realm, they also have their feet plainly planted in the muck and mire of the real world. Here is an Easter story of ordinary folk caught in the gracious grasp of an extraordinary God. In this rollicking, hilarious, sometimes pathetic, fast-paced, and always entertaining journey through a month of Sundays at Hope Church, we meet a wild cast of characters in church people surprised to be the body of Christ. Sex, violence, greed, grunge, lust, and lies--all in church! Saints and sinners all, caught within the embrace of a God who refuses to make proper distinctions.Endorsements:""In Incorporation Will Willimon offers a fascinating fictional exposé of the underside of the American mega-church. Seasoned ministers in this corporate church world are opportunists intent on crowd-pleasing performances that advance their careers. When inevitable missteps expose their manipulative ways, like their counterparts in the corporate world of business, protecting the corporation becomes their prime concern. But reckless ambition leads to compromises that bring about a final tragic accounting. There is still God after all.""--Douglas Alan Walrathauthor of Displacing the Divine: The Minister in the Mirror of American Fiction""Imagine a contemporary variation on Trollope''s Barchester Towers, set in a small American town with a big church called Hope, where both clergy and parishioners are energetically engaged in those all too human emotions--ambition, greed, lust, jealousy, pride--and ungodly shenanigans--drunkenness, adultery, criminal malfeasance--that make the lives of sinners so often more entertaining than the lives of saints. Imagine a touch of madness and mystery and the chance for grace. Imagine the narrator of this novel has a keen sense of irony and humorous insight into his cast of characters. You don''t have to imagine the result. Just read Will Willimon''s irrepressible Incorporation.""--Michael Maloneauthor of The Four Corners of the Sky: A NovelAbout the Contributor(s):Will Willimon is one of the most popular writers on church, ministry, and religion in the United States today. His books have sold over a million copies. He has served as an editor, writer, pastor, and bishop. He currently teaches at Duke Divinity School.