This article first appeared in the print edition of the Boulder Daily Camera on January 27, 2016.

Erik Nelson, a former VP with a large financial service company, is on the hunt for meaningful work.

He recently moved from Texas to Colorado to find a job in the nonprofit sector, hoping to discover a career with more than monetary benefits.

But after a few months, his search became a maze. He recently asked me, “Honestly, can work be anything other than mundane, routine, and pressure packed?” In other words, isn’t there more to life that working a 9-5—and then escaping to the mountains for the weekend?

Like the 19th century gold rush, Erik is one of thousands of people are flocking to Colorado. As the economic center of the United States shiftswestward, cities like Boulder are brimming with new faces – especially millenials. We seem to be following Henry David Thoreau’s prophetic words, “Eastward I go only by force, but westward I go free. This is the prevailing tendency of my countrymen.”

But why come to a city like Boulder? Why did Colorado gain over 100,000 residents last year? Is it our snow-kissed slopes? Our booming craft brewing industry? Dreams of trading the congestion of New York for a leisurely bike ride to work in the Colorado sunshine?

Certainly those perks play a role. But I have a thesis: what we’re really longing for is meaningful work. And for most, that search is riddled with anxiety.

In generations past, many took jobs merely as a means to a paycheck. Sign on with a large company, stay for 30 years, and find fulfillment on the weekend. But the new norm is to find a job with a social mission.

For example, JJ Oslund of Boulder left his job in human resources at Target to join the Global Accelerator Network, a network of short-term schools for entrepreneurs, because “I was in a system where I couldn’t effect change. I knew I wanted my work to make an impact.”

The American historian and broadcaster Studs Turkel described this longing well,“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.”

If work is just a dollars-for-hours swap, then we’re spending nearly 100,000 hours of our lives like Sisyphus — pushing a rock up hill only to see it roll down again. It’s no wonder 75 percent of young adults want to live a more meaningful life.

The trouble is, most aren’t finding what they’re looking for. The average job tenure for millennials is a staggeringly short 16 months. For the rest of the market, it’s only 4.6 years. The search for meaning in work is elusive; as soon as one opportunity knocks, thoughts creep in of a better job around the corner.

Tech entrepreneurs often have the toughest time finding satisfaction in their work. A recent survey by TINYpulse, a specialist in monitoring employee satisfaction, found only 19% of tech employees say they are happy in their jobs, and only 17% feel valued in their work.

Tensions with work are often hardest for women with children. Jesse Minassian, a mother of two and writer living in Aurora, says, “I love what I do. Yet working from home while homeschooling my kids makes it hard. Between working, housekeeping, mothering, teaching and being a wife, I never feel a sense of being ‘finished’ with my responsibilities.”

At Denver Institute for Faith & Work, these are the kinds of tensions we explore. Tensions between faith and work, aimlessness and purpose, family and career, what is and what should be.

Denver founder and city builder John Evans (1814-1897), whose efforts to connect the Denver Pacific railway to Cheyenne saved the metro area from obscurity, once said, “It is the imperative of the Almighty that we shall do all the good we can.” For Evans, his work in medicine, business and higher education, was driven by a deeper meaning than mere personal success.

Evans didn’t just have a career. He had a vocation. A person choosing a career balances financial and psychological benefits with professional advancement. But someone with a vocation obeys a summons, even if it leads to obscurity or suffering. The good of others trumps personal comfort.

Tensions in our work will remain. But hope for the masses moving West for meaningful work won’t be found in self-actualization but instead in the freedom of self-forgetfulness.

Jeff Haanen is the Executive Director of Denver Institute for Faith & Work, a Colorado based educational nonprofit, and co-founder of the 5280 Fellowship.

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Work

Want an Affordable Home? Thank a Craftsman

January 8, 2016

What is causing soaring home prices in Denver right now? This is the question on many would-be buyers’ minds. In June, the average home price in Denver was $366,419 — the highest in Colorado state history.

The Denver City Council has spent significant time trying to find solutions to the shortage of affordable housing. (Recently, The Denver Post reported that Mayor Michael Hancock wants to raise $15 million a year to subsidize projects as part of a much larger plan.) But how did we get here?

My wife and I asked our real estate agent, Trish Hopkins of RE/MAX, the same question. As we sat down to coffee, expressing our woeful prospects of ever finding a house we could afford, Hopkins said at least one problem is obvious. Inventory. She told us the average number of houses on the market for the Denver area is around 12,000 at any given time. Right now, it’s less than 3,500. With Colorado’s population boom, it just comes down to math.

So why don’t we just build more houses?

I recently asked that question to the CEO of Shea Homes, Chetter Latcham. He shared my bewilderment at the historic prices, but added that he has nearly 100 houses just waiting to be built. There simply aren’t enough people to build them.

The shortage of skilled manual labor in Colorado has been a challenge for some time. The Denver Business Journal wrote about it nearly a year ago. Yet the shortage of skilled tradesmen is not limited to Colorado. Manpower Group reported in 2014 that skilled labor jobs are among the hardest to fill internationally. In 2013, Forbes reported that the skills gap will worsen as nearly one-third of all tradesmen are 55 and over and will retire without nearly enough young craftsman to take their places.

Workers are certainly moving to Denver, but not to become plumbers, electricians or contractors. A Brookings Institution study showed that from 2010-2013, Denver attracted the second most young adults (25-34-year-olds) of any American city (just behind Houston, and tied with San Francisco). Great, right? Well, it looks like most young adults would rather work in other industries. The Colorado Home Builders Association sees this and has tried to combat the labor shortage with a new training program for young tradesmen.

Now the labor shortage is growing into an economic problem. Many millennials and transplants of other generations are priced out of the Denver home market. Without more affordable housing — and without more skilled laborers to build those houses — Colorado’s economy can’t continue to attract high quality talent to sustain long-term growth. And, we risk losing talented young workers to more affordable places like the Midwest.

The Root of the Problem

So, if Denver desperately needs houses that can be built by skilled tradesmen who are paid a good wage, then why the persistent shortage of manual laborers?

I have a theory: We’ve devalued the American Craftsman. I’ve written about this for Christianity Today (“The Work of Their Hands”) and the academic journal The City (“How We Lost the Craftsman”). Still, to date we’ve underemphasized how deeply biased our educational systems are against the trades.

Pursuing a four-year liberal arts degree has become not only the norm, but essentially the definition of the purpose of education. David Coleman, a former McKinsey & Company consultant, president of the College Board, and one of the architects of Common Core, has said that he intends to “help the [Common Core] movement towards agreement that college- and career-readiness is the goal of K−12 education in this country.” The strong implication is: go to a four year college or we’ve failed to prepare you for a good life.

A Different Kind of Intelligence

I recently had dinner with my friend Jim DeWeese, a small electrical contractor here in Denver. He’s thriving: His business is growing, and he has recently hired his first employee. But when we spoke he shared with a tinge of shame in his voice that it took nearly a decade for him to get through community college. And it was difficult the whole time. He isn’t a classroom and lecture learner. He is gifted to work with his hands.

But culturally, we don’t value the intelligence and skill of those who work with their hands. Consider this passage from Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod in his short story “Closing Down for Summer,” where a miner reflects on his dirty, yet beautiful, work:

“That they might journey down with me in the dripping cage to the shaft’s bottom or walk the eerie tunnels of the drifts that end in walls of staring stone. And that they might see how articulate we are in the accomplishment of what we do. That they might appreciate the perfection of our drilling and the calculations of our angles and the measuring of our powder, and that they might understand that what we know through eye and ear and touch is of a finer quality than any information garnered by the most sophisticated of mining engineers with all their elaborate equipment.”

DeWeese, like this miner, exhibits a skill and intelligence that is displayed at the intersection between mind and hand; it is intuitive and spacial. They both have been called to be craftsmen. Why do people like Jim feel compelled to apologize to take up the work of a craftsman?

Why, when our crumbling American infrastructure is longing for craftsman, have we shamed the pursuit of “vocational school” or a career in the trades as second rate? When we live in a culture where lattes are served up by English lit majors on federal assistance, why have we failed to realize that craftsmanship is not only a good way to make a competitive income, but it’s a noble way of life?

The Remedy

Maybe a better question is: What will motivate more young men and women to go into the trades?

There have been a few efforts to address this issue, such as Build Colorado and Skills to Compete, two Colorado initiatives designed to fill the skilled labor shortage. But most efforts fall short. Many only address compensation: Choose the trades because you can make more money than your college-educated peers. But this approach has limited results. After all, people are not motivated only by money, as Daniel Pink tell us. (His thesis is that people are ultimately motivated by mastery, autonomy and purpose.)

As Barry Schwartz, a Swarthmore professor, wrote in a recent New York Times article, “The truth is that we are not money-driven by nature. Studies show that people are less likely to help load a couch into a van when you offer a small payment than when you don’t, because the offer of pay makes their task a commercial transaction rather than a favor to another human being.” Research proves that people want their work to be more than an hours for dollars transaction — they seek the chance to be creative, to do their work with excellence and to serve a greater purpose in the world.

Humanities 101

To provide enough tradesmen for America’s economy, we need more than numeric arguments. We need the humanities. To influence more young people to take up a career in the trades, I believe we need to elevate three aspects of the trades: intelligence, beauty and vocation.

1. We’ve overlooked the intelligence of the skilled tradesmen, assuming that office jobs are where intellect thrives. Mike Rose, author of The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker, argues we’ve seen the laborer “muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no thought bright behind the eye, no image that links hands and brain.” In contrast, Rose sees the lightening-fast decisions of a waitress, the complex spatial mathematics of a carpenter and the aesthetic dexterity of the hair stylist as work to be praised and respected.

2. A vision of craftsmanship is directly connected to beauty. Before the industrial revolution, a city’s artists and its tradesmen were often the same thing: Each made structures for both utility and beauty. The medieval guilds had high standards. Weavers, painters, metalsmiths, bakers, butchers, soapmakers and leatherworkers contributed not just to the local economy, but also to a city’s social fabric. Those who proved technical competence in the trades often entered the social elite. Rightly so — they contributed significantly to the well-being and beauty of a city.

3. The vocation of the craftsman is not only noble, but Christians remember that Jesus himself was a tekton, a craftsman. Theology gives a new honor and dignity to doing the work that God Incarnate himself did for thirty years. In contrast to the Greeks, who saw manual work as the work of slaves (and mental work as the proper work of philosophers and the like), the first churches iassigned dignity to everyday work, an idea incomparable in the Roman world. They reasoned, if God himself is the architect and builder of the heavenly city (Hebrews 11:10), should we, too, not be willing to do all kinds of work?

Work, in the Christian vision, is ultimately about serving God by loving your neighbor. And as it turns out, this moral vision is what motivates the work of people across industries. Again, Schwartz writes:

“We need to emphasize the ways in which an employee’s work makes other people’s lives at least a little bit better (and, of course, to make sure that it actually does make people’s lives a little bit better). The phone solicitor is enabling a deserving student to go to a great school. The hospital janitor is easing the pain and suffering of patients and their families. The fast-food worker is lifting some of the burden from a harried parent.”

What we think about work matters to individual workers and whole networks of workers — that is companies and the economy. And the answers to our questions about affordable housing can be found in our best thinking about motivation, work and purpose.

Photo credit: Where have all the home builders gone?

Art Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Culture Economy Education Finance Media Nonprofit Politics Science Technology Theology Work World

Announcement: Launch of the 5280 Fellowship

January 4, 2016

Today is a big day.

Today my colleagues and I at Denver Institute for Faith & Work, in partnership with Gordon College, announce the launch of the 5280 Fellowship, a 9 month experience for emerging leaders beginning in the fall of 2016.

After years of planning, design and forging partnerships, each element of the program has fallen into place. And now what we are now offering is, I believe, one of the best faith-based fellowship programs in the US, and perhaps Denver’s premiere leadership experience for young professionals.

I know those are big claims. But I believe the 5280 Fellowship has the potential to deeply impact Denver for generations to come. And I’m not alone.

Some of Denver’s finest pastors – like Robert Gelinas (Colorado Community Church), Brad Strait (Cherry Creek Presbyterian), Rob Brendle (Denver United), Brian Brown (Park Church) and Hunter Beaumont (Fellowship Denver) – believe the Fellowship can be a life-changing experience for young professionals who want to deeply engage themes of calling, work, and culture.

Young professionals like Steven Strott (Cool Planet Energy Systems) and Amy Wofford (The Commons at Champa) see the value of connecting to a community of faithful leaders in Denver and articulate how important work is to the flourishing of a city.

And Dr. Michael Lindsay, the president of Gordon College who has deeply studied the world’s most effective leadership program, the White House Fellowship, believes this program, which has been modeled largely on his research, will give young professionals:

“deep relationships that span the city,”
a vision for how “the gospel provides a kind of connective tissue, helping us to see how does science and technology relate to the arts and entertainment,”
and a “catalyst in your career for the prospering not only of the wider culture, but also your life.”

Needless to say, if you’re asking big questions about the role of Christians in culture; if you’re interested in the relevance of the gospel to all of life; if you’re wondering about your own calling; and if you’re up for a challenge that could catalyze your career — then I encourage you to learn more at an upcoming info session.

Some of you may also be interested why we built the program as we did. On this blog, over the next several weeks, I’d like to peel back the veil on the principles underlying the Fellowship and why we built the program as we did. Blog posts will cover topics like:

Why Some Doctors Read the History of Opera: Leadership and Liberal Arts Thinking
EQ: Why Being a Good Conversationalist Might Be More Important Than an MBA
Why Nothing Before Age 20 Matters (And Why Your 20s-40s are the Most Critical to Career Success)
Calling: Learning to Listen to the Caller
Spelunking, Cave Formations and Culture Change
Our Common Longing: Meaningful Work
The Church in the World: Reformation, not Revolution
The Future of Higher Education: Friendships and the Information Deluge
The Golden Web: Mentors, Networks, and the Hidden Leadership Curriculum
Mission: Larger Than A Two Week Trip Overseas
Scattered: Being the Church Monday-Saturday
Significant Work: Developing a Taste for Tackling Big Problems

The launch of any new educational experience is really just the beginning of a conversation. This is a conversation on what it means to be fully human in this time and this place. I’d like to take the chance to invite you into this community.

I’d love to hear any and all feedback as the conversation grows. I hope you’ll consider joining me on this adventure into our own souls, the life of our city, and the heart of God.

Culture Theology Work

What Greg Thompson Can Teach Us About Living as Christians in Cities

December 11, 2015

Occasionally you meet somebody that shines with such virtue that you are, perhaps for the first time, made aware of your own poverty of spirit.

When I met Greg Thompson during our Thriving Cities symposium in late October, I almost immediately felt the weight of his glory. Before speaking to the crowd, he almost desperately asked me to let him know if there was anybody I knew at the event who had a particular hurt or pain that he could pray for. Unlike my concerns (Will the event be a success? Will people “like” the evening?), it seemed to me that his vision for the renewal of cities was almost completely driven by an other-worldly love.

It’s rare that I go back over a talk that a DIFW speaker has given several times to take notes, underline, and to pray. But when Greg spoke about our “shared wound and shared calling” to reimagine what a virtuous civic life might look like, it was not just my mind, but through sitting under his teaching, quietly my heart was drawn to the beauty of his vision.

Here are six movements Greg Thompson encouraged us to make as Christian people living in cities today. ‎

1. We need to move from a posture of victimhood to servanthood.

“It’s true, of course, that [Christians] are in fact an increasingly marginal people, a trend that looks to continue for a really long while — like a hundred years probably. And it is true that simply by virtue of having moral norms that we cling to, we can be seen as a moral threat to the aspirations of our nation. But it’s also true that Christ is risen, and that while we may be marginalized, we can never be victimized, for heaven’s sake. And to the contrary, we don’t live in this world either as masters or as victims but as servants.”

Fear is rampant in American culture, says Pulitzer-Prize winning author Marilynne Robinson. And I’ve felt this fear too. Just saying you’re a Christian can be a recipe for career sabotage or becoming socially ostracized.

But fear is not a Christian habit of mind — love is. Even as Christians are losing public influence and public voice, Greg reminded me that night at the event that we may be pushed to the margins, but we need never adopt a mentality of victimhood. We are here neither as “culture-shapers” (masters) nor culture-defenders (victims) — we are simply servants. Those who have a deep, abiding hope in the risen Christ, and a enduring reason to love those with whom we live.

2. We need to move from hostility to hospitality.

“One of the most painfully evident aspects of the Church’s life — at least in public — is our fear and our contempt of those who differ from us. It is true that we do have and we must have deep differences with our neighbors. That’s what it means to have convictions in a pluralist age. And it is true that some of our neighbors are going to be hostile to us because we’re Christians… But it’s also true that God loved you and me while we were enemies. Our neighbors, every single one of them, is made in his image and they have an irreducible dignity. And we have to be the people — the poets — who can recognize the beauty where it is and welcome them in.”

As Greg said this, I was convicted. Do I assume that I’ll be persecuted for my faith in a secular city, and is that why I’m always defending myself before a conversation has ever begun? Why is it that as a shrinking minority I feel the need to assert my “rights” to live a Christian? How might I simply open my workplace, my office, my dining room table and share my life with those that disagree with me? This is what Christ has first done for me — yet what I also find so uncomfortable in the reality of my Tuesday mornings — and Saturday evenings.

Yet inviting in the stranger is perhaps one of the most powerful things people of Christian faith can do in this pluralistic age.

3. We need to move from competition to collaboration.

“One of the most disappointing afflictions in contemporary Christianity is the way that we seem more eager to build a brand for ourselves than to build a common good for us all…

“It is actually as we join together that we grow up into what [Paul] calls the full stature of mature, Christian personhood. And because of this, we’re called to labor diligently to situate our gifts not simply in relationship to our own personal sense of calling, but to our brothers and sisters — to not simply get up in the morning and ask ‘What do I want to do?’ but ask ‘What needs to be done?’ ‘Who’s doing it?’ and ‘How can I join them?’”

I’m guilty of this. We all are. Brands must be built — it’s the only way we can market our products in a noisy world. I get this. But can the boundaries between brands and competitors melt a bit? Can we find ways to work together with rival schools, rival tech companies, rival businesses — even “rival” churches — for the good of all? (Could we even find ways to bless our competitors?)

Finding a way to live in distinctive conviction yet humble collaboration is a huge challenge for the church today. And for me personally as I try to walk the narrow path of both conviction and compassion.

4. We need to move from an emphasis on the individual to the institutional.

“Social healing in a disintegrated age cannot — it literally cannot — be a product of focusing on individuals, or even of focusing on individuals in aggregate and hoping by some math it will add up to a transformed society. It doesn’t work that way.

“We have to have an institutional horizon to our love. And the reason for this is because the social order that we inhabit and all the individual lives that we have are inescapably institutional in nature. We are formed by institutions at every point, and so if we’re going to be a people who reimagine a civic ecology, we’re going to have to take institutions very serious and learn that it’s not unspiritual to do that.”

Government employees, professional service providers, waitresses, nurses, engineers and even pastors are formed not only by individuals, but by the shared values, ethos and pathos that grow up in groups of people. Renewed cities require renewed institutions. Perhaps if we begin the counter-cultural work of thinking institutionally, our witness and service to the city start to take hold.

5. We need to move from the merely political to the public.

“Politics does not in fact create [culture change], but actually expresses a larger cultural system of which it is a part. And so politics emerges out of this larger network of interpenetrating institutions that I’m calling the ‘public,’ or economics and politics and art and medicine and religion. All of these things together are forming an ecology. And because of this, we have to renounce our obsession with merely political change, because that is not how social healing works.”

Politics is downstream from culture. Because this is true, efforts to change the culture through electing the right officials will nearly always fail. Instead, culture springs up from an ecosystem of work — oil & gas, health care, finance, education, religion, restaurants and hotels.

Politics is important. It always has been for people of Christian faith. But being people of Christian faith in cities does not start in Washington D.C. It starts at work.

6. We need to move from a focus on cultural triumph to a focus on the common good.

“One of the saddest features of our current cultural setting, which is definitely on grim display during the political season, is our tendency to think of the goal of all of our labors is actually the goal of conquest. To think that we’re trying to win. This aspiration is to defeat our neighbors in a high-stakes culture war…

“But listen: It is true that we serve a king — King Jesus — who right now is enthroned on heaven. Right now. Ruling all things. And as an expression of his reign sends light and wind on the righteous and on the wicked alike. He’s giving gifts to people who are opposed to him.

“And what that means is, if that’s true of him, if we seek to inhabit his kingdom, where we seek the good not simply of ourselves, but of our neighbors… We are not trying to win; we are trying to love. Because of this, as we think about what it means to engage the city and to reimagine a civic ecology, we have to remember that our goal is not cultural conquest; it is to seek the common good.”

“We are not trying to win; we are trying to love.” This is what I meant earlier by the beauty of Greg’s vision. He’s on to something — a way of civic responsibility, yet also one of deep peace and deep joy.

In the end, the way of love is the path toward a renewed city.

This post first appeared on denverinstitute.org.

Nonprofit Work

Stories of Hope: A Reason to Be Generous

December 8, 2015

Today is Colorado Gives Day, Colorado’s biggest one-day event to give to your favorite nonprofit. As I take a look at the past year, I can see all kinds of reasons to give to Denver Institute for Faith & Work (but hey, since I’m the Executive Director, I’m biased!). But perhaps one of the best reasons to give is the stories of hope we’ve told this past year.

As you give today to your favorite charities, enjoy these stories of men and women in Colorado being a cultural witness to the “good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10) through their work. Merry Christmas!

Jim DeWeese, Owner of Trademark Electric, shares about his calling to hire a man from transitional housing and the satisfaction he finds in being a part of “God’s redemptive story” as an electrician.

Jim DeWeese – Trademark Electric from Denver Institute on Vimeo.

Ellen Snyder, a 91 year old volunteer, shares about her calling to serve at the St. Francis Center and live a more redemptive retirement.

Ellen Snyder – Saint Francis Center from Denver Institute on Vimeo.

Trevor Lee, pastor at Trailhead Church in Littleton, shares about his calling to pastoral ministry, and why he’s found joy in helping other men and women find their callings.

Trevor Lee – Trailhead Church from Denver Institute on Vimeo.

Matt Turner, CFO at MorningStar Senior Living, shares about how his company serves seniors and gives them a chance to live out their own callings in the last third of life.

Helen Hayes, a mother and former investment manager, shares about her struggle to balance work and family – and the joy of knowing she lives ultimately for an “Audience of One.”

Culture Work

An Open Letter to Howard Schultz: Why I Love the Red Starbucks Christmas Cups

December 7, 2015

Dear Howard,

Right now I’m at a Starbucks in Littleton, Colorado, sipping a double shot Americano, using your WiFi, and listening to Christmas music. I also noticed what fine, festive cups you’ve chosen to adorn your stores across the land.

As I admired their white, green and red simplicity, I also thought of all the flak you’ve received from Christians who apparently don’t like your red cups. I’m sorry about this. They don’t speak for all of us.

Let me give you the top ten reasons why I appreciate the red Starbucks Christmas cups:

10. They hold delicious beverages that I purchase several times a week.

9. They allow nearly 191,000 employees to serve their customers worldwide – and provide for their own livelihood as well.

8. They have a sticker with my name and drink order on it because of the highly efficient system you and your team have created to get my drink order right nearly every time I’ve ever been to a Starbucks.

7. They’re made from 10% post consumer recycled fiber, which makes me thankful you care about God’s good world.

6. They have a warning on them about not burning my tongue. How thoughtful.

5. They match the shimmering red and green bags of coffee beans for sale, not to mention the tinsel, holiday gift cards, and holly-adorned windows that decorate your store.

4. Their plastic tops have a slight hole next to my nose, which allows me to not spill my Americano all over my Macbook. Again, awfully thoughtful.

3. They also match the array of other Christmas products you offer, like ornaments, Advent calendars, Christmas cards, Christmas CDs and Christmas cookies. Feliz Navidad to you, Howard.

2. They’re also providing work for coffee farmers, plastic manufacturers, paper manufactures, drivers, and countless other people who depend on Starbucks to feed their families.

1. They remind me of the blood of Jesus.

Again, sorry so many Christians have given you a hard time. They’re my brothers and sisters – even the noisy ones who can be tough to get along with. But hey, we’re family. So I’ll stick with them even when they say ridiculous things.

All that to say Merry Christmas! May the “good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10) fill you – and all your employees – with delight and hope this holiday season.

Your customer,
Jeff Haanen

Littleton, Colorado

Culture Work

A Gift to the World

November 11, 2015

Several weeks ago, I sat down to share about the DIFW vision with a prospective donor. As I began to explain our mission, I could tell there was a mental obstacle.

“So, you can’t evangelize in schools or business or the government,” he said. “So what it is exactly you’re trying to accomplish?”

Before I could reply, the conversation moved to Chick-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby, and the contentious religious liberty issues surrounding the overt faith of their founders. Though I’m personally encouraged by the Cathy and Green families, I could tell that our organization was being sucked into a culture war, one that tends to see the Church as almost a drain on a liberal, pluralist society – one that impinges on the rights of the individual.

But instead of getting drawn into the culture wars, I instead decided to say what has been true for millennia: the church is a gift to the world. There’s a reason why we chose the title “A Gift to the City” for our recently release 2015 Impact Report. It’s worth remembering that for centuries, Christian men and women have seen their work as an opportunity to bring life to society. The Church has long been a blessing to all – both Christians and people of other faiths (or none at all).

How has the church been a gift to the world? A few examples come to mind:

1. The Church gave us the first universities. The University of Bologna (1088), the University of Paris (1150) and the University of Oxford (1167) all were born out of Christian cathedral schools and monastic schools, dedicated to not only training clergy, but also learning about law, astronomy, medicine, music, math, and the “trivium” – grammar, logic and rhetoric. Say what you will about the drawbacks of medieval Europe: all modern institutions of higher education have a historical debt to Christians believing that investigating God’s world could benefit society at large.

2. The Church gave us the foundations for capitalism. No, it didn’t start with Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Nor was it due to the Protestant work ethic. Rodney Stark has convincingly made the case in The Victory of Reason that the free market enterprise system was flowering in 12th century Italy. The supposed “dark ages” bloomed with inventions like the water wheel, horseshoes, fish farming, the three-field system of agriculture, eyeglasses and clocks. Why? There’s a good reason that capitalism didn’t arise in China, Islam, or the global south. Stark explains, “All of these remarkable developments can be traced to the unique Christian conviction that progress was a God-given obligation, entailed in the gift of reason.” Innovation, the power of reason, and the moral underpinning of capitalism (of which trust is the most important) all flowed not from either Roman law nor Greek idealism – but from Christianity.

3. The Church gave us the framework for human rights and democracy. Christianity offered to the world a doctrine which would forever reshape our political life: all people are made in the image of God. Everyone. Though a form of democracy did start in ancient Greece, we see in Plato’s Republic that his version of democracy is one we wouldn’t want to see anywhere today: a republic where only property owners could vote, where women and slaves were property, and where philosopher kings ruled. There was voting, for sure. But certainly not a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

The roots of democracy we enjoy today come principally from the Magna Carta, composed in the Christian West. (Which is one reason why today’s Chinese Communist Party leadership doesn’t want it touring around their neighborhood.) First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Magna Carta (1215) originally limited the rights of kings, but was later used in the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution as precedent for protecting the rights of all people. Though nearly all societies have, at times, had their leaders approved by the people, the theological doctrine that all people are made in the image of God was the original source of one’s human rights – far before secular versions arose in the Enlightenment (See Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith and Revolution). Though the Church has also been guilty of violating human rights (i.e., The Inquisition), it has also been the source of the protections and rights we enjoy today in a liberal democracy. (If you need more convincing here, read Marcelo Pera’s Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians. It’s stunning.)

4. The Church gave us the birth of science. Isaac Newton did more theology than science, and Francis Bacon not only gave us the empirical method, but also worried that his methodology would be used by demons to distort its good intention. Sounds weird, but they lived in both the worlds of Christian theology and scientific inquiry. Talk of investigating the “book of nature” was a Christian idea – that we could see who God was both through Scripture and in his creation (Ps. 19, Rom. 1).

Often we only hear half of the story – that the Church opposed Copernicus’ heliocentric universe and persecuted Galileo, the “father of physics” and observational astronomy. But truth be told: Galileo’s run in with Pope Gregory XIII was more political than scientific (the Inquisition thought his biblical interpretation looked Protestant). His insights were initially adopted by Pope Gregory and used to revise the church calendar in 1582. Galileo himself believed that God had given us reason, senses and intellect and expected us to use them as tools to interpret Scripture. Galileo writes, “For since every truth is in agreement with all other truth, the truth of Holy Writ cannot be contrary to the solid reasons and experiences of human knowledge.” Generations of scientists, from Blaise Pascal to George Washington Carver (including a large number of prominent scientists today, like Francis Collins), are motivated by their faith to do science. Again, Stark makes the case that it’s the doctrine that God, the Logos, is a God of reason that led to science erupting not in China, Islam, India, or the Americas – but in the Christian West. Controversial thesis, I know. But hard to ignore the civilization in which the scientific revolution took place.

5. The Church gave us the art of Michelangelo and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel is perhaps history’s greatest work of art. And Johann Sebastian Bach would often sign his symphonies Soli Deo Gloria (to God alone be the glory), one of the five “solas” of the reformation. Handel would often do the same. Artists for generations have drawn fuel from their faith – from Leonardo Davinci’s The Last Supper to contemporary artists like Makoto Fujimara. Bono isn’t half bad either.

6. The Church gave us the Civil Rights Movement. It also bears mentioning the Martin Luther King Jr was a Baptist preacher. The fundamental drive for Dr. King’s leadership in a nonviolent movement to correct “America’s original sin” (slavery, and hence racial discrimination) was a Christian notion of love – even love for one’s enemy. This was first and foremost a movement of churches – and only secondarily was it political. The Civil Rights Movement would have been impossible without the Church.

We could go on and speak of the monks in Ireland washing the feet of travelers and setting the precedent for modern hotels, or Basil of Caesarea creating arguably one of the first hospitals (at a time when many Romans abandoned the sick or dying in plague ridden cities – see Stark’s The Rise of Christianity), or heroines like Florence Nightingale who essentially founded the profession of nursing out of a sense of duty from God’s call.

Though any Christian would be quick to confess that we’ve sinned deeply in the past (the Thirty Years Wars comes to mind) and today as well (the tragic segregation that remains in our churches), we can’t forget: the church has long been a gift to the world.

So, with that, the question of the Church’s role in the world need not focus on fear-based arguing about losing a position of relative influence in the now post-Christian West. Instead, as those inspired most fundamentally by the grace of God (grace=gift), we can instead ask, What has God put in my hands that I might give to another? Instead of just going to church to get “filled up” by worship music and a sermon, might the Triune God actually use the Church to be the conduit of his abundant life to the entire human family (John 10:10b)?

Featured Photo: Christ Feeding the 5000

Work

3 Signs We’ve Made Work an Idol

October 14, 2015

I think we were arguing about asparagus.

I had just sat down to dinner with my wife and three daughters (soon to be four), and amidst that cacophony of noise and food flying to plates, I started to eat. I love asparagus. I really do. But when I waited until half way through the meal to put in on my plate, my wife made a comment, I retorted, and before I knew it, we were arguing about asparagus.

She went downstairs and I started clearing the table, bewildered at what just had happened. My three girls were silent. So, in a vain attempt at humble confession, I said to our 6 year-old, “Sierra, there’s sin in the world. One day Jesus will come and wipe away all of our sin. You know what sin is, right Sierra?”

She replied. “Oh yeah dad. Like when you put Denver Institute in the place of God.”

I froze. What did she say? We had made no mention of work all night. And whether she hit it on the nail or God did it through here, the message was receive loud and clear: I was making my work an idol.

I thought about the prior weeks, and my work had started to become all-consuming. I couldn’t get it out of my mind on the weekends. I’d fall asleep at 8:30pm on the couch utterly exhausted. Patience was running slim with my family. Work had ceased to become a good gift from God’s hands. Instead it started to eat me.

As I reflect on the build up to that moment, I think there are at least three signs we can see in our lives when we make work an idol.

3 Signs We’ve Made Work an Idol

1. Exhaustion.

Always busy, and always tired. That’s the way many Americans live out their lives. Often, I’m the worst offender. Do one more text in the car (at a stoplight, of course); get in one more email; go in early; stay late. Squeeze in a bit more on the weekends.

Inevitably, exhaustion floods in. And as I started to hack out exercise and hobbies, I also started to become more irritable with everyone around me.

Oddly enough, I think this is as true for the over scheduled 2nd grader as it is for the mom juggling two part-time jobs, house cleaning, entertaining guests, and decorating a new shanty chic kitchen.

The late Dallas Willard used to start all his spiritual formation retreats with making people sleep until 9am. Their souls were as exhausted as their bodies. The reason? Work had become all consuming.

2. Fear.

What will happen if we don’t get more donors? What will happen if not enough people come to the next event? What will happen if my pitch gets rejected? What if? What if? What if?

Fear often drives us to overwork. What will happen if I don’t succeed? So we adopt the spirit of the rugged American individualist: “If it’s going to be, it’s up to me.”But underneath is the worry that I won’t have, I won’t succeed, I won’t (fill in the blank).

Jesus says, “Why do you worry about what you will eat or drink? Don’t you know your Father knows what you need?” At the heart of this fear is a deep loneliness. “I’m all alone in the world,” we whisper to ourselves, “and I have to do this by myself.

Praying and trusting God will provide –well, for a 21st century materialist, that’s a long shot, right?

No, I need to work harder. More. For salvation surely will come from the work of my own hands…

3. Pride.

Tim Keller once said, “Many modern people seek a kind of salvation – self-esteem and self-worth – from career success. This leads us to seek only high-paying, high-status jobs, and to ‘worship’ them in perverse ways.”

For so many, work is not just a job. It’s the chance to prove myself. My worth and value. Why is “busy” the #1 American answer to “How are you?” It’s because we want people to know just how important we are. It’s the heart’s never-ending quest for self-justification.

For many, work is how we centrally define ourselves in modern society, the way we measure our worth and success. When we do this, we no longer see work as worship – instead, we worship work.

Hush.

If you’ve ever seen these symptoms in your life, then what can me done? The biblical answer is rest.

“You shall work 6 days, but the 7th is to be a Sabbath to the Lord.” Why in the heck was breaking Sabbath punishable by death in the Old Testament? It’s because when we don’t rest, we make work an idol. And it violates the first command: You shall have no other gods before me. The very center of biblical faith is to love God will all you heart, mind, soul and strength. But when work supplants God, it immediately become destructive, just as all idols leave a trail of tears in their wake.

Sabbath reminds us that it’s not all up to us, but that God is our Provider. Sabbath reminds us that our identity comes from Him, not from our jobs. Sabbath brings a quiet rest to our soul.

Augustine recalls one of the final moments with his mother Monica that describes this kind of deep, inner peace. He says, “The tumult of the flesh was hushed. The water in the air was hushed. All dreams and shallow visions were hushed. The tongues were hushed. Everything that passes away was hushed. Self was hushed. And they moved into a sort of silence.”

It’s as if only in Sabbath can we hear that our very life (and work) is a gift from God. It is from Him that we have every good and perfect gift. And it’s from Him that we receive the peace that Jesus gave to his disciples (John 14:27). A peace that can them accompany our work days, uncertain as our jobs and professions may be.

The day after the Triune God spoke through my six year old to me after dinner, I took a long lunch. I swam a few laps at the pool. I then sat with my coffee at my office before I began to work, and said quietly to myself, “Jesus is Lord. ‘Be still. Know that I am God.’”

Economy Politics Work World

Let Them Eat Chicken: Religious Intolerance Is Bad for Business

September 24, 2015

by Chris Horst and Jeff Haanen

Denver is on the rise. Construction cranes line the streets around Union Station. New residents arrive faster than we can house them. But as Denver surges, will our city be a place where religious people are permitted to live and work? Given the recent news, it’s a fair question to ask.

Last month, a Denver federal appeals court ruled against Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic ministry serving low-income elderly and dying people in Colorado and around the world. The nuns believe new federal health care requirements force them to violate their faith by mandating they pay for abortion-inducing drugs for employees. Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, one of the nuns serving at Little Sisters of the Poor, said, “We… simply cannot choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith.”

Then, last month, the Denver City Council impeded the approval of a new restaurant lease at Denver International Airport (DIA). The “normally routine” approval process met a roadblock when several members of the Council decided the religious and political views of the restaurant’s owner — Dan Cathy, founder of Chick-fil-A — did not meet their approval. To our knowledge, the Council has not interrogated the religious views of any other entrepreneur attempting to do business in Denver, nor has it defined which religious views are permissible.

Councilman Jolon Clark said Denver “can do better” than working with Chick-fil-A. Councilman Paul Lopez said his opposition to Cathy’s religious views is “really, truly a moral issue on the city.”

These two events illustrate a new hostility some Colorado lawmakers have toward religious expression. It’s important to clarify exactly what these lawmakers find inappropriate.

The Little Sisters of the Poor operate dozens of nursing homes worldwide for “the neediest elderly of every race and religion.” They do not discriminate in who they serve and only ask our government to allow them to provide health care plans to their employees that do not violate their most deeply held beliefs.

Chick-fil-A is in the restaurant business and is rated America’s favorite fast food. The Denver City Council has chosen to hold hostage the popular restaurant’s entrance into DIA not because the company has a history of discrimination towards its employees or customers. Consistently, Chick-fil-A outperforms its peers in these areas. It is solely because of the religious beliefs expressed by the company’s owner in 2012.

A year later, LGBT activist Shane Windmeye publically defended Cathy and Chick-fil-A in a Huffington Post article that described their friendship. Recently, The Denver Post Editorial Board rightly criticized the Council’s decision, asking, “Are corporate executives supposed to muzzle all opinion, or make sure their views mesh with the predominant outlook of politicians in cities where they’d like to do business?”

Denver celebrates its inclusiveness. But does our inclusiveness have room for religious people? To be clear, we do not believe these actions by the Council are akin to religious persecution, but we do believe they are unwise if we want our state to be hospitable to people of all religious perspectives — including views that differ from those of Little Sisters of the Poor and Cathy.

In 2007, anti-Muslim sentiment lead to the beating and robbery of an Iranian-American salon owner in Long Island. Her attackers said, “Your kind isn’t welcome here. You don’t belong here.” Colorado should continue to be a place where all people feel welcome. We want Colorado to live up to the sentiment captured by acclaimed writer Marilynne Robinson:

“Democracy, in its essence and genius, is imaginative love for and identification with a community with which, much of the time and in many ways, one may be in profound disagreement.”

The American experiment hinges on this very definition of democracy, on our ability to live peacefully with our neighbors with whom we hold divergent views. If the recent actions of our lawmakers are any indication, our inclusiveness only has room for views approved by whomever currently holds office.

Colorado has long been a beacon of freedom for people of diverse ethnicities, creeds and religious traditions. For now, the spirit of the West lives on. Two weeks after the Council’s initial delay of Chick-fil-A’s airport lease, a committee unanimously approved it. The construction crews are busy at work in Denver for now, but unchecked intolerance toward people of faith will not keep them here for long. It’s bad for business and bad for Colorado.

This post first appeared on denverinstitute.org.

Jeff Haanen is the executive director of Denver Institute for Faith & Work (@jeffhaanen). Chris Horst is the author of Mission Drift and vice president of development at HOPE International (@chrishorst).

Featured photo of the Denver City & County building by Boston Public Library on Flickr, used under this Creative Commons license.

Economy Work

The Expendable Worker: Looking for Hope in the On-Demand Economy

September 11, 2015

“Low, low prices.” With that motto, a generation ago Walmart took over the world of retail. For years Walmart seemed untouchable; they could consume any competitor with volume, price and efficiency.

Yet in the past several years, some have questioned whether the Walmart empire has a gaping hole in the center. Forbes reported in 2014 that “Walmart’s low-wage workers cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $6.2 billion in public assistance including food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing.” Americans for Tax Fairnessfound that “a single Walmart Supercenter cost taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year, or between $3,015 and $5,815 on average for each of 300 workers.” When hourly workers go on strike to demand higher wages, often they’re fired.

Now, a recent New York Times cover story has highlighted the suffocating working conditions of Walmart’s successor: Amazon. Employing a sea of white-collar workers, Amazon has perfected the art of squeezing every ounce of productivity (and life) from its employees.

“One day I didn’t sleep for four days,” said Dina Vicarri, who sold Amazon gift cards. Another ex-employee’s fiancé would drive to the Amazon campus at 10pm after becoming concerned about his bride-to-be’s nonstop working night after night.

Liz Pearce, who worked at Amazon’s wedding registry said, “I would see people practically combust.” Bo Olson, who worked in books marketing, said “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.” The pressure to deliver faster and cheaper under the constant surveillance of Big Data has led to high employee turnover. A 2013 survey by PayScale, a salary analysis firm, showed that the average tenure for Amazon employees was one year.

Robin Andrulevich has called their human resource policies “purposeful Darwinism.” Hire overachievers with handsome incentives, drive them hard, and cut the lowest performers loose.

The conditions for warehouse employees at Amazon often are even worse. In 2011, Amazon came under scrutiny for brutally hot warehouse working conditions – they even placed paramedics outside for fainting workers. (They installed air conditioning after a public outcry.)

Walmart and Amazon today are fierce retail competitors with different business models. But they share at least one value: employees are expendable.

The Problem With the On-Demand Economy

Last week, I received the oddest email from Maren Kate, the former CEO of Zirtual, a company providing US-based online assistants — including my assistant Amber, working out of Utah. “It is with an incredibly heavy heart that I have to send this message. As of today, August 10th 2015, Zirtual is pausing all operations.” I didn’t fully understand what was happening.

Later that day, I learned that Zirtual, which had been on track for $11 million in revenue in 2015, essentially folded overnight. A round of debt funding didn’t come through, an within hours, 400 employees were let go and left to fend for themselves. Amber was dumfounded. She didn’t know what she was going to do for work.

Such is the lot of a new generation of workers in the On-Demand Economy. The Economist aptly titled an article on the phenomenon “Workers on tap.” The On-Demand Economy brings together computers and freelance workers (generally contractors) to provide a host of services: from chauffeurs (Uber) to home repair (Handy).

The problem with today’s On-Demand Economy – of which Amazon has at least taken cultural queues – is the same ailment plaguing Walmart and Amazon: employees are often seen as fungible assets. They may be human “resources” or even human “capital” (oddly, enough, and unlike money and machines, this capital can laugh and cry). But the unique lives of real people are often lost in the mix.

I can understand the desire of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to not want his company to become a lumbering “country club” like, in his view, Microsoft did. Frugal, productive and hard working are all good traits. But when companies drive employees, whether white collar or blue, to a place of desperation, we’ve made a critical mistake. And the mistake is dependent on our view of people. Are they assets or image bearers? Dispensable or deeply valuable?

Restoring the American Worker

I have a 6-year-old who occasionally treats her 2-year-old sister like a fly. Slightly annoyed, she often escapes to another room or simply builds her fort with a “No 2-Year-Olds Welcome” sign in front.

I then sit her down and explain a core Christian doctrine: All people are people. Even whiny 2-year olds have dreams and emotions, fears and joys, failures and triumphs. All people are reflections of God, I say to her. The all have value.

In the biblical account, people come first, then work.People are not designed for a job – jobs are designed for people. God put Adam in the garden “to work it and care for it” after he endowed them with inestimable worth (Genesis 2:15).

Today, we often take job descriptions and try to jam people’s lives into small boxes. When this happens, souls shrivel.

It also leads to odd distortions. Young college graduates work hundred-hour weeks in New York private equity firms as their bodies and relationships shrivel. Manufacturing line workers do the same repetitive tasks for decades – and their minds deteriorate as the years pass by.

Yet the biblical account gives us a very different view of work. It is neither one of seeking self-worth from working at a sexy tech company, nor one of selling off every skill and hour we have to the highest bidder on the other side of an app.

Work, in the Bible, is fundamentally about creative service. That is, work is a way for us to use our God-given creativity and talent to serve the needs of others.

But in an age where Amazon rules – and can nearly set the price for any good it offers because of it’s unending drive for faster, cheaper, more efficient -is it realistic to think that a large retailer could provide a life-giving environment for its employees? Could employees become more than expendable assets and contribute to a fully human community?

Hope for Retail: The Costco Model

In the late 90s, Matthew Horst worked part-time at a grocery store. He was punctual, cared for his customers, and did quality work. But the lack of benefits and a cancerous work environment prevented him from realizing his potential.

When Costco opened a store in his neighborhood in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, they hired Matthew. Even though he has always been classified as “special needs”, Costco took a chance on him.

Today, Matthew takes pride in a parking lot free of carts. He boasts to his friends at the eyeglass center, bakery and customer service desk. And he loves his customers.

His brother, Chris Horst, said it well: “There are many companies which ‘succeed’ at the expense of their workers. I am a firsthand witness to a counterintuitive company: Costco succeeds through the flourishing of its employees.”

A 2013 Businessweek article reported that Costco pays its employees $20.89/hour (compared to the $7.25 national minimum wage). Joe Carcello, a 59-year-old with an annual salary of $52,700 and a sizable nest egg for retirement, said “I’m just grateful to come here to work every day.”

President Craig Jelinek says about his employees, “We know it’s a lot more profitable in the long term to minimize employee turnover and maximize employee productivity, commitment and loyalty.” And so employees are paid well and treated with dignity – and contribute to a highly profitable model for retail.

Jelinek’s philosophy is simple: “This isn’t Harvard grad stuff,” he says. “We sell quality stuff at the best possible price. If you treat consumers with respect and treat employees with respect, good things are going to happen to you.”

Other big retailers that have tended to see employees as expendable assets, historically, have become casualties. K-Mart and Sears come to mind.

One has to wonder if Walmart (and even Amazon) are next.

This post first appeared on the Patheos Mission:Work blog at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/missionwork/2015/08/the-expendable-worker-looking-for-hope-in-the-on-demand-economy/. Image: Pixabay.