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My work matters to God—but can the Bible help me in practical ways? Over the past seven years, 138 scholars, pastors and workplace Christians from 16 countries have researched every book of the Bible, recognizing over 1000 passages related or directly applicable to work (free online at theologyofwork.org). The Bible develops workplace applications at length, including calling, truth and deception, finance, wealth and provision, witness to Christ, relationships at work, leadership, what churches can do to equip their members to follow Christ at work, and how to make sense of suffering and hardship at work. Some applications are surprisingly specific—like the importance of face-to-face communication in times of stress, or Jesus’ process for resolving conflicts among co-workers. Others span the world of work, like the value God places on excellence in so-called secular jobs, and pre-eminent role of relationships in doing good work. Its ever-present message is that work is a gift from God for meeting one another’s needs and making the world more like God intends it to be.
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Will Messenger
(BS, Case Western Reserve; MBA, Harvard; MDiv, Boston University; DMin, Gordon-Conwell) is Executive Editor of the Theology of Work Project, Inc., an international organization dedicated to researching, writing, and circulating materials about how the Christian faith can contribute to non-church workplaces. He was the Director of the Mockler Center for Faith and Ethics in the Workplace at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary from 1999 to 2008.
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Reflect/Respond
What practical guidance does the Bible offer for your work and its challenges?
Does the Bible offer guidance for work to groups and organizations as well as to individuals?
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Resources
Darrell Cosden, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work (Hendrickson, 2006)
R. Paul Stevens, Work Matters (Eerdmans, 2012)
Ben Witherington, III, Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor (Eerdmans, 2011)
Theology of Work Project. Theology of Work Bible Commentary (Hendrickson, 2014)
Faith and Work Channel at Patheos.com, patheos.com/Faith-and-Work. Blogs and columns.
The High Calling, TheHighCalling.org. Blogs, articles and multimedia resources on faith, culture, work.
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Faith@Work Summit 2014 by fwsummit.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at fwsummit.org.
