The Entrepreneurial Vocation by Robert A. Sirico

The Entrepreneurial Vocation
Robert A. Sirico
Acton Institute, 2012
http://www.vocationofbusiness.com/

The Lord is my entrepreneur I shall not lack?

This is little book asks the right questions. I'm not sure it always gives the right answers.

Robert Sirico is a Catholic priest who co-founded the Acton Institute in 1990. He has written this book out of a concern for the church and the lack of understanding of economic principles. He writes with the aim of integrating the concept of entrepreneur and vocation. He is right when he writes:

While entrepreneurs should not be unfairly criticized for making money, they also must not be treated as victims of unjust discrimination who deserve a special blessing. However, it is also true that their chosen profession deserves to be legitimized by their faith. The public must begin to acknowledge the value of the entrepreneurial vocation, the wise stewardship of talents, and the tangible contributions of entrepreneurs to society.

He starts by highlighting the lack of insight many have regarding the integration of faith and business. Typical of many examples is this one Sirico gives:

I recall one man, a self-described conservative Christian, saying that he no longer attended church services because he refused to sit in the pew with his family and, in effect, be chastised for his business acumen. How many critical sermons can a small-business owner or investment banker hear before he or she loses heart and decides to sleep in on the Sabbath? 

His analysis is correct. "An obvious reason for this ignorance is the astonishing lack of any economics training in virtually all seminaries." He may well be right, but is that the role of seminaries? Does this mean we should also provide science training in seminaries, and what about politics, art .... the danger then would be the seminary becomes a general education college. I would rather see seminaries equipping the pastors to be able to equip the rest of the saints. That may include some economics training, but better would be equipping in the tools to be able to critique the economic, scientific, political, .... ideologies.


I must also confess to being a little troubled by his 'principal argument':

The principal argument of this essay is that the pursuit of excellence, like the mind’s original constitution, discloses humanity’s ontological orientation toward the highest and most supreme good, namely, the perfect apprehension of God in heaven (cf. 1 Cor.13:12).

This sounds a little close to being neo-platonic.

He helpfully contrasts two views of the market the first held by 'religious leaders' as they pass the collection plate, is static and commands a Robin Hood morality; the other held by entrepreneur is of making rather than collecting money, the market is dynamic, a process rather than a place or object. This is obviously an over-characterisation. He makes this point to show that the 'clergy' must understand the market economy.

For those who think that the business enterprise is fuelled by selfishness and greed or that when entrepreneurs make economic losses they are getting their just deserts, this booklet will provide a helpful antidote.

He closes the book by taking a look at the parable of the talents and uses it to show how business and entrepreneurship are not no-go areas for Christians. As he rightly notes: "Entrepreneurs are the source of more social and spiritual good than is generally recognized."

There is much in this short booklet for careful and considered thought, it will provide the stimulus to think more carefully over these issues. The entrepreneur is a part of God's good creation and should be valued as such. The entrepreneurial vocation is just as much a vocation, a calling as being a priest, pastor or preacher.

Michael Schutt: Vocation the Mask of God

Mike Schutt on Vocation the mask of God

Schutt looks at why Luther called vocation the 'mask of God' and how we can be disciples over all of life.

How do we know what we are called to? "Listen to the Caller. It's not about being fulfilled or self-actualisation. It's about following a Caller".

Well worth checking out.
Mike blogs regularly here.

Cultural callings

The recording of session 4 of the cultural callings seminars can be found here.
Jon Swales looks at George Cadbury and I look at some principles for a Christian approach to (small) business.

Cultural callings 5: work, calling and vocation

Slides from cultural callings session 5.

Cultural callings 5 work and vocation

View more presentations from Steve Bishop.

Dorothy L. Sayers on work and vocation and the business of the church

It is the business of the Church to recognize that the secular vocation, as such, is sacred. Christian people, and particularly perhaps the Christian clergy, must get it firmly into their heads that when a man or woman is called to a particular job of secular work, that is as true a vocation as though he or she were called to specifically religious work. The Church must concern Herself not only with such questions as the just price and proper working conditions: She must concern Herself with seeing that work itself is such as a human being can perform without degradation – that no one is required by economic or any other considerations to devote himself to work that is contemptible, soul destroying, or harmful. It is not right for Her to acquiesce in the notion that a man’s life is divided into the time he spends on his work and the time he spends in serving God. He must be able to serve God in his work, and the work itself must be accepted and respected as the medium of divine creation.

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) 'Why work?' (1942)

Peter Heslam: transforming business

Peter Heslam looks at how entrepreneurial business can help eliminate poverty. He briefly looks at George Cadbury as a model.

Cultural callings 4

Cultural Callings 4 (business)

View more presentations from Steve Bishop.

Where do we draw the line?

Where Do We Draw The Line?

View more presentations from Steve Bishop.

Cultural callings session 3

Cultural callings 3

View more presentations from Steve Bishop.

Cultural callings session 1

Here are the slides from the first session of the cultural callings seminar:

Cultural callings 1

View more presentations from Steve Bishop.

Lesslie Newbigin on cultural callings

Jon Swales and I are doing a series of seminars at St Michael's Stoke Gifford on cultural callings. Here is the handout from the first session.
Jon has the slides from the second session here.

Cultural Callings Newbigin1

View more documents from Steve Bishop.

What is vocation? by Stephen J. Nichols (P&R, 2010)

What is Vocation?
Stephen J. Nichols
Presbyterian & Reformed, 2010
ISBN 978 1 59638 177 3
pbk. 31 pp. $3.99.


This is a great little book. In only 30 pages Stephen J. Nichols paints a wonderful picture of the importance and necessity of seeing work as a vocation.

This booklet is part of a series called ‘Basics of faith’ published by P&R. Nichols, professor of Christianity and culture at Lancaster Bible College, explores what the doctrine of vocation looks like in the twentieth century as well as how it was shaped by the Reformers in the sixteenth century.

Vocation in recent decades has become something of a dirty word, or one that is only applied to vicars and ministers. Vocations only apply to certain (usually professional) careers, the rest of us have jobs. However, this was not the original meaning. It comes from the Latin vocatio or vocare, which means ‘calling’. Originally it meant a call to the priesthood, but the Reformers redeemed its use and used it to apply to all callings including being a parent, a spouse and to the professions (p. 8). Hence the term, ‘full-time Christian ministry’ applies to all Christians whatever area of life they work in.

In a brief biblical overview Nichols traces the link between the garden and the task of cultivation to a new horizon of understanding for work. In our work we are in the service of the King. In two short sections he looks at how not to and how to work. Here he draws upon the insights in Proverbs.

He writes with the aim of helping us see that work – be it paid or unpaid - needs to be viewed as a calling, as a vocation. It is a message that we all need to be reminded of. This booklet will certainly help do that.

Cultural callings: work

Work - a cultural calling

Cultural callings: a word from God

CC2Word From God

WYSOCS AGM, globalisation and Newbigin

We had a great time at the WYSOCS AGM last Saturday.

Mike Goheen spoke three times over the weekend. The first session was on globalisation. He took a refreshing approach.   Globalisation is the outworking of the cultural mandate, to spread out spatially and globally - however, it has become distorted and misdirected. It has become shaped by economic idolatry. It has deep religious roots that can't be ignored.

His second session was on Newbigin and his desire for the 'laity' to fulfill their cultural callings. This session crystalised a numebr of key themes for me, discipleship, mission and worldview. Below are some of my notes for this session.

Unfortunately, I missed the third session on Sunday evening.


A neglected area of congregational life Newbigin's plea for training Christian for their cultural callings

Newbigin's understanding of mission

Mission: all of life bears witness to the gospel. Jn 20:21
God's people are a sent people - we can distinguish certain aspects

• Evangelism as words
• Deeds, mercy and justice
• Missions
• Various callings in culture

The latter he saw as the primary witness.

It's not (just)

• Evangelism at work
• Personal ethics - don't steal rubber bands; don't cheat on taxes; don't commit adultery with your secretary etc.
  

It is:

• Living out God's creational intent for those areas of creational life

It's the primary witness, but it is the most neglected. It is also one of the hardest things to put into effect.

The church “must equip its members for active and informed participation in the public life of society in such a way that the Christian faith shapes that participation” (Newbigin Public Truth).

". . . a farmer who farms his land but neglects to say his prayers will be certainly condemned by Christians as failing in his duty. But a farmer who says his prayers, and allows weeds, bad drainage, or soil erosion to spoil his land, is failing in his primary duty as a churchman. His primary ministry in the total life of the body of Christ is to care rightly for the land entrusted to him. If he fails there, he fails in his primary Christian task"  (Newbigin 1952 The Christian Layman in the world and in the Church).

How can we do it?

Formation of structures that equip for callings

• Study centre
• Conferences
• Frontier groups
• Leadership that enables training folk for their callings

What is ministry?

Ministry is equipping others to equip others, so that the Body of Christ can become what God intended it to be. Ministry is not restricted to those with turned-round collars! But those with the turned-round collars need to know how to equip their congregation for living Christianly in society. To do this they need to have a well developed Christian worldview, a clear grasp of theology and the Scriptures as well as an understanding of philosophy and ethics. So that they can provide the theological and biblical resources for their congregation both corporately and individually to transform the areas of society that they come into contact with.

Structure and direction

The term 'structure and direction' has been coined to describe an important reformational concept. Vollenhoven used the term and it was popularised by H Evan Runner. This section from Brian J Walsh and J Richard Middleton. The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian Worldview. IVP, 1984, pp. 88-90. describes the concepts well, the image of a wire was 'borrowed' from Al Wolters.

Imagine dozens of entwined electrical wires, encased together in a cord. These wires are like the many aspects of life we experience. Together they constitute one whole structure. And that structure was ordained by God in creation. He structured by his word not just atoms and trees and galaxies, but societal and cultural life. All creation, existing as a response to God's laws, expresses his creation order.

Thus the various strands of our lives function alongside each other within the structure God has ordered. And they are many: physical, emotional, biological, intellectual, political, aesthetic, economic, ethical and devotional. Now these aspects by no means exhaust all that contributes to the structure of life—God's creation is too complex for that—but life seems to involve at least these dimensions.

Unlike the wires within a cord, however, the strands of life are not discrete parts. We can't separate them one from another; we cannot make an economic choice, for example, without reference to ethics, politics or intellect. We live them all together.

As wires do not exist for their own sakes, so the elements of life exist for a purpose. They are fields of activity. Electricity runs through the wires. God didn't create the world to be neutral, like a still-life picture.

In the beginning the current ran through his structure in perfect response to his creational covenant. Life moved according to the will of God—and it was good, says Genesis. Mankind (and all creation) served God in loving obedience.

Then sin came. It was a current running in the opposite direction. Sin didn't change the structure of life in the world; God's original creation continues to stand as he upholds it. What changed was the direction of the current.

God's work in salvation is to redirect the current of our lives. Redemption is the restoration of our obedience to the will of God, essentially our re-creation; the current runs in the original direction again so that we can be what we were meant to be.

Although obedience and disobedience may be compared to currents running in opposite directions, the comparison goes only so far. For life is complex. Good and evil are both present in God's creation. And the two kingdoms, or currents, are at war.

But notice that sin is not intrinsic to creation. It is never a strand of life in itself. The current of power does not flow one way in some aspects of life and the opposite in others, for good and evil are not structural parts of creation. God created all things good. Evil is the kink in every wire, in every aspect of life; it is the direction of current away from God into disobedience.

To think of some parts of life as good, as innately Godward in direction, and to consider others as by nature inferior, is to divide the structure of life into impossible categories. Such thinking is the basis of a sacred/secular dualism which reads good and evil into separate aspects of God's creation. Isolating some of the strands, it elevates them to a place of privilege—while depreciating others.

This is not the biblical view. Scripture suggests rather a certain "democracy" about the wires. Whatever sacred/secular or holy/common distinction may have been in force under the old covenant (with its special priesthood, Temple and sacrifices), all has been changed with the coming of Christ's kingdom. We need to heed Zechariah's prophecy of the Messianic age:

On that day "HOLY TO [YAHWEH]" will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, and the cooking pots in [Yahweh's] house will be like the sacred bowls in front of the altar. Every pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to [Yahweh] Almighty. (Zech 14:zo-21)

All aspects of God's world are created good, but all aspects are also fallen. In Christ all may be redeemed.

What does this mean for our practical, day-by-day living? It means that we as Christians must seek to understand cultural phenomena and to bring them under the lordship of Christ. Of each part of life we must ask two questions. First, what in it is creationally good? Second, what in it is not good? In what ways has it been misdirected?

These questions apply to every area of human culture. We may not simply write off an aspect of human culture as if it were beyond redemption, nor may we accept it uncritically at face value. Instead we need to struggle discerningly with our brothers and sisters in Christ (as well as with unbelievers who are sensitive to creational norms). We need to listen to God's Spirit as he points us back to the guidance of his word for all areas of our life.

Goheen and Bartholomew - Living at the Crossroads

Living at the Crossroads
An Introduction to Christin Worldview
Michael W. Goheen and Craig G. Bartholomew
Baker Book House, 2008

ISBN 978-0-8010-3140-3
pbk xvi + 205 pp

Do we need another worldview book? The last decades have seen the proliferation of excellent worldview books:

• J. Mark Bertrand. 2007. (Re)Thinking Worldviews: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World. Wheaton: Crossway Books.
• David Naugle. 2002. Worldview: The History of a Concept. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
• Paul A. Marshall, et al eds. 1989. Stained Glass: Worldview and Social Science. Lanham MD: University Press of America.
• John Peck and Charles Strohmer. 2001. Uncommon Sense: God's Wisdom for our Complex and Changing World. London: SPCK.
• James W. Sire. 1976. The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog. Downers Grove: IVP. 4th revised edn 2004.
• Brian J. Walsh and J. Richard Middleton The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian Worldview. Downers Grove: IVP.
• B. J. van der Walt. 2008. The Eye is the Lamp of the Body:Worldviews and their Impact. Potchefstroom: Institute for Contemporary Christianity in Africa.
• Al Wolters. 1985. Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Second edition 1988. Revised and expanded 2005 (with Mike Goheen)

And now Goheen and Bartholomew's contribution. However, what marks this book as different is its missional focus and its clear setting within the biblical story. Both these reflect the interest of the authors. Goheen's PhD was on Lesslie Newbiggin, and Bartholomew's on Ecclesiates.

This is a sequel to their excellent Drama of Scripture. This hopefully, will mean that evangelicals and those with an interest in biblical studies will read this; it will thus appeal to others other than reformationals. This is an important message and needs to be grasped by Christendom at large rather than kept in the small reformational corner.

The book begins by setting worldviews in the context of the gospel, story and mission. We find ourselves at the crossroads of two totalising narratives - the biblical story of creation, fall and redemption and the post/modern western story. This book is written to help us live faithfully as Christians at the crossroads.

The second chapter examines 'What is a worldview?'. They begin with a brief history tracing the concept to Kant, Schelling, Kirkegaard and Dilthey. They note that its origins carry with it associations 'to be affirmed and others to be awry of' (p. 13). They go on to look at and address criticism of the 'appropriation' of worldview. these objections are:

• it intellectualises the gospel
• it relativises the gospel
• it may become disconnected from scripture and thus vulnerable to the spirits of the age
• it may lead to an unhealty messianic activism
• it may entrench a compromised middle-class Christianity

This discussion is helpful as it serves to act as a warning, we need to be aware of the temptations so we can avoid them. They see worldview as a foundation for 'vigorous cultural engagement' and as providing 'tools to carry out our task in the world' (p 30) - worldview correctly understood has a missional thrust. It is a great strength of this book that it continually emphasies this.

Inevitably the book traces the contours of a Christian worldview through the framework of creation, fall and redemption. And this is the topics of chapters 3 and 4. They then look at how modernism and postmodernism shape society. Chapter 5 looks at the roots of modernity, the worldview underlying Western culture. This is, in the words of Corliss Lamont, 'the task of being our own savior and redeemer' (p. 68). The roots of modernity were to some extent Christian but this became mixed with Greek humanism and from this arose scholasticism and a separation of reality into two storeys: grace and nature. Chapter 6 examines the growth of modernity. The Renaissance's secular humanism and the Enlightenment split apart the synthesis of the gospel and humanism, they led to a conversion of the West from a faith in the church to a faith in reason. The world would be bettered through science and reason. A synthesis of gospel and humanism became an antithesis.

In chapter 7 they adopt Tom Wright's addition to Walsh and Middleton's worldview questions: What time is it? Here postmoderism, consumerism and globalisation, the renascence of Christianity and the resurgence of Islam are scrutinised.

Chapter 8, the title chapter, explores how we can be both faithful and relevant in culture; they pose and answer the question: 'how can a christian remain faithful to the biblical story while living in a culture that has been shaped by a very different story' (p 132). To do so we must become 'critical participants'. The distinction between structure and direction is utilised to help distinguish between creational design and cultural idolatry.

The final chapter looks at six areas where worldviews are fleshed out: business, politics, sport, creativity and art, and scholarship. These provide tantalising teasers. It would be great to have each of these developed as chapters in another book! (Hint! Hint!)

This is a brilliant book its strength is that it provides a missional focus for a reformational worldview. It is replete with wisdom and insight. So, do we need another book on worldview? If its one as good as this, then Yes! Buy it, read it, act on it.

Publisher's website
Book website

Available in the UK from:

• Book depository
• Eden
• Amazon
• Wesley Owen
• St Andrew's Bookshop
• SPCK

A bibliography of bibliographies

Over the last six months I have been compiling bibliographies for a "Christian approach to ..." . Here's a bibliography of those bibliographies:

A Christian approach to ...

... mathematics
... technology
... geography
... psychology
... language and linguistics
... worldview books

Update here are some more:

... biology
... sport
... politics
... economics
... art and aesthetics
... biblical view of what it means to be human
... sphere sovereignty
... education
... law