Theology of WorkUnderstanding the Nature of the Key

Institutions

Session Four

In this session we will learn the following:

1. The Role of the Church

2. The Failures of the Church and the “World”

3. Allusions to the Value of Work in the lives of “Out of the Box” People

4. Universal Call to “Ministry”

5. Understanding the “Systems”

6. Quotations on “Work”

Learning Components for Session Four

There is a danger that in popular Christianity “community” is limited to the world of the “Church”. The Church is often seen as nothing more than a . . .

1. Building or a

2. Legal Institution or a

3. Program or a

4. Restrictive political entity When, what it really is, is the sum total of “people called by

God”, to represent Him in the world.

The Body: The Nature of the “Community” at Work

Words and Music by Richard K Avery and Donald S Marsh, 1972

For a children’s rendition of this, see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxrl8zDVjzo

“I am the Church, you are the Church, we are the Church together. All who follow Jesus all around the world, yes, we’re the Church together.”

“The church is not a building, the church is not a

steeple; the church is not a resting place, the church is a people.

A Children’s Song on the Church

“We're many kinds of people, with many kinds of faces, all colors and all ages, too, from all times and places.

“And when the people gather, there's singing and there's praying; there's laughing and there's crying sometimes, all of it saying:

“At Pentecost some people received the Holy Spirit and told the Good News through the world to all who would hear it.”

Children’s Song on the “Church”

According to the song, the Church is PEOPLE!!!

People gathered and scattered, taking their whole being and their message of Good News wherever they go.

The Church is “Centripetal”: spinning people together and . . .

“Centrifugal” flinging people out into the world as witnesses of His grace

The Message of the Song

Between Christ’s resurrection and His return, the Church is the unique institution of God’s presence, the “body of Christ”:

1. It is God’s especially designed collection of people interlocked into relationship, commissioned to proclaim the redemption of the world through Christ.

What is the Role of the Church?

2. It is the “tithe” of creative and redemptive activity intended to infiltrate that which is unholy with its character of holiness. It is intended that Christians be “invasive” rather than “evasive”

3. It is where Christians are equipped to serve God’s Kingdom in the world at large. This is also true of the STEM world.

What is the Role of the Church?

Yet, the sad reality is that the Church often fails to engage the world, living contentedly, or in hostility in its sub-cultural Christian ghettoes.

The Church fails to engage the world because . . .

1. It often regards only its own work as “ministry”

2. It regards value creation in the sphere of science as merely a neutral or negative activity with no intrinsic or eternal value.

So What’s Wrong with the Church?

3. Or it reduces the Bible to the spiritual realm disconnected from the ordinary world.

4. It lives in fear of the seductive influence of the world, including science, among its members, fearing contamination, or betrayal.

5. Its pastors have limited or no experience in the STEM world to know how to equip members for engagement

So What’s Wrong with the Church

On the other hand, the non-Church world including the STEM world fails to engage the Church because it believes that. . .

1. Its activities are morally neutral and not accountable to the Church.

2. It is too busy or too absorbed to deal with “trivial” Church pursuits

3. It asks questions or stimulates demand for things of inferior value that might be insignificant to God and higher purposes.

So What’s Wrong with the World?

4. It never gets around to addressing issues of moral accountability.

5. It ignores the importance of relationships and is only interested in the bottom line or results for their own sake.

6. It fears the implicit hypocrisy of religious institutions that oftentimes seek to “milk” the resources and benefits of the non-church world without appreciating the sacrifice or cost involved.

So What’s Wrong with the World

Implicitly there is an unspoken hierarchy of “ministries” in the Church, all of which see themselves as serving the Church rather than the world.

For instance, from those professions of highest value to lower:

MissionaryDenominational administratorPastorTheological professorChurch staff personChurch volunteers

Finally, “secular employment” including the STEM professions which though admired, really are seen as neutral in their religious or moral significance.

The Hierarchy of “Callings” in the Church

Yet, in the parable of the talents, in Luke 19:11-27, Jesus gives highest priority, not to clergy, but to persons who used God’s gifting in their lives, under risk, to give “value added”.

They earned added responsibilities, not in the Church, but in administrating cities, certainly not a typical reward!

The Parable of the Talents

The Gospel of Matthew highlights Jesus’ use of 23 similes and metaphors to describe the Kingdom of God:

17 of these take place in workplaces 7 speak of farming 6 take place in the home 4 speak of handling money 2 talk of caring for animals, or caring for children, or going to a wedding. The remainder talk about riding a camel, fishing, weather forecasting, baking bread, or buying pearls

NONE take place in a synagogue or temple!!!

Matthew Highlights Secular Occupations

Jesus describes the work of the Spirit as it “blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit”. (John 3:8).

Everyone “born of the Spirit” suggests an unpredictability or spontaneity of the Spirit, not confined in institutions or programs or even the Church.

Ironically, Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus that night was probably in a neutral location away from the Synagogue in much the same way that it was with the woman at the well, told in John 4. He tailored his discussion to their social, cultural and economic context.

The Spirit: Working Outside of the Box

Repeatedly throughout Scripture, the Holy Spirit seems to descend on the most unsuspecting candidates. For instance:

1. Exodus 31:1-2: This was the first time that the Holy Spirit filled anyone in Scripture. Bezalel and Oholiab, temple artisans, were filled . . .

“giving Bezalel great wisdom, ability and expertise in all kinds of crafts. He is a master craftsman, expert in working with gold, silver, and bronze. He is skilled in engraving and mounting gemstones and in carving wood. He is a master of every craft.”

The Spirit Outside the Box

2. Matthew 1: Christ was born to an unsuspecting young girl, Mary, made pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Ironically, in that same chapter is recorded the genealogy of Jesus, including four women’s names. To mention their names in a genealogy was, in itself, a scandal, given the gender divide during that era of Judaism. But the names themselves compounded the scandal as all four women bore the stigma of violence and social class.

The Spirit Outside of the Box

Tamar was impregnated by her father-in-law.

Rahab was a non-Jewish prostitute.

Ruth was a Moabite widow, a member of a cursed tribe.

Bathsheba was concubine and co-conspiritor with David, to the murder of her husband.

Yet the Holy Spirit appropriated their scandals into the story of redemption!

The Spirit Outside of the Box

Most prominent leaders in Scripture neither held clerical (Church) positions nor seemed highly qualified to perform their significant leadership tasks that ultimately transformed or redeemed their worlds around them. For example . . .

Noah, farmer and ship-builder, preserved the human race.

Abraham, agricultural mogul, designated to become the father of many nations.

Moses, murderer, sheepherder, with a speech impediment, delivered his people from slavery, and inculcated the Law into their culture.

Leadership, where you least expect it!!!

Joseph, arrogant teenager, slave, accused of moral failure and prisoner, becomes the agent of salvation for his family, Egypt and the surrounded nations. He was also the architect and creator of cities.

David, sheep herder and “runt”-kid in the family. Later, despite being an adulterer and murderer, he served as an effective ruler and “friend of God”

Nehemiah, security detail in the enemy royal court, rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem

Esther, Miss Persia, becomes the deliverer of her people

Daniel, exiled from his own land, works his way up to the position of court administrator, deftly succeeding four tyrant emperors

Leadership Where You Least Expect It

Joseph, carpenter, earthly father of Jesus

Matthew, tax collector, Gospel writer

Luke, medical doctor, Gospel writer

Mark, mission-casualty, but becomes Gospel writer

Peter, fisherman, becomes early proponent of the Gospel

Paul, former terrorist then tentmaker, uses his profession to access both rich and poor towards the Gospel

mon, the Zealot, a terrorist turned followerPaul, a terrorist turned missionary, but continued tent-making.

Leadership Where You Least Expect It

Conclusions:

The narrative of the Bible shows clearly that professional ranking has little to do with God’s calling. He chooses all to be ministers and uses all talents and gifts in vocation to serve as transformative agents of the Kingdom wherever we are placed.

It is our responsibility to learn how to leverage influence and

presence to extend the Kingdom of God through whatever our vocation may be.

The Church ought to be the arena of preparation for that

calling.

God calls all to ministry

For the most part, the STEM professions interfaces with the complexities of the “City”.

The “City” is not just a demographical concentration of people. It is also . . .

1. A population center that spawns alternate value systems.

2. A new “way of life” or “rhythm of life” that is distinct from rural or small town lifestyles.

3. A place that attracts, manipulates and dispenses “power”—political, economic and cultural.

Understanding the “Systems” of the City

4. It is the “hub” of innovation and change, both good and bad. Here, the STEM professions take the lead.

5. It is generally a place of cultural and economic diversity, resulting often in cultural clash and economic disparity.

6. It provides opportunities for social mobility and anonymity.

7. It concentrates collections of subcultures in critical masses that become self-sustaining, both healthy and pathological

Understanding the “Systems” of the City

8. It survives by the healthy interplay of its various infra-structural “systems”.

9. The City is not just an “organization, but it is an “organism” with life in constant

dynamism.

In some sense, it is similar to, or parallel to, the description of the human body in I Cor 12.

Understanding the “Systems” of the City

The human body at the physiological level is a complex interplay between various “systems”. These include:

1. the Neurologic System2. the Musculoskeletal System3. the Cardiovascular System4. the Immune System5. the Ear, Nose and Throat System6. the Psychiatric System7. the Endocrine System8. the Ophthalmologic System

9. the Pulmonary System 10. the Hematological System 11. the Dermatological System 12. the Urinary System 13. the Gynecological System 14. the Gastrointestinal System

The Human Body as “System”

What do these Systems teach us?

1. That all are necessary for the adequate functioning of the body

2. That when one system is diseased or injured, that there are backup or redundant

system that seek to repair the damage.

3. That one diseased system can traumatize or destroy other systems until death sets in.

I Corinthians 12:1, 25-26: “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. . . there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

Here we see the body as an organism, with each part inter-related and mutually dependent.

Biblical Metaphor of the Body

In similar fashion, the City or any Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) is an organism with a variety of “systems” that interplay with each other. Here are some of them:

1. The Transportation System: Determines how people get around.

2. The Welfare/Social Service System: Determines how people in crisis or chronic

conditions economically survive

The City as “Organism”

3. The Communications/Information System: Determines how people are informed.

4. The Political System: Determines how people are governed.

5. The Legal System: Determines how people in conflict resolve disputes, or protect themselves

6. The Economic System: Determines how people are employed or exchange services

The “City” as Organism

7. The Public Works System: Determines how communities handle basic infrastructural services.

8. The Health Care System: Determines how sick people are cared for or cured.

9. The Recreational/Entertainment System: Determines how people handle their “alternate realities”, their “sabbath” rest.

10. The Educational System: Determines how people are

skilled or enculturated.

11. Defense/Emergency System: Determines how the culture defends itself or responds to collective crisis.

The “City” as System

12. The Various Religious Systems: Determines how people find transcendent meaning

13. The Social System: Determines how people engage community and extend networks of support or common interest

14. The Technological System. Determines how people transcend material limitations.

15. The Land Management System: Determines how people deal with their ecological context and their natural resources

The City as “System”

So when one system is sick and diseased, like the physical body, the whole community is affected.

A healthy body rushes its resources to the diseased

system, to bring health to it.

However, if the disease, or the pathology is too great, then the whole body is profoundly affected, and it can become a “malaise” unto death.

Cities do die---Indeed, we have seen many cities die.

The City as the Interplay of Systems

1. To live in our ghetto-ized communities, well protected from, and/or oblivious to the disease around us. We can do this by . . .

disengaging from “real life”

“caccooning” in protective secure communities

taking “potshots” are the ungodly world around without doing anything

creating a neat division between the “real world” and the Christian Church

What are the options?

Or . . .

Infiltrating the various systems of the City to utilize one’s skills, job, vocation, to leverage Christian influence “on the job”, to transform one’s context as a “change agent” so that every facet of life becomes accountable before God.

Hence, Christian ministry is not just what happens in and through Churches, but that the Church engages the world, and its members become transformative agents right where they work.

City as Systems

The STEM professions play an important role in many of these systems:

1. Create efficiency2. Create markets and products3. Generate research and discourse4. Affect quality of life5. Redesign the environment6. Solve problems7. Stimulate economies

STEM Professions and the Systems

What other impacts do you see the STEM professions having on the systems?

Are they always beneficial?

What standards are used to determine what “beneficial” means?

Where do the STEM professions perhaps influence negatively a healthy engagement with the systems?

STEM Professions and the Systems

It is hoped then those in the STEM professions might have a positive two-fold benefit in relationship to the systems:

1. To be agents of accountability and transformation within their own professions, so that the professions themselves act more “Christianly” because you have been there.

2. To motivate the professions to influence positively clients, service providers, and the community where it is found, or what it serves.

Transforming the Systems of the City

1. Medical personnel2. Scientific communities3. Urban developers4. Academic community5. Management in the STEM professions6. Service providers for STEM resources7. Recycling and “Green” engineers8. Teachers of the STEM professions in public schools9. Research Centers10. IT personnel11. Media personnel12. And many more

What are the neglected “Niches” in the STEM world?

Think through a list of your own extended family.

What is the influence of the STEM world in their lives?

How do they see that world in relationship to Christian purposes or values?

Examine Your Own Family

One can influence the system by these legitimate but rather conventional ways. . .

1. Showing competency on the job2. Expressing integrity on the job3. Being a true friend to other employees4. Organizing Bible studies and prayer groups5. Inviting fellow workers to Church6. Expressing gestures of assistance or compassion

when others are in need7. Showing balance and fairness in both

responsibilities and relationships

Influencing the “Systems”

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quotations on Work

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

Martin Luther King

Quotation on Work

However, it may require a little more imaginative responses:

1. Measuring the values of the profession against Biblical values

2. Influencing the assumptions and values of the organizational body to better mirror Christian values

3. Recommending alternative ways of dealing with problems in the work environment, to better mirror the Kingdom.

Influencing the “Systems”

4. “Blowing the whistle” when injustice or unfairness, or dishonesty is taking place.

5. Empowering those around you, even if it means limiting or deferring your own power.

6. Seeking to defuse unnecessary conflict.

7. Seeking to move the organization beyond just the “profit or fame motive”.

8. Leveraging the organization to “make a qualitative difference” in its world.

Influencing the Systems, Cont’d

1. Inappropriate Work Setting---Are there jobs that cannot glorify God? If so, name some of them.

2. Internal Corruption of the Organization---Can a work environment be so corrupt that all employees become corrupted by it? For instance?

3. Programmed Limitations due to confined roles, lack of interpersonal contact, administrative rules, curbed influence. Can you think of other situations that confine the Christian influence in the organization?

Obstacles to Transforming the Systems

Sometimes we are called to confront the “Powers” that corrupt the systems and their manifest institutions:

1. Elijah confronts the gods of Baal (I Kgs 18)

2. Amos confronts the corrupt legal system (Amos 5:10-13)

3. Jesus confronts the corrupt economic-religious system (Mk 11:15-17)

Corrupt and Evil Systems

There are two facets of the ministry of the Church. Too often we have focused on the first facet:

1. “The Church Gathered”: or The Centripetal mission of the Church---to pull people into the confines of a church building or church institution and concentrate all ministry in that environment.

The Church “gathered” should be a public witness the “Communion of the Saints”, for rest and for restoration, for accountability, for training, for

community, for joint celebration, and for resourcing the mission of the “Church Scattered”.

The Two Facets of the Ministry of the Church

2. Therefore, the optimal activity of the Church should be, as it is engaged in mission in the world, within the systems, to bring them, and those, under the aegis or sovereignty of Christ, not just by individual conversions, but wherein the institutions themselves become “converted.”

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6:12.

The Church Scattered

“Then God gave Christ the highest place and honored his name above all others, so at the name of Jesus everyone will bow down, those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, And to the glory of the God the Father everyone will openly agree, ‘Jesus Christ is Lord.’” Philippians 2:10-11

The Church Scattered

Clinton Stockwell’s little essay given in your materials section, reminds us that just like a painter painting a canvas, the City itself is a collage of the creative collective imagination of its residents, through many generations.

If there is blight and ugliness, this is because that imagination has been sullied by sin, selfishness, and shabbiness so that the “art” of the City, is damaged, destroyed or devalued.

The Christian seeks to “turn it around”, through the instruments that his or her vocation provides, be they remedial, creative or confrontative.

The City as Work of Art

“The scope of redemption in Christ is the same as the scope of Creation.”

Paul Marshall

Summary Quotation

Feel free in insert below your questions and feedback on what you have learned in this

PowerPoint:

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Your Questions and Comments

End of Session Four