“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow…For we are co-workers in God’s service.”
1 Corinthians 3:6-7,9

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 craftsman, 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 mosaics of shapes, textures
and colors. He can turn drab boardrooms into a collage of natural beauty, and sterile
kitchens into a wild array of Mountain West history.

“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 coworker would leave scrap wood behind
the school – “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, though initially nothing came of it.

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. “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 his new business, Twenty1Five, was born. [i]

Thorny Work

Mabe’s story reminds me that our daily work is filled with hope and pain, dreams and
setbacks, accomplishments and struggles. Each day, as we care for patients, teach
students, fix homes, and listen to customers, we are caught between the beauty of
cultivating God’s good world, and beating back the thorns and thistles of a fallen creation
(Genesis 2:15, 3:17-18). Sometimes the orders for tables come in; sometimes they don’t.

The thorns of work in our culture seem to be multiplying. First, we tend to either overvalue or
undervalue our work. Most professionals have made work their religion, seeing work as the
source of identity, self-worth, and impact in the world. The religion of “workism” is indeed
making professionals miserable. [ii]

Yet on the other side of the economy, people disengage from work, seeing it as nothing
more than a necessary evil. Millions of working-age men have dropped out of the workforce
completely, opting for entertainment and disability benefits rather than jobs, families, and
homes. [iii] Gallup reports that about 15% of all Americans are actively disengaged from their
jobs. [iv] Most, I’d venture, at least since the pandemic, have felt the slow creep of acedia or
sloth in our work, languishing in the long-afternoon sun of infinite tasks, yet finite energy. [v]
Work can feel like an exhausting marathon, which we will only be saved from at retirement. [vi]

Second, work is distracting. The advent of the internet and smartphones have affected all
corners of creation. Attention spans have become even shorter, and anxiety is on the rise. [vii]
But it wasn’t always this way. The Shakers had an interesting philosophy of furniture making.
“Make every product better than it’s ever been done before. Make the parts you cannot see
as well as the parts you can see. Use only the best materials, even for the most everyday
items. Give the same attention to the smallest detail as you do to the largest. Design every
item you make to last forever.” [viii] Though this philosophy is beautiful, with little red
notifications buzzing in our pockets every few minutes, it makes doing quality, lasting work
nearly a herculean effort. Distraction is the norm in a digital age.

Third, millions are underpaid and underappreciated for the work they do. In July 2022 Just
Capital did a survey of the issues American workers care most about. By far and away the
most important issue to American workers isn’t about communities, climate change or
corporate governance, it is: “pays a fair living wage.”[ix] In the fall of 2022, support for unions
was at an all-time high since the 1960s. It’s no wonder. At a time of deep divisions, Blacks,
Hispanics, whites, Republicans, Democrats, women, those over age 65 and under age 60
can all agree that they want to be respected for their work and compensated fairly. [x]

Yet, despite undervaluing or overvaluing work, the distractions we face, and the wide
underappreciation and under-compensation, we sense that work is part of a whole, meaningful life. Not only do we spend nearly 90,000 hours at work throughout life, but we
look to it for a sense of purpose. [xi] In the 1970s journalist Studs Turkel wrote, “Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for
astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday-through-
Friday sort of dying.” [xii] We long to be seen. We long for our work to be remembered. We
long for fulfillment and meaning.

If we want to live a full, happy life, we’ll have to find ladders to climb out of this damp, dark
hole we’ve found ourselves in. To do that, we first need to re-establish the value of work
Itself.

When Fires Burn Themselves Out

“Daddy, what if there were no stores?” That was the question my then four-year-old
daughter asked on the way home from church. As we cruised down South Santa Fe in south
Denver, perhaps she noticed the German Auto Parts Dealer and wondered what took place
within those four walls, or the fact that St. Nick’s Christmas and Collectibles was closed for
the season. Either way, it was an interesting question.

“Well, Sierra, just imagine,” I replied, looking at a gas station, then a shopping mall. “If there
were no stores, we wouldn’t have this car we’re driving in. We couldn’t be driving on roads,
these streetlights wouldn’t work at night, and we wouldn’t have these clothes on our backs.
We’d be naked!” She giggled in the back seat. “We wouldn’t have any food in the grocery
stores, our house would eventually fall apart, and we wouldn’t have any warm baths.”

“And dad, there wouldn’t be any doctors!” she replied. This was of great concern to her
because pretending to be a doctor was one of her favorite games. “Nope, no doctors,” I said.
“Wouldn’t that be terrible.” [xiii]

My daughter’s question reminded me of a book written by Lester DeKoster, a lifelong
librarian. “Imagine that everyone quits working, right now! What happens? Civilized life
quickly melts away,” DeKoster writes in Work: The Meaning of Your Life. “Food vanishes
from store shelves, gas pumps dry up, streets are no longer patrolled, and fires burn
themselves out. Communication and transportation services end and utilities go dead. Those
who survive at all are soon huddled around campfires, sleeping in tents, and clothed in
rags.”

This dystopian scene reminds us of an important truth: work is meaningful because it is the
form in which we make ourselves useful to others. [xiv] Indeed, work is not just the way we
make civilization, it is how we contribute to the great symphony we call the modern
economy.

Yet good work also is a key ingredient in a happy life. Charles Murray, an author and
researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, found that people who are unmarried,
dissatisfied with their work, professing no religion, and have low social trust had only a 10
percent chance of saying they’re “very happy” with their life. Having either a happy marriage
or a satisfying job increased that number to 19 percent. But for those who have both a very satisfying job and a very satisfying marriage, the number jumps to 55 percent who say
they’re “very happy” with their lives. Having high social trust bumps the number to 69
percent, and if you add in strong religious involvement, its raises even further to 76 percent.
Stunningly, for his sample set – whites from ages 30-49 – having all four elements (happy
marriage, high social trust, religious involvement and a satisfying job) closes the gap of self-
reported happiness between those with high incomes and those with low incomes. [xv] Good
work alone won’t make you happy, but it is one of the key ingredients to being happy with
your life.

We might, here, pause to say that there are many who don’t work and are completely happy.
And yet, if we think of work broadly as both paid and unpaid labor, we find that students,
volunteers, stay-at-home parents and retirees who are engaged in committed service to
others are consistently happier than those whose lives revolve around self-focused pleasure
or idleness. John Stott, the late great Anglican author and leader, defined work simply as
“the expenditure of energy (manual or mental or both) in the service of others, which brings
fulfillment to the worker, benefit to the community, and glory to God.” [xvi]

Getting a paycheck is, indeed, important, but what gives us spiritual satisfaction from work is
the opportunity to use our talents to love our neighbors as ourselves.

This article is an excerpt from my latest book Working from the Inside Out: A Brief Guide to Inner Work that Transforms Our Outer World. It’s also available as an audio book. Click here for a free study guide.

[i] This story first appeared at: Jeff Haanen, “Knotted Dreams,” 2 April 2014, https://jeffhaanen.com/2014/04/02/knotted-dreams/.

[ii] Derek Thompson, “The Religion of Workism is Making Americans Miserable,” The Atlantic, 24 February 2019,https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/.

[iii] See Nicolas Eberstadt’s Men Without Work, which I mentioned in chapter 1.

[iv] Jim Harter, “U.S. Employee Engagement Data Hold Steady in First Half of 2021,” Gallup, 29 July 2021,
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/352949/employee-engagement-holds-steady-first-half-2021.aspx.

[v] Jeff Haanen, “Where are all the workers? How to revive a wilting workforce,” Comment, 1 September 2022, https://comment.org/where-are-all-the-workers/.

[vi] For a book on faith and retirement, see: Jeff Haanen, An Uncommon Guide to Retirement: Finding God’s Purpose for the Next Season of Life (Chicago: Moody, 2019).

[vii] The CDC reported in July 2022 28.8% of Americans report symptoms of anxiety disorder; for 18-29 year olds, it’s a staggering 42.9%. Though there are many causes of the rise in anxiety, in a forthcoming article for Christianity Today, I argue that digital media certainly isn’t helping. See: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/mental-health.htm.

[viii] Quoted at: https://www.hattebergwoodworks.com/.

[ix] I find it interesting that in some data sets, pay is in the middle of what workers want most from their employer. I mentioned this in chapter 2. However, when asked about public and political issues, fair wages and pay are often at the top for voters, as are issues about the economy in general. Harmonizing the various studies, I think that good pay is just as much about expressing a worker’s worth and dignity as it is about paying the bills. For managers, pay gets employees in the door, but it’s insufficient to keep them there.

[x] https://justcapital.com/reports/2022-survey-workers-and-wages-are-more-important-than-ever-to-the-american-public/

[xi] Dan Buettner, “Finding happiness at work,” Psychology Today, 21 February 2011,
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/thrive/201102/finding-happiness-work.

[xii] Studs Terkel, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (New York, New Press, 1972), xi.

[xiii] I first told a version of this story on my blog at: https://jeffhaanen.com/2013/02/24/daddy-what-if-there-were-no-stores/.

[xiv] Lester DeKoster, Work: The Meaning of Your Life (Grand Rapids: Christians Library Press, 1982), 2.

[xv] Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America from 1960-2010 (New York: Random House, 2012), 268,271.

[xvi] John Stott, Issues Facing Christians Today (Marshalls: Basingstoke, UK, 1984),162.

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Faith and Work Movement Work

Sacrificial Service & the Sapp Bros. Cheyenne Travel Center

March 28, 2024

It’s one thing to embrace customer service. It’s quite another to live a life of sacrificial service.

Jesus calls his followers to “take up your cross and follow me.” Peter wrote that serving as Christ did will entail suffering (1 Peter 2:21). It’s one thing to follow Christ when things are going well. But, in the words of biblical scholar Bruce Waltke, how many of us would qualify as the “righteous” – those willing to advantage others, even if it means disadvantaging ourselves?

People who commit to sacrificial service of a community through their work are rare. New York Times Columnist David Brooks wrote in his book The Road to Character that the median “narcissism score” has risen in the last two decades. When young people were asked about whether they agree with statements like “I am an extraordinary person,” or “I like to look at my body,” Brooks says, “Ninety-three percent of young people score higher than the middle score just twenty years ago” — they score about 30 percent higher, to be exact.[i] Behind the thin veil of careers with social impact is often the Almighty Self, ever ready to find the perfect mix of social impact, comfortable work hours, and financial reward in “meaningful work.” Especially since the pandemic, I believe the willingness to sacrifice for a cause greater than ourselves is diminishing.[ii] Especially if it costs us.

Yet, meaningful work is found not in success or financial reward, but in sacrificial service. When people struggle to find a cause worth sacrificing for, boredom and meaninglessness tend to creep in. “Far too many people in this country seem to go about only half alive. All their existence is an effort to escape from what they are doing,” writes author and dramatist Dorothy Sayers about how most people view their work. “And the inevitable result of this is a boredom, a lack of purpose, a passivity which eats life away at the heart and a disillusionment which prompts men to ask what life is all about.”[iii]

People need a reason to sacrifice for something beyond themselves. It’s what puts wind in sails, feet on the ground, and energy in a workday. Paradoxically, what we’re really looking for is the right cross to bear, not the best throne from which to rule.

We live in a cultural moment in which there are multiple issues calling for sacrificial work. Take, for example, the growing inequality in American society. In 1989, the Federal Reserve Reports that the bottom 50% held $22 billion in wealth while the top 10% held $1.7 trillion. Fast forward to 2021, and the bottom 50% held $260 billion in wealth while the top 10% swelled to $36 trillion.[iv] To make that clearer, the top 1% of US households has 15 times more wealth than the bottom 50% of households combined.[v] The simmering discontent and anger so prevalent in American society has its root, I believe, in millions of people seeing the wealthy get much wealthier — even in the last 20 years — while their standard of living stagnates or declines.

And yet, some decide that sacrificial love for others trumps personal comfort.

Julie (Sapp) Stone works as an investment director focused on family economic mobility at Gary Community Investments, a philanthropic organization in Denver. Before that she worked at Teach for America, an organization that places talented young teachers in low-income schools. Bright, energetic, connected, and committed, Julie was deeply formed by Catholic social teaching, which motivates her work on behalf of low-income families. When I asked Julie about her commitment to issues around justice, I was surprised to learn it didn’t come from academic study. Rather, it came from growing up at a truck stop on the Wyoming-Nebraska border.

Julie’s grandpa and his brothers were Depression-era survivors who bought a car dealership, which turned into car leasing and eventually into a small truck stop chain headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. Her dad became the general manager of Sapp Bros. Cheyenne Travel Center, and her mom the store manager. The establishment employed over 100 people between a motel, gas station, restaurant, and store. Julie grew up just a few miles away and started to work in the family business alongside her brother at just age five, picking up trash around the truck stop because of her parent’s pride in their work. As she grew, she waited tables, stocked shelves, and served the truckers. Her dad would famously pause mid-bite while eating in the restaurant to check out a customer after their dinner because “nobody should have to wait to pay.”

“I’ll pound the table in defense of truck drivers. They are an extraordinary community,” Julie says. “They’re hard working, responsible, God fearing, family centered, and make tremendous sacrifices for their work.” Julie pauses, with almost reverence in her voice. “My dad always trusted that I’d be okay at the truck stop, whether he was there or not. Truckers know that their actions reflect on other drivers, which creates a sense of shared responsibility. If there was ever a conflict or a tactless comment, without fail, another driver would step in and sort things out.”

Sapp Bros. was employee-owned, provided full healthcare coverage, and even paid for college tuition, which was practically unheard of in the 1980s. Julie’s parents believed that their job was to lead and serve their employees sacrificially. “I remember one Christmas my dad had it out with corporate. Since the combined portfolio of travel stations didn’t turn a profit that year, there would be no Christmas bonuses,” she recalls. “I watched my mom and dad divide their past and future paychecks to make bonuses happen for the Cheyenne employees.”

Julie believes her parents’ leadership was built on love. “At the end of the day Mom and Dad recognized that each employee was giving of their time and talent to help make our company successful. My parents were genuinely grateful for their people, which explains why so many who were hired on opening day in 1983 were still there when I graduated from college in 2003.”

Julie’s commitment to justice today isn’t abstract. She sees the faces of those who worked for her parents for 30 years in front-line jobs — people of enormous integrity. “I see working families first. They show up for the physical work. They provide services and make products the rest of us rely on, they almost always go unnoticed. These are the families whose sacrifices benefit us all.”[vi]

***

This is an excerpt from my new book Working from the Inside Out: A Brief Guide to Inner Work That Transforms Our Outer World (IVP, 2023). Buy a copy or listen to the audio book today.

[i] David Brooks, The Road to Character (New York: Penguin Random House, 2016).

[ii] See my article: Jeff Haanen, “Where Are All the Workers?” Comment, September 1, 2022, https://comment.org/where-are-all-the-workers/.

[iii] Dorothy Sayers, “Vocation in Work,” quoted in: William C. Placher, Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).

[iv] See: The Rationale, Ownership Works,https://ownershipworks.org/the-rationale/.

[v] Tommy Beer, “Top 1% of U.S. Households Hold 15 Times More Wealth than Bottom 50% Combined,” Forbes, October 8, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/10/08/top-1-of-us-households-hold-15-times-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-combined/?sh=3067585a5179.

[vi] Candidly, this was my favorite interview in the book. A special thank you to Julie Stone for sharing her story, and for her beautiful revisions.

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Vocation Work

Where Are All the Workers? (Comment, September 1, 2022)

September 1, 2022

How to Revive a Wilting Workforce

This week, Comment published my essay “Where Are All the Workers? How to Revive a Wilting Workforce.”

In the essay, I address something we’re all feeling, whether at the airport or the local restaurant: the labor shortage. We are facing a historic pinch: the global workforce is aging, birthrates are declining, labor participation rates are decreasing, and many people are not willing to take middle skill jobs – or really any job. In my paper I argue, however, the pandemic has changed our mood around work. From China to the US, we’re now living in an age of anti-ambition, characterized by what the medieval church called acedia, or sloth – which is not just laziness, but a sorrow at having to do good, challenging work.

I make three key points in the paper. First, work as an expression of one’s gifts, interests, and talents, rather than simply extracting maximal wages for minimal effort, is the critical element of a dynamic, growing economy. Second, historic ideas of Christian vocation can be translated into a secular economy to revive a weary workforce. And third, work, and the plight of the world’s workers, is the great social issue of our age.

Here’s how I begin the essay:

It was a Sunday afternoon and I was setting up for a game of musical chairs on my back deck. As the sun shone, I carefully counted black lawn chairs and placed them facing out, in a circle, with one chair less than the number of RSVPs for my daughter’s seventh birthday party. It felt a little cruel to set up a rigged game like this, but I reasoned it was a classic of childhood competition. What could be more American?

Before the pandemic, the labour market felt like a game of musical chairs. Employers created jobs, expected more applications than positions, and when the music stopped, they chose the best employees for the role. Of course, some were left out, but they could be trained to run faster next time and grab a chair, right?

But in the last two years, for both employees and employers, it feels like somebody tipped over the chairs, threw some into the yard, and shut off the music. And half of the kids left early from the birthday party, deciding they didn’t really want to play musical chairs anyway.

Not only has the pandemic has created a labour shortage, it has changed the world of work for all us. We now desperately need to find new ways to infuse life into a weary workforce.

Read the rest of the essay at Comment.

Business Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Economy Work

How to Get Smart About Workforce Development

July 2, 2022

Let’s assume that you, the reader, are one of three people:

Through news, personal experience, or another avenue, you’ve noticed the drastic (and growing) economic disparities between hourly-wage workers and those who own capital (some asset, usually in the form of stock in a business or home equity). You may be unsure what to do to help, but you feel that something ought to change.

You’re a business owner or manager and you’re having an awfully hard time hiring people, and you’re seeing that increasing wages or offering one-time bonuses just isn’t doing the trick.

You work in the civic sector, and you’ve noticed that getting somebody an entry-level job is really no longer sufficient to get somebody out of poverty because capital is growing faster than wages, and the people you serve just seem to be getting further and further behind.

Ok, maybe you’re none of these three, but you simply care about growing economic inequality and you believe that something must be done. That’s where I was years ago when I discovered the field of workforce development. For me, workforce development sat between my interest in Christian cultural engagement through work and God’s ever-present concern for the vulnerable (James 5:4). It’s a field of wide-ranging interest in educating and training workers, that ranges from employee benefits to workplace learning programs to employee stock ownership programs.

I wrote on the topic in my 2018 Christianity Today article “God of the Second Shift” (and forthcoming book), but I’ve never provided a simple guide to introduce people to this industry. The reality is, before we take action in helping low-income workers, we must commit to first learning. Having put together this ten week “curriculum” for a friend recently, I now share it with you.

Before you begin, you should know that I think a variety of learning formats is the best way to really grow, including reading, listening, meeting with experts in person, and processing what you’ve learned with trusted friends. Also, a disclaimer: I’m a Denverite, so I’ll drop some names on here who I think are particularly knowledgeable about this topic. If you don’t know them yet, I encourage you to offer to buy them lunch. If you’re out of town, reach out on LinkedIn to see if they’ll do a call.

So, grab a friend, put some 30-minute blocks on the calendar for discussion, and commit to getting smarter about the most important social issue of our time: the plight of our world’s workers.

How to Get Smart About Workforce Development in 10 Weeks

Week 1

READ: God of the Second Shift, Christianity Today cover story, by Jeff Haanen. This article is an introduction to workforce development from the perspective of yours truly.

LISTEN: “The Good Jobs Advantage,” by Jeff Haanen. In this 15-minute talk, I give an overview to why I believe a good job can be transformative not only for the employee, but also a competitive advantage for a business.

Week 2

READ: The Pinkerton Papers, Job Quality Series, #1 by Steven Dawson. Workforce development expert Steven Dawson gives an overview to why we need a “better jobs strategy” to really roll back poverty in the US.

MEET: Dan Kaskubar. Dan is a friend, consultant, and former COO at Activate Workforce Solutions. He’s worked with businesses to serve their frontline workers and seen transformative impact. Well worth picking his brain over coffee or a call.

Week 3

READ: The Pinkerton Papers, Job Quality Series, #3 by Steven Dawson. In this paper, Dawson makes the case that if you really want to see big change, we’ll need engagement from both business and nonprofits/governments.

LISTEN: Why it Pays to Raise Pay, by Adam Grant. Might it actually be more profitable long-term to raise the pay of your lowest paid workers? Best-selling author and Wharton professor Adam Grant believes so.

Week 4

READ: Pinkerton Papers, Job Quality Series, #6 by Steven Dawson. In a tight labor market, now even more than before the pandemic, Dawson argues we need to build alliances between employers and workforce development practitioners.

MEET:Julie Stone. She is the expert on family and worker economic mobility in Denver. Learn from her over lunch or a call, and hear her insights into the critical gap between a starting, hourly wage and an income that could actually support a family.

Week 5

READ: Top Ten Job Quality Resources, by Steven Dawson. This is an incredible overview to the organizations and best resources on workforce development in the US today, both for employers and civic organizations.

LISTEN: Light listening this week! Just listen to these testimonials of people who got a good job, and how it changed their lives. We at DIFW made this video for an event on this years ago.

Week 6

READ: “The Good Jobs Strategy” Harvard Business Review, by MIT Professor Zeynep Ton. (And peruse this website.) There’s a way to better your competitors and provide higher paying jobs: the secret is in product selection, operations, and culture…

LISTEN: “The Four Qualities of a Just Leader” by David Spickard. What does it mean to be “just” in a position of influence? Look no further. This podcast by former Jobs for Life CEO David Spickard is tops.

Week 7

READ: “Building from the Bottom Up.” Here’s an HBS report on how businesses can better uplift and give opportunity to low-income workers. Crunched on time? Skip to page 82 and just take action on these bullet points.

LISTEN: Hardly Working by Brent Orrell at the American Enterprise Institute. This intro podcast is a good place to start on how Brent and his team at AEI think about vocation, career, work and poverty alleviation. Really, anything he writes is worth reading.

Week 8

READ: “Employer Resource Networks.” The Employer Resource Network (ERN) is “an innovative model through which local networks of employers collectively provide work support services to their entry-level workforces, with the goal of enhancing productivity and retention.” Well worth learning about. (The ROI for businesses is really quite astounding.)

LISTEN: Here’s a short video of Karla Nugent, the Chief Business Development Officer at Weifield Group. She’s innovated an apprenticeship program at her business for those coming out of poverty. She offers an incredible example of risk-taking that ultimately just looks like good business.

Week 9

READ: “The Company of Second Chances,” Wall Street Journal. An incredible story of a faith-motivated company, Nehemiah Manufacturing, and their work employing those with a criminal past.

MEET: Zoe Schlag. Zoe is doing innovative work on Employee Ownership Trusts and how they can be both a viable exit plan for business owners and a transformative ownership opportunity for workers.

Week 10

READ: “KKR to Sell CHI Overhead Doors to Nucor, Generating Windfall for Itself and Employees,” Wall Street Journal. What if when a business sells to a huge private equity firm…the workers, not just management, got a windfall? It’s happening.

WATCH: Watch one of these case studies on how employee ownership can have transformative impact for both the bottom line and for workers.

***

REFLECT: Now that you’ve take some time to learn about business’s most important asset – its people – write down at least three takeaways that will influence your work. Then share those insights with a friend, family member or co-worker.

Not sure where to start? But interested in taking action on transforming the lives and families of your company’s workers? Reach out to schedule a call.

Photo Credit: CHI’s Hourly Workers

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor

Craftsman with Character

January 8, 2020

Know somebody who works with their hands? Know somebody in the trades that you really admire?

I came across this wonderful course created by Dave Hataj at Edgerton Gears, a company that makes gears. The course for high school students is called Craftsman with Character. I hope you’ll go and check it out…and maybe print off this poster for the aspiring craftsmen you know.

Architecture and Design Art Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Culture Economy Education Faith and Work Movement Finance Nonprofit Science Technology Vocation Work

Faith and Work Bible Study

September 2, 2019

Friends, a happy Labor Day to you!

To celebrate your work, I wanted to give you a gift: a free Bible study on Faith and Work.

The study is structured around people’s stories. In a series of articles, I highlighted the way people are living out their faith in the workplace.

Each study has a brief story Bible study participants can read at home. After each article, and before the study, we encourage you to Pause and Reflect on what the story might be telling you about God’s call for your own work.

The Bible study is structured around six sections: Introduce, Discuss, Explore, Apply, Closing Thoughts, and Prayer. It also has additional Resources.

Here are the weekly topics for “His Story, Our Stories: Encountering God Through Our Work”:

(1) “Light for Electricians,” (Creation)

(2) “Investments for the Kingdom” (Calling)

(3) “Showing Hospitality to Strangers and Spring Breakers” (Fall)

(4) “Productivity and Grace: Management and Labor at a Denver Manufacturer,” (Witness at Work)

(5) “A Well-Designed Journal Can Change Your Life,” (Culture)

(6) “A Growing Charter School Planted in Rocky Soil,” (Organizations/Companies)

Enjoy!

Looking for more material? Visit Scatter.org.

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Politics Vocation Work

‘Tis a Gift to Do ‘Undignified’ Work (Christianity Today)

July 29, 2019

Blue-collar labor often goes unappreciated and under-rewarded. How can that change?

When I was growing up, the best TV shows all featured blue-collar characters. Cheers, The Simpsons, Love and Marriage, The Wonder Years—each centered on the lives of loveable laborers. Cliff from Cheerswas a postman, Homer Simpson pulled levers in a nuclear power plant, and even the disgruntled Al Bundy sold women’s shoes. One episode of The Wonder Yearsfeatured Kevin learning about his dad’s career path from a loading dock worker to a distribution manager. “You have to make your choices,” Mr. Arnold told his son. “You have to try to be happy with them. I think we’ve done pretty well, don’t you?”

What a difference two decades makes. Since 1992, nearly every Emmy for Outstanding Comedy has gone to shows depicting white-collar adults working in Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, New York, or Washington, usually without kids. The exception would be The Office, but its humor is based on the idea that selling paper is an utterly miserable and meaningless job. In the NBC drama This Is Us, the story of a construction worker is told in a flashback to the 1970s and 1980s, as if Hollywood believes manual-labor jobs only existed three decades ago.

Not only has the working class gone underappreciated in modern America, but over the past 50 years, lower-wage workers have seen their lives get progressively harder. Oren Cass’s The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America sheds light on the plight of the working class, arguing that the distress that millions of workers feel today owes largely to federal policies that were supposed to help them.

Productive Pursuits

In the past generation, the central focus of policymakers has been the growth of the economy, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (a monetary measure of all goods and services produced in a time period) and rising rates of consumption. And it’s worked. From 1975 to 2015, America’s GDP has tripled, and consumption has ballooned.

The problem is that this period of economic growth has coincided with rising rates of suicide, drug abuse, and social isolation. The nation’s suicide rate climbed 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, deaths from overdoses have risen every year since 2000, and loneliness has now become an “epidemic,” for everyone from older adults to Gen Z.

Though the economy has grown, the standard of living afforded to low-skilled work has declined—and so has our collective appreciation of the work done by millions of lower-wage workers.

The critical issue, says Cass, a policy expert affiliated with the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, is that we’ve prized consumption over production. We’ve built a larger “economic pie” and attempted to redistribute its benefits to those left out rather than build a labor market that allows the majority of workers to support strong families and communities.

Cass’s central idea is that “a labor market in which workers can support strong families and communities is the central determinant of long-term prosperity and should be the central focus of public policy.” Cass calls his big idea productive pluralism, the idea that “productive pursuits—whether in the market, the community, or the family—give people purpose, enable meaningful and fulfilling lives, and provide the basis for strong families and communities that foster economic success too.”

Against those who dream of a post-work future filled with robots and artificial intelligence—underwritten by a universal basic income to cushion the impact of surging unemployment—Cass affirms both that the “role of the worker in society is fundamental” and that “it is within our power to ensure its vitality.”

Concrete Proposals

In The Once and Future Worker, Cass turns high ideals into concrete proposals to actually heal the fractures splintering the American workforce.

The most compelling is the “wage subsidy.” Rather than luring large corporations to town with big tax breaks (like the Amazon HQ2 hysteria of 2017) or levying payroll taxes on low-income workers and then redistributing the money through entitlements, why not “pay for jobs” directly? What if a worker saw a “Federal Work Bonus” on her next paycheck, adding three extra dollars for every hour she had worked?

Cass also advocates building an educational system better suited to the four-fifths of students who do not complete the high-school-to-college-to-career path. Around two-thirds of Americans don’t have a four-year college degree. To better ensure that more of them can get good jobs and contribute to their communities, Cass proposes reinvesting in vocational training and shifting toward a more “tracked” form of schooling—similar to systems found in Europe—where students are grouped according to educational ability rather than lumped together in the same classroom.

Yet there’s one area that government policy can’t do much about: our cultural views about the value of lower-wage workers.

“Waiters, truck drivers, retail clerks, plumbers, secretaries, and others all spend their days helping the people around them and fulfilling roles crucial to the community,” writes Cass. “They do hard, unglamorous work for limited pay to support themselves and their families.” Why shouldn’t we admire those who do harder jobs for lower wages on a broad scale? We’re capable of doing this with police officers, teachers, and firefighters. Why shouldn’t the work done by trash collectors, housekeepers, and janitors deserve the same degree of respect?

For that, we need not just policy reform but a different story about work altogether.

To Bow and Bend

It’s not every day that I pick up a book on the finer points of public policy—or review one for a Christian publication—but pausing to consider the markets, systems, and other largely invisible entities that shape our working lives is well worth the effort. It’s like pulling back the curtain on our workplaces and industries—and the perceived worth we bring to our communities.

Cass is the unusual conservative voice willing to cut both ways. He pushes back on both the left’s commitment to government spending and the right’s unwavering faith in economic growth. And he moves even heady policy discussions down to a level I understand: The goal is to create the conditions for people to have good jobs, raise healthy families, and contribute to their communities. As a Christian, there’s clearly much that resonates here.

Yet I also wanted to hear more about the moral, emotional, and spiritual elements that make for both healthy laborers and healthy labor markets. Tim Carney’s Alienated America makes the case—from sociology, political science, and research, not theology—that local churches are the critical element in the renewal of America. If churches account for 50 percent of American civic life, as Robert Putnam famously pointed out in Bowling Alone, do they not also have a central role in reviving the fortunes of American workers, many of whom experience the pangs of meaninglessness and loneliness?

In a time when economic divides mask the growing dignity divide between professionals and the working class, between prestigious high-wage jobs and unspectacular low-wage jobs, the church can and must play a central role in reviving a vision for work.

The Shaker spiritual “Simple Gifts” reminds us of Protestant traditions that deeply value work, even “undignified” work. “‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free, ‘tis the gift to come down where we ought to be. … When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.” Turning the other cheek, doing hard and dirty work, and being overlooked by the world—these are familiar notions to those of us who worship a carpenter and a washer of feet.

Christians should join in Cass’s call to restore the dignity of work in America, rounding out his policy argument with the rich resources of our own tradition. We should also recommit to studying which of our favorite policies—on both ends of the political spectrum—actually do more harm than good.

Most importantly, since policy is downstream from culture, we need to rediscover the habit of being public about our own story for work. And perhaps, like Mr. Arnold in The Wonder Years, we could start around the dinner table by telling our kids what we actually do all day.

The article first appeared in Christianity Today online.

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Faith and Work Movement Work

The Thinker

March 4, 2019

Back of the beating hammer
   By which the steel is wrought,
Back of the workshop’s clamor
   The seeking may find the thought;
The thought that is ever master
   Of iron and steam and steel,
That rises above the disaster
   And tramples it under heel!
The drudge may fret and tinker,
   Or labor with lusty blows,
But back of him stands the thinker,
   The clear-eyed man who knows;
For into each plow or sabre,
   Each piece and part and whole,
Must go the brains of labor
   Which gives the work a soul!
Back of the motor’s humming,
   Back of the belts that sing,
Back of the hammer’s drumming,
   Back of the cranes that swing,
There is the eye which scans them,
   Watching through stress and strain,
There is the mind which plans them—
Back of the brawn, the brain!
Might of the roaring boiler,
   Force of the engine’s thrust,
Strength of the sweating toiler,
   Greatly in these we trust.
But back of them stands the schemer,
   The thinker who drives things through;
Back of the job—the dreamer,
   Who’s making the dream come true!

—Berton Braley (1882-1966)

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Work

Be a gardener

November 13, 2018

Be a gardener,

dig and ditch,

toil and sweat,

and turn the earth upside down

and seek the deepness

and water the plants in time.

Continue this labor

and make sweet floods to run

and noble and abundant fruits

to spring.

Take this food and drink

and carry it to God

as your true worship.

Julian of Norwich (CA.1342-1416)

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Economy Work

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

October 12, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now What?

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

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

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

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