Articles & Writings

By John Terrill

On the popular Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe, the star and narrator, travels to serve in some of the most back-breaking, grungy jobs one could imagine-jobs few of us would ever consider taking, even for one week. Some of his assignments have included road kill cleaner, mosquito control operator, turkey inseminator and sewer inspector.

Mike reminds us that our jobs can tire us, frustrate us and even slime us. Yet, our work can also make us feel most alive: being creative, building and serving.

by Steve Garber

(This winter the week between Christmas and New Years Eve brought 17,000 students and others to the Urbana Convention. For decades it was held at the University of Illinois campus in Urbana/Champaign, but has now moved to downtown St. Louis. Steve Garber was asked to speak several times, once being "the final charge" for the students in the Business as Mission Track. This is his address.)

Two years ago this week I was in India, visiting two of our children who were working there that year. We didn’t see everything, at all. But we did travel through the south, in Tamil Nadu and Kerala—and of course in our seeing and hearing and smelling, were keenly aware that we were in a very different world.

by Bo Bartholomew

When people hear my story I am often asked, “How did you go from seminary to business?” While at Regent I studied the original language for the word “ministry” which comes from the root word for “service.” In a very real sense all of us in this room perform a service, a ministry, in the marketplace everyday.

By Michael Bruner

“The greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the one who serves.” (Luke 22:26)

As a brash young college student, I attended a lecture by Ramsey Clark, former United States attorney general under JFK and LBJ, and a leading peace and civil rights activist. After the talk, I approached him to see if we could meet for coffee (as I said, I was young and brash). To his associates' shock, he said, "How about tomorrow for breakfast?"

By Christina Crook

I met Wade in Toronto.

Height 6' 1- Inseam 3 - Waist 32 - Shirt 15 - Suit 40R - Shoe 10 - Hair Brown - Eyes Blue-green.

We sat taping dozens of loaned Town Shoes before the night's fashion show. He was the token boy for the runway, and I was there helping a friend pull things together for Fashion Week.

Wade was discovered in the kitchen of a Calgary Milestones restaurant. Since then he'd traveled the world over. Cities placed: Milan. London. Hamburg. Tokyo. Sydney. Toronto. Montreal. New York. Los Angeles. Paris. Munich. Miami.

In his six years as a male model he'd booked shows with everyone from Armani and Burberry to Hugo Boss, but he confessed to me quietly that spring afternoon: he was bored.

Bored?

By Janis Balda and Wesley Balda

We spotted a bumper sticker while on our campus recently that stated the obvious: "Don't believe everything you think." We tend to believe what we think, probably because we are the ones doing the thinking; however, we are simultaneously capable of infinite self-delusion and being sincerely wrong...

By Ray Blunt

Mention the word calling or vocation, particularly to a Christian, and you uncover for many a raw wound. We are finding that out as different people respond to the name of this organization on the website, in a casual conversation, or when they listen to a talk we might give. The words may differ, but the angst is very similar:

by Andi Ashworth
Art House Ministry

One thing I know for sure as I approach my 50th year: Understanding one’s calling is an ongoing process of discovery, and calling doesn’t have to be limited to one area. I continue to find new aspects of calling announcing themselves in different chapters of our lives, and I don’t suppose the revelation is over yet.

by Cary Umhau

“I was born in a house with the television always on,” sing David Byrne and the Talking Heads in their song Love for Sale. What could be truer than that for most of us? Yet even with the television blaring (and sometimes because of the television blaring), we manage to hear God’s voice in the culture…because He’s everywhere, and not only in a monastery.

We know that, but we also feel a certain tension. Christians live in a gap between “Be still and know that I am God” and Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message.” I for one often feel the pinch, wondering how to mind the gap.

By Bill Haley

It’s the Christmas season, and each year for me that guarantees at least three things--familiar sounds, longing, and a tradition. The first guarantee of the season is that I release into the airwaves the music that is held for just this one month of December, music that for my soul brings to the heart the beauty and truth and delicate grandeur and gravitas of Advent and the marking of the Incarnation of the Savior of the world. It’s music such as John Michael Talbot’s The Birth of Jesus, and certain selections from Bruce Cockburn’s Christmas, and Loreena McKennitt’s To Drive the Cold Winter Away, and an intensely attentive listening of Handel’s Messiah. Each year, merely from the unwrapping of these treasures once again, assuredly bring the heights of adoration and depths of devotion.   And their hearing guarantees the second thing . . . a longing in the form of a frustrated question:   “Why didn’t I learn to the play the guitar?!”