Vocation - The Rt Revd Dr Chris Herbert

It is a huge honour to have been invited both to chair this symposium and to speak at it and I want to thank not only Dr Chadwick but also John Gay and Diana Lazenby for their very considerable kindness in inviting us all to be here. It’s one of the joys for those of us who have had some part in the educational history of this country to know that trusts such as St Gabriel’s – and I have to put in one now for my own team, the Hockerill Trust - are able to sponsor this kind of event. I think it’s a remarkable way in which money can be well spent in trying to keep the vision of their original founders going.

You will see that the title this evening is ‘Faith and Citizenship in the 21st Century’ with the subtitle, ‘Vocation, Profession and Citizenship’. I have been asked to say something about the first of those three words, ‘Vocation’. I want to start by suggesting that my allotted task is by no means straightforward because something rather odd is happening to this general area of language in our society. If one compares the use of the word ‘vocation’ and the use of the word ‘spirituality’ in public discourse it soon becomes apparent that the word ‘spiritual’ has become relatively common in a whole range of areas of public discourse while the word ‘vocation’ has slipped very significantly down the league table and almost out of public discourse altogether.

For example if you look at any materials coming from the government related to the National Health Service, you will frequently find the word ‘spiritual’ in there somewhere – as of course you will in any document relating to education. The word ‘spiritual’ seems to be becoming as significant in public institutions as it is in the contemporary bookshop (in those awful, awful sections marked ‘Body, Mind and Spirit’). But if you look for the use of the word ‘vocation’ in an NHS document the picture is very different. If you go to the NHS website, for example, and set up a search for ‘vocation’ only one reference comes up under an NHS label - just one, and that is in one of their magazines. There are, however, references to the word ‘vocation’ from a number of universities, raising questions such as ‘Nursing – Job or Vocation?’ so here at least we are on territory familiar to those used to Christian discourse.

But outside the Church (with the apparently ambivalent exception of nursing) wherever the word ‘vocation’ is still used it now appears in an adjectival form, usually attached to the word ‘qualification’. So if I say ‘NVQ’, you know what the V stands for. (National Vocational Qualification). And the NVQs, as you know, refer to what used to be called ‘trades’ (as opposed to professions). I looked up to see how the NVQ website site itself would define ‘vocational’. The nearest to such a definition comes in the answer to the question ‘What are NVQs?’ I quote ‘The central feature of NVQs is the national occupational standards (NOSs) on which they are based. NOSs are statements of performance which describe what competent people in a particular occupation are expected to be able to do. They cover all the main aspects of occupation including current best practice, the ability to adapt to future standards and the knowledge and understanding which undergird competent performance’.

The implied definition of ‘vocational’ here (and it is only implied) is that it has something to do with upholding standards within a particular occupation by achieving competent performance undergirded by appropriate knowledge and understanding. It’s very difficult to find there any sense in which the word ‘vocation’ reflects what the word has meant, and possibly continues to mean, within the Christian Church.

Traditionally, of course, the word ‘vocation’ was used within Christian circles mainly to refer to vocations to the ordained ministry. But various lay ministries are now seen as being ‘vocational’ in the sense that it is acknowledged that people can be ‘called’ to exercise them. However, a somewhat more pragmatic view is possible. I was telling a friend that I was going to give this mini-address and asked him to give me a quick definition of ‘vocations’. And his immediate response was ‘A vocation means you don’t have to pay people very much for what they do.’ It was a very perspicacious remark – with echoes of the debate I mentioned earlier about whether nursing is a job or a vocation.

Of course even a ‘vocation’ in the Christian sense is still a ‘job’ (however well or poorly paid) and still requires a person to have certain ‘competences’. The study of journals kept by priests across the last couple of centuries reveals changing concepts of what the ’job’ entails. But perhaps we need to make a distinction here between a vocation in the sense of an experience of having been ‘called’ and a vocation in the sense of the job to which one is called. Even though the ‘job’ has clearly changed over the years, the approach to the job will have remained constant. It will have been seen as a task to be performed on behalf of others (the People of God, society, whatever) calling for a sense of commitment and purposeful action.

Certainly, if citizenship is to become a noble concept once again – and I make no apology for using the word ‘noble’ – a concept which involves such a sense of commitment and purposeful action, then ‘vocation’, in its broadest sense, needs to be explored anew and brought back into the public arena. I believe it is a much tougher, more awkward and angular word than ‘spirituality’ and for that reason it should be reinstated.