Academic Exchange Quarterly
Winter 2003: Volume 7, Issue 4
To cite, use print source rather than this on-line versions.
A Spirituality of Collaboration
In Hebrew scriptures, the great patriarchs and prophets usually struggle to
recognize God’s call. A student-teacher relationship is often the vital key
to discerning vocation. The relationship between Eli, the temple priest at
Shiloh in the eleventh century B.C.E.., and his young ward Samuel, who
assisted in worship, illustrates this important spiritual idea.  In
1 Samuel, God calls Samuel audibly three times, but Samuel (who is possibly
still just a boy at this time) doesn’t recognize God’s voice. He instead
responds instead to Eli the priest—his elder, mentor, supervisor, and
co-habitant. “Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD
had not yet been revealed to him.”  It was Eli, his mentor, who finally
realized God was calling Samuel and told him how to respond. The fourth time,
obeying Eli’s advice, Samuel asked God to speak and then listened while God
gave him a prophetic message for Eli.  Just as Eli had helped Samuel
discern his call and vocation, young Samuel then helped his mentor Eli
understand God’s will and work in Eli’s life.
Another example of this kind of relationship is that between the prophet Elijah
and his young successor Elisha. God tells Elijah, a nomadic prophet, to anoint
Elisha to be prophet in his place. He found Elisha and put his own mantle on him,
explaining that although he could indeed go kiss his parents goodbye as he’d
requested, Elijah had just done something very important to him.  Elisha
initially followed and served Elijah, but as Elisha began his political and
prophet work with the future king of Syria, Elijah recognizes the fulfillment
of his own prophetic understanding and career.  When Elijah asks what he can
do for Elisha before being take up, and Elisha asks for the wisdom and
discernment of his mentor: “I pray you, let me inherit a double share of your
Because of the resistance to women’s ministry and leadership in many spiritual
communities, their experiences of call often follow this model as well. Nearly
all of the women clergy interviewed by Fulbright scholar and graduate student
in sociology Annette McCabe felt a distinct and specific call, usually at a
young age, to give herself over to full-time Christian service. One woman
described having an “almost audible” “Samuel-type experience”: “I just kept
hearing my name, ‘Would you preach for me, would you teach for me?’” One
clergywoman described her whole process, fairly typical both of the biblical
accounts of call and of women interviewed: “I feel it in my heart, I prayed,
I thought, I fasted, I sought counsel, I was in the Word, and I felt in my
heart that God said, ‘I want you to preach my Word.’”  However, in spite of
their personal experiences of call, an elder’s or mentor’s confirmation of the
call through spiritual discernment was vital. “Given this idea that the
pastorate was inaccessible to women, all of the women continued in different
directions until someone, usually a male, specifically told them that they were
gifted to pastor and needed to be heading in that direction.” 
Just as Eli discerned Samuel’s call, women and men today also need elders and
mentors to help them discern and affirm their vocation, whatever it may be.
This may happen through student advising, informal conversation during office
hours, feedback on written assignments, and in threaded discussions online.
However, it seems that this dimension of teaching requires skills that are
seldom mentioned as part of our interaction with students. Where lecturing,
advising, and training are the parts of our role normally emphasized, this kind
of relationship requires listening, waiting, and observing to learn the student’s
strengths, gifts, and yearnings.
Part of what Elisha would later do was revealed to Elijah by a “still, small
voice” in a whirlwind. What patience and self-discipline are required to discern
what is nearly inaudible amid the chaotic noise of our academic and personal
lives (a challenge that seems all the more real to me as I write this during in
my campus office at the end of the first week of fall semester)! More listening
and less speaking are basic changes to help us accomplish this. We can only
recognize the student’s call if we are sometimes quiet enough to hear it, too.
 Dietrich Gruen, ed. Who’s Who in the Bible. Lincolnwood, Illinois:
Publications International, 1998, 133, 466.
 1 Samuel 3:8. All citations are from Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, ed.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University,
 1 Samuel 3:11-18. Ibid.
 1 Kings 19.16. Ibid, 477.
 1 Kings 19.15-16; 2 Kings 8.7-15, 9.1-37; Ibid, 466.
 2 Kings 2.9. Ibid.
 Annette McCabe. “Evangelical Women Pastors: Calling, Career, Gender Roles,
and Ministry.” Unpublished paper. Azusa Pacific University.
April 1, 2003, 9.
 Ibid., 31.
 Ibid., 11.
Heather Ann Ackley, Ph.D.
Azusa Pacific University
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