Aristotle offers another important insight. He emphasizes that virtues are habits that take practice. Habits are acquired “dispositions” that get woven into our character. And the way we acquire such habits is through practice and repetition—through “rituals,” you might say.

Let’s think creatively about rhythms and rituals and routines that would let the good news sink into us throughout the week.

something that is important for a Christian understanding of vocation. It’s not just a matter of loving our work; it’s about loving our work for God. It’s pursuing God in our work. God provides us the vision that pulls our labor toward his kingdom.

You could say God is not just the One who “pushes” us into existence; he is also the One who pulls us toward himself. Aristotle said that this “produces motion as being loved.” In other words, God doesn’t simply propel us; he also attracts us. We pursue what we love.

worship. This is why form matters. Which is just another way of saying that the Christian liturgical tradition should be seen as a resource to foster cultural innovation.

Think of the cranky constraints in your own context. Could it be more creative not to simply wish them away but to receive them as gifts? Is there a genius embedded in those constraints that some imaginative leadership could unveil, leading to new appreciation? Maybe a “completely free hand” is not what we need. Perhaps what we need is good constra

And Christian worship, I suggest, is a design studio. The church’s mission is to send out innovators and designers whose actions aim “at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” But innovators and restorers and makers and designers also need the church to be an imagination station, a space for rehabituating our imagination to the “true st

Humans are made to design. Indeed, if designer Herbert Simon’s axiom is correct, then we could rightly say that the gospel itself is a design project—it is the good news that humanity is now liberated to take up the design work given to us at creation, to assume our (co)mission as creation’s designers.

Innovation for justice and shalom requires that we be regularly immersed in the story of God reconciling all things to himself.