Faith and Work on Modern Religious Life

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Author

Christianity Today

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 , Proverbs 22:6, Joshua 24:15, Matthew 19:13-14 , Ephesians 6:4, Psalm 78:4-7

About 2 out of 3 American adults who regularly attend church or other religious services say they go for their kids.

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Are People in the West Abandoning Faith or Just the Church?

Author

David Zahl

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 32:1-4 , 1 Kings 18:21, Jeremiah 2:13, Romans 1:25, Psalm 115:4-8, Acts 17:22-23

In this excerpt, author David Zahl challenges the common belief that religion is “in decline.” He argues that while Westerners, particularly younger generations, may be distancing themselves from the ...

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Author

Andrew Sullivan

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Modernity slowly weakened spirituality, by design and accident, in favor of commerce; it downplayed silence and mere being in favor of noise and constant action. The reason we live in a culture increa...

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Reformers' Impact on Modern Spirituality

Author

Tom Nelson

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 2:15, Exodus 31:1-6, Proverbs 16:3, Matthew 25:14-30, Colossians 3:23-24 , Psalm 127:1

Noteworthy in this regard is the contribution of the Reformers, particularly Martin Luther, though John Calvin’s contribution is also very significant. Both called for a spirituality in the world that...

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Author

Mike Cosper

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To experience the richness of life in God's kingdom, we must reorder our lives. We need to see through the shallow promises of our culture, and we need rhythms, signposts, and practices that reori...

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The Sacred Alters of Modern Life

Author

A. J. Swoboda

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Our 24/7 culture conveniently provides every good and service we want, when we want, how we want. Our time – saving devices, technological conveniences, and cheap mobility have seemingly made life muc...

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Author

Cotton Mather

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Religion begat prosperity and the daughter devoured the mother.

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Author

Gene Edward Veith Jr.

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Thus a Christian finds himself called to drab and lowly tasks, which seem less remarkable than monastic life, mortifications, and other distractions from our vocations. For him who heeds his vocation,...

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“Respecting” Religion by Making it Private

Author

Nancy Pearcey

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Scripture

Exodus 5:1–2, 1 Kings 18:21–39, Daniel 3:16–18, Matthew 5:14–16, Acts 4:19–20, Psalm 2:1–2, 10–12

Most secularists are too politically savvy to attack religion directly or to debunk it as false. So what do they do? They consign religion to the value sphere—which takes it out of the realm of true a...

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Grace & Guilt

Author

Paul Tournier

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 3:1-24, Isaiah 6:1-8, Genesis 50:15-21, John 8:1-11, Luke 15:11-32, Psalm 51:1-17

In Guilt and Grace , Swiss physician and Christian, Paul Tournier, writes… I cannot study this very serious problem of guilt with you without raising the very obvious and tragic fact that rel...

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A Mischief to Religion

Author

Joseph Glanvill

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Anti-Intellectualism has been a problem in the church for some time now. Consider the words of the 17th century English clergyman Joseph Glanvill, who had this to say about the role of reason in faith...

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Doing Rather Than Being

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

Sabbath is that ancient idea and practice of intentional rest that has long been discarded by much of the church and our world. Sabbath is not new. Sabbath is just new to us. Historically, Christians ...

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Author

Matthew Henry

Keywords

Sabbath

The streams of religion run deep or shallow, according as the banks of the Sabbath are kept up or neglected.

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The Aroma of that Room

Author

Dallas Willard

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:1-6, Isaiah 6:1-8, Acts 9:1-9, Matthew 4:18-22, 1 Samuel 3:1-10

Sometimes, of course, the sense of God with us becomes much more distinct. My oldest brother, J. I. Willard, served for over thirty years as a minister under the blessing of God. But his entry into th...

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Innovation or Heresy

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Ecclesiastes 7:10, Colossians 2:8, Matthew 9:17, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, Romans 12:2, Mark 7:8-9, Isaiah 43:19

It’s funny how sometimes members of the church can associate anything new with “heresy.” We often make the mistake of confusing technological innovations or scientific discoveries for changes to the g...

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Author

David Putman & Ed Stetzer

Keywords

Scripture

Amos 8:11-12 , 2 Chronicles 7:14 , Nehemiah 13:10-11, Hebrews 10:24-25 , Matthew 9:37-38 , Psalm 122:1

Since 1991, the adult population in the United States has grown by 15%. During that same period, the number of adults who do not attend church has nearly doubled, rising from 39 million to 75 million—...

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Author

Thomas Merton

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If we want to be spiritual, then let us first of all live out lives. Let us not fear the responsibilities and the inevitable distractions of the work appointed for us by the will of God. Let us embrac...

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Religious Faith in the Workplace? The Resistance May Not Be What You Think

Author

John C. Knapp

Keywords

More often than not, park-it-at-the-door thinking [about religious faith] has less to do with hostility to faith than with the avoidance of risk, for many employer’s fear that any hint of religion is ...

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Blowing Through Stop Signs: Why Keeping the Sabbath Is So Important

Author

Dan Baumgartner

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 20:null, Deuteronomy 5:null

Ignoring God's Stop Sign Have you ever been driving and inadvertently blown right through a stop sign? It happened to me recently. Anne and I were down in San Francisco meeting some friends, I w...

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The Frustrating Unpredictability of Faith

Author

Don Everts and Doug Schaupp

Keywords

Scripture

Galatians 6:9, John 3:8, Ecclesiastes 11:5, Isaiah 55:10-11, John 6:44

Writing about ministering to postmodern skeptics, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp share a helpful insight into the mystery of God's movement: The first lesson they have taught us about the path to f...

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Tell us about Being a Christian

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 12:1-2, Matthew 5:14-16, 1 Corinthians 1:25, Micah 6:8, Colossians 3:16, James 3:17

In Soul-Making , Allen Jones shares an intriguing visit to the Coptic Monastery of St. Macarius out in the Egyptian desert. There, he meets Father Jeremiah, a monk who spins tales of the desert fathe...

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Author

Ernest R. Palen

Keywords

Sabbath

Our madly rushing, neurotic society needs the therapy of the silence and quietness that flows from a day kept holy, really holy. A day when our thoughts are of God, our actions are tempered by a desir...

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Don’t Professionalize Pastoral Ministry

Author

Frederick Buechner

Keywords

Scripture

1 Kings 19:4, Jeremiah 12:1-3, Matthew 11:28-30, 2 Corinthians 4:7-10, Psalm 42:1-5

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 ...

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Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

What you do in the present by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neig...

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Listen to your Life

Author

Frederick Buechner

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 118:24, Colossians 3:17, Matthew 6:34, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Proverbs 3:6, James 1:17

Listen to your life. All moments are key moments. I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it…Taking your children to school and ki...

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Your Labor is Holy

Author

Charles Spurgeon

Keywords

To a man who lives unto God nothing is secular, everything is sacred. He puts on his workday garment and it is a vestment to him: he sits down to his meal and it is a sacrament; he goes forth to his l...

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The Bruderhof: A Radical Christian Community

Author

Fleming Rutledge

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 16:1-36 , Isaiah 58:6-12, Micah 4:1-4, Acts 4:32-37, Matthew 5:7, Psalm 72:

The Bruderhof is one such Christian community with many locations around the world. Unlike most such attempts to build radical communities, the Bruderhof has not only survived, it is thriving. In 2021...

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It's My Life!

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

In Redeeming Productivity , Reagan Rose tells his own story to illustrate the two ways in which the idea that “it’s my life” leads to two very different and disordered outlooks on productivity. When ...

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Finding the Right Pastoral Work–Life Balance: A Few Unbalanced Thoughts

Author

Dan Baumgartner

Keywords

Scripture

John 15:null

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...

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Sabbath-Keeping and Legalism

Author

Walter Brueggemann

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 2:1-3, Exodus 20:8-11, Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Mark 2:27-28, Matthew 12:8, Luke 6:5

For the most part, contemporary Christians pay little attention to the Sabbath. We more or less know that the day came to reflect, in U.S. culture, the most stringent disciplinary faith of the Puritan...

faith and work on Modern Religious Life

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