Discerning God's Call to Vocation: Chris Luken’s Vocation Story

This is the eighth in our series on Christian vocation. Chris Luken is currently Youth Minister at Epiphany.

The perspective of my vocation story is coming from a single man who is engaged and soon to be married. Since there is no set category for this, my story will come at it from several angles.

I first started to hear a vocation as a freshman or sophomore in high school. While at the time, I did not know what a vocation was, I felt a pull toward what I thought God was calling me to do while on earth. I had a very inspirational theology teacher and was a member of a very involved youth group. These two experiences led me to hear a calling towards working with high school youth either in a teaching or youth ministry capacity.

I assumed that because I was religious, spiritual, and wanted to work in ministry the obvious route that I would take was to become a priest. I started talking with priests, my youth minister, and others to figure out what it exactly meant to be a priest. But as I started down this road, I never heard God calling me to be a priest. The harder I pushed for it, the more God called me down a different path.

By the time I entered college, I had realized and accepted the fact that priesthood was not in my future. I then figured I was then called to the closest thing I could get to a priest. I thought I would marry a nice Catholic girl and start a family. I would get my job as a youth minister or teacher. I would then become a deacon. I became heavily involved in the Catholic Students Association, music ministry, and campus ministry. I surrounded myself with all things Catholic while attaining a degree in theology. Again, after I had a plan set firmly in my mind, God had a better idea.

My senior year at Bellarmine, while I was researching Catholic colleges and universities where I could go to receive a Master’s degree in theology, I started dating a Reform Jew. It soon became apparent to both Krissy, the girl I was dating, and me that this relationship was very serious. It was also during this time that I discerned St. Meinrad as the graduate school I would attend. While I was at St. Meinrad, I had a chance to study Hebrew among other classes. I also had the opportunity to be in spiritual direction. My discernment in spiritual direction allowed me to see that Krissy was the person I was going to ask to marry me. When I asked her, she said yes. As we started planning the wedding, I started preparing for my graduation and entrance into the work world. I sent letters to all of the Catholic high schools and started looking for other ministry positions that were open. While I knew that I wanted to work with youth in some form of ministry as a vocation, I was still uncertain of the form that would manifest itself. The youth ministry position at Epiphany seemed to happen all at the right time. It also gave me the opportunity to have the catechetical role as teacher as well as the freedom of working in youth ministry and teach beyond the bounds of the school walls.

My story has taken many turns down roads I never expected they would take. I went from wanting to be a priest, to a deacon married to a Catholic woman, to where I am now, a Catholic youth minister marrying a Jewish woman. Working with youth in ministry was the one part of my vocation that never changed. Properly discerning the will of God and listening to that will has led me to where I am today. And while it was unexpected, I cannot see myself any happier in life than I am today.