LIVE event from The High Calling: “The Activist Faith Team” (July 16)

Last updated on: July 10, 2013 at 2:24 pm By Bob Robinson

The Bible doesn’t call us to like or tweet or even vote about human need and social problems. It calls us to act—to feed the hungry, visit prisoners, care for orphans, and bring good news to the poor. Over at The High Calling, you can join the co-founders of the dynamic #ActivistFaith movement as they share biblical contexts, personal stories, and practical guidance for engaging twelve divisive social issues. Written for Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and even those who despise religion... Read more

Working for God’s Best

Last updated on: July 10, 2013 at 9:04 am By Paul Sartarelli

Mark comes home from another exhausting night in the pediatric emergency room. In his mind he reviews the children’s faces, the difficult cases, the pained parents, and the good that he and his medical team were able to accomplish. It was a very hard night and yet a fulfilling night for all of the comfort and healing he was able to administer. There is however, a persistent and nagging voice regularly in his head. A voice offering a litany of... Read more

Work Life Balance – All this week at THE HIGH CALLING

Last updated on: June 24, 2013 at 3:11 pm By Bob Robinson

From Ideologies to Art: Why Work Matters

Last updated on: June 14, 2013 at 9:12 am By Dr. Steven Garber

Why work? For all that the Marxist-Leninist vision got badly wrong, they got this right: work matters. And work matters because it has social meaning, even political meaning, especially economic meaning, and most importantly, transcendent meaning. Even if the Marxists got its meaning wrong, tragically wrong, they saw something that was true. Captured in their iconic symbol of the sickle and hammer, always and everywhere it is an argument that the ordinary work of ordinary human beings is at the heart of... Read more

The Economics of Mutuality

Last updated on: June 4, 2013 at 11:51 am By Dr. Steven Garber

Growing out of a conversation with business executives who have responsibility for a global corporation whose products everyone on earth enjoys, the words are becoming flesh: “The economics of mutuality.” I recently flew to Paris to take part in several days of conversation about the whys and whats of what this might look like. At its core “the economics of mutuality” is a critique of the hyper-individualism and corporate myopia of Milton Friedman’s University of Chicago “school,” which is summed... Read more

Subversive for the Common Good: Seek the Welfare of the City

Last updated on: May 30, 2013 at 12:12 pm By Bob Robinson

Imagine, if you will, a leader telling his followers who are living within the enemy’s walls to help them to flourish. Not to undermine them, not to resist them with force, not to plot an overthrow. Imagine that the leader actually wants to subvert the evil enemy with blessings instead of curses. That would be unprecedented. Unless, of course, God had not already told his people to do just that. God, through the prophet Jeremiah, not only tells those in... Read more

What “The Office” Taught Us about the Workplace

Last updated on: May 29, 2013 at 1:30 pm By Bob Robinson

The finale of “The Office” had me laughing and even close to shedding a tear. For nine seasons, we watched as a PBS documentary crew filmed a bunch of people working in the Scranton office of the Dunder Miflin paper company. As we peered into the lives of these ordinary office workers, we could identify with them from our own office experiences. We could relate to having a boss that is so narcissistic that it makes everyone miserable. Whether he... Read more

Asking the Right Questions about Vocation

Last updated on: May 23, 2013 at 9:33 am By Dr. Steven Garber

vocation, meaning, and ethics. I had one more conversation with someone today about the vision and hope bound up with the word “vocation.” Is life about anything? Does life mean anything? Is getting up in the morning really for anything? What do we do with the days of our lives? Why do we choose to do what we do? Everyday someone somewhere wants to talk about this. Today it was a professor in Minnesota, and we had arranged to talk... Read more

The Secret to Better Work and Life Is Not Rocket Science

Last updated on: May 16, 2013 at 1:07 pm By Marcus Goodyear

What if someone told you they knew the secret to a better life? What if they shared this secret with you? They promised you would be able to concentrate better, enjoy life more, increase productivity at work, decrease stress at work and at home, and have a better sense of self-esteem. It sounds too good to be true. But researchers at Lancaster University reported these exact results from its Research Centre for Organizational Health and Well-being. In 2010, the university partnered with... Read more

Christian Faithful Presence in the Culture

Last updated on: May 10, 2013 at 9:32 am By Bob Robinson

If Christians are to be “missional,” then we must take seriously that our work, as a calling from God, is kingdom work. As such, it is like leaven that is mixed into the culture (Matthew 13:33), wherever we work and whatever we do. This “makes possible (the) renewal of each creational area from within, not without.” (Al Wolters, Creation Regained) James Davison Hunter, in his influential book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the... Read more

Who became jealous and tried to kill David several times?