Shows / Finding God at Work
Finding God at Work
Join Chris Easley, founder of Mission Central, as he explores the often complicated relationship between faith and work in this engaging podcast. Drawing from his experiences in both ministry and the marketplace, Chris delves into how to integrate our life with God and our everyday work. When we not only believe in Jesus but also experience him with us on the job, he transforms our understanding of work. He moves us beyond the limiting stories about work that we often live inside of and moves…
Episodes
- Finding God at Work
5: Everybody's Got a Hungry Heart
In his 1980 hit "Hungry Heart," Bruce Springsteen sings: Everybody needs a place to rest Everybody wants to have a home Don't make no difference what nobody…
- Finding God at Work
4: Swing Dancing and Spiritual Conversations
Have you ever gone swing dancing? When dancing with a partner, you don't just have to know the moves and the music; you have to know your partner! Both you and…
- Finding God at Work
3: Four Ways to Grow a Garden for Spiritual Conversations
If you have any experience gardening, one of the first lessons you likely learned was the importance of healthy soil. When Chris and Katie first moved into…
- Finding God at Work
2: Attending Well to God and Others
How many notifications do you have on your phone right now? If you're like me, you likely have a dozen notifications at any given time, all competing for your…
- Finding God at Work
1: A Guide on the Side
Have you ever gone birdwatching? Those who are really adept birders often bring binoculars and know all of the names of even the obscure birds. They've trained…
- Finding God at Work
19: Do Everything In Love
Do you know the Golden Rule? Jesus teaches it in the Gospels: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31 NIV). Back when Chris worked at a…
- Finding God at Work
18: Discerning Character Change
In a couple words, how would you describe the best coworker you've ever had? Maybe kind, honest or hard-working. Now, how about the worst coworker you've ever…
- Finding God at Work
17: Living Out Your (Evangelical) Faith In Public (Bonnie Kristian)
Chris interviews Bonnie Kristian, author and deputy editor at Christianity Today, on her new book In Defense of Evangelicalism: A Response to Its Cultured…
- Finding God at Work
16: Give It All Away
Have you ever made a fantastic investment? Maybe it's your retirement savings, a mutual fund, or a beautiful set of Cutco knives. When Chris was a little kid…
- Finding God at Work
15: AI Is Not Good for Writing
When you receive a birthday or anniversary card, you often see two sets of writing: the elegantly worded section from the author at the card company, and a…
- Finding God at Work
14: The AI Future: "Machines of Loving Grace" or "A Full-Grown Man"?
What do you think you'll do on a normal workday 10,000 years from now? In the new heavens and the new earth, we'll be working. We often think of the new…
- Finding God at Work
13: Keeping Pace with God in the Time of AI
Have you ever had to slow down to keep pace with someone else? In this episode of Finding God at Work, Chris considers when love requires us to put on the…
- Finding God at Work
12: This Time Tomorrow (Justin Mertes of Made to Flourish)
When we evaluate the vitality of a local church, we typically count heads in pews, measure annual giving, or analyze Sunday volunteer teams. But what happens…
- Finding God at Work
11: Love Made Visible (Joe Slawek of FONA International)
When preparing to lay the brick and mortar for a new business facility, the engineers and architects make sure the foundation is structurally secure. But when…
- Finding God at Work
10: Rooted in Love (Alissa Crouse of Rooted Elevation)
For many driven professionals, the cultural prescription for career success is simple: push harder, move faster, and accumulate more. We wrap our identities in…
- Finding God at Work
9: Lead Measures, Ego, and Grace
Few things crush a professional ego faster than throwing your entire heart into a project, only to watch it completely flop. Chris knows that feeling! In the…
- Finding God at Work
8: Sacramental Work
How would you explain the meaning of a kiss to an alien who had never seen one? You could describe it anatomically, of course, or define it abstractly as a…
- Finding God at Work
7: The Reluctant Entrepreneur (Dr. Benjamin Andrews of Mosaic Center for Psychological Wholeness)
Many of us look at the word entrepreneur and picture a distinct archetype: a natural risk-taker, someone driven by economic opportunities and a lifelong dream…
- Finding God at Work
6: Healthy Conflict with God
Have you ever been sitting in a church service, looked down at the bulletin to see the morning's scripture reading, and internally gasped, "Oh no, not that…
- Finding God at Work
5: Facilitating Love (Tim Cool of Smart Church Solutions)
We have a habit of building beautiful, sacred structures and then assuming they will take care of themselves. In our excitement to build the "new, shiny…
- Finding God at Work
4: Measure What You Can to Treasure What You Can't
Not long ago, Chris and his wife Katie—a hospice nurse practitioner—were watching an intense emergency room drama called The Pitt. In one scene, the doctors…
- Finding God at Work
3: Business as Blessing
If you grew up in church, you've likely heard about the noble woman of Proverbs 31. She is a staple of Mother's Day sermons and home-decor plaques, usually…
- Finding God at Work
2: The Structure and the Substance
When Chris was in the fourth grade, he traveled to Texas for a cousin's wedding and experienced a minor ecclesiastical crisis. Having grown up in an Anglican…
- Finding God at Work
1: A Mysterious Business: Bringing Ministry and Marketplace Wisdom Together
When Chris was growing up in the nineties, the shopping mall was a vibrant center of life. He remembers the special birthdays when his "adopted" grandmother…
- Finding God at Work
38: A Vessel for Love: Finding Eternal Meaning in Your Daily Work
A few years ago, Chris attended a retirement party for Mr. Clum, his childhood school principal. In a room filled with people celebrating a long career, they…
- Finding God at Work
37: Joy Beyond the Paycheck: Reclaiming the Meaning of Your Resources
Note: We had a one-time recording snafu for this episode, so the audio quality is not what we'd like to share. It's back to normal in future episodes! When…
- Finding God at Work
36: Beyond Resentment: Finding Freedom in the Tasks That Drain You
Is your "to-do" list gnawing at your soul? We all have a "Get-To / Have-To" mix at work. Even in a dream job, there's a percentage of our day—whether it's 10%…
- Finding God at Work
35: Loving Through Pain
When we're in the middle of a painful stretch in our lives, it can be easy to turn inward, focusing on our own suffering while ignoring others. Or we can run…
- Finding God at Work
34: Loving Through Attention
T.S. Eliot once wrote of "strained time-ridden faces / Distracted from distraction by distraction". Do you ever feel distracted from distraction by…
- Finding God at Work
33: How to Pray for Your Teammates
One of the most powerful ways we can love our teammates is praying for them. In this episode, we'll look at four ways to pray: For the work For the workers…
- Finding God at Work
32: How to Encourage Your Teammates
No one you work with is dealing with *too much* encouragement today. And you're better positioned than most people on the planet to specifically encourage your…
- Finding God at Work
31: Vibe Coding and Tertius of Iconium
"Vibe coding" caught my attention recently: using AI tools to produce code and putting it into production in public-facing apps, without a human coder building…
- Finding God at Work
30: Would an Angel Use AI?
Saint John Paul II (or JP2, as we theology nerds affectionately call him), once said, "the human person. . . is a creature that God willed for his own sake. At…
- Finding God at Work
29: How to Have a Joyful Day at Work
Studies show that happier workers are less likely to look for other jobs. That makes sense. But the joy that Jesus invites us into is even deeper than that…
- Finding God at Work
28: Seeing the Miracle
Sometimes, Jesus doesn't give us much data about what he asks us to do. He shows us a next step, but not a complete roadmap. Jesus gives us a way to serve, but…
- Finding God at Work
27: Courage to Serve
The discipline of service helps us grow in humility, and humility makes us ready to serve. It's a reciprocal relationship. The same is true for service and…
- Finding God at Work
26: Work as the Stuff of Salvation
Doing our work out of the motivation of service makes it meaningful in three different ways: Our work contributes to the common good. Our work images God in…
- Finding God at Work
25: Progressively Humble Service
Sometimes job postings list "progressively responsible work experience" among the prerequisites for a position. It means they're looking for someone who's…
- Finding God at Work
24: How to Stop Being Snooty
It feels awful when someone looks down on us. When they treat us as "less than." When they're snooty toward us. But we can be snooty ourselves. How do we break…
- Finding God at Work
23: Giving the Gift of the True Self
What can nursing mothers teach us about life with God in the workplace? In our work relationships, we have the opportunity to give the gift of ourselves to…
- Finding God at Work
22: Facing the False Self
It's difficult to be honest about our weaknesses. When we don't have the courage to humbly admit how we come up short, we instead project an image of a…
- Finding God at Work
21: Humility About Our Weaknesses
Sometimes we're ashamed about our weaknesses. Sometimes we're ashamed about our sin. When we come clean about our sin, we're owning something wrong. But when…
- Finding God at Work
20: Eating Humble Pie
Humble pie does not taste great. It's hard to eat it, to get it down. It's hard to admit that we're wrong. It's hard to revise our estimate of ourselves in a…
- Finding God at Work
19: When You Can't Hack It
What can you do when you can't hack it at work? When you just can't get it done? When you hit the wall? Sometimes our limitations surprise us. But they aren't…
- Finding God at Work
18: Working When the World Is On Fire
How do we make sense of "normal life" when it feels like the world is on fire? In the midst of global and national crisis, thoughts like these go through my…
- Finding God at Work
17: Coming to the End of Yourself (Attorney Kevin Drendel)
Chris interviews attorney Kevin Drendel about how his faith has intersected with his practice of law, both at work and through a nonprofit legal aid ministry…
- Finding God at Work
16: What Is Your Workplace Liturgy?
We are all creatures of habit. We have a routine for how we start our workday, even if we've never given it much thought. That means you already have a…
- Finding God at Work
15: Resisting Workplace De-Formation (Pastor Daniel Small)
Chris interviews Pastor Daniel Small about his unusual vocational journey, his experiences dealing with workplace anxiety (including at least one unexpected…
- Finding God at Work
14: The Weight of Forgiveness
What if the mild annoyances we face from our coworkers can build a spirit of forgiveness in us over time? If we engage them as "little weights" of forgiveness…
- Finding God at Work
13: Spiritual Sandpaper
God is crafting your soul, like a woodworker in a shop. What if God is using the abrasive experiences in your life like spiritual sandpaper, sanding down the…
- Finding God at Work
12: Unstrategic Decisions
Sometimes God calls us to do things that are pretty unstrategic. As Gideon is leading his soldiers to battle, God has him *reduce* the number of troops. And…
- Finding God at Work
11: A Small Obedience
You've been on a journey your whole life long to become the kind of person who can do the things that you are doing today. God has been at work on you to…
- Finding God at Work
10: Is Every Job A Calling?
Is a sanitation worker called to their job in the same way that a classroom teacher is? How do we make sense of the idea of calling in jobs that people don't…
- Finding God at Work
9: Working for Better (Dr. Elaine Howard Ecklund)
Chris interviews Dr. Elaine Howard Ecklund about her new book, coauthored with Denise Daniels, Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work. Hear about…
- Finding God at Work
8: Who Is God Calling You to Love?
Think about making career decisions like preparing a soup. The questions you ask while discerning what's next are like the different ingredients that mix…
- Finding God at Work
7: Where Is God Calling You to Go?
When we think about callings, we often ask, "What is God calling me to do?" But some other questions are just as important: "Where is God calling me to go?"…
- Finding God at Work
6: Loving Your City (Zack Wilson of LINK Kalamazoo)
Chris interviews Zack Wilson about his experience helping start LINK Kalamazoo. On a few prayer walks during the pandemic, Zack started asking, "Why couldn't…
- Finding God at Work
5: How Friends Can Help Discern Your Callings
When you're at a significant career juncture, how do you involve other people in your decision-making process? It can get dicey. On the one hand, we want…
- Finding God at Work
4: A Venn Diagram for Discerning Your Callings
It can be helpful to think about what God calls you to as the intersection of three circles: What You Desire (Your Deep Gladness) What the World Needs (The…
- Finding God at Work
3: You Have a Calling (Dr. Karen Swallow Prior)
Chris interviews Dr. Karen Swallow Prior about her new book, You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful. Hear about how "follow…