“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.

Spiritual Formation Vocation Work

Breathing New Life Into Your Work

July 9, 2024

Four doctrines that motivate me to work, build, and serve

Work can be a drag. Unreasonable managers, unruly technology, and unmet expectations – but work can also breathe life into communities. Work, I’ve noticed, has a particular power when motivated not centrally by success or money, but by the biblical story.

The Doctrine of Creation

Dave Hataj grew up with a dad who struggled with alcoholism. His alcoholism seeped into the family business, a small manufacturing company in Wisconsin. Remember parties at the office and pornography on the walls, “By the time I was 18,” Dave remembers, “I knew something was very, very wrong. Something felt dark.” Depressed and drinking heavily, Hataj turned to running as an escape. One day on a long run through country roads, “I remember a voice coming to me. I said, ‘Who’s playing a trick on me?’ I just remember this voice saying, ‘You are not alone. I’ve been with you through all of it.” Dave realized for the first time that he was not accident, and that his life had purpose.

Today, Hataj is the second-generation of Edgerton Gears, a company that makes gears, that in turn make cardboard boxes, aluminum cans, food processing and other everyday items. Dave felt that God was calling him to redeem the culture of his family business. After his conversion, Dave had his work cut out for him to introduce openness, trust, and accountability into the business. A part of the solution was to hire young men of character.

But it made an impact, “When I started working here,” says Clayton Flood, a Journeyman Machinist at Edgerton Gears, “I was nervous. It’ll probably be hardy, tough guys. But it was super nice people. But boss really cares for me here, and that’s why I felt comfortable becoming a machinist.” In a similar vein, “This is an actually happy environment,” says Andy Hagen, an apprentice machinist. “You feel like you can talk to your actual co-workers.”[i] Culture started to change around character.

Another strategy Hataj used was giving young craftsmen a sense of purpose. He found that many of the young men they were hiring hadn’t taken the college route, and had taken on an identity of being a failure or “D student.” Hataj, however, believes that every person is created to create (Genesis 2:15), and each has God-given talents and skills that their community needs. Hataj has written for his employees The Craftsmen Code, which he has new employees sign off on. It states:

I am not the center of the universe.
I do not know everything, nor nearly as much as I think I do.
There is dignity and purpose in knowing my trade.
The world needs me.
Pay is a reward for my efforts, but not my main motivation.
Every person has unique gifts and talents.[ii]

Dave’s renewal of the trades at Edgerton Gears is based on the doctrine that God himself creates, and we too are called to create what the world needs through our work. Or as Dorothy Sayers writes, “Work should be the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God.”

The Priesthood of All Believers

Lesya and Nicholai Login live in the small town of Khust, nestled in the western mountains of Ukraine. They both have a lifelong love of biking and dreamed of sharing their love of the outdoors with others. As Lesya worked as a teacher and Nicholai as a bike repairman, they dreamed of opening their own business. But Lesya, who was only 22 at the time, was consistently rejected for a small business loan because of their age and inexperience.

A neighbor told them about Hope International, an international microfinance institution. With their first loan from HOPE Ukraine, they bought a few bicycles and began to rent them. It was a time of growth spiritually as well. Nicholai had shared his faith with Lesya years earlier and they both began attending Nicholai’s church. Their story of entrepreneurship and faith was bound together, “Choosing to take the loan was pivotal for me,” Lesya says, “I was full of excitement to have my dream come true—that our passion would become our work.”

Years later their business grew. They expanded to two locations, a retail brand, and several employees. Not only do they sell bikes and accessories, but they also believe their work is a platform for sharing their faith. “When God gives, we are called to give back,” says Lesya. Working with their local church, the organize an annual bike ride for children. They have also created a bicycle club for youth, giving them a positive alternative to alcohol or drugs through the power of community.[iii]

The Apostle Peter once famously wrote, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Peter got the idea of “a royal priesthood” from Exodus 19, when God said to the Israelites, just before giving the Ten Commandments, “Out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be fore me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” (19:5-6). The role of a priest was to intercede on behalf of the people and mediate to God. When God calls his people “priests,” he intends that through all of his people – not just clergy – he will make himself known to the world. And that can and should take place every day and everywhere, even at a bike shop in a small town in Ukraine.[iv]

The Resurrection

Dan Reed is now middle aged. “I’m not in my thirties now, Jeff,” Dan told me over afternoon beverages. A long-time friend, Dan has been a life-long fundraiser. Short hair, beard, piercing green eyes and a quite attentiveness in any conversation, Dan is the founder of Seed Fundraisers, a coaching organization that trains “elite fundraisers.” His passion for fundraising came from years of raising money for the Morris Animal Foundation and seeing his peers in the industry. “Organizations that raise money aren’t necessarily the ones solving problems,” Day says. “Organizations solving problems aren’t necessarily raising money. And organizations receiving praise are not necessarily healthy places to work.” The nonprofit industry, noble as it seems from the outside, too is filled with brokenness.[v]

Dan set out to look for the gold standard in nonprofit fundraising practices. He found organizations led by visionaries; he found organizations that built sustainable solutions; but he also found that the best fundraisers were more concerned about activating generosity than raising money. Fundraisers, says Reed, are often seen instrumentally, meaning that leadership and boards often functionally say to them, “You go find us money so we can do the really important work.” And relationships with donors were often just as broken. Fundraisers would either “manage” donors to hit their revenue goals, or they would take on a subservient posture toward donors, bowing to an unhealthy power dynamic. But what if fundraising itself was intrinsically valuable work, apart from the causes it supports, simply because it inspires generosity, and hence, virtue?

Dan’s career was shaped by his understanding of vocation, which, for him, meant that his work had intrinsic value on a daily basis apart from the impact it made. It had value because work itself is a participation in the new creation.

Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has gone; the new has come,” (2 Corinthians 5:9). The Jews of Jesus’ day did expect a resurrection of the dead, but they thought it would happen at the end of time when Israel would be restored and a new, earthly Davidic kingdom would come at the end of time. But when Jesus’ was raised from the dead there was confusion. After the resurrection, they fully expected an earthy restoration of the Messiah’s rule (Acts 1:6). What happened instead was that the key event of the end of time – the resurrection – happened now in the middle of time. Theologians called this the “inaugurated kingdom,” or as one Anglican liturgy puts it “the Lamb who was slain has begun his reign.” The new heavens and earth are not just a future reality; they have already begun, right here, right now. Even as a fundraiser.

New Testament Scholar N.T. Wright puts it succinctly, “Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project to not snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s prayer is all about.”[vi]

When Dan Reed looks intently into how he does his work as a Christian, and why, he’s asking the right question as a person of faith: since Jesus is raised from the dead and now reigns, how now should I live?

Stewardship of our Gifts

Meagan McCoy Jones grew up in the family business. McCoy’s Building Supply is a supplier of lumber, building materials, roofing supplies, and farm and ranch equipment in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. She recalled as a teenager her parents would often have significant conflict. They worked through marital challenges with they help of a counselor, and the process ultimately influence Meagan’s own leadership of the company decades later. “They became committed to being relationally different, which is incredibly powerful,” Meagan recalls about her parents after their marriage crisis.

As a result, the McCoy family brought tools of building healthy relationships into the leadership of their company, which transformed how they do their work at McCoy’s. “Our leadership training includes tools like conflict resolution, which is a cute term until you have two super-angry people.” As a result of her parent’s marriage, she now works to deeply understand her co-workers. Leadership for Meagan is “me more deeply knowing you, and then caring about you. The next time I walk in, and I see your project as deserving of both praise and probably some constructive criticism, I’m going to make sure I’m very specific, and make sure to mention both the really good things and things I wish were different.”

Today, Meagan believes healthy conflict resolution is critical to a healthy workplace. “I have told my team that if there is any conflict among us, the only work of the day is to resolved the conflict between us.”[vii]

Generally, when Christians talk about stewarding our gifts, we think about using our skills and talents, whether they be designing a prototype or caring for injured patient, for God’s purpose. “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others,” writes the Apostle Peter, “as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms,” (1 Peter 4:10). Yet we rather think about stewarding our pain and suffering as a form of God’s grace. Meagan and her parents turned painful family memories into a means for building a healthy, redemptive workplace culture because, in part, they believed that even their difficult circumstances were gifts to be stewarded.

We’re called to see our talents and our pain, our skills and our suffering, our experiences and our frailty, as one mysterious gift we are called to steward on behalf of those we are called to serve.

“For some reason,” says Meagan, “we were given a lumberyard chain. And that’s our universe to care about and steward.”

This is an excerpt from my latest book Working from the Inside Out (IVP, 2023). Learn more about the book here.

[i] This story is from the film: “Turning,” Faith and Co, Seattle Pacific University, https://faithandco.spu.edu/film-detail/turning/.

[ii] See: https://www.craftsmanwithcharacter.org/the-craftsman-s-code.

[iii] “Bikes and Baptisms: One Ukrainian Couple’s Journey,” Hope International, https://blog.hopeinternational.org/2017/03/16/bikes-and-baptisms/.

[iv] For a more in-depth treatment of Exodus 19-20, see my sermon: “A Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation,” Wellspring Church, 26 July 2022, https://jeffhaanen.com/2022/08/01/a-kingdom-of-priests-and-a-holy-nation-a-sermon-on-exodus-19-20/.

[v] Dan Reed, “In Search of Best-In-Class,” Seed Fundraisers, 4 June 2021, https://www.seedfundraisers.com/post/in-search-of-best-in-class.

[vi] N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2008).

[vii] These quotes are taking from a Denver Institute for Faith & Work podcast interview, which can be found at: https://denverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/9_3-Meagan-McCoy-Jones-1.pdf

Spiritual Formation Theology Work

How to Change

February 26, 2024

An Excerpt from Working from the Inside Out

It had been a hard week.

As I got out of the shower, my mind was spinning with the minor defeats of a middle-aged man. The time I lost my temper with my daughters at the dinner table. The day I felt about four inches tall when I was talked down to by somebody with more money and power than me. The crouching sloth I was silently battling when overwhelmed by too much to do and too little motivation. And then that Saturday afternoon on my back patio when I felt a wave of depression sweep over me.

That morning I looked at myself in the foggy mirror. Crow’s feet had set in around my eyes. Gray hairs were sprouting from my sideburns. Alone in the bathroom, I said out loud, “God, when do I really change?”

I had been a Christian for twenty-two years, attended thousands of church services, and led a Christian organization, yet that day the promise of being conformed to the image of Christ had never felt so remote. Change, I’ve found the hard way, is elusive. Real, interior transformation—or what the New Testament simply calls abundant life—is the promise of the Christian gospel (John 10:10). And yet we struggle through addiction, broken relationships, and moral failures time and time again.

And it’s not just a problem for Christian leaders blazing back to earth after a fall from grace. It’s all of us. “Trying harder next time” seems to make it even worse.

To become good—actually, thoroughly good—feels like grasping smoke on a windy day.
As I pass my fortieth birthday, one question sits behind every other question in my life: Who am I becoming? That is often followed by another: Can I really change?”

HOW WE CHANGE

“To be honest, I’ve become adept at finding new ways to say I’ll change but then remaining stuck. The habits of sin—or even just the habits of our culture—have a way of reemerging like an unwanted trick birthday candle.

So, how do we change? Unfortunately, reading a book alone won’t do it. This is sad news for an author. But I’ve come to believe that reading alone won’t lead to real interior transformation. Think about your experience reading this book. Likely, it’s before bed, after a hard day, or consumed in snippets on vacation or between sittings. Once you close the book—even if it’s a self-help bestseller—you’re still surrounded by anxieties, responsibilities, media, family, coworkers, and a thousand other noisy influences. It’s not that books can’t change you. I believe they can, but they rarely do so in isolation from the rest of life.

How about getting more schooling? I’m a big believer in education, but many of our educational systems have largely adopted a narrow, heady version of change. Read a book, write a paper, take a quiz, then you’ll change. And yet, in higher education or in high school, the curriculum that really changes people are the unwritten values and norms of a school—not just what the syllabus says.

Most churches—at least word-centered Protestant churches—are similar. Though rarely stated, the unwritten message tends to be that the right combination of church attendance, music, and preaching will finally bring about the wholeness we desire. And yet, at least in my family, the van ride home from church often looks more like Chernobyl than the Garden of Eden. Some mysterious pattern of emotion, experience, and habit short-circuits even the most powerful experiences of God from creating real moral formation. I believe church is central to change, but we need to rethink what experiences actually lead to genuine Christian formation.

After researching the topic for years, I’ve discovered that trying to understand the way people change can leave you drowning in a quicksand of information: psychology, history, literature, sociology, andragogy, educational studies, history, theology, neuroscience, economics, current events, anthropology, sociology, philosophy—the author of Ecclesiastes wasn’t wrong when he wrote, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body” (Ecclesiastes 12:12).

And yet, here we are, limping along. We’re ever hoping things will get better, looking for salvation in every job offer, relationship, or vacation, yet feeling the subtle weight of encrusted sin, unhealthy habits, fractured relationships, and unmet dreams. If we really want to live a life that is truly healthy from the inside out, what kind of experiences might lead to real growth?

Unfortunately, I can’t answer that question fully. I, too, am just learning. But I have a working theory I want to explore with you in this chapter:

  Formation begins when an individual self-identifies a problem, need, or point of suffering and then joins a high-commitment community. The community is formed by an emotional and relational context of genuine vulnerability, bound together by a common story or universal history, and defined by a set of shared habits and practices.

  Over time, change is solidified by a deeper engagement of ideas and concepts discussed in community that affirm the story; a broader relational network that exposes learners to new emotions, stories, ideas, habits, and practices; significant work, which the learner is called to perform using new skills and knowledge; and public recognition for accomplishment, which shapes the learner’s identity.

   Long-term change happens when the learner chooses to grow in self-awareness and cultivate new spiritual disciplines, which open the soul to the transformative power of the Holy Spirit.

That’s a mouthful. Let’s take each of these movements one by one.

This is an excerpt from chapter 8 in Working from the Inside Out: A Brief Guide to Inner Work That Transforms Our Outer World. You can buy the paperback or audiobook wherever books are sold.

Culture Spiritual Formation Work

Anxious America (Part 3)

December 5, 2022

Advocate for greater access to mental health care through the workplace.

“In my way of thinking, the most important kind of medicine we can practice is the kind of medicine for those who otherwise wouldn’t otherwise receive care,” says Abraham Nussbaum, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who also works at Denver Health, a public safety net hospital. But because mental health services are often not covered by insurance – or are arbitrarily limited by most insurance plans – those who receive mental health care are predominantly wealthy and white. “This is a long-standing social disaster,” says Nussbaum.

One solution to improve access to mental health care is the growing number of options provided through the workplace.

It’s becoming more common for employers to offer mental health support to their employees as a workplace benefit. For example, workplace chaplaincy has been a life-line for many blue collar employees. Corporate Chaplains of America serves over 500,000 people and their families nationwide. Marketplace Chaplains employs 2,025 chaplains who serve at 5,461 locations and touch nearly 1.3 million employees, family members and patients.

There are also a growing number of tech tools and communities available. Stephen Hays, the founder of What If Ventures, a mental health venture capital firm, had an encounter with Jesus that freed him from a lifestyle of addiction. Today he invests in companies that move people from mental illness to mental wellness to mental performance.

His research has found that the mental health ecosystem is vast. Companies such as Calm, Headspace, Mindstrong, and Pear Therapeutics have reached substantial size. Types of companies include digital therapeutics, telehealth, business-to-business benefit providers, peer-to-peer platforms, non-tech businesses, measurement and testing companies, and companies focusing on mental health, wellness and sleep.

Some Christian companies, such as Abide, a biblical medication and sleep App, have reached millions of people, as have devotional apps like Pray.com. Others are just launching into the space between mental health and soul care. William Norvell, a former partner at Sovereign’s Capital, recently launched Paraclete, “The World’s First Soulcare Platform for the Workplace.” Norvell, who has also struggled with addiction, says, “In seasons of life where I had community I was always able to find pockets of light creeping into the darkness.” Paraclete offers businesses “on-demand, confidential conversations” through coaches who help employees with spiritual and emotional needs.

Whereas government leaders have focused largely on equitable access to public services and preventing more severe cases of mental health like suicide, workplaces are often becoming a primary place to advocate for and receive mental health care.

Rediscover the link between emotional health and spiritual formation.

“It’s impossible to be spiritually mature by remaining emotionally immature.” This punchy subtitle comes from Pete Scazzero’s best-selling book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Scazzero, his protege Rich Villodas, author of The Deeply Formed Life, and a host of others are sounding the bell to dissolve the barriers between emotional and spiritual health.

Brian Gray, the VP of Formation at Denver Institute for Faith & Work believes that growing anxiety calls for a deeper daily spirituality based on the classic spiritual disciplines. “It was the wise man who put Jesus’ words into practice that built his life on the rock,” referencing the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ call to practices, not just doctrine. Because work is a major source of anxiety for most people, a part of Gray’s work is forming leaders to live out the spiritual disciplines at work, further dissolving the barriers between daily life, emotional health and spiritual vibrancy.

Others are drawing on medieval traditions like Ignatian spirituality to address anxiety and mental health issues that church leaders face. Patti Pierce, a former staff member at Menlo Church (formerly Menlo Presbyterian Church) started a nine-month program called SoulCare after seeing several colleagues fall to sexual temptation. The program, which introduces ministry leaders to practices on interior freedom, paying attention to the movements of the soul, and living a “with God” life, has spread to Orange County and Denver, under the name the Praxis. “I found that the movements of the Ignatian exercises, which are based in the life of Jesus,” says Pierce, “really helped people experience Jesus, not just have cognitive information about him.”

The renaissance of spiritual formation, led in the past generation by leading figures like Richard Foster and Dallas Willard, addressed the growing evangelical desire for a deeper spiritual life past preaching and singing on Sunday. Today, those threads are being rediscovered as a lifeline for those searching for more enduring answers than what popular psychology and self-help books can provide alone.

Our hearts and souls, our emotions and our spiritual lives, are woven together and need to be addressed together. “Ignoring our emotions is turning our backs on reality,” says Scazzero. “Listening to our emotions ushers us into reality. And reality is where we meet God.”

You’re Not Alone

In an age of increased anxiety and depression, where mental health struggles seem to be an almost universal experience, Christ uniquely offers the world neither distraction nor temporary remedies, but everlasting good news: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid,”(John 14:27). As a result, I believe the church’s unique contribution lies at the intersection between therapy and spiritual formation, mental health resources and the life of God.

The church also uniquely offers an anchor for a tormented soul. “The deepest truth of who you are is that you are known and loved by God,” says Kinghorn to those struggling with chronic anxiety or mental illness. “And nothing about your situation can possibly change that.”

As I think about my own anxiety, I still experience the tingling neck, racing heart, and shortness of breath. Honestly, it still feels like there’s something wrong with me.

But I’m learning not to avoid it and flee. Instead, I try to exercise, do meaningful work, be patient with others, and open up to friends. I’m leaning into the slow disciplines of naming my feelings, practicing welcoming prayer, and seeking community. And when I need help, I now just ask for it.

As I do, I’m reminded of a central truth of the historic Christian faith: we are not alone.

***

This article first appeared in The Reformed Journal.

Spiritual Formation Work

Anxious America (Part 2)

November 28, 2022

How to Respond Faithfully to the Mental Health Crisis

Here’s what I’m learning from the best pastors, business leaders, psychiatrists, counselors, and spiritual directors addressing America’s mental health crisis.

Notice and address anxiety first in yourself.

“You have to name it to tame it,” says Steve Cuss, author of Managing Leadership Anxiety and Australian-born pastor, speaker and writer. Cuss’ journey as a hospital chaplain sparked an enduring interest in helping people notice and address anxiety. He helps people reduce anxiety by noticing how it shows up in everyday life and controlling “reactivity,” or the impulse to overreact when our bodies are in a fight-or-flight state.

“Anxiety shrinks the power of the gospel because it presents a false gospel – one of self-reliance rather than reliance on God,” says Cuss. Anxiety may be universal, but he says learning to notice it in yourself and others is a first step toward becoming calm, aware, and present.

A growing number of pastors have latched onto the concept of “non-anxious presence” to combat anxiety. Christian leaders like John Mark Comer, Mark Sayers, and Todd Bolsinger have all latched onto the idea in sermons and books. The term was popularized amongst clergy by the late Edwin Friedmann, a rabbi, family systems theorist, and author of books like A Failure of Nerve and Generation to Generation.

One pathway to non-anxious presence is what the late Murray Bowen, the founder of family systems theory and professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University, called the “well-differentiated self.” The key is to strike the right balance between independence and connectedness, and thereby avoid becoming enmeshed with others or, conversely, emotionally cut off.

The well-differentiated leader, according to Friedman, is “someone who can be separate while still remaining connected, and therefore can maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence.” The first step in addressing anxiety is found in taking responsibility for your own personal presence, and diffusing anxiety both internally as well as between others.

Be the first to bring up anxiety and mental health at church.

John Swinton, a Scottish theologian and minister specializing in faith and disability, believes the church offers a unique message from the broader culture. There’s a difference, he says, between inclusion and belonging. Inclusion, says Swinton, is just a technical requirement to not exclude, sustained by law and policy. “But to belong,” Swinton says, “you have to be missed. To belong you have to have a space where, when you’re not there, people long for you.” Churches offer this sense of family and connectedness that is often missed in secular culture.

As stigma about sharing mental health challenges decreases, especially among Millennials and Gen Z, the number of church-focused resources on faith and mental health increases. Mental Health Grace Alliance, Fresh Hope for Mental Health, Pathways to Promise, and Kay Warren’s The Gospel and Mental Health all offer churches practical congregational-focused resources. Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries offers a complete course for churches on topics such as mental health, stigma, recovery, companionship, caregiving, self-care and reflection.

“Everyone is struggling with anxiety,” says Trisha Taylor, a psychotherapist and co-author of The Leader’s Journey: Answering the Call to Personal and Congregational Transformation. Taylor and her ministry partner Jim Herrington help congregational leaders increase their emotional intelligence and navigate conflict. She also encourages all Christians to normalize conversations about mental health.

“First, let’s just talk about it. Second, we need to make a point to understand how emotions work. We need to learn from them rather than try to eliminate our negative emotions,” says Taylor, who believes that chronic anxiety is one major factor for why pastors leave their jobs. “Finally, anxiety is physiological. It’s our body’s natural response to stress. We often need to start by getting help for our bodies.”
For every 400 adults sitting in a congregation, on average 112 of them are struggling with chronic anxiety and 88 have symptoms of depressive disorder. For churches wondering how to restore community after the pandemic, here’s a place to start.

This article is the second of a three part series. The full essay was published by The Reformed Journal in November 2022. Next week I’ll publish the final article in the series.

Spiritual Formation Work

Anxious America (Part 1)

November 21, 2022

How to Respond Faithfully to the Mental Health Crisis

I shut my laptop abruptly late one afternoon. I realized I was holding my breath. My neck and scalp were tingling and my shoulders were tight. I put my hand over my chest and felt my heart racing. It was just an unpleasant email, I thought. Why am I feeling like this? I stood up from the kitchen table, only to feel dizzy. I sat down again, just to breathe.

It was early 2022. For months I had been experiencing increased anxiety, often making work and family responsibilities hard to manage. Tensions in my extended family and at work, mixed with intense cultural polarization, caused me to honestly ask myself two questions: Is there something wrong with me? And am I the only one feeling like this?

The Real Pandemic

After some digging, I came to learn that anxiety and challenges around mental health may be one of the most universal human experiences of the past several years. The CDC reported in July 2022 that 28.8% of Americans report symptoms of anxiety disorder; for 18-29 year olds, it’s a staggering 42.9%. In December 2021, the Surgeon General warned of a growing youth mental health crisis. And today, nearly one-quarter of Americans over age 18 are medicated for anxiety, depression or ADHD. No wonder President Biden called for national response to the growing mental health crisis in his 2022 State of the Union Address.

The pandemic didn’t create a global mental health crisis, but it did make it worse. “I believe we saw the exacerbation of mental health issues during the pandemic,” says Marvin Williams, 57, the lead pastor of Trinity Church in Lansing, Michigan. Williams, a Black pastor in a predominately White church (“which carries its own anxieties,” he says), believes the convergence of the pandemic, political division, and growing issues around race created a perfect storm. “Those three things coming together at the same time revealed even more of what was under the hood,” says Williams. Globally, the World Health Organization found the pandemic sparked a 25% increase in anxiety and depression.

Chronic anxiety is increasingly commonplace and even severe mental health issues have been on the rise for years. In the last two decades, suicide rates have risen 30%, and in 2020, 1.2 million Americans attempted suicide. Princeton researchers Angus Deaton and Anne Case found that “deaths of despair” – death by drug overdose, suicide, and alcoholism – have risen sharply, particularly for working class communities. For the first time in the modern era, even before the pandemic, life expectancy rates started to decline.

So what’s causing the growing mental health crisis? Many point to a loneliness epidemic. NPR reports 60% of Americans are lonely, which the pandemic perpetuated when workplaces and schools were shut down, impacting a generation of young people. The inability to gather during COVID led to fewer in-person relationships, sapping people’s resilience to stress.

Many also point to heightened social tensions in the past two years. “In our culture we’ve seen increasing political and social polarization, increasing awareness of sexual assault and racial violence and inequity, and we’ve had two very polarizing election cycles,” says Warren Kinghorn, a psychiatrist and co-director of the Theology, Medicine and Culture program at Duke University. “Our experience has been that mental health clinicians are in high demand, especially since the pandemic.” Kinghorn notes colleges and universities are reporting a significant increase in demand for student mental health services.

Others point to another plague for young people: the rise of social media and smartphones. Not only has social media led to growing political division due to an inability to effectively communicate, but studies have also found that overuse of smartphones actually warps teenage brains, causing anxiety, depression, impulse control problems, and sleep disorders. Dr. Jean Twenge, author of the best-selling book iGen, has found that this generation of teens, when compared to teens in the 1970s, are less likely to go out with peers, more likely to say they feel left out or lonely, and more likely to report they don’t enjoy life. These rates went up markedly since 2012 – the first year smartphones hit the market.

It may still be that something is wrong with me. But if the statistics are right, I’m certainly not alone.

Pioneers in Compassion

The church has been responding to mental health issues since its inception. The ancient Romans thought mental illness was caused by divine punishment, evil spirits, or an imbalance of the humors. Treatments ranged from philosophizing to bloodletting. Yet, noting Jesus’ compassion for the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1-20, Matthew 8:28-34, Luke 8:26-39), early church fathers innovated in devising new methods of care for the poor and mentally ill.

In 370, St. Basil opened a ptochotropeion, a hospital intended to serve the poor, indigent, and ill. In contrast to Greek hospitals of the time, who would only serve those who could pay, Basil offered care to all, founding what historians believe to be the first public hospital.

The Medieval Church continued to innovate ways to serve the mentally ill. The 7th-Century Irish Saint Dymphna inspired the town of Geel, located in modern Belgium, to pioneer de-institutionalized care for the mentally ill, where patients would interact with townspeople during daytime and sleep at the hospital at night.

A century later, Father Joan Gilabert Jofré (1350-1417) was on his way to the Cathedral in Valencia for the first Sunday in Lent. When he saw two men brutally attacking a “madman,” he rescued the victim, took him back to his convent, and preached a sermon about establishing an institution to care for the mentally ill. Afterwards, eleven patrons gathered to found arguably the first psychiatric care institution in Europe.

Indeed, anxiety and depression have been present throughout church history, including the 20th century. We’ve always had reasons to worry, whether they be the anthrax scare, 9/11, school shootings or the cultural turmoil of previous generations, like the Vietnam War or the Cuban Missile Crisis. Mental Health Awareness Month wasn’t founded in 2020; it has been observed in the US every May since 1949. “Cast your anxiety on him because he cares for you” is a comfort and mandate for all generations (1 Peter 5:7).

And yet, something does seem different today.

Many in the modern world experience unprecedented levels of wealth and physical comfort, but report being deeply unhappy – actually at the highest rate in the last 70 years, reports Gallup. The speed of technology and rapid cultural fragmentation are undoubtedly influencing us, especially young people. And the lines between mental illness and everyday experience seem to be blurring for millions.

Can the church offer unique insight today for those battling anxiety, depression, and mental illness?

This article is the first section of a full essay to be published at The Reformed Journal in November 2022. Next week I’ll publish the second of the three part series.

Spiritual Formation Theology Vocation Work

“A Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation” – A Sermon on Exodus 19-20

August 1, 2022

I recently had the chance to preach at my home church, Wellspring Anglican in Englewood, Colorado. I spoke on Exodus 19-20 and focused on God’s promise to the new nation of Israel in Exodus 19:5-6: “Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

In the sermon dive into what it would have meant to be a “kingdom of priests” and how Israel was called to be a “holy nation” in both their personal and public lives. I also ask some hard, personal questions about how – if it’s even possible – we might become holy.

I hope you enjoy listening. I’d be glad for your feedback below in the comments section.

“A Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation” – A Sermon on Exodus 19-20