Reprinted from the Chalmers Center; part one of a series. 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…
By Pam Tinsley, reprinted from Living God’s Mission. A priest I know recently attended a meeting of local business leaders who were struggling to comprehend the many changes that are being thrust upon our nation. The meeting included an elected official who was also struggling for answers and how to respond in such times. The leaders conveyed a sense of…
By David Williamson, part one of a series. From the beginning, at the dawn of history, men and women are called first into a relationship with God. Then, secondly, they are called to participate with God in exercising “dominion” – managing, shaping, designing and developing the world that God has created and entrusted to humans. The creator God is an…
By David Gill, reprinted from our archives; originally published by Workplace 313. J. Daryl Charles is an affiliate sholar of the John Jay Institute and the author of twenty books, including the superb Wisdom and Work: Theological Reflections on Human Labor from Ecclesiastes (2021). In Our Secular Vocation, Charles draws again on Ecclesiastes but ranges far wider in scripture and history to provide one…
Reprinted from the Theology of Work Project, lead contributor Alice Matthews. From time immemorial men and women have worked together in whatever enterprise they’ve found themselves. In the early American colonies women worked at tasks ranging from attorneys to undertakers, from blacksmiths to gunsmiths, from jailers to shipbuilders, from butchers to loggers. Some historians tell us that women ran ferries and…
By Chris Armstrong, reprinted from Humanism as a Way of Life. See previous posts in this series starting here and continuing here. So far we’ve looked at a few definitional aspects of what the Christian tradition has to tell us about vocation. Now what about popular understandings of vocation that may or may not align with those Christian understandings? We’re going…
By Isabelle Hamley, reprinted from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. The goat…
By Amy Sherman, reprinted from the Oikonomia Network. The Economic Wisdom Project is best known for our Economic Wisdom Project Talks, which are short, accessible, engaging and rich presentations suitable for use in classrooms and group discussions. But the EWP also features print resources, including our vision paper and our twelve elements of economic wisdom. Economic Wisdom for Churches, our…
Reprinted from the Chalmers Center. Pastor Rev. Kossi Nayo’s heart for his village in Togo was clear, as he often tended to church members and non-members during times of crisis. Hoping to empower the church to address poverty in their community, he introduced RESTORE savings groups to his congregation. The groups quickly grew, attracting both church members and those outside the congregation.…
By Pam Tinsley, reprinted from Living God’s Mission. How Full is Your Bucket Is the title of a book I read years ago for professional development.Authors Tom Rath and Donald Clifton’s premise is that each of us has an invisible “bucket,” and each interaction with another person can help fill our “bucket” by making us feel more valued, more positive. Conversely,…
