How to Integrate Work and Discipleship in Your Congregation

Over at The High Calling, Michael Kruse observes that many pastors and church leaders are now looking for a “programmatic strategy” for helping their congregations integrate work and discipleship. The problem, Kruse argues, is that such a strategy doesn’t exist: As leaders, we need to realize that to make faith and discipleship integrated in our congregations, we cannot do it with our congregation’s existing knowledge and skills, requiring those in our congregation (including ourselves) to make a shift in our values, expectations, attitudes, and behaviors. Continue Reading...

Retirement and the End of Work

“Retirement as a cultural concept needs to go away.” So says Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry in a thought-provoking piece today over at Forbes. I agree with the sentiment, in large part because good work never ends. Continue Reading...

Finding Blessings in Unwelcome Work

Most of us have spent at least a little time working in jobs we weren’t thrilled about. For me, it peaked with McDonald’s (no offense, Ronald). For Trevin Wax, it was Cracker Barrel: I never wanted to work at Cracker Barrel. Continue Reading...

Work Is More Than a Means to Evangelism

As already discussed, Matthew Lee Anderson’s recent Christianity Today cover story on “radical Christianity” has been making waves. This week at The High Calling, Marcus Goodyear offers a healthy critique of one of Anderson’s key subjects, David Platt, aligning quite closely with Anderson’s analysis about the ultimate challenges such movements face when it comes to long-term cultural cultivation. Continue Reading...

Rough Work Must Be Done

Joseph Sunde’s fine post today on vocation examines the dynamic between work and toil, the former corresponding to God’s creational ordinance and the latter referring to the corruption of that ordinance in light of the Fall into sin. Continue Reading...

Why Should We Work?

Why do we go to work, day after day, year after year for most of our lives? Sure, we most of us have to “make a living?” But is that our only motivation? Continue Reading...

Work, Leisure, and the Search for Daily Meaning

Over at AEIdeas, James Pethokoukis challenges our attitudes about work and leisure by drawing a helpful contrast between economists John Maynard Keynes and Deirdre McCloskey. First, he points to “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” in which Keynes frames our economic pursuits as a means to a leisurely end: Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well. Continue Reading...