All posts by Micheal Hickerson

About Micheal Hickerson

Micheal is a writer and website manager who lives in Greater Cincinnati.

Loving My Coworker As Myself

Missing Our Significance – and Others', Work and Vocation, , ,

Some blog posts are written from a position of authority. Others, like this one, are written from a position of humility, because the author needs to learn from the post as much as anyone.

So far, I have covered several major themes that I will return to in the future:

  • Not only are there no small roles, but there are also no small actors.
  • If think a job is “unimportant,” that says more about our value system than the actual importance of that job.
  • No matter your job, you are doing God’s work if you are involved in the stewardship or restoration of God’s creation.

If you feel unappreciated, or if you wonder whether your work matters, I hope these ideas will encourage you. Today, however, I want to focus on someone else. You see, if these ideas are true about you and your own work, they’re also true about everyone you work with:

  • The coworker who just can’t seem to do anything right
  • The manager who never cuts you any slack
  • The executive who seems more concerned about his annual bonus than his employees

As well everyone else you encounter in your working day:

  • The annoying salesperson who won’t take no for an answer
  • Customers who take too long to make a decision
  • Vendors whose products don’t work as advertised

Each one of these people is made in the image of God, doing God’s work, in a role that just might be far more important than you realized. Continue reading Loving My Coworker As Myself →

Doing the Work of God

Call: Stewarding and Restoring Creation, Work and Vocation, , , , , , , , ,

In Genesis, after God creates Adam (literally “the man”), he gives him work to do:

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (Genesis 2:15)

Note that this is before Adam and Eve’s sin of eating from the wrong tree. The Fall made work harder, but it didn’t create the work. In fact, God gives Adam two jobs: not only is he to be caretaker of the Garden of Eden, but he’s also the namer of the animals.

Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. (Genesis 2:19–20a)

This work, however, doesn’t seem to have a practical purpose. God had already provided for him through the Garden, as he makes clear from the instructions to eat from the trees that God had already planted. As for the names of the animals, in Genesis 1, God has shown himself to be pretty adept at language, speaking the very universe into existence. Surely he could have thought up names for pigs and horses on his own. Considering God’s omnipotence and omnipresence, he’s probably not delegating tasks to Adam that he’s too busy to address.

So what was this all about, then?

Adam was doing the work of God.

Continue reading Doing the Work of God →

Which Is the Best Job?

Image and Call in Daily Life, Work and Vocation, , , , , , , ,

Every year, U.S. News and World Report ranks the “best jobs” in the US. For 2013, the “best jobs” were:

  1. Dentist
  2. Registered nurse
  3. Pharmacist
  4. Computer systems analyst
  5. Physician
  6. Database administrator
  7. Software developer
  8. Physical therapist
  9. Web developer
  10. Dental hygenist

Health care and technology dominate the list. What else do these jobs have in common?

  • They are well compensated. Some professions, like physicians and dentist, are famously well-paid, but all of these provide you with a solid middle- to upper-class lifestyle.
  • They require specialized skills and talents. Not only do they require years of education, they also certain habits of mind in order to be successful. It’s relatively easy (compared to some other fields) to distinguish who belongs in the discipline and who is just a pretender. Beyond the compensation, the specializiation and high degree of skill confers a high level of respect for people who are good at these jobs. (People outside the profession might not even have a clear idea of what they do!)
  • They are in high demand. Both health and technology are growing at rates beyond the rest of the economy, which offers both security and a high degree of autonomy for people in these fields. Right now, at my work, we’re trying to hire a web developer, and it’s common for highly skilled developers to receive several attractive job offers at the same time. As a result, developers can be extremely selective, choosing a job that is just the right fit for their preferences.

In summary, the “best jobs” are well paid, highly respected, and secure. Who wouldn’t want that? Well, that’s a complicated question.

What Makes a Job “Good”?

The jobs identified as “best” were ranked by a specific formula:

  • 10-Year Growth Volume (10%)
  • 10-Year Growth Percentage (10%)
  • Median Salary (30%)
  • Job Prospects (20%)
  • Employment Rate (20%)
  • Stress Level (5%)
  • Work-Life Balance (5%)

Security (in terms of job growth, employment rate, and prospects) and compensation (median salary) were weighted more heavily in the formula, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the “best jobs” were those that delivered on those qualities. Continue reading Which Is the Best Job? →