By Chris Brooks, reprinted from Made to Flourish; this article originally appeared at woodsidebible.org. Last week, I lost my breath. My breathlessness came because of watching the now viral video of a man gasping for the desperately needed air his lungs begged for. He pleaded with the police officer whose knee was crushing his windpipe as he moaned out the words,…
Excerpt from Economic Wisdom for Churches. THESIS 50: Christians should be taught that if the pope knew about the exploitation practiced by the indulgence-preachers, he would burn the church of St. Peter to ashes rather than build it with the skin, flesh and bones of the sheep. Martin Luther, 95 Theses Jobs, poverty, globalization, environment, debt, racism, trade – does…
By Jim Grubs, reprinted from Minding the Gap. In my recent reading, I’ve come across Parker Palmer who’s written the book On the Brink of Everything. It’s a book about the latter years of living; looking at many of the principles he’s found important to him. From the title above, you’ve probably guessed one of them is the principle of paradox.…
By Jeff Haanen, reprinted from the Denver Institute for Faith and Work. We spend about a third of our waking lives at work. And yet, for the majority of people, work is not much more than a paycheck. We feel lonely, especially men. We feel like there’s a gap between our job responsibilities and our own potential. We often feel exhausted and question…
By Kelli Sallman, reprinted from Made to Flourish. Record layoffs. Seclusion. Loss. In three weeks, Americans filed more than 30 million unemployment claims and more are coming. Shelter-in-place rules, age, illness, and the broad loss of livelihoods have stripped away roles and outlets for talents that help form self-identity and purposeful work. For many in our communities, the world has become a…
Part one of two; reprinted from Workship. As I visited Laurel the other day to drop off a pre-recording of our weekly church service, Handel’s Messiah was pumping from her house. Laurel is over 80 and needs voices and music to be a little louder for her to appreciate them fully. I gave her the DVD and asked how she…
By Darren Lim, reprinted from the Salt & Light Australia Daily Devotional. As many of our Salt & Light contributors have written about this week the effects of COVID-19 on our society as a whole have been quite far reaching – even more so than a lot of us (certainly myself) may have initially anticipated. In many ways the unanticipated impacts have been less about the…
Reprinted from Workship. Photo by Kara Martin. A couple of weeks ago on Facebook, Nathan Campbell from Living Church in Brisbane explained that he was going to be preaching on the topic of work the coming Sunday. He posed the following question: “This week I’m preaching on work, like the stuff we do to bring order and beauty to the…
By Jim Grubs, reprinted from Minding the Gap. Over the last decade and more, the metaphor of “The Bus” has become popular within many of our business, service and educational organizations. It, indeed, has been a helpful way to look at both organizations and individuals within the organization. Questions such as “What is the purpose of the ‘bus’?”; “What direction is the…
By Klaus Issler; part three of a series. Reprinted from the Oikonomia Network. When friends learned I was studying lending in the Old Testament, some asked: What about “payday loans”? Let’s see how the Old Testament’s teaching about loan ethics applies to this controversial practice. As we have seen, one component of Old Testament generosity for the working poor is loans to…
