Last night I did some teaching on the topic of Men At Work at Watchmen a monthly mens group here at our Church. I don't normally go along as a Thursday night is one of the nights we have youth cells on.
One of the difficulties in looking at such a subject is that it's huge and there are some many worth while angles that you could take on it. Here's a summary of the track I took through the issue.
(1) There's something wrong with the way we're working.85% of Americans say they want more time with their family, 46 say they want MUCH more time with their family. Only 30% of Japanese people say they like their job. Three out of five workers in the UK complain of being stressed at work. Stress at work costs the UK economy £7 billion each year. There were 849,000 incidents of violence at work in England and Wales during 2002/03. Workplace bulling contributes to the loss of 18 million working days each year.
(2) Our thinking about work needs to be transformed (Romans 12:2) as transformed thinking leads to transformed living. One transformation that need to take place is a move away from what I call compartamentalised thinking where our "Christian lives" are separate from our "working lives". we need to be authentic holistic people.
(3) we need to be gospel people.
"The Gospel is before all else a call to live differently, so that life can be shared with others. in other words the Gospel is ultimately calling us to a stance of simplicity, vulnerability, dialogue, powerlessness, and humility. These are the only virtues that make communion and community and intimacy possible" Richard Rohr.
What would it mean, what would it involve, what would it look like for you to take a stance of simplicity, vulnerability, dialogue, powerlessness, and humility in your workplace?
I suggested that we've over spiritualised that Nazareth Manifesto (Luke 4:18 - 19) and that this should also be our work manifesto.
(4) Work is part of the Missio Dei. I quoted Tall Skinny, "the concept is that mission is not a program of the church but rather an attribute of God. Mission comes first from the heart of God and we are caught up in it rather than initiating it. Mission is primarily the work of God and we participate with God in what He is doing". My suggestion was that we could substitute the work work for mission.
(5) Darrel Cosden has been influential in my thinking on work so I quoted him lots. Darrel says that "Human work is a transformative activity essentially consisting of dynamically interrelated instrumental, relational and ontological dimensions". Much of what i did was try to unpack this.
(6) In understanding work as part of the Mission Dei then it is no longer something apart from our "Christian lives" but we recognise that work is both a means of grace to transform us, as agents of change we are called to transform our work and thus work can bring about a wider transformation. This transformation is not a return to the "garden" but transformation to the New Creation. It's incarnating what we all pray, "your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven".
"work must be ..evaluated in terms of its success or failure to conform to the values of the new creation to which it is thus, necessarily linked" - Cosedn
"we have to pattern our work according to the values of the new creation" - Miroslav Volf.
(7) Cosden's threefold model of work, i.e. Instrumental, relational and ontological means we cannot simply narrow the nature and meaning of work to one concern only. "Each of work's aspects in it's own turn will, by making its own claims, further qualify and somewhat dictate what we can ethically prescribe from its corresponding aspects. This dynamic and reciprocal process precludes the possibility that work, according to its aspects, can be construed hierarchically." - Cosden. Yet we have construed of work hierarchically with the instrumental aspect having such a dominant position that work is seen by many to be "a necessary veil in order to obtain purchasing power over goods and services" - Donald Hay.
If we allow the instrumental aspect of work to dominate and not be checked by relational and ontological concerns then we will struggle to integrate kingdom values, gospel concerns into the fabric of our work. Where instrumentality reigns work at best becomes an opportunity for evangelism, and yet God intend it to be so much more.
(8) we then looked a the problem of Biblical statements on work. Volf here is useful, "it is insufficient merely to interpret the biblical statements on work, distill from them transcultural binding ethical principles, and combine them into a consistent statement on how a Christian should work." What we need is a fully functioning theology and spirituality of work which act's a hermeneutic to our reading of scripture.
(9) A framework for understanding work. Work is cooperation with God. Gen 2:5 states that vegetation did not grow because God had not caused it to rain AND because there was no man to work the ground. "The growth of vegetation demands cooperation between God, who gives rain, and human beings, who cultivate the ground. There is a mutual dependence between God and human beings in the task of preservation of creation" - Volf.
As such we need an eschatological framework for understanding work as protology struggles to adequately interpret our complex modern world. Protological understandings of work focus on preservation. The Cross in not only a vindication of God's original creation as good, but demonstrates His intention that all He has created shall be transformed. An eschatological understanding of work facilitates such an understanding of transformation. YET..work is not as God intended it, we have become alienated in our work (Gen3:17 - 19). A consequence of this is that we are neither preserving or transforming the world but destroying it and in this process fallen work is destroying us.
That said, "cooperation with God can even occur through alienated forms of work, if the results are in accordance with God's will. Although the concept on the new creation does demand a striving to overcome alienation in work, such non alienated work is not a necessary precondition of human cooperation with God" - Volf.
Another change in our thinking which we need it that work is not a necessary evil from which we will escape in eternity. For sure it will be transformed as work too will "suffer" judgment, but work is "necessarily a part of both this life and the life to come." - Cosden.
(10) we need to build Sabbath into our lives. The guys broke into groups several times during the night, so I got them to discuss "is the concept of Sabbath an ideal that can on longer be achieved in today's market place?"
Sabbath should not however be understood as inactivity. The Sabbath in Genesis was not an end to Gods work (Jn5:17), but the crown of creation and as such it not only places a limit on our work but represents God's presence with us in time. Sabbath therefore is about our entering God's presence and finding God's shalom there. Shalom understood not simply as peace but as a deep inner contentment.
Implicit in this understanding of Sabbath is the concept of presenting. That as part of entering God's presence we acknowledge His presence by presenting our work to Him, that we pause during our work and say, "Dad look what I've doe today, what do you think of it?"
Sabbath is therefore transformed from a once a week break from work to a resting in God and presenting to God that seasons all our work.
I had hoped to look at calling / vocation / gifting but we ran out of time. I'll post some thought on this at the start of next week.
To understand the cartoon fully read this. In many respects the two people in the photo, Andrew Jones and Pete Rollins exemplify what I'll take away from the Soliton weekend the most. Here are two guys who I would guess (and it is my opinion I'm expressing here) that differ, and not just in body shape. I would guess that they differ on lots of theology, in the way to express what it means to be a follower of the Christ, in what church is and how to do it....yet there is a mutual respect and warmth between them. 
Recent Comments