Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: work

  • Bill Heatley on Graduation and Finding Meaningful Work

    Bill Heatley never disappoints with his insightful reframing of work and success in terms of human spirituality and our relationships with God.

    Check out his recent interview with “tothesource”. (click here)

    In this interview Heatley discusses the transition from college life to work life and some of the misconceptions, myths, and empty promises that young people face. He offers the refreshing and challenging alternative that work might actually be a place to bless society and each other through meaningful participation.

    Two realms (work and religion) that most people keep compartmentalized, he comfortably integrates with language that is both accessible and helpful.

    Bill is a kindred spirit regarding the natural integration of work and faith. If you have not met Bill, you need to do so right away. 

    Bill Heatley is also the author of The Gift of Work, a helpful rethink of our workplace commitments in terms of God’s larger intentions for our well-being.

  • Event Review: 4th Annual Faith at Work Conference

    Hats off to Stephen Christensen and his team for making the 4th Annual Faith and Work Conference at Concordia University an all-around great experience.

    Excellently organized they managed to pack seven quality speakers into a one-day event without feeling squeezed or rushed.

    More significantly, all the speakers except one passed my main guest speaker test, which is that they brought quality content to the table instead of disguised pitches for their own services. Very refreshing!

    The integration of work and faith is not a simple or straightforward field about which to think or speak.

    I have long advocated that the primary theologians we need to help us think critically about this crucial faith context of the workplace need to be the (more…)

  • Listen In -> Bridging the Work-Faith Divide #2: All Work as a Legitimate Calling

    I don’t know about you, but I am tired of being warned at church about the dangers my work poses to my faith.

    Sure some dangers exist, (e.g. greed, exploitation, workaholism, and various obsessions with power, status and money), but the focus on these dangers to the exclusion of the gifts and opportunities that my work holds for me is the greater danger by an exponential magnitude.

    Bridging the Work-Faith Divide

    In this week’s podcast discussion, Claudia and I focus on these gifts and opportunities: to make a difference, to apply yourself meaningfully, to mature in your skills and capacities, to belong to a working community, etc.

    The biblical concept that describes finding work that fits you beautifully is “calling.”

    I define “calling” as the intersection of God’s values, our personal make-up, and our life context.

    Sadly, the word has been so closely associated with going into the clergy or taking up cross-cultural missionary work that those of us in secular professions often feel our work is less blessed by God or less relevant to his kingdom.

    Nothing could be further from the truth.

    Whether it’s your profession, your field, your role or your daily responsibilities, nothing is more life-enhancing or worth waking up for in the morning than when you find a good fit.

    Have you been looking down on your profession because it isn’t an explicit form of religious ministry? Do you feel guilty for being as deeply invested in your work as you are?

    Listen in.

    Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.
    Interested in how we can resource your church or organization? Get more information here.

  • Quote to Consider: Love It or Leave It

    quote-to-consider“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.”

    Kahlil Gibran

  • Quote to Consider: Make-Work is Fake-Work

    quote-to-consider“The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.”

    Marge Piercy

  • The Gift of Work -> Chapter 3: Redefining Success

    thought-leadersMy head spins with all the different definitions of success out there. Even if I can think myself through their various fallacies, the measures of success in this culture still haunt and lure and accuse.

    gift-of-work1What I need, though, is not another critique of the culture’s twists and perversions of the truth. Nor, on the other hand, do I need another vague, conceptual affirmation of the eternal biblical principles by which my work should find its purpose, motivations and methods.

    So I especially enjoyed Heatley using four work-based categories, (success, competition, loyalty and service) to think through the shortcomings in most workplaces and the alternatives a faith-based perspective would contribute.

    While I agree that “love” holds the key to unlocking the creative juices that will eventually result in a plethora of practical alternatives emerging in workplaces around the world, I’m anxious to get on to brainstorming what these practical alternatives might be.

    For example, let’s take a variety of workplace processes: hiring, training, firing, planning, meetings, compensation, performance reviews, approval processes, budgeting, adopting new technologies, etc., and having teams work through what those need to look like if we’re to achieve, “market strength, employee focus and customer value.” In other words, put some feet on love in the context of work.

    How do you find ways to give practical form to your faith-based values at work, in the context of work’s issues, processes and structures, and within a culture where work is a daily reality on which our survival depends?

    Each Friday I post my reflections from one chapter of The Gift of Work by Bill Heatley. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

  • The Gift of Work -> Chapter 1: Changing Our Minds About Work

    thought-leadersI’m going to jump right into the issues raised by Bill Heatley’s The Gift of Work: Spiritual Disciplines for the Workplace without much content summary. So grab your copy and join the fun!

    gift-of-work1

    Faulty Frames of Reference

    Powerful from the get go is his challenge to our basic frame of reference about work as “a daily humiliation.” (p. 24) Such starting assumptions: work is but a necessary evil to pay the bills, TGIF, and working for “the man”—among others—is where we get our equation backwards. It’s as if we suspend our lives while at work in order to make the money we need to finance the lives we want to live while at home. We have to get ourselves dirty in the workplace (read “the world”) in order to serve God and others everywhere else.

    Instead of investing, engaging, reflecting and improving, we end up keeping work at arm’s length.

    A huge hurdle to becoming open to alternate frames of reference is learning how to identify our own starting assumptions. It can be like asking a blind person why they tripped on the cracked sidewalk. How can I figure out what I’m not seeing if I’m not seeing?

    More Ordinary Than You’d Think

    I love the way Heatley, almost matter-of-factly, asserts that work is (more…)

  • Some Space From Work

    Santa Monica BeachI don’t even want to look at my work today.

    A good sign that I need some space. Fortunately, it’s Saturday and with the kids off from school, I won’t be able to pick up my work if I wanted to.

    There are other times, though, when I’m so full of new ideas and unfinished projects and return calls to make that I can barely see straight. It’s when I feel like there are no options that I have learned there is one option I must be sure to act on.

    Get some space.

    A long walk along the beach will usually do it. The salty breeze, the endless horizon, the simple colors of blue water, white foam and brown sand. The space creates room inside me for the dreams and responsibilities, feelings and tasks, relationships and deadlines to move around and reorder themselves.

    Not a conscious exercise but a hidden phenomenon taking place in the background while I am otherwise occupied ducking an errant frisbee or digging for sand crabs or counting sailboats.

    I then go back to work. And am ready to do so, because I go with refocused eyes and a refreshed heart.

    What do you do to get some space?

  • Question of the Week

    What criteria do you use to measure the impact your work has on your quality of life?

  • Podcast – Things We Can Do To Change our Workplace Culture


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