BEC 494 - Senior Seminar

While some Christian professionals dream of being "freed from business" to go into the ministry or see business as enemy territory to be invaded for Christ, others are convinced that Christian principles simply don't work in the "real world." In Business as Mission, Michael Baer challenges each of these positions. He rejects the unbiblical thinking that ministry and business are by definition separate activities -- that our lives can be compartmentalized into the sacred and secular. Instead he guides business leaders in developing the vital characteristics of a kingdom business -- the kind of business that will free them to live fully integrated lives and lead organizations that significantly impact the world.

New York Times bestselling author of The Prodigal Prophet Timothy Keller shows how God calls on each of us to express meaning and purpose through our work and careers.

When you understand it properly, the doctrine of vocation--"doing everything for God's glory"--is not a platitude or an outdated notion. This principle that we vaguely apply to our lives and our work is actually the key to Christian ethics, to influencing our culture for Christ, and to infusing our ordinary, everyday lives with the presence of God. For when we realize that the "mundane" activities that consume most of our time are "God's hiding places," our perspective changes.Culture expert Gene Veith unpacks the biblical, Reformation teaching about the doctrine of vocation, emphasizing not what we should specifically do with our time or what careers we are called to, but what God does in and through our callings--even within the home. In each task He has given us--in our workplaces and families, our churches and society--God Himself is at work. Veith guides you to discover God's purpose and calling in those seemingly ordinary areas by providing you with a spiritual framework for thinking about such issues and for acting upon them with a changed perspective.

Amy Sherman, director of the Center on Faith in Communities and scholar of vocational stewardship, uses the tsaddiqim as a springboard to explore how, through our faith-formed calling, we announce the kingdom of God to our everyday world.

Jeff Van Duzer grew up thinking business was the source of much damage and evil in the world, the work of greedy capitalists polluting the environment. Thirty years later he was dean of a business school.In the course of that remarkable transformation, Van Duzer found cause for both hope and concern. He discovered many business people achieving a great deal of good for society as well as a lot of illegal and unethical behavior.Along the way he found some who thought that merely being honest and kind was what made business Christian. Others said they'd never ask pastors for business advice because they had no interest or experience in their work. After all, wasn't "full-time Christian service" what the church was all about?This book explores the nature and meaning of doing business and finds it calls for much more than most think. Van Duzer presents a profoundly Christian approach that integrates biblical studies with the disciplines of business and economics. Looking beyond the place of ethical principles and the character of the individual, Van Duzer displays a vision of business that contributes to the very purposes of God.

Most Christians spend most of their waking hours working, yet many regard work as at best a necessary evil -- just one more unfortunate by-product of humanity’s fall from grace. Not so, says Ben Witherington III, and in Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor, he considers work as neither the curse nor the cure of human life but, rather, as something good that God has given us to do. In this brief primer on the biblical theology and ethics of work, Witherington carefully unpacks the concept of work, considering its relationship to rest, play, worship, the normal cycle of human life, and the coming Kingdom of God.