Work

Last night I was doing some reading for my career development intervention class at school. One of the things the author came putting a huge focus on was how in our society the overarching theory is that work breeds worth. His point was that how much value and worth someone is assigned is based on the type and amount of work that you do. The author also notes that the two are interchangeable, meaning you can do less work and still receive an equal or higher status ranking if the work you do is of a higher prestige. With this being the framework in which we live and work, it's no surprise families are being torn apart by longer work days, and absent parents, because the need is to be on a higher level, prestigiously speaking, so parents sacrifice the familial intimacy of yesteryear to simply elevate their status in a fictional system which in the end is meaningless.
I am reminded of the passage in which Christ urges us to store up treasures in heaven not on earth where they can be ruined and stolen. Not only do I feel that this system has contributed to the ruin of our family units, I think that this has become the paradigm that runs our churches. We are encouraged to do more so as to have more. The way success is increasingly being measured in our current church society and culture is "nickels and noses", and if we want to get more noses to give more nickels then we have to work harder at getting them here. This to me seems to be a bit of a contradiction to the model in which Christ operated. If we look at the life and ministry of Christ, He didn't "work" hard at all. Christ went around building relationships with people, and he showed, shared, and communicated love to everyone he locked eyeballs with and they followed him by the thousands.
Maybe a shift in our thought process would go a long way to change the "success" of our ministries.

Love Always,
Drew