Mission and work
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
Another post rediscovered in the process of moving to WordPress. This one is a great quote from Tim Keller, taken from The Missional Church. I found the paper as a whole really helpful, but particularly in explaining why thinking about all of life from a Christian perspective has (or has to) moved up the agenda:
In ‘Christendom’ you can afford to train people just in prayer, Bible study, evangelism — private world skills — because they are not facing radically non-Christian values in their public life — where they work, in their neighborhood, etc.
In a ‘missional’ church, the laity needs theological education to ‘think Christianly’ about everything and work with Christian distinctiveness. They need to know: a) what cultural practices are common grace and to be embraced, b) what practices are antithetical to the gospel and must be rejected, c) what practices can be adapted/revised.
In a ‘missional’ situation, lay people renewing and transforming the culture through distinctively Christian vocations must be lifted up as real ‘kingdom work’ and ministry along with the traditional ministry of the Word.
Tags: mission, Tim Keller, work
Workplace as formation
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
I wrote this back in October, but forgot to post it. It follows on from the post about Miroslav Volf’s book Work in the Spirit and connects into James K.A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom (the intro is downloadable from the Baker website) The two spark interestingly off each other. Let’s start with Volf’s observation:
Economic alienation … often directly or indirectly causes alienation from God. We read in Exodus, for instance, that the oppressed and exploited Israelite slaves “did not listen to Moses on account of their … cruel bondage” (Exod 6:9). Economic alienation hindered their believing God and grasping the promise of liberation.
Smith’s point is that we are not just formed intellectually, via worldviews and ideas, but we are formed by practices. Using generalised liturgy as his focus, he suggests
…we are the sorts of animals whose orientation to the world is shaped from the body up more than from the head down. Liturgies aim our love to different ends precisely by training our hearts through our bodies. They prime us to approach the world in a certain way, to value certain things, to aim for certain goals, to pursue certain dreams, to work together on certain projects. In short, every liturgy constitutes a pedagogy that teaches us, in all sorts of precognitive ways, to be a certain kind of person.
But if we bring these two observations together, I think we are led to conclude that our work, employment, daily activities become part of our formation. They are not simply value-free actions, but they change our underlying perspective of the world. In the case of the Exodus story, the oppressive work formed the Israelites in such a way that they could not hear the message of liberation. Which brings up all sorts of questions: how does our workplace form us? Can we operate in a way that makes it positive rather than negative? Etc.
Tags: formation, Miroslav Volf, work
creativity and submission
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I’ve been looking at Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft recently. A very interesting read, essentially looking at the value of work that engages with creation directly and in a committed way (though that isn’t quite the way he would say it, I’m sure).
Here is one fascinating quote:
[According to the common view creativity] is what happens when people are liberated from the constraints pf conventionality.
…
The truth … is that creativity is a by-product of mastery of the sort that is cultivated through long practice. It seems to be built up through submission (think a musician practicing scales, or Einstein learning tensor algebra). Identifying creativity with freedom harmonizes quite well with the culture of the new capitalism, in which the imperative of flexibility precludes dwelling in any task long enough to develop real competence. Such competence is the condition … for genuine creativity…
Tags: art, creativity, culture, work
the gospel and economic liberation
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
I’ve been reading Miroslav Volf’s Work in the Spirit. Hard work to read (at least on the train), but interesting. One side point that stood out was this…
Economic alienation … often directly or indirectly causes alienation from God. We read in Exodus, for instance, that the oppressed and exploited Israelite slaves “did not listen to Moses on account of their … cruel bondage” (Exod 6:9). Economic alienation hindered their believing God and grasping the promise of liberation.
I found this fascinating and it brings out something that I’d never heard anywhere else. (Oh, I’m sure someone has covered it, probably in one of the books on my shelf, but I wasn’t paying attention…)
In the frequent discussions of the relationship between the gospel and social justice, I’ve seen few, if any, consider the possibility that social justice might, in some cases, be an important first step for people to hear the good news. We discuss whether social justice might be a significant consequence of the gospel or whether it provides some demonstration of God’s liberation, but we don’t consider that it might need to come first in some situations, that people might need to be helped at a more basic level before they can hear what we have to say.
But if we truly believe that life is not divided into the material/secular and the spiritual, is it so unreasonable that alienation in economics, work or daily life can make it hard for us to grasp the deeper ‘promise of liberation’?
And if we take serious what we see in the story of the Moses, then how should this affect our actions? Perhaps it should make us re-consider our attitude to third-world debt or fair trading or oppressive work environments…
Tags: justice, Miroslav Volf, work
good news for the ordinary
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
I’m trying to think about how we can better help our finalist students, so today I’ve been listening to a talk on work by Mark Greene (of LICC): Vision for Workplace Ministry. Worth a listen. (It takes him about 20 minutes to get to the substantial bit, so don’t give up too soon.)
Given my last post here, this quote particularly stuck out for me:
[The key problem in discipleship & evangelism] is not that we can’t figure out a way to answer the tough questions. It’s that we can’t demonstrate to a watching world a way to live the gospel in a compelling manner in the ordinary, good news for the ordinary.
worldview and work
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
I think my last post needs a corresponding observation from the other side.
When thinking ‘Christian Worldview’ it is easy to jump straight to the big questions. And this is important: develop a Christian view of politics — I will be grateful; show me how faith and art relate — I will enthusiastically read your book; construct a Christian philosophy of mathematics — my mathematician’s heart will rise up to kiss you. But, hang on, my average day sees only brief flashes of those big questions. What I also want is to know how my faith relates to office work or commuting or washing up or …
Steven Garber put it like this recently:
The [questions] I have spent the most time with over the years have always had something to do with relationships, with the yearning for love, for marriage, and of course with the meaning of sexuality. I have long believed that unless a person has confidence that the Christian vision has honest answers for these questions, these hopes, then it is awfully hard to believe that it is worth working out the meaning of my faith for politics, for economics, for the arts, for globalization (and an honest faith somehow, someday must address them at some point).
He’s probably hit the core, but I think we can expand the point further: we need honest answers to the questions lying around all the details of our lives, as much as the “big questions”. Perhaps more so…
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...