“I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.”
— John 15:16
The Calling — Seeing Through a New Lens
The oldest vocation in the world is not power.
It is following.
Long before there were leaders or titles,
there were seekers who listened—
men and women who followed the sound of truth across deserts,
through forests,
over centuries.
They did not build empires.
They carried presence.
Every wisdom tradition remembers them:
the disciples who followed not to possess,
but to perceive;
the learners who knew that the way to wisdom
was not ascent,
but accompaniment.
The sages called them ṛṣi—
those who heard what others could not.
The Greeks called them mathētēs—
students who followed a living question.
The desert called them prophets.
The monasteries called them novices.
The poets simply called them awake.
They all shared one vocation:
to follow what calls them beyond themselves.
Discipleship has never been about imitation.
It is about orientation—
a life turned toward something greater,
a willingness to walk where love is leading,
even when the road is unmarked.
We do not lead because we are ready.
We lead because something sacred
has already taken a step in us.
Discipleship begins there—
in the quiet turning of a soul
that no longer needs to define success,
only to follow what is true.
To see through this lens
is to recognize that the truest leaders
are the ones still learning to follow.
The Shaping — Speaking the Language of Presence
Every calling begins with sound,
but it endures through shape.
The call is what stirs the heart;
formation is what teaches the heart to stay.
The disciples who walked with their teachers did not study strategy.
They studied life.
They learned not by command but by companionship—
by watching how presence moved through ordinary hours.
A rabbi walking through a field,
a master potter turning clay,
a monk sweeping the floor,
a mother whispering psalms before dawn—
each was teaching the same truth:
that vocation is not what you perform;
it is what you practice until it becomes you.
This is the quiet labor of discipleship—
to be shaped, not shown;
to be formed, not finished.
We learn integrity by being trusted.
We learn patience by being delayed.
We learn grace by being forgiven.
We learn presence by being loved.
And through this shaping, vocation ceases to be a pursuit
and becomes a participation.
The work itself turns into prayer.
The task turns into offering.
The ordinary becomes altar.
When Christ said, “Follow me,”
He did not invite His disciples to perform His power.
He invited them to walk His way—
to live as presence among people,
to become what proximity reveals.
The more we live this language of presence,
the more our leadership begins to speak on its own—
not in words of authority,
but in echoes of love.
The Cost — Leading Without Possession
Every vocation asks for something.
But discipleship asks for everything.
Not all at once—
but piece by piece,
as we learn to release what we once thought was ours to carry.
The disciple’s first act is not belief.
It is surrender.
To follow is to unlearn ownership—
of time, of certainty, of control.
It is to walk by faith when sight is still being restored.
Leadership often begins with possession:
vision, authority, influence.
But discipleship matures through relinquishment.
It is the practice of letting the outcomes belong to God,
while giving the process your whole heart.
The saints of every age have known this cost.
Abraham left his homeland without map or proof.
Mary offered her body before she knew the plan.
The first disciples dropped their nets,
trading provision for presence.
To follow Christ is to lead with empty hands.
There is a poverty to this path—
a holy exposure that reveals what cannot be managed or measured.
But it is within that emptiness
that vocation becomes what it was meant to be:
not achievement,
but availability.
Every time we surrender the need to control the outcome,
we make room for resurrection.
That is the paradox of discipleship:
you lose your life only to find it alive in another form—
deeper, quieter, freer.
The cost of leadership is self.
The reward is service.
The fruit is peace.
This is leadership that lasts:
the kind that does not hold,
but hands over.
The Continuance — Living the Legacy
Every calling begins with a voice.
But it continues through lives that keep answering.
The disciples who followed Jesus did not carry titles.
They carried stories.
And through those stories, the call continued—
not as inheritance of office,
but as invitation of spirit.
They did not build an institution;
they tended a flame.
And when one generation’s breath grew faint,
another bent close to keep it alive.
That is how vocation endures:
not through control,
but through continuation.
Discipleship was never meant to end in one life.
It is a rhythm that keeps becoming—
each person who follows becomes the next voice that calls.
The potter teaches the apprentice.
The teacher shapes the student.
The mentor blesses the one who will surpass them.
And the Christ who once said “Follow me”
now speaks through those who do.
This is the mystery of vocation:
what we follow becomes what we embody.
The call we answer becomes the life we offer.
And the presence that once led us
now leads through us.
Leadership ends where vocation begins,
and vocation continues where discipleship is lived.
Because what is truly followed
is never finished.
When all positions fade
and names are forgotten,
the rhythm remains—
a pulse of grace moving through generations,
holding the world together
through the simple faithfulness of those who keep saying yes.
Closing Benediction
“Follow me,” He said.
And the world has been learning how ever since.
To lead, to serve, to create, to heal—
these are not different paths.
They are echoes of the same vocation:
to embody what calls us toward love.
This is the work that never ends—
the living continuation of presence,
the discipleship that leads by becoming,
the leadership that lasts.