Reading theologians, studying Scripture, listening to sermons, examining church history,
memorizing creeds – this is so much work! To that I would say, yes, that’s 100% correct.
Thinking theologically is hard, taxing work.

But so is preparing for a final exam, walking alongside a friend going through a divorce,
training for a marathon, signing yourself up for an alcoholics anonymous group, or working at a job for extra hours to pay for your child’s sports fees. All growth is difficult, but we
cannot truly become like Christ without the renewing of our minds…and doing hard things (Romans 12:1-2).

We need to learn. We need to think. We need to be reading, listening, and applying. And we
need to do so in Christian community, like the church. Worldview is important. Doctrines are
tools for seeing reality. And the gospel is not just private truth; it is the public truth for all
things.

Here are some practices I’ve noticed among those who excel at thinking theologically.

Decide that thinking well is a non-negotiable part of your Christian life.

In the struggle for civil rights, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a sermon on August 30, 1959
encouraging his listeners to be both tough minded and tender hearted. Drawing on Jesus’
command to become wise as serpents and innocent as doves, he says being tough minded,
“is that quality of life characterized by incisive thinking, realistic appraisal, and decisive
judgment. The tough mind is sharp and penetrating. It breaks through the crust of legends
and myths and sifts true from the false. The tough-minded individual is astute and
discerning.”

And yet, says Dr. King, “So few people ever achieve it. All too many are content with the soft
mind. It is a rarity indeed to find men willing to engage in hard, solid thinking.” [x] The majority,
says Dr. King, are gullible and willing to accept advertising and political slogans as truth. The
few make the real commitment to being like God, who is both tough minded and tender
hearted.

Every idea – whether a work email or a storyline in a movie – must be held up to the light of
truth. This commitment goes hand in hand with the commitment to following Christ as both
Lord and Teacher.

Make the space in your schedule and your home for clear thinking.

Our world is crowded with noise. Social media, apps, media – finding the quiet space to
actually think and reflect has become a real challenge in a world addicted to being
constantly connected. We all are too busy and find ourselves constantly distracted.

It takes discipline to shut the screen off, and get out a notebook. It takes resolve to refuse
the easy media of Netflix and choose the slow media of the written word. It takes forethought
to gather a group of friends for a conversation about a substantive book and arch the
conversation toward questions that matter.

We must choose to make space for a deeper, broader life. It won’t happen by accident.

Choose your reading diet wisely.

Tim Macready is from Sydney, Australia. Sporting glasses, goatee, and a down-under
accent, Tim’s work has led him to the intersection of Christian faith, social justice, environmental stewardship, and business. His work requires him to understand everything
from financial projections to international markets.

And yet, when I asked Tim recently about the books that most helped him in his work, he
mentioned Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together and The Cost of Discipleship. Theology, he
said, helped him better understand human nature, which directly influenced how we thought
of investing, business, and those he works with each day.

People like Tim are intentional with both their reading diet and their friendships. As a result,
they become wise (Proverbs 13:20). And they don’t read just theology, they read broadly
outside their fields. Doing so helps them make connections between topics, including
connecting theology to the secular world they live in. Broad reading, broad listening, and
broad relationships open the path to seeing a broader slice of God’s world. [xi]

Take risks based on what you know to be true.

Thinking theologically is not just an intellectually disconnected activity from the rest of life.
It’s a habit that is strengthened through practice, action, and then reflection.

Mary Poplin has spent her career teaching teachers. After a lifetime of reflection on how
Christian faith can and should be lived out as a public school teacher, Mary counsels
believers in education to take practical action steps based on the Christian worldview.

“Give kids direct instruction,” Mary says in a talk she once gave to other public school
teachers. “Be strict, but have high personal interaction with students and believe in their
potential. Teach religion in public schools in a way that’s fair. Don’t romanticize history –
either secular or Christian. Teach virtue and encourage moral conversations among
students. Pray for your students, be courageous in sharing your faith, and compassionate
with other views.” [xii]

Mary believes deeply that thinking well and living well are two sides of the same coin of
faithfulness in a secular industry.

Embrace that thinking theologically is for you, no matter your job, community, or title.

Thinking theologically is for the rich and the poor, those with PhDs and those with high
school degrees, those who are culture-makers and those who are culture-takers.

Take, for example, two very different people: Gisela Kreglinger and Gregorio Trinidad.
Gisela is a vintner who grew up on a family winery in Bavaria in south-east Germany. She
went on to get a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and write a comprehensive biblical
theology of wine in the biblical narrative, entitled The Spirituality of Wine. A world away,
Gregorio is an immigrant to the United States who works in Denver to support family back in
Mexico. His family has a small farm in central Mexico that he regularly visits, in which he
raises corn for elote. He once said about his family farm, “Today, on December 2, we sow
[seeds] in the name of our Creator and in that same name we hope with faith and patience
that by February 20 we can enjoy the fruit of that sowing.”

Though Gisela and Gregorio are from different social worlds, they both work in agriculture and they both see their work in light of Christian revelation.

Theological Action

In December 2019, University of North Carolina professor Molly Worthen wrote an op-ed for
the New York Times entitled, “What Would Jesus Do About Inequality?” She featured
leading voices on vocation in the U.S., noting that the faith and work movement today is
more interested in economic justice than baptizing laissez faire economics. She also wrote,

“In today’s evangelicalism, this is where the theological action is: the faith and work movement, the intersection of Christianity with the demands of the workplace and the broader economy.” [xiii]

I had to read that twice, before pausing to feel a proper sense of pride in being a small part of “where the theological action.” Theology, if we pursue it and know it, is indeed intended for action.

It’s easy to dismiss that “thinking theologically” is just for the few or the academically-
minded. This simply isn’t true. It is a gift from God for all the church to see our work and daily
life in light of Scripture, Christian doctrine, and the gospel grace. The Psalmist was right: “In
your light, we see light.” But to do that, we need to admit that what we think is who we
become. “For as a man thinks within himself, so he is,” (Proverbs 23:7, NASB).

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

[x] Martin Luther King Jr., “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart,” Stanford University, August 30, 1959,
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/draft-chapter-i-tough-mind-and-tender-heart.

[xi] For more on this topic, see my article: Jeff Haanen, “Broader, Not Deeper,” October 3, 2016,
https://jeffhaanen.com/2016/10/03/broader-not-deeper/.

[xii] Jeff Haanen, “What It Means to Follow Christ as a Public School Teacher,” July 17, 2005,
https://denverinstitute.org/what-mary-poplin-taught-us-about-being-a-christian-teacher-in-public-education-1-of-2/.

[xiii] Molly Worthen, “What Would Jesus Do About Inequality,” The New York Times, 13 December 2019,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/opinion/sunday/christianity-inequality.html.

Craftsmanship & Manual Labor Spiritual Formation Work

Reclaiming Our Work

November 15, 2024

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

Josh Mabe led me behind his shop. “It’s a mess back here,” he said. What I saw was not
your typical Home Depot fare: old railroad carts, wine barrels, deserted barn doors,
discarded flooring from nineteenth century homes, planks from the bed of a semi-truck trailer
– each piece had a common theme: it had been abandoned by somebody else.

But for Mabe, each piece of discarded lumber is the object of his craft, an opportunity to
bring life from decay. Josh is the owner of Twenty1Five, a small furniture business
specializing in reclaimed wood located in Palmer Lake, Colorado, nestled at the foot of the
Rocky Mountains. Josh, a carpenter and craftsman, has attracted state-wide attention.
Rocky Mountain PBS, 5280, a Denver magazine, and Luxe magazine have praised his
attention to sustainability and “upcycling” – creating new products from used materials.
Yet it’s the products themselves that turn heads. His tables are mosaics of shapes, textures
and colors. He can turn drab boardrooms into a collage of natural beauty, and sterile
kitchens into a wild array of Mountain West history.

“I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands,” Mabe recalls. After college he taught shop
class for eleven years at a public school. A retiring coworker would leave scrap wood behind
the school – “what people would consider ugly wood.” But Mabe, unable to part with the
discarded lumber, took it home and built a table for his wife from the “reclaimed” wood. The
table caught the attention of his neighbors, though initially nothing came of it.

For financial reasons, Mabe took a job selling insurance. “But I was dying on the vine,” he
told his wife, lamenting the confines of an office. “That day,” Mabe recalls,” I distinctly
remember God telling me, ‘Go, make tables. And in two weeks I’ll bring you orders.’” That Monday, he went to his shop and began to build. Orders came in. Word began to spread,
and his new business, Twenty1Five, was born. [i]

Thorny Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Fires Burn Themselves Out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faith and Work Movement

I Love the Church

October 1, 2024

I love the church. I mean, I absolutely love it.

During worship this past week, I was reflecting on what a miracle local churches are to their communities. For example, sociologists say that church involvement is associated with a wide host of benefits for both children and adults. Kids who go to church have higher academic achievement and better relationships with parents and are more involved in extracurricular activities. Churchgoers commit fewer crimes, are in better health, live longer, make more money – and give more away. And one Duke study shows that across the board, those who go to church report significantly higher levels of mental health than the general population.

City municipalities often see churches as a drain because they don’t pay property taxes. Yet what’s often overlooked is that they don’t just do worship services, they provide a wide array of social services to the community that, when measured, produce tremendous economic and social value. These activities are a boon to their community and include things like: free child care, free counseling sessions with pastors (for those who could never afford a therapist), food pantries, medical check-ups, job training programs, and a wide array of educational programs. Churches are also like glue, connecting the civic sector through partnerships with nonprofits to a general audience on a weekly basis. Healthy churches tend to create healthy cities.

And one of the miracles of the local church is there are almost no places in society today where billionaires and the homeless, the tech founder and the refugee, the college-educated and the working class all come into contact with one another. It’s happening less and less in business, government, and even education because wealthier families often tend to send their kids to schools with other wealthy kids. But church still provides our culture a “commons” that creates relationships across a wide variety of racial, gender and class divides. All are welcome, and all are equal, in a church.

When reflecting on our need for more talented, skilled pastoral leaders leading local churches – which is a central reason we created 3 Streams Institute – I also realized that the Church is unique among all institutions. Now, I obviously care a lot about people living out their faith in secular work. But healthy churches are the root of spiritual and social renewal, not nonprofits, businesses, or the government. Imagine, for a moment, 100% of the churches disappear from your city tomorrow. What will be the health of the nonprofits, businesses, and government institutions in, say, 10 years? I’d guess it doesn’t look good. If society is a body, church is the soul. The body cannot live without the soul.

I truly cannot think of a more valuable institution to our cities and communities than local churches. And I deeply admire those who decide to commit to pastoral leadership over a lifetime. Churches are worth leading, and leading well. Pastors are worth investing in. And churches are worth committing to – like attending every, single Sunday.

Been a while since you’ve been to church? Give it a try. You might be surprised.

Attend church, but not a member? Consider joining. Like marriage, all the benefits come with commitment.
Curious about what it might be like to lead a church? Let’s chat.

Faith and Work Movement Work

Translating Your Christian Convictions for a Secular Workplace

September 3, 2024

The Challenge of Translating Faith into a Secular Workplace

“These ideas are fine,” I’ve heard many people say during my tenure at Denver Institute, “but
I work in a very secular company. How am I supposed to share my faith in a context where
it’s not invited—or is even condemned as inappropriate or offensive?” It’s a fair response to the ideas in this book. Home health care or software development, construction or biotech, driving trucks and driving profit margin are worlds far removed from church or faith-based nonprofits.

For most, the objection is two-fold. First, the church has a language that isn’t easily
understood by the larger culture. Singing, Bible reading, sermons and liturgies contain
worlds like sin, salvation, redemption, sanctification, and eucharist, words mostly unheard of
in company policy manuals, Slack feeds, or break rooms. To make it worse, Christians often
unthinkingly adopt insider language – “How’s your heart, man?” “It was a total God thing,”
“Want to join my D group?” [iii] – that makes it even tougher to communicate faith to non-
Christian coworkers or neighbors.

Second, Christians often fear the consequences of speaking about their faith in the
workplace. One investor I know, who held a prestigious job at a large asset management
company, was quietly let go after sharing about his faith at a Christian conference. His boss
saw it as unprofessional and not in line with corporate culture. It’s no different in, say, a
hospital. Alyson Breisch, a scholar at Duke University who trains and teaches nurses, says
that one of the concerns for faith-motivated nurses is that bringing up faith will cross
professional boundaries, and that may even be inappropriate in a physician-patient
relationship.[iv]

The task is to take up not just the vocation of one’s work, but also the vocation of translation.
John Inazu, a legal scholar at Washington University in St. Louis and a Christian, knows this
well: “My vocation of translation means translating the university to some of my church
friends and translating the church to some of my university friends,” says Inazu. “Living
between these two worlds makes me a kind of bilingual translator.”

This work, he writes, often requires personal risk. One of Inazu’s faculty colleagues said, “I
don’t get you; you’re religious, but you care about poor people.” And those in his church
have said they can’t trust a “liberal law professor” like him. [v] Yet Inazu feels at home at the
university and in church. And he’s committed to helping to stand in the gap between two
disparate worlds as an interpreter between church and his workplace. John believes we are
“ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us,” (2 Cor. 5:20).

So how do we do it? How do people of faith translate their convictions about the biblical
story into the secular workplace? Here’s a place to start.

Discern what kind of environment you’re in.

Before you share the gospel at work, you must first discern what kind of work environment
you’re in.

David Miller, who leads Princeton University’s Faith at Work Initiative and is the author of
God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement, has proposed four
postures companies usually take toward faith in the workplace.[vi]

Faith-Avoiding. In a faith-avoidant company, leadership has actively decided to avoid
topics related to faith or religion. “That’s not appropriate here,” is the message, either
explicitly or implicitly. On the more extreme side, religious employees fear being fired for
expressing their beliefs, whether a Muslim wearing a headscarf or an evangelical Christian
asking a co-worker to accept Jesus as Lord.
Faith-Tolerant. More common in companies, schools, hospitals and government agencies
that faith is tolerated, yet not embraced. Often, faith-tolerant organizations will provide
religious accommodation to employees through the HR department, under the banner of
diversity and inclusion. In larger companies, religious expression is often tolerated in
“employee resource groups,” yet it is rarely invited into the work or company culture itself.
Faith-Based. The third option, which is most often cited among Christian networks of
business leaders, is faith-based. In this model, the faith of company founders is woven into
day-to-day operations of the company. This can mean the CEO is overt about his or her own
faith in corporate communication, adopts religious symbolism in corporate culture, and
groups, Bible studies, or evangelistic meetings take place at the workplace. This is most
common in smaller businesses or organizations led exclusively by Christians.
Faith-Friendly. Miller advocates for a fourth option: faith-friendly. In a faith-friendly context,
everybody’s ultimate beliefs are welcome, whether those be Christian, Buddhist, or secular.

In these organizations, leadership neither avoids or tolerates faith, yet neither do they
assume employees share their convictions. Instead, it actively welcomes conversations
about beliefs, backgrounds, and faith that shape employee’s motivations.

In addition to Miller’s four postures, I’d add the category faith-persecuting. In closed
countries, such as Iran, or ideologically-closed cities, like Boulder or Berkeley, being outward
about your faith can have severe personal or professional consequences.

This four-part model can be helpful in starting to understand how faith can translate into your
workplace. For instance, if you work in a dentist’s office where all your co-workers are
Christian, it will feel very different from working at a secular foundation that supports
progressive causes. In one context you’ll want to make space for others to speak who don’t
share your faith; in the other, you’ll need to be covert about how your faith is expressed lest
you become a pariah to your co-workers. Generally-speaking, the larger the company you’re
in, the more it will slide toward the faith-tolerant or faith-avoiding side of the scale.

Should you find yourself in a context like this, you need to recognize two things: your
company is not actually secular, but it is actually a very “religious” place (Acts 17:22).
Theologian Lesslie Newbigin believes, as do I, that companies not under the lordship of
Christ are controlled not only by people, but by what the New Testament calls “the powers and principalities.” These powers, though created by Christ and for Christ, become corrupted
and become dark when they become absolute (Col 1:16; Eph 6). When Jesus disarmed the
powers and principalities at the cross, he didn’t destroy them but he did rob them of the
claim to ultimate authority (Col 2:15). Though some see these verses as a hierarchy of
demons and angels, language of power in the New Testament could also be applied to
organizations, institutions, markets or governments. This truth can help us see that when we
go to work, various “gods” and ultimate purposes are already there, and we are ultimately in
a missionary context.

Second, we need wisdom to be Christians inside broken systems. Again, Newbigin uses the
language of subversion to understand the Christian’s role in a company, industry or system.
For instance, when Paul deals with the runaway slave Onesimus, he does not call for an
overthrow of the system of slavery, but instead reorients Philemon’s relationship to
Onesimus in light of now being his brother in Christ. The gospel doesn’t destroy systems,
but it sets them aright. “But undercover agents need a great deal of skill,” Newbigin says. It’s
a real challenge to know what it means to be in consulting, psychiatry, or financial services
as a Christian, who recognizes that her industry or company is distorted by the fall.[vii]

So, first, determine what kind of posture your workplace has toward faith, and begin the work
of seeing what the ultimate faith or worldview of your organization truly is.

Reimagine your workplace culture in light of the gospel.

The next step requires a work of the imagination.

Ask yourself: What’s good about my workplace or industry? What is distorted or fallen? What
might it look like if it was healed? And what is God calling me to do about it right now?

These four questions mirror the four movements of the biblical story: creation, fall,
redemption, and consummation. And they’re worth asking regularly as you begin to consider
what’s good, broken, and possible about your company, school, firm, or clinic. (See Chapter
4, Think Theologically.)

Matthew Kaemingk, a scholar at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, calls questions
like these taking an “industry audit.” We recognize that just like individuals, organizations are
often both a mix of good and evil, and it takes wisdom to discern what you can get behind
and where you must draw the line. Kaemingk believes asking these types of questions can
also help you discern how your industry is both forming you and deforming you. [viii]

For example, Trish Hopkins works as a real estate agent. “I’m astounded by whom God puts
in my path. From a young sailor and his bride purchasing their first home to a World War II
veteran selling his home after his wife’s passing, daily I get to participate in history-making
stories.” Trish sees the goodness of her industry in helping people buy and sell homes, for
many the largest and most significant purchase of their life. She also sees inflating home
prices, stress-filled house-hunting, and other agents who care little for their clients. She
imagines a world where people would “build houses and dwell in them, they will plant
vineyards and eat their fruit,” (Isaiah 65:21). Her calling in this larger vision of “home” is simply to be a thoughtful, Spirit-filled relational presence, patiently helping home buyers and
sellers navigate the process, and embrace an ethic of service, trust and compassion.

In the book of Genesis, Joseph knew the power of Egypt and Pharaoh to unjustly imprison
and persecute a religious and ethnic minority. But Joseph also believed that God could use
Egypt for good, including saving thousands of lives by providing food during a famine
(Genesis 50:20). He took a position of leadership in a corrupt government because he saw
that God can, and does, use broken systems as mysterious part of his redemptive plan.

Like Joseph, ask yourself: what role could even my broken, imperfect organization play in
healing a small part of God’s world? Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” It is also central to seeing how faith may transfigure not just your own work, but your whole industry. [ix]

Decide what practices you’ll engage in and which you need to abstain from.

What are the distinctive activities or beliefs you want to champion at your organization as a
Christian? And what are the practices or policies you must refuse as one ultimately
committed to God’s kingdom? [x]

For example, the prophet Daniel said yes to government leadership, serving in two different
pagan empires. He believed his leadership as a Jew could be of service to God and witness
to nonbelievers. He was willing to learn the language and literature of the Babylonians, and
even take a foreign name. He also engaged in the regular practice of praying toward
Jerusalem on company time. Yet Daniel and his fellow Jews Hananiah, Mishael, and
Azariah also famously refused to follow the dietary practices of his peers, and he also
refused to worship the CEO (Daniel 1-2). Ultimately, he was so valuable to his employer,
Daniel’s religious views were broadcast throughout the corporation (Daniel 3:29). This came
through pursuing excellence in his work, and carefully thinking through practices of
engagements and abstention.

The wise do the same thing today. Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, a journalist trained at
Northwestern University, has covered everything from local politics for the Daily Southtown
in Chicago to human interest stories for Christianity Today. Zylstra has seen journalism
transform in the digital age and social media turn up the noise and heat around political and
cultural issues. “The stories I write don’t necessarily…have anything to do with the headlines
of the day. We’re looking for where God is at work,” says Zylstra about what she chooses to
write. She believes the gospel changes “how we see our sources.” Because all people are
image-bearers, “We treat them very carefully. We want to have a lot of open communication
with them. We come alongside them to tell their story, so my sources see my stories before
they go up. It doesn’t get sprung on them when the rest of the public sees.” What she shares
with her secular peers is a commitment to getting accurate information and double-checking
facts. But in contrast to the never-ending anxiety-driven news cycle, she believes she can do
journalism in a counter-cultural way by focusing on local stories, where people tend to be
more hopeful about their communities and lives. [xi]

Deciding what practices to engage in and which to abstain from requires discernment. You
may see your co-workers in a tech company disengaging from their work and embracing an
“age of anti-ambition,” as one NY Times Magazine writer put it. Yet your response might be
instead to embrace a deep practice of sabbath rather than slack off in your work. Your
school may have strict, unspoken rules about sharing your faith with co-workers, but you
might instead choose to embrace intentionality with nonbelievers one month out of the year
as a spiritual discipline. Your financial services firm may be driven by greed or fear of
missing out on maximal returns, but you might instead practice contentment, or simply letting
your yes be yes or your no be no, resisting the temptation to twist language to close deals
for maximal personal benefit (Matthew 5:37).

To be a Christian in a secular age requires a form of civil disobedience, a refusal to comply
with the patterns of this world (Romans 12:2). It also requires Christians to offer alternatives,
finding practices that “give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the
hope you have, but always doing so with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15)

Embrace the power of language.

“What’s our motto? Practically, it’s profit, profit, and more profit,” Scott shares his story with
me over breakfast at Gracefull Café in Littleton, Colorado. Scott works at a large private
equity firm, a company that buys and sells other businesses.

As Scott finishes a breakfast burrito, his expression changes, and his countenance becomes
lighter. “But here’s what I do. On my white board in my office, I write my values which guide
how I work and serve in business: integrity, humility, excellence, grace and joy. I start
conversations about them with employees, CEOs I mentor, even partners at the firm.” For
Scott, the language he uses about his work is a bridge to conversations about faith. [xii]

Most of us aren’t CEOs who can just rewrite a company’s values. But we can intentionally
choose which values the company we work for we can get behind, and then we can carefully
“lead up” and challenge the company to live up to its own best version of itself. Language
can be a powerful way to do this.

For example, David Bailey leads a nonprofit in Richmond, Virginia called Arrabon, which
focuses on racial reconciliation. Rather than using language of diversity, equity and inclusion
to describe his work, which has become a source of tension in many communities, he
believes God calls us to form reconciling communities that lead to “proximity, empathy and
then unity.” He believes that the work of racial justice must first have a foundation in spiritual
formation.

Another exemplary leader using language to build value-oriented work is Steve, who started
Orbit, a fintech company in the mortgage industry. [xiii] He counsels other business owners to
look at the overlap between your “cultural why,” your “company why,” and your “kingdom
why.”

For Steve, he saw that in 2016, the net worth of a typical white family was nearly ten times
greater than that of a Black family, and home ownership was the difference between this
huge asset differential. Steve saw a cultural need, and his “kingdom why” was based on a desire to see shalom and justice in his community. So, he created a company that helps
small and medium size lenders efficiently process mortgages, offering both a competitive
advantage for local lenders as well as designing a product that can ultimately help get more
people, including people of color, into homes. The intersection of his three “whys” formed a
company built on the values of rigor, ownership, curiosity, kindness, and transparency.

Distinctive language in a secular culture focuses on the individual. Self-esteem, personal
empowerment, and various shades of self-aggrandizement dominate. Yet Christian
language is uniquely grounded in grace. Words like faith, hope and love – the three
theological virtues – draw listeners into a gospel-centered world. Language of thriving,
human flourishing, or the common good can become common ground that draw coworkers
into deeper conversation about the very purpose of work.

I personally tried this exercise. I wanted to see if I could translate our principles – think
theologically, seek deep spiritual health, create good work, embrace relationships, and serve
others sacrificially – for a broader audience. I wrote an article entitled “Designing
Workplaces to Be More Human,” (not more “Christian”) and encouraged readers to ask
these questions that could be transferred to any secular context:

Do we invest in deep emotional and spiritual health?
Do we encourage real friendship and relational wholeness?
Do we create conditions for people to do their best work?
Do we stimulate broad thinking about the key issues of our day?
Do we really care about our city, especially the vulnerable? [xiv]

Language is powerful. Think about the words you’ll repeat, the words you write, and the
words you speak as ways to create bridges into the biblical story.

[iii] If you’re reading these footnotes and just want to enjoy a good laugh, watch “Shoot Christians Say” on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dxo0Yjno3I&t=50s.

[iv] Alyson Breisch, “Reimagining Medicine: Breakout Session_04.6.16,” Denver Institute for Faith & Work, 4 April 2016,https://vimeo.com/172969773.

[v] John Inazu, “The Translator” in Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2021), 119, 125.

[vi] For more on these four models, including examples and what I believe to be challenges with each model, see: Jeff Haanen, “Faith in the Workplace: The Four Postures,” Denver Institute for Faith & Work, 17 November 2017,https://denverinstitute.org/the-four-postures-toward-faith-in-the-workplace/.

[vii] Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 83-84.

[viii] Two excellent resources to do this work are on Workplace Deformation and Workplace Reformation, by Dr. Matthew Kaemingk. They can be accessed online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RDvCESUSEg&authuser=0 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grgoMJF_Jyo&authuser=0.

[ix] For another perspective on how to understand your city’s (or company’s) culture, see Stephen Um and Justin Buzzard’s book Why Cities Matter, or my book review for Christianity Today: Jeff Haanen, “How to Change Your Company’s Culture,” Jeff Haanen, 13 May 2013, https://jeffhaanen.com/2013/05/13/how-to-change-your-companys-culture/.

[x] On this language of practices of engagement and abstention, see: Justin Whitmel Earley, The Common Rule (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2019).

[xi] From “Faith and Work in Journalism with TGC,” Denver Institute for Faith & Work, https://denverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/S2E3_Faith-at-Work-in-Journalism-with-TGC.pdf.

[xii] Scott requested I not use his last name or the name of his company.

[xiii] At the request of “Steve,” I changed his name and the name of his company to protect his identity as a Christian in a secular industry.

[xiv] Jeff Haanen, “Designing Workplaces to Be More Human,” Denver Institute for Faith & Work, 17 March 2020, https://denverinstitute.org/designing-workplaces-to-be-more-human/.

Spiritual Formation Vocation Work

Breathing New Life Into Your Work

July 9, 2024

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

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

The Doctrine of Creation

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Priesthood of All Believers

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

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

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

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

The Resurrection

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stewardship of our Gifts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spiritual Formation Theology Work

How to Change

February 26, 2024

An Excerpt from Working from the Inside Out

It had been a hard week.

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

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

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

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

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

HOW WE CHANGE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Culture Economy Faith and Work Movement Politics

Can Faith Make the Market More Moral? (American Enterprise Institute, November 2023)

November 28, 2023

Business Finance Work

Upside-Down Investing

April 19, 2023

A Model for Christian Investors

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

-Mark 10:42-45

Investing for the majority of Christians is a puzzle for at least two reasons.

First, investing is incredibly de-personalized. How many of us have actually gone into our 401(k)s or IRAs, looked at what mutual funds we own, then taken the additional step to research those fund’s top ten holdings – and then learned something about the companies we actually own a share in? In my experience, almost nobody. For everyday investors, most simply want to put the quarter in the vending machine, press “buy,” and get a bigger coin back out. In a heavily financialized economy, investing is complex and veiled under layers of lingo, financial instruments, and specialized professionals. Seeing an investment as caring for a group of people operating a business never crosses our minds.

Second, most of us feel powerless. With total investable assets in the US at an estimated $42.1 trillion – which are often controlled by mammoth institutions like Vanguard, Blackrock or sovereign wealth funds – what impact can my widow’s mite tucked away for retirement really have? Wall Street is a powerful system that is beyond our control; even many” powerful” asset managers feel powerless, ever at the whim of market forces and corporate titans that seem almost trans-human.

And yet, most of us don’t feel completely powerless when we go to work and engage in business. Business is a set of human relationships between investors, management, employees, and customers that most of us do have some say-so over. We can’t – and shouldn’t – wash our hands of responsibility for why, how and what we do working in a business; can the Christian really claim that the provision of capital for that same business doesn’t also carry at least some moral responsibility?

If investing is simply ownership over a share of a business, Christians might say that we’d prefer to both invest in and work in businesses that better reflect the kingdom of God rather than the kingdoms of this world. This tricky business because, of course, every business we invest in is a mix of good and evil, sinners and saints, redemptive products and depraved practices. No business (like no person) is perfectly, fully situated in the kingdom of light or the kingdom of darkness.

Yet I believe the New Testament gives us a way to understand what kinds of business better reflect (though not completely embody) God’s will for human relationships, business, and investing. The key, I believe, is wrapped up in a single idea: power.

Upside-Down Investing

It’s been said that all models are wrong, but some are useful. This one is no different. However, I believe we can contrast business and investing activities that function in two different paradigms: the kingdom of the world versus the kingdom of God. One is characterized by power accumulated; the other, by power given.

In this world of business, investors exercise power over managers, managers wield power over employees, and employees have power over customers. Simply put, “the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.” It’s the way the world functions. Those with the most money exercise power over those with the least. In the ancient near east they were called “Benefactors.” Today, we’d simply call them investors.

Yet over all of these people, another Power seems to be at work. Sometimes the power is “money,” or “the market,” or a corporation that is so large no one human can control it. They are nameless, faceless powers that seem to be controlling even the lives of the powerful men and women.

The New Testament can be shifty speaking about these powers. They’re sometimes called principalities, thrones, or authorities. Some see a hierarchy of angels and demons. Others see them as powerful institutions. But what’s clear is that they wield enormous control over human affairs, they’re generally associated with darkness, and Christ “disarmed” and “subjected” them through his death and resurrection (Romans 8:38, Colossians 2:15, Ephesians 6:12, 1 Peter 3:22). And they’re invisible. You can’t see the “powers,” but something certainly seems to be “there.”

As it relates to the economy, those inside this system tend toward power-seeking and using others to gain more power. Investors extract money from companies, management uses labor for profit goals, and employees manipulate the desires of customers, ultimately decreasing their freedom and agency. Dominance of others and fear of losing power characterize this economy.

It should be noted that these powerful systems are impersonal and faceless. Again, whether that be Mammon or the economy or a multinational corporation or “market returns,” people serve powerful systems that seem to have a super-human life of their own. Even the “customer” is often made into faceless avatar, holding even a seat on the board of one of the world’s most powerful companies.

Ultimately, in this system, power itself rules, and each person serves others who wield more power than they do.

In contrast, God’s kingdom functions principally by pushing power down a system. The Christian gospel begins here, with the Incarnation of God himself, taking on human flesh as baby in a manger. God empties himself of his immense power, and for the sake of lost sinners, he takes on the nature of a servant (Philippians 2:6-8).

In God’s kingdom, power is given away sacrificially for the benefit of others. It progressively lifts up “neighbors” with less power, particularly those in close proximity. It functions on an upside down logic, where the last become first, you find yourself by losing yourself, and servants are greatest of all.

A “love your neighbor” ethic for business is most obviously seen, I believe, when investors give power to managers, managers to employees, employees to customers, and ultimately customers buy goods and services that raise human potential. Business here becomes an engine of human blessing, a way God provides for the needs of his people and lifts up the poor. The self-giving love of the Trinity is best displayed, economically speaking, when each person first looks to the good of the other.

In stark contrast to the faceless and nameless powers and principalities, God’s kingdom is always personal. God is a person (actually, three persons), and he summons people to know and love people. Rather than fear and dominance, God’s kingdom is characterized by joy and service. Money is dethroned as a power that controls human affairs and instead repositioned as a part of the created world to be used, enjoyed, and given (1 Timothy 6:6-10; 17-19).

Love is an active force in God’s kingdom. Whether it be managers lifting up employees, or employees working for the well-being of customers, love – defined as actively working for the good of your neighbors, and even your enemies – is central to God’s kingdom. It’s also the center point of a healthy economy. Desire in this kingdom is ultimately not for power, but for Christ himself who gives of himself for others.

Again, the problem with both of these models is that we lived in a “mixed” reality, caught between God’s kingdom and the kingdoms of this world. And it’s not just on a social level. Each of our hearts are a battle ground between good and evil. Some days we’re self-dealing, other days we’re self-less. Some days I bow the knee to Jesus; other days, I bow the knee to Myself. Unfortunately, there are no perfectly clean lines between a business that is fully redeemed or fully depraved. We’re living perpetually on Holy Saturday, somewhere between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

And yet, I do believe we can notice signs that a business or economic system is moving toward the kingdoms of this world or the kingdom of God. For instance, I’ve noticed management can often “skip over” or use employees in route to giving a customer whatever he or she wants. Rather than empowering employees to serve customers, they’re often treated as expendable inputs that can be changed out at will. Companies with perpetually low wages, low employee satisfaction, and high turnover often fall into this pattern. Indeed, there are ways to be highly profitable both through lifting up employees or oppressing them.

Or, think of investors with no other ends than high returns. This naked focus on profit at all cost is often veiled with excuses like, “I have to. I’ll lose my own investors if I don’t maximize profit and give them what they want.” This passing on of responsibility for others – rather than taking responsibility for the well-being of others – is characteristic of systems built around the nameless, faceless powers.

This power-accumulating approach also applies to the types of products and services that are created in business. There are many ways to make money, including through manipulating customer’s more base desires. I’d argue that the rise in sports gambling, for instance, while it may be very profitable, does not serve a genuine human good. It preys often on those who are the most vulnerable – a key characteristic of a fallen world (Isaiah 3:14).

In contrast, we can also see signs when business is moving closer to God’s kingdom. Good jobs that incrementally lift up the poor; products and services that meet real human needs; companies that restore the planet through thoughtful environmental stewardship; money invested sacrificially, which takes into account economic as well as social, spiritual, and cultural goods – business as God intended it is indeed a part of God’s will for his creation and can be a part of life in his Kingdom.

Movement toward the kingdom of God looks like power used for the well-being of others. When proximity is brought back to investing, the practice of business itself begins to heal. Co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher once said, “We take great care of our people, they take great care of our customers, and our customers take great care of our shareholders.” Indeed, when investors serve managers, managers serve employees, and employees serve customers – when each serves their economic “neighbor” – business itself can be a noble activity.

The Faithful Investor

How, then, should a Christian invest?

First, Christians serve God and not the market, money or any other power. Because this is true, all Christians should minimally begin conversations about investing with “What is good for people in and around this business?” and not only “How do I maximize my returns?” Christians, who follow a Suffering Servant above all, have the reason to persistently ask questions around moral and relational dynamics of business, especially those we invest in.

Second, Christians can start to pay attention to the power-dynamics even in the businesses in which they work. Is my company moving toward a system where power is hoarded or given, where people are served or used? The first step in noticing the tremendous impact of faith and investing is by paying attention first to your own workplace, and allowing the Spirit to re-shape relationships around the core principle “whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant.”

Finally, Christians can lead the way in re-humanizing investing – even in public equities like stocks or bonds – by knowing, praying for, and finding ways to serve management. If the first “neighbor” an investor has is management, which I believe to be the case, Christians ought to first, learn what companies you own, and second, learn who are the people leading those companies. This may occasionally result in shareholder activism; it also may result in divesting yourself of some equities and buying others. But if an investor’s first job is not to realize returns, but instead to serve, we can only serve people we know.

When we take this simple step of knowing and caring for the managers of the companies in which we invest, we take a first step toward transforming investing. In doing so, investing is no longer de-personalized, and we are no longer powerless. We are people with real decisions to make, made in the image of the Son of Man, who “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Our job, in short, is to turn investing upside down.

***

Jeff Haanen is a writer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of Denver Institute for Faith and Work, an educational organization that creates content and experiences around topics related to faith, work, the economy, and modern culture. He’s the author of An Uncommon Guide to Retirement: Finding God’s Purpose for the Next Season of Life as well as two forthcoming books from InterVarsity Press on work, spiritual formation, and the American working class. He lives with his wife and four daughters in Denver, Colorado, and attends Wellspring Anglican Church.

Culture Work

The Struggles of Men Are a Problem for Everyone (Christianity Today)

February 6, 2023

From school and work to fatherhood and friendship, we need a vision of manhood that both sexes can celebrate.

Years ago, a friend told me about an awkward conversation with a female coworker. In between 5meetings, he had mentioned a Wall Street Journal article about declining college enrollment for men across America, a trend so advanced that men now trail women by record levels and colleges are ramping up their efforts to recruit men. Expecting a sympathetic response, he was caught off guard when she declared, in a nonplussed tone, “And now whose fault is that?”

At this point, he remembered that his coworker was a strong advocate for women’s rights. He guessed her harsh response was pinned to a belief that sympathy for men would detract from women’s longstanding struggle for gender equity. Yet he didn’t want to picture these causes as locked in a zero-sum contest. As he put the question to me one afternoon, “Can’t we care both about women’s rights and vulnerable men and boys at the same time?”

It’s a good question.

Richard Reeves’s ground-breaking book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, And What to Do about It makes a convincing case that men across the modern world are indeed struggling and need our attention.

Losing Ground

Reeves, a Brookings Institution scholar, marshals an array of eye-opening statistics to make his point. For instance, did you know that girls regularly outperform boys in education? Girls are 14 percentage points more likely than boys to be “school ready” at age 5, and by high school, girls now account for two-thirds of students ranked in the top 10 percent, according to GPA. The gender gap widens even further in higher education: In the US, 57 percent of bachelor degrees are awarded to women, and women receive the majority of law degrees. In contrast, men are significantly more likely to “stop out” (pause their studies) or drop out of college.

Men are also losing ground in the labor market. Labor force participation among prime-age men (25–54) has dropped by seven percent in the last half century, due at least in part to automation and a shift away from well-paying manual labor jobs to a service economy. The median real hourly wage for working-class men peaked in the 1970s and has been dropping since. And while it is true that men tend to make more than women, Reeves shows that the gender pay gap is largely a parenting gap, in that it has all but disappeared for childless young adults. We primarily have women, not men, to thank for rising middle class incomes since the 1970s.

And dads are increasingly in short supply. Traditionally, the male role was culturally defined as a provider for the family. But with greater economic independence for women (a good thing), men are increasingly unable to fill the traditional breadwinner role. “The economic reliance of women on men held women down, but it also propped men up,” Reeves writes. “Now the props have gone, and many men are falling.” If men aren’t necessary as providers anymore, many men question whether then they’re really necessary to families at all.

What’s puzzling scholars is that interventions to help men seem to not be helping. Take, for example, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Thanks to a group of benefactors, students in its k–12 education system can get their tuition covered for almost any college in the state. Women in the program experience large gains, including a 45-percent increase in their college completion rates, but men, as Reeves observes, “seem to experience zero benefit.”

Researchers have found similar results elsewhere. A student-mentoring program in Fort Worth, a school-choice program in Charlotte, a program to help low-income wage earners in New York—each show significant gains for women and girls, but not for boys and men. When asked why this is, researchers simply say, “We don’t really know.” Something is wrong with men. And it’s a phenomenon Christians—both men and women—need to seriously consider.

Male Malaise

Of Boys and Men has won awards and garnered widespread praise, and for good reason.

Reeves isn’t content to simply point out a dispiriting social problem and be on his merry way. He offers solutions. He argues eloquently that we should adopt policies that start boys a year later in the classroom to give their brains time to develop. He makes the case that we need to get men into “HEAL” occupations, meaning jobs in health, education, administration, and literacy—both because these jobs track with forecasts about the future of the workforce, and because they help remove the stigma against men in traditionally “female” jobs, like nursing or elementary education.

Beyond this, Reeves argues, we need to make a major investment into fatherhood. “Engaged fatherhood,” he writes, “has been linked to a whole range of outcomes, from mental health, high school graduation, social skills, and literacy to lower risks of teen pregnancy, delinquency, and drug use.” It’s time to think about paid leave for dads, equal child-custody rights for dads after a divorce, and father-friendly, flexible job structures.

Reeves has written a tremendously thought-provoking, well-researched, and convincing book on the plight of the modern man. As a policy wonk, he proposes policy solutions. And yet, as a Christian, I couldn’t help thinking past the question of what to do, essential though it is, and wondering more about the question of why. What kind of male malaise is spreading in our culture?

In a piece for the journal National Affairs, Reeves offers a succinct answer. “The problem, he writes, “is not that men have fewer opportunities; it’s that they’re not seizing them. The challenge seems to be a general decline in agency, ambition, and motivation.” Though this problem appears particularly bad for working-class men, professional men too are experiencing a broad, global slump in desire.

Since Reeves himself argues that policy interventions are rarely helping men, I couldn’t help but wonder: Have shifting economic and cultural norms around male roles have caused not just a social crisis, but a spiritual one?

Humility and Compassion

What does it mean to be a man? It’s a hard question for evangelicals to answer. Many Christian men know what they shouldn’t be. They shouldn’t conflate Jesus and John Wayne, say, or join the ranks of Christian nationalists. Despite their biological wiring to be more aggressive, risk-taking, and sexually-driven than women (there really is science behind this), they know they shouldn’t be domineering or unfaithful. In short, they shouldn’t live down to the stereotypes of what we often call “toxic masculinity.”

It’s easy to mock chest-beating men’s ministries or criticize the “good old boys club” in a local chamber of commerce. It’s much harder, though, to come up with a pro-social definition of masculinity. Yet many men who’ve lost their sense of direction and purpose long for exactly this: a vision of manhood that both women and men can celebrate.

Of course, there are wonderful examples. Peter Ostapko’s beautiful Kinsmen Journal, a magazine heralding faith, fatherhood, and work, comes to mind. As does Arthur Brooks’s call to faith, work, family, and friendship. I think even an appreciation of the art of manliness can help. Yet these calls to healthy masculinity are too rare.

Christians can get to work here. We can normalize conversations among men about both work andfatherhood. We can-and should—invest more time in friendships. We can support lower-income neighbors and coworkers, we can embrace sexuality as a gift of God within marriage, and we can redefine “men’s work” to better include a wider array of occupations.

But can we graciously have a theological conversation about God’s design for both men and women? Can you imagine if women’s ministries discussed Of Boys and Men and men’s ministries discussed Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood? Humility, after all, is a core virtue of the Son of Man.

I’m not sure this will happen any time soon. But after reading Reeves’s balanced, thoughtful book, I can confidently say that if you’re a woman and you know a man, he’s probably having a hard time. Show him compassion.

And if you are a man, well, let’s at least find a way to struggle together.

***

This review of Richard Reeves’s Of Boys and Men first appeared in Christianity Today.

Culture Spiritual Formation Work

Anxious America (Part 3)

December 5, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rediscover the link between emotional health and spiritual formation.

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

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

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

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

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

You’re Not Alone

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

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

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

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

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

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This article first appeared in The Reformed Journal.