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Fruitful Leadership in the Marketplace: A Mini-Conference if you are in the Louisville Area April 14

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On April 14, the Saturday right after T4G, I will be speaking at the Engage@Work Spring Mini-Conference held by Sojourn Community Church from 8 am to noon.

I’ll be talking about fruitful Christian leadership, especially in the marketplace, and will cover about six main things:

  1. Why we must care greatly about leadership as Christians
  2. Can there even be a Christian view on leadership? Or, how to learn from secular thinking without infecting the church with the “managerial model”
  3. What is the essence of good leadership and how does the gospel transform it? The two core principles at the heart of effective gospel-centered leadership
  4. Leading for the good of others: Transactional leadership versus transforming leadership
  5. How do you lead well — especially in the marketplace? 8 things you can start doing right now
  6. Leadership and how the gospel changes our organizations, cities, societies, and the world

Also, bring your questions — the harder the better. Answering difficult questions on leadership, the Bible, theology, and anything else is one of my favorite things to do. (But don’t worry if your question seems more simple — I like those questions as well!).

Everyone is welcome, and the event will be held at Sojourn’s New Albany campus. Registration is $10, and the first 50 registrants will receive a 40% discount on my upcoming book What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done when it releases.

You can see more details on Sojourn’s blog and register here.

It would be great to see you there!

Your Organization Does Better When You Care about Keeping Your Employees Happy

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A good post by Dave Ramsey. Here’s the first part:

What makes a customer satisfied with your business or organization? The answer may surprise you. It’s not always about offering the lowest prices or the newest gadgets. According to research from the University of Missouri, employee satisfaction plays a major role.

The study shows that CEOs who pay attention to employees’ job satisfaction are able to bothboost customer satisfaction and increase repeat business from those buyers two-fold. Simply put, when your team is happy, everyone is happy—including your bottom line.

He then gives 5 ways to keep your team engaged and satisfied. Read the whole thing.

Goldman Sachs, Self-Interest, and Greed

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The Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics recently wrote:

On March 14, Greg Smith, an executive director at Goldman Sachs, announced his resignation in the pages of The New York Times. He described a culture that had become “toxic” and outright callous to the interests of the firm’s clients.

The Institute for Faith, Work & Economics (IFWE) saw the news of his resignation as a teaching moment. Without taking sides, we sought to point out the important and often misunderstood difference between greed and legitimate self-interest.

Their visiting scholar, Jay Richards, and Vice President of Economic Initiatives, Anne Bradley, did this in a very helpful and brief op-ed for The Washington Times. Here’s an excerpt:

On Wednesday, Greg Smith, an executive director at Goldman Sachs, announced his resignation in the pages of theNewYorkTimes. His reasoning: The company’s employees and culture have morphed into a gross entity that sidelines the interests of the client in favor of making a quick buck. By his account, Goldman Sachs‘ culture has become “toxic and destructive.” Mr. Smith no longer wants to be associated with the Wall Street giant. “People who care only about making money,” he argues, “will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.”

Amen! To care only about money is not only unbiblical; it is also — contrary to what many people think — out of sync with capitalism. Contrary to the 80’s movie “Wall Street,” greed isn’t good, and never has been. Greed does not drive the free market, but actually ruins it. What drives the free market is legitimate self-interest — which is very different from greed. Richards and Bradley explain:

This paradoxical biblical principle, that self-denial is in our self-interest, is also an important economic principle. The greedy miser who hoards his wealth closes himself off to greater economic gains. And in a free market, the greedy merchant who swindles his customers is not likely to maintain profitability.

On the other hand, if we seek to meet the needs of others – whether we are hedge-fund managers or plumbers – we are likely to reap personal benefit. Great entrepreneurs who risk their wealth, delay their gratification and successfully anticipate the needs of others can become fabulously successful as a result.

This is the beauty of the free market: It harnesses our narrower self-interest for the common good. Markets bring together the most willing suppliers with the most willing demanders, and exchange takes place. You freely pay the grocer for groceries, he freely sells them, and you both end up better off than you were before.

Read the whole thing.

Don't Forget!

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Jesus:

When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. (Luke 14:12-14).

This applies to more than just dinners and banquets. In all that you do, in all areas of life, we are to give special attention to helping those who cannot do anything for us in return.

It is interesting that in Matthew 7, the people who expected to enter the kingdom but were turned away had done many “mighty works” in Jesus’ name (Matthew 7:21-23), whereas in Matthew 25 the righteous who enter the kingdom are described as those who met the concrete  needs of “the least of these” (Matthew 25:35-40).

It is not the way you treat the great that shows the state of your heart before God, though it is of course important to treat everyone with respect. What truly shows the state of your heart before God is how you treat those who are in no place to do anything for you, if you do it for Jesus’ sake.

These are tough words, if you think about it. So don’t forget. Live your life in such a way that it is filled with all sorts of actions and activities and other good works that you will not be and cannot be repaid for here on earth. And, if you do this from faith and by the Spirit, “you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

Stop Micromanaging: Jethro's Advice to Moses on Delegating Leadership

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This is a guest post by Loren Pinilis, who blogs on time management from a biblical perspective at Life of a Steward. 

In Exodus 18, Moses’s father-in-law, Jethro, offers sound advice that all leaders should take to heart.

From morning to evening, Moses would judge the disputes of the people. And from morning to evening, they would stand around waiting to have their cases heard. Jethro counseled Moses: “What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you.”

Moses was essentially micro-managing things by allowing all decisions to be funneled through him.

Note that Moses had good intentions. He wanted the people to know and understand the law, and he took his influence and responsibility over the nation seriously. He judged each case personally because each case mattered to him and to God.

It’s the same for leaders today, particularly in ministry roles. We have a reverence for even the smallest areas under our influence, and we have a healthy respect for our duties as leaders.

But there are very serious consequences when we let our concept of a sacred duty turn into micro-management.

Jethro could see that this pattern of behavior would cause utter exhaustion for Moses, and that’s what most people focus on when they mention this passage. But Jethro also realized that Moses’s leadership style would have a negative effect on the people. The court would get backlogged, the nation would be frustrated, and eventually many would abandon the idea of receiving justice.

When a leader insists on making or approving every decision, an organizational bottleneck is created. The limiting factor for that organization’s effectiveness becomes the time and attention of the leader.

An interesting thing then often happens. The leaders recognize that they can only do so much. But rather than delegate some of their decision making (often out of a well-intentioned respect for their responsibility), they engineer the system to accommodate for their limited time.

Teams prepare proposals and reports to pre-digest the information for those who have the ability to pull the trigger. It seems sensible: you’re minimizing the time the leaders spend on approving decisions and therefore maximizing what your organization can do.

But this is designing the entire organizational structure around the limitations of the leader. It’s the exact opposite of how leadership should work.

Imagine how many hours the team spends preparing reports to save the leader a few minutes. Imagine what else could have been done with that time and energy. This is the price of micro-management.

Jethro’s advice wasn’t to streamline the court. It wasn’t to appoint people who would summarize the information for Moses so he could render quick verdicts.

Instead, Jethro’s wise counsel was to delegate: to train up leaders who could take a portion of Moses’s authority and participate with him in caring for the nation. Moses could lead instead of holding everyone back.

He could handle his workload. The people wouldn’t be frustrated. Leaders would be trained for greater things. And Justice would be administered.

Working Hard is Biblical

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Sounds obvious. Most of the time when people think of a Christian view of work, they think “work hard and be honest.” This is so obvious we easily take it for granted.

But what is the textual basis for working hard? Is it truly biblical, or just a Western idea that we’ve uncritically absorbed?

It is indeed truly biblical. If the West is known for its work ethic, it is in part due to the influence of the Bible. Here are just a few texts, divided into two categories.

1. Paul worked hard, not only in his ministry but also in non-ministry work, in order to give us an example that we all ought to work hard as well:

You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive'” (Acts 20:34-35).

“For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate” (2 Thessalonians 3:7-9).

2. Proverbs tells us that if you are slothful in your work you are not only lacking sense and hurting yourself, but are actually akin to a vandal:

“Whoever is slothful will not roast his game, but the diligent man will get precious wealth” (Proverbs 12:27).

“Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger” (Proverbs 19:15).

“I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense” (Proverbs 24:30).

“Whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys” (Proverbs 18:9).

Don’t be a vandal. Work hard!

 

 

The Doctrine of Vocation in the Sermon on the Mount

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Jesus says “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6).

In the Middle Ages, before the Reformation, it was thought that life was divided into two areas — the “perfect life” and the “permissible life.” Those in “full time Christian service” lived the perfect life, and everyone else was relegated to second class — your life was acceptable, but not most important. If you wanted to live a truly important life, you had to be in “ministry” (which was also conceived of very differently then).

Jesus explodes this error.

He doesn’t do this by saying “the things of the world are as important as the things of God.” The teaching of the Bible is not that there are no priorities in life. Seeking the kingdom of God is the most important thing.

But the revolutionary teaching of Jesus and the Bible is that you don’t have to be a pastor or missionary or full-time Christian worker to do this.

Wherever you are, whatever your job, you can and must seek the kingdom of God first.

That’s the doctrine of vocation. The doctrine of vocation does not say that you don’t have to seek the kingdom of God first. Rather, it says that this life is open and available to everyone, regardless of your job or station in life. All of us, no matter where we are or what we do for a living, are equally able to seek the kingdom of God and put it first.

As Paul said, “if then you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is” (Colossians 3:1ff.) And as he shows through the rest of the chapter, we do this not by retreating from the world to live like monks, but by obeying Jesus’ teaching in all areas of life.

You don’t have to leave the world or be a pastor to obey Jesus’ teaching. You just need to do all things for his glory and the good of others in all areas of life, and you can do this even if you have no control at all over your job (Colossians 3:22-25).

That’s the revolutionary doctrine of vocation. Not that the things of this world are as important as the things of God, but that you can seek the things of God from any station and calling in this world. This, then, transfigures all of life with the presence of God.

7 Motives in Our Work

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As Christians, what are our primary motivations in our work? Here are 7.

1. The glory of God

“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17). “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men. . . . You are serving the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23-24). “…rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man” (Ephesians 6:7).

2. The good of others

But how do we do something to the glory of God? First by offering it to him — doing it for his sake and in his power. But, second, by seeking the good of others. The first commandment is to love God with our whole hearts (Matthew 22:37). But the second is like it: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Loving your neighbor is not some abstract thing you need to go to Africa to do; rather, we love our neighbors primarily in the context of our vocations — the things we do every day, like our work. Our work is an avenue of doing good for others.

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye service, as people-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man” (Ephesians 6:5-7). When Paul tells slaves to “obey” their masters, of course this means doing what they are told and not being disagreeable. But it means more than that. It means employees are to seek the good of their employer. Don’t just do the minimum; take initiative and go the extra mile. Don’t be a clock-watcher; render service with a good will that seeks and desires the good of your employer — and your co-workers, any who work for you, your company or organization, and ultimately the good of your city and society in general (Jeremiah 29:5-7).

3. Enjoyment of the work itself

You don’t get more spiritual points for hating your job. And you don’t get docked spiritual points for loving your job. As Christians, we are to love our jobs. Not just the fact that our jobs are a service, but also the activities of our jobs themselves. “Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 5:18). “I perceive that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil — this is God’s gift to man” (Ecclesiastes 3:12-13).

4. To earn money to support yourself, give, and enjoy

Earning money is a legitimate motivation for our work. It’s just not the first motivation. We earn money so that we can support ourselves without being in need: “…and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may live properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one” (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12). And, if you notice the connections that exist within 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12, you see that working such that you are not dependent on anyone is actually a form of love.

So we work in order to support ourselves. We also work in order to have something to give: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28). Don’t work to get merely; work to get in order to give.

And, with some of the money we earn, it is right and good not simply to support ourselves and give sacrificially for the good of others, but also to enjoy it and do interesting things. For God “richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17) and “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4). The problem is in putting your hope in riches, being arrogant, and being stingy (1 Timothy 6:17-18), not in enjoying the fruits of your work.

5. Hope

Sometimes we are underpaid in our jobs here, and not all the good that we do is seen or rewarded or cared about on earth. But the Lord sees it all and will reward it all: “render service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free” (Ephesians 6:8).

Likewise sometimes we are treated unjustly in our work and wrongs are committed against us. Further, sometimes those who have greater authority are shown partiality so that they get away with things they shouldn’t. So also here, we are able to continue on in the hope that God notices those wrongs as well, and will address every wrongdoing either on the cross and through repentance, or in judgment: “For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality” (Colossians 3:25).

6. The gospel

We are able to do these things ultimately only because we have been made alive in Christ through faith in him. “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is” (Colossians 3:1). As the flow of the chapter shows, seeking the things above does not mean retreating to the wilderness to grow wheat and wait until Jesus comes, but to live according to his ethic here and now, putting to death evil desires (vv. 5-9) and putting on love and kindness and humility towards others (vv. 10 – 16) and doing this in the here and now (v. 17), including our vocations (vv. 18 – 4:1), not by retreating into the wilderness.

7. Adorning the gospel

By living all of our vocations for the glory of God and good of others, doing them well and in a way that is pleasing to the Lord, we create a good testimony that supports and demonstrates the truth of the gospel and shines the light of Matthew 5:16 in such a way that some people will become Christians through our witness (that’s the meaning of Ephesians 5:7 – 17, one of the hardest to understand passages in the NT until you read Peter O’Brien’s commentary). “Slaves are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our savior” (Titus 2:9-10).

Your work is intrinsically valuable and justified in its own right, simply by virtue of the creation mandate (Genesis 1:28). You do not need to justify your work on the basis of its evangelistic usefulness. At the same time, work does serve as a testimony to the gospel and we should be mindful of that in our work (that’s part of what it means to “walk in wisdom” (Colossians 4:5; cf. Proverbs 11:30).

By doing good work and enjoying it, for the glory of God and good of others, you not only serve your workplace, but, through that, you serve and transform society as well. If dozens and hundreds and thousands and millions of Christians all did their work in this way right where they are at, society would be transformed by the gospel because it is in our vocations that we most effectively carry our faith into the world.

God-Centered Living at Work

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My friend Doug Wolter is a pastor at Oak Hill Baptist Church and is preaching through Colossians. He invited me down to preach on Colossians 3:22-4:1 yesterday, and I preached on what it means to do our work unto the Lord and for the good of others.

This also involved laying out a bit of a Christian doctrine of work from this text, since what the Bible has to say about our work is so often overlooked these days. You can listen to the message here.

Why the Church has a Shortage of Leaders

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It’s because we are weak in the doctrine of vocation. Consequently, the way many churches are run does not develop or attract leaders.

This is not to say there are no good leaders in the church. Quite the contrary. But it is to say that it is often extra hard to become a good leader within the context of a vocation that is structurally connected to the church.

These words, from a book I read a few years ago on marketplace ministry, are worth pondering:

As a whole, the modern church has not created nor attracted strong leaders. Meanwhile, the marketplace attracts and produces leaders by the truckload.

Gifted leaders gravitate to opportunity, challenge, and learning environments offered by businesses. They are repelled by the small vision, autocratic leadership [take note — I think this is more common in the church than we realize!], lack of objectivity, chaos and foolishness that characterize many church environments.

The best leaders avoid the political environment as well because of its small-mindedness, blind ambition, dishonesty and inability to address real issues [again, note that he is speaking in generalities]. In church and politics, there is often little recognition or reward for effective leadership. But in business, leaders find their natural environment. They are almost always welcomed, rewarded, groomed, and given opportunity.*

This doesn’t need to be the case. Business should and will always be a natural environment for developing leadership. But the church can and should be as well.

If you read the Old Testament, in some sense leadership is a major theme that runs throughout. The judges and kings of Israel were leaders, and we have example after example of good leadership and bad leadership.

Further, God says in Jeremiah 3:15 that he will give the church “shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and insight.” This is in contrast to the shepherds that scatter God’s people and rule them harshly and for their own personal benefit (Jeremiah 23:1-2; Ezekiel 34).

Again, I’m not saying that the church has completely failed in developing leaders. There are many, many solid pastors and other leaders throughout the church. But I am saying that we haven’t done nearly as good a job as we can — and should. We need to do better. And, perhaps, it is actually prophesied that this will continue to happen more and more (Jeremiah 3:15; Isaiah 32:1-2).

The key to doing better is to recover the doctrine of vocation. Ironically, by recognizing the value of all vocations before God, we gain the framework for understanding what effective leadership really looks like in the church and how to develop it better.

*Marketplace Christianity: Discovering the Kingdom Purpose 
of the Marketplace