Joan of Arcadia – “Vocation and Call”

In 2006 I was asked to speak at a camp for high school students, the material I produced for the gig was based around call and vocation. Using segments from the television series “Joan of Arcadia” I was able to produce four sessions, tree of which I’ve decided to release in a package for people to use as they wish, in the package is the powerpoint for each session including a breakdown of the presentation, the student handbook for the camp that will provide some help in forming small groups to discuss the sessions and an episode guide for each episode I used for the sessions.

The fourth session was a session in which I tied all the previous sessions together, I’ll try and piece that together for people in the near future, we didn’t use a particular episode for this session, instead I included a number of scenes of God approaching Joan from the entire series. This is why not as much has been done on this session than on the others. I hope you find the sessions useful, if you want to provide feedback please email me. Feel free to use in your ministries at no cost..

Joan of Arcadia and Vocation / Call Session 1

Here’s the first of four sessions on Vocation and Call using Joan of Arcadia as a discussion helper. I’ve included leaders notes in the Power Point presentation as well as the time settings for each clip from the dvd.

This session’s the first of four sessions on prophecy, call and vocation. During this session we’re introducing people to the stories of Moses, Gideon, Matthew and Jeremiah all who were called by God/Jesus to be prophets among the nations. One of the features of the call narrative is the discussion between the caller who appears and the callee who then makes an excuse, for some it’s because they aren’t a good speaker, for others it’s their age and, for someone like Matthew it’s their unworthiness. We are all called by God to be prophets, to be people of God and, like Jeremiah and Gideon and Matthew and Moses and others before and after them we try to offer our own excuses, our own attempts at saying that we’re not worthy.

The Joan of Arcadia episode is Episode 1, “Pilot” and follows the first time that God appears to Joan and enlists her to help him in Arcadia, the discussion sheet is in the slide notes for the second slide and include the call narrative for Joan.

The key questions for small group discussion for this session are:

What are my weaknesses?
What have been/would be my excuses?
Have I ever heard God calling me?
How does God appear to me?

Download Session Powerpoint: Joan of Arcadia Session 01 ppt
Download Session Episode Guide: Joan of Arcadia Session Guide 01 pdf
Download Series Student Handbook: Joan of Arcadia Student Handbook pdf

Joan of Arcadia and Vocation / Call Session 2

One of the things that’s common in the call narratives of the prophets is the reassurance that while they are called to do something big they are not being called to do it alone. Jeremiah is reassured by God as is Moses and Gideon, Peter finds himself being reminded that he’s going to be doing it all with Jesus and his friends. So after we offer our excuses God has a tendency to say “that’s cool, but together those excuses don’t mean a thing, I’m going with you.” God never asks us to do something without God being with us, without being given the skills to do what we’re called to do.

This session delves into that, it asks what people are good at, what skills that God’s given them, and how those skills have grown and changed over time.

The Joan of Arcadia episode deals with precisely this, God calls Joan to build a boat, something that she shows no aptitude for, she even has a conversation with God later in the episode about finding that she has some gifts, but they’re the wrong gifts, can she “make a gift exchange”?…

Bruce Van Blair writes that “Always God assumes that we are going to do this in partnership with him” and it’s this that we seem to constantly forget.

The session also asks about what gifts we’d like to swap, what would we swap them for, and also goes into asking how we feel when we’re all alone and when others have put down our skills and gifts.

The end message is that we’re called, but we’re not called to do things alone, that God is always present and wanting to be involved, no matter what it is that we’ve been called to, whether it be building a boat, saving a nation or loving a enemy.

Download Session Powerpoint: Joan of Arcadia Session 02 ppt
Download Session Episode Guide: Joan of Arcadia Session Guide 02 pdf
Download Series Student Handbook: Joan of Arcadia Student Handbook pdf

Joan of Arcadia and Vocation / Call Session 3

I’m not sure what I fear more, failure or success, I guess it all depends on the meanings that I give them really. But if I’m being called to be a prophet to the nations then success would probably mean hanging around people that I don’t want to, eating with people who are my enemies, possibly it’d mean being homeless, or being poor, or leaving home or moving somewhere I don’t want to live. Failure would at least mean that I can stay home, earn money, buy all the things that I need, eat a lot of food, have a good job…

I should say that to be a prophet one might be called to stay at home and have a good job, but the reality is that for Moses through to Peter this wasn’t the case, they were asked to go on a journey, a long journey.

For some of us our fears may have been shown in our discussion on our excuses, for others it may run deeper than that, me, well I’m afraid of truly being alone, I’m also kind of afraid of what it’d mean to be called by God to go somewhere that I’ve never planned for. Others may be afraid of letting their friends know who they really are, I mean, how do you tell your skateboarding friends that you’re a Christian and that you’re being called to work in northern Australia in indigenous communities. Others might be afraid of ending up financially bankrupt, being handicapped, or suffering illness…

And then there are those who are afraid to let people into their lives, or afraid to enter into the lives of others…

Which is where we meet Joan and her friends in this session, a baby’s been found in a dumpster and while the police and school staff are trying to figure out who the mum is in order to save the girl’s life it seems that noone in the school, even Joan is paying enough attention to their peers, their friends in order to have even noticed that one of their own was pregnant. Are we too afraid to be close to each other? And what about the fears of the mother?

It helps us to talk about those things that we’re afraid of, to ask for help from others to get through it, to feel safe enough in a space to say “I’m not coping” and to not be berated because of it, this episode shows us that while school may sometimes not feel like that place it better become such a place or our fears will take over.

I wonder what Moses, Gideon, Peter and Jeremiah were afraid of.

I wonder what scares us, what REALLY scares us…

Today’s questions are: