In my recent discussion about Joy and Work and, especially the ideas proposed by Dennis Bakke in his book, “Joy at Work“, one of my readers (Holger) questioned if work came as a result of the fall. Moreover, this reader suggested that most of us rarely display our creativity at our jobs. Bakke himself pointed out that work was right there at the dawn of creation. Man was charged with tending the garden right at the beginning, prior to the fall. After the fall, though, the toil and grind of work entered into man’s experience. Rather, it was thorns and thistles became the result of man’s toil rather than fruits and everything for food from the ground.

So, both the meaning and the result of man’s labor became troublesome after the fall. However, work was supposed to be glorious, God-honoring and God-pleasing. According to the plan at creation, man was supposed to work for his nourishment and enjoyment. Read the rest of this entry »

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Technorati Tags: work, work as play, joy, passion, square peg round hole

The fourth annual Faith and Business Forum was held this past week, and it showcased Dennis Bakke, author of Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach To Fun on the Job. Bakke started AES, a global power company, serving as CEO and President for a number of years.

Bakke suggests that work is God’s primary vocation for man. Being made in the image of God, we are all called to be co-creators with God to fulfill our calling at work. This means that there is no separation between sacred work or spiritual work. Work is not meant to be something we do just to bring in the material resources to enable us to do sacred work.

According to Bakke, Christians tend to think that sacred work is the primary commission. That since Jesus left the church with the Great Commission, doing “the work of God” becomes our primary calling. Therefore, apparently, we are led to believe that we are to be busy with sacred ministry and our “secular” occupations merely serve primarily to put a roof over our heads, feed our families and us to enable us to support sacred ministry and spend time volunteering in such ministries as well. Read the rest of this entry »

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From time to time reflections about work, vocation and ministry occupy my thoughts. As someone who very early in life felt the “call” to “full-time Christian ministry” I often ponder about the implications about “full-time Christian service.” Previously, spurred by a friend’s email, I pondered about the difference between thinking about your work, profession or vocation as a career and thinking about it as an occupation. There is a sense in which focussing on career advancement for instance may impinge upon our calling as God’s stewards. I also wrote and thought a little about how our sense of self-identity is often wrapped up in the work that we do, or the professional titles that we use at work.

For instance, my role at my present company is to seek new relationships with companies to do business with our company. Such a professional role is often known as “Business Development Executive” or “New Account Executive”. Both very professional sounding name. What did I choose to call myself? I often introduce myself as “The Sales Guy”. Because I feel that is descriptive of my role and work. Also, because I wish to elevate the status of sales people generally. Anyway, I am digressing here. Will come back to this line of thought perhaps in a separate post.

Let me back up to my earlier thoughts about vocation, call and ministry.

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I think it must be the long weekend. Long lazy weekends like this one have the tendency to make me contemplative and bring me back to the thoughts and feelings that have gnawed at me for quite some time. It’s the feeling that I am not really doing what I love. You know, the whole question about what I do for a living. Or what I do in my life. Or what I do to bring in the resources so that I pay my own bills in order to live. You know, the whole question about job, career, occupation and calling.

Reading DJ Chuang’s journey along the same lines has caused a little bit of a stir in that direction for me as well. Off and on, over the past several years, I have been questioning my own life’s calling. For someone who returned to college six years after finishing high school, and then who checked out of graduate studies to go into business, and finally who returned to part-time graduate studies seventeen years later, I am still undecided what I want to be “when I grow up.”

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A little while back, I was reflecting on the difference between careers and occupations, a post that was spurred by an email from a friend of mine. I have actually been thinking about this issue quite a bit.

Recently, while reading Faith at Work Blog discussing what defines a person, I was once again reminded about these ideas.

I think sometimes we confuse our sense of who we are with what we do. And, we also conflate what we do for a living with the things we do as a person. In the post I refered to above, Mike McLoughlin was speaking more about the kinds of that you do as a corporation that defines the type of corporation it is. Just because one says that a corporation is a kingdom corporation, says McLoughlin, doesn’t make it such.

I used to work for such a company. Regular readers (all five of you!) of this blog will remember my struggles with that company, and especially with my former boss. We used to talk about “customer-centric” philosophies and we often talk about business ethics at work, but the boss practices what some of my friends call “NATO policies” which stands for “No Action; Talk Only”). It all makes for cynicism and deep duplicity at work for all of us.

I suppose this can be applied to the individual level as well. Merely applying a particular label on yourself would not really do the trick. It is by your fruit that you shall be known, as the Lord says in the Gospels.

What has this got to do with the difference between careers and occupation? I think these ideas are all intricately tied up to not only the confusion we place on our view of careers as opposed to occupation and calling, but also how we view ourselves. In my earlier post, I explored the idea that when we focus on our careers, we are tempted to forget that there is a difference between our occupation, our calling and our careers.

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Responding to several of bloggers‘ complaints of Apple Company’s Steven Jobs’ recent commencement speech (also highlighted by Michelle Malkin)where he apparently glorified work, human effort, postmodernism’s anti-dogmatism and Eastern mysticism’s acquiescence with death, Mike McLoughlin of Faith at Work blog pronounced:

A person’s story, no matter how devoid of faith it may appear, is actually a story of God at work. There is no part of creation where Christ is not present and at work. (Colossians 1:15-20). Each human being is created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27) and has the potential to glorify God in their life (Isaiah 43:5-8). God even uses fallen human beings to care for his created order. I respectfully submit that this is exactly what He has done with Steve Jobs.

McLoughlin argues refreshingly that God’s grace and mercy are not limited to a favored group of people. It is temptingly deceptive to think God only uses the elect for His purposes and that God is only glorified by the lives of people who subscribe to a particular set of beliefs. Even if someone espouses belief systems that may be contrary to our liking, or to our denominational preferences, or even, to our understanding of biblical principles, yet this person’s life may and can actually be used by God to bless many.

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If you are one of those who have been regularly following my blog you might have come across the posts regarding the struggles of my previous job and the subsequent roller coaster ride following my being fired by my former boss whom I called "Dragon Lady."

I must admit that there is a ring to the name even if, as one of my commenters advised, with whom I largely agree, that it might be counterproductive to my intention to bless, to forgive and to extend grace and mercy to her as part of my own spiritual discipline and development

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It is just right there - albeit verbally. After two greulling days of negotiation, I think this long drawn out process (beginning with even before I lost my job, and the ups and downs of the subsequent job search process) is finally drawing to a close. The smoke, however, hasn’t cleared.

I received a firm written offer on Wednesday night. It was just too fast, I tought.

I had just barely come back from the interview - in fact, I received a call about three hours after the interview (it was an hour and a half commute from the office to my house), and was told by the hirer that he had sent me the offer by e-mail.

When can I start?

I told him I needed time to read the offer and talk to my family, consider my options and then come back to him. Read the rest of this entry »

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