Visions of Vocation


Book Description

Vocation is more than a job. It is our relationships and responsibilities woven into the work of God. In following our calling to seek the welfare of our world, we find that it flourishes and so do we. Garber offers here a book for parents, artists, students, public servants and businesspeople—for all who want to discover the virtue of vocation.




The Seamless Life


Book Description

What if we began to see all we are and all we do—our work, play, relationships, worship, and loves—as significant to God? In these essays Steven Garber helps us discover the seamless life where there is no chasm between heaven and earth and we understand the coherence of our lives and God's work in the world.




God at Work


Book Description

When you understand it properly, the doctrine of vocation—"doing everything for God's glory"—is not a platitude or an outdated notion. This principle that we vaguely apply to our lives and our work is actually the key to Christian ethics, to influencing our culture for Christ, and to infusing our ordinary, everyday lives with the presence of God. For when we realize that the "mundane" activities that consume most of our time are "God's hiding places," our perspective changes. Culture expert Gene Veith unpacks the biblical, Reformation teaching about the doctrine of vocation, emphasizing not what we should specifically do with our time or what careers we are called to, but what God does in and through our callings—even within the home. In each task He has given us—in our workplaces and families, our churches and society—God Himself is at work. Veith guides you to discover God's purpose and calling in those seemingly ordinary areas by providing you with a spiritual framework for thinking about such issues and for acting upon them with a changed perspective.




Vocation


Book Description

How shall we live? What is the good life? What is the value of a person? What is my place in this world? Is God active in this world? These are questions that have been asked in every culture and in every era. From the Hebrew concept of Shalom (wholeness/well-being) to the Greek concept of Eudaimonia (happiness) and even to the American notion that all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, great thinkers have pondered what it means for humans to flourish. The doctrine of vocation uniquely answers these questions. A certain level of security, prosperity, and freedom are essential components of human flourishing. God provides these components by working through humans in their stations in life such as parents and police (security), farmers and bankers (prosperity), and soldiers and governments (freedom). And yet there is more for which we humans strive. We are the types of beings whose wonderment drives us to the pursuit of knowledge, justice, and achievement. In short, we desire to be justified. We want to be valued. We want to be right or just. We strive for epic-ness. But no mere human adulation will satisfy. Nor can we justify ourselves before God with our broken lives. God justifies Christians through Christ and then uses them. God adds another component to human flourishing: purpose. He uses Christians in his economy of love to take care of the world. He lifts us from the ordinary to accomplish the extraordinary even as we carry ordinary tasks. For the Christian these stations become callings or vocations. This can only fully be appreciated if the Christian knows that he or she is free from pleasing God through works. Once the Christian is freed from this burden the whole of the Christian life is reoriented to the free exercise of love towards neighbor. It is the highest calling, the truly good, flourishing, and happy life.




The Fabric of Faithfulness


Book Description

How do parents, professors, campus ministers, youth pastors and others help students learn to connect what they believe about the world with how they live in it? Steven Garber answers this question in this revised edition which includes a new chapter on life formation.




Wonder Women (Frames Series)


Book Description

There is a new reality for mothers in the 21st century-it's a different world with different goals than it was even a generation ago. As little girls, today's moms didn't grow up with ONLY dolls and toy kitchens and princesses and visions of idyllic domesticity and motherhood behind a white picket fence: they were given these but also a little plastic doctor's bag and a coloring book full of potential careers to choose from. "You can be anything you want, child." It's a message of empowerment and it's beautiful. But, as many of those young girls grew up, a message that was once meant to convey opportunity has begun to feel like a pressure cooker. What once was "You can have it all" has now become "You need to have it all." You need to have the perfect job, the perfect husband, the perfect house, the perfect kids, the perfect play dates and craft nights and date nights and DIY Pinterest projects and #nofilter Instagrams. What does it mean to be a mom in a world like that? Where does vocation fit into all this? What does a holistic idea of self fit in? Many women struggle with the decision to work inside the home or outside the home. How can you maintain a sense of self and motherhood in both decisions? The reality is we can't really have it all - sometimes we will have to make choices. This Barna Frame explores the value and beauty in those constraints. Join Kate Harris, wife, mother, and the executive director of The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation, and Culture, as she unpacks the identity questions, the economic realities, and the role of the church in your life as you feel compelled to be wonder woman.




Kingdom Calling


Book Description

Amy Sherman unpacks Proverbs 11:10--"When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices"--to develop a theology and program of vocational stewardship. Here is practical help for churches, ministries and other faith communities to navigate the complex process of following Jesus in those places where we happen to prosper.




A Vocation and a Voice


Book Description

Published for the first time as Chopin intended, this is a collection of her most innovative stories, including "The Story of an Hour," "An Egyptian Cigarette," and "The Kiss." For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.




Culture as a Vocation


Book Description

Vocational occupations are attractive not so much for their material rewards as for the prestige and self-fulfillment they confer. They require a strong personal commitment, which can be subjectively experienced in terms of passion and selflessness. The choice of a career in the cultural sector provides a good example of this. What are the terms of this calling? What predisposes individuals to answer it? What are the meanings of such a choice? To answer these questions, this book focuses on would-be cultural managers. By identifying their social patterns, by revealing the resources, expectations and visions of the world they invest in their choice, it sheds new light on these occupations. In these intermediary and indeterminate social positions, family heritages intersect with educational strategies, aspirations of upward mobility with tactics against downward mobility, and social critique with adjustment strategies. Ultimately the study of career choices in cultural management suggests a new take on the analysis of social reproduction and on the embodiment of the new spirit of capitalism. The empirical findings of this research conducted in France are set in a broader comparative perspective, at the European level and with the USA.




Divided by Faith


Book Description

Through a nationwide survey, the authors of this study conclude that US Evangelicals may actually be preserving the racial chasm, not through active racism, but because their theology hinders their ability to recognise systematic injustice.