Everyday People: Reclaiming Vocation as Faithful Resistance

“What do a church, a community, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religionless world?” 

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer 

Christians increasingly struggle to make meaningful connections between their faith and the complicated lives they now lead in their homes, workplaces and communities. Nearly 25 years ago, Frederick Buechner famously counseled, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” But today, these intersections have become discouragingly difficult to locate and engage. Faith communities can help!

Discover new Bible and worship practices for equipping everyday people to discern and live out their callings in the world today. The course draws on fresh understandings of the Bible as a product of imperial contexts (e.g., biblical depictions of God as both liberator and conqueror; the language of “kingdom of God”) as well as the worship life of Christian communities practicing faithful resistance to empire (e.g., confessing church in Nazi Germany and Taizé behind the Iron Curtain). Engagement with these texts and contexts will strengthen your capacity to cultivate communities and lives that are “in the world but not of the world.”