It’s kind of cool as a pastor when you’re reading through a book and flip a page to find your church member’s name at the top.
“Ted Corwin’s Story” is what the caption says on page 261 of a new book called Lifework, by Darrow L. Miller.
Ted and his wife, Lucy, joined Corinth last year. He is President of the board of Food for the Hungry, an international Christian relief agency. But the page in Miller’s book features Ted’s “life work.”
Ted founded Designmaster Furniture of Hickory, a company which uses John 21:17, “Feed My Sheep,” as its motto. Designmaster sees its mission not only as manufacturing high quality dining room furniture (family “feeding” time), but as feeding its employees, feeding its stakeholders, and feeding the world by tithing its profits.
Darrow Miller shares Ted’s story as one model of how our life work can integrate the worlds of the secular and sacred.
Miller believes that Christians through the centuries have too often functioned as dualists – separating our spiritual lives from our daily work. He spends a rather interesting chapter tracing dualism through history, from Greek philosophy through the contemporary church. He believes dualism operates in both the mainline/liberal church and the fundamentalist/evangelical church.
Miller’s most startling use of language may be the phrase “evangelical Gnostics” to describe pre-dispensational fundamentalists who elevate the spiritual/private world over the natural/physical. It was this movement, Miller says, that prioritized “full-time Christian service” over “life work,” and even certain forms of spiritual work (evangelism to the unreached) over others. (The book is published by a leading missions organization, YWAM, so it’s obviously not devaluing missionary service.)
Lost in this dualism? A sense of calling, most clearly articulated by the Protestant reformers, in which we all understand God’s general call on our lives (to faith) and his special call to a place of honorable service for his glory in one of many different and varied spheres. Like making furniture.
It’s a calling where I don’t have to see my job as something that takes away from my bigger priority of faith (or family) – life work is one of the ways I live out that calling.
Donald Miller has written a good book. It’s more detailed in its argument than most people will take time to digest. I skimmed through its pages, charts, and side bar stories very quickly. But not so quickly that I missed Ted Corwin’s page!
And not so fast that I missed its primary point. The God-centered life is not just for Sunday, not just for church, not just for full-time Christian workers. The Lord of all wants to be central in the life work of all of us.