Are You Alone at Church?
What makes us the people of God is not our vision or even our efforts to be a “true” or “ideal community.” What binds us to one another is Christ and what He has done. This explains why Paul does not exhort us to try to become the Body of Christ; he simply reminds us that we are the Body of Christ. We are members of one another. The trick is to realize it, and then, by God’s grace, begin to live as if we are. – Glenn Packiam
What is the Gospel?
To describe the last 17-months of my life as transformative is a dramatic understatement. But what’s behind it? It all stems from experiencing the Gospel and Gospel based-community in radically new ways. As I get ready to head back to school this fall, my dream is to take what I’ve experienced, figure out what was behind it, and recreate it for the benefit of others. This week, I’m offering some initial thoughts, starting with the nature of the Gospel itself. So, what is the Gospel?
Work and Responsibilities
Over the past two weeks I’ve been talking about work. I started with common approaches to work and then laid out the biblical alternative of working to love. After exploring various ways that can happen and how it’s happened in my work over the past year, I brought up the need for an addictive element to work that keeps us going on the work to love path. But there’s one more thing to consider.
Is Your Life Addictive?
On Monday I mentioned that one of the jobs I worked last year was with Promark Financial. One day during my training the lead trainer told me, “You’re going to love this job. Making a sale, its like crack. You make a sale and you find yourself craving another.”
I remember listening and hoping it was true, after all, I still wasn’t sold on myself as a salesman, and my perception of insurance salesmen placed them somewhere in the realm of guys on the used car lot and lawyers. If making the sale was like crack, I could learn to love this job and find myself motivated to do it well.
How I Work to Love
I opened a week ago arguing that Christians need a new way of thinking about work. Last Wednesday, I laid out a vision for working to love. On Friday, I identified various fields and ways we can work to love. But what does this all look like in everyday life?
In 2011, I worked three different jobs. In each of them, I was able to work to love. Let’s explore.
4 Ways To Work to Love
On Monday, I laid the foundation that said we need to find a new way to talk about work. On Wednesday, I unpacked what a “work to love” approach aims to carry out. Today, I want to offer four tangible fields where you can work to love. Here’s hoping you offer more ways in the comments.
How Do You Work to Love?
If you talk to most people about work, you can break them into one of two categories. They either “work to live” or they “live to work.” On Monday, I looked at both from a biblical perspective and found them lacking. I went on to argue that since the Christian life is one of love, Christians should “work to love.” But what does that mean?
