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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1) Understand your organization’s culture.

(2) Challenge your organization’s storyline.

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

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

Photo: Denver Panorama

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

Work

Peace in Your Work

April 20, 2013

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

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

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

She sent me a text message this morning:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Work

Blessing the Status Quo

March 27, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peter Drucker once said,

“Machines work best if they do only one task, if they do it repetitively, and if they do the simplest possible task…[But] the human being…is a very poorly designed machine tool. The human being excels in coordination. He excels in relating perception to action. He works best if the entire human being, muscles, senses and mind is engaged in the work.”

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

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

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

Photo: Steel Works

Work

Just For White Guys?

March 12, 2013

Is the faith and work movement just for white guys? This question has been a mystery to me for some time. Just a cursory glance around the faith and work landscape, and you’ll find a bunch of middle class white men (with the occasional woman or Asian). So what’s going on here? Does integrating your faith and work only matter for white professionals and not African-Americans or Latinos? (For the sake of this post, you’ll have to excuse some generalizations.)

I think Maslow might be able to help explain this quandary.

Anybody who’s taken an introduction to psychology course will have heard of Abraham Maslow (b. 1908). He’s famous for proposing a hierarchy of needs that explains human motivation, organized into a neat little pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are the most basic physiological needs: food, water, oxygen, sex. One layer higher is the need for safety from, for example, illness or danger. Above that came needs for self-esteem, love, intellectual stimulation, and beauty. At Maslow’s apex is “self-actualization” – the need to engage your skills and talents to reach your highest potential.

After World War II, Americans became the wealthiest people in human history. In the 1950s and 60s, satisfying the needs for food and shelter became almost universal. The expectation of comfort became the norm. In the late 20^th century, millions were “liberated” to pursue self-actualization. And work was where self-actualization was primarily sought. As early as 1962, Maslow said,

“All human beings prefer meaningful work to meaningless work. If work is meaningless, then life comes close to being meaningless.”

As we approached the 21^st century, more people rejected being “Organization Man monoliths,” as Daniel Pink has pointed out in his book Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live. They sought to venture out for themselves in record numbers, starting new businesses and organizations, hoping to find that their “true self” through meaningful work.

For the time being, let’s bracket the inherently idolatrous nature of looking to work to find your sense of purpose (perhaps the topic of another blog post). Instead, let’ s bring the issue of race into the picture. Twentieth century America did not bless all ethnic groups evenly with wealth and comfort. African Americans lived under the thumb of institutionalized racism even years after the civil rights movement, and struggled for years to acquire the kind of jobs, and thus material comfort, that their white counterparts did. Today, it’s mostly Latinos who occupy the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder; they make even less than blacks per capita across age groups.

All that to say this: while white guys were wondering about their purpose in life, blacks and Latinos were just trying to survive. When I was a pastor of a Latino congregation, it wasn’t terribly surprising that questions of existential despair or vocational fit never arose. Dignity and providing for the family trumped “fulfilling the cultural mandate.” Getting a job and paying rent was a bit higher on the hierarchy of needs.

To be fair, faith and work ministry exists globally in the form of business as mission (BAM). The reason business is so important is because buying and selling provides human needs like food and shelter. The Lausanne Movement has a thriving BAM arm and is comprised of people from every race under the sun.

Historically speaking, it’s no wonder that faith and work ministry looks like a project that’s “just for white guys.” It’s not tough to see how history produced different motivations for work among different ethnic groups. It would be wise to remember Maslow when teaching about faith and work to those from different cultural or social backgrounds.

But I believe the “just for white guys” stereotype will soon be a thing of the past. The middle class in Latin America has been growing for decades, and China now has a thriving, middle and upper middle class workforce. There are even signs of hope for Africa’s economic prospects. In a world that becomes wealthier yet more isolated from a sense overarching public purpose, the question of meaning will continue to bubble to the surface – for Latinos, Asians, Blacks , and even white guys.

Photo by kay ef

Discussion question: So, am I right or not? Is the faith and work movement just for white guys?

Work

When work stops

February 14, 2013

The Bible sets a pattern of work and rest. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work,” (Exodus 20:9-10). Six days are for work. Produce, create, and make. Yet one day there is to be no work whatsoever. It is a day of rest, a day of worship. Work is good – but God limits our cultural production, lest it become our driving force and make us slaves once again, as we were in Egypt.

Two weeks ago I received a phone call from my step mother. There had been an accident. She and my dad were at a grocery store, weary from a long trip back to Minneapolis from the lake. My step mom went to the deli to get a small dinner, and my dad needed to use the bathroom. While in the bathroom, his gun (he regularly conceals and carries) slipped out of his hands, fell to the ground, and fired a round. It pierced a hole in his shin. My step mother had left her cell phone in her car; my dad called and received no answer. He cried for help, and finally she returned to see him reeling with pain, soaked in blood, on the bathroom floor.

My dad is okay. He needed immediate surgery, and now has an titanium tibia. Yet I was jarred by the news. The bullet could have strayed – and been deadly. In a moment, I might have lost my father. After I found out, I booked a flight on Southwest for that same evening to visit my dad at North Memorial Hospital. I had several things planned for the next two days. But in a time like this, work stops.

It’s not quite right to say, as many do, “At the end of your days, will you really care whether you spent another day in the office?” Those who say this mean well, but it means work is ultimately meaningless. I would say to that person, “Perhaps you should have done different work.”

Yet we must say that work is not ultimate. God is ultimate. And we immortal creatures dance on the edge of eternity each day. There must come a time, ideally one day out of every seven, when we step back and consider the great expanse of lives, and what (and who) deserves our greatest attention. On January 24, that object of my attention was my father.

Discussion question: Do you practice Sabbath? If not, why? If so, how do you use your time of rest well?

Work

What we’ve forgotten about vocation

February 3, 2013

There is a scene in J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic The Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo Baggins meets Lady Galadriel, an elf queen. She leads him to look in small bowl of water, called the mirror of Galadriel, that tells the future. After seeing the demise of the Shire in the mirror, the Lady says about his great task of destroying the Ring, “For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the enemy…For the fate of Lothlórien you are not answerable, but only for doing your own task.” The movie version of this scene adds her saying, “Frodo, if you do not do this, it will not happen.”

Frodo was called. He had an appointed task that was heavy with importance, and if he, the Ring Bearer, did not do it, it would never happen.

The idea that people are called by God to do a task is deeply biblical. Some examples:

Moses was called by God to bring the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery (Ex. 3:7-10)
David was pulled from tending sheep and anointed king of Israel by God’s special choosing (1 Samuel 16:8-30)
Jeremiah, even though only a boy, was called to be a prophet to the nations (Jer. 1:4-10)
Isaiah, despite being a “man of unclean lips,” was sent to be a stern rebuke to Israel’s corrupt kings (Is. 6)
Jesus called his first disciples to leave their fishing nets and instead “fish for people” (Lk. 5:10)
Paul was called to “proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and the people of Israel” (Acts 9:15)

Even though the concept of a divine calling is so pervasive in Scripture, today we have largely lost some of its key tenets. I think we’ve lost at least three things.

(1) We’ve lost the sense of having a singular life task that is given to us, and us alone. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer was sitting in a Nazi prison in WWII, he worked tirelessly on what he believed to be his great life’s work: his book Ethics. This task kept him exercising, eating, and working when many other prisoners lost all hope. He felt his death was coming soon, but continued to study and write, feeling deeply that he had to complete this work before his days were done. While in prison, he wrote to his friend Eberhard that this idea of being called to a life’s work had been all but lost in his day. He would not be among those who lost such an expansive perspective on their life’s work.

(2) We’ve lost the role of weaknesses in fulfilling our calling. A pastor, who I greatly admire, recently advised his congregants on how to find their calling. He gave a three-fold test for discerning a calling: affinity, ability and opportunity. That is, (1) Do you want to do it?, (2) Are you good at it, and (3) Do you have the opportunity? This is generally good advice – if you’re missing any of these, you’re not likely to be happy in your career.

Yet I believe he’s missing the role of weakness. Frodo was the least likely person to carry the Ring to Mordor, but he was ultimately selected. Bonhoeffer was in a freezing, bare Nazi prison, yet his writings endure to this day – including his unfinished Ethics. David was the youngest son, not the oldest, Moses stuttered (and was an ex-con), and Paul was a Christian-killer before conversion. Yet each was chosen by God. This is how God works. He chooses “the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27). Calling is just as often aligned with weaknesses submitted to God than finding your strengths.

(3) We’ve forgotten that most careers aren’t vocations. On the one hand, we often confuse our calling with being successful in our careers. Leah Labresco has written a great article in First Things that blasts the destruction of intimacy and relationship in a culture that prizes success at any cost. She writes:

“Most careers aren’t vocations, so we need space outside them to grow and love. It’s possible to make a short-term decision to put life and relationships on hold, in order to make a high-intensity commitment to a cause (this is the model for the oft-touted national service draft), but it’s unhealthy to let these crisis-mode jobs give shape to your life.”

Our vocation may be to stay at home for a season, or to take a demotion for more meaningful work. To say you’re “called” to do something is not the same as saying “I will succeed at any cost. A calling is always from God, who may send us into a desert for 40 years before sending us to Pharaoh (or, like the desert fathers, he may just keep us there).

Yet, on the other hand, some completely lose touch of their vocation because of the pressures and challenges of a career. It’s one thing to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed coming out of college, ready to conquer the world. It’s another to have experienced years of having your career not turn out as you thought, and being weighed down with a mortgage – and still to continually live out a calling. This often takes courage – and a deep faith that this is indeed where God has called you (despite the world telling you otherwise).

We need to see our “work” as larger than our careers ( and our success in them) and yet still a central way in which we live out a commitment to Christ.

Paul writes, “For you are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which were prepared in advance for you to do,” (Eph. 2:10). God has prepared tasks for all Christians to do. We are saved for a purpose. Like Frodo, we all have a Ring to bear – and a mission to fulfill.

Discussion question: What is your calling?

(Photo: “Sortie,” Keoki Seo)

Work

Working, Pt. 1: Sharon Atkins, Receptionist

January 20, 2013

For the next several posts, I’m going to highlight individual stories of people talking about their work. The interviews are from Studs Terkel’s masterful book Working, a compendium of first-hand accounts of people at work: steel workers, cab drivers, farmers, policemen. As I’ve read their stories, I’ve been moved to hushed silence. The cry for dignity, the frustration, the crafting of meaning through work – this is one of the most human books I’ve ever read.

What I will do in each post is introduce the individual and his/her work, and then share a lengthy direct quotation from the interviewee. From there, I will offer some brief theological reflections on their experience.

Sharon Atkins, 24, works as a receptionist for a large company in the Midwest. As an English major, she originally looked for copy writing jobs, but employers wanted a journalism major instead. So she took a job answering phones.

“I changed my opinion of receptionists because now I’m one. It wasn’t the dumb broad at the front desk who took telephone messages. She had to be something else because I thought I was something else. I was fine until there was a press party. We were having a fairly intelligent conversation. Then they asked what I did. When I told them they turned around to find other people with name tags. I wasn’t worth bothering with. I wasn’t being rejected because of what I said or the way I talked, but simply because of my function…

“I don’t think they’d ever hire a male receptionist. They’d have to pay him more, for one thing. You can’t pay someone who does what I do very much. It isn’t economically feasible. (Laughs.) You’re there just to filter people and filter telephone calls. You’re there just to handle the equipment. You’re treated like a piece of equipment, like the telephone.

“You come in at nine, you open the door, you look at the piece of machinery, you plug in the headpiece. That’s how my day begins. You tremble when you hear the first ring. After that, it’s sort of downhill – unless there’s somebody on the phone who is either kind or nasty. The rest of the people are just non, they don’t exist. They’re just voices. You answer calls, you connect them to others, and that’s it…

“I don’t have much contact with people…You don’t know if they’re laughing, if they’re being satirical or being kind. So your conversations become very abrupt. I notice that in talking to people. My conversations would be very short and clipped, in short sentences, the way I talk to people all day on the telephone…When I talk to someone at work, the telephone rings, and the conversation is interrupted. So I never bother finishing sentences or thoughts. I always have this feeling of interruption…

“You try to fill up your time with trying to think about other things: what you’re going to do on the weekend or about your family. You have to use your imagination. If you don’t have a very good one and you bore easily, you’re in trouble. Just to fill in time, I write real bad poetry or letters to myself and to other people and never mail them. The letters are fantasies, sort of rambling, how I fell, how depressed I am…I always dream I’m alone and things are quiet. I call it the land of no-phone, where there isn’t any machine telling me where I have to be every minute…

“Until recently I’d cry in the morning. I didn’t want to get up. I’d dread Fridays because Monday was always looming over me. Another five days ahead of me. There never seemed to be any end to it. Why am I doing this? Yet I dread looking for other jobs…I don’t know what I’d like to do. That’s what hurts the most. That’s why I can’t quit the job. I really don’t know what talents I may have. And I don’t know where to go to find out…

“My father’s in watch repair. That’s always interested me, working with my hands, and independent. I don’t think I’d mind going back and learning something, taking a piece of furniture and refinishing it. The type of thing where you know what you’re doing and you can create and you can fix something to make it function. At the switchboard, you don’t do much of anything.”

On being “networked”: Sharon had the experience of being “networked” as a press party; as soon as somebody found out her job, they deemed her unimportant. The Christians teach that all people have value not because of their work or social status, but simply because they’re made in the image of God. How often do we “network” people to advance ourselves, or simply treat people as tools to be used? Do we really talk “to” the clerk at the grocery store or the insurance representative on the phone, or do we talk “through” them, to simply get what we need and then be on our way?

On interruptions: Sharon observed that her job was affecting her ability to think. Her thoughts and her sentences became truncated because her work forced her to say something quickly and then move on to the next caller. A recent book has noted that the internet is also affecting our brains. How do the rhythms of your job – whether serving customers or replying to mountains of email – affect you ability to have a full thought? Sharon’s mind was altered by her work, and she experienced a deep boredom through automated repetition.

On fear: Sharon was afraid to leave her job because she wasn’t even sure of what she was good at anymore. She dreaded Monday (even Fridays too), and her dreams were melting away. It’s clear that her work was the locus of a deep sadness, and she yearned for an even deeper hope.

On satisfying work: Sharon longed for another kind of work, one “type of thing where you know what you’re doing and you can create and you can fix something to make it function.” I’ll have more to say about this in future posts, but Sharon is expressing a deeply embedded desire to reflect the image of the Creator. She was born to create, to leave a physical imprint on the world as one who is herself the physical imprint of Another.

Discussion question: If you were to meet Sharon tomorrow, what hope would you offer her? What advice would you give?

(Photo: Telephone Switchboard, Robert Niles)

Theology Work

Upcoming Faith and Work Conferences

January 5, 2013

Here are three upcoming conferences on faith and work that I’d highly recommend attending if you’re able to make it:

The Gospel at Work

When: January 11-12

Where: Gaithersburg, MD; Covenant Life Church

How much: $79 for early registration (ends Jan 7), otherwise $99

Synopsis from the website: “The Gospel at Work conference was born out of a desire to help Christians think and live differently in the workplace. It’s designed to help Christians think biblically and theologically about their work. What is God’s purpose for my work? How does the gospel change my work? How does applying the truths of the gospel help me manage differently? How does a Christian strategize and plan their career?”

Keynote Speakers: Os Guinness, author and social critic; Mark Dever, Senior Pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church; Michael Lawrence, Senior Pastor, Hinson Baptist Church; Bob Doll, Former Chief Investment Officer, Blackrock; Eric Simmons, Lead Pastor, Redeemer Church

Common Good RVA

When: January 18-19

Where: Richmond, VA

How much: $55

Synopsis from the website: “A lot of Christians are confused about how the work they do Monday to Friday connects with who they are on Sundays. Yet the Bible views our work as central to our calling and a way that we can directly connect with the mission of God…Our city needs many more Christians who see their vocations as a way to advance the common good of Richmond. Together as lawyers, doctors, business leaders, electricians, artists, and stay-at-home parents, we will gather to explore what it means to see our everyday work as a meaningful part of our Christian calling.”

Keynote speakers: Andy Crouch, author and editor of Christianity Today; Dr. Amy Sherman, Senior Fellow at the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research, author of Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good

The Gospel Coalition 2013 Post-Conference on Faith and Work

When: April 10, 1-6pm

Where: Orlando, RL; Rosen Shingle Creek

How Much: $235 (this includes the entire conference, from April 8-10)

Synopsis from the website: “Tim Keller and several other leaders in the church, marketplace, and broader culture will focus on a variety of issues related to the Christian faith and its role in our work and vocation.”

Keynote Speakers: Tim Keller, Senior Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, author of Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work

Culture Work

William Faulkner on Work

December 29, 2012

William Faulkner once wrote,

“You can’t eat for eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day no make love for eight hours a day—all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.”

William Faulkner Faulkner gives two reasons here that illuminate the desperate need for more faith and work initiatives throughout North America. The first is a simple matter of time. Work is how we spend our lives. Eating, drinking, making love – one could add exercising, going to church, or watching football – all make up only a small fraction of our lives in comparison to work. If Christian discipleship doesn’t extend to our working lives, then it simply doesn’t touch the largest part of human life.

The second reason is more grave: work is the reason why we are so “miserable and unhappy.” I’m reminded of a quote by Dorothy Sayers on work:

“Far too many people in this country seem to go about only half alive. All their existence is an effort to escape from what they are doing. And the inevitable result of this is a boredom, a lack of purpose, a passivity which eats life away at the heart and a disillusionment which prompts men to ask what life is all about.”

Although I can’t substantiate this claim with research, I think I’m on safe ground saying that most people see work as something to escape from as soon as possible. For most, their careers or jobs are not their vocations, but simply a means to end, whether that end be money, leisure time, or another job. This desire to escape leads to “boredom, a lack of purpose, and a passivity which eats life away at the heart” – the core ingredients in Faulkner’s recipe for misery and unhappiness.

So the question is this: can we really claim to be shaping believers for Christian maturity if we never mention their work? Can we really claim to be equipping the saints for mission with an array of elaborate ministries if we ignore both where people spend the majority of their days as well as one of the great causes of frustration and unhappiness in human life?

Of course, I think Faulkner was missing a key element of work in his diagnosis, namely, hope. We are hope-shaped creatures, and the Christian faith gives us a supreme hope because of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

Discussion question: Do you think Faulkner is right, that most people’s jobs are a source of unhappiness? Also, do you know of intentional efforts in your neighborhood that seek to integrate faith and work in practical ways? If so, what are they? What has been helpful?

Art Work

Choosing to do meaningful work

December 20, 2012

We have to consciously choose to use our freedom well. I’m aware of few authors who put this more pungently than Annie Dillard.

In her book The Writing Life she reflects on her work as a writer.

“Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your intelligence…It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself.”

The freedom to create something new is the heart of exhilarating work, a fact, I would think, not lost on the Creator himself. To dream up a project, bring it to reality, and see its affect on others – this is meaningful work.

Yet there is an ugly opposite to this creative work as well. Dillard writes,

“The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever…Your freedom is a by-product of your days’ triviality.”

This quote struck me like a dull club. When I read this I thought about my relationship to email and to web surfing. There is no lack of triviality in our culture, and in our work there are mounds of tasks we could simply leave undone, and nobody would care.

I’m reminded of Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. He advises executives to not make to-do lists, but instead not-to-do lists. Hacking away at the trivial will do more to improve effectiveness than adding to the stack of the important.

I’m also reminded of Gary Haugen, founder of International Justice Mission. At a Willow Creek Leadership Summit Conference several years ago, he pleaded with pastors to call out to God to, “save us from all that is petty.” Where is this plea today, in a world afloat with digital triviality?

One of the great verses used in faith and work circles is in the prayer of Moses: “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands – O establish the work of our hands!” (Ps. 90:17).

The context of the verse, however, is an extended reflection on the fleeting nature of human life. “Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—they are like the new grass of the morning: In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered,” (Ps. 90:6-7). In the scope of eternity, the prayer to “establish the work of our hands” is built upon a knowledge of the shocking brevity of life.

Teddy Roosevelt once said, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” So here’s the question: What makes work worth doing?

Discussion question: Do you intentionally choose which tasks you will and won’t do on any given day? What criteria do you use to make this decision? How would you define “work worth doing?”

Jeff Haanen

How to Change Your Company’s Culture

Peace in Your Work

Blessing the Status Quo

Just For White Guys?

When work stops

What we’ve forgotten about vocation

Working, Pt. 1: Sharon Atkins, Receptionist

Upcoming Faith and Work Conferences

William Faulkner on Work

Choosing to do meaningful work