David Spickard is the President and CEO of Jobs for Life (JfL), a global non-profit organization that engages and equips the local Church to address the impact of joblessness through the dignity of work. He wrote an amazing story at Live58 that explains why work is so integral to what it means to be human and to participate in God’s mission in the world. Joy grew up in a home absent of work. Her mom got by on public assistance... Read more
Being the aroma of Christ in the world. The priest walks down the center of the church, waving an urn of burning incense. The sweet smell fills the church as an act of worship to God, and all are reminded of the sacrifice of Christ, of how his sacrifice wafts to and fro, from the cross into the world, as the witness of God’s love. As the church, we are called to be that sweet aroma to the world around... Read more
In this video, Will Messenger offers a brief overview of the biblical foundation for work. As the Executive Editor of the Theology of Work Project, he oversaw one of the most important projects of the century: The Theology of Work Commentary (available free online at theologyofwork.org). Over the past seven years, 138 scholars, pastors and workplace Christians from 16 countries researched every book of the Bible, recognizing over 1000 passages related or directly applicable to work. [tvideo type=”youtube” clip_id=”Yilotbr8Tro” autoplay=”false”... Read more
Years ago, a friend gave me a small framed print highlighting a verse from the Gospel of Luke: “For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” (Luke 12:12) She handed me the gift a few minutes before I stepped to the podium to deliver a keynote address. Her gift was a reminder that when I stood before the audience, I didn’t stand there alone. The Holy Spirit would be with me. After... Read more
“Beauty is the word that shall be our first. Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving... Read more
In this video, Skye Jethani makes a bold claim: That many evangelical Christians, even though they think they know what the Gospel is, actually have not ever heard the gospel clearly and succinctly. In fact, they have mistaken the “response” to the Gospel with the Gospel itself. Why is this video so important? Because it is because we have the gospel wrong that we live dis-integrated lives. We need to get the Gospel right in order to reintegrate faith, life, and vocations. Skye says,... Read more
In this video, Katherine Leary Alsdorf gives excellent insight into why reintegrating faith with work is essential to living out the gospel in today’s culture and how this also makes radical and positive changes to our churches and to our evangelism. Christians need it, our churches need it, and the world needs it. [tvideo type=”youtube” clip_id=”eFcOzWTRtbU” autoplay=”false” controls=”true” disablekb=”false” fs=”true” loop=”false” rel=”true”] Katherine Leary Alsdorf is the founder of Redeemer Presbyterian Church’s Center for Faith & Work and their intensive Gotham Fellows program. She now helps churches in... Read more
Yesterday we sang two Christmas carols with opposing views on redemption. Joy to the World rightly proclaims the goodness of creation, the tragic destruction of sin (“no more let sins and sorrow grow, nor thorns infest the ground”), and God’s plan to save the entire earth, “far as the curse is found.” This is my favorite Christmas carol, both for its jubilant melody and sound theology. [tvideo type=”youtube” clip_id=”zrOlXLeWJQ4″ autoplay=”false” controls=”true” disablekb=”false” fs=”true” showinfo=”true” modestbranding=”false”] Then we sang Away in... Read more
Finding our place in God’s huge story. I imagine having an out-of-body experience. As I gaze down upon an ancient table, I see a large book before me, bound in leather with silver clasps and edges. As I open the book, the words on the pages come to life, showing story after story of lives being lived concurrently. The stories, at times, are independent of each other, but most of the time, they intertwine with other stories to make a... Read more
Many churches have annual Missions Conferences. For a week, we concentrate on overseas missionaries, highlighting their good work of proclaiming the gospel to those in foreign lands. And with this in mind, our sermons often look at the life of Paul the Apostle—the consummate model of the traveling missionary. Certainly, Paul is the epitome of the Great Commission to “Go and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19-20). And in light of this, we are encouraged to contemplate if God is calling us... Read more
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