Ray Bradbury’s dystopian story “The Veldt,” published in 1950, depicts a future in which technology does everything, leaving humans to enjoy their leisure. Of course, they do not enjoy it. The parents, bored and anxious, smoke and drink too much. The children, spoiled and detached, create disaster. The reader is duly warned. This and other dystopian stories (I, Robot; The Matrix; the…
When Yvonne Streit’s young daughter Vicki suffered brain trauma back in the 1960s as the result of complications from mumps, she found nowhere to turn for help. Programs to aid those with physical and intellectual disabilities in finding a way to contribute meaningfully to society were scarce at best. So Yvonne created one. While it began as a tiny project…
For all of the national conversations about a universal income, unemployment rates, the threat of automation, politicians’ promises for more jobs, etc., the daily experiences of individuals and their jobs can get lost. That’s one reason why Studs Terkel’s 40+ year-old interviews with American workers still resonate today. Terkel published his iconic book in 1974. It was called Working: People Talk…
A few weeks ago we reprinted a post from the Oikonomia Network by Ken Barnes about the beginning of his tenure at the Mockler Center at Gordon-Conwell. We caught up with him recently for more details. TGR: How are things going since you wrote that article for ON? KB: Things continue to move along. I’m very happy with the growth of the Ockenga Fellows program and the center itself. Our primary goal…
In my previous post, I introduced a new framework for thinking about how people maintain and overcome boundaries between faith and work. I proposed we consider two simple categories: overlap and separation—states that may obtain in spite of our intentions to integrate or segment faith and work. In this post, I consider the first category of overlap: fusion. By fusion,…
Here at The Green Room we are always looking for resources that communicate the integration of faith and work. It isn’t everyday when I come across such a rich and robust resource as God’s Pleasure at Work: The Difference One Life Can Make – an Introduction to Faith, Work, and Purpose. This eBook curriculum for K-12 was written by Dr.…
By Greg Forster: part two of a series. In a talk on Sending Disciples to a Pluralistic World, Vincent Bacote said: “Many Christians live in an imagination desert, unable to connect faith to vocation.” That’s a deep insight – that it takes imagination to make the connection between faith and work. And Bacote draws the work/imagination connection tighter when he…
