WORK

1
WORK

• Where are we?

2
Discovering Your Need At Work

• You may go to work unaided and unchallenged by
  the Word of God.
• You may be unclear as to how to take advantage of
  resources of Christianity for day-to-day work
  problems and decisions.
• You may be bored by your work and see no lasting
  value in it. Indeed you may feel that only
  through your religious life do you find any
  purpose and meaning.
• You may be skeptical as to the relevance of
  Christianity to the rigors of the secular world.
• You may struggle with the cost of integrity and
  need inspiration to keep your ethical edge.

Your Work Matters to God Sherman and Hendricks
pg 13
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Discovering Your Need At Work

• You may embarrass the cause of Christ by living
  an inconsistent life-style at work.
• You may not be challenged to influence coworkers
  for Christ.
• You may struggle with how to put work in its
  proper perspective and balance the many demands
  that compete for your time.
• You may lack an integrated life purpose that
  spans the public and private arenas.
• You may lack a sense of dignity in you day-to-day
  work, and this your life.

Your Work Matters to God Sherman and Hendricks
pg 14
4
Christianity and Work Dont Mix?

• The evidence that the church has abandoned the
  work world
• Where is the stuff about work?
• I hate Mondays and love Friday
• Why is ethics such a problem at work?
• Working ourselves to death
• How relevant is Christianity in the workplace?

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Christianity and Work Dont Mix?

• Where is the stuff about work?
• The average person spends anywhere from fifty to
  seventy-five percent of his life in work or
  work-related tasks. Lets say sixty percent. He
  may spend another thirty or thirty-five percent
  on his family and personal interests. And
  perhaps he spends as much as five or ten percent
  on church or religious activities.
  Your Work Matters
  to God Sherman and Hendricks pg 16
• Go to the bookstore and look for books and
  resources on the practical and theological
  perspectives of work
• Try a search on the web
• Name an organization dedicated to re-connecting
  Christian principles and the issues of work.
  There are several, but not widely known. This is
  changing.
• Results?
• . . . Millions of people go to work every day
  unaided, disillusioned, and unchallenged by the
  Word of God
  Your Work Matters to God Sherman and Hendricks
  pg 16

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Christianity and Work Dont Mix?

• I hate Mondays and love Friday
• Does our work have a purpose?
• Do we show up just for the paycheck?
• Is our job challenging, worthwhile, a place of
  calling, a place of personal mission, a strategic
  and relevant place of action?
• How has the church abandoned the workplace?

7
Christianity and Work Dont Mix?

• Why is ethics such a problem at work?
• In 1983 a study by the Princeton Religion
  Research Center indicated that that there was no
  significant difference between the churched and
  the unchurched in their ethics and values on the
  job.
• Living out a life of deep spiritual commitment
  means we are faithful, first in the small things
  (expense reports, hours reported, sales
  practices, breaks, lunches, etc.).
• Matthew 2523 (NLT)
• The master said, 'Well done, my good and
  faithful servant. You have been faithful in
  handling this small amount, so now I will give
  you many more responsibilities. Let's celebrate
  together!'

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Christianity and Work Dont Mix?

• Working ourselves to death
• When we worship our careers we are willing to let
  work supercede our family, our marriage, our
  relationships, our health. In our culture, we
  have exchanged the worship of God for the worship
  our ourselves and our own fulfillment
• The scripture asks a penetrating question about
  our desire to gain anything
• Matthew 1626 (NLT)
• And how do you benefit if you gain the whole
  world but lose your own soul in the process? Is
  anything worth more than your soul?
• Working ourselves into spiritual death is a
  frightening and disturbing proposition.

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Christianity and Work Dont Mix?

• How relevant is Christianity in the workplace?
• In nothing has the Church so lost her hold on
  reality as in her failure to understand and
  respect the secular vocation. She has allowed
  work and religion to become separate departments,
  and is astonished to find that , as a result, the
  secular work of the world is turned to purely
  selfish and destructive ends, and that the
  greater part of the worlds intelligent workers
  have become irreligious, or at least,
  uninterested in religion. But is it astonishing?
  How can any one remain interested in a religion
  which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths
  of his life? Dorothy Sayers Why Work? Found
  in the book Creed or Chaos?
• Sayers essay entitled "Why Work?"-
• In it she made a point we have never seen made by
  any other contemporary Christian writer. One
  explanation for the general exodus from
  Christianity, she wrote, is the fact that the
  Church has no theology of work. We human beings
  spend most of our waking hours throughout most of
  our lives working. Why? To earn a living, of
  course.
• That clearly is the usual reason, she observed,
  but many people find it an unsatisfactory one. In
  fact, the best reason to work is the work itself
  and what it produces. Thus, the first Christian
  responsibility of a Christian plumber is to be a
  good plumber. Every pipe fitted, every joint
  soldered should be done to the glory of God. The
  accountant does not work for IBM, argued Dorothy
  Sayers he works in IBM for Christ, and therefore
  his accounting is an offering to God.
• "The church's approach to an intelligent
  carpenter," she writes, "is usually confined to
  exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in
  his leisure hours, and to come to church on
  Sundays. What the church should be telling him is
  this that the very first demand his religion
  makes upon him is to produce good tables. Church
  attendance, by all means, and decent forms of
  amusement--but what use is all that if, in the
  very centre of his life and occupation, he is
  insulting God with bad carpentry?"
• The same rule, she says, should apply to
  Christian investors. Were this to happen,
  "shareholders in--let us say--brewing companies,
  would astonish the directorate by arising at
  shareholders' meetings and demanding to know, not
  merely where the profits go or what dividends are
  to be paid, not merely whether the workers' wages
  were sufficient and the conditions of labour
  satisfactory, but loudly, and with a proper sense
  of personal responsibility 'What goes into the
  beer?'"
• So what struck us about this investor of ours was
  that he plainly drew a line between a "vocation,"
  by which he presumably meant work done for God,
  and what he regarded as work that was "purely
  business." But in the Sayers view, the work he
  describes as "purely business" is also very much
  "work done for God"--a truth the Church does not
  make clear. And this, as she suggests, is perhaps
  one very good reason why so many people do not go
  to church, and consider "organized religion"
  irrelevant to life. A Christian plumber's
  major service to God consists in being the best
  plumber he can be
• by Ted and Virginia Byfield THE REPORT

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Calling

• . . . Calling is the truth that God calls us to
  himself so decisively that everything we are,
  everything we do, and everything we have is
  invested with a special devotion and dynamism
  lived out as a response to his summons and
  service.

The Call Os Guinness pg 4
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Alternatives to Finding Our Calling

• Live in two worlds
• The secular work world
• The church world
• Conclude that work is not important to God
• Church, ministry, and spiritual thing are more
  important
• Destruction of the dignity of work (60 of your
  life does not matter to God maybe you dont
  count maybe you are a second class citizen in
  Gods economy
• Guilt Couldnt you do more for God?

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Why Find Our Calling?

• 1. A new and refreshing sense of dignity and
  meaning in work. The simple idea that God cares
  immensely about what you do all day lends awesome
  value to your job.
• 2. An encouraging sense of destiny and calling in
  work. As you'll discover, God has designed you to
  accomplish certain kinds of work. Thus, you can
  go to your job with a deep conviction that you
  are there for a purpose.
• 3. Motivation to pursue a lifestyle of ethical
  distinction on the job. Knowing that you and your
  work matter to God and that you have a Boss in
  heaven provides stimulation to pursue moral
  integrity and a Christlike character.
• 4. A comprehensive view of life that relates work
  to spirituality. You'll discover how to bring
  your work and your faith together, along with the
  other areas of your life, creating a meaningful
  whole and thus escaping spiritual schizophrenia.
• 5. A new respect for the faith in light of its
  contribution to work. The discovery that
  Christianity addresses work and work
  issues-issues that matter to you-will cultivate
  an elevated appreciation for the resources God
  has provided.
• 6. Answers to many questions you may have about
  your relationship to your church. You'll gain
  insighUnto your status and contribution as a
  layperson, and into how and where you express
  your commitment to Christ.
• 7. Hope! Once you discover how much God cares
  about you and your work, you'll be eager to learn
  what He has to say about the particulars of your
  job. This should encourage you, because it means
  that you don't have to "go it alone" as a
  believer in a secular workplace. You'll act from
  the confidence that God and His resources are
  with you.
• Your Work Matters to God Sherman and Hendricks
  pg 22

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The Cross of Christ in the Marketplace

• "I simply argue that the cross should be raised
  at the center of the marketplace as well as on
  the steeple of the church. I am recovering the
  claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral
  between two candles, but on a cross between two
  thieves on the town's garbage heap at a
  crossroad, so cosmopolitan they had to write His
  title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek...at the kind
  of a place where cynics talk smut, and thieves
  curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where
  He died. And that is what He died for. And that
  is what He died about. That is where church-men
  ought to be and what church-men ought to be
  about."- George MacLeod of Scotland

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Being Relevant in the Workplace

• Christians are not relevant in the mundane how
  are we going to be relevant in the profound? -
  Pastor Erwin McManus

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• "I got into television because I hated it so. And
  I thought there was some way of using this
  fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who
  would watch and listen." -The recently departed
  Fred McFeely Rogers, beloved host of MISTER
  ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD, on why he devoted his life
  to improving children's television. He held a
  master's degree in child development as well as a
  divinity degree (he was an ordained Presbyterian
  minister), and received 59 Emmy nominations
  during his noble career (CBC News, 2/28/03)