Pastoral Calling Reimagined

Celebrating the Spirit’s Abundant Invitation

Conversations in the Canadian Church book 02

Edited by Gordon T. Smith
Chapters by Gordon T. Smith, Karis Thy Le, Amy Caswell Bratton, Clara King
Foreword by Mark Buchanan

Who is God calling into ministry leadership? This question rings through churches looking for pastors, denominations seeing fewer new pastors and theological institutions training the next generation of leaders.

Pastoral Calling Reimagined explores mid-career calling, multivocational leadership, and shared ministry between lay leaders and clergy in the church. The variety of people God is calling today brings hope to a changing landscape. Dr. Gordon T. Smith ignites the conversation and brings in three voices, Rev. Karis Thy Le, Amy Caswell Bratton, and Rev. Clara King, who are active in the Canadian church, to share their experience of the Spirit’s abundant invitation.

Contributors

Featured

Gordon T Smith is the Executive Director for Christian Higher Education Canada (CHEC) and a Teaching Fellow at Regent College, Vancouver. He is the author of a number of publications, including Welcome Holy Spirit: A Theological and Experiential Introduction (IVPress, 2021), Your Calling Here and Now: Making Sense of Vocation (IVPress, 2022), and In the Meantime: Living in Light of the Ascension (Cascade, 2025). He has for many years had a particular interest in the question of vocation, work and career. Gordon is married to Joella and together they have two adult sons and six grandchildren.

Karis Thy Le (Lê Nguyễn Huyền Thy) is the pastor of the English-speaking congregation at Brampton Vietnamese Alliance Church. Originally from Vietnam, she now lives in the Greater Toronto Area with her husband, Hung, and their daughter, Anna. Karis has been serving in ministry since 2008, including two years in the mission field in Malaysia and eight years in Vietnam. Karis holds an MA in Pastoral Counseling from Singapore Bible College and an MDiv in Intercultural Ministries from Ambrose University. She loves preaching and teaching the Word of God and regularly serves as a guest speaker for churches and retreats. Her passion is to help people know God and experience a deeper relationship with the LORD God through Jesus Christ.

Amy Caswell Bratton is the Director of Operations & Publishing for the New Leaf Network and the project manager for the Canadian Multivocational Ministry Project and a chapter contributor to Tentmakers: Multivocational Ministry in Western Society, (2022). She lives in Saskatoon, SK, on Treaty 6 land, with her husband, Tim, and their sons, Oswald and Ira. She is a lay leader at Riversdale Neighbours church and an Adjunct Professor with Rocky Mountain College in the area of Spiritual Formation. She writes and speaks about the history of Christian spirituality, with a focus on the early Methodist understanding of Christian maturity known as “perfect love.” Read more from her in her book Witnesses of Perfect Love: Narratives of Christian Perfection in Early Methodism, (2014).

Clara King is an ordained priest in the Anglican Church of Canada (M.Div '08, Vancouver School of Theology), with experience in urban, suburban, rural, and regional ministry. Since 2018, Clara has taught leadership for clergy and lay leaders in a variety of denominations in Canada and the United States. She is a teacher and mentor in the Leader’s Way Program for clergy at Yale Divinity School, and a PhD candidate in Practical Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. With her husband Michael, she has two adult step-daughters, two characterful horses, and a Border Terrier named Jonah. They live in Calgary.

Description

Edited by Gordon T. Smith

Foreword by Mark Buchanan

Chapter contributions by Gordon T. Smith, Karis Thy Le, Amy Caswell Bratton, and Clara King