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As Christians, we are to be agents of flourishing–people who seek the common good for their city. But the individual question remains: "How can I be an agent of flourishing when I have such little influence?" Join Joanna Meyer and Amy Sherman, a senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute & award-winning author, as they discuss community, shalom, and the Church. Amy Sherman is the author of Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good and Agents of Flourishing: Pursuing Shalom in Every Corner of Society.
On work as stewardship:
"We're expected to steward everything that God has given to us for the purposes of offering foretastes of shalom to others. Our work is a central arena through which we engage in that stewardship. We have what I call 'vocational power.' God calls us to use that power to advance 'kingdom foretaste' or shalom foretaste."
On being called into something larger:
"When we are converted by Christ, when He calls us out of darkness into His kingdom of light, He is then calling us to participate in this larger restorative work that He is doing in the world."
On pursuing the common good:
"....pursuing the notion of seeing more and more and more of the kingdom and the kingdom's values become incarnated and embodied in all these different spheres of life, that work is precious and important to God, and so is the work of seeing individual people becoming ever more renewed and sanctified and made more into the full human beings that God created us to be."
If you enjoyed this conversation be sure to check out Amy Sherman's books, Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good and Agents of Flourishing: Pursuing Shalom in Every Corner of Society.
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Dr. Amy Sherman is the author of Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good, the winner of Christianity Today’s 2013 book award in the category of Christian Living. She is a Senior Fellow at the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research, where she directs the Center on Faith in Communities. She is also the founder and former Executive Director of Charlottesville Abundant Life Ministries, an evangelical nonprofit assisting low-income, inner-city families. Dr. Sherman also serves as a Senior Fellow at the International Justice Mission’s IJM Institute. She is the author of six books and 75+ published articles in such diverse periodicals as Christianity Today, First Things, The Public Interest, Policy Review, Prism, The Christian Century, and Books & Culture.
