What New Invitations Are Emerging? Reflections from a Silent Retreat

[I'm currently on a seven-day silent retreat at The Hermitage in Three Rivers, MI. If you want to read more about what a silent retreat is, you can read my late husband's words about it here. I haven't had a week-long retreat since moving to Africa in 2005.  What a gift to be still and know that He is God!]

"What new invitations are emerging?"

This question greets me at one of my favorite sitting places on my silent retreat. 

At the start of my retreat, this question unsettles me. Do I hear an invitation? If so, what is it? If not, what does that mean? What if I don’t hear one the whole time I’m here? People expect me to “hear from God” in a place like this—but what if He is silent? What if I don’t do silence “right” and miss Him?

At the root of these questions lies fear. Fear that I’m not enough. Fear of failing. Anxiety about producing.

But slowly, as I enter into silence and redirect my eyes, ears, and soul, I hear Him.  Every time.  And I’ve been doing retreats on and off for nearly thirty years.  I don’t always hear what I want.  I usually come with an agenda of what I want to hear, and He gently moves my agenda aside and invites me just to be with Him, letting me know we can deal with “stuff” when I’m back in work mode. 

So, what new invitations are emerging?

This retreat has held an invitation to winter.

I usually take silent retreats in the spring, summer, or fall. Nature always plays a role in how I hear God. But this time, I wondered what it would be like to retreat in the cold, snowy winter—when stepping outside is less of an option.

Yet, as always, God has spoken through the winter landscape. The snowy paths, the stillness of the trees, the crisp air—all of it reminds me that He is present everywhere. It’s not The Hermitage that holds a special connection to God; rather, it’s that in this place, I slow down. I step away from distractions and listen.

How many moments do I miss experiencing God because I am too preoccupied with the calling rather than the Caller?

The invitation to winter is not new, but my understanding and acceptance of it are.

Just as trees go through seasons, so do we. Some trees require winter’s deep freeze to send nutrients to their roots and conserve energy for new growth. From the outside, they appear lifeless, but beneath the surface, quiet work is happening. It’s a season of rest—essential for survival and future fruitfulness.

Psalm 1 says that blessed is the one who is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season.  Even for this tree, there are seasons of winter, of deep freeze, cold, barren, dark, and dreary.  We are not protected from that season.  We are to go through it, understanding that something important is happening during that time.  Our roots go down deeper, and we realize we can flourish even in the winter.  While here, I read a delightful book from Brother Lawrence, who lived in the late 1600s and was converted simply by looking at a tree in winter when he was 18 years old!  The potential of that tree moved his heart to believe in God.

So I'm being invited to winter.

What invitations are emerging in your life? Are you in a season of rest, growth, waiting, or action?

I believe God is always speaking—if we have the courage and patience to listen.

I’d love to hear from you.

Bridging the Sacred-Secular Divide: The Need for Theological Education Reform

As is typical, the first part of a new year is spent reflecting on the past year. For DML, this means collecting all the data on the activities that we have engaged in and assessing both what went well and what was a challenge.

We continue to be very, very busy, and we are seeing good impacts from those activities! As you probably know, we work directly with churches and denominations, business leaders, and people engaged in every workplace.  

(Our annual report will be coming out soon, but here is a sneak peek at the numbers from 2024 compared to earlier years. We thank God for all of our partners who work together to help this message get out there!)

However, one audience we do not share as much is our focus on getting courses into Bible colleges, seminaries, and Christian universities, relating to workplace discipleship and breaking the sacred/secular divide.  This particular audience tends to move very slowly and with great difficulty, as any changes must undergo rigorous accreditation processes to add or change courses.  While that is the reason often given for the slow process, I think the challenge goes deeper than that.

Recently, I was reading a book called Our Secular Vocation by J. Daryl Charles. (I don't like the title of this book—it's confusing.  But that aside, it's a good book.)

He said this about this topic (emphasis mine):

Any emphasis on the priesthood of all believers that calls Protestants back to their roots and to the sacredness of work in the marketplace is scarcely to be found in seminary and divinity school coursework. Substantial curricular change would require institutional reform on a wide scale, reform requiring a different academic model. What is needed in theological education is nothing less than the transformation of its core components. Every course in every theological topic at the seminary/divinity School level needs rethinking to eliminate the perpetual "sacred versus secular" residue and to foster the integration of faith, work, and vocation in a holistic way. At the most basic level, among those things needing serious examination in terms of course content are the following: a theology of creation, a theology of work, human flourishing, a theology of vocation, the history of the sacred-secular divide, the Lutheran breakthrough of the 16th century, the importance of engaging competing worldviews, ethical and economic challenges of the workplace, a theology of stewardship, service toward the common good and community flourishing, and redefinition of "mission."

The challenge is not just adding a course, such as DML's "Church-based Business as Mission" course, but a much broader institutional reform to break down the sacred-secular divide.  

While we have seen great progress in the faith and work movement, it continues to be led by church members rather than church leaders. Relatively few participants in this movement are pastors or priests. This is in large part because theological educational institutions are not keeping up with the opportunity and potential of this movement.

In addition, for those pastors who are already leading churches, the great majority of pastors or church leaders have not spent a significant season of their lives working in the marketplace.  When the leaders can't identify with the challenge and the opportunity, 99% of members will continue to belong to churches that help them worship weekly but leave them unsupported for where they spend most of their waking time.  Many people ask our DML teams if pastors should be co-vocational - having a job in the marketplace and leading a church?  We say that it is not necessary (but may be helpful for a season).  But at a minimum, the pastor should spend time meeting with at least one member in a learning position every week, asking, "What is God doing in your workplace, and how can the church support you to join Him in that work?"

It is good to see this movement change and grow.  We are seeing more and more Christians grow in their understanding that their work can be an act of worship.  We are seeing more and more denominations open their doors and embrace the need for discipleship in this area, especially denominations in Africa.  

(Picture is from Emmanuel University in Malawi, which has adopted DML courses into its curriculum and has undergone accreditation.)

We continue to pray that theological institutions will begin to train and equip every pastor to know how to equip the priesthood of believers to view their workplace as a place for worship and mission.  Please continue to pray with us for a breakthrough in this area!

Common Grace/Work and Saving Grace/Work

I cancelled my trip to India for the month of February to attend to some family and personal matters.  It was a difficult decision, but I'm so happy to see the India teams stepping up to support each other and work together.

Over the past weekend, I made my third drive to Canada this year to help with the moving process of my mom, and while I drove, I listened to a podcast that was recommended to me by one of our leaders in Togo.  The podcast was on the intersection of faith, work, and life, something that I've spent the last twelve years immersed in, but I'm always interested in learning new ways to express the call to work in ways that will resonate.

The speakers introduced a theme of "common work" relating to "common grace," and then linked "saving work" and "saving grace."  It really resonated with me, so I'm sharing it with you, with my own spin on it.

One of the things that Christians believe is that there is common grace in the world.  By this we mean that God is good to all people, regardless of their beliefs.  This includes general blessings like sunshine, rain, food, and water.  Matthew 5:45 says, "He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."  

Common grace leads to saving grace.  Saving grace is for those who claim Jesus as their Lord and Savior and leads to salvation and eternal life.  Common grace points us to an awareness or understanding of the goodness of God; saving grace is when we make a personal decision to accept and follow this God.

Strong's concordance defines grace as "the divine influence on the heart and its reflection in life." I like this definition as it is not just the acceptance of a blessing of grace, but it implies that we are blessed to be a blessing - it is to be reflected in our life.

So how does this apply to work?

God has called us to work.  Work is a gift.  Work is one of the purposes of our creation.  Every person, in every place, works.  Not everyone has a job, but there is work for everyone.  The work that we do is like common grace - we do our work for the blessing, or for the benefit, of the customer, business, the community, and the nation.  We seek to do our best, regardless of how we feel about the customer, the owner of the business, the government leaders.  We work for the common good. We are blessed to work, and it is then a blessing for others.  That is what we are to do as Christians.  We are to do our work as an act of worship - as unto the Lord and not for man.  Receiving this grace has an influence on our heart and it should reflect in our life.

But our "common work" can then lead to "saving work."  When we do our work with a MISSIONAL goal, to make disciples, we participate in the Great Commission.  We help people to know about Jesus, which can lead them to saving grace from our Lord and Savior.  People can come to know Christ through our work by being disciples and by making disciples. We integrate our faith and work. 

In DML, we often teach a quadruple bottom line (goals): economic, environmental, social, and missional.  But maybe this simplifies it to two:  work for the common good (which actually would include economic, environmental, and social) and work for the saving good (missional).  The work for the common good SHOULD lead people to the saving good or saving grace.  

I like the simplicity of this - we work for the common good...but we don't stop there...our goal is to help all those in our spheres of influence - our customers, employees, employers, vendors, colleagues and more - to learn about this amazing, loving, merciful God and Father, and to receive the saving grace that comes through Jesus.  

May your work be a blessing for the common good and saving good this week!