Jeff Haanen

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Faith and Work MovementTheologyUncategorizedWork

The Uncertain Future of the Faith and Work Movement (Christianity Today, December 2023)

Can it broaden its appeal beyond evangelicals in high-status professions?

Say it’s Thursday evening, and you sit down on your couch after dinner. Just before flipping on the TV, you pause, breathe, close your eyes, and reflect for a moment about your workday.

What do you feel? Do you have a sense of being anxious and overwhelmed? Of satisfaction and accomplish- ment? Of exhaustion or frustration from interacting with a coworker? Or does your mind blank out, avoiding thoughts of work altogether?

For some, perhaps, the wheel of ambition is still turning, and instead of watching Netflix you decide to flip open your laptop and keep working until bed. If that description fits, you might be what Andrew Lynn calls a “creative class evangelical.”

Lynn, a University of Virginia sociologist, is the author of Saving the Protestant Ethic: Creative Class Evangelicalism and the Crisis of Work. In the book, he surveys both this history and the current state of what some call the faith and work movement, which he describes as a “highly organized and well-resourced effort to renegotiate creative-class evangelicalism’s place and relation to power within the institutions and social structures that make up American society today.”

Lynn argues that the contemporary faith and work movement arose principally to meet the needs of a narrow niche of Christians: highly educated evangelicals seeking meaning in their work and a place within an increasingly secular culture. Beginning in the 1980s, as evangelicals attained college degrees and entered the knowledge economy in greater numbers than ever before, there was increasing talk of closing the “Sunday to Monday gap.” Rejecting the notion that work is merely a moneymaking necessity, a rising cohort of evangelical professionals wanted to make theological sense of their newfound success.

HOW WE GOT HERE IS ITS OWN INTERESTing tale, which begins with fundamentalism after the Civil War. When John Nelson Darby published the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909, a frantic concern for eschatology and saving souls took hold. Funding soul-saving ministries became a top priority, and work was simply a way to supply these funds, which, in the words of one writer, needed to be “exchanged” into the “current coin of heaven.”

Later evangelical leaders like Billy Graham abandoned many elements of this earlier funda- mentalism. But the remaining network of Bible institutes, summer camps, media outlets, and para- church ministries still focused on spiritual rather than earthly labors. Echoes of this mindset can be heard in Rick Warren’s 2002 book The Purpose Driven Life, which states, “The consequences of your mission will last forever. The consequences of your job will not.”

Along the way, however, several prominent Christian business leaders began wondering whether their actual work mattered to God, not just the money they made from it. As the inventor and engineer R. G. LeTourneau said at a Chris- tian Laymen’s Crusade in 1941, “We are going to sell laymen the idea that they are going to work for Jesus Christ seven days a week or not callthemselves Christians.” Subsequent decades saw the advent of organizations like the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International (1952), Laity Lodge (1961) and Fellowship of Companies for Christ International (1977). By the 1980s and 1990s, dozens more had been founded.

And from the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s, an explosion of books, conferences, and funders fueled a wave of Christians claiming that work itself—not just soul-saving—was import- ant to God. Out of this movement arose four frameworks for understanding how Christianity ought to influence our work. As Lynn describes them, each was embodied in a dis- tinct group.

The first was the evangelists, for whom faith at work prin- cipally meant workplace evangelism. Second were the achiev- ers. Prominent business figures like J. C. Penney and Henry Parsons Crowell, the owner of Quaker Oats, popularized the idea that business itself was endowed with spiritual value. Notions of “stewardship” and God’s “ownership” reframed work as an arena of holy influence.

The third group, which represents the most common framework within evangelicalism today, consisted of the inte- grators of faith and work. Thinkers like Dorothy Sayers and lesser-known figures like Marquette University professor David Moberg reminded evangelicals that being made in God’s image means being made in the image of a Maker. Work is valu- able simply because God works—and calls us to do likewise.

Lynn also identifies a final group of activists, who called for Christians to pursue the common good through their jobs. Their ranks were smaller than those of the integrators, in part because some evangelicals were skeptical of calls to view work as an engine of advocacy or social change.

But the integrators mainly benefited from larger trends in demographics. As more evangelicals earned college degrees and entered the knowledge economy during the 1970s and early 1980s, they were receptive to messages that affirmed their work as a form of service to God and neighbor.

And yet, whose work were we talking about?

Lynn notes that two groups were often over- looked in faith-and-work conversations: women and blue-collar laborers. It was business leaders, on the whole, who were credited with breaking down the sacred-secular divide, and attendees at faith and work conferences tended to be male, white, and college educated. Over time, the lan- guage of “calling ” and “vocation” became attached to entrepreneurs, lawyers, and other “creative” or high-status professionals.

Lynn also faults the faith and work movement for being too susceptible to influence from the polit- ical Right. He argues that organizations like the Acton Institute, the Kern Foundation, and the Insti- tute for Faith, Work & Economics baptized laissez faire capitalism, channeled evangelicals away from progressive causes, and even “lowered the ethical floor” of what qualifies as “dignified labor.”

But the movement largely succeeded in shifting evangelicals from postures of cultural separatism and embattlement toward a spirit of stewardship and production. Buttressed by Dutch theologian and statesmen Abraham Kuyper’s theology of public engagement, leaders like the late Tim Keller and his ministry’s Center for Faith & Work promoted this shift. D. Michael Lindsay’s 2007 book Faith in the Halls of Power highlighted evangelical involvement in the upper reaches of media, business, government, entertainment, and higher education.

LYNN ACKNOWLEDGES THAT FAITH-AND-work conversations face an uphill climb in an era of growing distrust for institutions. In such a climate, he writes, “inner-worldly asceticism mobilizing zealous participation in secular institutions appears to be a tough sell.” The problem is especially acute for Christians who work at the lower levels of these institutions and have little power to change them.

Alongside the risks of resistance or indifference goes perhaps an even greater risk: the lure of cultural accommodation. Lynn wonders whether the faith and work movement might serve as its own “gravedigger” as it “shuttles evangelicals from subcultural institutions centered on evangelical distinctives into full admission within mainstream societal institutions.” There’s a historical warning here: In the latter half of the 20th century, mainline churches were full of educated elites who enjoyed leadership roles across society, but this didn’t spur revival within those churches. It would be a shame to watch the faith and work movement launch believers into positions of leadership, only to see them changed by the world rather than changing it for Christ.

Despite these warnings, however, I remain hopeful for the faith and work movement. Chris- tians will keep working, and they’ll keep asking what their faith means for their work. And yet, as someone deeply involved in this movement, I have three suggestions.

First, knowledge-class evangelicals should commit to using their power for the vulnerable, not only in society at large but also within their own workplaces. And they should give greater weight to the concerns of organized labor. Evangelicals could work to rediscover Catholic social teaching on this topic, or at least remember the days when Wesleyans, Free Methodists, and Salvation Army groups championed the rights of workers.

Second, continuing to affirm that work matters to God, we should recognize the extent to which workers are feeling anxious, stressed, and bur- dened. The faith and work movement has been geared toward power and cultural influence, but the future of the movement, I believe, will be rooted in spiritual formation. Work is not only about suc- cess, influence, or even gospel impact—it’s about who we’re becoming as followers of Christ. Indeed, Puritans like John Cotton, who helped shape the Protestant work ethic, warned that making one’s labor “the chiefest good” would only lead to selfish materialism. Lynn (and others) are right to regard a spiritual vibrancy as the foundation not just for work but for all of life.

Finally, the future of the faith and work move- ment depends on deeper rootedness in local church communities. Lynn helpfully points out that non-Anglo churches have excelled at creating communal bonds and “collective identities that resist some of the excessive pulls of capitalism and careerism.” Indeed, one historic distinctive of the Protestant ethic is congregations that provide ref- uge and solidarity to workers facing dangerous con- ditions, punishing demands, or economic volatility. At its best, Lynn remarks, the church draws people “toward forms of social relations not determined by status, wealth, or achievement.” What would it look like to center our identities on our local congrega- tions rather than our professional titles?

In sum, building a faith and work movement that appeals to a broader swath of Christians means a renewed emphasis on justice, spiritual formation, and the church. Perhaps, then, we can sit on our couches after a long day, close our eyes, and breathe in the lasting peace of knowing we have spent a day simply working with God.

This book review was first published in the December 2023 print issue of Christianity Today.

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12 Leadership Lessons

 

Occasionally I sit down with a cup of coffee and try to distill the leadership lessons I’ve personally learned over the past few years. Here’s what I came up with this morning:

1. Do not be caught without vision when God decides to provide the money.

2. Quality systems build trust; a lack of systems sows distrust.

3. Don’t try to fit a round peg in a square hole; don’t try to get somebody to do what they’re not fit for.

4. Listen to others, even their harsh complaints; and then give them hope.

5. Focus on quality, not quantity. Thriving organizations grow from a “hot center.”

6. Trying to influence people’s actions is futile; influence their vision and actions will follow.

7. Many have vision. Unfortunately, it’s not very specific.

8. Prayer is a strategy, perhaps the most important strategy.

9. Spend half your time on what’s urgent, not “important;” the other half of your time on what’s urgent and important. Try to ignore the rest.

10. Recruit godly leaders. Amazing things happen with the right people in the room.

11. Seek wise mentors. They’re indispensable.

12. Give. It is the foundation of leadership.

 

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Denver Institute for Faith & Work

In late 2012 I resolved to create new nonprofit called Denver Institute for Faith & Work. The following is a letter I sent to friends and family in January 2013 explaining my idea.

Dear Friends and Family,

I’m writing to share with you a new project that I am launching in 2013 along with several good friends. I’m creating a new nonprofit organization called Denver Institute for Faith & Work that helps people integrate their faith and work.

Why faith and work? Well, there are several reasons. First, we spend the majority of our waking hours at work, yet most struggle to relate the two worlds of faith and work.  God calls most believers to secular work – electricians, account managers, teachers, homemakers, engineers – yet many are stuck in the sacred/secular divide, or isolated from other believers in their fields. One of my favorite theologians, Lesslie Newbigin, has said,

 “And we need to create, above all, possibilities in every congregation for laypeople to share with one another the actual experience of their weekday work and to seek illumination from the gospel for their secular duty. Only thus shall we begin to bring together what our culture has divided—the private and the public. Only thus will the church fulfill its missionary role.”

This is what I’m trying to do with Denver Institute – connect what our culture has divided through illuminating our work with the gospel.

Second, I believe we’re living in a cultural moment that desperately needs the gospel applied to areas of public life. Strategies to influence culture in the past 50 years have been too heavily focused on seeking political power. I think a better strategy to influence public life is through work. As author Andy Crouch has said, culture is changed not primarily through critique, copying, or condemnation, but through creating more of it. Work is where we do our culture-making.

There are many more pressing reasons as well, ranging from the feeling of hopelessness many feel in their work to the need to provide a supportive community to individuals struggling to live as Christians in secular contexts. There are too many important reasons for this new organization to mention in a short email, which is one reason why I recently launched a blog on the topic of faith, work and culture. It deals both with the “why” of integrating faith and work, and the “how” – what this looks like in real life.

Denver Institute for Faith & Work will have four programs:

  • Illuminate: Teach a class and curriculum on the integration of faith and work for the local church
  • Connect: Connect individuals in their fields to discuss their work in light of the gospel through “frontier groups” and an online community
  • Inspire: Host seminars and conferences on issues of faith, work and culture; and share stories of those applying the gospel to their work
  • Create: Help people create new products and services that reflect the Christian commitments of creativity, service and hope

The mission of Denver Institute for Faith & Work is to cultivate a movement of personal joy and cultural renewal through applying the gospel to work.

I want to ask for your prayers. I’m beginning to create class materials and develop our website (under construction), and am also in the early phases of recruiting a board, getting 501(c)3 status, requesting donations, and setting the foundation of the organization. Pray for God’s wisdom and guidance, and pray for “early adopters” who will give their passion, time and commitment to this vision, especially as board members and donors.

Please let me know if you’d like to be on our email list as well. I plan on sending monthly newsletters tracking our progress.

Thanks for your support and prayers. I look forward to hearing from you.

Grace and peace,

Jeff Haanen

 

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