Right after graduating from seminary, I served as a director of children’s ministry in a local church. There, I met a deacon who became a good friend in my life. He and his family loved and served the Lord by pouring out their time and lives to support the ministry of the church. The deacon...
Continue Reading
Many pastors and social commentators have noted the irony of Labor Day in the United States, that we celebrate work by…not working. One of my church elders loved to begin talks on faith and work with the $64,000,000 question.[i] The question was simple: “If I gave you $64,000,000 today, would you be at work tomorrow?”...
Continue Reading
I was nervous as I stood up in front of the audience of scientists and engineers. I’d been invited to give a keynote at this conference, but I was not sure whether many of them would be interested in my topic: generative artificial intelligence and the future of work. It seemed to have snowed indoors...
Continue Reading
In AD 52, the Apostle Paul wrote a letter, either the first or second New Testament epistle ever written, to a small church in the city of Thessalonica, a church he had started not long before. This church was planted in a highly cosmopolitan, affluent, powerful city where Christians struggled with the same kinds of...
Continue Reading
The fact that we celebrate the American worker by not working tells us something about our relationship with work — it is very complicated. Even Labor Day itself has an interesting background. When President Grover Cleveland signed the law that made Labor Day an official national holiday in 1894, he did so against a backdrop...
Continue Reading
In 2019, Derek Thompson suggested in the Atlantic that work for college-educated Americans had become workism, “the most potent of new religions competing for congregants.” He noted, “No large country in the world as productive as the United States averages more hours of work a year. And the gap between the U.S. and other countries is...
Continue Reading
