A Pastoral Word. . .
Pastor Mark Adams
October 6, 2022
After high school, Brandon Yates became an electrician. Finally, when he became a master electrician Yates founded KC One, an electrical contracting services company based in Kansas City, Missouri.
Yates said, “Craftsman is a lost word in our day.” He aims to change that by recruiting hardworking high-school graduates with an aptitude for making things. KC One’s apprenticeship program provides on-the-job training and certifications for one or two young electricians each year. “Society teaches these kids that they’ll become losers if they become electricians. My job is to unteach them.”
The perception that the trades offer less status and money, and demand less intelligence, is one likely reason young people have turned away from careers in the trades for several generations. In Yates’s school district, officials recently shuttered the entire shop class program. Scholar Mike Rose says, “In our culture, the craftsman is a muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no thought bright behind the eye.” Thinking, it’s assumed, is for the office, not the shop.
Scripture identifies Jesus Himself as a tekton (Mark 6:3, literally “craftsman” or “one who works with his hands”). So, it’s time to challenge the tradesman stereotype, and to rethink our cultural divide between white collar and blue collar, office and shop, in light of the Divine Craftsman Who will one day make all things new.
These days college graduates have had little, if any, training in repairing a leaky toilet or hardwiring a smoke detector. When they graduate they take with them a degree, a ton of college loan debt---and a dearth of practical training such that, without help, their pipes would be forever clogged. Without reintegrating the trades back into our culture, we will perpetuate the falsehood that plumbers, electricians, and other skilled laborers are somehow less intelligent.
Like Yates, I hope there is a rebirth of interest in craftsmanship---and if it happens it should be welcomed by Christ-followers. Remember, one day we will live in a house Jesus has custom-designed and built for us (John 14:2).
God is Maker, Creator of the heavens and the earth; and God is Fixer, Redeemer and Restorer of a broken world. As we look forward to the heavenly city, whose Architect and Builder is God (Heb. 11:10), perhaps we owe it to our children and grandchildren to encourage more of them to be makers and fixers, too
Keep the SON in your eyes!
Mark
Yates said, “Craftsman is a lost word in our day.” He aims to change that by recruiting hardworking high-school graduates with an aptitude for making things. KC One’s apprenticeship program provides on-the-job training and certifications for one or two young electricians each year. “Society teaches these kids that they’ll become losers if they become electricians. My job is to unteach them.”
The perception that the trades offer less status and money, and demand less intelligence, is one likely reason young people have turned away from careers in the trades for several generations. In Yates’s school district, officials recently shuttered the entire shop class program. Scholar Mike Rose says, “In our culture, the craftsman is a muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no thought bright behind the eye.” Thinking, it’s assumed, is for the office, not the shop.
Scripture identifies Jesus Himself as a tekton (Mark 6:3, literally “craftsman” or “one who works with his hands”). So, it’s time to challenge the tradesman stereotype, and to rethink our cultural divide between white collar and blue collar, office and shop, in light of the Divine Craftsman Who will one day make all things new.
These days college graduates have had little, if any, training in repairing a leaky toilet or hardwiring a smoke detector. When they graduate they take with them a degree, a ton of college loan debt---and a dearth of practical training such that, without help, their pipes would be forever clogged. Without reintegrating the trades back into our culture, we will perpetuate the falsehood that plumbers, electricians, and other skilled laborers are somehow less intelligent.
Like Yates, I hope there is a rebirth of interest in craftsmanship---and if it happens it should be welcomed by Christ-followers. Remember, one day we will live in a house Jesus has custom-designed and built for us (John 14:2).
God is Maker, Creator of the heavens and the earth; and God is Fixer, Redeemer and Restorer of a broken world. As we look forward to the heavenly city, whose Architect and Builder is God (Heb. 11:10), perhaps we owe it to our children and grandchildren to encourage more of them to be makers and fixers, too
Keep the SON in your eyes!
Mark
Posted in A Pastoral Word
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