Piecing It Together

By Michaela O’Donnell Long, reprinted from the De Pree Center.  The other night my daughter and I were putting together a LEGO set. LEGOs have become what I’ll affectionately call a “pandemic pastime” in our house. As is usual, she was the builder and I was the helper. As helper, my job was to look at the instructions and see what pieces she’d need…

Doing Good and Doing Well: A COVID-19 Response

Reprinted from the Denver Institute for Faith and Work. Samantha Glenn is a current 5280 Fellow and a strategist with Peak Refreshments. As a food services company, fears about the Coronavirus have interrupted their normal workflow drastically. But the disruptions caused by the pandemic have also created a new opportunity to partner with local churches and nonprofits to enhance food access for their…

11 Ways a Biblical Understanding of Work Can Help during Corona 2020

Reprinted from Workship. Coronavirus (COVID-19) is having unprecedented impacts on our lives, with apparently worse to come. Setting aside the health effects, our working is being impacted in many ways: the context (working from home where possible), the amount of work (casuals losing shifts, work suspended for months, being made redundant) and the culture of work (from positive to crisis)…

Valuing the Individual

By Darren Lim, reprinted from the Salt & Light Australia Daily Devotional. Learning to value and recognize the contribution of every individual is incredibly important. Our modern-day ecosystems are built around speed, efficiency and productiveness which while having their advantages, can also lead to transactional relationships and a lack of general empathy for the emotional needs of people stuck in…

The Bus: An Organizational Metaphor

By Jim Grubs, reprinted from Minding the Gap. Over the last decade and more, the metaphor of “The Bus” has become popular within many of our business, service and educational organizations. It, indeed, has been a helpful way to look at both organizations and individuals within the organization. Questions such as “What is the purpose of the ‘bus’?”; “What direction is the…

Moses, Modern Finance and Poverty (Conclusion)

By Klaus Issler; part three of a series. Reprinted from the Oikonomia Network. When friends learned I was studying lending in the Old Testament, some asked: What about “payday loans”? Let’s see how the Old Testament’s teaching about loan ethics applies to this controversial practice. As we have seen, one component of Old Testament generosity for the working poor is loans to…

Seminary Spotlight: Sioux Falls Seminary

By Philip E. Thompson, reprinted from the Oikonomia Network. Toward the end of the last Seminary Spotlight report from Sioux Falls Seminary, we shifted our focus a little. Having reported the deep integration of themes attendant on work and the economy in our curricular and co-curricular opportunities, and having shared the fruit being borne by our students in their varied contexts of…