Faith and Work News ~ Links to Interesting Articles
- Crush Your Finances, Crush Your Debt, and Crush Your Career with Kristina Ellis. On this episode of the Crush Your Career podcast, Dee Ann Turner visits with personal finance writer and speaker Kristina Ellis. Kristina has helped thousands of people figure out how to go to college debt-free and has incredible insight into what financial freedom looks like.
- The Impact of Saying I’m So Busy. Darren Bosch suggests that responding with, “I’m so busy”does three things: reveals our leadership, drains our credibility and limits the God-story.
- The 5 Lies of Corporate Culture with Ginger Hardage, Part 2. Corporate culture connects an organization’s values with its daily activities. Healthy organizations don’t just have values, they find ways to live them out. On this episode of the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, Stanley and Ginger Hardage wrap up their conversation on the five lies of corporate culture.
- How Garbage Collectors Can Refresh Our Theology. Gustavo H.R. Santos writes “Do I believe that garbage collectors care about vocation? Yes, I do. Perhaps not in the same way that lawyers, doctors, or engineers do, but just as deeply, and in some ways more richly.”
Click on ‘Continue reading’ for:
- More links to interesting articles
- The Top 10 Faith and Work Quotes of the Week
- My Review of Called to Create: A Biblical Invitation to Create, Innovate and Risk by Jordan Raynor
- Snippets from the book Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy by Matthew Kaemingk and Cory B. Willson
- How Ministry Experience Develops Critical Thinking. In his ongoing series, Jeff Eads looks at the important skill of critical thinking.
- Rich Stearns on How to Beat Failure in Leadership, The Value of Persistence, and What For-Profits and Non-Profits Can Learn from Each Other. On this episode of the Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast, Carey visits with Rich Stearns who talks about how growing up in a traumatic environment didn’t stop him from going to Cornell and the Wharton School of Business, about twice being fired from the C-Suite and how he bounced back after a deep struggle, and what for-profit and non-profit leaders can learn from each other.
- Mark Miller on Virtual Leading. In this short video, Mark Miller discusses how to effectively lead your organization from a virtual platform.
- What Do You Do All Day? Russ Gehrlein shares his top five words that describe what he does at work and a relevant Scripture to go with it.
- How Should I Address My Transgender Colleague? Charlie Self addresses this question “I work in a secular workplace, and my new colleague is transgender. When I was introduced to him and found out that he wants to be addressed by a female name and pronouns, I was caught off-guard. I didn’t know if I should address him by his real name or by the female name he wants to be called, and I certainly don’t think I can address him in good conscience using female pronouns. How can I speak to him and work with him in a loving way without compromising my Christian convictions?”
- How the Sabbath Prevents Work from Being the Meaning of Our Lives. Hugh Whelchel writes “Correctly practicing the Sabbath brings about a new spiritual understanding of both work and the whole of our lives. The purpose of the Sabbath is not rejuvenating yourself in order to be more productive. Nor is it only the pursuit of pleasure.”
- We’re Running a Rigged Race. Run It, Anyway. Justin Zackal writes “Run the race for which God has already won for you, and give him the glory in your conversations. The race is rigged, but the reasons to finish and succeed run deep.”
- How to Increase Joy at Work. On this episode of the The Center Memphis podcast, Brantley Davidson, Dan Butler and Howard Graham discuss what it means to work redemptively and how that leads to more joy even in the most challenging circumstances. They discuss real life lessons from multiple industries.
- On this episode of Minute with Maxwell, John Maxwell tells us to focus on our strengths, not our weaknesses.
- The Way Home: Preston Poore on Work and the Kingdom of God. On this edition of The Way Home podcast, Daniel Darling visits with Preston Poore, a long-time Fortune 500 executive, who shares insights about how to think about your job as an arena to which God has called you both to evangelize and disciple and to do good work for the Kingdom of God.
- Work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, and prayer; it is not simply medicine but food for our soul. Tim Keller
- Whether our lot seems humble or exalted, let us work with all our heart, for the Lord knows and rewards all faithful labor. Dan Doriani
- All work done well has a dignity in the eyes of God. Tim Keller
- In order to best glorify our Creator and love others, Christians should do the work we are best at, work that God has equipped us to do exceptionally well. Jordan Raynor
- No organization drifts to greatness. Mark Miller
- The biblical worldview has the highest opinion of the most menial of work. Tim Keller
- We are here to glorify Christ in our daily life. We are here as workers for Him, and as workers together with Him, let us see that our life fulfills this purpose. Charles Spurgeon
- What would it look like for us to become those who live most beautifully, love most deeply, and serve most faithfully in the places where we live, work and play? Scott Sauls
- Do you have a deep sense that God has designed and prepared you to do what you get paid to do? Russ Gehrlein
Called to Create: A Biblical Invitation to Create, Innovate and Risk by Jordan Raynor. Baker Books. 242 pages. 2017
****
Jordan Raynor, who also wrote the excellent book Master of One, tells us that God was the first entrepreneur. He brought something out of nothing. He established order out of chaos. He created for the good of others.
This book started out with a set of questions the author had accumulated through years of seeking to more deeply integrate his faith with his work as an entrepreneur and creative. Rather than answering all of those questions himself, he spent about two years posing them to dozens of Christian entrepreneurs through first-person interviews and research. The stories of these men and women are what make up the majority of this book.
The author begins by providing a new definition for the word “entrepreneur”:
“An entrepreneur is anyone who takes a risk to create something new for the good of others.”
He tells us that there is a clear connection between entrepreneurship and creativity. Both require bringing something out of nothing, establishing order out of chaos, and creating something good for others.
The book is a compilation of stories that paint a picture of what it means to be called to create. Some of the people and organizations you will read about are Casper ten Boom, Blake Mycoskie (TOMS), Johann Sebastian Bach, J. R. R. Tolkien, Arthur Guinness, In-N-Out Burger, Chick-fil-A, as well as many people that you may not have heard about previously.
The book is organized into four parts:
- Part 1 deals with the issue of “calling”.
- Part 2 examines how following the call to create impacts our motivations for creating, the products we choose to create, and what it looks like to holistically integrate the gospel into our ventures.
- Part 3 deals with the challenges that are unique, or pertain especially, to the Christian entrepreneur.
- Part 4 includes a charge for those who are called to create.
The author has developed a helpful (and free) Called to Create study journal with thought-provoking questions to accompany each chapter and plenty of space for you to take notes.
Among the topics the author addresses in the book are the value of our work, our calling, hustle, discipleship, the purpose of profit, doing our work with excellence, and that what we create today has the potential to live on forever on the new earth.
One of my many takeaways from the book were these three questions entrepreneurs tended to ask when discerning God’s calling on their lives:
- What am I passionate about?
- What gifts has God given me?
- Where do I have the greatest opportunity to love others?
Below are some of my favorite quotes from the book:
- Our work can only be a calling if someone calls us to it and we work for their sake and not our own.
- The Bible teaches us that work will also be a central component of life in heaven. Contrary to the caricature of heaven being a glorified retirement home, the Bible teaches that we will continue to work for eternity, serving God with our unique gifts.
- All work is meaningful and can be used by God at any time, in any situation, to accomplish his will.
- In order to best glorify our Creator and love others, Christians should do the work we are best at, work that God has equipped us to do exceptionally well.
- Following the call to create means that we no longer work to make a name for ourselves; we work for the glory of the One who has called us.
- There is perhaps no clearer way for Christians to set themselves apart from the world than by prioritizing people over profit and everything else.
- The purpose of profit is not as simple as giving it all away. There are many ways in which God calls us to steward the abundance he blesses us with through our ventures.
- The Bible makes it clear that we will work without the curse forever on the new earth; I think it’s safe to assume that those of us who are called to create will use our entrepreneurial skills to create as an act of worship.
- We work for the One who has called us to create.
Faith and Work Book Club – Won’t you read along with us?
- Early Christian liturgies directly engaged the mundane materials of urban life and labor. Early Christian worship was permeated with a holy form of worldliness.
- Early Christian worship did not facilitate a worker’s escape from creation or daily work. Instead, the worldliness of worship rooted workers in the earth, in their work, and in their city.
- Worship that engages our senses and bodies, our tongues and stomachs, and the physical work of our hands can go a long way in helping workers ground their worship and work in the earth—as opposed to the clouds.