Your friendly neighborhood Distributist and blog curator originally wanted to share with you some quotes from G. K. Chesterton which would put you in the right frame of mind to think about human flourishing and the improvement of the faith and work movement in the New Year. What I have actually done instead is spent an hour on the website…
By Alistair Mackenzie (see our interview with Alistair here) Previous posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 One of the most helpful discoveries that I made in my thesis research was identifying some of the elements that are necessary for someone to gain and nurture an ongoing sense of vocation, or SoulPurpose as I have gone on to call it.…
I recently had the good fortune to attend a conference where I heard stories of different organizations around the country whose leaders have a vision of flourishing and common good in their communities. While this conference was not explicitly a faith and work event, I believe every individual there was living out the integration of faith and work on a…
By Alistair Mackenzie (see our interview with Alistair here) Previous posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2 In my continuing series of lessons gleaned from study and work in the faith and work movement, I want to talk today about two things: dangers in emphasizing a theology of work and opportunities worth pursuing. When you start to elevate the significance of…
By Greg Forster; part six of a series. This series on daily work as a battle to reclaim the world from Satan started with a cosmic view of the holy war between God and Satan for control of the world. Then we applied this at the personal level and subsequently walked outward from there to the social level. As we…
The Problem With Work (2011) by Kathi Weeks has been sitting on my desk now for some time in preparation for my reviewing it here. Recently, my 5-year-old walked by my desk. She is just learning to read, and she sounded out the title. “What is the problem with work?” she said. “Is it that not everyone has a job?” On the…
By Greg Forster; part five of a series. We have been looking at how spiritual formation in daily work and resistance to the world’s injustice are deeply and extensively interdependent. Last time we began unpacking two amazing sentences about how we should do our daily work, drawn from Dallas Willard’s Divine Conspiracy in a section titled “The Glory of My Job.” The…
In a well-meant attempt to ascribe value to work beyond the instrumental contribution to a financial bottom line, the faith and work movement has tended to describe work as having intrinsic value. This is a move in the right direction, but it may unintentionally oversimplify the discussions of the value of work. Instead, I recommend setting aside the category…
By Alistair Mackenzie (see our interview with Alistair here) Previous posts in this series: Part 1 In my last post, I talked about how I came to enter into graduate study on the theology of work. Here’s some of what I learned. First, I noticed how early in the history of the Christian church the sacred/secular divide that runs like a…
From the Theology of Work Project: We give because you first gave to us. Giving God, just as we love because you first loved us, we give because you first gave to us. Out of gratitude we bring gifts of money to be used for your kingdom work. With these gifts we also pledge to you our whole selves. We give…
The Green Room 