Seen on a T-shirt:

“If I Had Known Being a Grandparent Was So Much Fun, I Would Have Done It First.”

That’s not exactly true in real life. Being a grandparent is fun, but not always.

And, being a grandparent first is impossible.

Janet L. Ramsey, associate professor of congregation care leadership, Luther Seminary, tried to sort out whether grandparenting was a vocation or an avocation Tuesday at the “Grandparent Conference: The Call to Grand-parenting.”

Her keynote address was “Grandparenting as vocation: Love, Meaning and Hope.”

Whether grandparenting is a vocation or an avocation is an important distinction to be made.

If it’s a vocation, it’s a job.

If it’s an avocation, it’s is an activity that a person does as a hobby outside their main occupation.

Ramsey compared grand parenting to a vocation.

“My whole point today,” Ramsey during a Tuesday morning conference break, “is to reframe grand parenting as a vocation and not just something that happens to you biologically, but something that you really see as God’s calling in your life.”

To make her point, Ramsey told Tuesday’s conference attendees, “We need to use vocational language more frequently and root it more deeply in our theology of a ‘new creation.’”

“We need to find practical ways to support grandparenting as a vocation; especially, but only to those who are custodial or heavily involved grandparents,” she said. “Support groups, mentoring programs, continuing education events, respite care by youth and one-on-one support from other grandparents … all of these are powerful resources.

“As a church and in our communities, we need to advocate for financial and legal justice on behalf of grandparents, including visitation rights following divorce custody battles, compensation for full-time child care, etc.,” she said.

Ramsey’s call for action goes further.

“We can provide more nuanced and complex narrative of what it means to be a grandparent,” she said. “Against the simplistic, overly-sentimental narrative of our culture.”

Once that is done, Ramsey added it will be time to work to integrate the more nuanced and complex narrative with the alternative narrative of the “good news in Christ.”

“We need to pray regularly for both parents and grandparents in each congregation and as a national church, that their important work be strengthened and supported by the Holy Spirit and by the love and care of other Christians,” she said.

Bishop Harold Usgaard opened the conference with a blessing from the Southeast Minnesota Synod of the ELCA. Usgaard served at St. Olaf Lutheran Church as its senior pastor before becoming the Southeast Minnesota ELCA bishop.

Breakout sessions examined such topics as Long Distance Grandparenting, Youth Culture, Volunteer Grandparenting, Legal Rights of Grandparents and Resource Sharing.

Todd Portinga, St. Olaf’s director of older adult ministries, who organized Tuesday’s conference, said the attendees represented a cross-section of grandparents from the greater Austin community.

More women, than men, the participants were a part of something new: A conference connecting grandparents with vocation. The latter, Portinga said, was “having a sacred calling from God.”

The St. Olaf idea was catching on while it was in process Tuesday.

“We’ve had ripples about what we’ve been doing here,” Portinga said. A similar conference is scheduled in St. Paul next week and an ELCA synod in northern Wisconsin is also interested in holding one of its own and another Lutheran synod in Iowa, too, according to Portinga.

“I’ve told our team here at St. Olaf that we have been successful even before we got started, because we put it on the public agenda to talk about,” he said.

The keynote speaker said she hopes, in part, use the St. Olaf grandparenting conference to start a new trend of her own.

“I think the trend we need to start is to put more honor and dignity to elders, in general, but especially to such an important role that has an impact on our communities and the world today,” she said.

“We can learn from our children, but we can also teach children. Grandparenting is a back-and-forth thing,” she said.

For more information about Ramsey’s “Grandparenting as Vocation” theme, go online to www.luthersem.edu/j ramsey.