Book Recommendation: The Other Six Days by R Paul Stevens

The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work and Ministry in Biblical Perspective by R. Paul Stevens is another really good book. It is quite provocative (and I don't agree with some of his views: but do I agree with any book without exception? But I digress....) yet much of what he brings up about the calling of every Christian is compelling.

Here are a few quotes:

"a theology of the whole people of God must encompass not only the life of God’s people gathered, the ekklesia, but the church dispersed into the world, the diaspora, in marketplace, government, professional offices, schools, and homes" (8)

John Stott: “It is safe to say that unbalanced notions about either clergy or laity are due to unbalanced notions of the Church. Indeed, to be more precise, too low a view of laity is due to too high a view of clergy, and too high a view of clergy is due to too low a view of the Church” (50) [qtd from Stott, One People, 18]

“Our ordinary occupations find their true meaning in something larger than personal fulfillment. They are callings taken up in what the apostle Paul calls ‘my purpose’ (2 Tim 3:10)…. the Christian doctrine of vocation—so central to the theology of the whole people of God—starts with being called to Someone before we are called to do something” (72)

“We live in a post-vocational age. Without any theology of vocation we lapse into debilitating alternatives: fatalism (doing what is required by ‘the forces’ and ‘the powers’); luck (which denies purposefulness in life and reduces our life to a bundle of accidents); karma (which ties performance to future rewards); nihilism (which denies that there is any good end to which the travail of history might lead); and, the most common alternative today, self-actualization (in which we invent the meaning and purpose of our lives, making us magicians). In contrast the biblical doctrine of vocation proposes that the whole of our lives finds meaning in relation to the sweet summons of a good God” (72).

“The whole of our life has the glorious prospect of living out the great doctrines of the faith. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, directs God-imaging creatures to live relationally…. The incarnation revolutionizes our attitude to things and promotes a radical Christian materialism. The atonement equips us to live mercifully. Ecclesiology evokes the experience of peoplehood, living as the laos of God rather than a bouquet of individual believers….Eschatology teaches us to view time as a gift of God rather than a resource to be managed” (244-245)

“What makes an activity Christian is not the husk but the heart… What makes a work Christian is faith, hope, and love. This is a crucial point. Orthopaxy is not merely accomplished by the skillful performance of ministerial duties…. I can preach a sermon to impress people; I can fix a shower door at home for the glory of God. I have probably done both” (249).

I will interact with some of the powerful points from the book sometime soon.