Archive for the ‘Vocation’ Category

Guest Post by Tom Nelson, author of Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work

I don’t know if it is the stage of life I now indwell or the company I keep these days, but something seems afoot among my fellow baby boomers. Perhaps as the generation ahead of us is passing on with increasing frequency, our own mortality is confronting us more and more with each passing day. In any case, much has been made to those of us who are entering the middle years about moving from lives of success to lives of significance.

This beckoning to more fully embrace lives of significance touches us deeply as image bearers of the one true God. Often this call to significance is translated as leaving the for profit world of business to invest our time, talent and treasure in a non-profit faith based enterprise.

I do not doubt that God’s vocational calling can and does at times lead us from one work sector to another, but does the well intentioned clarion call beckoning us from success to significance bear up under the thoughtful examination of Holy Scripture?

With all due respect for my “half time” friends, I don’t believe a robust theology of vocation, carefully mined from the biblical narrative, supports the “half time” paradigm.

• First: The Genesis creation account centers the definition of work not in terms of financial remuneration or an economic model, but rather to our contribution toward the flourishing of the common good and the cultivation of God’s good world.
• Second: The Apostle Paul writing to New Testament churches emphasizes being faithfully present wherever we are providentially placed in the work place. Writing to the local church at Colossae, Paul avoids any kind of dichotomous thinking about either a successful or significant vocation. Instead he presents God-honoring work indwelling God-honoring motive in the broadest of categories of worshiping God. Paul puts it this way, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord and not for men.” Paul wants us to grasp that our work itself has more than instrumental value; our work whatever it is has great intrinsic value as an act of God-honoring worship. From Paul’s perspective we are given a great deal of freedom in our vocational endeavors as long as we direct them to the glory of God and the advancement of the common good.
• Third: The matter of wise stewardship of the work skills we have attained over the years may very well be best used and further developed in the same for profit work sector. As one who has worked primarily in the non-profit world, I can speak from experience that while some “half-timers” find the transition to the non-profit world a good fit, but many do not. I don’t doubt that some non-profit enterprises have found “half-timer” contributions helpful, yet many I encounter have also experienced great difficulty. While both for profit and non-profit sectors can learn from each other, they each have unique dynamics that are vastly different. Many “half-timers” bring to the non for profit sector needed skills in organizational efficiency and pragmatic management, but what they often lack is the essential level of theological reflection needed to guide the organization in accomplishing its multiple bottom line mission.

So before we jump too quickly on the “half time” bandwagon, let’s both search our souls as well as the Holy Scriptures. Whether our lives have been marked by success, modest achievement or failure, our vocations are filled with great significance as we worship God in and through them.

Perhaps it is time we replaced a success to significance paradigm with a vocational paradigm of faithful presence. Where ver God has providentially placed you, whether that is in the profit sector or non-profit sector, be fully present for the Glory of God and the furtherance of Christ’s Gospel mission in the world.

Tom Nelson (DMin, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) has served as senior pastor of Christ Community Church in Leawood, Kansas, for more than twenty years. He is the author of Work Matters, Five Smooth Stones, and Ekklesia as well as a member of The Gospel Coalition.

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Author Tom Nelson helps us think about our calling and vocation in his new book Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work.

You can sample a free chapter, The Transforming Power of Work.

Nelson also has a great (free) audio series on this same topic:

1. The Sunday to Monday Gap
2. Work: A Four Letter Word
3. Work and Hope
4. Work and Hope (2)
5. The Extraordinary Ordinary Life
6. Gifted for Work
7. Divorce from Reality

As human beings, we have been designed not only to rest and to play, but also to work. From the very beginning of Scripture we see that the one true God is not a couch potato God, nor did he create a couch potato world. As the Genesis storyline opens, we read, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Here we are immediately introduced to God as a thoughtful and creative worker. At first glance we observe the triune God as an active deity. The Spirit of God is hovering over the waters. God’s infinite creativity, omnipotence, and omniscience are unleashed, and he is intimately engaged in his good creation.

Created to Contribute

Scripture tells us that the most bedrock answer to the question of why we work is that we were created with work in mind. Being made in God’s image, we have been designed to work, to be fellow workers with God. To be an image-bearer is to be a worker. In our work we are to show off God’s excellence, creativity, and glory to the world. We work because we bear the image of One who works. This is why the apostle Paul writes to a group of first-century followers of Jesus who have embraced the gospel, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thess. 3:10). At first blush, Paul’s rather blunt words seem cold and lacking Christian compassion, but upon further theological reflection, Paul’s words convey to us some needed insight. Paul does not rebuke those who, for various legitimate reasons, cannot work, but he does say that an unwillingness to work is no trivial thing. For anyone to refuse to work is a fundamental violation of God’s creation design for humankind.

When we grasp what God intended for his image-bearers, it is not surprising that throughout the book of Proverbs the wise are praised for their diligence and the foolish are rebuked for their laziness. When we hear the word fool, we often think of someone who is mentally deficient. However, a foolish person in Scripture is not necessarily one who lacks intelligence but rather one who lives as if God does not exist. The psalmist puts it this way: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Ps. 14:1). A fool is one who rejects not only the Creator but also creation design, including the design to work. Throughout Scripture slothfulness is rightly viewed in a negative light. A slothful Christian is a contradiction in terms. We should not be shocked to see that the Christian church throughout history has reflected negative sentiments about slothfulness. Sloth finds a prominent place in Pope Gregory the Great’s listing of the seven deadly sins. The Protestant Reformers spoke of the poverty of slothfulness and laziness. Consistently they made the connection that those who spend their time in idleness and ease should rightly doubt the sincerity of their Christian commitment.

God could have placed Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden and made it much like the world of humans in WALL-E, where they could sit around with food coming to them, sipping their life-giving nutrients out of giant cups. This was not God’s desire or his design for his good world. Because God himself is a worker, and because we are his image-bearers, we were designed to reflect who God is in, through, and by our work. The work we are called to do every day is an important part of our image-bearing nature and stewardship. As human beings we were created to do things. In this sense we are not only human beings, we are also human doings. We have been created to contribute to God’s good world.

From Work Matters by Tom Nelson

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