How God Makes the World A Better Place: A Wesleyan Primer on Faith, Work, and Economic Transformation

Today we are all too well acquainted with a view of work and economics as necessary evils—means to an end. Our culture shouts its disapproval of work as bothersome, if necessary. It is conflicted over competing economic views and challenges the notion that one system can be better than all the rest. Even in the church the importance of work and economics can be undermined or dismissed. But what if we took great joy in our work? What if we began to develop an economic vision that reflects God's own design?

In How God Makes the World a Better Place David Wright and his team challenge teachers, preachers, and business leaders to use their influence to create, maintain, and affirm communities that value work and that value the systems that make work possible and rewarding for the most people. They are urged to inspire in others the dignity of labor and achievement that leads to real meaning and satisfaction. They must ensure that the world creates economic, legal, and organizational structures that enable work that truly will make the world a better place.

As the authors look back in time, many of the principles they outline are drawn directly from the lives of John and Charles Wesley—two devoted ministers of the gospel who took their work seriously as a tool for serving God. In doing so they transformed the spiritual landscape of England at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. John Wesley was particularly captivated by the truth that we are created in the image of God. This foundational teaching of the Wesleyan movement is of utmost importance to our understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in our work.