vocational channels archives

God did not create work to be drudgery, but due to the effects of the Fall and our sinfulness, work can definitely not be what it should be. But that does not mean that work is all bad.

In fact, work is where we often find purpose and joy.

Dr. Chip Roper is the Founder and President of the VOCA Center. The VOCA Center is a faith-based organization that brings God’s wisdom to your work through teaching, coaching, and leadership development. It recently partnered with the Barna Group to conduct a research survey to discover what brings joy and what brings challenges in the contemporary workplace.

Listen here. 

For this episode, we have one of our favorite guests: Jordan Raynor, a leading voice in the faith-and-work movement.

His latest book is The Sacredness of Secular Work: 4 Ways Your Job Matters for Eternity (Even When You’re Not Sharing the Gospel) (Waterbrook Press, 2024)

On the podcast, we often discuss overcoming the false dualism between the sacred and the secular. I love how Jordan Raynor plays with those words in the title. We might want to call it “secular work,” but God calls the work of normal everyday workers, not just overseas missionaries or pastors, sacred work.

We often see setbacks and disasters as events that keep us from our best life. But what if these are actually opportunities to grow in our leadership? Our guest on this episode is Dr. Gayle D. Beebe, who has been a leader for over two decades and has insights into how to overcome the disorienting challenges that we face, both personally and in our leadership.

In his new book, The Crucibles That Shape Us: Navigating the Defining Challenges of Leadership, the university president shares personal stories and the wisdom of many other authors and mentors on how to tackle suffering. He reveals that, although we can be confused at first, these situations ultimately can bring us into a deeper relationship with God and also make us better leaders.

Listen to the podcast here.

Our work situations, family and friendships, and everything around us always change. How do we navigate through the fog of not knowing what will happen next and where we are ultimately going?

This episode features two guests who can help us navigate a life that is always in flux. Leadership, career, and vocation experts Michaela O’Donnell and Lisa Pratt Slayton teach the practical skills needed to navigate constant change. Their new book is Life in Flux: Navigational Skills to Guide and Ground You in an Ever-Changing World (Baker Books, 2024).

Michaela O’Donnell, PhD, is the Executive Director of Fuller Seminary’s Max De Pree Center for Leadership. Lisa Pratt Slayton is the Founding Partner and CEO of Tamim Partners, providing coaching and consulting to executives, businesses, nonprofits, and churches.

Women now have professional opportunities beyond those of previous generations. But sadly, as women have seen their roles grow at work, the church’s vision for women’s work and calling has not grown along with it. This has left women feeling isolated and under-resourced.

Joanna Meyer has written Women, Work, and Calling: Step into Your Place in God’s World (InterVarsity Press, 2023). She is the Director of Public Engagement and the Executive Director of Women, Work, and Calling at the Denver Institute for Faith & Work. In our discussion, we talk about the multiple tensions that Christian women face – between home and work, and between the great gifts that they have and the limiting beliefs that hold them back from providing their workplaces with the fullness of those gifts. All the while having to navigate the complex and sometimes difficult gender dynamics in the workplace.

This episode of the Reintegrate Podcast is a little different in that we live-streamed it in conjunction with the Logos Daily Circle. Jason Stone joins Bob David Loughney and Bob Robinson to discuss reintegrating faith with work.

What is “calling,” and how can we reintegrate our vocations with God’s mission? What is the connection between callings and the kingdom of God? Does what we do in our work in a fallen and temporary world really matter? How can pastors better equip people to be missional in and through their vocations?

Michaela O’Donnell, PhD, is the Executive Director of the Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Seminary, which helps leaders respond faithfully to God in all seasons of their life, work, and leadership. Her book, Make Work Matter: Your Guide to Meaningful Work in a Changing World (Baker, 2021) is based on her deep research and is filled with stories and insights from faithful entrepreneurs. She offers a step-by-step paradigm for discovering what God is calling each of us to do in a changing world and practical habits suited for the new world of work.

Dr. O’Donnell is a business entrepreneur, a teacher, and a sought-after speaker and consultant who regularly presents on the topics of vocation, career, and leadership. She has fifteen years of experience in business marketing, founding and running, with her husband Dan, Long Winter Media, which helps brands through creating multi-media content. At the Depree Center, she created a six-week remote cohort experience rooted in her PhD research, called Road Ahead, designed to help people in transition to discern next steps and gain clarity about what God is calling them to do.

We are all fascinated with the End Times. What is our final destiny? This is eschatology. If we were to take a random survey of Christians in North America, we would hear something like this: Our destiny is heaven. When we die, we go off to our home with Jesus, worshiping God for all eternity in an otherworldly existence. We will finally shed this earthly life and live as God wants us to live, with Jesus and away from this earthly life. Most pastors preach that the earth is not our home, that what God has for us is to live forever in another place, Heaven, and that Earth will be no more.

Our guest on this episode is J. Richard Middleton. In his book, A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Baker Academic, 2014), he makes the case that the Bible teaches that the ultimate hope for the believer is not an otherworldly heaven. Instead, it is full-bodied participation in a new heaven and a new earth, brought into fullness through the coming of God’s kingdom. Dr. J. Richard Middleton (Ph.D. (Free University of Amsterdam) is Professor of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Northeastern Seminary.

For Christians who work in engineering and developing technology, it’s not always clear how their faith and work integrate. How can designing and using technology actually be a way of loving God and our neighbors?

On this episode, we will interview three veteran engineers to understand how that particular vocation can be reintegrated with the mission of God. They are the co-authors of A Christian Field Guide to Technology for Engineers and Designers (IVP Academic, 2022).

You’re not supposed to “let God take control” of your life and work. You’re not supposed to “hear God’s voice in your heart.” And, you’re not supposed to be guided by God’s Holy Spirit by inner feelings of peace, intuitions, or impressions.

These are three things believers have recently come to believe as being essential to being Christian. But according to our guest Phillip Cary, they are not found in the Bible and actually will cause harm – psychologically, morally, and spiritually. Phillip Cary is a Professor of Philosophy and the Chair of the Philosophy Department at Eastern University. Brazos Press has just released the expanded second edition of his best-selling book, Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don’t Have to Do.

How do I navigate the work world as a Christian? My work matters but should I get my identity from what I do? How can I live with integrity, doing good work while also being authentic in who I am?

Denise Lee Yohn is a keynote speaker, consultant, and writer on brand leadership. She has led seminars at such places as Facebook, Lexus, the NFL, and more. When she started her professional career, Denise also became a Christ-follower — and ever since then, she’s been passionate about reintegrating faith and work. She is the director of the Faith & Work Journey, a spiritual formation and professional development experience. She is a popular speaker at Christian organizations and conferences, has contributed to The Gospel Coalition and De Pree Center, and has served as an advisor to the Theology of Work Project.

The Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper famously said these words in a speech he gave when he opened a new university:

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

Jessica Joustra and Robert Joustra are the editors of a new book titled Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures (IVP, 2022). It’s a book that features contemporary Christian theologians, historians, scientists, and artists applying to today the concepts Kuyper introduced to America in 1898 in his famous Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary. These lectures, reflecting on the role of the Christian faith in a variety of social spheres, emphasized that our Christian faith addresses every aspect of life. This book seeks to bring those concepts into the 21st Century.