By Lisa Slayton; part two of a series. Reprinted from The Wholeness Journey. MYTH #1: PURSUE YOUR PASSION MYTH #1: You should pursue your passion and find your dream job. This is a big one, and has a related Myth – Myth #1.1, that you should seek a job that “makes an impact.” There is a commonly held adage that furthers this myth:…
By Matthew B. Harper, a resident in a Virginia prison. Reprinted from Living God’s Mission. “What is your ministry?” As I have worked my way through the church’s discernment process, I have struggled when someone asks me this. And it gets asked a lot. It is a good question because it seeks to understand my role in community, and how I…
Part one of a series. Reprinted from Ethos. In the late 1990s I was a mother of young children who had the opportunity of sitting in a class led by Robert Banks and Simon Holt about the theology of everyday life. It was one of the first units presented by a fledgling organisation, the Macquarie Christian Studies Institute (MCSI), led by Robert…
By Klaus Issler; part two of a series. Reprinted from the Oikonomia Network. As we saw in part one of this series, for most of the history of the church, church leaders understood that the Old Testament taught a complete ban on any interest on money loans. The subject of this study is the matter of loans to fellow Israelites who had the potential…
By Lisa Slayton; part one of a series. Reprinted from The Wholeness Journey. CALLING MATTERS As a leadership adviser and executive coach, I spend much of my time working with leaders and their teams to build healthy organizations. One of the questions I am often asked is “what is the biggest pain point that leaders most often come to you about?” You…
By Klaus Issler; part one of a series. Reprinted from the Oikonomia Network. For much of church history, pastoral leaders believed the Old Testament taught that no interest should be charged on any loans. The care and protection for the Israelite working poor was the main rationale for such a prohibition that no interest should be charged on such loans.…
Fourth in a series. To quote G.K. Chesterton, “the following propositions have been urged”: That we lack an account of what makes a social space a “public” space That this gap helps explain our failure to theologize well the particular kinds of social spaces in which most people do most of their work (business, government, etc.) That it also helps explain…
Third in a series. I’ve made the case that we lack an account of what makes a social space a “public” space, and that this lacuna in our thinking helps explain two persistent problems that the faith and work movement has long wrestled with: failure to theologize well the particular kinds of social spaces in which most people do most of…
The “faith and work movement” in America is in danger of deepening the sacred-secular divide . . . by approaching and understanding church in some secularizing ways. If we want to find the sacred in the world – including in our workplaces – we must first find it in our churches. And when we do, our work can be revolutionized. That…
Second in a series. I have proposed that the faith and work movement is hindered by the church’s failure to theologize public spaces in the same way we theologize the church and the home. To flesh that out, let’s begin by defining our terms – in part because the Philosopher’s Guild will take my card away if I don’t. What is…
The Green Room 