I can lose my job; I might be released from a position. My career can come to an end when I retire from the organization I work in. But my vocation comes from God; it remains and is not in the end som...
Exodus 3:10-12, 1 Samuel 3:8-10, Matthew 4:18-20, Acts 9:3-6, 2 Timothy 1:9, Psalm 139:13-16
Older notions of vocation and vocational development assumed that people wrestled with matters of vocation as a young adult. It has been commonly assumed that vocational counseling was provided in hig...
Spirit of the Living God—Fall afresh on us this day. Spirit of God present and powerful, Spirit of God fruitful and faithful, Spirit of God filling and fulfilling us as children of the Father and foll...
I can lose my job; I might be released from a position. My career can come to an end when I retire from the organization I work in. But my vocation comes from God; it remains and is not in the end som...
Worthy goals are generally motivated by something deeper than success. In her conversations with Nobel laureates, [researcher Xiaodong D.] Lin said she has found that “they all have insatiable passion...
Most of the heroes in the Bible had what we would think of as secular vocations. Isaac developed real estate, Jacob was a rancher, and Joseph was a government official (in charge of agriculture, the e...
1 Samuel 3:1-10, Ecclesiastes 12:1 , Proverbs 2:1-11, Mark 10:17-22 , 1 Timothy 4:12 , Psalm 119:9-11
I have been moved to a different course of action, however, inspired largely by my daily exposure to college students in a great university during the course of a preaching and teaching ministry that ...
We think it's difficult to apply for jobs today, what about a hundred years ago when traveling did not mean jumping on a flight or the interstate. Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain once tra...
Pastors work hard and those outside of ministry (and maybe within) may miss that it is labor , a job , their share in Adam's gift of work. We're excited to share this devotion from Kara M...
Ministers run the awful risk . . . of ceasing to be witnesses to the presence in their own lives — let alone in the lives of the people they are trying to minister to — of a living God who transcends ...
O God, you are indeed worthy of our praise and worship. Yet we turn away and worship other gods. We find ourselves at the altar of our careers, our financial security, our self-image, our status. We t...
The word vocation is a rich one, having to address the wholeness of life, the range of relationships and responsibilities. Work, yes, but also families, and neighbors, and citizenship, locally and glo...
Hebrews 11:39-40, Jeremiah 1:5, Philippians 3:14, Galatians 6:9, Matthew 25:21
In his landmark work, Habits of the Heart, the sociologist Robert Bellah describes thee distinct orientations people take with respect to their work. The first orientation is to see your work as a job...
Peter Drucker suggests that we should always sustain two streams of learning and self-improvement. And though he is speaking specifically about work and career, what he says is equally applicable whet...
By the time they have turned eighteen, most Americans will have moved at least twice. Most thirty-year-olds will have moved six times. By the end of our lives, most of us will have pushed that number ...
The huge assumption of our social context is that work is bad and leisure is good. Our only hope for a transformed vision for vocation, work and career, and for navigating the transitions of life, is ...
Contemporary society assumes that we make a choice: one member of a household will be the “homemaker” and the other the “breadwinner” (i.e., in the marketplace generating income to sustain the home). ...
This past week I have been at a reunion with college friends (this is the main reason I missed last week's update). It's been significant for a number of reasons. I hope to unpack a few other ...
The American Golfer George Archer had a relatively successful career on the PGA tour, winning thirteen PGA tournaments, including the 1969 Masters. As he drew closer to retiring from the sport, he was...
I mentioned last week that I spent time recently with friends from college, and this group loves asking deep questions about life and faith. During our time together, we had some assigned reading by...
Exodus 16:4-18, 1 Kings 17:8-16, Isaiah 55:1-2 , John 6:32-35, Matthew 14:13-21, Psalm 37:25-26
Celebrated as one of the greatest writers of all time, French writer Marcel Proust (1871–1922) filled out a personal questionnaire at the start of his career for a magazine like the one we know today ...
The US Golfer George Archer had a relatively successful career on the PGA tour, winning won thirteen tournaments, including the 1969 Masters. As he drew closer to retiring from the sport, he wasn’t ex...
A few weeks ago I brought up the topic of vocation , or calling . Right around that time, Frederick Buechner, whose work I had included in that post, passed away at the age of 96. His works have ...
In his book “Where Is God When It Hurts?”, author Philip Yancey shares an unfortunate, yet central dynamic related to how Americans respond to pain: we do everything possible to avoid it. That means p...
Many have heard of the polymath and famous atheist Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), whose career as a public intellectual touched on a variety of disciplines, including philosophy (he is considered one o...
Note: This was originally posted on 2/6/20 at Workship.com.au. A couple of weeks ago on Facebook, Nathan Campbell from Living Church in Brisbane explained that he was going to be preaching on...
I might not be the best person to be writing this. After an eleven-year career in business in my twenties and early thirties, I’ve been an ordained pastor now for nearly twenty-seven years. There are...
If you were lucky enough to watch the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, you probably remember swimmer Michael Phelps bursting onto the international scene. Phelps won six medals in those ga...
Despite a widely shared belief that faith should inform ethical decisions at work, a mere 18 of 230 respondents had ever consulted a pastor for advice about a work-related matter. Of these, six were ...