Introduction
Problem, Strategic Intent, WholeLife Church
Why do we do work and faith integration. There is a gap in the church that our discipleship program do not really addressed / or we do not have a systematic way to address them / church life and ministry takes precedence over work life, hence in enhancing the discipling process and avoiding the irrelevancy of the church in the area of engagement with its members we design the a robust work and faith theology called the Vocation@Work (VW) Discipleship Program.
Why Work
The Importance of Work Life Discipleship
Work and faith is wholly integrated in the life of the believers. Work is important because God grant us salvation through our faith, this
indwelling of God make us disciple and through our vocation and by charisma we are called to serve- 'We are saved to work" and this should be the mandate for us as believers and work has its values and we believed in the redemptive nature of work now and the continuation of work in the future.
Works occupies 2/3 of our waking hours, hence it is significant and if this is not addressed the church can become irrelevant. hence a holistic church is the one that bridge the gap of faith on Sunday, where we prepare the people for work and the work on Monday
We are worker like Jesus because we are made in His image and our work helps God in caring the world through us.
Problems: Why The Integration?
The church at large do not addressed work and faith integration in a holistic way,
hence churches has become irrelevant to its congregation concerning work.
If they do talked about work life they speak it from a 'do this and do not do this',
and we see many areas of work life are missed out,
i.e. affirmation of work, the proper theology of work, the importance and the value of work.
We will be employing the Vocation@Work [VW] program to bridge this gap.
1
Dualistic Mindsets
Sacred and Non-Sacred
Theological and Worldview Practises
2
Compartmentalize Lifestyles
Individualistic thinking and mindsets towards silo mentality
3
Sin affecting Work
The worldly lifestyles and the fallenness of work which has created a distinction between a holistic and secular life
What Needed to be Fixed to build a holistic Church
Vocation@Work Program
Vocation@Work is a holistic Discipleship Program that fix the Sunday-Monday gap in building a Holistic WholeLife Church- where work and faith integration are core to the program in driving growth of the church.
The Integration:
The Strategic Intent
The Strategic Intent of the Vocation@Work is to build a holistic program of work and faith integration to create an integrated engaged work life. When a Church speaks of worklife, the church will be relevant and meaningful
This is done through 4 intentional questions: The Who-Why-Now-What- to create a robust engaged church termed as the 'WholeLife Church' that is relevant to the life of the believers recognizing that a gap between their daily work and faith must be bridged.
The Being
1. The question of being, the identity of "Who is doing the work"
2. The question of being, the purpose of "Why are we doing the work"
Doing
3. The question of doing, the methodology of "'How the integration is done"
4. The question of the doing, the result/outcome of "What we would like to see"
The
church
Whole Gospel.. Whole People.. Whole Community
At Christ Lutheran Church, we embrace a holistic approach to faith and community- through work and faith integration to build a holistic WholeLife Church. This is a church where the 'whole of life' (soul) are disciple to do the 'whole work' of God and our mission is to share the 'whole Gospel' with a Kingdom mindsets where we are "saved to serve" the "whole people - where souls matters" and this vibrant holistic work 'The Whole Work' ids rooted in God's vocation and charism - in building a community of the people of God. We believe that our work is significant to God, and God is significant in our work because He is doing the work through us in caring and loving his creation.
Join us as we strive to build a community that reflects His kingdom on earth.
THE ENLARGED CHURCH MODEL
The Church gathered &
The Church dispersed
Vocation@Work is a transformative program designed to empower the gathered Church on Sunday to be the dispersed Church on Monday. Our mission is to equip the soul [the whole people] with the tools and inspiration
[with the whole Gospel] needed to engage meaningfully [the Whole Work] in their community throughout the week.
Minding the Monday gap, the program turns the gathered Church into a catalysts for community transformation.
The Church as a
Re-Fueled | Repair
Re-Strategize
Station
For Redeployment
Dispersed/Scattered
THE CHURCH
The 2 Kingdoms emphasis of the church.
Why Work Matters
In today's world, the church must embrace a holistic approach to discipleship, focusing not only on ministry work but also on work lives of its members. With work occupying a significant portion of our waking hours, it becomes essential to connect our faith with our daily work. By helping members integrate spiritual beliefs into their work, the church can foster a culture of meaningful and purposeful work. This engagement not only enhances the relevance of the church towards the lives of its members, it foster growth and fruitfulness for the entire community.
The Strategic Intent of the church to integrate work and faith is not just a matter of opinion, it is essential and necessity to bring the whole life/being/soul to work
Understand this well: there is something holy, something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it- work is such that you can find God in it.
You are writing to me in the kitchen, by the stove. It is early afternoon. It is cold. By your side, your younger sister — the last one to discover the divine folly of living her Christian vocation to the full — is peeling potatoes. To all appearances — you think — her work is the same as before. And yet, what a difference there is!
—It is true: before she only peeled potatoes, now, she is sanctifying herself peeling potatoes.
Jose Marie Escavar - Opus Deo
We've succeeded as a species because of our ability to form cultures through our thoughts process and actions. Cultures are groups of people who come together for a common values and beliefs with others to form trust.
The integration is about forming this culture, where work and faith intersect. This is when your work matters to God and God matters to your work
On Shaping A Work and Faith Culture
THE 2 DEGREE MINDSHIFT SHIFT
ONLINE MODULE
15 May 2022, 8.30 pm
Via Zoom and YouTube Live
Quote
Luther
The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays – not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors. The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.
“All the people at the churches are in a common situation in the world. Wherever he works, wherever he meets the community at large, he finds that Christians are in a minority. His faith comes under fire or is ignored, or even pitied. He is regarded often as a relic of the past. When he goes to church that past comes alive, he hears, speaks and sings its language with sincerity and it becomes for him a vehicle of eternal realities. But he is conscious, acutely or vaguely, that all sorts of ideas about man and the world, hidden in the words, are of the past, belonging to a pastoral or patriarchal society, and to a triple-decker view of the universe. Instead of making sense of the world for him, the Christian’s faith, couched in this language, is often a problem he himself is trying to make sense of. Yet he needs it to guide and sustain him in the world.”
Quote
Katherine Bliss [We the People], 1963
