6.30 - Faith & Work - Christ City Church Dublin

For the last 4 years we have run a course for growing Christian leaders with a view to leadership in the church. This year we’re doing something slightly different. We’re going to run a course around the topic of faith and work to help equip Christians to integrate their faith and work.

We also wanted to broaden it out from primarily CCC members to all Christians in the city of Dublin who work in any and every field, including students. Hence this course will be hosted by myself and Sean Mullan. Both of us are Christian leaders who spend much of our time doing non-church work.

Sign ups have now closed for 2020. Please get in contact if you have any questions.

The course is called 6.30 Faith & Work because it happens at 6.30am 🙂

Why a course on Faith & Work?

Mark Greene in his book – Thank God It’s Monday wrote this:

The impact of Christians effectively robbing their work of spiritual and ministry value is to produce a sense of guilt. The working Christian comes home at the end of a fifty-hour week and thinks “I haven’t done any evangelism. I haven’t done any ministry. I’m not serving God. I must make time outside of work to do all these things.” The result can simply be exhaustion and discouragement. Exhaustion because too much is being attempted, discouragement because there is a sneaking suspicion that the thing we spend thirty, forty, fifty hours a week doing is of no intrinsic value to God.

For many his words ring true. We spend over half our lives at work and yet few of us have a vision for how our work is part of our calling as Christians (as humans in fact from Genesis 1-2), a way to worship God, serve our neighbour and find deep personal joy. On this course we want to give ourselves a vision for our work as a calling from God.

The sacred-secular divide

One of the greatest failures of the church is to create a divide between the sacred and secular; that is to mark off church activities as sacred (prayer, Bible-reading, church attendance etc) and certain activities as secular (work, sport, music, sex, money etc). This then creates a second and equally devastating failure that also plagues the church, which is that those who lead the sacred activities (priests, pastors) are seen to be more spiritual and noble than those who lead the secular activities (bankers, politicians, CEOs and entertainers).

The biblical view stands in utter contrast to these two failures. On the one hand the biblical writers saw all of life as lived in relationship with God and that all of life is part of our worship and offering to God. Everything is spiritual (Colossians 1:24). Everything is an act of worship (Romans 12:1). On the other hand therefore there is no hierarchy within the church in terms of who is doing ‘the important jobs’; we’re all priests serving God (1 Peter 2:9). Throughout the course we want to create a framework that helps us integrate our faith into every part of our work.

Course Outline

The 6 session course takes place on the fourth Wednesday of each month, 6.30-7.30am, at Irish Church Mission (28 Bachelors Walk). Following the biblical story, here is the outline of the course:

(1) Creation Part 1 – The goodness of work (Wed 22nd January*) – we’ll explore God’s original intention in our work, that we are to image God who himself is a worker, and how this gives work dignity and purpose.

(2) Creation Part 2 – The goodness of work & rest (Wed 26th February) – we’ll explore the importance of establishing patterns of resting from our work and how we are to work from a position of rest, rather than work until we need to rest.

(3) The Fall – The brokenness of work (Wed 25th March, will be online via zoom) – we’ll explore how our sin and the curse God put on our world means that work is so often fruitless, pointless, selfish and gruelling, and how to respond to this.

(4) Redemption Part 1 – The gospel and our work (Wed 22nd April) – we’ll explore how the gospel gives us a new identity, a new concept and new moral compass for our work.

(5) Redemption Part 2 – Evangelism in our workplaces (Wed 27th May**) – we’ll explore how we are to make “the teaching about God our Saviour attractive” (Titus 2:10) and share the gospel through our work.

(6) Consummation – Hope for our work (Wed 24th June) – we’ll explore how the future hope and inheritance we have in Christ gives us the motivation and perspective we need in our work. We’ll also spend time reflecting on what we have learned and will take away from the course.

The source material for the course will be Every Good Endeavour by Tim Keller

Course Format

Each session will run as follows:

6.25am – Arrive, grab coffee and pastry and sit in tables of 3-5 people (people will sit on the same tables each session for continuity)
6.30-6.40am – Opening discussion on tables
6.40-7am – Upfront teaching, unpacking the big ideas
7-7.30am – Discussion, application and prayer on tables (and as a bigger group)

Course requirements

Here are the requirements for the course:

€40 – To cover the cost of hiring the venue and the food, to be paid online beforehand (€20 for students or unemployed).
Attend six out of six sessions. Part of the course will be the table discussions and community that forms from learning together. Apart from unforeseen circumstances, please only commit to the course if you can do all six sessions.
Turn up at 6.25am – We only have one hour, so please be on time. Get your cup of tea/coffee and a pastry and be ready for 6.30am. We’ll also respect the end time so people can leave immediately at 7.30am.
Complete the online questionnaire beforehand* – Please print, complete and bring it with you to session 1.
Submit a one page reflection at session 5** – no more than 1000 words (bullet points is fine) under the title “What lessons have I learned from the course and how will I apply them to my work?” We’ll use the essays in our final session, for self-reflection.

Sign ups have now closed for 2020.

Who is it for?

Any Christians in the city of Dublin who wants to learn more about how to integrate their faith and work and participate humbly in a community of like-minded people committed to doing the same. People from all church backgrounds are welcome. There’s a chance to ask any further questions when you sign up, but if there’s something you need to know before then, please speak to Steve or email hello@christcitychurch.ie.