Center for Calling and Vocational Formation

Welcome to the Center for Calling and Vocational Formation! The CCVF was launched at McAfee in 2022 through a partnership with the Lilly Foundation to support a community of students, congregations, and ministries as they discern their callings and live out their vocations.  We carry out this vision in three ways:

• Creating programming and educational opportunities on calling and vocational formation to incoming, current, and graduated McAfee students.
• Expanding McAfee’s learning community to include alumni, local congregations, pastors, and lay ministers and offering resources and continuing education.
• Providing access to seminary education for lay-persons in a way that allows them to remain rooted in their local ministry context, whether full-time or bi-vocationally.

We are excited to see the ways that McAfee and Mercer students live out their callings in meaningful vocations, engaging their faith to “imagine, discover, and create God’s future.”

CCVF Mentoring Fellowship Program

Churches face a litany of unprecedented challenges that often leave the ministerial and administrative staff overwhelmed and overburdened. With a nationwide shortage of seminary-trained clergy, many congregations are looking inwardly to fill in the gaps to better serve their communities and meet the needs of the congregation. The CCVF Mentoring Fellowship encourages and fosters a relationship between pastors/professors and student-mentees within the student’s local ministry context. Both mentor and mentee become partners on a great growth journey where everybody grows and wins.

Funding and resources are available for CCVF Fellows participating in the program!

For more information, email theologyadmissions@mercer.edu

Vocational Formation I & II

Vocational Formation I is designed to assist second-year M.Div. students in nurturing and understanding their call to ministry through peer learning and critical reflection in a small group setting. Particular attention is given to vocational discernment as it relates to personal and professional identity formation. Vocational Formation II is a continuation of Vocational Formation I, designed to assist second-year M.Div. students in nurturing and understanding their call to ministry.

The two courses achieve multiple grant objectives: They prepare students spiritually and practically for their upcoming contextual education components. A more diverse student population at McAfee will be formed as they reflect upon their lived experiences and classmates’ roles in conversation and the formation of their callings. Our graduates will be healthier and better equipped to serve in their vocational contexts.

Student Learning Cohorts

Learning cohorts for students, alumni, and other stakeholders at conferences, retreats, and workshops have proven effective in aiding students in vocational formation and discernment.

McAfee partners with The Ministry Collaborative to offer a semester-long cohort for 10 students enrolled in its online master’s and doctoral programs seeking pastoral and ministry leadership.  Through six sessions and an in-person retreat, students are provided space to contextualize their classroom learnings and engage in the discernment of their ministerial identity, purpose, and vocation with a special focus on self-care, creative expression, and prayerful practice. The group calls students to creatively engage with congregation and community, express diverse perspectives, experiment and explore the changing landscape of ministry, and build an ongoing practice of forming an open-hearted and faithful response to the joys and challenges of ministry.

Other learning cohorts convene at conferences such as the Women in Ministry Conference, Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference, No Longer Invisible: Disabilities and Faith Conference, and William B. Self Lectures at Mercer University.

For more information about CCVF, please contact Leah Jackson at Jackson_LD@mercer.edu