2014 Gospel at Work

Guest Speaker: Greg Gilbert

Greg Gilbert is the Senior Pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, KY. He earned his B.A. from Yale University and his M.Div. from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of What Is the Gospel?. He is the co-author of What Is the Mission of the Church?; Preach: Theology Meets Practice; and The Gospel at Work. He also often writes for 9Marks Ministries. Greg is married to Moriah and they have three children: Justin, Jack, and Juliet.

Workplace Idolatry is a mindset that makes an "idol" of work—a mindset that has wrongly decided that work matters above all, that personal wellbeing is defined by success at work, and that work holds the key to ultimate satisfaction in life. We need to be able to diagnose how we make an "idol" of work and how we can avoid doing so in the future.

Being "idle" at work doesn't mean sitting at a desk and doing nothing. It's a whole mindset that has wrongly decided that work doesn't really matter, that it's just a rat-race after all, and that the only real purpose of it is to buy us time to do the things God really cares about. But is work merely a means to what God really wants us to be doing?

The Bible gives a better way to think, though, and the Gospel confronts both those challenges with a challenge of its own. Both idolatry and idleness have their roots cut by the realization that, whatever you do, you work for the King! We should not separate our work from our Christian life. Our new identity in Christ should change how we view our job and impact our day to day work life.