Recently I bought a small, red cabinet for my wife and kid’s homeschool books. It was from IKEA, so how hard could assembly really be? Yet in only 20 minutes, I had managed to drill three holes in the wrong side of the red cabinet door. My wife took the project away from me, and assembled it for herself. I have concluded that I not only lack a manual and spacial intelligence, but that I’ve significantly undervalued those who build just about everything I see.

My respect for our culture’s craftsmen has grown – especially since Christ Horst and myself recently did an article for Christianity Today entitled “The Handcrafted Gospel.” The editor chose the subtitle “Meet the craftsmen reclaiming the honor of manual labor.” In our culture, “honor” and “manual labor” don’t often go hand in hand. We steer our students away from ‘tech schools’, believe thinking is for the office, not the shop, and have precious few “faith and work” events for electricians, contractors, carpenters or plumbers. Yet there is a huge skills gap and labor shortage for skilled manual labor in the US.

We have a problem.

Here’s a sneak preview of our theology for the craftsmen. Enjoy.

“I’ve always enjoyed building and fixing things,” says Brandon Yates.

After high school, Yates became an electrician. A fast study, he advanced quickly through the first two electrical certifications, apprentice and journeyman. Finally, when he became a master electrician in 1999, Yates founded KC One, an electrical contracting services company based in Kansas City, Missouri.

“Craftsman is a lost word in our day,” says Yates, now 37, who 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. In our “cultural iconography,” notes scholar Mike Rose, the craftsman is a “muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no thought bright behind the eye, no image that links hands and brain.” Thinking, it’s assumed, is for the office, not the shop.

But considering that Scripture identifies Jesus himself as a tektōn (Mark 6:3, literally “craftsman” or “one who works with his hands”), we think it’s high time to challenge the tradesman stereotype, and to rethink the modern divide between white collar and blue collar, office and shop, in light of the Divine Craftsman who will one day make all things new.

Apprentices and disciples

Craftspeople (harashim)—masons, barbers, weavers, goldsmiths, stonecutters, carpenters, potters—are replete in the Bible. The first person Scripture says was filled with the Spirit of God was Bezalel, who was given “ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze” (Ex. 31:1–5, ESV). Passages like these suggest God cares about craftsmanship, above all in his most holy places. From the tabernacle to the temple, what was built was meant to reflect and reveal God’s character. The temple was not just a majestic building; it spoke powerfully of his holiness.

Likewise, some of the most important New Testament figures worked with their hands…more

Work

What’s Wrong with, “Do What You Love”?

June 18, 2014

We’ve said it for so long to graduating college seniors it’s become almost gospel. Do what you love. Do what you’re passionate about. Don’t settle for just a job. Follow your dreams. But is this wisdom or just hot air?

Gordon Marino recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about his experience at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. In contrast to the college students who came into his office, “rubbing their hands together, and furrowing their brows,” wondering if they should become doctors, philosophers, or stand-up comics, many people in Northfield delivered papers at 5am or became roofers. Marino’s own father worried very little about “doing what he loved.” He worked at a job he hated for most of his career in order to take care of his family.

The rub, says writer Miya Tokumitsu, is that the “do what you love” ethos is actually elitist because it undermines work that is not done out of “passion.” Moreover, it severs the traditional connection between work, talent and duty. The vast majority of the world’s workers are not working because they love the job, but instead are simply providing for their loved ones, and they had little choice in the matter.

Kate Harris of The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation & Culture has aptly pointed out that in today’s culture, the word vocation has been twisted from its original meaning of living one’s entire life in response to the call of God. Instead, for many it refers to an ideal job, one that forever seems over the rainbow. In my own experiences in Denver, I’ve found this to be the case as well. Mentioning the word vocation elicits a range of responses, mostly involving: “I feel called to…” or “I don’t feel called to…” The emphasis is on our personal feelings, self-fulfillment, and career preferences, not necessarily on hearing and obeying the voice of God.

Throughout its usage in Christian history vocation has rarely if ever meant “do what you love.” More often than not, the call of God was actually a call to suffer for the sake of others. Moses was called from the desert to free the Israelites from slavery, only to be burdened with the task of another 40 years of wandering the desert with a bunch of grumblers. Jeremiah was called to suffer as a prophet to the nations; a calling he rued later is his life. (“Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!” [Jeremiah 20:14]). Paul was called to be the great apostle to the Gentiles, and God tells him through Ananias, “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name,” (Acts 9:16). Not exactly “do what you love.”

Of course, the biblical idea of calling is not for sake of suffering, it’s for the sake of Christ, and for the sake of serving others. This is why Tokumitsu’s critique is so ripe. There is a historical connection between being called, and using your gifts to serve the needs of others. For some this means doing what you love. But for most, it means doing what you must. It means using your skills to bring value and life to your community.

Is this life, this call to do what you must, inherently unsatisfying? I don’t believe so. My mother was a public school teacher in Hopkins, Minnesota for 35 years. Her days were long, and when she came home, she cooked, brought us to basketball practice, and most nights corrected papers for her third graders until she dozed off. Did she love it? Many days, yes. All the time? No way. Being a single mother supporting two kids is a life of duty and a life of service. It’s not one of self-actualization. But in the giving, my mother made a huge impact on the lives of my sister and myself.

Ironically, when we think about work, chasing after our own happiness will never bring us happiness. It is in serving others and pointing beyond ourselves that happiness is tossed in along the way. To find happiness, forget about passion. Give yourself to what the world needs. Or better yet, give yourself to God, and let him use you as He sees fit.

At the conclusion of Christopher Wright’s magisterial The Mission of God, he says, “I may wonder what kind of mission God has for me, when I should ask what kind of me God wants for his mission.” Exactly. But be prepared, this just may not be a job that you love.

This article first appeared on the Missio blog at The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation, and Culture.

Illustration by Leslie A. Wood

Economy Finance

Review of Young Money

June 12, 2014

Today Christianity Today published my review of Kevin Roose’s Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits. The book was literally hard to put down. As Roose unfolds the experience of eight young college graduates at the world’s most powerful investment banks, he captures the reader with a haunting portrayal of work that in almost every way destroys a soul. If I ever needed motivation to build Denver Institute for Faith & Work, I need look no further.

Here’s the first part of the review:

Only halfway through his first year as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, Jeremy Miller-Reed fell into a deep depression. The 100-hour work weeks and endless Excel spreadsheets he could handle. But his boss, Penelope, he could not. Penelope looked like Julia Roberts but had the personality of Genghis Khan. Junior analysts dreaded her wrath. After assigning a 20-page memo to Jeremy over her vacation, she returned to find a single page missing. “You had all week to get this right!” she screamed. That night, Jeremy went to the roof of his apartment, lit up a joint, and cried in the rain, thinking to himself I can’t do this anymore.

In college, Jeremy, like most young financial analysts, was bright, motivated, and had high hopes. He graduated from Columbia University, and in the summer of 2010 was excited to begin a career at Goldman Sachs selling commodities—oil, gas, corn, wheat, precious metals. Lured by a starting salary of $70,000, plus bonuses of up to $50,000, he rationalized that a two-year stint as an investment banker would be good experience for a planned career in urban design or politics. It was a common decision among his peers. At Harvard in 2008, 28 percent of seniors headed into financial services, and at Princeton in 2006, it was a stunning 46 percent. But for Jeremy, it was a decision that would haunt him—as it would the sorry cast of Kevin Roose’s new book Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits.

From 2010-2013, Roose, a business writer for New York magazine, shadowed eight freshly minted investment bankers during their first two years on Wall Street, tracking their stories. From starry-eyed interns to disillusioned, exhausted, and depressed spreadsheet jockeys, Roose’s Young Money reads like a handbook for everything and anything than can go wrong with work.

Moral Black Hole

The work of young analysts is often mind-numbing. Most investment bank rookies spend days (and nights) creating “pitch books”—hundreds of pages of financial data for companies considering buying other companies. After hours of formatting cells, creating graphs, and producing Excel models, often pitch books would be blasted by bosses… (read more)

Culture Technology Theology Video Work

Keynote Addresses from Denver Institute

May 19, 2014

Well, I’m a bit biased here, but DIFW has been killin’ it lately. Here are keynote addresses from the past 6 months on the topics of technology, power, law, business and vocation. Enjoy.

https://vimeo.com/79194491

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Work

How We Lost the Craftsman

April 24, 2014

It was a crisp, winter morning and I stood outside Manual High School, traditionally one of Denver’s lowest performing schools. Along with twelve other seminary students on an urban ministry site visit, we listened to our professor. “Manual is one of Denver’s oldest institutions,” he said, pointing to the brick edifice. “It opened in 1896, and was named Manual because it was originally intended as a vocational school to train students for manual labor.”

We quietly shook our heads in disbelief. How could educators have such low expectations for their students? Didn’t the founders believe all students could go to college? So great was our 21^st century disdain for manual labor that we naturally connected Manual High School’s low academic performance with its original intent: preparing students for the manual trades.

Americans today devalue manual labor with an almost righteous indignation. We can see it in our economy, in our schools, in our entertainment, and even in the church. And it’s causing all sorts of problems. Let’s take these one by one:

Economy. Consider these statistics. The average age of today’s tradesperson is 56, with an average of 5-15 years until retirement. As skilled laborers retire in masses, America will need an estimated 10 million new skilled tradesmen by 2020 (such as a pipefitters, masons, carpenters, or high-skilled factory workers). But even today, an estimated 600,000 jobs in the skilled trades are unfilled, while 83% of companies report a moderate to serious shortage in skilled laborers. The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and BusinessWeek have all recognized the huge shortage we have of skilled laborers.

Schools. Across the US, as the need for skilled laborers has increased, the number of classes in “tech ed” – traditionally known as “shop class” – have all but disappeared. For example, in Jefferson County Public School District in Colorado, only three remaining schools have any kind of “tech ed” programs – of a district of over 84,000 students. And in Denver Public Schools, there are only two shop classes remaining – and one of them is currently selling all their equipment to local buyers. As high schools prepare youth to be “knowledge workers,” they unload lathes, table saws, and other “vocational ed” equipment in droves.

The assumption that every student should go to a four your liberal arts college has almost become sacrosanct for urban, suburban and rural students alike. Going to a two-year trade school is seen as a path for “average” to underperforming students. As educator Mike Rose has said in his book The Mind at Work about the cultural image of the tradesmen: “We are given the muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no thought bright behind the eye, no image that links hands and brain.” Real thinking, our schools have taught us, happens in the office, not the shop. And today have a veritable mountain of student debt – an estimated $1.2 trillion in the US alone – and the lowest labor participation rate since 1978.

Culture. Even in entertainment, we’ve persistently devalued trade schools and community colleges. NBC’s satirical TV show “Community,” portrays American community colleges (which train many skilled tradesmen, among other professions) as the pit of the academic world. The show takes place at Greendale Community College, where “Straight A’s” are “Accessibility, Affordability, Air Conditioning, Awesome New Friends, and A lot of fun.” Perhaps community college is “a lot of fun,” but such merciless mocking finds its way into the future plans of high school students – plans to avoid trade schools and community college at all costs.

Church. In the past 5-10 years, there’s been a renewed interest among protestants in the topic of work. Three years ago Christianity Today launched the This Is Our City project, which profiled evangelicals working in various industries for “the common good” of their city. Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City has launched a “Center for Faith and Work.” Gabe Lyons’ Q Cities convenes conferences of culturally-minded evangelicals who work in industries like art, media or education. Conferences, books, and seminars on God and work have multiplied, and evangelicals in finance, business, technology, art, science and nonprofits have received renewed attention. But one sector has largely been overlooked: skilled manual labor.

James K.A. Smith, a professor of philosophy at Calvin College, recently wrote, “Do people show up to your ‘faith & work’ events in coveralls? With dirt under their nails? No? Then whose ‘work’ are we talking about?” Though surely not everybody in the modern economy will have “dirt under their nails” after a day’s work, he makes a good point: where are the examples plumbers, landscapers, carpenters, and electricians among this renewed interest in vocation? And more broadly, where are the examples of craftsman and “blue collar” workers who are intentionally living out their vocations in and through their trade? Are executives and professionals the only ones privileged enough to wed meaning with work?

All of this is strange for at least two reasons. First, we all depend on the work of craftsmen every single day. Whether it’s your HVAC repairman, plumber, or electrician, heat, clean water and even light flow as a direct result of their work. The work of the trades is of the utmost importance for nearly every aspect of modern life.

But as a Christian myself, this cultural situation strikes me as even more strange. After all, the Bible is replete with craftsmen – masons, goldsmiths, gem cutters, potters and weavers. The Bible even states that the first person explicitly filled with the Holy Spirit is Bezalel, whom God filled “with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills—to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts,” (Ex. 31:3-5). And, lest we forget, Jesus was a tekton, translated literally as “craftsman” or “one who works with his hands” (Mk. 6:3).

What has gone wrong here? How is it that we came to devalue the craftsman, to the detriment of our economy, schools, churches and culture? To find answers, we need to look to history.

Losing the Craftsman

Such a disdain for the trades was not always so. In the mid-nineteenth century, craftsmen were an integral part of the professional and scientific community. For example, the Mechanics Institutes of Britain had over 200,000 members, which hosted lectures that satisfied the intellectual curiosity of millwrights, metal workers, mechanics and other tradesmen with evening lectures by professors and scientists.

Likewise, in the 1884 book The Wheelwright’s Shop, George Sturt relates his experience of making carriage wheels from lumber. Previously a school teacher with literary ambitions, Sturt was enraptured with the challenges of shaping timber with hand tools: “Knots here, shakes there, rind-galls, waney edges, thicknesses, thinnesses, were for ever affording new chances or forbidding previous solutions, whereby a fresh problem confronted the workman’s ingenuity every few minutes.”

Manual labor was not only integral to scientific discovery, it attracted many of the best minds of its day. In the 18^th and 19^th century, some of history’s finest scientists – Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), James Watt (1736-1819), Samuel Crompton (1753-1827)– were also craftsmen who built what they designed, and knew no separation between working with the hands and the mind.

Yet the forces of industrialization were changing the skilled trades. Even as early as The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith marveled at the efficiencies of the factory: “One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head…Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins a day.” The division of labor could produce more pins in a day between ten people than one person alone could produce in a lifetime.

Although the factory had been around for generations, the automation of work took on a new dimension in 1911, when Frederick Winslow Taylor published his Principles of Scientific Management. As Matthew Crawford has pointed out, Taylor’s work focused on gathering the knowledge of craftsmen, organizing it into high efficiency processes, and then re-distributing that work to laborers as small parts of a larger whole. After extensive time and motion studies, Taylor was able to design processes, overseen by management, which allowed employers to cut labor costs by standardizing much manual labor. According to Taylor, “All possible brain work should be removed from the shop and centered in the planning or lay-out department.” Thus the previous harmony of craftsmen and thinker, skilled labor and scientist, began a long process of separation. A “white-collar” labor force of planners and “blue-collar” mass of workers began to emerge.

The positive side of mass manufacturing was unprecedented wealth creation. In 1913, Henry Ford’s assembly line was able to double worker wages and still produce cars more cheaply than his competitors, allowing thousands to afford an upgrade from a carriage to a Model T. Yet the negative side of automation was the monotonous routines for workers, which, according to Ford’s biographer, meant “every time the company wanted to add 100 men to its factory personnel, it was necessary to hire 963.” Skilled craftsmen would simply walk off the line, with a sour taste for work that made them feel like machines themselves.

(Perhaps business philosopher Peter Drucker was right: “Machines work best if they do only one task, if they do it repetitively, and if they do the simplest possible task…[But] the human being…is a very poorly designed machine tool. The human being excels in coordination. He excels in relation perception to action. He works best if the entire human being, muscles, senses and mind, is engaged in the work.”)

At the turn of the 20^th century, engaging work seemed like it was being lost in the cogs of industry – and in the mean time, craft knowledge was bowing to mechanical processes.

In the days when Teddy Roosevelt was preaching the virtues of the strenuous life to East Coast elites, many felt education needed to change to ensure the survival of craft knowledge. Only 4 years after Ford’s assembly line, the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 gave federal funding for manual training. Yet because the bill established separate state boards for vocational education, it had the unintended effect of separating the trades from a liberal arts curriculum. General education would be focused on the liberal arts (college), and vocational education would focus on specific job skills (trade schools).

The advent of shop class began to track all “blue collar” work – whether the high skilled tradesmen or the low skilled assembly line worker – into a single category. Over time, shop class meant children of “white collar” workers could make a bird feeder or toy car in shop class, but they had little remaining skills of the craftsmen, which for centuries had been passed on through a process of apprenticeship.

We feel the lingering effects of this division between “vocational ed” and a liberal arts education today. Most of those who graduate with degrees in film studies, sociology, or even mathematics or physics haven’t the foggiest idea how to actually fix a car engine, build a table, or wire a light fixture.

Yet the greater effect is the enormous economic problem we now have before us – there are literally millions of “dirty jobs,” as Mike Rowe, the former host of the Discovery Channel Show, would call them. But swathes of young people would would never consider a career in plumbing or construction, despite evidence that these jobs both pay well and are here to stay. Computers and technology have certainly changed our labor force (and will continue to change the economy, as a recent article in The Economist convincingly argues), but they will never change the fact that we live in a physical world – and we will always need physical things because we are physical beings. We will always depend fundamentally on the physical goods – whether made or repaired – that are the unique domain of the craftsman.

Signs of Hope

What is to be done about this problem? Although this is a monumental challenge, we can do at least two things. First, praise examples of excellent craftsmanship – from chefs and jewelers to masons and electricians – that arise from above the criticism and display an ethic of skill, beauty and manual intelligence in their work.

For example, every four years, France hosts the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (MOF) competition. One event features a fierce three-day competition between 16 international pastry chefs jockeying for the blue, white and red striped collar that signifies culinary excellence. Chefs are judged on artistry – the visual appearance of the desserts, buffets and, for example, sugar sculptures – taste – entries have very specific size and ingredient specifications – and work – how clean and efficiently the chefs work; including spotless aprons, no waste (exact planning is required), immaculate kitchens. Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, producers of the documentary “Kings of Pastry” said in an interview , “The idea of recognizing excellence in manual trades and elevating them to a status equal to intellectual or academic fields is what is uniquely important about the MOF Competition” (emphasis mine). Indeed, Meilleurs Ouvriers de France, when translated, is “Best Craftsman in France,” a title won only by the finest chefs exhibiting the highest levels of skill and manual intelligence. And France’s competition isn’t just limited to chefs; there are also competitions for stonemasonry, plumbing, tailoring, weaving, cabinetmaking, soldering, glassblowing, diamond-working, and a host of other trades.

In America, Tad Landis Meyers, a photographer, recently published Portraits of the American Craftsman – a stunningly beautiful photo journal of the work of a “lost generation of craftsman.” Scotty Bob Carlson of Silverton, Colorado makes hand-crafted skis; Nell Ann McBroom of Nocona, Texas cuts, dies and sews baseball gloves; Steinway and Sons Pianos in Long Island New York makes pianos “designed to last not just for years, but for generations.” Meyers’ five year journey of photographing American craftsmen has revealed an almost forgotten way of life, defined by careful skill, mastery of the physical world, and satisfying work. Brett Hull of Hull Historical Millwork in Fort Worth Texas says, “The simplicity of the clean lines or the intricacy of the detail are exciting to me. It’s something that just fills my soul.”

But praising excellent craftsmanship can also be more commonplace. Drop a laudatory comment to the construction worker who’s laying pavement; marvel at a gang of conduit that winds itself above light fixtures; choose to buy a table that will last not for years but generations. The simple act of recognition is powerful.

But second, and most importantly, encourage more young people to go to trade school. That’s what more people are doing around Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They recently announced a $2.5 million dollar grant to expand training programs for high-wage, high-demand manufacturing jobs. And with a a 95 percent job placement rate, minimal student debt, and jobs like an industrial apprentice that can start at $60,000 with full benefits, more students are taking a look at choosing trade school over a 4 year college degree.

I’m not encouraging more young people to be vocational mercenaries (go get the quick money!), but for those students who nod off in British literature (God forbid) but come alive when rebuilding an engine, we must acknowledge that some people are designed to be builders – and that’s okay. It may even get them a better job than their peers who end up as debt ridden, college-educated baristas who can make a mean latte, but find trouble getting into a career.

The craftsman lives on – yet still in the corners culture more enamored with the virtual world than the physical world. But for the sake of our economy, schools, culture and even our churches, we would profit to once again appreciate our culture’s makers and fixers – the craftsmen.

Photo: American Craftsman Project

This essay first appeared in The City, a publication of Houston Baptist University. Also, Chris Horst and myself have a feature essaying coming out in Christianity Today this summer on the topic of craftsmanship and the gospel.

[Exq_ppd_form]

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor

Knotted Dreams: A Carpenter’s Story

April 2, 2014

Josh Mabe led me behind his shop. “It’s a mess back here,” he said. What I saw was not your typical Home Depot fare: old railroad carts, wine barrels, deserted barn doors, discarded flooring from nineteenth century homes, planks from the bed of a semi-truck trailer – each piece had a common theme: it had been abandoned by somebody else.

But for Mabe, each piece of discarded lumber is the object of his craft, an opportunity to bring life from decay. Josh is the owner of Twenty1Five, a small furniture business specializing in reclaimed wood located in Palmer Lake, Colorado, nestled at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Josh, a carpenter and craftsmen, has attracted state-wide attention. Rocky Mountain PBS, 5280, a Denver magazine, and Luxe magazine have praised his attention to sustainability and “upcycling” – creating new products from used materials.

Yet it’s the products themselves that turn heads. His tables are a mosaic of shape, texture and color. He can turn drab boardrooms into a collage of natural beauty, and sterile kitchens into a wild array of Mountain West history. Each cabinet, door, and coffee table is invested with slow, careful skill.

[easyrotator]erc_33_1395890583[/easyrotator]

“I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands,” Mabe recalls. After college he taught shop class for eleven years at a public school. A retiring co-worker would leave scrap wood behind the school and collected scraps from local contractors – “what people would consider ugly wood.” But Mabe, unable to part with the discarded lumber, took it home and built a table for his wife from the “reclaimed” wood. The table caught the attention of his neighbors, but initially nothing came of it.

Until September 29, 2011.

For financial reasons, Mabe took a job selling insurance. “But I was dying on the vine,” he told his wife, lamenting the confines of an office. “But that day,” Mabe recalls,” I distinctly remember God telling me, ‘Go, make tables. And in two weeks I’ll bring you orders.’” That Monday, he went to his shop and began to build. Orders came in. Word began to spread, and Twenty1Five was born.

This process of restoration inspired the name Twenty1Five, which is from Revelation 21:5, where Jesus says: “Behold, I make all things news.” Their name peaks curiosity with both Christian and non-believing clients. Yet he tells the story faithfully just the same. And so far, sharing the gospel as he shares about his craft has not yet cost him any customers.

Mabe travels to abandoned barns, weary homesteads, and to the forgotten corners of rural Colorado. He works with customers to “source” each piece of discarded lumber, ultimately to be refashioned into a dining room table, door, or TV stand. He offers custom booklets to customers that tell the knotted history of each piece of furniture he crafts in his shop – the lifespan of lumber that served, was forgotten, and finally renewed. And in so doing he shares a subtle tale of redemption – of buying back the useless, of uncovering hidden beauty.

Knotted Dreams

Yet Mabe’s story has not been without challenges. The first challenge was embracing a call to be a tradesmen in a culture that has abandoned shop class and “tech ed” in favor of a virtual world.

Mabe had been a teacher in the Jefferson County Public School District, a district with less than three schools remaining that teach tech ed – and one with more than 80,000 students. As high schools prepare youth to be “knowledge workers,” they unload lathes, table saws, and other “vocational ed” equipment in favor of iPads, smart devices, and entrance into four-year liberal arts colleges.

Though Josh attended college, it was always in the shop rather than the classroom that he found his gifting. “Coming from a school system that so pushes college down kid’s throats —,” Josh paused, as if to remember his first grade son. “I have a son who’s so wired to build…I just want to cultivate that and honor the gift that God has given him.”

Yet even as educators emphasize preparing students for an “information economy,” employers are yearning for skilled tradesmen. In 2012, Manpower Group reported 53 percent of American skilled-trade workers were 45 years of age and older, and nearly 18.6 percent were between 55 and 64. As America’s plumbers, electricians, steelworkers, machinists and carpenters retire, America will need an additional 10 million skilled tradesmen by 2020. Even today, 83% of companies report a moderate to serious shortage in skilled laborers.

But an economic demand for tradesmen doesn’t guarantee a smooth career path. Since our interview in October 2013, more knots have emerged in Mabe’s story. Last fall, his business partner, Randy Valentine, decided to move on. Randy did the marketing and business development, and Josh made the furniture. But now, as the sole owner of Twenty1Five, Josh had to renegotiate his dream. His wife went back to work full-time, and Josh now works part-time. He drives his kids to and from school each day, and fills orders as he’s able.

But the knots in Mabe’s story have not dampened his dreams for Twenty1Five. “I still have big dreams,” says Mabe, “but I now hold them more lightly.” In his earlier days as an entrepreneur, the vision held a tighter grip on his heart. But now, with hands held open, he trusts God will provide and continue to lead the way in his vocational journey.

Thinking back to the advent of his business, Mabe recalls, “What really spurred us on was the story that parallels between our lives and what we do. Most of this stuff,” pointing to a knotted board, “is beat up and has got scars, and is discarded lumber. But if you take that stuff and see beyond some of those scars, you can make something really beautiful out of it.”

Josh Mabe is speaking at the April 11 dinner event with Amy Sherman. To hear Josh’s story in person, you can register by clicking here.

Education

Education and Christian Faith

March 17, 2014

As soon as Christians bring up the topic of faith and education, they quickly divide into two camps. On one side are those that argue passionately for educational equity, and see the foundational expression of the Christian faith in public education as one of equal access and “closing the achievement gap.” Here, justice is the issue.

On the other side are those in Christian schools and home schools who see the integration of faith and education as a plain matter of teaching Bible, theology, and the “Christian worldview” as the centerpiece of the educational experience. For them a version of “Christian education” is the answer. Here, truth is the issue.

Yet what I find disturbing is that these two groups rarely talk to each other. And instead versions of name calling usually take place. Those committed to public schools will call Christian school and homeschool families “separatists,” – they’re ignoring the needs of their community and instead living in a “holy huddle” instead of being “salt and light” in the world. And those in the Christian school and homeschool world look at those in public school with disbelief: how could you let a secular government raise your kids? Don’t you know there’s no such thing as a neutral education?

And because parents have made these decisions for their children, their most precious of treasures, any suggestion that they have made a wrong or “unChristian” decision is most likely to incur rage rather than rational discourse. For this reason, nearly every pastor I’ve ever spoken to about this issue refuses to bring it up. Why incur the wrath of moms on both side when I can just avoid it all together, and say, “Well, it’s a personal choice.”

What we lack almost completely is a view of faith influencing the practice of education itself.

Let me try to explain with an illustration. Last week, a well known Christian advocate for educational equity came to Denver and gave a conference at a church. She spoke about her organization, the needs of low-income students around the US, and the idea that access to a quality education is a moral issue – an issue that all Christians that care about justice should support and act upon. What followed were illustrations of Christians in after-school mentoring programs and families moving into low-income neighborhoods to send their kids to underperforming schools. Her argument was supported by biblical verses about justice.

Then the issue of prayer in public schools came up. Shouldn’t kids have the right to pray in school? What about before sports games? But after some discussion, the presenters (and pastors) agreed that Christians shouldn’t just be interested in praying in school – they must simply serve the needs of their community, which, again, meant educational equality.

What was never even brought up was how the Christian faith should influence the actual teaching and learning process. Because we’ve so largely accepted the idea that the gospel belongs in the private sphere (home and personal life, or in this context, homeschool and Christian school), we’ve by and large accepted the idea that speaking the gospel in a public school context is either rude or possibly illegal, and utilizing the gospel as a framework for understanding our work in public education is simply inappropriate.

So what are you saying? That public school teachers should share their faith in front of the classroom – maybe quote a few Bible verses before literature class? Realistically, any Christian teacher that did this would get a barrage of phone calls from parents – and possibly a severe reprimand from her principal. This path won’t realistically work in a pluralistic society.

But I am saying that in a republic that protects freedom of religious expression, there ought to be freedom for Muslims, Christians, Jews, secular humanists, Hindus, or those with modern scientific worldview to openly express their beliefs. Teachers could obviously not lead prayers, but neither should they feel forced to lie about the reasons why they act, think, or speak as they do. Stephen Prothero’s book Religious Literacy cites the huge need that public school kids have for just understanding what religions believe – and several Supreme Court decisions that have protected the teaching of world religions in a public school context.

This alone would be a huge step forward. Right now, people of any explicit faith tradition feel afraid to even share what they believe openly. Instead, a dark cloud of silence rests on most public schools – and students leave schools largely ignorant of history’s most influential movements, ideas and beliefs.

But this is not what I’m arguing for. We need to begin a conversation (or, more accurately, continue from centuries past) about how the Christian faith can and should influence our actual practice of education within a pluralistic society. I see this happening on two planes: (1) placing religion back in the category of knowledge and (2) exploring the subtle, “subversive” ways in which Christian doctrine can influence how and what we teach – and so better serve students and communities.

First, teachers need to ask the basic question, Can claims about God, the supernatural, or even ethics in general be true or false in the same sense that there are true and false answers in calculus or chemistry? In the science labs, teachers expect students to have the right answers, but in literature and “religious studies” it is personal opinion that reigns supreme. Even though the vast majority of school districts would say they want their students to be people of “character” or “integrity,” when teachers try to define exactly what those are – and then teach students about a clear right and wrong, like a mathematics answer can be right or wrong – they are generally left with little institutional support.

A hard question to ask is this: Did Jesus rise from the dead? On Sunday, Christians would say, “Oh, yes. Absolutely.” But when pressed in a public school context, many of those same teachers would say, “Well, that’s what I believe.” But the question remains – did Jesus rise from the dead in the same, plain historical sense in which Caesar crossed the Rubicon or Pompeii was buried in ashes by a volcano? By raising these types of questions, public school teachers can at least highlight the historical claims of the Christian faith, and begin to usher religion back into the category of knowledge – something that can be either true or false. Something that students should all investigate for themselves.

This first strategy I see is one that will largely raise the tension level in many classroom settings. But the second strategy I think can be more covert and “subversive” – but also more of a widespread blessing to people of many backgrounds and beliefs.

My friend Bill Kurtz, the CEO of Denver Schools of Science and Technology, has built a network of public charter schools that are some of the best in the US. And he has done this in part by bringing his underlying Christian faith to bear on how he sees the human person, the human condition, and his motive for serving. So, for example, he believes students are made in God’s image but are fallen and in need of restoration. And so on Wednesday mornings all students at his schools gather to both praise students who have lived out the schools values and to hear public apologies from students who skip class or don’t “do their best” – one of the school’s core values. Restoration is a part of their school’s culture.

He also believes that each student has great potential, black and white, rich and poor, quick learner or slow. He shares this belief with his co-workers from many faith backgrounds – but it is nonetheless significant that he is animated by a hope that each student has value and each student can succeed and attend college. Such an overt and pervasive hope is indeed rare in public education. But he brings this hope ultimately from the story out of which he is living. (It is a hope which has led him to launch 8 schools so far, with 6 more planned in the next 8 years.)

Here both Christian school / homeschool and public school teachers need to begin a more robust conversation about faith and education by asking how doctrines like creation, incarnation, justification, original sin, and eschatology influence everything from how we evaluate the critical thinking movement to how we structure our lesson plans. (This, by the way, is needed just as much in Christian schools as it is in public schools.) This is the mostly untested, untried arena of Christian faith and education in a pluralistic setting. And here Christians ought to be unafraid to venture, because we believe (for there is no knowledge without belief, said Augustine) that the Christian faith is the best revealer of reality – for all people at all times and in all places.

Here is the great conversation we must begin between Christian faith and education. Here is a project that brings us beyond offended parents, fearful teachers, and cultural assumptions that say we must choose either justice or truth. Here is a better way than either crusading for our religious rights or passively adopting the assumptions of secular humanism. Here is the needed cultural space we must create between church and school – a space that is more faithful to God and a better servant of our neighbors.

Work

What would you ask Eugene Peterson about your work?

March 5, 2014

If you could sit down with Eugene Peterson, the author of The Message, and ask him any question about your work or career, what would it be?

This fall, Denver Institute for Faith & Work, along with Cherry Creek Presbyterian, New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Littleton Christian Church, and Bloom Church, is hosting a special dinner for the residents of Colorado. The dinner will feature several short video clips of Eugene Peterson answering your toughest and most honest questions about calling, theology, and career.

To get the video, this Spring we will be traveling to Eugene Peterson’s home in Montana to ask him your questions about work, vocation, career and the Bible. And so before we go to his home, we want to hear your heart and thoughts. We will be collecting questions from you for the next two week on anything related to calling, work, career and the Christian faith. The top three questions will both actually be asked to Eugene Peterson for the video recording and will earn you a free dinner this Fall.

So, if you were sitting next to Eugene Peterson, what would you ask him about your work?

Work

The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma

February 28, 2014

I sat in the car, waiting for my next appointment. I was about to meet with two CEOs back-to-back. My bag was filled with literature for my start-up. And I was ready to take the stage.

That’s what it feels like, becoming an entrepreneur. Taking the stage. After months of work, day and night, you put yourself out there to sink or swim. You believe in your idea whole-heartedly, almost to the point of being surprised that others don’t see as you do. But in the midst of the risk, the excitement, a temptation can worm its way into our hearts: I am my idea.

Several months ago, I remember speaking with a pastor in Boulder who works with young tech entrepreneurs. The temptation for entrepreneurs is to so wholly identify with their new start-up that their soul becomes bound up with the new venture’s success. This is the entrepreneur’s dilemma.

Usually one of two things happen: (1) We are successful. We get the venture capital, our insane hours produce a killer product that takes off. The cash begins to pour in. We believe those who reverently call us “founder,” and soon we begin to whisper to ourselves, “Look what I have done.” And pride begins its cancerous growth. Or, conversely, (2) We fail. Either we get the venture capital and the product flops, or the idea never takes off at all. And because our identity has become so tied in with our logo, our website, the global impact we had envisioned, when the business crumbles, so do we. This failure can lead to caverns of isolation, despair, or a simmering cynicism that bubbles over into subtle anger toward the world who couldn’t see our “true genius.”

Being an entrepreneur myself, I have acutely felt both of these temptations – pride and fear, desire for glory and the specter of failure. But as I sat in the car that day, waiting for my two appointments, I turned on the radio. A song came on, and as I was listening to it, it was if I was experiencing a small taste of a Beauty so much larger and more soul-delighting than a mere song. As I offered a quiet prayer before my appointments with the two CEOs, all of a sudden I felt a rush of emotion. I felt point to a Beauty beyond me, a Beauty so rich, so filled with life, that I remember thinking: He is my great treasure, my eternal song, and he is mine, all mine. He can never be taken from me.

As I grabbed my bag, got up from my seat and shut my car door, I remembered a quote from C.S. Lewis: “He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.” That is, the Christian with wealth, power, prestige, pleasure – “everything” – has no more than the Christian with none of those things.

As both my pride and my fear began to melt away, I came to see what I wish all entrepreneurs could see: Christ himself is already the highest treasure and sweetest gift. So, if I succeed, and I can build my new venture to mythic proportions, I will have no more than what I have now. I can be no wealthier, and have no more enduring happiness than here, in this moment. And if I fail, and all my plans come crashing down, I will still have all the riches of heaven, for they are a gift that cannot be taken from me. As St. Patrick said, “Thou and Thou only, first in my heart, High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.”

It’s here that the Christian faith is the truest and best support for both entrepreneurs and economic development in general. The Christian faith is based solely on God’s gift of grace. And when risk-taking entrepreneurs bring His grace into their hearts, they neither ruin themselves nor others by their new enterprises, because they become neither prideful CEOs or despairing “failures.” Instead, they are liberated to both risk everything and, ironically, nothing at all, for their greatest treasure is secure.

On a societal level, I believe Christians have the best reason of all to take big risks. Secular humanism means the risks are real and failure can crush the human person with no reference point beyond him or herself. And it can often lead to Founder’s Blues, an all too common emotional roller coaster that can swell egos but also can lead to suicidal bouts of depression. But for the Christian, to win all or to lose all are both minuscule in comparison to the unsurpassed gift of God himself.

It’s been noted that entrepreneurs are the fuel of the modern economy. What risk. What reward. What responsibility to fuel our modern way of life. But I’ve come to believe that it’s only in the Christian story that an entrepreneur can truly answer take risks without damaging his very soul and ultimately those around him – for in Christ, he already has his great reward.

It is with this confidence that I walked into those corporate offices that day. But the confidence was certainly not in my own ability. But it was with a deep sense of peace that offering my idea was not the same as offering myself. I could confidently share my business plan, and our future prospects, and not try to wrangle him for money or support. Instead, I held my idea loosely, with a balance of eager expectation and an openness to a future that is ultimately in the hands of the One who gave me this idea in the first place.

If I had just thirty seconds with every entrepreneur, I would share with him this mystery. I would give him a soul-filling reason to work, to risk, to build a new business. I would tell him: “He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”

Photo: Entrepreneur

Economy

Vocation: The Holy Grail of Corporate America

January 7, 2014

Five hundred billion dollars. That’s how much economists estimate the US economy loses every year due to employee disengagement.

A recent Gallup poll showed that 70% of Americans are disengaged from their work – either simply punching in and punching out each day, or actually working to sabotage the company they work for.

Globally it’s worse: recently Harvard Business Review noted that 80% of the global workforce is disengaged – 10% worse than America. And the numbers aren’t getting better. Back in 2007-2008, the Global Workforce Survey conducted by Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson) polled 90,000 workers in 18 countries. Five years ago, 79% were disengaged worldwide. That’s one percentage point better, showing the world has lost ground in the past 5 years.

Imagine a global economy of Dilberts, wandering in a forest of cubicle boredom– and a sea of managers doing little to stem the tide of corporate ennui. If images of The Office are popping into your head (without the entertaining antics of Michael Scott), you wouldn’t be far from the truth.

But why hasn’t this question garnered more of our attention? Employee disengagement costs not only the US economy, but it dearly costs businesses, both large and small, in annual revenue and profits. And if these numbers are accurate for Christians as well as people of other faiths, that means that 4/5ths of the Body of Christ would rather be playing Angry Birds, checking Facebook posts from high school buddies, or taking naps under their desks than actually working.

Considering we live in an economy ever more dependent on creativity and innovation, we have to ask the question: How did the modern world become so disengaged from work, and what can be done about it?

Gary Hamel, named by the Wall Street Journal as the world’s foremost business strategist, tried to tackle this question in his book The Future of Management. He introduced a simple framework for ranking employee engagement, which he called “A Hierarchy of Human Capabilities at Work.”

A Hierarchy of Human Capabilities at Work

Level 6: Passion

Level 5: Creativity

Level 4: Initiative

_____________________

Level 3: Expertise

Level 2: Diligence

Level 1: Obedience

At the bottom is obedience – employees who show up each day and follow the rules and procedures. Obedience is necessary for large-scale organizations, but people on Level 1 simply do what they’re told. Next is diligence. These employees stay until the job is done and take personal responsibility for their work. They’re hard workers, and want to do a good job. Level 3 is expertise, or personal competence. They’re not only hard workers, but they’re good at what they do. They’re well-trained, many have great skills, and they’re eager to learn more.

Here’s the problem, however, with Levels 1-3. “Trouble is, obedience, diligence and competence are becoming global commodities,” writes Hamel, in his new book What Matters Now. “You can buy these human capabilities just about anywhere in the world, and in places like India and China, they can be bought for next to nothing.” And corporations have realized this, which is why millions of jobs have been outsourced from American and Europe to the Far East. If you’re an employee under the line in Hamel’s Hierarchy of Human Capabilities at Work (Levels 1-3), it’s likely that sooner or later, you’ll be looking for a job.

What, then, of the higher levels? Beyond expertise is initiative. These are employees who see problems or opportunities, and don’t wait to be told what to do. They’re proactive, and find ways to initiate new projects that create value for their company.

Level 5 is creativity. Here, “employees are eager to challenge conventional wisdom and are always hunting for great ideas that can be imported from other industries.” They challenge tired industry norms, pay attention to emerging trends, leverage existing skills and assets, and meet needs that customers didn’t know they yet had. For example, the creatives at Apple weren’t the first to invent a smart phone, but they did combine the idea of a smart phone with web browsing, a music player, email, alarm clock, calendar and an ecosystem of other apps. Level 5 employees are culture-makers – they create new ways of doing and thinking, and in the process shift companies, and occasionally industries.

Yet the apex of Hamel’s Hierarchy is what he simply calls “passion.” Hear how he defines passion: “[These are] employees who see their work as a calling, as a way to make a positive difference in the world. For these ardent souls, the dividing line between vocation and avocation is indistinct at best…While other employees are merely present, they are engaged.” Vocation – a deep sense of calling, a zeal to work for a purpose beyond oneself – is the single greatest need for corporations across the globe. In a creative economy, audacity, imagination and passion create the most long-term value.

But Hamel sees a problem: “[Here’s] the rub. These higher order human capabilities are gifts; they cannot be commanded. You can’t tell someone to be passionate or creative. Well, you can, of course, but it won’t do much good.”

Let’s take a step back and summarize. Most of the world can’t stand their work. It costs the economy and businesses billions of dollars, and it costs individuals of a sense of purpose. The world’s best business thinker sees this problem and crafts a hierarchy that puts action, creativity, and, of all things, vocation, at the top of his list of most valuable assets. But the problem is that these traits can only be gifts. That is, they must be given.

You can probably see where I’m going here.

It’s one thing to say that we ought to think about how to live out our faith in the business world. It’s another thing to say that the most desperate need the world – and our companies – has is people who are called to initiate and to create, both activities that have their very foundation in God himself (bara is the Hebrew word for “create” or “initiate”, used to describe God’s activity in creating the universe in Genesis 1).

What’s the takeaway? One of the wisest use of resources for any company is to help people discover their vocation, and then create fertile environments whereby employees can use their gifts to grow, create, and make a difference.

I’d also say that it would be fiscally wise for corporate leaders to leave space for honest expressions of faith, recognizing that you can’t give your employees creativity or passion. But perhaps Another can.

This post first appeared on the Denver Institute Blog.

Jeff Haanen

Moral Black Hole