Cultivating Your Calling

How has calling transformed your life?

What life circumstances led to your transformation? Who supports and mentors you?

In the 1980s, I was called into solidarity with Philippine Christians working for human rights and liberation in their country. For eleven years, my wife and I immersed ourselves in exploring the meaning of solidarity under the intense challenges of that work, and developed some of the most meaningful relationships of our lives.

Decades later, the issues I wrestled with then emerged in a new context. What did liberation look like in the context of the United Methodist church in the United States?

In 2006, I felt called to start a multiracial, boundary-crossing church in the Bronx. The work was hard, but we weren't afraid to try new things. Some of them failed, but several led to new levels of faith community. One six-week course devoted to naming and living our life's purpose lit a fire. We repeated the course two or three times a year, leading to dozens of powerful breakthroughs in people’s lives and infusing our faith community with the spiritual energy of calling.

Reflecting on both the challenges and the power of calling — I have come to a simple realization: calling must be cultivated.

The Parable

In Mark 4, Jesus tells a parable of a sower scattering seed. The seed is the Word of life, designed to bear fruit. But the parable also names the obstacles: rocks that block the roots we need to withstand persecution; thorns of materialism and greed that choke the plant before it can grow. Cultivation is the key to thirty, sixty, even a hundredfold growth. Read alongside the persecution described in Mark 3, this parable offers wise guidance for how we tend our calling — and what threatens to strangle it.

How the Retreat Works

Before the retreat. The process begins 2–3 weeks out with a one-hour individual coaching session, in person or via Zoom. My training comes from the International Coaching Federation, grounded in the belief that the wisdom and solutions you need are already within you. My role isn't to hand you answers — it's to ask the questions and offer the observations that help you clarify your own understanding of your calling.

One colleague, reflecting on this work, pointed out that the word calling itself can carry weight — often assuming that some people have more access to certain roles than others, based on race, class, sexual orientation, gender, and age. She suggested that any real reflection on calling needs room to name and untangle that knot before it can move forward. We take that seriously.

At the retreat. By the time you arrive, you'll already be sitting with your calling — and the retreat turns to cultivating the soil. Using the imagery of the sower, the seed, and the soil, we'll look honestly at what chokes deep growth: the well-worn paths of tradition, the rocks that block our roots, the thorns of materialism and popularity. And we'll practice, together, the disciplines that clear the ground.

The retreat includes time for quiet reflection, walking the labyrinth, small-group conversation, and hands-on practice with the tools that form the foundation of a long-term cultivation practice — one built for an abundant harvest.

After the retreat. A final individual coaching session, a few weeks later, helps deepen the roots of what you've begun.

Interested? Have questions? Reach out — I'd love to talk with you: cunninghamdp@gmail.com