Christian Faculty and Staff Network gathering on 11/13 - Work reveals our idols?

Come to the Christian Faculty and Staff Fellowship on Wednesday, November 13, at 11:45 AM (done by 12:45 PM). We meet at the Baptist Campus Ministries building (University Boulevard and 4th Avenue), and lunch will be served. 

More:

• It's the best meal deal in town: You can get lunch there for $1 thanks to the generosity of local churches. Don't forget to thank the church workers for what they do for the students. The first meal of the term is special, so you won't want to miss it.
• Our book for the term is Tim Keller's Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work. Here's a summary from the Amazon page: "With deep conviction and often surprising advice, Keller shows readers that biblical wisdom is immensely relevant to our questions about work today. In fact, the Christian view of work that we work to serve others, not ourselves can provide the foundation of a thriving professional and balanced personal life."
• You're welcome to facilitate one of our meetings as well. I pass around a sign-up sheet and invite all to participate. Some things you might want to do:
• Facilitate the discussion of the current chapter of the book we're going through. That involves asking questions and inviting responses.
• Giving a discipline talk about what you're doing in your area. It's a chance to get to know you and what you're doing at UA.
• Bring in a guest speaker (we can also dial up someone on speakerphone).
• Invite your pastor or college minister to chat about college students in your church.
• Etc. That's a catch-all in case you have a great idea about something else for our lunch gathering. 

We enjoyed a discussion with  John Kim's pastor, Rev. Jeff Pate of Riverwood Presbyterian Church, who shared some ideas about the previous chapter on work and selfishness. 

We'll cover Chapter 8. Having idols is "imagining and trusting anything to deliver the control, security, significance, satisfaction, and beauty that only the real God can give."  Here are some points to look forward to:

• We learn an alternate story line for our work.
• We start to think in terms of partnering with God in his love and care for the world.
• We get a more sensitive moral compass.
• Our motives change radically. 

Apropos of the chapter, I came across a piece about happiness and success. It's an interview with a social scientist rather than a pastor/theologian and has some interesting points.

• "[Happiness] about being open to others and being other-oriented in your experiences."
• "The dirty secret in social science is we don’t have great objective metrics for happiness."
• "There are lots of things we’re very motivated to seek out, thinking they are going to make us happier, but they don’t work. At least not the way we think. And we lack motivational capacities to go after the things that really do matter a lot for our happiness." 

Today back in the day:

• 354. St Augustine born.
• 1913. Lenin wrote, "Every religious idea, every idea of God, even flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness." Well, since you can't please everyone, it's best to please the one who counts.