Fides Quaerens Intellectum » Vocation

The Puritan work ethic: inherent value in non-spiritual work?

John B. — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 22:54:00 +0000

As I’ve been making my way through professor Leland Ryken’s (father of current Wheaton College president Phillip Ryken) book Redeeming the Time: A Christian Approach to Work and Leisure, I’ve been reminded once again of the importance of viewing life holistically. The Puritans certainly emphasized this, and sometimes in ways that shake our sensibilities as evangelical Protestants (for those of us who fall in this category) who have assumed for so long that the main work we are to accomplish in this world is to prepare–and prepare others–for the next world…and not worry so much with the here and now. On this view, if you have “secular” or “civil” employment, you do well to ask God to take you into full-time ministry, or at the very least see your current station mainly as a way to evangelize the lost. This is the unfortunate and theologically truncated narrative adopted by so many faithful believers today, which resulted from the fundamentalist-modernist battles of the early twentieth century. Now, I’m all for evangelizing the lost, but we do well to probe a little more deeply into our history. The Puritans weren’t perfect, but they were for evangelism as well. Furthermore, their thinking pre-dates that of the fundamentalists by a couple hundred years, and in general is far more sophisticated. Their work ethic suggests something else, namely an endorsement of “secular” and “civil” work. Ryken quotes the Puritan Thomas Shepard as saying: “As it is a sin to nourish worldly thoughts when God set you a work in spiritual, heavenly employments, so it is…as great a sin to suffer yourself to be distracted to spiritual thoughts, when God sets you on work in civil…employments.”

-Quote from Thomas Shepard, Certain Select Cases Resolved, in The Works of Thomas Shepard (New York: AMS Press, 1967), 1:306.

Advice to new college grads

John B. — Thu, 05 May 2011 11:37:14 +0000

My friend and colleague Hunter Baker, Assoc. Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Union University, has some sound counsel for freshly-minted college grads in his recent post.

http://hunterbaker.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/advice-to-new-graduates-in-recessionary-times/

Culture-Making

John B. — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 10:41:36 +0000

This week Trent Wilbanks and I are team teaching our final module for the academic year. Cultural transformation is the topic, and Andy Crouch’s book Culture Making is the backbone text. Concept of the week? Power. Crouch says that cultural power is “the ability to successfully propose a new cultural good.” As it turns out, this concept is related to our various callings. More to come on this in future posts.

JP Moreland on Education

John B. — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:50:15 +0000

JP Moreland, my former philosophy professor who is still very much a mentor to me, made his annual pilgrimage back to IMPACT 360 this month, and we got into a discusssion of “real” education. Here are a few of his thoughts:

“…as I’ve said before, we are not human beings seeking a spiritual life; we are spiritual beings seeking a human life. Now what does that mean? That means at the very core of our identity is the spiritual life. We are fundamentally spiritual creatures. We were made to be attached to and connected to God. We were made to co-labor with God. That’s the way we were made. I don’t care if you’re an atheist, I don’t care what your beliefs are, whether you like it or not, that’s the way you were made to function. And you will function best if you come to know the Creator Who made you, the God of the Bible, and you learn to co-labor with Him throughout the rest of your life.

Now an education should help a person learn how to attach to God and to see God’s world the way God sees it. It will include then an understanding of theology and philosophy and the humanities. It will help a student learn to understand the trends in the culture. What’s happening in my culture and my world? And how do I think about these trends from a Christian point of view?

It will include the notion of calling, that I have a calling from God. That calling might be to be a Christian doctor, or to be a school teacher, or a Christian businessman or woman, whatever it might be. But God put me into this world for a purpose, and He has got a calling on my life. He hasn’t specified everything in complete detail. Sure, I have freedom about certain things, but there are things, tasks that God put me here to do, and He gave me talents and abilities that make me uniquely qualified to fulfill my calling. A good education should emphasize calling and help a student find his or her calling.”

Bonhoeffer and Vocation

John B. — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 12:54:25 +0000

“Who stands fast?

…the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God.

Where are these responsible people?”

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

First who…

John B. — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:55:22 +0000

Over the years I have consistently been amazed at a particular organizational dynamic that emerges within nonprofits, and how that dynamic drives–and in some cases determines–hiring decisions. That dynamic is urgency. “Let’s get someone to fill the position asap!” Just get a body in there. Interestingly, urgency in these situations often breeds passivity. Far too often leaders and managers are on autopilot in the way they think about hiring. Write up a job ad, post it on the website and a few other places and let’s see who applies. In most cases, a new hire should be here in 2-3 months if we get a decent stack of resumes’. What?!!

How about trying this way instead: Jim Collins’ (author of Good to Great) principle of “First who, then what.” Collins points out that the CEOs of top companies will hire quality people even at times when they don’t have an already carved out spot for them. These leaders discovered long ago that their success rises and falls on the quality of their people, NOT an organizational chart that results from the latest and greatest strategic plan. Obviously organizations must post positions that need to be filled, but when they do, why not be proactive in hiring process? Don’t just sit back and “see who comes our way,” get on the phone, email, and start working the networks to find out who can be persuaded to consider the position.

Having done a bit of hiring myself, and having conducted job searches both ways, I much prefer the latter strategy. The quality of the applicant pool is higher, and they are better workers from the word “go.” Our organization is experiencing this right now. We just hired two new student life staff members, and although I had little to do in actually finding them, there is no question that we found them as a result of team members being proactive in the search process. We got the right two folks for sure.