Recently we held a blog contest asking people to respond to the following Kuyper quote by sharing how this idea reframes your calling in life, “There can be nothing in the universe that fails to express, to incarnate, the revelation of the thought of God.”

We are excited to share with you the three winners of the contest. Our first prize winner is Travis Thomas and his full entry is below. Our two honorable mentions are James Berry and Katelyn Swiatek. Click on their names to read their entries.
Read more on Announcing the On Call in Culture Blog Contest Winners…

Why the disconnect between work and worship? To reckon with this question, the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics (IFWE) blog recently launched a series on “Work and the Church Today.”

Read more on Bringing the Church to Work…

Albert Hahn: Dr. Kuyper’s care for the little people (1905)

In yesterday’s post I highlighted a pair of articles that cover the transition over the last 120 years or so in the Netherlands from an emphasis on private charitable giving to reliance upon the welfare state. In some ways this story mirrors a similar transformation in American society as described by Marvin Olasky in his landmark book, The Tragedy of American Compassion.

Olasky’s work does double-duty, however, not only chronicling this transition but cogently arguing the superiority of voluntary aid and charity, which can effectively address both spiritual as well as material aspects of poverty.

In the special issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality on “Modern Christian Social Thought,” we also find a wonderful resource on this topic in the form of Abraham Kuyper’s reflection from 1895 on the relationship of Christ and the gospel to material concerns, “Christ and the Needy.”
Read more on The Tragedy of Dutch Compassion…

On October 31, 1998, Charles Colson came to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan to deliver the closing address at Acton’s “The Legacy of Abraham Kuyper & Leo XIII” conference, sponsored jointly with Calvin Seminary.

Read more on Video: Chuck Colson speaks at the Abraham Kuyper & Leo XIII Conference…

“Think, Think, Think” –Pooh

It’s always hard to sit down and write. There are a million distractions that tempt us away from the keyboard or notepad and entangle us in the details of life. Not that these details are bad. In fact, as a community focused on being On Call in Culture, many of those details are the whole purpose.
Read more on Writing Tips for Your On Call in Culture Blog Entry…

On of Chuck Colson’s heroes was Abraham Kuyper, and when we set out to publish a translation of Kuyper’s three volumes on the topic of common grace, Chuck was happy to support the project.

Here’s what he said about the first selection from the larger translation project, Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art:

Abraham Kuyper was a profound theologian, an encyclopedic thinker, and a deeply spiritual man who believed that it is the believer’s task ‘to know God in all his works.’ In a day when secular science is seeking to establish hegemony over all knowing, and when postmodern art is threatening to bring an end to art, Kuyper’s solid, Biblical insights can help to restore perspective and sanity to these two critical areas of creation.

Read more on Colson on Common Grace…

Speaking of the time he spent in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, Chuck Colson said: “I couldn’t have made it without Christ in my life, I know that. But I couldn’t have made it if there wasn’t in the back of my mind a belief that God had a purpose for this.”

Read more on New Video: Chuck Colson in ‘Like I Am’…

What would our life be without books? Books teach, entertain, encourage and give invaluable perspectives that allow each of us to grow and deepen our life and faith. If we asked every person who will read this blog post about their favorite book, we would get a rich tapestry of stories full of warm memories.

And we are not alone in our love for books. Read a few of these wonderfully emotive quotes:
Read more on In Praise of the Book . . . On World Book and Copyright Day…

As part of the On Call in Culture community, we are interviewing people in different areas of work to showcase what being On Call in Culture looks like on a daily basis. Today we’re introducing Ed Moodie, an environmental engineer at Stepan, a global manufacturer of specialty and intermediate chemicals used in consumer products and industrial applications.
Read more on On Call and Chemicals…

The fine folks at Cardus, the noteworthy thinktank north of the border, have posted a review of The Best of the Reformed Journal.

John Schmalzbauer, who teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at Missouri State University where he holds the Blanche Gorman Strong Chair in Protestant Studies, concludes about the situation sixty years after the founding of the Reformed Journal:

Read more on The Reformed Journal and the Grand Rapids Intellectuals…