A great post by John Piper. He gives quick thoughts on 9 areas:
- Dependence
- Integrity
- Skill
- Corporate shaping
- Impact
- Communication
- Love
- Money
- Thanks
One additional word on skill: If you show love by being the first to order the pizza, or drive the van, or do whatever to serve people, but aren’t good at what you do, everything will fall flat. You have to be good at what you do. Good intentions are not enough.
And this usually means, in part, reading about your industry and about the best practices (and unconventional practices!) for your role and about management and about leadership and other such things.
Which likely means reading secular resources as well as Christian. You won’t learn what it means to be a great manager, for example, simply by reading Christian books on management (unfortunately!). Same with leadership. Marketing. And so forth.
And this is acceptable and good. As John Wesley said, “To imagine none can teach you but those who are themselves saved from sin, is a very great and dangerous mistake. Give not place to it for a moment.”
Likewise, the book of Acts points out that Moses (Moses!) was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds” (Acts 7:22). And we could go on and talk about Daniel (Daniel 1:4, 17), Paul, Luke, Joseph, the book of Proverbs (most scholars recognize that many of the Proverbs were adapted from the wisdom literature of other civilizations), Jonathan Edwards, and on and on.
The point is: If we want to glorify God in our workplaces, we need to learn from the best thinkers in our fields, whether they are Christians or not. And, this creates a better testimony to the gospel.
Don’t be the guy who volunteers first to go get the pizza, but that everyone groans about because he thinks that’s a substitute for being an expert in his role.