Living Generously

What does Leading in Finances look like in local churches? Phil Colgan not only challenges church leaders, but all of us with the call of Jesus to live generously:

When we look at those passages that do talk about money we should see immediately that the call they make is radical, especially to us living in this materialistic culture. However, as shepherds of God’s flock, are we teaching this radical call? More importantly, are we living it?

Take the rich young ruler in Luke 18 as an example. After you have (rightly) pointed out that Jesus’ demand to sell everything and give it to the poor is not a universal command, and (again, rightly) explained that not everyone has to give away everything to follow Jesus, do you still feel the power of Jesus’ words that it’s harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle? Do you still hear that radical call, or have you middle-class-ified Jesus’ words? Think for a moment what this episode in the Gospel of Luke means for a family in Sydney, earning $150,000 a year, and living in a 4-bedroom house. It cannot just mean they should give 10% of their income to church, can it?

Or think about the saints sharing everything in common in Acts 2. After you have (again, rightly) pointed out that descriptive parts of the Bible are not necessarily prescriptive for us, do you still feel the power of what gospel generosity looks like in that situation? And again, for that family living in Sydney, surely this cannot just mean they should give 10% of their income to church, can it?

Making God Known at Work

John Piper, in talking about "Tentmakers" in Minneapolis, outlines five ways in which we make God known through our job:

I have in mind at least five things—five ways to make God known through your secular job and all of them are important. When one of them is missing, the witness to the truth of Christ suffers.

1. First, the excellence of the products or services you render in your job shows the excellence and greatness of God.
2. Second, the standards of integrity you follow at your job show the integrity and holiness of God.
3. Third, the love you show to people in your job shows the love of God.
4. Fourth, the stewardship of the money you make from your job shows the value of God compared to other things.
5. Fifth, the verbal testimony you give to the reality of Christ shows the doorway to all these things in your life and their possibility in the lives of others.

The Actual Struggles of Our Souls

David Powlison writes about prayer as a great place to begin biblical counseling, and in doing so provides a great description of how we should prayer:

... the Bible’s prayers are rarely about health, travel mercies, finances, doing well on a test, finding a job, or the salvation of unsaved relatives. Of course, these are legitimate things to pray for, but they are a minor emphasis in Scripture. Even so, these topics typically dominate most church and small group prayer requests. They easily miss the real action of God’s dealings with his beloved people.

In contrast, the driving focus of biblical prayer asks God to show himself, asks that we will know him, asks that we will love others. It names our troubles. It names our troublesome reactions and temptations. It names our holy desires. It names our God, his promises, and his will. When someone asks you, “How may I pray for you?,” imagine the impact of responding in a manner such as this: “I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, and have been inattentive and irritable to those nearest and dearest to me. Please pray for me, that I will awaken and turn from my preoccupation with work pressures, recreations, health problems, or money. God promises to help me pay attention to him. Ask him to help me remember and focus. Ask him to help me to take my family and other people to heart. Pray that I will take refuge in him when the pressure is on. The Lord is my refuge, but I’ve been taking refuge in TV and food.” This kind of prayer gets things that matter on the table—things that matter both immediately and eternally.

"Everyday Church"

I added the book Everyday Church to my list of books I'd like to read, because of this review.

Chester and Timmis wisely insist that the ethos of everyday church does not depend on copying the specific structures they have developed. Instead, it means infusing daily life with relationships with those inside and outside the church, and infusing those relationships with the gospel. That is an ethos I not only agree with, but more importantly need all the help I can get in living it out. Through its biblical teaching and mediated modeling, that is just what Everyday Church offers.

Three Books on Marriage

Jean Williams recommends three books on marriage:

What, ultimately, is marriage for? In my reading, there were three books on marriage that I thought came closest to answering this question: John Piper’s This Momentary Marriage, Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage, and Christopher Ash’s Married for God.They look in different directions to find the purpose of marriage—one upward, one inward, and one outward.

And from the conclusion:

So what is marriage for? I started by arguing that one, overall goal would be more helpful than the three traditional goals for marriage. Yet we are still left with three goals, looking in three directions:

• Marriage looks upward—its purpose is to display God’s glory by presenting a picture of the covenant between Christ and the church.
• Marriage looks inward—its purpose is spiritual friendship leading to holiness, as husband and wife partner each other on the journey to glory.
• Marriage looks outward—its purpose is to serve God in partnership as we rule and care for his world and make Jesus known.

Your Epic Ordinary Life

I'm glad there's an increasing emphasis on the value of people's everyday work, and a shift away from the mistaken belief that only ministry or ministry work is truly significant. This article by Paul Rude affirms that truck drivers (and other workers) matter to God.

The truth is stunning. The truth is that the regular, everyday, earthly work of a Christian's life possesses breathtaking significance bestowed by the touch of God's magnificent glory. God pulls the white-hot ingot of eternity from the forging fire of his sovereignty. Then, like master to apprentice, he entrusts the hammer to our hands (Eccl. 9:10; Col. 3:17, 23; 1 Cor. 10:31; 2 Thess. 3:6-12). He says, "Strike it. Strike it right here. This is your place. This is where I want you to influence eternity. Live the life I gave you to live." And so, in stammering awe, we take up the hammer. We live our lives---our regular, everyday, toilsome lives. The hammer falls. Sparks fly. Eternity bends, and the Master is delighted (Matt. 25:21).

Multiply Disciple-Making

The Multiply material from Francis Chan and David Platt is available on-line. This is the same material as in the book, but available in PDF.

Multiply is designed as a simple resource that you can use to begin making disciples. Our prayer is that it will give you the confidence you need to step out in faith and disciple the people whom God has placed in your life.

Relief, Rehabilitation, Development

Here's a link to the Chalmers Center's Helping Without Hurting Network. What they say about the difference between relief, rehabilitation and development:

The first step that must be taken in poverty alleviation is to determine whether people who are poor are in a context that requires relief, rehabilitation or development. A failure to distinguish between these three very different scenarios can result in doing considerable harm to the poor and to ourselves.

• Relief
  Relief is the appropriate intervention when a crisis such as a tsunami plunges people into a downward spiral leaving them within a context in which they are unable to help themselves. The appropriate response to such a situation is to provide immediate, temporary aid to stop the bleeding of the powerless victims.
• Rehabilitation
  Rehabilitation is the correct intervention when people are able to participate in returning their lives to pre-crisis levels. A good example of this context would be the situation in Indonesia six months after the tsunami hit.
• Development
  Development is a context in which people are able to participate in improving their lives above the status quo level by experiencing reconciliation in their four fundamental relationships.

Keller on Faith-Shaped Work

As a follow up to the last post (of a month ago!), here is a link to something Tim Keller writes on How Faith Affects Our Work. He highlights four ways Christian faith influences and shapes our work:

1. "The Christian faith gives us a moral compass, an inner GPS giving us ethical guidance that takes us beyond merely the legal aspects or requirements in any situation."
2. "Your Christian faith gives you a new spiritual power, an inner gyroscope, that keeps you from being overthrown by either success, failure, or boredom."
3. "The Christian faith gives us a new conception of work as the means by which God loves and cares for his world through us."
4. "The Christian faith gives us a new world-and-life view that shapes the character of our work."

Keller concludes the article:

How wonderful that the gospel works on every aspect of us—mind, will, and feelings—and enables us to both deeply appreciate the work of non-believers and yet aspire to work in unique ways as believers.  Putting all of these four aspects together, we see that being a Christian leads us to see our work not as merely a way to earn money, nor as primarily a means of personal advancement, but a truly a calling—to serve God and love our neighbor.

Summer and Fall Reading on Vocation and Work

It's been a busy late summer and fall, but I did come across some good articles on work:

1. In The Myth of the Protestant Work Ethic, John Starke responds to the idea that the Protestant work ethic teaches "hard work and good deeds would bring rewards, in life and after."

The doctrine of justification by faith and the forgiveness of our sins redirects the aim of our vocation. In receiving a righteousness that is not from our works or successes, we are free to serve our neighbor and benefit society and our community. 

The article also links to a video where Tim Keller explains the Protestant view of vocation and answers the two questions: (1) Why your work matters to God, and (2) why God matters to your work.

2. Gene Edward Veith on the purpose of work:

According to Luther, the purpose of every vocation is to love and serve one's neighbor. The farmer tills the ground to provide food to sustain his neighbor's life. The craftsman, the teacher, the lawyer---indeed, everyone who occupies a place in the division of labor---is providing goods and services that neighbors need. This is God's providential ordering of society. But for a Christian, the service rendered can become animated with love.

For Luther, vocation was far more than economic activity, including also our callings in our families, the church, and the culture as a whole. Each of these vocations calls us to particular neighbors whom we are to love and serve. Husbands are called to love and serve their wives, and wives are called to love and serve their neighbors. Pastors love and serve their parishioners, who love and serve each other. Rulers are to love and serve their subjects, and citizens love and serve each other for the common good.

3. Veith also writes about vocation and the spirituality of ordinary life:

... the physical realm is far from meaningless or spiritually insignificant. God created and sustains the material world, into which the Son of God became incarnate. God uses physical means—His Word printed on paper and ink, the water of Baptism, the bread and wine of Christ’s Body and Blood—to bring sinners to Himself. And He is active when ordinary people do ordinary things—going to work, getting married, having children, participating in a community, going to church—to extend His blessings.

A non-Christian and a Christian may work together on an assembly line, both performing exactly the same task. The one may see that work as just a tedious way to earn a living; the other may see that work through the eyes of faith as a way to love and serve his neighbours, and may catch a glimpse of the God who hides Himself even in factories. In vocation, ordinary life becomes transfigured with the presence of God.

4. God of Shop and Marketplace by Bobby Giles.