Connecting Faith and Work

Listen to a recent message Roger Thompson of Berean Baptist Church shared with his Ironworks men's group about COVID-19.

Here's a quick note from Roger to go along with the message:

"My mind and heart are in the spin cycle every day. I bounce between the maddening constrictions and confusion pumped at me daily and the timeless encouragements of God's presence and promises. To elevate my spirit above the flood, I wrote these questions in my journal. I hope they will help you orient your heart as well.

Is the sovereign Lord still reigning?

There's no getting around it: we are in serious times. We need to be informed, but we need also to be infused with God's purpose and confidence. Take a deep breath of courage and hope as you ask yourself these questions." - Roger Thompson

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Find COVID-19 resources on the Ambassadors for Business website: https://www.afbnl.com/covid-19resources/

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The events referenced in this episode were cancelled due to COVID-19.

In the final installment of this series, Chuck Proudfit shares real life examples of what he call Biznistry. Biznistry is business and ministry integrated together in a kingdom enterprise.

Be inspired to explore ways to connect business and ministry in your community! Chuck encourages listeners to not despise small beginnings. It is fun to hear big stories like the ones he shares, but they started where you are and built out the concept over time.

Biznistry book - https://www.amazon.com/Biznistry-Transforming-Lives-Through-Enterprise/dp/0615938825/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

At Work on Purpose - Free Biznistry Teaching Seminars: https://atworkonpurpose.org/videos-category/training-videos/biznistry-bootcamp/

The events referenced in this episode were cancelled due to COVID-19.

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The April 16th events referenced in this episode were cancelled due to COVID-19.

Chuck Proudfit expounds on the five primary spiritual struggles Christians face at work, and the spiritual solutions to these struggles. These five choices are what make up the Choices Profile that Chuck is bringing to people in workplace.

Be encouraged by the stories Chuck shares and the lessons he has learned from implementing the Choices Profile into his own life and business. Find practical ways you can reframe how you think about faith, work, and the intersection of the two in your life.

Learn more about Chuck and his work by visiting www.atworkonpurpose.org

The April 16th events referenced in this episode were cancelled due to COVID-19.

Support Connecting Faith and Work

Find COVID-19 resources on the Ambassadors for Business website: https://www.afbnl.com/covid-19resources/

Support Connecting Faith and Work

The April 16th events referenced in this episode were cancelled due to COVID-19.

Chuck Proudfit's journey to faith was triggered by his frustrations with work. The first project he was assigned as young brand manager left him feeling empty and less than inspired. He was totally depressed when a still, small voice reminded me of the friends he had in college who had faith. He started exploring religion and philosophy and came to Christ at age 31 as a young working professional.

Over the years Chuck learned how to weave his faith into his work. When he started to see the fruit of that he was hungry for other people to experience it.

He started reaching out to working Christians who had an interest in this idea of bringing faith to work to start a discussion group. Over six months word spread and they had grown to over 300 people who wanted to get involved. Chuck began to meet with these different Christians and learning about how they were integrating their faith into the work they did each week. Before he knew it what was emerging was a decentralized and organic model - a network of people tied together through relationship - with these different workplace initiatives. At Work on Purpose ended up being born as a ministry to help curate existing workplace initatives.

Chuck became convinced that they needed to get really good at understanding how to equip working Christians with a straight-forward framework that would be action oriented. He decided to do a research project about how Christians experience faith application at work and the feedback that came was that there are five overarching spiritual struggles that we face at work regardless of what we do. For each one of them there is a spiritual solution we can deploy. This became the framework for the Choices Profile that we package in a product called Mission to Monday.

To close out this episode, Chuck explains the five spritual struggles Christians face in the workplace, and the solutions to them.

Learn more about the ministry of At Work on Purpose by visiting their website: Go to www.atworkonpurpose.org

The April 16th events referenced in this episode were cancelled due to COVID-19.

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Join Bob Willbanks and a panel of guests as they discuss trusting God and making wise decisions in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis the world is facing.

Join a Thrive! Connect meeting for more encouargement and support throughout your week: https://business.afbnl.com/eventcalendar

Reference Links:

COVID-19 John’s Hopkins Map - https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

World Meters - https://www.worldometers.info/

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Devin Dickel, church relations lead at Open USA, interacts with churches and colleges to cast vision for using business to transform the world for Christ. He comes alongside what God is doing in churches and schools, and looks for ways to partner with them in their efforts to bring Christ to the marketplace.

Devin talks about how the sacred/secular divide is rooted in the idea that some vocations are more important to God and those who do them are more important to God. Everyone else is supposed to make money to support those who do the important work. This leads to marketplace workers feeling that God doesn't care about their work, or how they do their work.

Through his work at Open USA, Devin is helping people consider what it means to be a someone who loves like Christ in the marketplace.

**Practical action: **Write out a description of your work on a piece of paper. Once you have that, write out a prayer right next to it about how you want to devote and dedicate every aspect of what you just wrote about your work to God.

"...you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." - 1 Peter 2:5

Questions about prayer to consider:

Our love needs to look different - consider small, yet meaningful, ways to show love in your workplace. Unless the Holy Spirit prompts you to share the whole Gospel, it is best to not say too much too quickly. Wait until they are hungry to share the whole Gospel. Listen to the Lord and follow His prompting. Make little things a part of your routine.

Download the AFB Bible App:

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Host Bob Willbanks interviews Chris Fleck, an Ambassadors for Business board member and legacy planning expert, on the topic of estate planning and being good stewards of the resources God has given us.

Join Ambassadors for Business, North Central University's legacy planning team, and Generations Legal Services on March 12th for an overview presentation of the four key pieces of a strong estate plan. It is important to get the conversation started, and this event will do just that.

Find more details about the March 12th, 2020 Big Event here.

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Devin Dickel, church relations lead at Open USA, interacts with churches and colleges to cast vision for using business to transform the world for Christ. He comes alongside what God is doing in churches and schools, and looks for ways to partner with them in their efforts to bring Christ to the marketplace.

Devin finds that churches start from many different points when it comes to how they view the importance of sacred and secular work. In a lot of churches, Devin sees a divide between jobs that are viewed as sacred (pastor, missionary, etc) and jobs that are viewed as secular (accountant, architect, etc). Devin asks questions and seeks to understand where each church stands on this topic so he can bring forward Biblical principles and new perspectives to get people thinking and talking about the role of all work in the lives of Christians.

"A church that looks like Jesus from a vocational perspective will respect all the vocations in the church - seeing them as equally pleasing to God." - Devin Dickel

After Devin shares about the work he does with Open USA, the conversation shifts to thinking about the common divide between sacred and secular work in the minds of Christians. Devin presents the fact that in Scripture we see Christ working in a traditionally secular role - as a carpenter - and later in life we see him in what would be considered a sacred role - preaching the good news of the Gospel. Drawing from the Biblical principles, Devin shows how Christians can learn from Christ's example and strive to be more life Christ in how we view our work and the work that others do.

To learn more about Open USA, [visit their website](www.openusa.net).

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