Recently on the Oikonomia Network author and Detroit pastor Chris Brooks shared an excerpt from his new book, Urban Apologetics: Why the Gospel is Good News for the City. He reminded his readers, To those who are willing to put in the hard work of learning how to engage socially without compromising biblically will be given a harvest of souls. And this is our ultimate goal. Unlike secularists who are attempting to establish a utopia on earth (which can never come about... Read more
Recently at On Faith, writer and university professor Halee Gray Scott talked about what happened to her family in the Great Recession: I was nine months pregnant when my husband, Paul, decided to quit his job in 2009 — right after the economy took a nosedive. The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its biggest single-day decline in its 124-year history, obliterating more than $1.2 trillion in market value. American and European banks failed. The S&P 500 lost 21.6% of its... Read more
We’re starting a new feature over on the Patheos Faith and Work Channel’s Facebook page; daily prayers for work. (You can see the first one here.) From general prayers for seeking God’s will, to prayers for hope in difficult situations, to prayers for guidance in finding our calling, to–whenever we can find them–prayers for people in specific occupations, we hope we can find a prayer each day from both famous Christian saints and modern folks that will speak to you.... Read more
….first of all, please stay tuned, because we’ll have people from the Patheos Faith and Work Channel at some other conferences related to faith and work in the near future, live-blogging, tweeting (our Twitter account is here–if you aren’t following us, hop on over and sign on!), and reporting afterwards with thoughtful commentary and real-life practical tips. Secondly, if you haven’t discovered our events calendar, you might want to take a look. You can look for faith and work events... Read more
Tom Nelson, pastor of metro Kansas City’s Christ Community Church and author of Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work, talked a lot at the Redeeming Work event about the robust theology of everyday work his congregation has tried to cultivate….and you can read about it in my two previous posts on his talk, here and here. But that’s not the only way they try to bring Monday back into Sunday at Christ Church. They aim for a regular liturgical emphasis on work–in worship. Language... Read more
Tom Nelson, pastor of metro Kansas City’s Christ Community Church and author of Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work, had plenty to tell us as we munched oversize muffins about what’s going on in Genesis 2. And it’s not, he said, what we commonly think of. Tom argued that Genesis 2 is a story about how humans fit in as image bearers with the work of God in the world. So often preachers go right to the topic of marriage when they... Read more
A highlight of the recent Redeeming Work Twin Cities conference was Tom Nelson, pastor of metro Kansas City’s Christ Community Church and author of Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work. Tom opened by telling a story on himself. At a posh benefit dinner, Tom had successfully avoided “outing himself” as a pastor until . . . a redoubtable society woman greeted him loudly across a table of formally dressed movers and shakers: “Pastor Tom!” she said. And Tom... Read more
At Leadership Journal‘s Redeeming Work Twin Cities event yesterday, Andy Crouch winds up his thought-provoking opening talk with a magic (well, how about “providential”) formula for human flourishing through human work. Ready? Authority + Vulnerability = Flourishing More than any other creature, he argues, image bearers (humans) have Authority, and Vulnerability. Authority = capacity for meaningful action (more than any other creature) Vulnerability = exposure to meaningful risk (more than any other creature) We humans are exposed to risk, and... Read more
Andy Crouch said something provocative (well, more than one thing provocative) at the Redeeming Work conference here in the Twin Cities yesterday. By way of explaining why today’s Christians have been so blind to the spiritual significance of everyday work, Andy made this blunt claim: “We are missing chapters of our Bible.” Huh? Really? Is this like the extra Gnostic stuff Elaine Pagels has been telling us about? Nope. Andy says we’re missing the first two and the last two... Read more
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Exciting news!
Our friends at Theology of Work Project have some pretty exciting news to announce today: they’ve just released an entire new commentary–online immediately and in print in October–dealing with the subject of work in the Bible. It’s written by a top-notch group of scholars, pastors, executives, and workers, and tackles questions like these: I’m not a minister. Does God care about my work? Does he call people to ordinary jobs? My job is to promote my product. Is it... Read more