Week Two - Routed Into Work

Opening Scene
- Interview of 3-5 professionals.
- Preferably those who have been working for not more than two years.
- Question(s):
How many hours do you think you would spend working over the next ten
years??

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome Scene
- Welcome by two hosts.
- Preferably one male & a female.
- Preferably they should have been working for not more than two to three
years each.
- The suggested set design should be contemporary and relaxed.

Host 2: Welcome back to Routed. This session, we're going to be thinking

about work. And as we've seen, work takes up a significant chunk of our lives.
We had guesses ranging from _______________ all the way through to
___________________ hours of work in the next 10 years.

Well, I've done the sums and eight hours of work a day, a little bit of annual
leave; in the next decade, you're going to work about 18,000 hours. How do
you feel about that?

Host 1: Well, I mean, that's a huge chunk of time, isn't it? And it's valuable
time. It's a precious commodity. And I'd want that time to matter. I'd like to
think that it's not just about earning money in order to do other things or to
boost my own career ambitions.
Host 2: But it's also an opportunity, isn't it? Because, as we've heard in
session one, the whole of our lives matters to God, then work must matter as
well, all 18,000 hours of it.

So work is a big chunk of our lives and that's why I asked _____________________
what the Bible has to say on the subject of work.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Teaching Scene One

- Here the teaching guest shares what follows.
- To simulate an interview session, the teacher is captured from sideview.

Work really matters to God. You don't have to go far in the bible before you
can see that. In fact, the very first chapter Genesis chapter one shows God as a
creative worker bringing order light from dark, land from sea, making
provisions, food, drink, creating beauty and releasing potential effectively.
God is creating a context for the flourishing of life.

And then in Chapter two, God goes on to show humans how they can work to
bring out the potential of the earth. Chapter 2: verse 19 says

“… Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground, all the wild animals and all
the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name
them and whatever the man called, each living creature that was its name.”

Do you see what God is doing there? God, the creator of the universe. He's
delegating. He's delegating to humans to co-partner with him to steward his
resources to bring life and create a context for life to flourish.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Review/Teaching Break Scene

Host 2: What did you think?

Host 1: Well, it's quite reassuring isn't it to be reminded that work is actually
a good thing and that the bible has a great vision for work.

Host 2: And actually, it's a God given gift. What I found really interesting was
how Lindsay said that God has entrusted his work to us. He's delegated and
even more than that, he's shown us how to do it well, because of his role as
worker.

And I think she named five different things about how God works. So, we have:
creating order
creating beauty,
making provisions
releasing potential,
and bringing joy.

Host 1: And that's a funny one, isn't it? Because while I have experienced that,
I think I've also experienced the opposite.

Host 2: Have you got any examples?

Host 1: Well, yeah, I mean, coming from the stand-point of a business owner
and employer of labour, you get to experience difficult clients, or you know,
employees constantly flaunting orders and not following protocols.

I once even caught two employees making out after work, which didn't bring
either of us joy.

Host 2: You are for real right now? That happened?

Host 1: Honestly, yes it did!

Host 2: Wow! So, work is designed to be good. But often it doesn't work out
like that in reality. So, I went back to ……….. and asked her what about the
broken side of work. What does the bible have to say about that?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Teaching Scene Two

Creative partnership in stewarding God's resources, … it's a wonderful vision.

But sadly, things went awry. And from Genesis three onwards, you can see the
fallenness of humanity, the fallenness away from God, the fallenness that
affects all things including work.

That alienation from God, that alienation from his life-giving presence results
in work becoming hard drudgery, painful toil.

So, we experience boredom and frustration at work, hyper-busyness, levels of

stress that are just up here and maybe toxic cultures in the workplace. But
painful toil isn't the end of the story.

Jesus came into the world to bring his restoration, his redemption, to
reconcile all things to God through himself, including work. God's good
purposes for work were renewed and people are called to join in with God's
purposes as part of that recreation.

So, your daily work is significant to God because you are significant to God.
And you are partnering with God to steward his resources and to enable this
world to flourish.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Outro Scene

Host 2: So, the bible is pretty realistic about how work is broken, and the fact
that we don't actually have to look that far to see it.

Host 1: But we still have such a significant part to play in God's purpose,
right? And that can either be creatively, or helping to put things right that
have gone wrong.

Host 2: Yes. So, as I think about certain jobs, people who work as writers, and
others who work in creative media. They're quite creative jobs, right?

But then I think to other worker types: architects, again … really creative job,
but also doctors; and they spend a lot of their time fixing things, restoring
people to full health and that's a really significant role as well.

Host 1: And you've also got people in other lines of work: cleaners and …….

Host 2 (cuts in): … customer service jobs.

Host 1: Yeah, that involved that too.

And a lot of jobs straddled both, don't they? The creative and restorative
aspects of work that God delegated to mankind.

So even as a sociotherapist I spend a lot of time listening, but I also spend a lot
of time fixing the broken parts of people’s life whether it’s relationships or
gender based violence or dealing with life after rape.

But it's great to know that even through that I'm not wasting time, but it's
actually something that God wants me to do, to make a difference through my
work.
Host 2: But I guess as we start work - moving into the workplace or start a
new job, it can take a little while before we really feel like we're making a
difference.

But for now, we're going to spend some time thinking about how our present
or future jobs take part in God's creative or restorative purposes.

Both Hosts: Bye for now.