Faith and Work News ~ Links to Interesting Articles

• Don’t Work for the Weekend, Work Toward It. Scott Bellavia writes “Attempting to literally reverse the week’s end and the day’s start would confuse many in our cultural moment. So, adopting this view is an internal paradigm for me that has had external benefits.”
• Mere Christians: Michelle Myers. On this episode of the Mere Christians podcast, Jordan Raynor visits with Michelle Myers, founder of She Works His Way, about Ecclesiastes, and what it means for your work.
• Musk’s 5 Step Algorithm to Cut Internal Bureaucracy at Tesla and SpaceX. Joost Minnaar shares this helpful information from Walter Isaacson’s book Elon Musk.
• Golden Rule for Your Email Inbox. Caroline Stolzfus asks “How can we love and serve our fellow emailers without spending too much time in our inboxes?”

Click on ‘Continue reading’ for:

• More links to interesting articles
• The Top 10 Faith and Work Quotes of the Week
• Faith and Work Book Review ~ The Fabric of This World: Inquiries into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work by Lee Hardy
• Quotes from the book Agents of Flourishing: Pursuing Shalom in Every Corner of Society by Amy Sherman.

• Working with Dan Doriani: Steven Garber. On this episode of the Working with Dan Doriani podcast, Dan visits with Steven Garber about mentorship. Steve was the speaker at my Covenant Seminary graduation, and I’ve enjoyed his books Visions of Vocation and The Seamless Life.
• Clarifying Your Purpose in the Third Third of Life, Part 8. Mark D. Roberts shares a tenth suggestion to clarify your third third purpose: Pay attention to God’s callings.
• How Thankfulness Serves as a Witness. Jessica Schroeder writes “Know that developing a habitual attitude of gratitude will not happen overnight, but it is vital and canbe done.”
• How are We to Work? Russ Gehrlein shares a few key principles about work that is found in the Bible.
• Called to Lead. My book Called to Lead: Living and Leading for Jesus in the Workplace is available in both a paperback and Kindle edition. Read a free sample (Introduction through Chapter 2).
• Is Work Good? Thomas Myrick writes “Work is a vital part of God’s good design for man. It is full of dignity and purpose.”
• 3 Insights from the Faith and Work Ministry of Tim Keller. Katherine Leary Alsdorf writes “I’m now seeing the influence of Tim’s emphasis on vocational discipleship in churches around the world.” She then shares some key areas of influence.

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Top 10 Faith and Work Quotes of the Week

• Convictional leadership begins with a commitment to truth and a relentless desire to see others know and believe that same truth. Albert Mohler
• Our vocations are one avenue for doing God’s work in the world. Tim Keller
• The Christian’s calling, in part, is to proclaim God’s dominion in every corner of the world—in every corner of our hearts, too. Andrew Peterson
• We are not called to do something or go somewhere; we are called to Someone. We are not called first to special work but to God. The key to answering the call is to be devoted to no one and to nothing above God himself. Os Guinness
• God appointed the Sabbath to remind us that he is working and resting. To practice Sabbath is a disciplined and faithful way to remember that you are not the one who keeps the world running, who provides for your family, not even the one who keeps your work projects moving forward. Tim Keller
• The people who follow God’s heart and ways see everything they have as gifts to be stewarded for his purposes. Tim Keller
• As we work, fully aware of God’s presence, our Christlike attitudes and actions as employers, as employees, or as both, will speak loudly to a lost world. Empowered by His Spirit, He will speak through us. Russ Gehrlein
• According to the Bible, we don’t merely need the money from work to survive; we need the work itself to survive and live fully human lives. Tim Keller
• In nothing has the Church so lost Her hold on reality as in Her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. Dorothy Sayers

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FAITH AND WORK BOOK REVIEW:

The Fabric of This World: Inquiries into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work by Lee Hardy. Eerdmans. 231 pages. 1990
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The author, now Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Calvin College, based this book on a course he and others taught at Calvin College titled “Christian Perspectives on Work and Vocation”. He writes that the book, readings from which were on the syllabus for one of my seminary courses, might be read as an attempt to help revitalize the concept of work as vocation – or calling – at least within the professing Christian community. He states that his primary intent is “to flesh out the concept of vocation, to delineate its historical background, to mark out its place in the array of possible attitudes towards the meaning of work in human life, to illuminate its full religious content, and to explore its practical implications, both personal and social.”
The author begins the book with a history of the philosophy of work, looking the teaching of Aristotle, Plato, the philosophers of the Renaissance, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. He then looks at vocation, calling and career choice. The author then gives us a historical overview of the development of American management theory from Frederick Taylor’s scientific management, the Hawthorne Experiment, Chris Argyris, Frederick Herzberg, Douglas McGregor, Peter Drucker on responsible work, to Robert Levering on workplace quality. After looking at recent (the book was written in 1990) advances in work design, he states that in all situations the aim of the appropriate design of human work remains the same: making a job the kind of place where a vocation can be pursued.
I really enjoyed reading this book, but can understand that not all will appreciate the lengthy historical overviews included.

Below are 15 of my favorite quotes from the book:

• Our work can count as a vocation only if it occurs in the kind of social structures that make it a genuine service to others through the responsible use of our talents and abilities.
• Work itself, then, is a divine vocation.
• By working we affirm our uniquely human position as God’s representatives on this earth, as cultivators and stewards of the good gifts of his creation, which are destined for the benefit of all.
• All work, provided it contributes to the common good, possesses an inherent religious dignity, no matter how mean or low it may be in outward appearance. For the divine intent for human life is that we be employed in mutual service.
• Human life is to be lived out in a society of mutual service and support, each member contributing according to his specific talents and receiving according to his need.
• One need not have a paid occupation in order to have a vocation. Indeed, all of us have, at any one time, a number of vocations-and only one of them might be pursued as a paid occupation.
• In making a career choice, we ought to take seriously the doctrine of divine providence: God himself gives us whatever legitimate abilities, concerns, and interests we in fact possess. These are his gifts, and for that very reason they can serve as indicators of his will for our lives.
• As Christians we are obliged to evaluate a job by its actual social content-the way in which it benefits, or harms, others.
• An occupation must be first considered in terms of how it provides a fitting place for the exercise of one’s gifts in the service of others.
• The most important things we do in life may not be those for which we are paid.
• Work and vocation are not the same thing. Work may be a part of my vocation, but it is not the whole of my vocation; work may be one thing that I am called to do, but it is not the only thing I am called to do.
• Our work, then, is just one facet of our overall vocation, and it must be integrated with the other facets of our vocation if we are to hear and heed the full scope of God’s call within our lives.
• Work ought to be a social place so structured that it is possible for people to serve others through the free and responsible use of a significant range of their gifts, talents, and abilities.
• Work is a social place where we can employ our gifts in service to others. God calls us to work because he wants us to love our neighbors in a concrete way.
• Jobs ought to be designed so that we can in fact apply ourselves-our whole selves-to our calling.

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Faith and Work Book Club – Won’t you read along with us?

We are reading Agents of Flourishing: Pursuing Shalom in Every Corner of Society by Amy Sherman. Sherman is also the author of Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good, a book I first read in my “Calling, Vocation and Work” class at Covenant Seminary.
Every corner, every square inch of society can flourish as God intends, and Christians of any vocation can become agents of that flourishing. In this book, Sherman offers a multifaceted, biblically grounded framework for enacting God’s call to seek the shalom of our communities in six arenas of civilizational life (The Good, The True, The Beautiful, The Just, The Prosperous, and The Sustainable).

This week we look at Chapter 10: A Strategy for Cultivating the Just Be a Reconciling Community. Here are a few helpful quotes from the chapter:

• Since 2008, EEF has sought to be a reconciling community, a racially diverse congregation reflecting the unity in diversity of the kingdom of God.
• Deliberately located in the Church Hill neighborhood of east Richmond, three words are at its center: shalom, reconciliation, and justice. The principal way it pursues shalom is through racial reconciliation and efforts to address the injustices rooted in racism.
• Repentance circles were one of the most powerful, embodied, spiritual practices they deployed in the pursuit of healing.
• Reconciliation is God’s great work, but it’s a work he invites humans into. To be a disciple of Jesus, EEF leaders believe, is to be a reconciler who has joined him in his work of advancing shalom. This will inevitably involve the pursuit of justice.
• The work is hard and long. EEF leaders understand reconciliation as spiritual formation.
• EEF’s covenant community—which today numbers around 125 people—has committed to ensuring that no member lacks sufficient food and shelter.