What really motivates us as entrepreneurs?

I ask the question because in the past 6 months, I’ve started to notice some disconcerting cracks in my own character. In 2018, as an entrepreneur, father and husband, externally, things have thrived. Internally, however, I’ve struggled.

I’ve noticed my patience has gotten shorter with my kids. I haven’t been the kind of husband I want to be. My ability to deal with stress almost seems to be diminishing. I’ve felt spiritually fragile. As I’ve tried to understand what’s happening inside of me, I’ve come back to the question: what is really motivating me to build, grow, and achieve? What is driving me?

In 2013, I started Denver Institute for Faith & Work. It was exhilarating. We pitched the idea to a handful of donors. They started giving and we took off. Beginning in January of 2014, we hosted over 600 people at 6 events over 7 months. More donors came, and we eventually hired a communications director and event director. In 2016, we launched the 5280 Fellowship, our flagship program for emerging leaders in theology, work and culture. Recently, we launched a new online learning platform called Scatter. For a few years, everything looked up and to the right.

Last year, however, I hit a wall. I was doing too much. I was connected in too many spots. I felt exhausted. The this-is-cool thing wore off, and I thought of tossing in the towel. So we restructured. I gave more responsibility to my COO who now leads our internal operations. We built more systems to stabilize and bring about trust and accountability.

Yet even with the changes, I’ve realized that something inside of me is driving me – something that I wish would quiet down. There’s a good desire in me to build, create, make a positive impact on my city. But there’s also something that’s unhealthy that is bubbling under the surface.

What is it? What really motivates me? What really motivates us as entrepreneurs?

At a recent gathering of the Entrepreneur’s Forum at Denver Institute for Faith & Work, I asked that question to a room of 60 founders and early stage entrepreneurs. Stories emerged.

One founder in Denver built a recruiting company. He told me many of the CEOs he works for come home to their families with significant stress, principally because of staffing issues. In a tight labor market like Denver, entry-level employees are tough to come by – and tough to keep. Sometimes they don’t show up, can’t get to work, or they have some kind of personal issue. And at the end of the day, the company can’t fulfill orders due to personnel problems, and it’s the CEOs responsibility.

And so one day I asked my friend, “Why don’t they simply invest more in their frontline employees? Wouldn’t this help to retain their labor and help fix their biggest headache?”

My friend shared with me over coffee that every single CEO he works with says they would invest 10% of their salary if they could solve their staffing issues. But when the time comes, the vast majority don’t. Why?

“Because when you start making over $1 million dollars a year,” my friend at the recruiting company posited, “and you drop below that mark, you feel like you’re failing. And so they protect their salary even if it’s causing them and those around them pain.”

They feel like they’re failing. Though I couldn’t identify with making over $1 million a year, I could identify with the feeling of failure – no matter what had happened in my organization last month. Oddly enough, after I publish a big article or pull off a big event for business leaders, this is precisely the time in the year when I feel like I’m failing the most.

After the big deal is done, so many of founders I know feel like they’re failing deeply. Why is this? Where does the feeling of failure come from?

What is really driving so much of our entrepreneurship? I believe that its fundamentally about our identity. Too many of us are trying to prove our worth in a world that seems empty of it.

At one of the early small groups at DIFW’s Entrepreneur’s Forum, over lunch we shared about how we see ourselves. One day, the topic of our fathers came up. This particular group happened to be mostly men, and a full three quarters of us realized we had really significant issues with our dads and significant pain we’ve taken into adulthood. We realized in our conversation that there’s a part of us that’s longing to be recognized. Because it wasn’t there early in life, there’s something inside of us that keeps driving us. To go, create, achieve. To prove our worth. We simply want somebody to notice out of an internal voice that incessantly says, “It’s never enough.”

No success is ever enough to fill the void within.

Culturally, I believe we’re in a weird spot with entrepreneurship. We have a hero complex we’ve built around entrepreneurs. They’re the formable founders who fuel the economy, suffer the pains of a startup, and finally “make it” and either sell or IPO. They sacrifice their bodies, their relationships, their minds, their time – everything – for the sake of their startup.

Whenever I hear those stories, I must confess, they sound like a savior story. Both the founder – and their fans – are really longing for salvation.

I’ve come to believe that Christianity can offer all entrepreneurs – including myself – the only, final healthy motive for building a business. That foundation is this: in Christ, your identity is already spoken for. It cannot change. It is never at risk. Your success or your failures can’t touch it.

Recently a video of 10-year-old Ivey Zezulka made its way around the internet. It was of a girl who just realized she was going to be adopted. Her adoptive parents gave her a package. When she opened the package, she read a picture frame and said, “I’m going to be adopted?” And when she said this she covered her mouth and began to cry. And so did I.

Why? Because not only do kids in the foster system struggle with deep, internal narratives of who will really accept me – but I do, too. When I am completely exposed and internally sense that I’m a failure who will never really amount to much, where do I turn?

This is the critical difference that Christianity can offer entrepreneurs that no other religion or worldview can offer.

Jesus says to entrepreneurs, “You are mine. All the work has been done through my death and resurrection. You can add nothing to it and take nothing from it. Now be free. To work. To create. To build a business. To fail. No matter what, you no longer need to prove yourself. You are now a part of the family. Your identity is spoken for. You are mine. You are home.”

The freedom for the faith-motivated entrepreneur is that in Christ, all the work is finally finished. Our work, then, is simply to listen, obey, and to tend the vine given to us. And when it grows, to marvel at the handiwork of the Gardener.

This post first appeared on Faith Driven Entrepreneur and was based on a talk I gave at DIFW’s Entrepreneur’s Forum.

Image credit: Inc

Vocation

In the Fields of the Lord

January 14, 2019

This last weekend for me was difficult. And it was difficult for me, because of me.

We had friends over, neighbors over, and church members over to our house on Saturday and Sunday. Our home was filled with the noise of laughter, but it was also filled with the tears of children…and adults. My wife and I are wrestling with educational choices for our daughters, trying to discern what’s best for them and what God is calling us to. And our dearest third born continually both delights us and baffles us. Her emotional swings – from joy to incapacitated sadness – weigh heavy on our hearts.

I went to bed last night utterly exhausted from the weekend. As a 5 on the enneagram (“the investigator”) I’ve come to learn about myself that whereas most people start the day with an emotional tank 100% full, my “full” each day is about 20%. I’m at once overwhelmed by gratitude for all God has given me…and just overwhelmed. Holding my own emotions together on a day-to-day basis is an enormous task.

This morning I woke up and headed to the work, anxious to recover from the weekend. I listened to a CD that I have loved since it was released two years ago, “Work Songs: Porter’s Gate.” For an anxious heart, “In the Fields of the Lord” whispered to me a deep peace.

In the fields of the Lord our work is rest

He is moving in our hands and feet to bless

In the fields of the Lord, in the fields of the Lord

In the fields of the Lord, our work is rest

In the vineyards of the Lord our work is light

He is tending every leaf and every vine

In the vineyards of the Lord, in the vineyards of the Lord

In the vineyards of the Lord our work is light

In the garden of the Lord our work is sound

He is weaving every thorn into a crown

In the garden of the Lord, in the garden of the Lord

In the garden of the Lord, our work is sound

At the harvest of the Lord the fields are white

He will wipe away the tear from every eye

At the harvest of the Lord, at the harvest of the Lord

At the harvest of the Lord the fields are white

This song reminds me that God can use even my clumsy attempts at parenthood or serving a nonprofit organization to bless others.

It reminds me that the results are not all up to me, whether raising children or fundraising, because God is first “tending every leaf and every vine.” It is, after all, his vineyard, not my own.

It reminds me that the pain I experience – whether the deep doubts I have about being a father, or internal chaos I feel in an extroverted world – that God is willing to take the thorns of sin and place them on his own head, and give me a place in his kingdom.

And it reminds me the day is coming when God will soon wipe away the tears from every eye.

It is a strange and new place for me to realize that all of the great challenges of my life are inside me. To submit decisions to Christ, rather than to grasp for control. To be patient with my kids, rather than frustrated at the frailties they show – which I even see in myself. To be present to the people in my life, when realizing the utter necessity to set boundaries in order to live an emotionally healthy life. To seek love, joy, peace, patience ,kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control, yet to realize these virtues cannot be taken. They must be given.

For such a journey, I need others. I need songs like this. And I need to finally let go of my own grasping attempts to control my environment. The fields are the Lord’s.

If you’d like to learn to play “In the Fields of the Lord” on either guitar or piano, here’s the song book, kindly shared by Isaac Wardell at Porter’s Gate, and open for public use.

Theology Vocation Work

The Church in Public Life: Pastoring for the Public Good of Your Community

January 4, 2019

The following is the talk I gave at Thriving Churches, Thriving Cities, Denver Institute’s annual gathering for pastors and ministry leaders. The topic: what does it mean for pastoral leaders and their churches to be involved in healing the public life of their communities?

Thank you again for coming today. I’d like to introduce our final set of conversations today by speaking to the topic of pastors and public engagement.

Today we’ve spoken about pastoral wholeness and integrity, and, in the breakouts, growing in pastoral excellence through navigating change and conflict. What might it mean, then, for pastors to lead churches working toward the healing of their cities?

Let me first tell you a personal story. My first pastorate after seminary was serving Iglesia Bautista Nueva Esperanza, a Spanish-speaking church in Brighton, Colorado. I preached in Spanish, led youth group in English, and, as the only white guy there, stuck out like a sore thumb.

I realized a year into my pastorate that about 80% of my congregation was related to each other. They were nearly all from Chihuahua, Mexico.

I also realized something important: that just holding church services and doing Bible studies would not be enough to serve my congregation and allow them to experience wholeness in Christ.

As immigrants, they were driven to leave their home because of economic factors. They were seeking good jobs. And many of the men were gone on Sundays working as painters and roofers. Education was also so important. They wanted their kids to get a good education, but they often struggled to navigate the system. And they were worried their kids would get caught up in gangs. Culture, too, was deeply formative. They were worried that America would instill in their families materialism over a love of family. Many were also aware of their Mexican culture and its tendency toward corruption.

As I pastor of my first congregation, I realized work, community, and culture were not abstract ideas. They were the fabric of real, daily lives.

Early in my life as a minister, I asked a question I want to now ask us today. Are we influencing culture, or are we being influenced by culture?

Or more pointedly, I recently started to ask about my own preaching: do I use culture to illustrate the gospel? Or does the gospel illustrate culture? That is, would I use the latest headline about business or government to illustrate a point from the book of Romans, or was I using the book of Romans to illustrate – shed light on – business and government?

What about us as pastors and ministry leaders in Denver, Colorado today? What does it mean to be the church in this place and time?

A generation about, pastor and missionary Leslie Newbigin wrote a slim book called The Other Side of 1984. He was addressing the world council of churches about what it meant to be “on mission” in the secular West. He wrote something about the nature of the church I’ve never forgotten.

In the book, he tells the story of early Christians in the Roman empire, and the debate of what to call themselves. He explains that in the Roman empire, there were many “private cults” that enjoyed protection from the Emperor. The opponents of Christianity used these words to refer to early Christians, but no Christian apparently ever did so. In other words, the Church did not regard itself as a society for the promotion of the personal salvation of its members.

The obvious choice for what to call a congregation of God’s people would have been sunagogos, or synagogue, which was already used to address Jewish minorities throughout the empire. But they didn’t use this either. Early Christians opted for the word ecclesia, which denoted the public assembly called by the civic authority, in which all citizens were summoned to discuss and settle the affairs of a city. By calling itself the ecclesia Theou, the Church made its own self-understanding clear: It was the public assembly by which all humanity was summoned, called by God himself.

The essential message of the early church was about Jesus’ kingship. Jesus was God incarnate, who died for our sin, was resurrected for our salvation, and now is Lord of all. All authority and heaven and earth has been given to Him.

That is, church has never only been about Sundays and souls; it’s about souls and cities. If something is going wrong in a city, it is the church’s responsibility to act. We are not only about defending our rights to worship as we please; we are about showing the invisible reign of Jesus through our words, lives, and actions.

In John Stott’s 1970s classic Christian Mission in the Modern World, he states,

“If we are to love our neighbor as God made him, we must inevitably be concerned for his total welfare, the good of his soul, his body and his community. When any community deteriorates, the blame should be attached where it belongs: not to the community which is going bad but to the church which is failing in its responsibility as salt to stop it from going bad.”

What does it mean to be a pastor who is publicly engaged and cares for souls as well as bodies, communities, companies, and cities?

Let me briefly suggest three things for the pastor’s role in public life.

Publicly-engaged pastors commit to preaching a gospel for all of life.

Here’s Newbigin again: “The message of Jesus was about the kingship, the universal sovereignty of God. It was not a message about the interior life of the soul in abstraction from the public life of the world.” Christian discipleship therefore means that Jesus is Lord of all – not only of our religious life, but of all of creation, including communities, cities, companies, schools, hospitals and cultures. The good news transforms our souls as much as it does our businesses.

The good news is that by Jesus’ death and resurrection, the power of sin has been broken, and he’s healing all that has been fractured by the Fall. This is both individual and institutional. Pastors have the unique and often times offensive job of preaching that Jesus really is King of all, and all final allegiance belongs to Him.

Publicly engaged pastors read far outside of their field and humbly learn from people living and working in sectors far different from their own in order to explore what Jesus’ kingship might look like for those areas of human life.

Publicly-engaged pastors commit to serving the vulnerable in their communities, both personally and through the volunteer efforts of their congregations.

Pastors who are publicly engaged commit to social justice and civic renewal in response to Jesus’ command to “love your neighbors as yourselves.”

Practically speaking, you can think about how to do this a few different ways. But one way is the think about your church and the volunteer capacities of your people, and decide together – what will be the one or two needs in our community that we will take responsibility for? It could be homelessness, loving immigrants, caring for pregnant teenagers, or mentoring. Sometimes it’s a program you’re doing; sometimes it partnering with a local nonprofit or civic imitative. But from what I’ve seen, this isn’t doing everything, but it is doing something. And doing it for a long time.

Another way is to become personally involved in the critical issues of your community. We’ll hear shortly from two pastors who’ve done this through sitting on local boards to investing in real estate projects. If you care, your people will care.

Publicly-engaged pastors commit to vocational discipleship and forming men and women to be agents of restoration and reconciliation in their workplaces and communities.

Here’s a word of good news for you. You don’t have to do everything. God has people touching every part of our civilization. The pastor’s role is to shape the imaginations of your people for their lives and vocations.

Here’s how NT Wright puts it: “Your task is to find symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts that say there is a different way to be human.” To be “raised with Christ” is a creative calling to find ways our daily work and lives to point beyond ourselves to Christ, the Light of the World.

Let me also briefly make the case for an institution like Denver Institute for Faith & Work. We exist to serve churches – both pastors and laity – as we explore the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection for our work, whether that be business, health care, retail, or transportation.

You, pastors, have the privilege of walking alongside of men and women and explore what it means to salt in society, yeast in our culture, and a city on a hill in a dark world. As your people scatter throughout society during the week, you can give them a vision for the redemptive angle of their work has on the public life of our society.

In summary, publicly-engaged pastors preach the breadth of our good news, show the depth of God’s love for the poor, and work to form God’s people in their vocations scattered throughout our cities during the week.

Pastors are critical to the health of churches, and churches are critical to the health of our cities. Thank you for your work.

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Work

Be a gardener

November 13, 2018

Be a gardener,

dig and ditch,

toil and sweat,

and turn the earth upside down

and seek the deepness

and water the plants in time.

Continue this labor

and make sweet floods to run

and noble and abundant fruits

to spring.

Take this food and drink

and carry it to God

as your true worship.

Julian of Norwich (CA.1342-1416)

Nonprofit Theology Work

The 10 Characteristics of a Thriving Pastor

October 16, 2018

For years we at DIFW have focused on what it means to live out the gospel in supposedly “secular” work, like business, medicine, law, or the arts. But several years ago we came to the uncomfortable realization that there was one field we had overlooked: pastoral ministry.

Now, we hadn’t completely overlooked pastors. But we had done two things. First, we assumed being a pastor was intrinsically “sacred.” But as my colleague at DIFW Brian Gray says, who was a pastor for 10 years, “It’s possible to wait tables very ‘sacredly,’ but pastor very ‘secularly.’” In our work with pastors, we’ve seen being a pastor, too, can devolved into just being a “job.”

Second, I felt like we had started to look at pastors as a means to an end. That is, we hoped pastors would come to “get it,” meaning that they would teach their congregants to be missionaries and servants of God in society through their work. And once they “got it,” we wanted them to influence their congregations with a robust theology of vocation. But after several of our key church relationships cooled off, I began to ask: have we been using pastors to get to their people, or had we been serving pastors? Had we really asked what might it look like for pastors to deeply live out their own faith through their work?

When working with pastors in our city on topics surrounding vocation, we also realized that getting churches to engage the social and cultural needs of their cities through their congregant’s work was often nearly impossible because they were dealing with too many issues in their own churches. Difficult elders, flighty volunteers, shrinking budgets, conflict amongst members, unclear goals. We realized that if churches weren’t led by pastors with unusual skill and competence, spanning from preaching and teaching to conflict resolution, community impact was nearly impossible.

Yet pastoral excellence, too, is elusive! We also realized that attaining pastoral excellence is difficult for many pastors (just as excellence is for people in any field!) because they were dealing with so many of their own spiritual and emotional issues—or not dealing with them. In a survey we did this last spring with nearly 20 pastors in Denver, many told us anonymously about their own loneliness, fears and doubts. Many were longing for communities of clergy peers with whom they could be honest, vulnerable, and open – and found that this was usually difficult to do inside their own congregations. Pastoral ministry can be hauntingly lonely.

As part of a grant application process we did this last spring (for which we were summarily rejected – so take this following list with a grain of salt!), we put together our convictions about what it means to be a thriving pastor.

We summarized the marks of a thriving pastor in three categories: personal (points 1-3 below), professional (4-5), and public (6-8). We also believe thriving pastors put themselves in the right context (9-10) to grow. Thriving pastors lead from the inside out: they draw on the life of Christ from within, pursue excellence in their craft of pastoral leadership, and influence their churches for the sake of their cities and the flourishing of their communities.

Drawing on our work with pastors in the Denver metropolitan area along with external research on pastoral health, we at DIFW believe there are ten characteristics of a thriving pastor.

Personal

1.Personal Humility and Deep Spiritual Health. Thriving pastors “face their own shadow” in the context of vulnerable relationships. They open their hearts to God’s transforming grace through practicing spiritual disciplines, and they sustain pastoral habits of mental, emotional, and physical self-care. Their first call is to love God with all of their heart, mind, soul and strength.

2. Embracing the Call to Be a Pastor. Thriving pastors listen to God’s voice over a lifetime and embrace a professional identity without being unhealthily dependent on that identity for a sense of personal worth. They embrace a distinct call to be a pastor. They recognize their limitations and leverage their God-given gifts for their congregations and communities.

3. Healthy Families, Marriages, and Friendships. Thriving pastors are surrounded by healthy relationships, including first their spouses, then children, family and friends. Safe, open and honest relationships are critical to pastoral flourishing.

Professional

4. Leadership Management and Skill. Thriving pastors exhibit pastoral competence and learn new leadership skills often left untaught in seminary education (e.g., casting vision, managing projects, managing budgets, hiring well, etc.). They recognize short-comings and depend on mentors to navigate leadership challenges, especially early in their career.

5. Emotional Intelligence. Thriving pastors exhibit growing emotional intelligence and self-awareness, especially as it relates to leading and “reading” their church and its key leaders. They are able to build trust and lead healthy growth and change in their congregations.

Public

6. Social Engagement. Thriving pastors lead churches that serve the needs of their particular community, especially the poor. They commit to social justice and civic renewal in response to Jesus’ commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

7. Vocational Discipleship. Thriving pastors lead churches committed to forming men and women in their vocations as agents of reconciliation and restoration in families, workplaces and cities.

8. Evangelistic Witness. Thriving pastors lead evangelistic churches committed to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed with their communities and the world.

Context

9. Community of Peers and Mentors. Thriving pastors have communities of clergy peers and mentors who help them navigate personal, professional, and community challenges over a career. They embrace friendships with other pastors and leaders outside their church.

10. Becoming an Adult Learner. Finally, thriving pastors take ownership for their own development and embrace learner-directed, problem-oriented, and contextualized learning environments over a lifetime. They write their own “syllabus” and embrace peer feedback.

Today pastors face increasing complexity in their ministerial roles: the pull to be both spiritual and organizational leaders, and the pressure to offer cultural leadership in communities that no longer recognize their moral authority. Pastors – like all of us – need rhythms of spiritual formation, self-care, family health, and professional development to thrive with resilience.

We all face deep challenges in the workplace and long for God to use us to bless and heal this broken world. Perhaps one day, both lay leaders and pastors will lock arm and lean on one another to imitate King David who “shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them” (Psalm 78:2).

I’d be interested to hear from you. What do you think we missed in this list? What did we get right, and what did we get wrong? What specific examples can you give of deep pastoral health and resilience?

For more on this topic, see:

Bob Burns, Tasha Chapman, and Donald Guthrie: Resilient Ministry
Pete Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality
Gordon Smith, Courage and Calling
Barna Group, The State of Pastors: How Today’s Faith Leaders are Navigating Life and Leadership in an Age of Complexity

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Economy Work

Six Differences Between How Professionals and the Working Class See Their Daily Work

October 12, 2018

America is working pretty well for the top third of society. It’s the other two-thirds who are struggling.

I came to this conclusion after reading Robert Putnam’s stunning book Our Kids. After seeing the growing class divide separating American society, I also started to ask: how does the working class see their work?

As I spend nearly all my time working with and for professionals (those with a four-year college degree), in a recent article I confessed that as I grew older, I realized I didn’t have a single working-class friend. Their world was foreign to me. And so was their work.

Joan C. Williams is a law professor at the University of California, Hastings who studies social class. Her book The White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America explains how differently professionals and the working class see their daily work. Her research is a wise, honest look into working class values, beliefs, and opinions about their families and work.

Here are six differences between how professionals and the working class see their work.

Discernment versus discipline. For professionals, the spiritual and occupational challenge of work is discernment. There are so many good things we could do with our lives, how do we choose? The challenge is to stay inspired for eleven-hour work days without burning out.

But for the working class, endless choice isn’t a luxury they have. Instead, getting and keeping a good job through discipline and moral integrity is the higher priority. Consistently Williams research shows working class families value honesty, having integrity, and being hardworking, while they look down on dishonesty, being irresponsible, and being lazy.

“Hard work for elites is associated with self-actualization; ‘disruption’ means founding a start-up,” writes Williams. “Disruption, in working-class jobs, just gets you fired.”

For the working-class, self-control, discipline, and saying no to temptation is the only way out of the maze.

Achievement versus struggle. Professionals see work as a chance to achieve and prove yourself. Many college educated young adults, says David Brooks in The Road to Character, see work as the arena to maximize financial and psychological benefit while minimizing discomfort.

The working class, however, sees work as a constant struggle for survival. Job insecurity, dropping wages, and balancing child care put constant stress on working class families. Many working class families feel at a constant disadvantage. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, decided to join the working-class by taking jobs as a waitress, nursing home aide, Wal-Mart sales clerk and living in the motels and cheap trailer parks. She found that no job is truly “un-skilled,” that enormous mental and physical effort is needed to survive, and that often one job isn’t enough – two is necessary if you want a roof over your head.

Networks versus “real work.” Many professional jobs involve social skills and managing networks of influence. Yet the working class feel that their work, which often involves technical expertise, is both more down-to-earth than the work of professionals, and more practically valuable.

Many in the working class also feel a deep sense of pride in their work. Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soul Craft, points out the dignity the manual laborer feels after a day’s work. “He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on.”

One values relational influence, the other tends to value practical usefulness.

Work-identity versus Communal-identity. In professional communities, work-a-holism and busyness is a sign of success. Missing your kid’s swim meet is honorable, if it’s for a deposition (or a writing assignment.) For professionals, you are what you do. They derive their identity from their work.

But the working-class dismiss work devotion as narcissism. One technician criticized people who are “so self-assured, so self-intense that they really don’t care about anyone else. It’s me, me, me.” Ambition is seen as trying to get ahead, a way to leave behind the community that cared for you in pursuit of personal success.

Instead, the working-class prizes traditional values and family loyalty. If you’re from professional family, moving to Silicon Valley is a fun opportunity. But if you sell toilets, it’s safer to hang out with people who won’t judge you for your dirty job. “Familiar faces provide a buffer against humiliation,” writes Williams.

Creativity versus dependability. Professionals value entrepreneurial initiative, boundary breaking, and creativity. They signal initiative by “breaking the rules.” But the working-class values dependability and stability, which are useful dispositions if you’re an order-taker rather than an order-maker.

At one electrical contractor in Denver, there are three characteristics of successful apprentices: show up on time, have a good attitude, and be willing to learn. Creativity just might get you electrocuted.

Now What?

Take a look at this list of questions as ask which you more identify with:

Professionals	Working Class
How can I stay inspired?	How can I keep my job?
How can I make an impact?	How do I get through the week?
Who can you connect me to?	Who will notice what I’ve made?
“What do you do?”	“Where did you grow up?”
How can I challenge the status quo?	How do I get me and my family out of the maze?

My guess is that nearly all of you reading this will identify more with the first list than the second. If you’re reading the second list and say, “Yes, that’s me,” leave a comment below.

I’d like to meet you and learn more about your world.

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Culture Economy Faith and Work Movement Vocation Work

“God of the Second Shift: The Missing Majority in the Faith and Work Conversation” (Christianity Today Cover Story)

September 27, 2018

By Jeff Haanen

The following is the cover story for the October 2018 print issue of Christianity Today. To access the full article for free, click the “friends and family” link below. Also, if you’re not a subscriber, please consider subscribing to Christianity Today to support their work. Here’s an excerpt of the story.

Our group was white, college-educated, and passionate about helping people find meaning in their careers. We looked at Josué “Mambo” De León, pastor of a bilingual working-class congregation called Westside Church Internacional, eager to hear his thoughts on a recent “faith and work” conference.

“For us, work isn’t about thriving,” Mambo said. “It’s about surviving.”

Between bites of salad, it slowly became clear who the man in a red baseball cap, World Cup T-shirt, and jeans really was: an emissary from another world.

“You start with the premise that you have a job and that you feel a lack of purpose,” he said. “But that doesn’t resonate with us. How are you supposed to find purpose and flourish when you don’t even have opportunities?”

On my way home from the office of the nonprofit I run, Denver Institute for Faith & Work, I stewed over Mambo’s comments. They reminded me of a similar conversation I’d had with Nicole Baker Fulgham, president of an educational reform group called The Expectations Project. Baker Fulgham, an African American working with low-income kids, asked me bluntly: “So when do we start talking about faith, work, and life for fast-food employees?”

In the past decade, the faith and work movement has exploded. Hundreds of new conferences, books, and organizations have sprung up from San Diego to Boston. But there’s a growing anxiety among Christian leaders that our national vocation conversation has a class problem.

A hundred years ago, partnerships between clergy and labor unions flourished. Yet as the forces of industrialization transformed the trades in the late 19th century, and vocational education and liberal arts schools parted ways, a new mantra for the college-educated took root: “Do what you love.” The late Steve Jobs, in a 2005 Stanford commencement speech, stated, “You’ve got to find what you love. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” Work done out of necessity was devalued, and eventually conversations about Christianity and work applied the word vocation mostly to college kids contemplating work they would most enjoy.

Today, when American evangelical leaders talk about work, the working class—which is two-thirds of the American workforce—is largely absent. What are we missing?

Daily Meaning or Daily Humiliations?

Years ago, I started Denver Institute after reading Studs Terkel’s 1971 classic Working, an oral history of working-class Americans. Work, Terkel says, “is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”

Of course! I thought. This fit well with my graduate school angst (and growing boredom with my assignments). I liked the quote so much that I put it in my email signature.

But somewhere along the way, I forgot that Terkel also believed work was centrally about “violence—to the spirit as well as the body. It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations.”

This didn’t sound like the workplaces I was used to. But the tension between Terkel’s two statements has started to resonate with me. In the past five years, we in Denver have hosted thousands of doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and other young professionals at our events. But there’s been a conspicuous absence of home care workers, retail sales clerks, landscapers, janitors, or cooks.

Calvin College philosopher James K. A. Smith—who once pulled 10-hour graveyard shifts on an air filter assembly line—observes, “The bias of the [faith and work] conversation toward professional, ‘creative,’ largely white-collar work means that many people who undertake manual or menial labor simply don’t see themselves as having a voice in this conversation.”

It may be time to do some soul-searching. Have we, by which I mean myself and presumably many of this magazine’s readers, seen the culture-shaping power of work but been blind to the “daily humiliations” of those whose work we depend on each day? Have we been interpreting Scripture through our own professional class bias and failed to ask how working-class Americans think and feel about their work?

The Great Divide

“Because hard work was such a high value for our family, it was also demoralizing,” says pastor Jim Mullins of Redemption Church in Tempe, Arizona. “One of the most difficult aspects of growing up was not the lack of money but the shame that would come with not having opportunities. That shame would boil into anger. I think a lot of the drug use and alcohol [use] that we experienced was a sort of numbing of the shame.”

Mullins’s story echoes the stories of millions of working-class Americans who have seen life deteriorate over the past 50 years in nearly every economic and social category. (I use the term “working-class” to mean those without a four-year college degree.)

The growing body of research is astounding…

(Read the rest of the article at Christianity Today.)

Culture

Justice

August 15, 2018

“So, last year I was initiated into a secret society of sorts, one that is baffling and somewhat overwhelming: it’s called the swim meet. All of my four kids swim, and this year, we had three kids competing for the Ben Franklin Fish. Let me describe these Saturdays to you. There are more kids running around than there are ants. Goggles, swim caps, heating, music, concessions, and wall-to-wall lawn chairs and tents to endure the 8 hour Saturdays outside. I never thought I’d be that parent, but this year, we actually went the night before to set up our 10’ x 10’ tent and lawn chairs to claim our real estate at the swim meet. I am that parent

One day, our kids were competing at Cherry Knolls and Kelly set up our tent in a high traffic area. This made me nervous. I’m an introvert. And so heat, noise, and tons of people make me want to run away and find a large shade tree and a book. And so, several weeks ago, between kid races, that’s what I did. I sat under a tree, and read a book called Our Kids by Robert Putnam. In this book, Putnam tells to story of two kids: Chelsea and David…”

I recently gave a sermon on the topic of justice at my home church. The sermon text was Proverbs 29:7. “The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.” I chose the text because Putnam referenced it in his haunting and masterful book. After reading Our Kids I thought: am I one of the righteous who care about justice for the poor, or am I one of the wicked who have no such concern?

Here’s the sermon:

Would love to hear your thoughts if you have the chance to listen to it.

Business Economy Work

Faith and Entrepreneurship

August 9, 2018

Two weeks ago I shared with our newly formed “Entrepreneur’s Forum,” a quarterly gathering of founders and early stage investors in the Denver area. The topic was faith and entrepreneurship, and I laid out what I thought were three starting points for thinking about entrepreneurship as a Christian: Creation, Fall, and the Great Commandment.

Here’s the audio. Eventually, the audio and the Powerpoint will be available on our new learning platform at Scatter.org.

Enjoy.

Faith and Work Movement Work

Stephen Blankenship to Join Denver Institute as the New Director of Scatter

July 9, 2018

Well, today is a good day. Big news: Stephen Blankenship is the new director of Scatter, Denver Institute for Faith & Work’s new learning platform designed to equip the Body of Christ to serve God in all areas of life.

Stephen is one of the first graduates of tech stars, a startup accelerator in Boulder, and was the co-founder and former CTO of the DailyBurn, a fitness website now with an estimated 2.5 million members.

A software engineer by trade and entrepreneur by experience, having Stephen take the helm at Scatter bodes well not just for DIFW, but for the millions of men and women seeking to serve God and their neighbors Monday through Saturday, scattered into every corner of culture.

Plus, working with somebody with that kind of beard game, who wouldn’t be excited?

(Official press release is here.)