Having been in ministry for over 20 years, I have come to a conclusion about how we pastors do a great disservice to our congregants. God has given us the awesome burden to lead local congregations – this is no small thing. This is huge. We are in charge of leading a group of God’s people. It is our responsibility to equip them for their ministries. And we love our job. We pastors are passionate about what we do. We... Read more
I’ve been in church ministry for well over two decades now, and one of the patterns I see in the church world is a deep frustration about and fear of the culture. Evangelicals see the world around us and wring our hands, seeing the demise of traditional values, the triumph of greed and commercialism, and workplaces filled with and defined by arrogance, assertiveness, egoism, pretentiousness, pride, and self-importance. We think that the only way to make a difference (if only I... Read more
Mark Sheerin was once an international aid worker for the Christian ministry World Vision, traveling around to distant lands and helping the poor. He quit that job to go create a financial planning and wealth management firm. And, get this, he is convinced that his current work glorifies God as much as his former work did. Sheerin wrote the Blue Ribbon winning essay for Christianity Today’s This is Our City project with “Why I Left World Vision for Finance: And why my current... Read more
Below is my graphical representation of the Gospel. It is the four-chapter story of God’s working in history for the restoration of the cosmos that He created. A few weeks ago, I presented this to a couple of guys in Colorado. They had just discovered that their father has terminal cancer, and I wanted to offer them the Good News so that they could make sense of this tragedy and perhaps move toward faith in Christ. It was exciting to... Read more
Reintegrate has officially partnered with Celebrate Your Work, a new website ministry featuring a boatload of free resources. I will be creating resources for this website, and we will feature the resources at Celebrate Your Work here! To quote the website: Is the work we do on a daily basis something to be endured or to be celebrated? God worked to create the universe. Adam and Eve worked in the garden before the Fall. That makes work a good gift... Read more
“When you find yourself having to choose between depending on somebody else to get an important task done or taking matters into your own hands, which do you prefer?” I asked this question to a group of men and women in one my church’s Sunday school classes. Just about everybody said that they would rather do the task themselves! Why? “By the time I tell somebody how to do it, I could get the job done myself,” said one man,... Read more
You’ve been let go from your job. You cannot find a new job in your field. You dig into your savings to try out a new direction. You blow through your savings while this new direction turns out to be a dead end. No job; no money. A scenario like this (the true story of one of his friends) prompted Umair Haque, in one of his Harvard Business Review blog entries, to ask, “What do you do when you reach the edge... Read more
Art Lindsey, over at the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, writes “Today’s evangelical Church has largely failed to address the subjects of faith, work, and calling. There is a tendency to focus on issues pertaining to salvation, evangelism, or basic personal discipleship (Bible reading, prayer, fellowship, etc.) but to ignore what most people do forty, sixty, or eighty hours a week… …There isn’t anything wrong with recognizing someone’s faithful service to the church. However, we’re much more likely to... Read more
When I was first introduced to the incredibly important passage in the Gospel of Matthew called “The Great Commission,” it was made very clear to me that this is Jesus’ command for his followers to actively engage in evangelism. But the passage does not say, “Go evangelize.” It says something else. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in... Read more
A business manager wants to live a radical Christian life—a life for which Jesus will say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” But he is frustrated because he is inundated with so many everyday urgent decisions, concerning product and distribution, supply chain, and personnel, that he doesn’t have time for what his pastor says really matters—sharing the gospel with his co-workers. But if he did find the time, how would he do it without getting the owners angry for his proselytizing? He wonders:... Read more
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