Today’s guest post comes from Bill Sieben, one of an excellent class of students from Bethel Seminary who recently studied the intersection between faith, vocation and work. Beginning my recent Theology of Vocation class, I struggled to determine the difference between a Theology of Vocation class vs. a Discipleship Class. What I found is that a Theology of Vocation includes an element of vocational or even societal reformation. It includes a level of discipleship that goes beyond personal interactions and begins to engage... Read more

Today’s guest post comes from Ryan Braley, one of an excellent class of students from Bethel Seminary who recently studied the intersection between faith, vocation and work. Youth pastors are kind of like mad scientists. We sit in a lab and experiment with crazy idea after crazy idea searching for better ways to create space for young people to experience the living God. Sometimes the experiment fizzles out and amounts to nothing more than a decent effort. Other times we catch lightning in... Read more

Today’s guest post comes from Maurice Williams, one of an excellent class of students from Bethel Seminary who recently studied the intersection between faith, vocation and work.   The issue of AIDS looms heavily in Africa as well as in Black communities in the United States. It has been reported that AIDS has killed an estimated 25 million people since it was first recognized in 1981. The vast majority of these deaths were of African or African American decent. The Office of Minority... Read more

Today’s guest post comes from Charles White, one of an excellent class of students from Bethel Seminary who recently studied the intersection between faith, vocation and work. Inertia, the force that we first learn to associate with physical processes, is also an extremely strong force when we look at vocation. In physics it is defined as the resistance of any physical object to any change in its motion (including a change in direction). In other aspects of our lives, it is a force... Read more

Today’s guest post comes from Chad Wensink, one of an excellent class of students from Bethel Seminary who recently studied the intersection between faith, vocation and work. The relationship between Christian work and money continues to be a matter of major concern for Christians who seek to fulfill their God-given calling while managing their finances well. In the past few years it seems that economic concerns have–in many cases–been pushed to the forefront of the societal concerns expressed in the mainstream media, and... Read more

Today’s guest post comes from Laura Schaffer, one of an excellent class of students from Bethel Seminary who recently studied the intersection between faith, vocation and work. Over the last couple of months I have had the opportunity to do some in depth thinking and reflecting on the concept of work in ways that unfortunately I must admit I never have before.  In a nutshell work for me has been something that one does to earn a paycheck and if you’re... Read more

Today’s guest post comes from Dave Jernander, one of an excellent class of students from Bethel Seminary who recently studied the intersection between faith, vocation and work. I believe to adequately understand the concept of work we must recognize the origin of work which is recorded in Scripture, namely (Genesis 1:1-15). In regards to this Biblical passage we see that God worked in creation, and we later discover that since man is made in the image of God that, he too,... Read more

Today’s guest post comes from Carley Evenson, one of an excellent class of students from Bethel Seminary who recently studied the intersection between faith, vocation and work. I have been waiting for God to send me the pristine, professional and beautiful PowerPoint slideshow, with perfectly timed music in the background and an accompanying map of my life and His will for it, preferably quite detailed and specific. Silly me, apparently he does not work that way. My type-A planner-personality would like... Read more