By Dylan Pahman A website called Over Fifty and Out of Work offers Baby-Boomers who have lost their jobs an opportunity to share their stories. Many talk of age discrimination in hiring practices as they look for new work, but all speak of the trial of wanting to work but being unable to find it. The stories reveal that work is a significant factor in one’s self-worth and, I would add, a duty of human dignity. Kay Kusy-Eliassen shares her story there as well.... Read more
By Joseph Sunde Television personality and former Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe has become somewhat notorious for penning pointed responses to fans and critics on Facebook, offering routine challenges to prevailing attitudes about work, calling, and vocation. In his most recent rant, Rowe stays true to form, explaining to a man named “Stephen” why popular vocational directives such as “follow your passion!” make for such terrible advice: Like all bad advice, “Follow Your Passion” is routinely dispensed as though it’s wisdom were both incontrovertible and equally applicable to all. It’s not. Just... Read more
By Elise Hilton In preparation for the Symposium on Common Grace in Business (co-sponsored by the Acton Institute and Calvin College), I spent time with Shirley Roels, one of the moderators for the event. Roels, a former business faculty member at Calvin College, is now senior advisor to NetVUE (Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education.) Roels now works primarily with young adults, and we spent time talking about vocation, spiritual life, business and how young adults think about these concepts. The first... Read more
By Joseph Sunde The Acton Institute’s new film series, For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles, was released earlier this year, and in the months since, has garnered heaps of praise from a variety of corners, most recently in Christianity Today, where Andy Crouch described it as “Christian popular culture that embodies theological and spiritual maturity—and childlike humility.” Now, in addition to the DVD and Blu-Ray combo pack (which is on sale for only $35), you can expand your FLOW experience with a new Exile Supply... Read more
By Evan Koons World-renowned fine artist, and special guest in Episode 6 of For the Life of the World, Makoto Fujimura recently came to Grand Rapids to promote his latest work “Walking on Water – Azurite” for the nationally-recognized art competition ArtPrize. An elegy to the 2011 Tsunami that obliterated the coasts of Japan’s northern islands, “Walking on Water” seizes the essence of destruction, chaos, and crushing violence that the earth carries at its core. He reminds us that in simple pivots, the earth can... Read more
By Joseph Sunde “Christian discipleship is nothing less than conformity to Christ—as individual believers and as local communities,” writes Charlie Self in Flourishing Churches and Communities, CLP’s Pentecostal primer on faith, work, and economics. “The very life of God is in us.” Most of us have heard the Great Commandment and the Great Commission in their basic forms, but understanding the relationship between the two and living out that combined imperative can be difficult to wrap our minds around. How do we love the Lord... Read more
By Jordan Ballor Conversations about human dignity often, and rightly, refer to the biblical concept of the image of God. In the creation account in Genesis 1:27 we read that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” The third person pronouns are fitting here because the text is providing a narrative depiction of a past event. Those human beings back then were created by God. When... Read more
By Elise Hilton Andy Crouch, Christian author, musician and former Acton University plenary speaker, reviews For the Life of the World, a new film series produced by the Acton Institute. In the newest edition of Christianity Today, Crouch discusses how the series takes the Dutch Reformed theology of Abraham Kuyper and “pops” it in a whole new direction. The result, Crouch says, is inventive, profound, and rewarding. With the intention of attempting to “articulate core concepts of oikonomia (stewardship), anamnesis (remembering), and prolepsis (anticipation)” for... Read more
“All that exists is God’s gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man’s life communion with God…God blesses everything He creates, and, in biblical language, this means that He makes all creation the sign and means of His presence and wisdom, love and revelation.” -Alexander Schmemann The following clip is an excerpt from the first episode of For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles (the film series), and sets the stage for... Read more
By Jordan Ballor There’s much for lovers of faith and freedom to appreciate in the new LEGO movie. The film aptly captures the playfulness and creativity that have been so closely identified with the little plastic bricks for decades. One of the more memorable lines from the film is the chorus to a little ditty that recurs throughout: “Everything is awesome!” When we are first introduced to the song, we encounter it as a stultifying earworm designed to keep the masses of LEGO... Read more
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