Towards A Work and Faith Integration
A world where our work matters to God and God matters to our work.
My Name is Eric Mau. I am a Lutheran Pastor, serving in a local congregation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I am current doing a project of work and faith integration for my Doctorate program at the local seminary in Malaysia.
I am passionate about work and faith integration, particulary on work as a calling. God called us to himself and to others, where he saved us, and participate in our life so that we can serve others. This is where the doctrine of justication by faith and sanctification are collated into one for the purpose of 'saved to serve'. This is what holistic work is all about and this is an importnat tenent of the reformation, but was deemed lost or forgotten.
I believed work and faith integration holds the key towards the relevancy of the church, for when the work life of the members are engaged through faith, the church will thrive. The integration challenges the prevalent culture of the church and changes the ecosystem of the church. These new culture should reexamine the ministry of the church to embrace a new concept of an enlarged church. This is where, the gathered church is seen equipping and supporting the people to integrate thwir work with faith where they are send out to serve others. This is the dispersed church. The holistic concept of work and faith would rendered When work and faith is engaged in such manner, an engaging community will be the results.
My goal is to build a wholistic work life through a system of 'Discipling (Learning) and Experience' which targets the whole of life because work makes up 2/3 of our waking hours, yet the church do not spend its time on building this but emphasis is given to other more important ministry. The whole of life concept would mean seeing work through the eye of God's plan for us, where our starting point is the identity- The Who? that is doing the work and why he is doing it. This integrated starting point is crucial for the work life, because if we do not know our identity and purpose, there will be disengagement and the church suffers. The church must constantly challenge the culture via its concept of Calling in the praticipation and cooperation of God in the life of the believers. For when work life is engaged, integrated through the call, it makes work meaningful. This is seen as how our work is transformed to be the work of God. Thus, our work matters to God and God matters to our work and we at vocation@Work believes that a work and faith engagement will lead to an engaging work life and church.
Your work matters to God and God matters to your work is the basis of our philosophy of the integration. I hope you can journey with me to discover this marvelous call of God in your life. This is the journey of a holistic church, and we termed it as a WholeLife Church- a church that is holistically looks at the totality of life in relation to faith.
Leave a comment if you would like to get in touch and communicate with us on making faith relevant to work life for the glory of God.