What is your church measuring? What does that say about your mission?

Last updated on: March 1, 2013 at 9:09 am By Bob Robinson

Edgar Schein, Professor of Management at MIT, says that whatever an organization measures and how it measures it becomes its de facto culture. Churches and ministry organizations write mission statements that sound good on paper. But these only articulate wishful thinking if the way they measure success is contrary to those lofty mission statements. For instance, a random church’s mission statement I grabbed from the internet reads, “Our church seeks to make disciples for our Lord Jesus Christ through Christ-centered... Read more

The Mission of God and the Missional Church

Last updated on: February 28, 2013 at 9:06 am By Bob Robinson

According to Alan Hirsch in The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church, a missional reading of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) “requires that we see that Jesus’s strategy is to get a whole lot of versions of him infiltrating every nook and cranny of society by reproducing himself in and through his people in every place throughout the world” (p. 113). We must rid our churches of the pagan dualistic understanding of reality (see “Dualistic Christianity and the Church”) which... Read more

Video: Work as Worship

Last updated on: February 22, 2013 at 2:50 pm By Bob Robinson

In this video from RightNow Media beautifully and succinctly explains the reason Reintegrate exists (and they don’t even know it!). Read more

Missional Living in Our Daily Work

Last updated on: February 21, 2013 at 4:02 pm By Bob Robinson

At one of the Missional Church’s most read websites, David Fitch’s Reclaiming the Mission, Cyd Holscaw has written a wonderful article entitled, “Mission Hidden in Plain Sight: The Gospel in Everyday Life.” She likens our daily work to cooking hamburgers for her family, secretly adding onions, garlic, and zucchini to the ground beef: “My kids think they’re just eating ordinary hamburger… but they’re actually eating life-giving veggies.” At Life on the Vine, the church that she helps lead with David Fitch, Ty... Read more

“Rest Works”

Last updated on: February 6, 2013 at 2:06 pm By Bob Robinson

Christianity Today’s Leslie Leyland Fields offers an excellent review of Matthew Sleeth’s new book on Sabbath, 24/6: A Prescription for a Healthier, Happier Life. Sleeth makes a winsome case for a return to Sabbath “rest, renewal and reverence.” … We take comfort from our work obsession, he notes, because “[i]f work is the meaning of our lives, then more work equals more meaning.” To balance hard work, we engage in hard play. But there’s a biblical solution to our collective freneticism: work hard—then stop,... Read more

Ten Ways to Encourage Vocational Stewardship in Your Church

Last updated on: February 5, 2013 at 4:17 pm By Amy L. Sherman

– 1. During corporate worship services, pray for members by vocation. This could take a variety of expressions: pray aloud for a different occupational group (e.g., educators or businesspeople) each week invite congregants who are facing difficulties on the job to come forward during or after the service for prayer pray for individual members by name and vocation 2. Visit church members at their places of work. 3. Recognize vocational achievements and awards of congregants in the church’s newsletter or on... Read more

Welcome to Holy Week: The Super Bowl as Religious Festival

Last updated on: January 30, 2013 at 3:37 pm By Adam Metz

To the extent that sports is America’s civil religion, the Super Bowl represents its most important religious festival. One aspect of what makes sports so powerful is that they are so intertwined with other powerful realities: politics, economics, and culture to name but three. The National Anthem serves as an invocation, as well as a military fly-over, and often a recorded message from the President. The astronomical price of advertising during the Super Bowl is common knowledge and accentuates the... Read more

Happiness, Meaning, and a Theology of Work

Last updated on: January 22, 2013 at 9:19 am By Michael W. Kruse

Originally Posted at Kruse Kronicle This month at The Atlantic’s website, there is a fascinating piece on happiness written by Emily Esfahani Smith, “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy.” After a wonderful introduction featuring the insights of Viktor Frankl, Smith looks at the findings of a recent study on happiness and meaning in life: “…Researchers are cautioning against the pursuit of mere happiness. In a new study, which will be published this year in a forthcoming issue of the... Read more

One of the Best Books of the Year

Last updated on: January 16, 2013 at 9:07 am By Bob Robinson

Christianity Today awards a book on VOCATION as the winner of the best book on “Christian Living.” I’ve had the pleasure to speak with Amy Sherman a few times in the past year. She has the same vision for reintegrating faith and work that we do here at Reintegrate. And she is getting some traction. Each year, Christianity Today has a special issue in which they give their “Book Awards.” Amy’s book, Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good (InterVarsity)... Read more

Django Unchained: Reflections on Evil, Vengeance, and Justice

Last updated on: January 15, 2013 at 9:21 am By Bob Robinson

Denis Haack and his wife Margie founded Ransom Fellowship. Denis is one of the keenest minds reflecting on movies from a Christian perspective. His latest review, on Django Unchained, can be found at A Glass Darkly. Movie comment: Django Unchained (2012) By Denis Haack I went to see this movie without reading any reviews or seeing much about it in the media except that some people (including director Spike Lee) found it offensive. I didn’t feel unprepared, however, since I need no introduction to Quentin... Read more