I still remember what it was like, as a senior in college, to hear the dreaded question: “What’s next?” Plenty of my friends had good answers. I didn’t. I was sure I was going to marry my college sweetheart (she in fact said yes). I knew I wanted to study certain subjects. I knew I needed to earn enough money to live and make my student loan payments. When the question came from well-meaning professors, friends, and future in-laws, I fumbled for an answer, trying not to visibly panic.
Since then, I’ve learned my story isn’t unique: Many soon-to-be-graduates don’t know what’s next. Many feel something must have gone wrong. After four years of study and formation, we think, wasn’t I meant to have my whole life mapped out and immediately use my degree to provide financially and make a meaningful difference in the world? Why am I about to walk across the stage without my vocation figured out?
That word vocation is at the heart of graduation-season anxiety. Many worry that if they don’t launch straightaway into a meaningful career, they’re missing their vocation. But this has very little to do with a biblical understanding of vocation.
If you want your post-college “bridge years” to be fruitful and not just anxiety-ridden, or if you’re walking alongside a recent graduate, we need to return to what Scripture teaches about vocation. Here are five things graduates can hold onto in this season:
1. Your vocation is not unique to you.
Vocation comes from the Greek vocare, “to be called.” The apostle Paul really liked this word, addressing believers in Rome and in Corinth as “called ones,” or “invited ones” (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2). In Paul’s letters, vocation is tied to being called by God: We’ve been called to participate in God’s kingdom plan of redemption through Christ. And crucially, in all of this, Paul is addressing churches, not individuals. The most important aspects of your vocation, your calling, are common to all Christians. Put another way, while God’s call is personal, it is never individual. It is a call to be part of a people.
2. Your vocation is not primarily (or even secondarily) about your career.
We live, as philosopher Josef Pieper put it, in a world of “total work.” Writing in Europe as it sought to rebuild after World War II, Pieper argued that the modern world makes work our identity: Work spreads “to cover and include the whole of human activity and even of human life.” In other words, we are what we achieve and produce. If Pieper’s diagnosis is right, no wonder that when we speak about vocation, we’re usually talking about our career.
To be sure, work is part of being human. Working hard, earning a wage, and being productive are all good things. The problem is that vocation and occupation aren’t interchangeable. Instead, the Bible makes clear that our vocation, God’s call on our lives, is fundamental. Christ calls us, just as he called his disciples, saying, “Come, follow me” (Matt. 4:19).
Following Christ has implications for every aspect of life, and responding to God’s call should make a difference in why and how (and perhaps even in what field) one works. But a career is likely not even secondary to a person’s vocation. Likely, paid work is less central to following God’s call than things like loving your family, caring for your neighbor, serving others, and perhaps even pursuing hobbies or unpaid work. These may be more essential to your vocation.
3. Your vocation is not a secret plan for your life that God will only reveal if you crack the code.
When I listen to students talk about vocation, it sometimes sounds like they’re trying to solve a riddle or decode a secret message. It’s as if God designed them for one specific career path but refuses to give them the map. We’ve already challenged this notion by remembering that vocation is primarily corporate. But it’s also not a riddle or a secret. It’s something clearly laid out for you.
Listen to some things Paul makes quite clear: Your calling doesn’t have anything to do with your abilities (1 Cor. 1:18–31); your calling is something bestowed on you by God (Rom. 11); your calling is eschatologically oriented toward your final hope (Eph. 13–14); your calling is about holiness (2 Tim. 1:9); and God is making you worthy of your calling (2 Thess. 1:11). Notice how many of these come from the opening lines of Paul’s epistles. There’s nothing hidden here. Paul wants you to get it, so he says it right up front.
What’s hard about vocation is not that we have to guess what it is. What’s hard is obeying. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Our vocation is to follow Christ to the Cross.
4. Your vocation is not something you figure out between the ages of 20 and 23 and then coast on for the rest of your life.
If the heart of your vocation is clear—it’s the way of the Cross—you still need to discern what to do with your days. This discernment isn’t something you’ll finish this year, or next. You won’t figure out your vocation at age 25 and be done with it.
One reason is practical: Life won’t go the way you expect. If you’re graduating in 2026, you’ll change jobs on average every 3.2 years. Your generation moves around more, buys a first home later, and marries both less and older. Your life will be more fluid and less permanent than that of your predecessors. That might excite you or make you anxious or both. Regardless, it means you’ll never be done asking, How should I follow Christ?
You don’t graduate from vocational discernment, because the Christian life requires ongoing repentance. We need moments in our days and in the church year (like the season of Lent) when we pause to remember our mortality, to take a long, hard look at our sin and to ask, once again, “How can I turn back to you, Lord? From what do I need to turn away?”
Because life holds many twists and turns, and because we’re never done repenting, discernment isn’t something from which we move on.
5. Your vocation is as much about the present as it is about the future.
Finally, it’s tempting to think of vocational discernment as figuring out something that happens in the future, about making plans or large life choices. There’s nothing wrong with making a plan, but planning can easily distract us from the present. Worse still, our planning can be spiritually dangerous when it makes us feel like we’re in control of lives. To those of us addicted to planning, Christ asks: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matt. 6:27).
Discernment is less about the future and more about what God is doing right now. As theologian Gordon Smith puts it, “To discern well we must pay attention: we need to observe and listen, noting what is happening around us and within us and attending to what others are saying.” In other words, discernment requires noticing what God is doing and seeking to participate in his work. We can only hear Christ’s call when he speaks to us—here and now. One way to avoid answering Christ is to obsess over the future, to fixate on our plans, dreams, and anxieties.
If you’re coming up on graduation, you’ve likely been in a season of life that’s all about discerning your vocation. Whether or not you have plans lined up or are still wondering what to do, it’s a weighty time.
Thankfully, your vocation doesn’t hinge on what comes right after graduation. The most important aspects of your calling have already been given to you. Your vocation is not defined by what you’ll go on to achieve. Instead, you’ve been invited to belong to God’s people, to hear and respond to Christ’s call to follow him to the Cross. And the work of discerning how to follow this call isn’t something you’ll wrap up by May. And for someone who keeps getting the “What’s next?” question, this is very good news.
Paul Gutacker serves as the executive director of Brazos Fellows, a post-college program in Waco, Texas, that invites emerging adults to commit to a common rule of life. He is the author of Practicing Life Together: A Common Rule for Christian Growth.
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