For more than a decade, over 50% of U.S. workers have consistently reported feeling dissatisfied and disengaged from their work (Conference Board, 2016; Gallup, 2015), including many workers who identify as Christian (Miller, 2007). While many Christian workers claim that connecting their faith and work is a critical way of infusing their work with meaning and purpose (Miller, 2007), many also lament experiencing a "Sunday-Monday Gap" (Nash & McLennan, 2001 p. 7), where their faith has little to no meaningful connection to their work. Recently, the ancient concepts of vocation and calling have experienced a resurgence (Duffy & Dik, 2013), partly as a reflection of Christian workers' desire and attempts to integrate their faith and work in more meaningful and comprehensive ways (Duffy & Dik, 2009, Miller, 2007).The phenomenon of vocational formation describes a developmental process wherein a Christian learns to explore and articulate meaningful connections between their faith and the rest of life, with particular focus on the integration of faith and work (Chandler, et al., 2014; Parks, 2000). While emerging adulthood is an ideal time of life for young adults to explore life's "big questions" of meaning, purpose, and vocation (Parks, 2000), Christian young adults often lack the necessary resources from social institutions (e.g., church, college, and the workplace) to effectively support their vocational formation (Clydesdale, 2015; Dalton, 2001, Kinnaman & Hawkins, 2011). As a response, growing numbers of Christian groups have created programs to foster the vocational formation of young adults; however, due to a lack of research, little is known about how the process of vocational formation occurs and the efficacy of these programs.Therefore, the purpose of this appreciative qualitative inquiry was to uncover more about the vocational formation process and experiences of Christian young adults who have learned to integrate their faith and work in meaningful ways. To this end, 10 'vocational exemplars' were selected from a group of young adults who had participated in The Fellows Initiative (TFI), a 10-month long vocational formation "Fellows" program for recent college graduates. Data were collected in the fall of 2017 and primarily focused on a series of in-depth narrative-based interviews which were augmented by field observations and a wide range of vocational artifacts.Findings from this study include evidence that participants engaged in a form of transformative learning during their Fellows year, a vocational transformation which resulted in a more expansive faith, a more satisfying relationship with their work, and a less compartmentalized life overall. This study also found that the primary catalyst within participants' vocational transformation was a series of theological concepts (e.g., Vocational theology, Biblical metanarrative framework, and Christian worldview lens), which were introduced in, and reinforced throughout, their Fellows program. Participants often referenced these concepts through the image of "God's story" and/or the "4-Chapter Gospel", and discussed how these concepts helped to transform their prior assumptions about the world, work, faith, and the relationships between them. Participants' transformed perspectives also had a positive impact on their experiences with integrating faith and work, and helped them to discover more meaning, purpose, and value in their lay (i.e., non-ministry) work. More specifically, participants' experiences were transformed from professional ambiguity to clarity about how God was calling them to a lay profession, from spiritual anxiety to confidence about the intrinsic value of their lay work within God's mission, and from vocational apathy to creativity about a wider range of ways their faith and work were/could be meaningfully connected. A new conceptual model for vocational transformation is offered to illustrate the complex process observed in this study. Since this study provides groundbreaking evidence about how vocational formation occurs for Christian young adults, implications for related theory and praxis are also discussed.
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