June 30, 2020

This week I attended an online stewardship seminar about what giving to the church looks like now in COVIDtide. (I am indebted to my bishop, Mark Van Koevering, for the term COVIDtide, by the way. Feel free to borrow, and to give credit.)

It was an excellent seminar. But as we were going through it, I thought of something. As with many stewardship programs, we were invited to think through the money story we had learned from our family of origin. Then we were invited to reframe that story in light of the theological reflections on giving and grace that we had worked through in the seminar.

Here’s the thing, though. From my earliest childhood, as I’ve said here before, I grew up framing my life in light of stewardship, reflecting on giving and grace. One of my mother’s favorite sayings was “God is extravagant.” In fact, when we were asked to write down the one word that characterized our childhood experience of money, that’s what I wrote down: Extravagance. I was told as a child not only that Jesus had a claim on my money, but that giving a lot of money away was part of what becoming like Jesus meant.

Here’s the other thing, though: we had a lot of money. Not gold-toilets-and-business-class-flights money, but we-never-have-to-worry-about-anything-and-we-can-go-to-summer-camp money. There was a meme circulating on Facebook a few days ago that asked people what they thought made people rich when they were a kid. One of the things I learned from reading folks’ answers was that I was, in fact, rich, despite the fact that I couldn’t (and still can’t) fly business class. Whenever I really needed something, the money was there for it.

I remember having a hard time convincing my mother that the fact this wasn’t always the case for other people was a flaw in our economic system, not in other people. As a Slytherin and the child of Slytherins, and the descendant of long generations of doctors, lawyers, scientists, and university professors, I have begun telling people that we were the Malfoys without the nastiness (although my daughter has pointed out that, since my family of origin consisted of three Slytherins and my brother the Gryffindor, the Blacks might be a better analogy.)

 

It’s an oft-repeated truism that it’s actually people who have very little who give the most away. The story of the widow’s mite even gives that truism Biblical support. Lack of money, not piles of it, is what’s supposed to produce extravagance. Piles of money is supposed to produce Malfoys. It does produce Malfoys, actually. Just sometimes Malfoys who, like Narcissa in one of my favorite moments in Deathly Hallows – that moment when she keeps Harry alive out of love for her own son – learn that extravangance actually makes better bank.

After we wrote down the one word that characterized our own childhood experience of money, we were then supposed to write down a word that characterized our current experience of asking other Episcopalians for money. I wrote down “Difficult.”

The first word was supposed to explain the second. I’m still trying to figure out if it does.

Image: Unsplash

June 25, 2015

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We’ve made huge strides in the past several years on bringing the topic of work to church. But I’ve noticed an ongoing tension. It’s a tension between what we say about work on Sunday and what we do (or don’t do).

On the one hand, talk of “faith & work” and cultural engagement have been popping up across the evangelical landscape. From Lecrae waxing eloquent on the sacred/secular divide at Liberty University to the forthcoming publication of a Faith and Work Study Bible, it’s becoming blessedly normal to embrace the importance of work for Christian cultural engagement.

But on the other hand, painfully few churches actually do anything on a regular basis to equip their own people for works of service in their daily work. Most church services and weekday programs have gone untouched. This leaves many folks sitting in the pews feeling a bit like Van Gogh’s Starry Night – a city full of light, but a church that has gone dark.

This is really perplexing considering the sheer scope of programming some churches can offer.  Ministries for every life stage are common: kids, students, 20s and 30s, college & career, young marrieds, men, women, singles, and so on. Add in short-term missions, volunteering on Sunday, and church-sponsored basketball leagues, and we’ve hit nearly every interest area. Or have we?

More than once many of us have asked, “What about the other 45 hours of the week?” Nurse, school teacher, app developer, accountant, home-maker, small business owner, barista, engineer, city council member. If work is where culture is made, what would it look like in the practical day-to-day structures of Sunday services and weekly programming for church leaders to equip the diverse Body of Christ for witness and service in and through our work?

In addition to Work “Rhythms” for the Local Church, here are 10 practical steps pastors can take toward becoming a culturally-engaged church. 

On Sunday Morning

1. Host a commissioning service once a year for laity celebrating their work. 

There are several ways to do this. LeTourneau University has an easy to follow format, including prayers and benedictions for the people of God who serve Christ across various sectors and professions.

At DIFW we encourage churches to do something even more simple. As a part of the church partnership program, we create short videos of men and women serving Christ in their work. From there, churches take that video of somebody in their own congregation, play it in a service, interview her about her daily work, and then pray for the whole congregation as they serve Christ in their daily work.

2. Pray for people in their work; consider doing so by season. 

Sometimes these prayers will be formal, like this affirmation of our labor found in Book of Common Prayer, Bishop Slattery’s Prayer for the Work Day, Moses in Psalm 90 (“Establish the work of our hands, O Lord!”), a Prayer for All Christian’s in Their Vocation (by Steve Garber) or a even personally written Prayer for Work.

Other times pastors may want to pray for people in different professions according to season. For example, pray for teachers in August as they go back to school; business leaders, managers, and those in retail in November or December around busy shopping season; farmers as they harvest the crops in the early fall; accountants in March and April; and chefs, servers, and restaurant managers on Mother’s Day – America’s favorite day to go out to eat. Just put these seasons on your annual church calendar, and remember to cover the saints in prayer during these key times of the year

3. Select songs that affirm the value of God’s creation. 

Far too many of our worship songs seem to be only about “me and God” or my own personal heart or feelings. Unfortunately as we sing “When the things of this earth grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace…” it leads us to a view of culture that effectively ignores work and our cultural engagement because it doesn’t “matter” compared to individual salvation and the next life. (Ironically, in my experience, when I became a Christian the things of this earth grew strangely bright and exciting in the light of his glory and grace!)

Instead, consider songs that affirm love for God’s world – both in nature and in human society. Everything from “You make beautiful things, from the dust, out of us,” to “The universe declares your majesty” to “All thy works with joy surround thee, heaven and earth reflect thy rays” affirm the original goodness of God’s creation. I also like Isaac Watts’ riff on Psalm 23: “Oh may thy house be mine abode, and all my work be praise.”

The point isn’t in ignoring a personal relationship with Jesus. This is the foundation of a life of faith! But we can push against the individualistic and privatized faith of our current age by affirming how God works among us, in our world, and is drawing all of his creation (from mountains to machines to the work of mechanics) to himself.

4. Hang work-affirming art in the physical space of your church. 

From painting to photography, most evangelical churches could use a dash of heart-expanding beauty in the foyer. (For that matter, so could most businesses!) For example, The American Craftsman Project is both utterly beautiful and affirming of the manual labor of small businessmen across the US.

You’ll need to decide which types of work you would like to feature based on the professions represented in your own congregation. Churches in New York could highlight finance or drama; in Boston the academy; Texas, the energy industry; and in Denver a huge mural of REI employees and ski lift operators!

Doing this is a lot more simple that you think. Hire a photographer or local artist and find out what the Body of Christ does every week – the great, the sad, the beautiful and the broken. Bring this art back to the actual walls of your church building, and let your congregation’s social and vocational imaginations blossom.

5. Use the word “ministry” to refer to the priestly service of  all Christians. 

Too many  well-meaning church leaders share stories of men and women who left the business world to go into “ministry” – quietly suggesting that only paid church workers are in “ministry.” But the word ministry in the New Testament is also translated “service,” such as in Ephesians 4:12. Here, it’s the particular job of pastors, evangelists, apostles and prophets to “equip the saints for works of ministry/service” in all walks of life – not only those in 501(c)3 nonprofits with an explicitly faith-based mission.

My church, Colorado Community Church, does this well. Their task as pastoral leadership is to “disciple every member to be a missionary.” Since obviously not every member is a missionary overseas, that means every member is called to be a missionary – that is a servant and a witness – in all of life, including family, recreation, and work.

Having said this, there’s no need to ignore differences between the work of pastors and, say, landscapers or lawyers. It is a noble thing to desire to be an overseer (1 Tim. 3:1). And we should encourage more young people to choose to become pastors, not less. Yet we can do this as we affirm that the work of all the saints can be a genuine act of neighbor love.

(Pastors: here’s a quick summary of the different sectors of the American workforce. It can be helpful reminder of where “ministry” is happening on any given week.)

For tips 6-10, check out the next page!

June 4, 2015

The Rev. Mike Mather walks with the youth at Broadway United Methodist Church in Indianapolis. The church has closed many of its traditional helping ministries and created new ways to connect and support the community surrounding it. Photos by Kelly Wilkinson

Broadway United Methodist Church in Indianapolis has redefined what it means to serve its urban community. The approach is simple: See your neighbors as children of God.

For an idea of how Broadway United Methodist Church is turning the model of the urban church inside out, look for a moment at its food pantry, clothing ministry and after-school program.

They’ve been killed off.

In many cases, they were buried with honors. But those ministries, staples of the urban church, are all gone from Broadway. Kaput.

Broadway’s summer youth program, which at one point served 250 children a day — bringing them in for Girl Scouts and basketball, away from the violence and drugs of Broadway’s neighborhood — is gone, too. Broadway let the air out of the basketballs. Sent the Girl Scouts packing.

Then peek into the comfortably cluttered office of the Rev. Mike Mather, who is prone to putting his feet on his desk and leaning so far back in his swivel chair that you expect him to go flying at any moment.

Rev. Mike MatherWatch him, inverted like this, until he suddenly gets animated, drops his feet to the floor, leans over, elbows on knees, and shares this: “One of the things we literally say around here is, ‘Stop helping people.’

“I’m serious.”

He is serious. Mather has given years of thought to this, and he’s as sure about it as anything he learned in seminary.

Broadway UMC’s leaders have changed the way they view their neighbors — as people with gifts, not just needs. In what ways does this view reframe the conversation? What difference does reframing the relationship make in the outcomes achieved?

“The church, and me in particular,” Mather said, “has done a lot of work where we have treated the people around us as if, at worst, they are a different species and, at best, as if they are people to be pitied and helped by us.”

With that in mind, Broadway (link is external) has — for more than a decade now — been reorienting itself. Rather than a bestower of blessings, the church is aiming to be something more humble.

De’Amon Harges“The church decided its call was to be good neighbors. And that we should listen and see people as children of God,” said De’Amon Harges, a church member who sees Broadway’s transformation in terms not unlike Christ’s death, burial and resurrection.

Rejecting charity

In 2004, Mather hired Harges to be Broadway’s first “roving listener,” a position that is exactly what it sounds like. Harges’ job was to rove the neighborhood, block by block at first, spending time with the neighbors, not to gauge their needs but to understand what talents lay there.

“I was curious about what was good in people, and that was what I was going to find out,” he said.

As part of community outreach, members of Broadway United Methodist Church and the community meet for a meal and conversation at Sarah Killingsworth's home, Saturday, March 14, 2015.  This night's topic was entrepreneurship.  In this photo, De'Amon Harges
De’Amon Harges, Broadway’s “roving listener,” listens to Sheila Arnold as she talks about helping youth with her organization, Cornerstone City Mission. They have gathered with others to share a meal and discuss entrepreneurship. These meals are one way that Broadway members and people living in the neighborhood around the church connect and work together.

Harges wound up spending hours sitting on people’s porches and hovering near them as they worked in their backyard gardens. He began listening for hints about their gifts.

“I started paying attention” he said, “to what they really cared about.”

Mather, meanwhile, was drawing deeply from the philosophical well of “asset-based community development” — the notion of capitalizing on what’s good and working in a place rather than merely addressing its deficiencies.

As part of community outreach, members of Broadway United Methodist Church and the community meet for a meal and conversation at Sarah Killingsworth's, left, home, Saturday, March 14, 2015.  This night's topic was entrepreneurship.
Sarah Killingsworth, left, hosted the meal and discussion about entrepreneurship.

John McKnight, a professor emeritus at Northwestern University, is one of the founders of the approach. He literally wrote the book on building communities from the inside out. He describes Mather and Harges as a “God-given team.”

When Broadway invited him to come speak, McKnight spent some time walking the church’s neighborhood with Harges.

“What he’s listening for is their gifts — ‘What has God given you?’” McKnight said. He doesn’t advocate ignoring people’s needs and problems, but rather to look first for solutions within the community itself. Later, he said, institutions and services can help.

“John 15:15 tells us that, at the Last Supper, Jesus said to the disciples, ‘I no longer call you servants. … I call you friends.’ So the final way of defining what Christianity is based on is friendship, not service. … I think Mike and De’Amon are guided by that spiritual principle.”

A key to what’s going on now at Broadway, McKnight says, is the church’s brutally honest view of charity, which McKnight defines as “a one-way compensatory activity that never changes anything.”

Seeing and serving needs

Like so many older, urban churches, Broadway came to its charitable ways honestly, and with the best of intentions.

The third service on Sundays at Broadway United Methodist Church are in the beautiful sanctuary, Sunday, March 15, 2015.
Broadway was once a thriving church. It experienced steep decline but now has about 200 in worship.

When the current building was erected, in 1927, the church along the banks of Fall Creek was on the northern outskirts of Indianapolis. It was then a flourishing area primed for growth. Within a decade, Broadway had 2,300 members. The pews were packed. The Sunday school rooms were buzzing.

But by the late 1950s, Indianapolis began to experience white flight to newer suburbs. The neighborhood began a long, slow decline. And so did the church.

By the mid-1990s, weekly attendance was down to 75. The pews were empty. The Sunday school was dark.

Amid the surrounding decay, the church assumed a new role: caregiver.

Broadway, Mather says now, came to see its neighborhood for all of its problems — poverty and abandoned houses, drugs and the related violence, high teen pregnancy and dropout rates.

Mather confesses to being part of that history. He has been pastor of Broadway twice, and during his first stint, from 1986 to 1991, he retooled the church’s summer youth program — the one with the basketballs and the Girl Scouts — and injected it with a new spiritual theme each week. And it took off.

“We felt so good about it,” Mather said, “that I broke my arm patting myself on the back.”

But then Mather was confronted with a heavy dose of reality. In a nine-month span, nine young men within a four-block radius of the church died violent deaths. Some of them had come through that great youth program at Broadway, a program that had done nothing to inoculate them against street violence.

Mather was left to bury them — along with the sense that what Broadway had been doing for its neighborhood all those years had not been effective.

Asking new questions

Mather carried that sense with him to another United Methodist church in South Bend, Indiana, where he was assigned in 1992.

Again, he was a pastor in an urban setting. But this time Mather began to probe more deeply into McKnight’s philosophies, into what it meant to be an urban preacher. Finally, he asked himself whether he was living out what he believed, and what he had been preaching.

One Pentecost Sunday, Mather preached about Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 regarding the prophecy of Joel:

“And in the last days it will be,” God says, “that I will pour out my Spirit on all people, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.” (Acts 2:17-18 NET)

At a congregational meal after the service, a parishioner asked Mather pointedly, “So how come we don’t treat people like that?”

Mather didn’t understand. Then the woman explained that she was talking about the government food giveaway hosted by the church. To get food, participants had to fill out a form that basically asked, “How poor are you?”

Nowhere on the form were there questions about people’s gifts.

“If we believe that God’s spirit is flowing down on all people, old and young, women and men — and on the poor,” the woman continued, “why don’t we treat people like that’s true?”

February 27, 2015

This post comes to us from The Well. Thanks, folks!


By Heather Ardrey

There are many reasons people move to a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Some are in it for the adventure. Some are in it for the money. Some are in it for the nostalgia, having grown up here. But many of us are running from something.

For over a year leading up to our decision to move, it was clear that there was a transition coming. It was one of those times when I just knew that I knew that change was coming — I just didn’t know what it was. Everything in life seemed fine. Family was good: husband, two kids. Neighborhood was good — great even, by some measures. Church was good. Work was good: doing things I was good at for a good cause. But still, I didn’t feel settled and my husband, Dave, didn’t either. Everything was good, but nothing was quite right. We had many long conversations about what was next and absolutely no clarity.

In the fall of 2013, we entered what I would come to call our “dart-throwing” stage. Dave started sending out feelers both within and outside of his company. I was doing the same. Everywhere it seemed doors were closing and by late winter/early spring, it seemed we would start the fall of that year in the same place with essentially the same questions and uncertainty we had had the previous fall. Then something shifted.

In the end of February, Dave applied within his company for a lab group that works and lives on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands — mid-Pacific Ocean. In our minds the chances of it working out were very, very slim. But by the end of April he was offered a position, our household goods left mid-May and the first week of July we moved half a world away.

When we made the decision to move to Kwaj, I didn’t think I was running away, or at least I wasn’t only running away. We had a lot of good reasons to move, including feeling that this was the door God had opened for us. This was the change we had been waiting for. It was a relatively easy decision for us to make, even given the magnitude of choosing to move so far from everything and everyone we’d ever known.

It didn’t take long on the island before I realized that I had been running from something after all. In that year of discernment leading up to our move, I hadn’t really been asking the right questions. Instead of inquiring with an open mind and heart, I had been more in crisis mode. I’m in my mid-thirties — I should know what I want to do with my life. I should know what God wants of me. But it felt hard to ask God those questions, and it felt harder to listen for the answers.

I realized that I had not really been dreaming about what I could do. I had not really even been able to ask God, because I was afraid. I’m afraid that taking care of my kids is all God will ask me to do. I’m also afraid God will ask more, for something bigger than I’m capable of. I’m afraid that in dreaming a future for myself, I’m grasping at something that’s not really mine to grasp.

Our pastor here on the island said once that for those who run away to Kwaj, there’s a sense that the island life might be a balm of sorts. Maybe the hurt, or isolation, or fear will go away if I just sit under a palm tree long enough. But I can tell you from experience — it doesn’t go away, at least not in the way you want. In fact, before there’s any chance of it going away it shows up again. It finds you. There are fewer distractions here, so when it shows up it’s harder to ignore. You can’t hide from it. It’s too obvious outlined against the turquoise water of the lagoon. When it finds you, you have two choices: you can find another palm tree on another island and then another and another and just keep running forever…or you can stop running and decide — this island, this palm tree is the one I will stay under, where I will sit with this pain until we come to an understanding.

Just this past month I finally picked a palm tree. I am not going to run from this anymore. As I was processing all of the fear with my spiritual director, her question to me was: “Who is this God who only gives you fearful options?” Aw, snap. He doesn’t. Why would he? I don’t believe God is giving this fear to me. Scripture tells us that perfect love drives out fear. I’m not stagnant because God is silent — I’m spinning my wheels because of fear. This is not where I want to be. I want to be active. I want to be moving forward. Fear stagnates, love propels.

I felt like I had heard something like this before, and here is what I found:

“When we sit in fear, we are constricted — our heart closes, our muscles tighten, our thoughts ricochet, and our spirit is caged….When we’re in a state of fear, it’s difficult to move. Our body, mind, emotions, and spirit stagnate.  And when we do move, we’re like a little gerbil running aimlessly on its little wheel inside its little cage, going nowhere, running fast to stand still….So how do we get off this wheel of self-inflicted, vegetative angst?  By moving into gratitude. Once in gratitude, we can go anywhere. Gratitude is the element of love that maintains an open heart, expands our capacity for tolerance, and sustains compassion. Love propels us forward in life and in our spiritual growth.” — Tina Frisco

Living with a grateful heart, like most things that matter, is not a given. It is not something that will happen without our attention. Gratitude is a discipline, just as most important things are. If we want to excel at it, we have to practice.

Adele Calhoun tells us in her book Spiritual Disciplines Handbook that gratitude as a spiritual discipline has little to do with what’s around us or what we’re given. It’s all about being aware of who’s around us. It’s about noticing God’s presence with us and within the world. Gratitude is ultimately a response towards God. Conversely, a lack of gratitude stems from being unable or unwilling to notice God’s presence regardless of the circumstances.

We move out of fear by moving into gratitude. It is not an invitation to an easy gratitude that pretends nothing bad ever happens. Instead, we are invited to reframe the way we view our lives and the circumstances of our lives. And above all else we are invited to notice God.

I still don’t have answers. Even though I know this island life is a temporary one for us, I don’t know what’s next. I may not for a very long time. As a person who likes to plan, that puts me in a really uncomfortable place. I want to know what to prepare for. I want to feel I have a purpose outside of myself and outside of my home. But for now, I’ve picked my palm tree. I will not run from the fear of what God might ask of me. I know him to be a God who gives life-giving, love-filled options, not fearful ones.  As I sit here under my palm tree, I will wait for him to open a way forward in my vocation. I will look for the presence of God and be grateful I am not alone.

Heather Reneé Ardrey is an Ordained Elder in the Church of the Nazarene. She is a former Intervarsity Graduate Staff Worker. She, her husband Dave, and their two kids live on a two-mile-long island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Heather currently spends her time caring for her kids while waiting for whatever is next in her vocation. In her free time, she can be found scuba diving, painting, or writing.

January 1, 2015

This post is part of a Patheos Public Square on best practices for peace.


TPC_GregForster_bioYou can’t make peace if you don’t know what peace is. That much is clear from the daily headlines. I can’t think of a better “best practice for peace” than to reframe our lives around a more accurate view of what peace really is: not the absence of conflict, but the presence of right relationships.

As Augustine once observed, everyone is for “peace” but everyone wants a different kind of peace. For the Stoic and the Buddhist, peace is the death of our desires. For Confucius and Aristotle, peace is living in accordance with nature. For any number of dictators and madmen, peace is all the rest of us bowing down to them.

Even the cruel, greedy dragon in C.S. Lewis’ The Pilgrim’s Regress, consumed day and night with the miserable burden of guarding his hoard,prayed to God for peace:

 Oh, Lord, that made the dragon, grant me thy peace!
But ask not that I should give up the gold,
Nor move, nor die: others would get the gold.
Kill, rather, Lord, the men and the other dragons
That I may sleep, go when I will to drink.

There you have the rock bottom – the most ambitious and comprehensive plan for peace possible. Permanent, too.

This horrible view of “peace” is more relevant to our practical problems than you may think. A suppressed version of this view has come to dominate much of our public life in the western world. If we want to build other approaches to peace, we must become aware of what we are really fighting.

What the dragon really wants is not the death of all other living things as such. He wants the absence of conflict without the submission of his own desires to a higher standard of good. The death of all other living things is merely the means implicit in the desire for this end.

And the chilling thing to realize is that striving after “the absence of conflict without the submission of our desires to a higher standard of good” is precisely the goal of much of our political, economic and social activity today. Like the dragon, we do not actually strive to dove-41260_640exterminate all life. What we want is a sort of bartered compromise in which we each get as much as we can for ourselves without going to war with one another.

In politics, we often vote for leaders who will deliver more swag (whether in the form of money and patronage, or symbolic culture-war victories) to our groups. In economics, we often use the market system as a tool to extract economic value from others rather than for what it was made for – to provide us with opportunities to create value for others through our work. In the home, we often treat marriage as a source of individual emotional fulfillment rather than a permanent metaphysical union within which the self-interest of each member disappears.

These approaches, over time, teach us to view one another as rivals for status and resources. They set citizen against citizen, worker against worker, spouse against spouse. The dragon’s desire for the death of all others takes up residence in our hearts. Our vision of peace teaches us to hate our neighbors.

And this selfishness ultimately undermines whatever complex system of compromises we try to build. Dragon-hearted people can’t build systems that last. That’s why T.S. Eliot used the word “dreaming” when he described us as people trying “to escape from the darkness, outside and within, by dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”

In the Bible, “peace” means not the absence of conflict but the presence of right relationships. Supremely this means love, although much else is required. And “love” in the biblical sense is not primarily about feelings. Our feelings are important, but the real heart of love is a firm and disciplined will to pursue the good of others regardless of how we feel about it.

It is important to realize that the presence of right relationship does not necessarily imply the absence of conflict. Peter was in wrong relationship with the crowd in the palace courtyard when he denied his lord in order to avoid conflict with them. By contrast, Paul was in right relationship with Peter when he rebuked Peter for leadership practices that compromised the integrity of the gospel.

We get peace not by avoiding conflict but by pursuing the good of others. Of course, over time and in the long run, a firm resolve to pursue the good of others will dramatically reduce the occurrence of conflict. But when we make an idol out of the absence of conflict, we get isolation from one another and – ultimately – dragonish hearts that lead to more conflict.

If you ask me for one “best practice for peace” in 2015 it would be: Create peace through your conflicts. Each month, make a list of the three most important conflicts going on in your life and think about how you can seek the good of others in those conflicts. Pray for the light to see new ways of being in right relationship with others when it’s hardest, and for the strength to do so.

And a second “best practice” is like it: Over the year, build ongoing relationships between your own household and two households in which core relationships are broken. If possible, try for one Christian and one non-Christian household. The biggest challenge facing the poor in our midst is not a lack of money but the breakdown of work and family relationships. If every Christian household built relationships of mutual care and strengthening with two other households, we’d have this “peace” thing licked in time for 2016.

Dove image: Pixabay.

December 31, 2014

businessman-573024_640Check them out again! And stay tuned for more great musings and helpful tips on faith, work, vocation, calling, and economics in 2015!

  1. A Broken Brave New World: Greg Forster talks about a new approach to helping the poor.
  2. What’s Wrong With “Do What You Love?” Jeff Haanen asks if we can find a better guide to following our callings.
  3. Andy Crouch on Why We Can’t See the Faith-Work Connection–We’re Missing Chapters of Our Bible:  Chris Armstrong reports in from the “Redeeming Work” event in Minneapolis on the parts of the Bible we tend to leave out.
  4. Faith, Work, and #Ferguson: An Opportunity for Us: Vincent Bacote outlines how the faith and work movement could respond to the broken systems that contributed to the recent events in Ferguson, Mo.
  5. Community Development Forum: Growing New Ideas: An interview with Brian Jones of Innové Project about the way a church is incubating new and entrepreneurial businesses in Minneapolis-St. Paul.  (PS. They are receiving applications for their next round of grants until January 5, 2015!)
  6. Reframe Your Life: Here’s How: Information on a new curriculum about connecting faith to daily life, produced by the Washington Institute for Faith, Culture, and Vocation in cooperation with Regent College.  You can read even more about it in these other posts on the topic.
  7. Does Blue-Collar Work Have Any Meaning?: Former pastor and factory worker Larry Saunders on why he couldn’t feel fulfilled on the factory floor despite following all the precepts he preached to his congregation.
  8. Politics in the Pulpit: Yes and No? Preach about justice, says Greg Forster.
  9. What Does Faith and Work Mean to Blue-Collar Workers?: The Oikonomia Network muses on what the faith and work movement needs to do differently to respond to the challenges of blue-collar work.
  10. Faith and Work Movement, Heal Thyself: Chris Armstrong talks about how consumerism in the American church has disconnected us from any real efforts to transform the culture.

Image: Pixabay.

 

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