Following up on a recent post about the 2016 election as a faith and work crisis, our friends David Gill and Al Erisman passed on this video from CBS News interviewing Mike Rowe about the value of blue-collar work. Food for thought!
Author: The Green Room
When faith and work doesn’t work by itself
My husband Ralph had a daydream when he was 15, to one day own an orchard and help kids in India. But early into our farming years, our labor force radically changed from white, U.S. citizens to Latino immigrants. We realized that our employees must become our first focus of mission, if we were ever to help kids in India. The work provided a common focus that compelled us all to show up every day and do our best. But our new employees not only needed skills. They needed affordable housing, dependable childcare and year-round jobs if their kids were going to stay in school and flourish. Most of all they needed to feel safe. We have found that practicing the core values of love, compassion, respect, community and purpose helps us care about each other. We take better care of our place, which in turn takes care of us, with a surplus of love to export.
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Cheryl Broetje and her husband Ralph, founded, own and operate Broetje Orchards – a vertically integrated apple growing, packing, shipping, sales company located in the southeastern part of Washington State. Its five million trees produce fruit that is exported around the world. Its mission is to be “…a quality fruit company bearing fruit, fruit that will last.” Cheryl also founded The Center for Sharing, a non-profit, faith-based servant leadership development organization whose mission is “… calling forth the gifts of all persons through Christ-centered community.” Cheryl serves as its executive director. Her passion is in bringing people and resources together to build kingdom structures.
Faith@Work Summit 2014 by fwsummit.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at fwsummit.org.
Why Faith@Work is Important
More than ever before, humanity is in a crisis over work. People change jobs and careers 6 times or more in their lives. Robotics will threaten even professional level vocations over the next decade. Darwinian competition trumps teamwork and human dignity. Our work – our commitment to bring God’s truth, love, and human dignity to the work lives of all people – has never been so important! How can we better equip ourselves for our work, for our calling? How do we help others work in a world that is increasingly unaware of and even hostile to the hope of the gospel? How does the Biblical story and a deep understanding of the gospel give us the resources to persevere, the winsomeness to witness, the character to be just, and the calling to make a difference?
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Katherine Leary Alsdorf (BA, Wittenberg; MBA, Darden School, UVa) founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church’s Center for Faith & Work in New York City and served as Executive Director from 2002 – 2012. She established the intensive Gotham Fellows program, an Entrepreneurship Initiative to start new gospel-centered ventures, Arts Ministries, and numerous vocation groups. She now helps churches in other cities to establish faith and work ministries. She spent 25 years in the high tech industry in California and New York. She is co-author with Tim Keller of Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work.
Faith@Work Summit 2014 by fwsummit.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at fwsummit.org.
The history and future of the faith and work movement
By Adam Joyce This year, the Oikonomia Network’s annual faculty retreat featured provocative and stimulating talks from three leaders of the faith and work movement. Access their talks and slides here: David Miller, “God Bless Us, Every One: The Past, Present and Future of the Faith and Work Movement” (audio) Amy Sherman, “In and For Community: Helpful Models in Theological…
Does faith at work work for the poor?
By Blaine Crawford Humanizing Work” was the theme of the Center for Faith & Work’s annual conference this year [2014]. During the opening session, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was mentioned. Maslow, a 20th century American psychologist, studied people’s motivations, eventually developing his infamous hierarchy. His model was comprised of five needs, beginning with basic (physiological) needs before ascending to…
The Green Room 