When I was pastoring in Paris, I invited Erik to come and share with our people about faith and work. Our congregation of engineers, CEOs, HR managers, fashion designers - and a handful of professional hip hop dancers - strongly connected with the message of...
Recently, the Lord has been leading me into a place of rest instead of study when it comes to my devotional times. I’m a big Bible nerd, so often my devotional time can be pretty intense – I’m talking lexicons, concordances, commentaries, Greek words, and more....
Sometimes we have a natural tendency to build our identities around something. It comes as a subconscious move to fix ourselves around an object, habit, hobby, or person and it results in us being connected to this thing, deriving our sense of worth, value, or...
By living, serving, and working in community with locals in their area, a tentmaker is able to take part in growing their local community, and in so doing they are able to love, serve, and support those around them.
I have been thinking a lot about rest lately. The time & place for it, the how-to, and the why. It’s a tough thing for us all to do sometimes, and, as I’ve written about before, I certainly haven’t always been the best at it! I was thinking about this...
Work is meant to add value to both the world around us and the human experience – it was something God ordained in His original created order. But workism is one distortion of our worship that takes our hearts from God and puts our focus into our work alone.
Workism filters into our hub display with messages such as “hustle harder”, “grind”, and “fueled by coffee”. It’s not bad or wrong to desire to accomplish something and leave a legacy – I think that’s an innate human desire – but the method, motivation, and purpose for which you do it is most important.
I was thinking today, what if we were so confident in God’s provision that we never worried about our next paycheck? What would that look like? What would that feel like? In a culture consumed by workism and workist theology, what would it look like for...
Workism is based on a value-system of productivity and our ability to get things done. It might make us look really good- we might have good grades, high standards, or a maxed-out margin of productivity- but in reality, our work has become an idol in our lives above God Himself. Workism is not rest. We are needy people that require rest and must rely on Jesus alone as our strength.
We can impact entire families for generations upon generations by delivering the love of Jesus through our everyday work. Isn’t that something?
Bill Tibbetts walks participants through a reflective exercise during this CBB session on “Work and the Great Separation.” Using the metaphor of a lunch tray, he challenges attendees to identify which areas of their work feel “sacred” and which still feel...
In this kickoff session of the 2025 CBB series, Erik Cooper unpacks “The Great Separation”—the false divide between sacred and secular that leaves many believers feeling like second-class citizens in God’s Kingdom. Through stories, humor, and theology, Erik challenges...
Erik Cooper shares a story about his son’s journey to making the C Team in middle school basketball—a reminder of how so many marketplace believers feel about their role in God's Kingdom. They see pastors and missionaries as the A Team, while they feel like B Team or...