Reprinted from the Chalmers Center. Material poverty is complex and not reducible to a single cause. Healthy, sustainable poverty alleviation ministries need to address all five root causes of material poverty – individual brokenness, systemic brokenness, false stories of change, broken and destructive formative practices, and demonic forces. Over the last few weeks, we’ve looked at Ministry Design Principles that contribute…
By Pam Tinsley, reprinted from Living God’s Mission. Several months ago, I returned to the gym for the first time since the pandemic started. It wasn’t easy. Not because I was physically incapable of resuming regular exercise, but because working out at the gym was no longer a daily practice. I made excuses not to go. However, as I eased…
Reprinted from Workplace 313. Workplace 313 is excited to offer churches and study groups a 12-part series of 18-20-minute videos with Dr. David W. Gill—plus a downloadable Study Guide—on the basics of workplace discipleship (“faith at work”). Our churches help members with the basics of prayer, Bible study, evangelism, and church and family life. But there is usually a gaping hole when…
By David Williamson. Looking at the annual appeal for a charity providing farm animals to poor families, from Africa to the Far East and in the U.S. – and, this year, Ukraine – I started thinking about the high Calling of a veterinarian’s assistant. I thought of two important and biblically grounded characteristics: love and the exercise of dominion. A…
By Sophie Sanders, reprinted from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. Shape tracking. Sequential memory. Reactive avoidance. Most of us don’t even know what these words mean, let alone use them in our daily lives. But John Archer does both. He loves his job as a trainee air traffic controller and uses these incredibly specialised skills to direct and divert…
Reprinted from the Oikonomia Network. Our collection of EWP Talks on History will help your students see that they are part of a much bigger story – the story of the mighty works of God done among us, his people, across the centuries since the coming of the Word and Spirit. From a 4th century witness against slavery to the social witness…
Reprinted from the Chalmers Center. Ministry focused on addressing poverty is fundamentally about promoting change. It’s about helping people and communities move to a better situation than their present one. Effective poverty alleviation requires us to know where we are trying to go and how we can get there. In other words, we need a “story of change” – or as it…
By Pam Tinsley, reprinted from Living God’s Mission. “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’” (John 20:21). This verse, from the Gospel reading for the Second Sunday of Easter, has been my earworm this past week. Jesus appears to his disciples after his resurrection as they huddle together…
By David Gill, reprinted from Workplace 313. In her recent book, Work, Pray, Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley (Princeton, 2022), UC Berkeley sociologist Carolyn Chen showed how work has become, in effect, a replacement religion for many tech workers. Church attendance is down and what takes its place is work as religion, the source of meaning and purpose, and the idol to whom sacrifices of time (and…
By David Williamson. While on my usual neighborhood walk, I noticed a cable company employee working below the ground to establish an electrical connection that would establish an internet connection to several homes in the area. Spontaneously, I recalled the old song “Wichita Lineman,” and started singing – well, humming, actually – the words of that Glenn Campbelll classic. I…
The Green Room 