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 Jeff Haanen, reprinted from Made to Flourish. Anne Bell, a recently-retired researcher at the University of Northern Colorado, spent one of her first years after retirement volunteering with the 5280 Fellowship, a leadership program for young professionals in Denver. Bright and soft-spoken, wearing dark-rimmed glasses that match her innate curiosity, she confessed one day to a group of early…
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…
See Part I here. I recently met a man who had worked emptying pig intestines in a sausage factory. Now that is a lousy job. But there are plenty of ways a job can be lousy. Whether it’s packing boxes in a swelteringly hot warehouse, listening to coworkers brag about one-night stands, or getting eclipsed for a promotion by someone…
Reprinted from Made to Flourish. A few years ago in a powerful op-ed in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote that “the United States now has a greater wealth gap by race than South Africa did during apartheid. Whites in America on average own almost 18 times as much as blacks; in South Africa in 1970, the ratio was about 15 times.”…
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…
How will the Church in the 21st century “equip the saints for works of service” (Eph. 4:12) for the vast challenges we face in the world today? This seems overwhelming at first blush. But then I remember that God’s people are touching every area of our cities through their daily work, and it’s the Church’s privilege and responsibility to send…
The Green Room 