Reference

Glossary

The canonical language of this course. Terms grow as your understanding grows.

Core terms

Vocation
Your calling: what God has called you to do to fulfill his mission in and through your life. Older than and distinct from a job.
Avoid: career, occupation, profession (when used as synonyms).

Occupation
How you earn a living to fulfill your needs and desires. The activity itself, not its calling. Your occupation is the setting in which you live out your vocation.
Avoid: calling (when used loosely).

Image bearer (imago Dei)
A human made to reflect God's character and care. Genesis 1 assigns this identity to every person, regardless of what they accomplish.
Avoid: "child of God" (when used to blur the image-bearing of all people).

Label before Labor
The Genesis pattern: God names our identity (image bearer) before assigning our task (work the garden). Our value precedes our productivity.
Avoid: "self-worth from work."

Labor before the Fall
The truth that work was given in Genesis 2, before sin entered in Genesis 3. Work is a prior gift, not a curse; the fall made it harder, not evil.
Avoid: "work is the result of sin."

Missio Dei (mission of God)
God's redemptive purpose for the whole world. Your vocation is integral, not incidental, to it.
Avoid: "church ministry only."

Shalom
The peace, wholeness, and flourishing that God's rule brings. Honest work extends shalom, pushing back the corruption of the fall.
Avoid: "inner peace," "calm."

Purpose (Lesson 2)

Profession
Your work in its double sense: your trained occupation and your testimony - what you declare to be true about God by how you work. The two cannot be separated.
Avoid: using "profession" and "vocation" as flat synonyms.

Practices, Products, Sacrifice
The three arenas in which you profess Christ at work: how you work, what you make, and what you are willing to give up.
Avoid: reducing witness to words only.

George Bailey test
A significance test borrowed from It's a Wonderful Life: imagine the world without your job, and the people your work serves come into view. Reveals neighbor-love hidden in ordinary labor.
Avoid: measuring a job only by pay or prestige.

As for the Lord
The Colossians 3:23 reframe: you ultimately serve Christ, not an earthly boss - which frees you to work hard and to refuse what is wrong.
Avoid: "my boss owns my conscience."

Integrity (Lesson 3)

Integrity
Working so that the nature of your labor matches the nature of your God - true and trustworthy under pressure, keeping your word even at a cost.
Avoid: "just being honest," "having good values" (when used without the under-pressure cost).

Adorn
To make beautiful or attractive. Integrity adorns God's name: it makes his character visible and worth asking about to watching people (Ps. 25:8).
Avoid: "decorate," "show off."

Swears to his own hurt
Psalm 15:4's definition of integrity: the person who keeps their word and meets obligations even when circumstances change or an unexpected cost appears.
Avoid: "stubbornness," "rigidity."

Money (Lesson 4)

Steward
A manager, not an owner, of what God has routed through your hands. The faithful question is not "What is mine to keep?" but "What is mine to manage, and for whom?"
Avoid: "owner," "self-made" (as descriptions of your wealth).

Three gospel purposes of money
Mercy (provision for those who cannot repay), family (care for your own household and relatives), and ministry (resourcing the preaching and teaching of God's word). Drawn from 1 Timothy 5:8-18.
Avoid: thinking of money as either purely private or purely evil.

Holy compass
Chapell's image for money as a heart-indicator. Whether you are its steward or its hostage reveals whether your heart is on or off God's mission.
Avoid: reading money as a measure of God's approval.

Contentment
Rest in God's precise provision, to the penny, of what you need to glorify him (Prov. 30:8-9). Its loss shows up as envy, debt, and vanished generosity. "Godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Tim. 6:6).
Avoid: "settling," "low ambition."

Cheerful giver
The New Testament posture for giving (2 Cor. 9:7): decided in the heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion. Motivated by gratitude for grace, never by guilt. "Guilt never promotes healthy giving; joy always does."
Avoid: reducing giving to a tithe argued to the decimal.

Success (Lesson 5)

Bless the Lord
The direction of true success. Not blessing as something we receive, but blessing God back: giving him honor and glory by using the resources he placed in our hands according to his priorities (Deut. 8:10).
Avoid: treating "blessing" as only what God hands to us.

Multiply (the gifts)
God's expectation that we not merely use but increase what he provides, multiplying his blessings through faithful effort. From the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30); the master praises effort to multiply, not the total accumulated.
Avoid: "success = amount accumulated."

God's resources, opportunities, design
Chapell's three-part definition of success. The resources are his, the opportunities are his appointments, and the design is his purpose. Our part is faithful stewardship of all three.
Avoid: "my resources, my opportunities, my plan."

Enslaved by expectations
The unnamed slavery that replaces faithfulness as our measure. When success is defined by accumulation or others' approval, we become captive to the world's scoreboard and our own ambition.
Avoid: mistaking others' approval for God's approval.

Identity in Christ
The anchor that frees us from the tyranny of expectations: we are united to Christ, eternally treasured, and loved no less for a fumble or a failed quarter. Success flows from this identity, it does not create it.
Avoid: "identity = my achievements."

Humility (Lesson 6)

Humble courage
The paradox at the heart of true humility. The same King who rides a donkey flips the money-changers' tables, knowing it will cost him his life. Humility is not timidity; honoring God with it requires genuine courage.
Avoid: "doormat," "conflict-avoidant," "people-pleasing."

Humility (chosen)
Choosing, for the sake of a greater purpose, to forgo your own personal interests. Never forced by people or circumstances; always a decision of the will, fueled by love.
Avoid: "low self-esteem," "thinking less of yourself."

Level 5 leader
Jim Collins's term (in Good to Great) for leaders whose companies achieved lasting greatness: a paradoxical blend of personal humility and fierce resolve. Chapell affirms the pattern but warns humility is a character of the heart, not a business plan, and guarantees no worldly result.
Avoid: treating humility as a technique for profit.

Show up for the suffering
Chapell's shorthand for humble determination: the willingness to risk loss, endure scorn, or sacrifice gain for the sake of Christ and the people he loves. Modeled by Jesus setting his face to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).
Avoid: "stoic endurance" (without love, it runs out).

Glory (Lesson 7)

Imago Dei (image of God)
The Genesis 1 identity of every human: made to mirror God's character and care into every place and task. The reflection is imperfect, like a child with a toy mower behind his dad's tractor, but unmistakable.
Avoid: "child of God" (when used to blur the image-bearing of all people).

Labore cum Deo (labor with God)
The ancient fathers' phrase for work as priestly worship. Paul calls us "God's fellow workers" (1 Cor. 3:9). You do not arrive at worship on Sunday; you have been engaged in it all week.
Avoid: the sacred-secular divide that makes only "ministry" holy.

Shalom (workplace sense)
The peace and flourishing God's rule brings, extended into the world through honest work and fair practice. Your products and practices (not just your profits) distribute God's care.
Avoid: "inner peace," "calm."

Missionary calling in your profession
God does not call all Christians to leave their job for missions, but he gives all Christians a missionary calling within their profession. Work and witness are intertwined in extending his glory to every corner.
Avoid: "witness only happens at church or on mission trips."

Evil (Lesson 8)

Fiery trial
Peter's name (1 Pet. 4:12) for the opposition and suffering Christians should expect, not as something strange, but as par for the course in a fallen world where Satan still strikes the heel (Gen. 3:15).
Avoid: "God promises his people upward mobility and easy living."

Deforming work
When good gifts are twisted: zeal into workaholism, provision into pride, intelligence into competition. The occupations designed to magnify God's glory also become Satan's arsenal to wound.
Avoid: assuming your job can only form you, never deform you.

Commonness of sin
"No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man" (1 Cor. 10:13). The seed of every sin already lives in every heart. We who judge others' wrongs share some dimension of the same.
Avoid: "I could never do what they did."

Forgiveness vs. pardon
Biblical forgiveness does not require pardoning (sheltering from all consequences). It seeks the wrongdoer's eternal good and the community's flourishing, with all malice emptied. You may still pursue justice, never vindictively.
Avoid: "forgive and forget," "forgiveness means no consequences."

Leadership (Lesson 9)

Super-hyper esteem
Paul's coined Greek word (1 Thess. 5:13) for how highly we should value those who lead. Respect is owed to the office, like a guard saluting the insignia, not merely the person.
Avoid: respecting leaders only when you agree with them.

Admonish (noutheteo)
"To set the mind." Because leaders care, they reorient hearts and habits toward what is good, including consequences when needed. It is not loving to keep someone in a role God did not call them to.
Avoid: conflict-avoidance disguised as kindness.

Flourishing
The goal of biblical leadership: restoring people to full expression of humanness in right relationship with God (Fikkert). Admonish, encourage, help, and be patient all aim here, for now and eternity.
Avoid: "leadership = maximizing output or profit."

Faithful presence
James Davison Hunter's call: be a faithful presence in the square inch of existence God has assigned you. Change the world one square inch at a time, reflecting Christ's character there.
Avoid: "I can only serve God in a bigger or more spiritual role."

Balance (Lesson 10)

Unless the Lord builds
The theme of Psalm 127. Without God's blessing, work is pointless. You can dedicate yourself to the work that needs doing, or to the God who actually gets the job done.
Avoid: "it all depends on me."

Awe is the antidote to anxiety
The chapter's central sentence. Being awed that Almighty God loves us and works all things toward our good frees us from anxiety and gives us sleep (Isa. 26:3; Ps. 127:2).
Avoid: trying to cure anxiety with harder work or more accumulation.

The work under the work
Tim Keller's diagnostic question: what fear (of losing stuff or significance) is actually driving your drivenness? Name it so the gospel can answer it.
Avoid: treating busyness as a virtue in itself.

Sabbath
The declaration that God can do more with our six days than we can with seven. Rest is not the enemy of work; it is the condition of it. A sign of freedom and a balanced life.
Avoid: "I cannot afford to rest."

Witness (Lesson 11)

Salt and light
Jesus' images (Matt. 5:13-14) for the believer's workplace influence. A little salt goes a long way in the Father's recipe; a city on a hill is a fixed light others navigate by. Steady, not flashy.
Avoid: "witness must be a big public event to count."

Works as important as words
Jesus says let your light shine "so that they may see your good works" (Matt. 5:16). Shoddy work or selfish habits destroy witness faster than silence builds it. "Make good tables."
Avoid: "witness is mostly what I say."

God's promises outweigh our problems
The assurance behind workplace witness. Jesus promises blessing, the kingdom (present tense), and good company with the prophets. Our problems never outrank these.
Avoid: "if I face trouble, God must have failed me."

This glossary grows chapter by chapter. Terms are added as you demonstrate understanding.