Paul Williams, Executive Director of the Marketplace Institute at Regent College, Vancouver speaks to the Faith@Work Summit, Boston, 2014:
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Summary
Whether through excellence, absence or mediocrity, theological education has a huge influence on the Church?s devotional and missional life and this is no less true for those seeking to live faithfully and fruitfully as disciples of Jesus Christ in the marketplace. In recent decades a host of new resources have been developed by seminaries and Bible colleges to help marketplace believers. How do we evaluate these? In what other ways could these educational institutions support faith at work? In addition, we need to ask some broader questions: What is the role of the local church in theological education? Are theological education institutions currently capable of helping the faith at work movement? We?ll consider these questions as we seek to grasp the opportunities that our present moment offers us ? a moment in which both the need and the awareness of the need for quality theological education for faith and work integration is growing.
Biography – Paul Williams
BA, MA, MSc (Oxford), MCS (Regent College)) is Executive Director of the Marketplace Institute and David J. Brown Family Chair of Marketplace Theology & Leadership at Regent College (Vancouver BC). He was formerly Chief Economist and Head of International Research for DTZ, a London-based multinational consulting and investment banking group. Paul is passionate about the Church?s missional engagement with contemporary culture. He served as Academic Dean at Regent and has helped pioneer a number of innovations in theological education, including the ReFrame project (reframecourse.com) and a new executive program for marketplace leaders.
Reflect/Respond Questions
- What are the biggest challenges facing Christians seeking to live faithfully in the workplace and how are these challenges related to theological education?
- Where do believers seek answers to the problems, challenges, and questions they face in living faithfully at work?
- How can theological institutions? existing resources for faith at work integration be made more available?
Resources
Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (Helmers & Howard, 1989)
Richard Mouw & Andy Crouch, ?Seminary of the Future Project? (Fuller Theological Seminary, 2011) future.fuller.edu
JR Rozko & Doug Paul, ?The Missiological Future of Theological Education,? unpublished paper available from thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com
David Smith, Mission after Christendom (Darton Longman & Todd, 2003)
Faith@Work Summit 2014 by fwsummit.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at fwsummit.org.