I’m thankful for a new book called Fruit at Work: Mixing Christian Virtues with Business (Lanphier, 2012) by Chris Evans.  Evans is a talented entrepreneur who works with the cool-sounding Blackstone Entrepreneur Network.  He’s also been involved with The Trinity Forum, associated with Os Guinness and others.  I’ve enjoyed Fruit at Work, which draws off of Tim Keller and others to ground our daily labor in the gospel and in biblical virtue.

The text is readable and filled with personal reflection from Evans’s life.  Here’s an example from his chapter on humility, a quality that not every leader–or Christian leader–has an easy time embodying:

A big way that I changed is that I feel I have a capacity for gentleness that just wasn’t there before I was broken.  Having been deeply humbled, I can have compassion for others in tough situations.  While part of me still wants to feel powerful and give orders, the Christ in me cares more about the people I’m relating to than my image (136).

Read this helpful book, which will help you to approach work first from the perspective of godly virtue, rather than primarily as a means to accomplishment, achievement, or as Charlie Sheen would say, “winning.”

Read the whole thing over at ThoughtLife.

Here’s a snippet:

Here’s what caught my attention in this segment, though: can anyone reasonably expect to “resurrect” liberal Protestantism?  Forget the political issues involved here and the rather soft journalism at play in this piece.  This is one of the more interesting questions one encounters in the study of modern American Christianity.  Richard Wightman Fox, progressive Christian and author of a classic biography on Reinhold Niebuhr, once mused out loud in a fascinating essay that the dynamic of liberal Protestantism–specifically, its shaping by the culture–set it on a collision course with enlightened secular thought.

In other words, the liberal Protestants were so shaped by cultural mores that their project was essentially destined to merge with the culture.  This is a brilliant insight, and it tells a great deal of the story of liberal Protestantism in the last 100 years.

Read the whole thing (please).

If you like thinking about responsible, church-friendly, gospel-driven social justice work that is friendly to entrepreneurship and aware of the power of the market to affect health for individuals, this will be like catnip to you.  I found Greer’s answers manifestly biblical and helpful.  Here’s a snatch from the broader interview (and see these helpful thoughts on the D’Souza scandal):

What are the economic realities that shape the way that HOPE International conducts its work across the globe?

Aid is broken. Economist Bill Easterly writes that despite a massive increase in aid to Africa over the last 40 years—$568 billion—most African countries are not better off. In fact, many growth rates have plummeted.

We have sufficient data to know that the only way for an economy to grow is through the private sector.

The Brookings Institution reports that since 2005, 70 million people each year are escaping poverty. According to the 58: campaign, between 1981 and 2005, extreme global poverty was cut in half, from 52 to 26 percent. This progress is largely the result of investments and job creation.

Consider China. Thirty years ago, China had more people, percentagewise, living in poverty than every country except four. Today—through economic growth—poverty has been reduced from 84 to 16 percent, according to the World Bank.

Today even Africa is poised for change. Private investments have generated more than 1.7 million jobs (from 2003 to 2010)—bypassing the effect of aid, according to the 2011 report published by Business Action for Africa and Ernst & Young. 

Job creation and investments, not aid, is what will cause Africa to experience growth, development and a much brighter future.

To use locker room language, I am pumped up to blog for Patheos.  I’ll join evangelical thought-leaders like Tommy Kidd (and the Anxious Bench crew), Joe Carter, David French, Adrian Warnock, Fred Sanders, and a host of others.  I will continue to operate this humble little blog and will post regular content here (especially related to the ministry God has given me).  But my heavy-duty public square engagement will take place over at Patheos.

A major part of what drew me to Patheos was the vision Tim laid out after beginning discussions about such a move.  I am all about a big, bold vision.  Here’s a slice of what Tim has said he wants the Evangelical Portal to be:

The center of gravity of the Evangelical Channel presently rests just left of center.  While the Evangelical Channel will continue to support its current roster of writers fully, it will seek to fortify its offering in Reformed and Baptist writers, and in culturally-savvy center-right social commentators.

There is not now a single venue that attracts compelling commentary from young, conservative evangelical public intellectuals.  While maintaining our strengths in center and center-left writers, then, we’re eager to extend our strength rightward on the spectrum.  This is partly to represent American evangelicalism better, partly to give a new generation of conservative evangelicals a voice, and partly to form a more thoughtful approach to social and cultural engagement amongst conservative-leaning evangelicals.

You can read the whole thing here.  I love this blueprint.  Tim is right: there is currently no major go-to resource for conservative evangelicals on culture and public square issues.  We have excellent media hubs for theology, spirituality, the gospel-driven Christian life, and news and issues affecting the church.  But we very much need a home for evangelical public intellectuals.  Patheos has drawn a number of gifted progressive Christians, but it’s clear that the Evangelical Portal is featuring and more recently has been featuring a treasure-trove of conservative evangelical cultural engagement.  That’s just terrific to see.

Again, to be alongside outstanding evangelical scholars like the aforementioned Tommy Kidd and Fred Sanders is beyond exciting to me.  I want ThoughtLife, and indeed much of my work, to be a kind of accessible David Wellsian take on culture and the public square.  In other words, I want to bring all the megawatt scholarly power of the Bible, theology, and history to bear on modern issues (though I will probably have more to say about basketball and hip hop than Wells (!), a major intellectual influence on me–and fellow TEDS grad).  The gospel remixes life.

So: get ready to add a new RSS feed and to “follow” a new blog.  You don’t need to drop your association with this little site; I’m still going to be “here,” so to speak.  But I hope you’ll join me at ThoughtLife and make my experience there as profitable, sharpening, and downright fun as things are here.

I am honored to give this lecture, which has featured speakers like Os Guinness, Eric Metaxas, and Ross Douthat, but I am excited to speak on this topic at a thinktank that is doing a great deal to contend for the faith in the public square.

Here are the details from FRC:

The Christian influence in Western society has played a vital role in shaping our nation and the world. Many, such as the great British abolitionist William Wilberforce, have used their Christian faith to inform and drive moral policies. To divorce the Christianity of these men and women from their political action would do a disservice both to them and to history itself.

In today’s world Christianity is often seen as a religious relic of the past. Dr. Owen Strachan issues a clarion call to the next generation of Christians to realize the times demand a strong biblically-grounded, moral witness. Born out of a spirit of sacrifice and humility Christians, must speak out for godliness and righteousness in our public sphere. Dr. Strachan will explain what must be done if the great Christian witness of the past is to once again influence our culture and its government.

You can register for the live-stream here.  You are of course welcome to fly to DC to hear this lecture–consider yourself invited, in fact.  But the live-stream might just work better for some.

By the way, FRC is currently leading the charge for Dr. Angela McCaskill, who was suspended from her post at Gallaudet  University for supporting traditional marriage by signing a petition.  You can show support for McCaskill by going here.  I would encourage you to do so.

A bunch of, well, young conservatives used this hashtag for the VP debate and saw a major response.  It may just crack the Twitter top ten tonight, and that might inspire visions of global domination.  You never know (not that one wants to aim too high or anything).

Here are a couple of Christianity Today pieces I wrote recently on Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, by the way.  And here’s a very good one from my buddy Denny Burk on the importance of bringing pro-life convictions to bear on voting.  Evangelical conservatives are of course “whole life” advocates–we wish for holistic human flourishing at all stages of life.  But to get to all the stages of life, of course, one has to exist, and not be killed in the womb.

I’m deeply thankful for him and for this issue of Credo, which will allow you to think deeply about him.  I look forward to talking philosophy and theology with Schaeffer in the new heavens and new earth, and to thanking him for being a faithful voice in the public square.  Here’s the magazine’s blurb:

The year 2012 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). It is difficult to think of an evangelical figure in the 20th century who so seriously engaged the philosophies and ideologies of the secular world and set them over against the Christian worldview than Francis Schaeffer.

But Schaeffer was no ordinary evangelical. The man wore knickers and knee high socks when he lectured, sporting not only long hair but a goat’s-chin beard! Most importantly, Schaeffer did not fear man, but feared God. Not only did he engage secular worldviews, but he confronted his fellow evangelicals, even rebuking them for doctrinal concession and compromise.

As many have observed, it is not an overstatement to say that the Schaeffers transformed, reshaped, and in many ways reformed American evangelicalism. Those writing in this new issue of Credo Magazine are proof, each writer bearing testimony to how Francis Schaeffer has made a monumental impact on how we understand and articulate the Christian faith and life in the world of ideas. Contributors include Bruce Little, William Edgar, Bryan Follis, Stephen Wellum, and many others.  

But Ockenga is gone now, and Boston has a new stylish leader: Rondo.  He’s the NBA’s best point guard.  He can dominate the game without scoring.  I think he’s poised to have a big year.  Here’s a bit about Rondo:

Rondo’s résumé includes plenty of impressive statistics, but a point guard in the NBA is never defined purely by numbers. At Rondo’s position you can have a great game and not necessarily score a lot of points, and he’ll be the first to say it. “It’s always the whole package,” he says. “Some fans look at a point guard and say he had 26 points, seven assists, and eight rebounds, and they’ll say he had a great game. But there is a lot of talent in the NBA, and eventually that talent catches up with you. The mental game is where it’s at. I would say the game is 80 percent mental and 20 percent physical, for me at least. What separates great players from good ones is performing consistently. I can dominate the game in any number of ways, not just with the numbers.”

People can judge point guards by assessing passing, scoring, defense, and a slew of other things, but Rondo takes it a little further. “My definition of what a good point guard is might be different from what some others might think,” he says. “I’ll give you an example: If [head coach] Doc Rivers gets thrown out, I can run the team for the rest of the game. I know what plays to call, what sets to call, or when to call time outs. It’s more than keeping track of the score. There is so much more going on that you take for granted on any given night, and there are only so many guys who can run a team when you don’t have a coach. In that category I think I am the best at what I do.” Rondo has the rare ability to see the big picture while still focusing on the details of his own game.

Read the whole thing.  This is valuable information, people.  The Celtics matter, and I say that without any of the bias that would accrue to a New England native who grew up in the halcyon days that were the Bird era.