The Discernment Deck: the Stocking Stuffer that will Change your World
12-14-2015
By Rev. Wayne Meisel
You may have noticed our #DecemberDiscernment Questions on Twitter and Facebook, these come from the newly created Discernment Deck. Center for Faith and Service Director Wayne Meisel created the Discernment Deck to help people of all ages sense the movement of the Spirit in their lives and discover what God has in store for them on the next step of their vocational journeys.
What do you want for Christmas? If you said a “Discernment Deck” then I know you have been hanging around the Center for Faith and Service or on one of the twenty six seminaries or divinity schools that are part of Seminarians that Change the World.
The Discernment Deck is s sleek looking deck of black cards in a plastic case that are about the same size as an Phone 6. Inside is a journey of forty cards, each with a topic or quote and a question that touches on every aspect of ones life, from joys and hopes to challenges and realities.
For years I traveled around the country helping to design and lead weekend retreats where the focus was on vocational discernment. What is that you might ask? Well you might get as many answers as people you ask, but since I am the one writing this article, I will give you my definition. Discernment is the act of being thoughtful and intentional about the important choices that you make. For people of faith, it invokes the living god into our heads, hearts, and hands to walk with us during the process.
Travel is expensive, time consuming and limited. I thought how could we take what we hard learned and what we have heard and circulate it to more and more people.
So if the world has Cards Against Humanity, then I felt we should have the Discernment Deck to balance it out. Inside the box are forty cards, divided into four areas: Self, Relationships, Choices and Vocation. The cards come with no instruction, although there is a link to a site that offers different ways to use them. We created them mostly for young adults who were in the midst of or just finishing up a year of service with a program like YAV, Jesuit Volunteer Corps or AmeriCorps. But we have found that retired people and high school students have used and enjoyed them as well.
The original idea was to hand them out during the New Faces of Ministry Tour. We will do that but we also have learned from college chaplains, youth and young adults ministers, youth corps directors, students and parents and just about everyone else that they would like one to.
If you would like one, please us know. Because we have them printed locally and can only do small runs, they are expensive to produce. But a ten-dollar donation to the Center is likely to get you a pack.
So if you do get a Discernment Deck for Christmas, you will not only be receive a neat stocking stuffer, but you will begin a lifetime journey once you open the pack. Discern Away, but when you do it, do it with joy, hope and a sense that you are part of a larger community who wish you well and who will walk with you all along the way.
Rev. Wayne Meisel is the Director for the Center for Faith and Service, a national initiative to guide seminary students as they seek to live out their call through service. Wayne is a blogger at the Huffington Post, and you can follow him @waynemeisel12. To get your own Discernment Deck, visit Faith3.org
One of the questions posed by the Discernment Deck
