Download or read book Visions of Vocation written by Steven Garber and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2014-01-27 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreword Review's Annual INDIEFAB Book of the Year Finalist Outreach Resource of the Year Christianity Today Award of Merit Leadership Journal Best Books for Church Leaders Book of the Year from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore Is it possible to know the world and still love the world? Of all the questions we ask about our calling, this is the most difficult. From marriages to international relations, the more we know, the harder it is to love. We become cynics or stoics, protecting our hearts from the implications of what we know. But what if the vision of vocation can be recovered—allowing us to step into the wounds of the world and for love's sake take up our responsibility for the way the world turns out? For decades Steve Garber has come alongside a wide range of people as they seek to make sense of the world and their lives. With him we meet leaders from the Tiananmen Square protest who want a good reason to still care about China. We also meet with many ordinary people in ordinary places who long for their lives to matter: Jonathan who learned he would rather build houses than study history Todd and Maria who adopted creative schedules so they could parent better and practice medicine D.J. who helped Congress move into the Internet Age Robin who spends her life on behalf of urban justice Hans who makes hamburgers the way they are meant to be made Susan who built a home business of hand-printing stationary using a letterpress Santiago who works with majority-world nations in need of capital George who has given years to teaching students to learn things that matter most Claudius and Deirdre whose openhearted home has always been a place for people Dan who loves Wyoming, the place, its people and its cows Vocation is when we come to know the world in all its joy and pain and still love it. Vocation is following our calling to seek the welfare of the world we live in. And in helping the world to flourish, strangely, mysteriously, we find that we flourish too. Garber offers a book for everyone everywhere—for students, for parents, for those in the arts, in the academy, in public service, in the trades and in commerce—for all who want to discover the virtue of vocation.
Download or read book Visions of Vocation written by Steven Garber and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2014-02-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 business people—for all who want to discover the virtue of vocation.
Download or read book Kingdom Calling written by Amy L. Sherman and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2011-11-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christianity Today Book Award winner Imagine the scenarios: a CEO successfully negotiates a corporate merger, avoiding hundreds of layoffs in the process an artist completes a mosaic for public display at a bank, showcasing neighborhood heroes a contractor creates a work-release program in cooperation with a local prison, growing the business and seeing countless former inmates turn their lives around a high-school principal graduates 20 percent more students than the previous year, and the school's average scores go up by a similar percentage Now imagine a parade in the streets for each event. That's the vision of Proverbs 11:10, in which the tsaddiqim—the people who see everything they have as gifts from God to be stewarded for his purposes—pursue their vocation with an eye to the greater good. Amy Sherman, director of the Center on Faith in Communities and scholar of vocational stewardship, uses the tsaddiqim as a springboard to explore how, through our faith-formed calling, we announce the kingdom of God to our everyday world. But cultural trends toward privatism and materialism threaten to dis-integrate our faith and our work. And the church, in ways large and small, has itself capitulated to those trends, while simultaneously elevating the "special calling" of professional ministry and neglecting the vocational formation of laypeople. In the process, we have, in ways large and small, subverted our kingdom mandate. God is on the move, and he calls each of us, from our various halls of power and privilege, to follow him. Here is your chance, keeping this kingdom calling in view, to steward your faith and work toward righteousness. In so doing, you will bless the world, and as you flourish, the world will celebrate.
Download or read book Vocation written by Raleigh Sadler and published by New Reformation Publications. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Seamless Life written by Steven Garber and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all want to make sense of life, of who we are and why we are, and to know that what we do—day in and day out—matters. But daily demands often lead to a life that feels void of meaning and disjointed from our deepest beliefs. Steven Garber challenges us to move beyond our fragmented sense of reality and begin to see all we are and all we do—our work, play, relationships, worship, and loves—as significant to God. Once we discover that there is no chasm between heaven and earth, we are able to understand the coherence of the work of God and of our lives in the world. This is the seamless life—to see the truest truths of the universe woven into the very meaning of life, labor, learning, and liturgy.
Download or read book The Fabric of Faithfulness written by Steven Garber and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2007-01-11 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Vocation and a Voice written by Kate Chopin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Calling in Context written by Susan L. Maros and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I don't care for vocational books written in the United States; they're too American." When Susan Maros heard this comment from a Malaysian colleague, she was initially taken aback. Isn't the concept of calling universal? Why wouldn't resources with a biblical perspective on vocation apply to everyone? The reality is that each of us encounters our questions of calling from within a particular context. In this paradigm-shifting book, Maros explores how various dimensions of social location—including race, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status, and gender—shape our assumptions and experiences with vocation. Maros helps Christians in the United States in particular see how ideas about calling that emphasize certainty, career paths, and personal achievement arise from cultural priorities that shouldn't go unexamined, such as individualism, productivity, and meritocracy. She explains how unexamined "mental maps" can distort our perspective and refocuses our attention on biblical insights about calling as a lifelong journey. In the process, she helps us find both clarity and encouragement to explore the paths before us. God calls all people, yes—but calling is not a monolithic concept. Filled with numerous stories from Christians in diverse communities, Calling in Context invites anyone exploring questions of calling to find fresh possibilities in their own identity and engagement with God's mission. Reflection questions and Bible study prompts are included throughout.
Download or read book Consider Your Calling written by Gordon T. Smith and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2015-12-31 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What on earth is God doing? Who are you? What is your stage of life? What are your circumstances? What is the cross you will have to bear? What are you afraid of? We ask these six critical questions—and then we ask them again—at points of transition in our lives. They all lead us to the one core question: What is the good work to which I am called? Gordon T. Smith, author of Courage and Calling, writes: "It is a good question because our work matters to us, to others and, of course, it matters to God. Work itself is good. It is vital to our human identity; and we are most ourselves, most who God calls us to be, living in what it means to know the salvation of God, when we know the grace of work well done." However, Smith acknowledges that this is not a simple question to answer in the midst of our very complicated lives. That's why he has written this brief and accessible book—to offer the support and insight we need as we ponder these six core questions in community with God and others. As a steward of your life, in attentiveness to the calling of God, how is God inviting you to engage the world?
Download or read book Resisting Structural Evil written by Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reorienting Christian ethics from its usual anthropocentrism to an ecocentrism entails a new framework that Moe-Lobeda lays out in her first chapters, culminating in a creative rethinking of how it is that we understand morally.
Download or read book My Name Is Blessing written by Eric Walters and published by Tundra Books. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the life of a real boy, this warm-hearted, beautifully illustrated book tells the story of Baraka, a young Kenyan boy with a physical disability. Baraka and eight cousins live with their grandmother. She gives them boundless love, but there is never enough money or food, and life is hard --love doesn't feed hungry stomachs or clothe growing bodies, or school keen minds. Baraka is too young, and, with his disability, needs too much, and she is too old. A difficult choice must be made, and grandmother and grandchild set off on a journey to see if there is a place at the orphanage for Baraka. The story begins by looking at Baraka's physical disability as a misfortune, but ends by looking beyond the disability, to his great heart and spirit, and the blessings he brings.
Download or read book The Significance of Singleness written by Christina S. Hitchcock and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The church needs to do a better job of speaking theologically to single Christians. Challenging prevailing evangelical assumptions about "the problem" of singleness, this book explains why the church needs single people and offers a contemporary theology of singleness relevant to all members of the church. Drawing on the examples of three important figures from the history of Christianity, the book helps today's church form a vision of life in the kingdom of God that is as theologically significant for single people as it is for those who are married.
Download or read book Untamed Shapevine written by Alan Hirsch and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discipleship is costly. Are we willing to critique and even challenge much we've been taught for the sake of the kingdom? For this is the radical nature of the discipleship to which Jesus calls us. He did not allow the outside culture to hold him captive; instead he established the kingdom of God and turned the world on its head. Jesus was untamed, and he calls his church to be the same. In this provocative and compelling book, internationally known missiologists Alan and Debra Hirsch overthrow culturized understandings of theology and culture, and cast a vision for a distinctly mission-shaped way of living the Christian life. Written for any Christian serious about issue of discipleship, Untamed covers such topics as church, humans as bearers of the image of God, family life, culture, and sexuality. Through it all they seek to answer the question, how are we to think and live day to day as followers of Jesus? Each chapter ends with suggested practices to help readers begin to live out the book's principles as well as questions for group discussion.
Download or read book Culture as a Vocation written by Vincent Dubois and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-30 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Clown of God written by Tomie dePaola and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This beautiful new edition of Tomie dePaola’s 1978 classic retelling of a French legend stars a little juggler whose unique talent leads him to what might be a Christmas miracle. Little Giovanni is poor and homeless, but he can do something wonderful: he can juggle. The people of Sorrento marvel at his talents, and before long, he becomes famous throughout Italy for his rainbow of colored balls that delight the nobility and townspeople alike. But as the years pass, Giovanni grows old, and his talents begin to fail him. No longer a celebrated performer, he is once again poor and homeless, begging for his food. Until one Christmas Eve, when Giovanni picks up his rainbow of colored balls once more. And what happens next just might be a miracle…
Download or read book Living Your Heart s Desire written by Gregory Scott Clapper and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you've ever daydreamed about alternate paths or wondered how you can find peace in today's rat race, this book is for you. You can find your true calling where God's grace and the daily grind meet. Many of us follow a seemingly arbitrary and rushed path to a paycheck. Once you're out of school, whether it's high school or college, you're expected to go to work. You work hard to pay your dues. Then, one day, you feel stuck. You feel restless and like a mercenary...the "it's just a job" mentality. Soon, these feelings of alienation and cynicism spill over into the rest of your life. Clapper goes beyond the usual career counseling formula in Living Your Heart's Desire. He explains why it's more helpful to understand the theology behind work, calling, and human freedom. You'll discover a variety of visions of what it means for you to lead a life of Christian faithfulness in all realms of existence. You'll be equipped to understand yourself as a Christian in the workforce as well as understand how to be content -- no matter what you do for a living -- among the discontented. "We must ask if the life we are living is a worthy expression of gratitude for what God has done for us," Clapper writes. "Our most important response is the shape of our entire life. It is, in short, our vocation." Easy to read and relevant to today's economy and world (with many references and lessons from movies), this book can help you lead a more fulfilled, rewarding, and joyful Christian life -- regardless of how you earn a paycheck. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter make this perfect for small group discussions. Learn to see your "Office Space"-like world as a Spirit-filled and vital calling in Christ. As one reviewer has said, Living Your Heart's Desire will help you "understand the connection between faith of the head and faith of the heart, as well as the next step on your faith journey." Take comfort in knowing that God has a plan for your life. Revel in it.
Download or read book Friend of My Heart written by Claire Blatchford and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 1999-06 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is a useful compendium of information, recipes, and anecdotes from Waldorf kindergarten teacher Lisa Hildreth--a rich book for teachers, parents, and anyone who cares for young children. Create soups, breads, and fruit dishes with children, while learning and teaching them how various foods affect us and how to use healthy ingredients to make delicious and nutritious snacks. himsically and joyously illustrated by kindergarten teacher Jo Valens, you will find yourself turning to this book time and again when it's snack time. The author has also included a chapter on birthday and festival foods.
