We were greatly encouraged by the response to the online training we piloted last month.
If December was too crazy for you, we have two options on workflow management running this month.
We’ll have two live sessions, one tailored for busy professionals (on 1/12/16) and one for pastors & church leaders (on 1/19/16). Join Matt Perman online for 60 minutes as he helps you get control of your week.
If you are in the greater Kansas City area, come join Matt tonight as he speaks at Christ Community Church. This event is free and open to the public. Matt will speak on gospel-centered productivity and have a time of Q&A. You can find full details about the event here and you can RSVP here.
Tom Nelson, author of Work Matters, is the senior pastor of Christ Community Church. Pastor Nelson’s book provides helpful counsel for those seeking to better understand the theology of vocation and apply it in their own life.
Come join the folks from Christ Community for an evening of discussing faith and work together. See you there!
I’m excited to be speaking at the One2 Conference in Atlanta this Thursday. The vision for these events is amazing and just what we need when it comes to the faith and work discussion. Here it is in a nutshell:
ONE2 is a one-night event for students and recent graduates who want to do meaningful work that honors God and serves the world.
These events are not like a traditional conference where most of the time consists of teaching. Instead, in addition to the teaching (two 20-minute TED-like talks), there is also table discussions and Q&A. The aim is to create a space for 18-25 year-olds to talk about the intersection of faith and work.
So if you are a student or recent graduate, come to ONE2 Atlanta this Thursday and learn more about how your faith integrates with your work. The other keynote speaker will be Tyler Reagin, executive director of Catalyst, who I can’t wait to hear.
You can register at the website, as well as learn more about ONE2 in general, discover some of the resources they recommend, and read their blog. And here’s a short video trailer on the conference:
If you are in or around central Iowa, it would be great to see you at the Technology and the Glory of God conference this Saturday, hosted by Stonebrook church in Ames.
Tim Challies and I will be speaking on, you guessed it, technology and the glory of God.
One of my sessions will be a Q&A, and I especially love hard questions. So feel free bring your most difficult and challenging questions. (Or just ordinary ones are fine too, of course!)
Doors open at 12:30 and the conference goes from 1:00 to 7:00.
You can register and see more details at the Eventbrite page.
Come to Catalyst Atlanta this October 1 – 3!
Catalyst is the best leadership conference for young leaders who love the church. If you’ve never been to Catalyst before, it’s unlike any conference you’ve ever been to. It’s exciting, innovative, and yet grounded in excellent content and substance. Here’s a short description:
Catalyst unifies change makers — equipping you with impactful content and experiences that transform thinking, provoke action and cultivate community. We’re challenging leaders who love the Church to break the bounds of an ordinary existence and find the courage to embrace and radiate bold change.
Main speakers this year include Andy Stanley, Matt Chandler, Craig Groeschel, Tim Keller, John Perkins, and more.
If you come on October 1st, the day before the main conference starts, you can attend Catalyst Labs. I’ll be doing a lab session and would love to see you. The title of my session is: All the Good You Can: How the Gospel Changes the Way You Lead, Get Things Done, and Change the World.
I believe it is possible to change the world, and that God in fact calls us to do so. It isn’t just an inspirational idea or a dream of people who like to think in big terms without doing the hard work to create that change. But we do need to understand changing the world in a God-centered way, and we need to understand how this affects the way we lead and the way we get things done. God has a particular way in which he wants us to change the world. We need to know what that is and how it affects everything we do. So that’s what I’ll be talking about in my session.
You can learn more about Catalyst Atlanta at the website, and register here. It would be great to see you there!
(And here’s a great, quick video on the vision for the conference:
If you live in or around central Iowa, you are invited to a workshop I’m doing on What’s Best Next on Saturday morning, April 26, from 9:00 – noon.
I’ll cover things like these:
The seminar will be at Zeke’s, at 3329 Lincoln Way, Ames, IA 50014. You can learn more about it and register here.
It would be great to see you there!
In addition to the author meet up on Tuesday night at T4G, I’m also doing a brief event on Monday (tomorrow) at 10:00 am at the Lifeway Bookstore at Southern Seminary.
The bookstore is on campus in the Honeycutt center.
I’ll talk a bit about the book, answer questions, and I think some other things. Also, they will be giving away some copies.
So if you are in Louisville, and especially if you are a student at SBTS, it would be great to see you Monday morning!
One of the most important conferences of the year is happening this Friday and Saturday at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
The conference is The Gospel at Work, and it’s about helping Christians live extraordinary, gospel-centered, faith-filled, fruit-bearing lives in their workplaces.
The reason it’s one of the most important is because the subject of faith and work goes to the very heart of the biblical vision for how Christians transform their communities, cities, and the world. Yet there are almost no conferences and hardly any (good) books on this subject (with some very notable exceptions, of course, including some excellent recent books I hope to blog on in the near future).
The Gospel at Work conference is a great way to be encouraged, connect with other believers also interested in how the gospel relates to our work, learn more about the biblical vision of how our faith and work relate, and gain some helpful practical tips as well.
Speakers
Speakers include:
My Seminar
And, I will be doing a breakout session on productivity and the gospel. My chief thesis is that the key to productivity in the workplace is highly counterintuitive and surprising — namely, to pursue the good of others before yourself.
In other words, the Golden Rule applies not just in our personal lives, but also in our work lives. Very often we think that we are to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” at church and in our personal lives, but that our work lives are to play by different rules. I’m going to argue that this is an unbiblical dichotomy. We are to put others first both in our personal lives and in our work lives. This is not about hijaking a true biblical principle and forcing it into an out of context reality for our own ends. Rather, it is the right and biblical thing to do. It is the way we ought to treat people because they are in the image of God.
Further, and counterintuitively, the best business thinking is showing that this is what actually leads to the greatest effectiveness in your work and for your organization.
Here’s another way to put it. What does it mean to make God supreme in your work? The chief and first thing it means is to seek the good of others by putting them before yourself in your work itself. This gives great meaning to our work no matter what we are doing, is an essential implication of what it means to love God, and, paradoxically, leads to the greatest effectiveness.
Registration
Standard registration ended yesterday, but you can still register at the door.
Would be great to see you there!
For those in the Orange County area next week, I’ll be speaking at Sovereign Grace Church on gospel-centered productivity on Thursday night, June 7. I’ll be giving two messages:
Daniel Montgomery, founder and lead pastor of Sojourn Community Church, talks a bit about my upcoming leadership seminar at Sojourn on April 14.
If you are in the Louisville area, it would be great to see you there!