5 Book Recommendations to Rekindle Your Imagination and Impact

When I walk through the door on Friday evening, I can usually feel a slight tingling sensation on my scalp. The speed of the work day – meetings, phone calls, emails, tweets, tasks, problems and exhilarating opportunities – is almost addictive. I can feel my heart rate slightly elevated and my words rushing through my house like a gust of wind. The pain of shutting down my smartphone for Saturday feels like I’m putting down the ring of power.

In the early morning hours, as I sip coffee before my children awake, I wonder who I’m becoming. I find it difficult to carefully listen to those whose lives are vastly different from my own. I find it difficult to consider the pilgrimage of my soul amidst the whir of leadership. I find it difficult to be dazzled by adventure as I was as a child; to laugh and to delight in the tall tales of giants and men; to find the emotional reservoir and depth of character my kids, my wife, and my co-workers need from me.

And I find it difficult to calm myself, and carve out the space, the silence, to read.

For years I’ve loved books. I became a Christian through reading, believing I had discovered a secret the world knew nothing about. But in my 34th year, pressed by responsibility on every side, on the weekends I find it far easier in my exhaustion to turn on the television, justifying that I have nothing left, even to pick up a book. Yet, when I choose the route of easy entertainment, I usually feel drawn out, thin, like “butter spread over too much bread.”

It’s tempting in positions of leadership to read the latest business book, or dilly over the latest news story. Everything is so pressing, so urgent. Yet over the last year, I’ve come to realize what’s most urgent is my own moral formation. It is goodness that my community needs most from me. Literature makes me ask questions about myself, my world, and my work that lean on my heart, and open doors to unforeseen countries of truth.

Here are five books I recommend that have found a home in my imagination, and perhaps can rekindle your own imagination – and leadership – too.

1. The Life You Save May Be Your Own, by Paul Elie

Paul Elie has crafted a stirring biography of four great 20th century Catholic writers: Dorothy Day, activist, bohemian, pacifist, founder of the Catholic Worker, and friend of the poor; Thomas Merton, rebel against the modern world, lover of literature, mystic, and Trappist monk; Flannery O’Connor, novelist of the Christ-haunted south, independent thinker, seer of tension between a longing for the Holy, and an ever-present secular doubt; Walker Percy, physician, melancholy novelist, and Catholic who found stability in faith amidst a family lineage that included generations of suicide.

Percy, O’Connor, Merton, and Day – all great readers before they were writers – became known as the School of the Holy Ghost, each learning about each other’s writings as they struggled to find faith in 20th century America.

The book is hefty, but it reads more like a novel than a biography, carrying readers from one episode to another. The value for leaders today is the book’s theme: “an American pilgrimage.” Each of them was on a spiritual journey, riddled not only with doubt but with illegitimate children, anti-war protests, the the pain of illness. Many of us long for the divine but find faith elusive. Day, O’Connor, Merton, and Percy are friends for the journey of leadership.

For me, spending time with The Life You Save May Be Your Own was not a journey of salvation, but it was certainly a pilgrimage toward sanctification.

2. Island of the World, by Michael O’Brien

Josip Lasta grew up the son of a school teacher in the remote mountains of Croatia. O’Brien’s tale takes the reader through World War II, occupying armies, the suffering and death of innocents, and a one man’s attempt to live a good, human life amidst the dehumanizing engine of the modern world. Island of the World is a story of the courage, pain, and deep introspection of a man – and poet – not famous or wealthy, but whose journey from Europe to America formed him into a full, if bleeding, soul.

Literature, like Island of the World, allows us to feel, to weep, to mourn, and to see in character the moral conviction we long for despite the thousand miniature cuts we incur in life, family, work, and public life.

For O’Brien, the foundation of the world is not found in the city streets, monuments of steel, or, in our day, the cables of broadband laying on the ocean floor. The foundation of the world is love despite pain, hope amidst destruction, a God who suffers alongside side of us.

Leadership can be a lonely journey. After reading Island of the World, I felt a little less alone.

3. Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance

Vance’s “memoir of a family and culture in crisis” pulls back the veil of America’s working class, which has suffered since the 1970s, especially across Appalachia and the Rust Belt.

Vance’s odyssey sticks in your mind like a splinter: his beloved Mamaw (grandmother) who once taught her drunk husband a lesson by pouring gasoline him and lighting him on fire; his drug addict mother demanding her teenage son to pee in a cup so she could pass a drug test and not lose her job (after Vance refuses, she cries and begs: ‘I promise, I promise I’ll do better. I promise’”); the fierce honor code among hillbillies, demanding each slight be returned tenfold.

After reading Hillbilly Elegy, I felt covered in shame. A confession: I find it easy to look down on poor white people. When taking road trips from Colorado to Minnesota, I stop at gas stations in Nebraska and Iowa and quietly, smugly, look down on poor white people.

But now, after seeing Vance’s childhood, a sheep being raised by wolves (who in turn were also raised by wolves), I felt in my bones the enormous difficulty of cyclical and cultural poverty, and my own smug arrogance for not stopping to see and to know the American poor.

Hillbilly Elegy should be required reading for leaders who often have “hillbillies” working at the bottom of their organizations. This book gives the crisis of America’s working class a human face. And by the end, you come to even love Mamaw – cursing, violent, vulgar and all.

4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

Much great literature is wasted on bored high school students; it is we adults who need it the most. After re-reading Harper Lee’s perennial classic, I was stunned. Stunned by the ability of a young author in the south to see the “other.”

Atticus Finch – old, scholarly, bright, humble – not only defended Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of rape, in court, but he could see his inherent dignity despite the swirl of racism in the South. Scout, Atticus’s curious daughter, defuses an angry mob coming to lynch Tom Robinson: “Don’t you remember me, Mr. Cunningham? I’m Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one time, remember? … I go to school with Walter … he is your boy, ain’t he? Ain’t he, Sir?” It’s as if Harper Lee can see the humanity in even the racist and bigoted. The hero of the story ends up being Boo Radley, the dark recluse thought to have stabbed his father. A strain of compassion and heroism existed even in his heart.

My life leading Denver Institute moves fast. And I love it. But when I move fast, I often put people into simplistic categories: “doesn’t get it,” rich guy, that’s a “get stuff done” person, ignorant, a “nominal” Christian. Harper Lee crushes my categories, and makes me take a second look at each person I meet.

If I have ears to hear and eyes to see, each person is a deep well, filled with virtue and stain, triumph and moral weakness.

5. The BFG, by Roald Dahl

Sheer delight. That’s how I’d describe my experience recently reading The BFG with my 8 year-old daughter.

“Human beans is not really believing in giants, is they?” Well, all of us should, because recovering a sense of wonder is right around the corner. Giants with names like Bloodbottler, Fleshlumpeater, and Childchewer (over 50 feet tall!) drool and gulp humans every night. But the BFG instead eats stinky snozzcumbers, drinks wonderfully delicious frobscottle (which bubbles downward and causes the ever-fun whizzpoppers to lift him into the air), and catches dreams, hearing them whizz through the air with his enormous ears.

Can you remember a time when both a little fear (could giants really be real?) and a sense of adventure (maybe I could be like Sophie and save kids from those terrible beasts!) were just as real as the dinner you ate last night?

Leaders need to laugh, to delight in words like Roald Dahl, and spend more time thinking like children. Children, in the words of children’s author Mo Willems, are not dumb. They’re just short.

Leaders could learn a lot from kids. After all, the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.

This post first appeared on denverinstitute.org. Photo credit.

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Health Care Science Work

An Ancient Christian Vision for Modern Medicine

January 10, 2017

Meet the Denver doctor on a hilarious, heartfelt search for the healing ingredient in health care.

“Do you remember our handshake? The Nussbaum handshake? First you slap, then you shake, then you slide! It’s the Nussbaum sandshake, the Nussnutt landrake, the Fussbutt bandlake, the Cussbutt taketake!”

Martha, a retired nurse battling depression, found herself once again on the psych unit under the care of Dr. Abraham Nussbaum, a psychiatrist at Denver Health and author of a new memoir, The Finest Traditions of My Calling: One Physician’s Search for the Renewal of Medicine. After years of hospitalizations, Martha formalized her affection for Dr. Nussbaum with “the dreamshake.” Slide and shake, pinky swear, fist bump, explosion.

But why the dreamshake? What did Martha dream about her doctor? Was he a scientist, friend, lover, pill-provider, teacher, technician—or savior?

In a mammoth industry—in 2014, $3 trillion, or $9,523 per American, was spent on health care—competing visions for reform abound. Nussbaum, a 41-year-old Catholic physician, ushers readers through a wild, weird, head scratching, infuriating, and tender odyssey into the dizzying diversity of modern medicine.

Part journalist, part comic, part philosopher, and part shrink, Nussbaum’s search for the healing of healthcare culminates not with the wonders of technology or a recipe for cost-saving, but instead with a fourth-century bishop’s call to build a “poor house” for the ill.

Comedy and Tragedy

On the second day of med school, a young female pathology resident grabbed lunch from the cafeteria and accompanied Nussbaum to his first autopsy. She casually chatted while cutting open an elderly man’s chest—opening the rib cage, removing the organs, and plopping intestines into the sink before she “ran the bowel,” spilling out feces.

As guts spilled out of the cadaver, Nussbaum asked if she ever considered vegetarianism. “No,” she said. “Why would you ask?”

For Nussbaum, residency began by learning how to handle dead body parts; it eventually grew to learning how to handle co-workers.

As a third-year resident, Nussbaum (the rookie) shadowed Cannon, an intern with small glasses, curly hair and pearly teeth. Around three in the morning, a nurse paged them about a patient with a case of the hiccups.

“Okay, Rook, look up treatments for intractable hiccups,” Cannon said.

“Chlorpromazine. Haloperidol. Methylphenidate. Baclofen. Midazolam. Rectal massage.”

“What was that last one?”

“Rectal massage.”

“Uh-huh. That’s the one. Rook, let me teach you. You’ve got to show the nurse who’s in charge.”

The furious nurses massaged the patient’s rectum every 15 minutes the entire night—and made sure to page Cannon mercilessly for the next half decade while on call.

It’s hard to say whether the physicians, the patients, or the consultants in The Finest Traditions of My Calling are more entertaining.

Dr. Paul Bregman, one of Colorado’s many marijuana doctors, arrives to lunch wearing Air Jordans, tweed pants, and a black t-shirt, and tries to offer Nussbaum a bag of cannabis-infused Ho-Hos (“I want you to see the amazing”). Connie, a patient who is sure her sister is plotting to harm Peyton Manning, won’t relent until the star quarterback visits her in treatment. A team of health care consultants prints t-shirts with the new hospital motto. They get tossed from floor to floor by underwhelmed doctors and nurses, and eventually worn by wild-eyed patients on the third-floor psych unit who could uniquely identify with the new slogan: “I’M COMMITTED.”

Yet the comedy of medicine often gives way to the tragic.

Bao was a 43-year-old Vietnamese immigrant who regularly visited the emergency department reporting chest pain, suicidal thoughts, and anxiety. She felt “as lonely as an empty cup.” One night, Bao, a self-described virgin, requested birth control pills. When asked why, she said, “I met a man.”

“Can you tell me about him?”

“My car broke down on the highway. I was on the side of the road and a police officer helped me call a tow truck. Then he told me he was separated from his wife and wondered if we could get together some time. For sex. He told me he liked Asian ladies.”

The internist had prescribed Ortho Tri-Cyclen for birth control, but had missed Bao’s real story completely.

“The value of experience,” said Sir William Osler, founder of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, “is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.” Has modern medicine reduced people to “parts and money,” billing patients for defective limbs or organs, yet forgotten to cultivate deeper virtues?

Amidst such a circus, where does one look to discover and “to preserve the finest traditions of my calling,” to which the Hippocratic Oath refers?

The World’s First Hospital

While enrolled in an AmeriCorps program after college, Nussbaum lived at a Dominican priory. One night, he arrived for mandatory vespers for hymn singing. They cracked open their hymnals to the 72nd Psalm,

“He will rescue the poor at their call,
those no one speaks for.
Those no one cares for
he hears and will save.
He saves their lives from violence,
lives precious in his eyes.”

Having just seen Francisnek, a homeless Polish immigrant whose sobriety was the boast of the rescue mission, slip back into alcoholism, Nussbaum longed for the fulfillment of the psalmist’s promise.

In contrast to the scotch-sipping, sitcom watching friars, the Sinsinawa Dominicans, their sister community down the road, “seemed strangely alive in the absence of men.” One nun handed Nussbaum a “holy card”—like a baseball card for Catholics—of two saints, Cosmas and Damian, “Physicians and Martyrs” who promised to turn their bearers into “willing and loving servants.” Considering the call to medicine, Nussbaum’s pilgrimage took him to Duke University, to study the history of medicine under theologian Stanley Hauwerwas.

In the ancient Greek tradition, sick people came to the temple of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, and offered gifts in exchange for health. Likewise, Greek doctors saw only those who could pay, and there was no public duty toward the sick. But the Jewish tradition of hospitality and the Christian tradition of charity to the poor birthed a new, public commitment to the ill.

In 370, Basil, the new bishop of Caesarea, built a ptochotropeion, or house for the poor, ill, and dispossessed. Located on city’s edge, so it would be accessible especially to travelers and strangers, clerics, deacons, and lay physicians gave patients rest, meals, and care. Basil believed Christians were responsible for the social welfare of the entire city, not only the wealthy. Many scholars today consider Basil’s ptochotropeion to be the first hospital in Western society, the foundation of public-health efforts, and the historical inspiration behind hospitals for the indigent ill in cities throughout the West.

Denver Health, where Nussbaum practices medicine today, descends from Basil’s vision, however loosely. Outside the hospital is a bench, cut from stone, that reads “DO JUSTICE. LOVE GOODNESS. WALK HUMBLY.” The omission of God’s name from the prophet Micah’s famous injunction is both a symbol of medicine’s forgotten origin and a testimony to longings for a deeper, more soul-satisfying vision of the physician’s vocation.

Each morning, when Nussbaum’s arises from bed, he gazes upon an image of Basil of Caesarea. “To place the hope of one’s heath in the hands of the doctor is the act of an irrational animal,” wrote Basil. But “when reason allows, we call in the doctor, but we do not leave off hoping in God.”

Engagement with Faith

The Finest Traditions of My Calling is a sparkling, heart-wrenching, hilarious success.

Even when critiquing quality improvement experts, the narrative still charms. Nussbaum once compares Atul Gawande’s New Yorker essay on “Big Med,” which promises healthcare will be saved by becoming like aircraft carriers or assembly-line restaurants, to “Famous Factory Meatloaf” produced at the Cheesecake Factory.

Yet it’s his serious and delightful engagement with Christianity that really elevates the book. He praises Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval abbess, musician, mystic, and pre-modern clinician, for gently nursing both gardens and patients back to health. Dr. Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health, advocates an application of liberation theology to health care, and opens clinics for the impoverished from Malawi to Peru to Russia. Nussbaum suffers alongside of one of his patients, Eleanor, who struggles to believe in a God who let her mother die of cancer.

Most books on medicine either completely ignore Christianity (and assume medicine started in the 20th century) or see it as a tactic for converting patients. But here, faith is a surprising source of hope. Though Nussbaum doesn’t claim to be a “Catholic psychiatrist,” (he unconvincingly claims to be a “bad Catholic” in the vein of the novelist Walker Percy), his Christian commitments shine through with the humility of St. Luke the Physician.

Yet perhaps Nussbaum’s greatest triumph is turning a medical memoir, a genre that can inspire intractable cases of yawning, into an accessible adventure for a general audience, one worthy of a sequel or even a film adaptation.

Weeks after finishing the book, my daughters are still asking me to do the Nussbaum handshake.

This book review first appeared on christianitytoday.com.

Business Economy Work

Investments for the Kingdom

December 30, 2016

Eventide Funds has confounded the investment world with its success—and it’s biblically based principles.

Not long ago, when reporters wrote about Robin John, the cofounder of Eventide Asset Management, a subtle snicker rumbled under the surface. One called him “The Believer”; others pointed out the odd language on his Boston-based mutual fund company’s website: business as an “engine of blessing” and “biblically responsible investing.”

Theology as the foundation for picking stocks? Is this guy for real?

Today the murmurs seem to have faded, and for good reason. Since its launch in 2008, Eventide’s flagship mutual fund (a pool of money professionally invested in stocks, bonds, and other securities), the Gilead Fund, has given shareholders a 13.70 percent annualized return as of September 30, 2016, compared to 9.03 percent for the Standard & Poor’s 500. To put that into perspective, an investor who put $10,000 into the fund at its launch would be worth $26,050 today. The Gilead Fund has been covered as a top performer by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg, among other publications. Over the past three years, media attention has helped Eventide explode from $50 million in assets under management to nearly $2 billion.

But there’s more to Robin John than a focus on profit. Challenging Milton Friedman’s declaration that the only social responsibility of business is to increase profits, John says, “Profit is only the byproduct of a job well done.”

John, an evangelical living in Dallas, is a leader in the growing field of biblically responsible investing, which applies Christian theology and social concern to investment analysis. Eventide, founded in 2008, has garnered attention because of both its results and its uniquely faith-filled investment philosophy, driven ultimately by Jesus’ command to love your neighbor as yourself.

His journey to investing, however, was fraught with vocational doubt, uncertainty, and a heart-wrenching journey to India, the land of his birth.

Longing for a Calling

John grew up in a village in southern India, influenced by the faith of his grandparents. “I remember looking out my window as a child and seeing a cemetery,” John told me. “The church needed land to bury the dead, and so my grandfather, poor as he was, donated it.” John learned the Bible originally in his native tongue of Malayalam and saw a sacrificial faith lived out at an early age.

When John was seven, his family moved to Medford, Massachusetts, following his uncle, an international pastor at Tremont Temple Baptist Church in Boston. “We moved into a community where I was one of the only non-Italian and non-Irish students in class,” John says. Due to an error on his Social Security card, his last name became an abbreviated version of his middle name, Cheriakalath, while he was in school. It was nearly impossible for his Anglo peers to pronounce, just one factor that made growing up an Indian immigrant in American schools tough. So he studied hard and graduated in the top 1 percent of his high school class.

A few years later, John graduated with a degree in economics from Tufts University and took a job at a large bank. “I would pray for a calling to go into ministry,” John recalls. “But I didn’t hear from God. So, because I didn’t feel like I had a calling, I said, ‘I guess I’ll just make money and support those who do.’ ”

One of his first assignments took him from Boston back to Pune, India, near Bombay, to train new employees.

One day, staying in the guest house of an Indian firm, he asked the housekeepers where they slept. He discovered that in a four-bedroom house, they slept in a closet behind the kitchen on the concrete floor, with no mat or rags for a pillow. Outraged, he notified his company of the housekeepers’ living conditions. But the two men begged him not to pursue the matter or they would lose their jobs—and return to the slums.

When John returned to the United States, the air of his home office was heavy with tension. Outsourcing to India meant job cuts for American workers. Now coworkers in Boston came to John with their own plea: “If my job is going to India, you’ve got to let me know. I’ve got a family.”

“I started realizing that work is not just work,” John says. “People’s lives are being impacted.”

In the years that followed, he vocationally wandered from a bank to an accounting firm to part-time classes at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he still longed for “a call to ministry.”

While in Boston, John got in touch with a friend from high school, Finny Kuruvilla. At the time, Kuruvilla was simultaneously pursuing an MD from Harvard Medical School, a PhD in chemistry and chemical biology from Harvard University, and a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. (“And just for fun, Finny taught biblical Greek and Hebrew at his church.”)

John asked Kuruvilla to pray with him, hoping for a sense of God’s call. They prayed once a week for six months. “If God wants me to go into full-time ministry, that’s what I’ll do,” John said, uncertain about working in ministry or business. Together they started a house church and were joined by a Nigerian widow, Congolese immigrants, and a few Harvard students eager to serve their community.

Soon after, Tim Weinhold, an entrepreneur and Harvard alumnus, visited the house church. Getting acquainted after the service, Kuruvilla mentioned that he and some friends were thinking of starting a Christian mutual fund.

“I know what a mutual fund is,” said a skeptical Weinhold, who would eventually become director of faith and business for Eventide. “And I know what a Christian is. Explain to me what a Christian mutual fund is.”

After prayer and discussion, John and Kuruvilla cofounded Eventide Asset Management with the vision of “Investing that makes the world rejoice.”

As the Great Recession began, the sun was setting on John’s longing for a call to ministry. In response to John’s question of whether to go into business or ministry, God slowly revealed his clear answer: “Both.”

From Plunder to Blessing

“I’m confused,” I confess on stage, as I interview John before an eager crowd at The Commons at Champa, a shared workspace in Denver. “What’s the difference between socially responsible investing, values-based investing, and biblically responsible investing?”

In the audience is a young couple, eagerly listening for advice on how to begin their meager retirement savings; a pastor turned investment adviser, fearing he’s failed now that he’s no longer a minister; and a bleary-eyed investment banker, tie-loosened and over-tired, wondering if he’s made a vocational mistake.

eventide-team-ct Conventional fund managers look for financial strengths in making investment decisions, John says. The problem is that profitability is a lagging indicator. It tells investors more about the past than the future. Moreover, it doesn’t show how a business made that money, whether through quality products or oppressive business practices.

Conversely, moral or ethical fund managers screen out the “vice stocks”—pornography, tobacco, weapons, or abortion—and then look for financial strengths. “This is the typical approach of what we might label biblically responsible investing 1.0. It’s a good start,” John says, “but it doesn’t go far enough, because business can harm not just through bad products but through bad practices.” For example, payday loan companies can trap the poor in a cycle of debt, and auto title loans can charge effective rates as high as 500 percent.

The biblical word for these business practices is plunder, says John, who cites biblical passages that emphasize God’s concern for the poor: “ ‘Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan, I will now arise,’ says the Lord. ‘I will protect them from those who malign them’ ” (Ps. 12:5).

But instead of merely avoiding companies that plunder or extract value from a community, John says, “we look for companies with an extraordinary ability to innovate and create value for all stakeholders—customers, employees, suppliers, host communities, the natural environment, and society.” Each of these six stakeholders, Eventide believes, is a primary neighbor that businesses are called to serve. John dubs this positive vision “biblically responsible investing 2.0.”

The Eventide philosophy, or Eventide Business 360, is rooted in the biblical understanding that God’s intent for business, investing, and all vocations is to serve and, in turn, bless humankind. Weinhold, Eventide’s director of faith and business, points to verses like Deuteronomy 8:18—“But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today”—to show that business is uniquely able to create wealth and provide for material needs.

Business does this, according to Weinhold, by creating products that solve the material challenges of human existence and by making a profit, thereby enlarging human wealth to make those products affordable and accessible.

When deciding what businesses to invest in, Eventide considers factors often outside of typical investment analysis such as employee satisfaction, a genuine innovation in the field of investing. They use websites with company reviews shared by employees, as well as other sources, to evaluate both how well a business is “loving” its employees and also its long-term prospects for profitability.

In the days before the Great Recession, John says, “we saw the subprime mortgage industry was exploiting its customers. We didn’t invest there.” Avoiding dishonest practices, John says, is one discipline that can help the firm sidestep the kinds of activities that may be profitable—at least for a time—but do long-term harm.

Like the vast majority of mutual fund investors, most of Eventide’s 133,000 clients are average people saving for retirement. The minimum investment in the Gilead Fund is only $1,000 (or, with an automatic investment plan, $100). “We wanted anybody to be able to invest with us,” says John.

Eventide has performed well for their shareholders, but investing is risky business and can suffer downturns. Even in down markets, though, John reminds his team of their true purpose. Gilead, the name he and Kuruvilla gave their first fund, means “mountain of witness” or “hill of testimony.”

John remembers praying for a calling in 2008, descending into his unfinished basement to “ask God to use me for his glory.” In 2015, Eventide gave away more than $3.5 million to charity, directed almost $2 billion toward businesses they believe improve people’s lives, and influenced business leaders and financial advisors across the United States in how they think about the purpose of their work.

John found his calling in an unlikely place. An investor and entrepreneur, John has embraced a higher view of business, often quoted by Weinhold: “Business is God’s intended partner in his great work as Provider for all of humankind.”

This article first appeared in the December 2016 issue of Christianity Today.

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Business Economy Work

We All Proselytize

December 23, 2016

“Kelly, what does proselytize mean?”

“Evangelize, but with negative connotations.”

I had to ask my wife last Sunday night because the word came up in a discussion with a local Christian entrepreneur.

I’ll paraphrase what he said: “In my company, we believe in the power of entrepreneurship to create flourishing communities. And I’m very open about my Christian faith with my employees when it comes up. But I would never engage in proselytization.”

When he said it, I mostly agreed. The word just sounds like rude, arm-twisting – or possibly even an illegal activity. Encroaching on other people’s faith makes many of us feel uncomfortable at worst, and often offended. It’s usually a good way to seriously tick off your co-workers.

But what does “proselytize” even mean? I looked it up in the dictionary and here’s what I got: “pros·e·lyt·ize ˈpräs(ə)ləˌtīz/verb: convert or attempt to convert (someone) from one religion, belief, or opinion to another.”

Well, that’s interesting. This word simply means trying to change somebody’s beliefs or opinions from one view to another.

When I read this, I had to ask myself: aren’t all of us constantly trying to convert someone from one set of beliefs to another? I mean, if we’re honest, isn’t this what is constantly happening in advertising, media, and even conversations with friends?

For example, Leonardo DiCaprio’s new documentary Before the Flood is clearly trying to influence people to care deeply about climate change. And he’s not apologizing for that. He believes deeply in the catastrophic consequences of inaction for our planet. And he wants the apathetic or the climate change skeptic to be converted from one belief to another.

Or take actress and activist Emma Watson. She recently went to a train station in England and gave away over 100 copies of Maya Angelou’s “Mom & Me & Mom.” As a “book fairy” for the day, she also included a short note in the book, encouraging readers to pass it on. Her motivation was to get as many people as possible to be reading about inequality. Her campaigns for the UN have advocated for feminism, the protecting of young girls against child marriage, and fighting a rape culture. A noble woman, to be sure. And she’s not apologizing either that she’s attempting to convert you to her views.

Even thinking more broadly than Hollywood stars, isn’t the act of proselytization simply a natural, human act? When you receive an email from Costco, aren’t they trying to convince us to buy their products? Weren’t hundreds of millions of dollars spent on political advertising trying to “convert us” to vote for a particular candidate? Doesn’t my daughter try to change my beliefs when she asks for a cookie before bed?

I’m shooting beyond my pay grade here, but it seems to me that a primary use of all human language is to influence people to adopt your beliefs. Some philosophers have even postulated that in all human relationships we attempt to exert power or influence on others. To Daniel Pink’s point, to sell is human.

But can we at least admit that we’re all trying to convert others to our beliefs? Even those who say it’s wrong to convert others to your beliefs, ironically, are trying to convert you to that belief!

But back to the specific topic at hand: sharing about your Christian beliefs in the workplace. A few things to note for my fellow Christians:

We should never try to coerce others. People in positions of leadership need to be careful about sharing their faith with employees simply because it can be construed as “to be accepted around here, you need to be a Christian.” That’s no good. Belief should never be a pre-condition to acceptance. The truth is, God doesn’t coerce us, but is patient with us and allows for us to respond freely to him. Peter writes, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” If God gives us free will and time to respond, should we not do the same for others?

Let’s not be angry when faith comes up. I’ve seen many Christians get ticked off at the topic of faith in the workplace. They cite their first amendment rights to freedom of religion — while about to bust a vein in their necks. Again, no need for this to become a political fight. If it does, it shows that the real issue at stake is a political issue – not theological.

Gentleness and respect should adorn our faith conversations with co-workers. “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,” says Peter. I’m afraid to say that this has not always been the case for people of Christian faith in the public arena (I’m practicing the art of understatement). Instead humility, openness, and respect – along with a robust adherence to the truth we profess – ought to shape our interactions with those of other faiths.

To be honest, I’ve never liked the word proselytization. I won’t be using it anytime soon. But it is worth admitting that all people proselytize. Including Christians.

“Evangelize,” is a much better word. The word comes from the Greek euaggellion, meaning simply “good news.” The word is equally noxious in our secular culture, but it shouldn’t be. Why not? Let me tell a brief story:

For the past two weeks, as I have been driving to work, I’ve listened to the Christmas song, “Mary Did You Know?” After the tears welled up in my eyes for a week straight, I decided to commit the lyrics to memory so I could sing it to my daughters before they go to bed.

Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water?
Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you delivered, will soon deliver you.

Mary did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?
Mary did you know that your baby boy will calm the storm with his hand?
Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little baby, you kiss the face of God.

The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again.
The lame will leap, the dumb will speak, the praises of the Lamb.

Mary did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is heaven’s Perfect Lamb?
That sleeping child you’re holding is the Great I Am.

This is the message I have believed. And this is the one I unashamedly share – with kids, family, co-workers, neighbors, and anybody else who will listen. And when I share my own most-precious good news with the world, I join the rest of the world world that engages in sharing their stories of good news as well…

Last night, I finished singing it to Sierra, my oldest daughter, before we fell asleep. As we both looked at the Christmas tree night light, she said to me with a little grin as I finished the song, “I like that song, daddy.”

“I do too, my love.”

As we prayed together, I thanked God for that person who first “proselytized” me.

This post first appeared at denverinstitute.org.

Business Economy Work

Nourishing the World: Spending an Evening with Dan Dye, CEO of Ardent Mills

December 14, 2016

As we walked into the kitchen, our senses came alive: the smell of freshly baked bread, the shine of stainless steel appliances, the smile of Chef Daniel Marciani, and the sight of risotto, chocolate quinoa desserts and caramelized spread. We felt like we had just walked into Babette’s Feast.

The food was the unexpected capstone of an evening the 5280 Fellows spent with Dan Dye, CEO of Ardent Mills, the largest flour producer in the country. Ardent Mills, a new company that was spun off from ConAgra, CHS, and Cargill just over two and a half years ago, has 42 production facilities in the US, over 2,000 employees, and – get this – serves an estimated 100 million per day with their products. Chances are, if you ate any kind of bread product today, you are being nourished by Ardent Mills.

As we gathered around the conference room to hear Dan’s story, he candidly shared about life as the leader of a $4-billion-year company: the advent of his career at Cargill, the transition to leadership over a team of commodities traders in Winnipeg, and the values he uses as guideposts for everything he does.

Values, he said, are at the core of his leadership. Trust. Serving. Simplicity. Safety. For Dye, they’re more than words: they form the heart of the company he leads – and while not explicitly or exclusively Christian, each of them are endowed with deep spiritual value. “Though I don’t always say to people, ‘These are biblical values,’ to me each value is Biblically rooted, and the Bible informs me on how to lead a company, and how I can help best serve both customers and employees,” said Dye.

Dye spoke about discerning his calling and new job opportunities alongside his wife, Alea; how to build a strong leadership team; the challenges of work-life choices as he took different roles throughout his career. He shared about being a strong emotional presence in times of crisis, especially during a time early in his career when, tragically, two employees died during an accident. “It was the hardest time of my career – and one of the hardest times of my life. The value of safety isn’t just a word on the wall – I believe in it with every fiber of my being.”

Developing a strong, values-based culture is central to Dye’s leadership. He believes values allow them to better serve their customers, but they also create a work-environment that blesses his employees. The five principles of leadership at Ardent Mills are:

Live Our Values: Trust, Serving, Simplicity, Serving
Others Focused vs. Self-Focused
Clear the Noise
Relentlessly Curious
We Will Win – The Right Way

The final value used to be just “We Will Win,” believing that profit is inherently good as it creates the opportunity to serve more customers and hire more employees. But he added “The Right Way” after observing the Volkswagen emissions scandal in 2015, in which the German automaker intentionally mislead environmental authorities to pass emissions standards. To Dye, doing business “the right way” means profit must be made ethically, upholding the highest standards of integrity.

Banks Benitez, 5280 Fellow and Vice President of Global Expansion at the Unreasonable Institute, shared a brief note with me after the Community & Culture gathering:

“I just wanted to drop you a brief note thanking you for tonight. It broadened my perspective, humanized a big industry that I know nothing about, connected us to a leader who is putting Christ in that center circle, and sparked many ideas for me in my own career and role. One thing that Dan mentioned, which I really liked, was about getting rid of the noise and bringing clarity to people. I know that’s something I struggle with in my role with our team…It was such an amazing night and I kept thinking, “this is way beyond what I expected from the fellowship.”

Dye also shared about the centrality of his faith to his work. “I remember when I was a kid, my dad would take me aside before a basketball game, and give me some clear advice: keep your cool, do your best, honor God. I’ve always kept that advice close to my heart.” Through both his father and early career mentors at Cargill, who encouraged him to keep Christ at the center of his life, role models profoundly impacted Dye’s career trajectory.

The Ardent Mills vision of “Nourishing What’s Next” has special meaning for Dye. Bread is a central metaphor in the Scriptures: Jesus is the bread of life; the kingdom of God is like yeast that works its way through dough; Jesus commands his followers to remember his death through drinking of wine and eating bread.

As Dan Dye leads a company that is nourishing the world – quite literally – he also strives to nourish the spirits of the customers, employees and communities Ardent Mills serves each day.

This article first appeared on the Theology of Business Blog at denverinstitute.org.

Economy Work

Business Travel Have You Exhausted? Bring a Kid

November 29, 2016

Traveling for business is tough. For most men I speak to, the time away from family and on the road is usually an emotional, spiritual and often physical black hole.

My friend Danny recently came back from a business trip. Bleary-eyed, he shared that the meetings were poorly planned, his flight was delayed – and it took him at least two days to recover from a feeling of exhaustion after getting back to his wife and four kids. And his family was a mess as a result of his week-long trip.

Another friend, Andrew, sent a group of men an email,

“I’ve been asked to head up a church group specifically for guys whose jobs have them on the road frequently. Those of you who travel regularly know that it can be challenging to get connected with other men while traveling. We also want to help strengthen men in the face of temptations that often present themselves while away from home. Do any of you have recommendations for a small group study that speaks to these challenges?”

Looks like the challenges of life on the road are pretty widespread.

Traveling loses its luster pretty quickly when you’re only between conference rooms, airports, and generic hotel rooms. Though being on a business trip has an air of importance and unhinged freedom that can often puff us up, often we quickly crash back to earth when faced with temptation, long hours, short nights, and missed kid’s soccer games. The biggest challenge most business leaders face is loneliness – and traveling solo doesn’t help.

There has to be a better way.

When meeting with my friend Dave, he shared with me that better way: take a kid with you on the trip. Whenever he travels for speaking engagements, he tells them that a part of his travel fee is that he always travels with a guest: rarely does he say it’s one of his four children.

So, on a recent business trip to visit a foundation, I took my oldest, Sierra, 8, with me on the trip. And it was a total move of genius. Eating chocolate pancakes, spying night-time pool cleaning machines, putting on cheese heads at a Wisconsin airport – we had a blast.

Here’s why I think traveling with a kid ought to be a regular practice for dads on business trips – and why I think businesses should fund their little traveling companions, too:

Traveling with kids leads to an emotionally and physically healthy trip. Sierra was delighted by the airplane, giddy as we ate spaghetti and meat balls together, and talked about our trip to Chicago for weeks prior – and months afterward. Her delight and wonder rubbed off on me. “Dad, I just can’t help being so excited about the airplane!” We smiled, laughed, and chatted our way from rental car to hotel to meetings because of the joy of my daughter. Moreover, because I had to put my daughter to bed as soon as we arrived to the hotel at 10pm, I went to sleep then as well. And woke up right at 6am. The pull towards destructive behaviors to make myself feel better after a long commute….completely disappeared. I got enough rest, prayed with my daughter, and felt energized for the business meetings I had the next day.

Traveling with kids keeps families healthy. How many families have been crippled by absent dads on the road – or husbands who strayed from their wives while thousands of miles away? Having a kid on the trip draws us immediately back into the commitments and loves of our families, and instead of putting strain on the family, draws families together. For Sierra and I, it was precious one-on-one time that is rare for a family for four kids. One she still treasures – and I treasure, too.

Traveling with kids cultivates spiritual health in employees, thus making them more productive. Is buying the additional plane ticket on the company dollar really worth it? Maybe a better question is: what’s the cost of spiritually unhealthy employees? I’ve spoken to dozens of men who feel an unusual pull toward pornography when away from home – and in the cycle of addiction, no productive work is done. When dads get home, often we find we need to do triage after leaving our wives with 100% of the family responsibilities for a few days. And thus we need to work less because of the additional emotional stress of being gone. (Or our time at the office the next day is tinged with a an additional level familial stress.) An extra plane ticket is indeed an expense – but if we have health incentives programs at our companies to exercise and eat right, why not make an investment in healthy relationships?

I’ve shared my affection for traveling with kids (and my spouse, when we can find a brave babysitter for four kids!) with friends and business leaders, and here are the questions I get:

What do you do with your kids during business meetings? Good question. And I have a pretty simple answer: give them homework to do. Sierra traveled with a binder of homework – long division, reading, writing, and world geography (which we had a chance to directly experience while on the road). During lay overs and during meetings, I simply gave her work to do. To be practical, I’m not sure if doing business travel with kids before about age 6 can really work that well. But after that, if they can do audio books or iPad math, they can productively use the time to further their education – and not get behind on class work.

Won’t my kids get bored? That’s possible. Conferences of mortgage lenders or pharmaceutical sales aren’t exactly Disney Land. However, when I travel with kids, we make nearly everything an adventure. Exploring hotel hallways, ordering fun meals, exploring new lands on the Illinois toll way. Plus, just before we flew out of Milwaukee, I took Sierra to visit lake Michigan (see picture below). That half hour on the shores of one of America’s Great Lakes has been the topic of her school writing exercises for a full month after our trip.

How do I get this business expense approved? Make the case that healthy men need healthy families, and that being isolated from our families for days or weeks on end isn’t healthy. It may be a first-time conversation with your supervisor, but make the case that employees are not just human ‘doings’ that accomplish tasks, but human beings who need deep spiritual, emotional and physical health to do creative, productive work.

At the hotel in Chicago, the front desk clerk looked at Sierra and I, and she said, “How cute! I wish my dad would have taken me on business trips as a kid. Our home was always so crazy – seemed like he never had time for me.”

Time for new trend in global business travel.

Art Work

That Eye-On-the-Object Look: Finding Focus in a Distracted World

November 18, 2016

The world is a distracting place.

Email, Facebook, open office spaces, iPhones, and insanity-inducing apps with red pop-up bubbles nagging for my attention. What would the opposite of a distracted work day look like?

Check out this statement by W.H. Auden:

“You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes; a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading, wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look.”

When was the last time you were working and you had that eye-on-the-object look? For me, at least, it’s elusive. So much clutter – mental, and physical. What can be done?

This makes me think about three things:

Find Deep Work. Cal Newport’s book makes the case that unplugging from distraction is rare, meaningful and valuable. He also gives some clear tips on on how to work deeply in a distracted age, like quitting social media, embracing boredom, and “draining the shallows.” It’s the quantity of deep work – not the total hours in your day on your computer – that really matters.

Serve the Work, Not the Customer. In her profound little essay “Why Work?” Dorothy Sayers says “If work is to find its right place in the world, it is the duty of the Church to see to it that the work serves God, and that the worker serves the work.” Here’s what she means: in an age focused on “customer service” we’ve lost a vision for the intrinsic value of the work itself. That is, we ought not to work ultimately for our customers or for our wages, but for God, and in so doing, our work reflects his beauty and creativity alone. Nuts to what others think about it. Do a thing well for its own sake. There’s your daily act of worship.

Recover the Practice of Attention. Matthew Crawford has written a delightful book called “The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction.” It might be your iPhone’s fault that your distracted, or it may have deeper roots in Western culture. Crawford makes the case that hockey players, chefs and pipe organ makers need hours of undistracted focus – and that like them, collectively we could build public spaces more attentive to focus than frittering away our time.

It is indeed possible to get into a flow, as TED talk all-star Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it. It’s tough, but worth a try.

It’s high time each of us went back to the why of our work, and started to recover our vocation – and that beautiful eye-on-the-object look.

Economy Work World

Care About Refugees? This Greek Yogurt CEO is Hiring Hundreds of Them

November 10, 2016

Hamdi Ulukaya, the CEO of Greek yogurt brand Chobani, is showing the world – including Christians – how to treat refugees. Since 2007, he has hired hundreds of refugees from all over the world, and currently employs over 300 refugees across his company.

In a cultural moment when more refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean than ever before, Ulukaya has, in the words of a recent Global Citizen article, an astonishing amount of moral clarity:

“He understands that refugees are fleeing tremendous hardship and just want to be given a chance to begin or resume a normal, healthy life. His workers have escaped death. They’ve seen family members get killed or have been forever separated from their families. They’ve endured years of uncertainty and fear. Now, they just want to be normal.”

A Kurd from Turkey, Ulukaya knows what’s it like to be oppressed. Despite significant backlash against hiring refugees in the US, he continues to advocate for refugees and give them job opportunities as a way to rebuild their lives.

Ulukaya’s story has a certain allure: born to a family that operated a small sheep, goat and dairy farm in Ilic (Erzincan Province) in Turkey, he came to the US in 1994 to study English and take a few business courses. He started a feta-cheese factory, and then took a big risk in buying a defunct yogurt factory in upstate New York in 2005. His goal was to produce a yogurt without preservatives, artificial flavors or gelatins – more akin to the quality and natural yogurt he grew up with Turkey as opposed to the sugary and watery yogurts he found in America.

Over the next 5 years, Chobani – from the Turkish word for “shepherd” – would take off. In less than five years, his company would be valued at over $1 billion and is now the leading yogurt brand in the US.

Ulukaya clearly values philanthropy. He’s signed Bill Gates and Warren Buffet’s Giving Pledge, committing to give away over half of his fortune during his lifetime or in his will. But on September 29, 2015, at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, he also urged business people to do more than “just write checks” to help alleviate the suffering of refugees.

For example, he believes in paying his employees higher wages, noting that not only is treating employees better for the company, but also states that, “for the sake of our communities and our people, we need to give other companies the ability to create a better life for more people.” He even gave his 2,000 employees an ownership stake in the company. When Chobani is sold or goes public, they’ll receive shares up to 10% of the company’s values. The move could make the employees on his manufacturing floor millionaires.

In an interview with Ernst and Young Global Chairman & CEO Mark Weinberger, he unabashedly said, “Business is still the strongest, most effective way to change the world.”

Here in Denver, James Rudder, CEO of L&R Pallet, has hired hundreds of refugees from Myanmar. Other Christians have followed suit with campaigns for charitable giving to help refugees throughout the world. But after a conversation yesterday with an investor and business leader in Denver, whom I deeply admire, I can safely say that we Christians have a long way to go to in seeing business – not just charitable giving – as an opportunity to serve the needs of our world. We could learn a lot from Ulukaya and his moral example.

A challenge to all of us in the US: Could we hire more refugees in our companies in the US? Could we intentionally start companies abroad to help the 65.3 million refugees in the world today? More broadly, how could our hiring practices reflect God’s heart of compassion for the poor, the foreigner, the widow and orphan?

One thing’s for sure: after learning about Ulukaya and Chobani, next time I go to the grocery store my wife and I will be stocking up on Greek yogurt.

Economy Nonprofit Work

The “Culture Hole” in Our Annual Giving

November 7, 2016

So many charities, so many choices. This time of year, year-end fundraising appeals pour into our mailboxes. How are we to decide between the many worthy nonprofit causes that are asking for financial support?

If you’re anything like Kelly (my wife) and me, you have to make this choice carefully. We’ve set aside a certain amount each year in our charitable giving budget, and we want our donor dollars to make an impact.

For us, there are two giving categories that won’t budge anytime soon: the local church and the poor. We believe we have both a duty and a joyful opportunity to support our local church (Littleton Christian Church) as it proclaims the gospel to our community and nonprofits like HOPE International that are serving the poor and marginalized throughout the world. I believe these two categories should be universal priorities for Christians.

But I think many Christians have often overlooked a third category for charitable giving: culture. Actually, I believe the culture category is necessary considering the redemptive scope of the resurrection and what it means to be a follower of Christ in this world. Education, the arts, scientific research, leadership development, even politics (Did I really just write that?). The broader arena in which we work and live needs generous donor support – and without generous culture patrons, our entire civilization is negatively affected. Not a small claim to defend!

Here are three reasons why I think we all need to add “culture” to our annual giving priorities:

Not all good activities our society needs are profitable, and thus, they need charitable support.

Imagine if you had to buy a $20 ticket to go to church each Sunday. Would you be incensed? What if you grew up in a community with no symphony, or you never visited an art museum or arboretum as a kid? Do you feel like other children should have that experience today – even if they can’t pay for it?

We live in the age of philanthrocapitalism – a view that says philanthropists ought to act like angel investors, and nonprofits should cease with this fundraising nonsense and act more like businesses.

Many nonprofits should indeed develop earned revenue streams (book sales, event ticket sales, or fee for service). And many organizations need to vastly improve reporting and metrics. But some valuable human endeavors are simply not profitable. And never will be.

Two examples:

(A) Education. It’s not profitable. It just isn’t. When a Ph.D. student spends five years studying medieval Hebrew manuscripts, or a kid learns a multiplication table for the first time in second grade, there’s no way these activities can – or should – be profitable. Experiments in for-profit higher education, like the University of Phoenix, haven’t gone well. The point is that education is good… and costly. And it will perpetually require donor and/or government support to impact lives and shape an educated citizenry, which our businesses, churches, hospitals and, yes, schools, depend on.

(B) Science. Building the large hadron collider, a massive particle accelerator, is costly. Really costly – to the tune of about $13.25 billion. Now, why on earth would anybody fund this? Because this activity could push all of humanity forward through a new scientific breakthrough. It’s not profitable – but it is valuable. Cancer research, a children’s hospital, the chemistry department at your local university – each need donor support.

I fully understand the need for sustainability in the nonprofit world. Trust me: as the executive director of a nonprofit, I understand this. We actively work on minimizing risk and diversifying our income streams. But it’s also worth remembering that there are incredibly valuable human endeavors that require generosity and can only flourish with the support of people who think private schools and preserving primate habitats – “culture” – are worth donor support.

Christianity leads us to invest in a broad scope of redemption – and a broad commitment to human flourishing.

Colossians 1:19-20 says, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” All things, many theologians have pointed out, means the individual soul but also neighborhoods, cities, and entire areas of human endeavor, like art, law, manufacturing, agriculture, retail, and investing.

Or take a less-quoted example: Zephaniah 3. When God judges Israel for her sin, he says, “Her officials within her are roaring lions; her rulers are evening wolves, who leave nothing for the morning. Her prophets are unprincipled; they are treacherous people. Her priests profane the sanctuary and do violence to the law.” God is judging not just individuals, but cultural norms that had become unjust. He speaks to government leaders, the media (ancient prophets functioned in many ways like the media of today), and corrupt religious leaders.

God’s law, given through Moses at Sinai, lays down a vision for a just society, not the private salvation of individuals nor isolated acts of charity. As soon as he tells people to “act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God,” he follows up by mentioning the integrity (or lack thereof) of their business practices (Micah 6:8-11).

God cares about all of his creation, from neurotransmitters to nuclear energy. And because of human sin, each area of the world is distorted due to sin. Syria is crumbling, spiritual emptiness is rampant, caustic partisan division is paralyzing Washington, and refugees are suffering.

Anthony Bradley, a theologian at The King’s College, defines human flourishing as “a holistic concern for the spiritual, moral, physical, economic, material, political, psychological and social context necessary for human beings to live according to their design.” Does our giving reflect this broad view of human flourishing?

We can’t change all that has gone wrong, not give to every cause. But we can do something. Why not pick an area of culture – like spurring on the generosity movement, contributing to the formation of a potential leader, or even giving to a bunch of scholars thinking about culture – and give generously?

The poor need us to give to “culture.”

Last week I was talking with my friend David, who, through his career, has become personal friends with many high ranking government officials in Africa. One day, he took an emerging leader from the Congo (a lawyer by trade) to visit one of the world’s biggest private equity funds (hundreds of billions in assets). The fund manager said, “We’re interested in investing significantly in the Congo. But we can’t yet. Because of the scope of the investment, we need to see political stability for at least 10 years before we invest.”

The young leader went away encouraged – knowing that this investment could create thousands of jobs for his countrymen – yet knowing he needed to work on building networks of moral integrity in the upper echelon of leadership in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help stabilize a county that’s been torn by civil war.

The point has been well made by documentaries like Poverty, Inc. or books such as Entrepreneurship for Human Flourishing that entrepreneurship and business does more to alleviate systemic poverty than charity ever will. But that’s not to say that charity isn’t necessary. On the contrary, what we most need is a certain kind of moral fiber among business leaders that turns wealth creation into societal benefit. Earning more money can mean the chance to buy more whisky and prostitutes, or it can mean the chance to invest in your kid’s education. The formation of ethical leaders, especially in business and government, is critical to poverty alleviation. (Gary Haugen has also made the case that the rule of law and preventing violence from sweeping through countries is also critical to development work.)

In summary, if we care about the poor, we can’t just give to the next natural disaster or emergency fundraising appeal we get in the mail. We need to build up institutions and the people who lead them because it leads to jobs, stability, and cultures of virtue that can put poverty to rest for good.

The Most Generous Country in the World

Americans are the most generous people in the world. We give away over $1 billion dollars a day. We give away $373 billion a year – and 73 percent of that is from individuals like you and me. (Though we give the most by total contributions, Australia and New Zealand edge us by a greater percent of people who give to charity each year.)

And people of religious faith are the most generous of all Americans. It’s controversial, but true. Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute reports that the average annual giving among the religious is $2,210 per year, whereas it is $642 among secular Americans. Christians even give to secular causes more generously than secular people.

Each year, Kelly and I strive to give more generously for the core reason that God has first given generously to us.

It’s makes me excited to give this year to the church, to the poor – and to the cultural endeavors that God so loves (John 3:16; 2 Corinthians 5:19).

Faith and Work Movement Theology Work

Broader, Not Deeper

October 3, 2016

What will allow more pastors to see the importance of work for their church and its mission? How might the faith and work movement help pastors and seminaries to embrace ministry models that equips men and women to serve Christ in the wide array of professions in our culture today? And why is this so difficult?

Last year, I interviewed Michael Lindsay, president of Gordon College, about his new book View from the Top. One of the lasting highlights from our conversation was about his research on the White House Fellows, a leadership development experience that had shaped a significant majority of the 500+ “platinum” leaders in his study. The vast majority of these leaders had experienced a “broadening education” during their time as White House Fellows. Fellows had candid, off-the-record conversations with everybody from zoologists to members of the President’s cabinet. Through this experience, they developed a taste for seeing issues in society broadly, not only from the perspective of their own field, but from the perspective of others as well.

The reason, says Lindsay, this is so important for leadership development is that most of our career tracks drive us to becoming technicians, not generalists. We go through school and our early career, perhaps get a professional degree, and then get technically proficient at a single thing – whether that be creating pitch books or operating on a L5 vertebrae. And usually, these jobs are handsomely remunerated. The problem is that we have less and less of an incentive to see the broad world outside of our field, and what those kinds of work mean for building a good society. We may start off with a liberal arts education, but we very rarely cultivate a liberal arts lifestyle.

For example, Lindsay interviewed John Mendelsohn, who just stepped down as the head of MD Anderson Cancer Center. Mendelsohn was a top-flight scientist at a prestigious research institution. When Lindsay interviewed him for View from the Top, he asked Mendelsohn what book was on his nightstand. Surely a book on cancer research, or science more broadly. Right? No. The history of opera. Mendelsohn was reading about the history of opera before falling asleep! Why? Because he wanted to know more about the world he lived in.

This practice of broad learning, not deep, is core, says Lindsay, to a kind of leadership that is good for society in general. I’d also argue that it is core to helping more ministry professionals see the world of work outside the walls of a church.

So often, when we teach about professional growth, we go further and further into our own disciplines. More management theory for executives, or more biblical commentaries for pastors. But more often than not, the deepest growth happens at the intersection between fields and the relationships of people leading in vastly different sectors. (This idea has also influenced the formation of the 5280 Fellowship.)

Within the faith and work movement, we often ask the question: how will more leaders of God’s church start seeing the centrality of work to God’s restoration of his creation? We typically do what most professional development programs do: get more people to see it our way. Ask them to read Tim Keller’s Every Good Endeavor or Tom Nelson’s Work Matters. Or come to a conference where Steve Garber or Amy Sherman are speaking. These are all good things to do. Tim, Tom, Steve and Amy are incredible human beings, and we should read more of their work.

But I don’t actually think that an initial step further into theology is the right move. What’s lacking for most is not good theology but good anthropology. Many pastors are wonderful theologians, correctly exegeting Bible passages, expounding gospel-centered ministry, and speaking of God’s kingdom and His redemption coming to all aspects of the world. What we can’t actually see, often, is the world and what human beings are actually doing in that world. We see elders, youth ministry workers, deacons, and volunteers, but it’s hard to see executive coaches, cashiers, community college administrators, nurses, and homeschooling moms filling the pews.

Most men and women need to learn only one other field to grow in the integration of faith and work: theology. Pastors, however, need to not only know theology, but all the fields their people work in: something of finance, K-12 education, health care, retail, manufacturing, agriculture and the social sciences. For starters.

What practices can help church leaders to see the world in which we live, and what Christian faith means for that world? To begin with, I’d say to temporarily put down the Bible commentary, and start to look broader, not deeper.

Here are three places to start:

Broad Reading. Drawn to reading Tim Keller or James K.A. Smith? Read American history or the Wall Street Journal Drawn to Fox News? Flip on MSNBC. Love reading systematic theology? Me too. But just to toss in a curve ball, consider 18^th century literature, or classic psychology. If you’re stuck, ask a friend about their work, and try to read one foundational work in that field before the year’s out. This broad reading will allow us to see a bigger view of “the city” we so often like to talk about renewing – and all the thorny, complex, and beautiful issues and industries in that city.

Broad Listening. I’m so guilty here. Generally speaking, when I feel out of my league after the inevitable “What do you do?” question, I steer the question back to a topic I’m a pro in. It’s easier that way, and I don’t feel stupid when my friend is speaking about pharmaceutical sales or loan underwriting. But what if we simply dove further in, and became more curious about the work of others? I’ve experimented with this, and it’s just like learning a foreign language as an adult: you have to concede that you’ll sound like a kindergartner. But when you do, your imagination for what redemption might look like in physics research or ceramics production grows exponentially. This is really a practice in pastoral ministry – the shepherding of God’s flock for their formation in the pastures that God has placed them.

Broad Relationships. We tend to hang out with people just like us. Again, guilty as charged. Most of my friends are white Christians that work in an occupational ministry-related field, many of whom live in suburban Colorado – like me. But what if we all made a commitment to having lunch, coffee, or dinner with people vastly different than us – ethnically, socio-economically, or vocationally? We would be able to see a far wider perspective on the world. Also, many of our biases against “those” people might be put to rest if we simply listened to their stories: where they grew up, the pains they suffer, the longings they harbor. Here we might be able to find common ground even with our enemies, thus making Jesus’ command to “love our enemies” a bit easier to do..

Perhaps these, not another faith and work conference, are the best next step for a broader cultural engagement, and a church that embraces its missionary role in the world.

This post first appeared on The Green Room. Photo credit.

Jeff Haanen

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