ReFraming Your Story

After reading through the stories and articles in The Regent World, maybe you’re wondering what’s the next step? How can I serve God in the place he has put me right now—whether that’s working retail, changing diapers, negotiating a business deal, or everything in between?

For more than forty years, Regent College has equipped the whole people of God with the tools to integrate their faith with all of life. We’re continuing in this rich tradition with some innovative projects. On May 16, you can participate in the first Regent World webcast: “Can You Do What You Love?: Finding Power, Purpose, and Happiness when the Old Rules Don’t Apply” with thought leaders in culture, theology, and philanthropy. Additionally, Regent College’s Marketplace Institute, in association with The Washington Institute, has produced a new film-based discipleship course called ReFrame that will be available this fall. This 10-session series, ideal for small groups, is designed to help you live out the gospel in your job, school, church, and home—in all areas of life.

Drawn from the curriculum of Regent College, ReFrame seeks to situate your personal story in the broader gospel story that transforms how you think, work, and interact. You’ll be introduced to core content from faculty members including Rikk Watts, Paul Williams, Sarah Williams, and Iain Provan, supplemented with interviews by leading thinkers such as Andy Crouch, Eugene Peterson, and Scot McKnight.

So how can ReFrame help you figure out how faith connects with your own life, and, if you’re a pastor, the life of your church community?

1) ReFrame names reality

The truth is, many of us find it difficult to connect faith with all of life, whether at home, in the workplace, or in retirement. Why is this? Most of us live in profoundly secularized societies where we’re told both overtly and covertly that faith does not, in fact, intersect with our Monday to Saturday. More than that, it has been the prevailing wisdom of our time to explicitly exclude the language of faith from our public discourse.

ReFrame outlines this trajectory and names the alternate stories our societies would rather we inhabit. It shows how, for many people, these stories have led to a crisis of identity on the one hand, and a crisis of faith on the other.

2) ReFrame grounds us in the biblical story

Having named the challenge of our lived experience, ReFrame then retells the whole biblical narrative as the story that reframes everything. It is this story, grander than any of the stories in our culture, which speaks truly of what God is doing in the world. It is this story that gives hope that even now, God is drawing all things to himself and “making all things new” (Rv 21:5). We need such an enlarged vision of the gospel to make sense of, and room for, the whole gamut of callings found within the Christian community.

3) ReFrame invites us to encounter the living God

Jesus encountered the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, right in the midst of their pain and disappointment. Jesus had been resurrected, but the disciples didn’t know it yet—they didn’t even recognize him. He walked with his friends shoulder to shoulder, opened the Scriptures to them, and finally broke bread together later that evening. It was then that they recognized Jesus. And their hearts burned within them. Oh, how we long for such an encounter!

The whole ReFrame course, and each episode in particular, is constructed with this arc in mind. It is our prayer that Jesus would reveal himself again as we journey together in small groups, sharing life and feasting on the Scriptures together.

4) ReFrame sends us out to live as Christ’s joyful ambassadors

Many of us experience life as aliens—far from our eternal home, full of disappointment, and with little to assuage our yearnings for something better. But the disciples on the road to Emmaus experienced something else: they knew what it was to be an ambassador on the road, when, in the midst of grief and pain, Jesus had suddenly and inexplicably appeared to them, giving them good news to take back home. ReFrame seeks to equip each of us for life as a joyful ambassador of Christ, doing the work of diplomacy wherever we’ve been placed. Rooted in community, confident in the mission, skilled in the work of translation, and active in the work we’ve been given to do—our lives can be thoroughly reframed by Christ’s life-giving Word.

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ReFrame will be available for purchase in Fall 2014. In the meantime, visit reframecourse.com where you can subscribe for email updates, watch the trailer, and share with your friends on social media!