A Workplace Ministry Pastor

Engraving of Jonathan Edwards by R. Babson and J. Andrews. (Public domain)

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was a pastor, a missionary to Native Americans, and the third President of Princeton University. Among his descendants came scores of pastors and missionaries, 120 college professors, 110 attorneys, 60 authors, 30 judges, 13 college or university presidents, 3 congressmen, and one Vice President of the United States.

But there's more to the story.

While doing eight years of Ph. D. research on Jonathan Edwards, Dr. David Scott discovered something remarkable:

"One day…I came across the discipleship curriculum that the puritan pastor Jonathan Edwards had been trained in by his church in how to have a God-filled work life. They even had a name for it…'technologia,' a Latin term for their little-known method of teaching the art of God-centered work.... Edwards and his fellow students—future pastors and merchants alike—were tested in it in order to graduate from early Yale. The Puritans knew what it meant for the church to purposely pastor people in their work. We do not.” [For more, see "A Church Without A View: Jonathan Edwards And Our Current Lifeview Discipeship Crisis."]

The English Puritan Pastor George Swinnock said: "The pious tradesman will know that his shop as well as his chapel is holy ground." No doubt this was because the Puritan view of work was systematically built into the minds of "pastors and merchants alike" through the church. This was normative.

Yet today, for the most part, a "systematic worklife discipleship" effort by the church has gone the way of men's powdered wigs.

But things are slowly changing. Though small in quantity, an increasing number of pastors are making "systematic worklife discipleship" a priority. Tom Nelson, author of Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship To Monday Work, the Pastor of Christ Community Church in Leawood, Kansas, is a good example. Tim Keller, author of Every Good Endeavor, and Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, continues to be a leading voice in this matter.   

A local church in our area, Cedar Park Church, has placed a man on staff to serve as a Workplace Ministry Pastor. Paul Graves' total focus as Workplace Ministry Pastor is to help members of Cedar Park Church to discover their calling at work. Paul, a good friend of mine, has created GodWork 360 to restore a "systematic approach" to worklife discipleship through the local church.  

For more, see: http://www.cedarpark.org/ministries/workplaceministry/.

Paul Graves, Workplace Ministry Pastor at Cedar Park Church, Bothell, Washington, USA, heads up GodWork 360. The hair is different than Edwards', but the heart is the same.

The Truth And Baloney Detector

You may remember my interview of Gary Starkweather, who taught an adult Sunday School class at our church for several years, and also invented the laser printer. If you missed the interview, see https://youtu.be/61-gPwHdYo4. Apparently Gary's fascination with lasers went far, far beyond the printer. The above photo (used with Gary's permission) shows him receiving an Oscar for his behind-the-scenes contribution to the technical success of the first Star Wars film. This award was presented for his part in helping to develop a technique to color scan film into a digital computer for matting several images together (often more than ten frames matted together), which was used for scenes like the light sword fights. The increased efficiency of this digital matting technique was much more cost effective than the old hand cutting and physical matting approach. Way to go, Gary.

One of our WRAP schools [Worklife Restoration and Advancement Project] is Grace Christian School, in Staunton, Virginia. The High School Principal, Brian Fitzgerald, sent the following message to parents before the opening of the new Star Wars film. In it, Brian recommends a teaching tool presented in the WRAP training, called, the Truth and Baloney Detector:

Dear GCS Parents,

How should a Christian approach a film like Star Wars? Thoughtfully. We should be active viewers, being conscious of the ideas coming through the art. We need to teach our kids and students to do the same, learning to detect truth from baloney. And there’s an app for that! Well...a tool.

It's called the Truth and Baloney Detector, and we will be using this tool more often in GCS classrooms. This tool is designed to help us engage thoughtfully with media. It’s easy to pick apart a film and identify everything that’s wrong with its ideas. It takes more humility and discernment to identify truth in these same films. Yet be vigilant in separating it from baloney.  

The Truth and Baloney Detector is an excellent tool to use to talk with your children about the movies they watch, especially if you are watching with them. Our kids are going to watch movies, so let’s teach them how to watch well, with the biblical worldview as their framework. 

I recommend filling out the attached Truth and Baloney Detector together as a family. It may seem like a lot of work for watching a movie, but thinking biblically is necessary work. If we don’t actively engage with our entertainment, what’s the alternative? 

Damon of Athens, a contemporary of Plato, said, “Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who writes its laws.” Law enforces a code. Entertainment teaches culture. You can write and implement laws to make people outwardly conform to certain standards, or you could smuggle those same ideas into people’s minds by packaging them in movies that everyone willingly watches. 

Let’s love God with our minds, take captive thoughts that are counter to Christ, and teach our children to do the same.

For your Truth and Baloney Detector, click here [downloaded file].

Well done, Brian! The following link explains how to use the Truth and Baloney Detector in detail. I recommend watching this with your son/daughter before using the tool:  https://youtu.be/WW1_8utGspo

May the Father be with you!

The Big Idea Behind Christmas

Today's post appeared six years ago, during my first year of blogging, and has been a Christmas tradition since.

One of my favorite Christmas carols is Joy To The World. The words are by Isaac Watts, based on Psalm 98: "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth; make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for He cometh to judge the earth, with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity."

Some say the song is not about the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, but about His second coming. The joy that is sung about, then, is a future joy that will occur when Christ returns, to “make the nations prove the glories of His righteousness,” in that full expression of His Kingdom yet-to-come.

This may be what Watts had in mind, but the song makes as much sense to me as a celebration of Christ's first coming. While I’m looking forward to that full and perfect expression of the Kingdom-yet-to-come, I’m  also celebrating Christ's King-domain already here. Jesus is Lord of all. Today! Not just in the future, but at this present moment (Acts 10:36-37).

Christ's Kingdom hasn't fully arrived, nor is it perfectly realized yet. This will happen when Christ comes the second time. But the domain over which Christ is King (that is, His King-domain) includes both heaven and earth right now. He is holding it all together by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3). Today.

This is the greatest Christmas gift: that Christ came “to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found.” His blessings flow through people who are reconciled to God, and who, in turn, are reconciling all things to Him, including the things of earth, far as the curse is found. Today! 

This is the big idea behind Christmas. (See Col. 1:16-20, and To Reconcile Not Only People But Things.)

So, no more let thorns infest the ground. By God's amazing grace, let's go back to work after Christmas, to pull up some bramble bushes and plant some redwood trees.

Joy to the Earth! the Savior reigns; Let men their songs employ; While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, Repeat the sounding joy, Repeat the sounding joy, Repeat, repeat the sounding joy! 

Far as the curse is found.
 

A Nigerian Investment That's Really Working!

A wise school leader builds his office upon a rock. This is the office of Segun Gbolagun, Director of The Kingdom Citizens International School, in Jos, Nigeria.

Last week, we highlighted the Worklife Restoration and Advancement Project, or, as we call it, the WRAP. Currently, there are a handful of Christian schools in the USA and abroad that are involved in this project. Lord willing, there will be more to come. 

These WRAP schools are actively restoring theology of work to the curriculum in a way that is systemic, intentional and repeatable. It is a rigorous, multi-year process for each school.

In addition to the WRAP schools, Worldview Matters is working with selected cohorts of Christian educators involved in early education through graduate school. These specialized cohorts are in the United States, South Korea, Uganda, Guatemala and (starting in January) Bogotá, Colombia.

Each WRAP school and leaders' cohort participates in a 9-month distance-learning course developed especially for Christian educators, called, Increase Meaning: A Wholistic Approach To Christian Education. It is through this venue that Worldview Matters is able to train educators around the world without leaving our office in northwest USA. [Actually, anyone in the world can enroll in this course. For more information, click here.]

Thanks to a grant from the MustardSeed Foudation and Bakke Graduate University, we have been working for the past 1-1/2 years with a WRAP school in Jos, Nigeria, called The Kingdom Citizens International School.

You may know Nigeria as home to a vicious Islamist group called Boko Haram. This gang of thugs has killed 20,000 people since 2009, and displaced 2.3 million people from their homes, primarily in northeast Nigeria. Last March, the group declared allegiance to ISIS. The name "Boko Haram" means: Western education is evil. (How would you like to be operating a Christian school in this neck of the woods?)

Recently, in a conversation with Segun Gbolagun, the Director of The Kingdom Citizens International School, I asked him if they were in any danger from Boko Haram. "Oh, no," he replied. "Boko Haram is far away from us." When I asked him how far, he said: "Oh, they are about a six or seven hour drive from us."

This information was not all that comforting to me.

Last week I recorded a video call with Segun and Dot Reju, Pastor of The Kingdom Citizens Pavilion, the church that oversees this school. I want to share some of our conversation with you. I think you'll agree, this is a Nigerian investment that's really working!

If the video does not play, click here: https://youtu.be/q9C3Jbe_DLc

Worklife Restoration and Advancement Project

Why should Christians value machines?

On a fourth grade science test after a unit on pulleys and machines, Mrs. Curry included the following question: 

Why should Christians value work and machines?

Here are some of the answers she received: 

"Because they help us through life, and God gave us the material to make them."

"God wants us to use our brains to worship Him, and machines help people to worship God."

"Because God said to do work, and machines help us to do work."

"Because people can glorify God by building things that they have never built before."

"God gave us the thought of them and they make it easier to serve God."

"Because God made us to do work, not to just sit around and do nothing.  So when we work, we should want to do it easily if we have to do it all the time."

"Because God made us to do work and live. We should make it easier by using simple machines."

"Because it is God's purpose for us."

"God created people so people can invent machines."

I received this report from Dean Ridder, Headmaster at Isaac Newton Christian Academy, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Dean ended his message with: "Not bad for 10 years old."

An understatement.

Worldview Matters is working with Bakke Graduate University and the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics to restore a biblical concept of work via elementary and secondary education. We do this through the WRAP: Worklife Restoration and Advancement Project. We have been working with Dean's school for the past 2½ years. [For details about the WRAP, click here.]

In another note, Dean relayed: 

"Our enrollment has grown by 10% since last year (and is still growing--we have families still actively participating in the enrollment process for this year). When I was asked to what do we contribute this growth when enrollment is dropping at Christian schools in our area, I had a good answer. 'People are hearing about our efforts to elevate the level of biblical worldview integration and incorporation of theology of work in our classrooms, and are responding to it.'"

Below is a clip of another INCA teacher, Mrs. Greer, having a conversation with 5^th grade students on the topic of ecosystems and work. Here is an example of authentic Christian education, helping students to think about all things, including work, in the context of a biblical frame of reference:

If the video does not play, click here.

The Accidental Executive

The Book of the Year. (My year, that is.)

One of the best books I've read on the intersection between the biblical worldview and the world of business came out this past year. It's called, The Accidental Executive, by Albert M. Erisman.

I don't say this just because Al is a personal friend, and we attend the same church! I say this because his book is full of rich insights, from cover to cover. As I read the book, I kept saying to myself, "How can Al keep pulling so many insights out of the life of Joseph? Just when I think he can't possibly come up with another insight, he comes up with another great insight!"

The Accidental Executive is a truly exceptional book that deals with theology of work in the context of life itself. What makes the book particularly good, is that Al relates so much of what he learned from the life of Joseph to his own experience as Director of Technology for The Boeing Company. Al's real-life stories are not only the happy experiences, but the not-so-happy ones, too. And that's just like Al. He's the real deal.

I highly recommend you get this book for anyone on your Christmas list who works in the world of business. Actually, what Al pulls from the life of Joseph applies to everyone. Just get it.

Allow me to introduce you to the man behind the book, via this short video recently done by Centered Stories:

(If the video does not play, click here: https://vimeo.com/125599429.)

Thanksgiving Exercise

Here's a great Thanksgiving exercise worth doing annually.

Take out a clean sheet of paper, and write the following at the top: My Personal Board Of Directors.

In the middle of the page, draw an oval to represent a large conference room table. Print your own name at one end of the table. Around this table, print the names of six or seven others who currently influence you the most, in a positive way. They may be living or deceased. They may be people you have not met, such as authors, media personalities, sports figures, or musicians. They may be people you've known for decades. These are the voices you turn to, listen to, and learn the most from. These are the voices you take seriously when you want counsel, ideas, motivation, companionship, guidance, or a boost of confidence.

Now write a short description by each name that identifies the reason he or she is on your Personal Board of Directors. For example, “He always makes time for me,” or, “She never makes me feel like my ideas won't work.”

Finally, write a short personal note to at least one of your Personal Board Members (a living one), or a phone call, thanking this person, letting him/her know that he/she is on your Personal Board of Directors, and why.

I was taught this great exercise by Kathy Koch, Founder of Celebrate Kids, Inc. (http://www.celebratekids.com/). With her permission, I have shared it with many others over the years.

Several of my Personal Board Members have been at my table for more than 35 years. My wife has been on my Personal Board for over 45 years!

What a difference these people have made in my life. They are the friends I cannot afford to live without.

Who is on your Personal Board of Directors? Maybe you cannot limit it to six or seven. Get a bigger piece of paper. Thank one or two of them today, and be sure to let them know why they are on your Board. You will be glad you did, and they will be glad, too. It will be a Thanksgiving gift to treasure.

One more question: Did you include Jesus on your Personal Board?

He's been on mine for 58 years.

Thank you, Lord!

John Taylor (left) and Bill Laney (right) have been on my Personal Board of Directors for 35+ years.

The People We Can't Afford To Live Without

Two are better than one. Especially at work.

We seem to be living at a time when friends are more necessary than ever. What may come as a surprise to many, is that a person who has a best friend at work is seven times more likely to be engaged in his or her job. This may seem counter intuitive, but it is the discovery of Tom Rath.

Who is Tom Rath? He's the best-selling author of How Full Is Your Bucket?, StrengthsFinder 2.0, and Vital Friends: The People you Can't Afford to Live Without.

Rath puts meat on the term friend. He does this by identifying eight different types of friends. As I summarize his eight types below, I urge you to think about the people in your own life who fill these various roles. And consider how you might be filling one or more of these roles in other people's lives: 

Builder: a person who motivates you to accomplish things you would not otherwise accomplish.

Champion: a person who sings your praises to others.

Collaborator: a person who has similar interests, and shares those interests with you.

Companion: a person who is always there for you.

Connector: a person who introduces you to others (without being asked!).

Energizer: a person who gives you a boost.

Mind Opener: a person who challenges you to think outside the box.

Navigator: a person who provides guidance for you.

As I read Vital Friends, I couldn't help but think of the people in my life who have filled the roles described by Rath. It was easy for me to see why he calls these the people we can't afford to live without.

As King Solomon put it, in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12,

Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor;
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up.

Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

This Pastor Doesn't Say It Any Longer

"The most important thing happening this week in our city is what's happening right now in this sanctuary!"

That's what Dr. Vic Pentz, Senior Pastor at Peachtree Presbyterian, Atlanta, Georgia, used to tell his congregation on Sunday mornings. But this pastor doesn't say it any longer.

Has he backslidden?

You be the judge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YboJIUVm8Cc

Poor Atlas

Dr. Robert Osborn is the Executive Director of Wilberforce Academy, St. Paul, Minnesota. He is a brother we greatly respect, and Wilberforce Academy is a work our readers should know about. I asked Bob if he would write a post about his work with international students, which he kindly did here. My wife, Kathy, and I have had international students living with us off and on for 40 years. These students have come from Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. We have touched many nations through our home and our family. But Bob carries the process much further.

Poor Atlas.

The entire globe was on his shoulders. 

Now, imagine a lever by which you can leverage the future of the nations that span that globe.  And imagine not having to leave your home in the process, but actually having the opportunity to impact the destiny of whole nations from your doorstep.

Welcome to the world of international student ministry and Wilberforce Academy.   While churches invest large amounts of funds to transport families overseas where missionaries often spend years wrestling with major cultural, linguistic and religious obstacles that make sharing the Gospel difficult, God has dropped more than a million international students in North America (and three million elsewhere around the world).  In many cases, the finest brains come to North America because of our renowned universities. 

They are at our doorsteps, waiting for our welcome. Many are open to the Gospel, especially those from Mainland China, which sends the largest percentage of international students (more than 1/3^rd of the overall total).

Not only do some of these students find Christ here, but at the Wilberforce Academy we’re also preparing these students to creatively, courageously, skillfully, and intelligently apply a Christian worldview to the challenges facing their societies and workplaces.  We call these students whom we mentor “redemptive change agents,” that is Christ-animated agents of change whose horizons are denominated by the Kingdom and whose academic training, when brought under the yoke of Christ, yields rich fruit.  By the grace of God, we prepare them to be advanced professionals skilled in making known Jesus Christ and His healing balm throughout their nations.

Thangboi has founded two Christian schools in Northwest India, while Emmanuela prepares to depart for Cameroon in 2016 where she will design children’s curricula for Cameroon’s churches and public schools.  Ricardo advocates in Jamaica’s courts for his country’s most vulnerable children.  Nearby in Haiti, Abbel champions a vision for teaching Christian worldview to his people while also managing programs for Compassion International.  In Zimbabwe, Masango teaches conflict resolution skills, while, in Togo, Ameido will very soon arouse the entrepreneurial potential of her country’s young college graduates who now only wait for government jobs.  Kisongo, from his base in Minneapolis, is transforming the church landscape in eastern Congo because of his teaching on a Christian worldview, and, very soon, he hopes to also empower the development of businesses that will create desperately needed wealth.

The world at our doorsteps awaits.  Will you rise up with the love of Christ, and a desire to teach the only worldview that matches the shape of reality?  Will you then train these future leaders who await your hospitality and your friendship, and help them to disciple their nations?

If you do, you will be leveraging what Atlas could only carry.

And you will know blessing unimagined.


For more about Wilberforce Academy click here.