Category: Unsolved Problems

Continue the Conversation: How to Help Youth Value School as Work

by Paul Brandes This is the second post in a new series reprinted from Made to Flourish about the importance of integrating faith and work conversations within our youth ministries and homes, including the why and how of talking to our kids about vocation and the ways it relates to our faith.  I first began seriously considering vocational ministry when I…

How Big a Gospel?

Eschatology isn’t the only theological issue the faith and work movement struggles with, although it is probably the thorniest one. Another issue has been soteriology. How big is the gospel? But I think increased theological awareness in the church has removed a lot of what used to be real obstacles here. And the tensions that remain are, I think, actually tensions…

How Rest Can Save the Conversation on Vocation From Itself, Part 5: Embodied Rest

This is the final post in a series of posts adapted from a white paper prepared for Wheaton College’s Theology of Vocation Project. For the rest of the posts, go here. For three reasons, rest consistent with the Sabbath commandment is integral, and not ancillary, to the discussion of vocation and calling. First, the Sabbath commandment can infuse our work and other…

Faith and Work Summit Spotlight: Helen Kim and Integrating Theology of Work into a Child’s Worldview

The purpose of the Faith at Work Summit is to gather active participants and leaders in the faith at work movement from every industry sector to learn from each other and work together to extend Christ’s transforming presence in workplaces around the world. The 2018 Faith at Work Summit, held in Chicago at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare on October 11th-13th, is now open for registration! Early…

Quit Your Day Job (On Hannah Gadsby, Worker)

“Don’t quit your day job” is the extremely clever advice hecklers yell at comedians they judge to be not very funny. (As if 99% of performers – or writers or other artists – could ever afford not to have day jobs.) Australian standup comic Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special “Nanette” isn’t especially funny, but that’s part of its point. In the middle of the special, she…

How Rest Can Save the Conversation on Vocation From Itself, Part 4: Saving Vocation by Resisting Our Worst Instincts

Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series The Sabbath commandment not only provides rest for a restless world, but is an essential aspect of the conversation about vocation. Indeed, understanding the Sabbath correctly can help us to understand vocation – and even that dimension of vocation that we call work – better, as Marva Dawn argues in Keeping…

Faith and Work Wisdom and Wit From My Pa

This post continues an ongoing series curated by Ben Norquist on diversifying the faith and work conversation.  By Billye Kee Wisdom and wit from my Pa…..shared by a proud granddaughter, raised in Alabama during segregation and Jim Crow. One of the greatest influencers in my life was my grandfather, William Curtis White, Sr.  He was known throughout several counties in southeast…

Let’s Keep Bickering: Polemical and Patient

Part three of a series. Eschatological continuity emphasizes fighting for justice, bearing prophetic witness against the darkness of the world, and exercising kingly and queenly authority in rooting it out from our own domains of responsibility. Eschatological discontinuity emphasizes moderating our ambitions to see justice and mercy vindicated, and waiting patiently for the Lord’s judgment upon the overwhelming majority of evil that we are…