What might Christianity say to those who are “stuck” in entry-level, hourly jobs? What can we say to those organizing clothes at The Gap, steaming espressos at Starbucks, or selling laptops at Best Buy? High ideals are perhaps not hard to find in medicine, law or social work. But what about the rest of us who deliver juice, sit at the front desk, or just find ourselves trying to get by? Are these jobs just “meaningless” ways to earn money, or can there be ways to apply the Christian faith here too?

Two conversations I recently had shine light on this very question. Jim is an architect. Today he designs homes and hospitals with one other partner in Denver. As we grilled out and watched our families play by their apartment pool a week ago, I asked him about his work.

He explained to me that his firm was built on biblical principles. “What do you mean ‘biblical principles?’” I had to ask. He explained that it primarily meant an attitude of genuine service toward their clients. Because they’re driven not only by the bottom line, he’s free to design what his customers genuinely need. He also said it influences how he does his work; buildings are spiritually formative. To that end, he regularly asks, “How will this design influence my client’s day-to-day life?” Besides service and the spiritual dimensions of design, he also accepts projects for nonprofit clients like Colorado Coalition of the Homeless.

“Jim,” I asked, “But what would you say to an entry-level architect that has no influence, and must simply serve the bottom-line in a larger corporation?” Jim replied, “Yes, that was me for several years. I would say find ways to create value. When I was an intern just trying to get my license, I worked in a huge corporation. But when a task was given to me, I found ways to do it with distinction and create value for both my boss and my clients.” The projects given to him turned out better than his boss expected. It was that attitude that gave Jim the reputation and relationships that set the foundation for his firm today.

Jim didn’t change the corporation, but he decided where he did have influence, and started there. His influence had a leavening effect on his small circle of clients and co-workers his first years after college. Jim created value through doing excellent work and serving the needs of others – and eventually his influence grew.

Dave is a bus driver. A dear friend from church and a wise follower of Christ, Dave told me he was laid off from his job of testing car emissions a few years ago. When he left his shop, he took a job driving a bus for special needs children. His new job was highly interpersonal in nature – a vast difference from his previous work. Although it was an unforeseen career move, Dave applied his Christian faith in bold ways.

Over burgers at a recent cookout, he recounted to me, “One day, I spoke to other bus drivers about our jobs. So many people just see this job as a paycheck. But I said to them, ‘When a kid walks onto your bus, each and every one of them is important. They’re not just a paycheck – each of them has a unique story and life. We have a responsibility to greet them with a smile and take care of them.”

“What was their response?” I asked. His jaw dropped, visually showing me the dumfounded responses of the other bus drivers. “They had never thought about that before.”

Dave had influence over the students he saw daily and on the network of other bus drivers he knew. In a job where it was just about getting the route done, he insisted that all people, including children with special needs, are made in the image of God – and through his words and example spoke a shocking gospel to his co-workers. Like Jim, Dave knew he actually did have influence, and he used his influence to speak truth and serve.

So, how should we counsel those who are in “meaningless” jobs? First, decide where you do have influence. Then, give both clients and customers the benefit of work well-done, an ennobling experience fitting for image-bearers, and, most importantly, words of hope.

Discussion question: In what ways have you seen others bring meaning to a “meaningless job?” In what ways have you shared the gospel through your work?

Uncategorized

12 Leadership Lessons

June 1, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11. Seek wise mentors. They’re indispensable.

12. Give. It is the foundation of leadership.

Work

Work as Witness

May 28, 2013

Often our first ideas are the most clear. Writing a book, drafting the design for a new cell phone case, mapping out a family vacation – often the foundational work comes in a short flurry. Last fall, this is what happened to me as I imagined the reason for a new faith and work nonprofit. I quickly wrote down five goals that would address the six tragedies of modern public life.

Five Goals For Our Work

Our work should be a sign and foretaste of the Kingdom of God. I’m not sure work can “transform” the world, nor do I think we can “redeem” culture. But as Christians live in God’s reign now, so each element of the Christian’s life can be a sweet foretaste of the world-to-come. Writing a book, designing a shopping mall, or teaching a lesson can all point to God’s kingdom when Christians can articulate the reality of God’s reign, and connect theologically how the work of their hands points to the authority and majesty of King Jesus.
Because most of us work in “public,” work should be the place where we make public witness to the Gospel. Our work can and should be a witness to the gospel when we connect revelation with our daily deeds. Question whether that ad accurately portrays the product you’re selling – and do so with the knowledge that our work bears our image, and we reflect the image of the God of all truth. Construct buildings that draw the heart to beauty, and are not only focused on the bottom line, for God himself is the author of all beauty. Work is the place where we can potentially have the greatest influence for the gospel, both by our words and our deeds.
We need a new framework for our fields based on God’s revelation in Jesus Christ as elements of the Enlightenment project deteriorate our shared public life. The West, and nearly all global cities that call themselves modern, share a very similar culture, which is based on thought that comes out of 18^th century Europe. Today, the underlying Christian roots of modernity have been increasingly pushed out of public life, and what’s left is an ever-critical, individualism that doubts nearly all authority and people who live, as Maslow has said, increasingly for “self-actualization.” The way to give public life a rejuvenated moral fabric and sense of purpose is by re-imaging our respective fields in light of the gospel, a story that both challenges other gods and casts down idols, and lifts up all that is good, true and beautiful in the world, whether it comes from the hands of Christians or non-believers (for it all comes from the hand of God). The task before us is to create spaces for Christians to ask how the gospel influences their work in community, and do it with the desire not to conquer, but to speak truth in humility and to serve the needs of our neighbor.
We need the vocational resources of the Christian community to be unleashed for serving the common good of our cities. A city well-served and deeply loved; this is the task of nearly every urban church, but far too few see the inherent power of equipping the saints not just for volunteer opportunities once a month, but for using their God-given skills to advance the common good 40-50 hours a week.
We should strive for creative, joyful work. God worked with joy, and he created simply because it was good. So should Christians be known for craftsmanship, doing a thing well simply for its own sake. Become lost in your task, adorning society with your art. Be filled with wonder and use your mind and hands to bring a smile to the face of another. It is in this self-forgetfulness that we unwittingly sow the seeds of cultural renewal.

Photo: Urban Architecture

Culture

Six Tragedies of Modern Public Life

May 27, 2013

It can be rather easy to lose one’s way. This afternoon I was working on the “shape” of our vocation groups for Denver Institute, and I almost got completely lost in the details. Tonight, I sat down at my desk, opened my notebook, and read some personal notes from 2012. I found notes on “six tragedies of modern public life” that led to the advent of this new organization.

Six Tragedies of Modern Public Life

Work is isolating. Long hours, artificial online relationships, and high demands are not the only reasons for isolation. Many are caught spending their days in a deeply dualistic mindset, serving God on Sunday and other gods Monday-Saturday. Isolated from other co-sojourners and even isolated from some kind of overarching reason for work apart from mere survival, it’s no wonder Thoreau said, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation.”
Cities are almost wholly organized on secular assumptions. The Enlightenment notion that what can be proven scientifically belongs in public, and morals and religion belong in private, still prevails. To bring your Christian faith to bear on just understanding your field alone is often seen as inappropriate. Just flip on the evening news or read the newspaper, and you’ll see how desperately true this is.O Of course, this doesn’t mean everyone’s an atheist. Far from it. The gods are everywhere; some are just less accepted than others.
Faith has been systematically privatized. Francis Schaeffer saw it when he explained the “upper story” of facts (science, public) and the lower story of values (religion & humanities, private). Bonhoeffer saw it from a prison cell and lamented “God is being pushed further and further out of our life, losing ground.” Lesslie Newbigin saw it when he returned from India in the late 1970s, and saw a civilization in Britain that had lost all sense of public purpose. Today, social analysts like Charles Murray, author of Coming Apart, can even see the widespread loss of traditional values among the working class. “Religion” is an ever narrowing category.
Public witness to the Christian faith has been almost completely dominated by politics in the past 50 years. James Davison Hunter saw this with adroit clarity in To Change the World; I personally keep my distance from both the Christian Right and Left, both whom I believe have been co-opted by worldly ideologies on some issues, and align with God’s purposes on others. Nonetheless, the notion that seeking political power can change culture has worn itself out, yet those in the public world who hear the word “evangelical” cannot think of us as anything other than a voting bloc.
Many churches have willingly retreated into the private sphere. We indeed should care about personal morality – what we do in the home and in private. But so many can see no systemic powers at work that shape human life. If Jesus is Lord of the universe, and his gospel is public truth for all to see, then should it not be brought to bear on all areas of life? Perhaps, as David Van Drunen points out, this job belongs to the organic church (the church scattered throughout the week), and not the institutional church (the place you go on Sundays). But nonetheless, do systems, structures and institutions not matter for living faithfully for Christ today? If they do matter, then who is intentionally equipping those to make public witness to the gospel through where they actually live “in public” each day – at work?
There’s no genuine pluralism. Most would disagree with me on this. After all, we live in a highly pluralistic society made up from people of every religion and ethnic background. But religious reasons for taking certain actions have been nearly eradicated from our shared vocabulary. Just imagine the blow back a politician would get today (in most districts) if she quoted a Bible verse as justification for voting for a bill? Just imagine what would happen if a Christian teacher in a public school taught that just as there are two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in every water molecule, so, as verifiable history, Jesus has been resurrected from the dead? Those are grounds for a pink slip…and evidence that some views are accepted in public, and some systematically condemned.

As I was jotting notes in late 2012, I did not stop with just these tragedies. I also wrote five overarching goals for an organization that could address these problems. These five goals are the topic of my next blog post.

Culture

Cities, Burbs, and Metro Regions

May 22, 2013

A few days ago I received an email from my good friend Dave Strunk. He referred me to an “excoriating” review of Why Cities Matter written by blogger Keith Miller. Since I recently reviewed the book for Christianity Today, and Mr. Miller and I rather different focal points for our reviews, let me respond to his critique.

Argument: Mr. Miller points out a central weaknesses of Why Cities Matter: the slippery definition of the word “city.” In Keller’s introduction to the book, Miller deduces that Keller uses the word “city” to mean at least three things:

1. “The Top 100 City”—a metro area at least as populous as Wichita, Kansas;

2. “The Not-Rural Farmland City”—everything with a greater density than homestead farming;

3. “The Urban Center City”—places like Manhattan.”

He draws this conclusion from Keller’s use of a Gallup pole and a UN statistic claiming “180,000 people move into cities each day.” Um and Buzzard switch between these slippery definitions throughout the book, at times referring to a major urban center like Los Angeles, and at other times referring implicitly to small towns that are not rural.

Response: Good critique. Miller is right to point out “sloppiness” here. There needs to be a standard way for evangelicals (and others) to talk about “cities.” It may be a pipe dream to think we could agree on such a thing, but the authors should at least lay out their own view and stay consistent.

Argument: Um and Buzzard are extremely liberal with the word “city” in the biblical review. Jesus was born in the “city”, say Um and Buzzard, but Miller points out Bethlehem had a population of 300-1000 at the time Jesus was born. He also critiques their claim that the Garden of Eden “may well have had buildings,” among other exegetically fanciful moves to find “cities” throughout the Bible.

Response: Again, this critique is also fairly well founded. In an earlier draft of my review, I pointed out that Um and Buzzard seem to substitute the word “city” for nearly any kind of human community, from Bethlehem to Babylon to the Church. Comparing the modern city to ancient settlements of nearly all sizes is problematic – to the point of needing correcting. Again, well said.

I would argue, however, that the Bible does have significant things to say about urban centers – particularly large ones. From Babel to Babylon, and Eden to the New Jerusalem, it’s no coincidence that cities take on either heavenly or hellish characteristics in the biblical narrative. Precise definitions are needed, surely. But a gloss of his own over the importance of cities in the Bible does us no favors either. Dense groups of people are uniquely important in the Bible as today.

Argument: One of Miller’s final critiques is that Buzzard defines Silicon Valley as a “city.” He points out that it is actually a suburban sprawl, and that Buzzard’s own church moved from an urban center in downtown San Jose to an area that looks a lot like a suburb in Santa Clara.

Response: If the critique here is primarily of defining Silicon Valley as a “city” – that is mixed use space and “denseness” and “proximity”, an idea that Um and Buzzard borrow from Keller – then good. Buzzard is perhaps too in love with the idea of “cities” and wants to live in one even if he’s not in one.

But I’m inclined to push back against Mr. Miller. If city can also mean “center of regional influence,” then Silicon Valley certainly qualifies. It’s hard to imagine a more culturally influential suburb than the tech hub of the world (Um and Buzzard are right here). And perhaps this leads us to a closer definition of what we mean by city. After all, the plainest definition of “city” is: “a large or important town.” By that standard, which is more of a “city”: San Jose or Silicon Valley?

Final Thoughts: Mr. Miller’s critique of their sloppy use of the word “city” is right on, both as applied to the ancient world and the modern world. We need to draw the line better.

But, unfortunately, Mr. Miller skipped over nearly all the valuable pieces. First, cities are growing, both in size and clout. As Richard Florida points out, the lines between suburbs and cities may be dissolving, but “mega-regions” are growing, attract a disproportionate number of talented, creative people, and churn out far more economic output than in past generations.

Second, Um and Buzzard have valuable things to say on both how the characteristics of cities as well as how they work; concepts, for example, like “connective diversity” and “clustered diversity” are helpful for non-urbanologists trying to understand urban areas.

Third, their ministry applications are helpful. They counsel readers to try to understand a city’s storyline through five questions. We may squabble over the definition of a city, but “large or important towns” certainly take on unique characters over time. I’m from the Denver area, and its focus on outdoors and adventure is crucial to understand for pastors. Cities have “gods”, and they must be understood if they are to be confronted. It’s hard to say that where I live, Littleton, exerts anywhere near the influence of Denver.

If it makes Mr. Miller feel better, perhaps we can substitute the word “city” for “metro area” and be rid of the whole argument.

But don’t listen to me. I live in a suburb. But then again, Mr. Miller lives in Hillsdale, Michigan: population 8,278.

Work

How to Change Your Company’s Culture

May 13, 2013

I recently wrote a dual book review for Christianity Today. One book, Why Cities Matter: To God, the Culture and the Church, was cogent, clear and helpful; the other, Christ + City: Why the Greatest Need of the City is the Greatest News of All was chatty, poorly argued, and at times misleading. In my review, I argued there was a key difference that separated the two volumes: “one book is merely in the city; the other is engaged with the city.”

One book brought Bible stories “into” an urban context (the author was from Chicago), yet showed very little understanding of the city nor engagement with its culture. The other book, Why Cities Matter, combined social analysis and ministry application to produce a useful tool that helps ministry leaders not just move into the city, but to winsomely engage its culture.

“In” a city versus “engaged with” a city is a helpful distinction that can shed tremendous light on the faith and work conversation. Many Christians are simply “in” a company or organization, and even are very “Christian” there (personal evangelism, ethical decision-making), but are not in any meaningful way influencing their organizational culture or the culture of their industry. I would venture to say that the majority of faith and work ministries unknowingly encourage versions of this kind of isolation by promoting a “protect and defend” mentality. Christians gather, circle around the Bible, and defend their personal morality against the pressures of cut-throat competition, secular humanism, or unsavory influences.

Of course, other Christians are not just “in” an organization, but are actively engaged with its culture, and do so winsomely. Some strands of faith and work ministries do this extremely effectively, and though the means for influence is indeed work, the outcome is actually cultural influence. So how do you move from simply being a Christian “in” an organization to actually engaging its culture with the gospel?

Stephen Um and Justin Buzzard offer five clear questions for determining the “storyline” (culture) of a city, which also works well for a company or organization. There are five key questions to determining your organization’s culture.

1. What is your organization’s history? When was it founded and by whom? Where did it start and when? What was the original mission statement and how has it changed over time? Answering these questions is foundational to understanding your organization’s unique culture.

2. What are your organization’s values? Entrepreneurship, faithfulness, long hours, creativity, success at any cost, the bottom line? What does your organization reward at the end of the year?

3. What are your organization’s dreams? Global influence, millions of dollars, brilliant scholars, Broadway? Perhaps a better way to ask the question: if your organization found $10 million in a treasure chest, what would be done with it?

4. What are your organization’s fears? Past non-existence, what is the worst case scenario? Generally, flip its dreams upside down, and you get its fears.

5. What are your organization’s ethos? An organization’s ethos is shaped by its unique geography, history and climate. It’s no accident that REI thrives in Colorado, and even that the tech executives of sunny Silicon Valley wear t-shirts and sandals. The climate affects their casual culture.

If you can find time to hammer out these questions with your co-workers, you can begin to define your organizationally culture. When Um and Buzzard applied this framework to cities, they labeled (accurately, I believe) key urban centers with their corresponding idols: Boston: Knowledge; Paris: Romance; London: Influence; Boulder: Adventure; San Diego: Health; Singapore: Order; Oklahoma City: Family. If you can understand your organization’s culture, which is always ruled by a god, you can begin to engage it’s culture with the gospel.

Engagement is twofold: (1) Challenge your organization’s storyline, and (2) Re-tell it with the hope of the gospel. The Scriptures frequently command direct confrontation of idols. Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal, Josiah crushed the Asherah poles, and Paul’s “spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city [Athens] was full of idols” (Acts 17:16). Taking the step to say your firm, school, or guild’s focus of ultimate significance is not ultimate is no easy task. In my personal experience, one of two things will happen: (1) People will think you’re crazy and say there are no such gods in this place, or (2) Try to drive you out (he’s really not our kind of person after all). Nonetheless, challenging the idols is a necessary part of ministry within your industry.

Second, and perhaps this is the way to not get fired, retell your organization’s storyline with a renewed hope inspired by the gospel. A friends of mine works at a public relations firm in Denver. In the world of PR, there’s a tendency to “bend” the truth for your clients, as there is across the world of marketing. The Christian story points to a person who is himself the way, the truth, and the life, and calls his children to live in the truth. The gospel also points to the day when light will expose all darkness, and the truth of Jesus’ kingly authority will be made known to all.

Truth, as it turns out, is good for marketing and PR. In a culture of “noise”, people are skeptical about advertising and marketing campaigns, expecting to be bamboozled, if even subtly. Seth Godin recently advised marketers to lead with the unattractive parts about your product or service. This kind of “leading with truth” can actually surprise people enough to cut through the noise and potentially win more clients. Perhaps not. But the reward of telling the truth is reward enough for the Christian who values integrity over pandering for more business.

This is just one example. Other industries will have other idols to confront, and Christians will have other (better) stories to tell. But I believe this is where cultural influence begins, first on the micro level and then at the macro level.

(1) Understand your organization’s culture.

(2) Challenge your organization’s storyline.

(3) Re-tell your organization’s story with the hope of the gospel.

Of course, all this talking by itself is insufficient to change the culture of your company. Ideas must be incarnated; they must put on flesh. Re-telling must culminate in creation, in new kinds of work. We must take a better hope and make new processes, policies, programs, or products. Here is where we can plant the seeds of renewing the face of the earth – and the office.

Photo: Denver Panorama

Discussion Questions: What is your organization’s culture? What are its idols? And how would you re-tell your organization’s (or even your industry’s) story with the hope of the gospel?

Work

Peace in Your Work

April 20, 2013

The last two weeks have been overwhelming. In addition to my normal job (admissions director), I’ve taken on the task of planning a major 2-day conference. I didn’t fully know what I was getting into. Setting schedules, contacting speakers, arranging technology, coordinating volunteers, planning facilities, writing web content, arranging a live stream, and promotion. Promotion. We’ve contacted, it seems, everybody. And yet, my heart has been restless.

When I fall asleep, I think about the details. When I wake up, I worry if we’ll have a good turnout. My mind has nearly been ruled by this work. When I come home, I feel ashamed that I’m only able to give partial attention to my beautiful wife…and my beautiful family.

This morning, I sat next to my wife (and my one-week old daughter), and said, “You’re going to have to help me with this. I enjoy this work, but I have no Sabbath. Not just on Sunday, but this conference is taking me over. I need boundaries. I need peace.”

She sent me a text message this morning:

My love. You know it’s never really about how hard your work, or how much you get done; it’s about how God chooses to work. ‘Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to him be the glory’ Eph. 3:20.

God has given you good work to do, but work with freedom and peace because he has already won!

This is exactly what I needed to hear. Praise God for godly wives! When the frantic worry creeps in, the worry that I haven’t done enough, or that things won’t turn out – that worry comes from not understanding the gospel. This is what I had missed:

(1) God has already accomplished the great work of salvation on the cross. Peace comes when I realize that the most important work has already been done. I’m free.

(2) God is at work today, in and through my work. The “work under the work”, as Tim Keller calls it, arises when I erroneously believe that it’s only me at work here – me against the world! This is not true. God himself is working in not only planning this conference, but in gathering people and using it to bring about change in hearts. And he is able to do WAY more than I can ask or think or imagine. He is mighty. And He is working today in ways I can’t even imagine.

Christians must plan God into their strategic plans. That is, they must fully trust that He will show up, and that if he doesn’t things won’t work out. No contingency plans, but a deep trust that God is a person who is alive in this world, in human history, and in our lives. “Waiting on the Lord” is a strategy. Perhaps the best strategy.

Jesus himself said we can do nothing apart from him (John 15:5). Surely, we can (and the world does) accomplish all kinds of work without Christ. But nothing of eternal value, nothing that will survive the refiner’s fire (1 Cor. 3:13) will survive if it’s not done with Jesus.

Today, I go back to work. The resurrected Son of Man works alongside me. I have nothing to worry about. I still work hard – and long hours. But I work with a deep peace.

Politics

The Real Reason for Evangelical Interest in Immigration Reform

April 18, 2013

Today evangelical Christians flocked to Washington D.C. for an “Evangelical Day of Prayer and Action for Immigration Reform.” Believers from across the US, 15 from Colorado, gathered for worship, press conferences, and meetings with members of Congress. The event, well timed to overlap with the recent release of a proposed immigration overhaul, represents a growing groundswell of support for immigration reform among conservative evangelicals.

But what has caused this growing consensus among evangelicals? Was it the beating Republicans took at the polls last November from minorities, especially Hispanics? Or how about the growing number of heart-wrenching stories from the nations’ nearly 11 undocumented immigrants who are living in legal limbo? Or was it, as a recent TIME cover story pointed out, the growing realization that “they” (our immigrant neighbors) are increasingly “us” (evangelical Christians)? These are all central reasons. But the media has generally overlooked a central truth: The Bible is the real reason behind evangelical interest in immigration reform.

Colorado presents an interesting case study. In 2008, Dr. Daniel Carroll, a professor of Old Testament at Denver Seminary, published Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible. Tired of mere partisan bickering, he set out to re-frame the immigration debate by looking to Scripture. He unearthed ancient wisdom from Israel’s past. For example, God commands Israel, “‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them…Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God” (Leviticus 19:33-34). Carroll reminded the evangelical community that Abraham was an immigrant from Ur, Joseph became a refugee when his brothers sold him into slavery, Daniel lived as a “resident alien” among the Persians, and Jesus himself became an immigrant when Joseph and Mary fled Egypt to escape persecution.

Dr. Carroll’s theology was instrumental in forming the Evangelical Immigration Table, a national group of college presidents, mega-church pastors, and leaders of evangelical organizations calling for a bipartisan solution on immigration based on biblical principles. In January, the organization launched the “I Was a Stranger” Challenge, calling for churches to read selected Bible passages related to immigrants for 40 days. To date, over 700 churches nationwide have participated. On April 24, Michelle Warren, a Colorado representative for the Evangelical Immigration Table, is organizing a night of prayer for immigration reform for seven churches in Colorado, located in each of Colorado’s seven congressional districts.

As interest in churches has grown, key evangelical leaders in Colorado have voiced their support for immigration reform. In a June 2012 Christianity Today interview, Jim Daly, the president of Focus on the Family, publicly voiced his support of immigration reform. Colorado pastors like Nick Lilo of Waterstone Church, Tom Melton of Greenwood Community Church, and Mike Romberger of Mission Hills Church all have voiced support for immigration reform based on biblical convictions.

Even Christian high schools are joining the movement. On April 26-27, Front Range Christian School in Littleton will host the “G92 Conference,” a reference to the 92 occurrences of the Hebrew word ger – foreigner, sojourner, immigrant – in the Old Testament. Leading evangelical voices such as Dr. Carlos Campo, President of Regent University, and Stephan Bauman, CEO of World Relief, will speak on the conference’s theme: “Welcoming the Stranger: Exploring a Biblical View of Immigration.” Ironically, the conference will take place in the former congressional district of Tom Tancredo, a name synonymous with anti-immigrant fervor.

In the coming weeks, congress will debate visas, border security, and paths to citizenship. And as they do, evangelicals will add their noisy political voice because they believe God cares for immigrants. Although evangelicals aren’t the only ones interested in immigration reform (left and right, liberal and conservative have worked on reshaping the system), they may be key to winning the GOP dominated House of Representatives. But even if reform isn’t successful, it’s a breath of fresh air to see the Bible being used in politics as it was always intended: to defend the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant.

Uncategorized

Denver Institute for Faith & Work

April 1, 2013

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

Dear Friends and Family,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Denver Institute for Faith & Work will have four programs:

Illuminate: Teach a class and curriculum on the integration of faith and work for the local church

Connect: Connect individuals in their fields to discuss their work in light of the gospel through “frontier groups” and an online community

Inspire: Host seminars and conferences on issues of faith, work and culture; and share stories of those applying the gospel to their work

Create: Help people create new products and services that reflect the Christian commitments of creativity, service and hope

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

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

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

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

Grace and peace,

Jeff Haanen

Work

Blessing the Status Quo

March 27, 2013

In an article Gene Edward Veith wrote for The Gospel Coalition this past Fall, he concluded:

“Our very work becomes transformed not in its substance—Christian workers mostly perform the same tasks as non-Christian workers—but in its meaning and in its value.”

I’m generally a fan of Veith’s work, but this claim is truly astounding. Veith is claiming that when we truly understand the gospel’s influence on work, we will do the same tasks (and work) as non-Christians, but just feel better about it. That is, if we properly understand the idea vocation, our motivation and attitude will change, but the work itself will be no different. Astounding.

With all due respect for my brother in Christ, let me ask some honest questions: Is this not a high priestly blessing of the status quo? Is this perspective not simply baptizing the ways of the world with thinly veiled language of “calling” and “all work is spiritual work?” Should Christians really not be engaged in different kinds of work, and not just in become more emotionally psyched up to do the same job but with a rosier outlook? Here’s my real question: How on earth did we end up here?

Mr. Veith outlines in his article just how we got here: Luther’s doctrine of vocation. Luther lived in an age where “calling” (vocatio) meant to enter the priesthood or to become a monk. Thus, his response was to say that God calls people to all sorts of work – farmers, magistrates, bakers, mothers and pastors. No need to make one kind of work (ministry) holier than others (business, art, etc.).

Luther based his doctrine of vocation in the doctrine of divine providence. It’s through work that God provides for the needs of the world. He uses the farmer to feed us, the tailor to cloth us, and the carpenter to house us. Luther’s classic quote is, “God is milking the cows through the vocation of the milkmaid.” That is, God is using the milkmaid to provide milk for the needs of others. The logical conclusion: stay where you’re at in life, and acknowledge that God is using your vocation to serve your neighbor’s needs.

One of Luther’s favorite Scriptures to prove this point is 1 Corinthians 7:17, “Each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches.” Luther’s conclusion: “calling” is connected with staying in your current job, because God has providentially put you there. Essentially, Veith follows Luther’s line of thought here: change your attitude and motivation for your work, but don’t change the work itself. Work harder (a la the Puritans), work happier, but stay put. If you’re suffering in your work, acknowledge that Christ suffered too – and keep working.

Now, 1 Corinthians 7 doesn’t have anything to do with work. It’s about men, women and marriage. But that’s beside the point. Luther’s view of work doesn’t take into account several critical factors. First, Luther assumed a static social sphere (as did most medieval people), and that one’s current work was one’s calling. But this just isn’t the case. Indeed for some, their current job is their calling for God, but not for most. The call to remain, be satisfied, and just recognize that your job is a “calling” is comforting to some – but to many it is suffocating. As Miroslav Volf has pointed out in Work in the Spirit, this view led to an eventual merger of the idea of “vocation” and “occupation.” Your job iss your vocation – you just don’t realize it yet.

However, second, and most importantly, Luther’s view focuses on the individual’s attitude, not on the work itself. Reflection on work for nearly 500 years, under Luther’s influence, has tended to focus on how a person feels about his or her work, and not on whether some kinds of work are essentially good and humanizing or bad and dehumanizing. Thus, the recent revival in interest in vocation has parroted the phrase “all work is spiritual” or “all work is God’s work,” without even a second thought to what types of work we might be baptizing.

For Luther, the only kind of work that shouldn’t be done was directly immortal – prostitution, etc. But the question remains: are there some kinds of work that make us more human, and some that make us less human? Or, to pick up on our initial question, should Christians do different kinds of work, or just bless “all work” equally?

I’ve been too theoretical. Let me give you an example. Mike Lefevre is a steel worker. Studs Terkel interviews him in Working:

“I put on my hard hat, change into my safety shoes, put on my safety glasses, get to the bonderizer. It’s the thing I work on. They rake the metal, they wash it off, they dip it in a paint solution, and we take it off. Put it on, take it off, put it on, take it off, put it on, take it off…

“I say hello to everybody but my boss. At seven it starts. My arms get tired about the first half-hour. After that, they don’t get tired any more until maybe the last half-hour at the end of the day. I work from seven to three thirty. My arms are tied at seven thirty and they’re tired at three o’clock. I hope to God I never get broke in…Cause that’s when I know there’s an end. That I’m not brainwashed. In between, I don’t even try to think.”

Mr. Lefevre does back breaking work day in and day out. But that’s not the problem. His work is so repetitive he feels like he’s getting brainwashed – tired arms are the only things that make him snap back into reality. For most of the day, he tries not to think at all.

A simple question: how many jobs today, whether white collar or blue collar (however we define them) partition doing from thinking? How many jobs have been reduced to the simplest possible task, and have left tired arms (or lower backs and wrists for the computer age) and empty minds? Can any job that does this regularly to God’s image bearers be a vocation with simply a right attitude change? What about the work itself?

Peter Drucker once said,

“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 relating perception to action. He works best if the entire human being, muscles, senses and mind is engaged in the work.”

Another question: do some types of work better facilitate coordination of the entire human being – muscles, senses, and mind – than others? We would all have to say yes. Then why has so much Christian theology focused on the individual’s attitude toward work (Luther, and recently Mr. Veith), and not on actual hard reflection about the different kinds of work itself, and what different kinds of work do to people themselves?

I have a theory. There is a trinity to good work. Thought, activity, and interaction with others, akin to the Father, Son and Spirit (clearly the topic for another article). The last 500 years focused on the theme of calling for a framework for human work; perhaps the next 500 years will focus on the work of the Triune God himself.

Even if they don’t, let’s not say that the only difference between Christians and non-Christians at work is that Christians see meaning and value where others don’t. Indeed, there is too much suffering, too much hardship, and too much of human life bent out of shape like a warped steel rod to settle for such a capitulation to the status quo.

Photo: Steel Works