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Archives for February 2014

How to Work as a Christian in the Secular Arena

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This is a message I gave at a Fortune 100 company recently on how to be a Christian in a secular workplace. I talk about avoiding the twin errors of spiritual weirdness (such as thinking you need to insert the gospel into every conversation, or call attention to God through strange trinkets like the “Faithbook” t-shirt I came across at a truck stop once) on the one hand and, on the other hand, thinking that our faith bears no relation to our work at all.

Then I talk about the chief way that God intends our faith to inform our work: namely, love. Love is to be the guiding principle for Christians in their work, and I show what that looks like and how even many leading secular thinkers are echoing this truth in very significant ways. At the end I talk about the results of going about our work in this way.

Update: Here’s a timeline of the message that Joshua Van Der Merwe wrote up (thank you, Joshua!):

  • (3:53) Error #1 regarding faith and work: Our faith doesn’t relate to our work at all
  • (4:26) Error #2 regarding faith and work: Spiritual weirdness, i.e., Work is only a platform for evangelism
  • (5:32) Being boring on the Biblical doctrine of work
  • (9:03) A Christian work ethic goes way beyond, “Work hard and be honest.” 
  • (9:57) The solution: Work matters in itself, and is a place where the gospel can spread. Your secular work matters in itself, and it can be a place where the gospel is proclaimed. 
  • (11:01) Love as the guiding principle and motive in the workplace
  • (22:01) Seeing our work as service to others brings great meaning to our work, and serving others is the way to be most effective in our work. 
  • (26:30) Principle 1: Do your work as service to God, as an avenue of worship
  • (28:04) Principle 2: Make the good of others the aim of what you do. 
  • (28:45) Principle 3: Be on the look out for good you can do. Isaiah 32:8. Make plans for the welfare of others. 
  • (31:29) Principle 4: Make your work easy for others to use. Care about usability.
  • (33:06) Principle 5: Know how to do your work really well. 
  • (34:06) The effect of all this: God can use your work to change the world — this is redemptive. God is at work in our work. 
  • (38:15) Q&A time. 

Join the Launch Team for What's Best Next!

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My book What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done, releases March 4. You’ve been hearing about it for a long time now, and thanks for all of the encouraging words that so many of you have sent me over the last couple of years. It’s been a long journey and I’m really excited for its release!

If you are interested in being a part of the launch for the book, I’d love to have you as part of the launch team.

What You’ll Get

Here are some of the benefits of being a What’s Best Next launch team member:

  1. A free electronic edition of the book in advance.
  2. Private Facebook group access.
  3. A half-hour teleseminar prior to launch on Friday, February 28.
  4. A thank you link back to your blog.
  5. A free copy of my ebook How to Set Up Your Desk (not yet published).
  6. A free PDF where I compiled a whole bunch of my research for the book (about 300 pages).

And, most importantly, it will be a lot of fun and you can help me get out a very important message on what it means to base our productivity in the gospel!

What You’ll Do

As a member of the launch team, here’s what you’ll do:

  1. Write a short review on Amazon or other e-tailer site.
  2. Spread the word using your platform during launch week (the week of March 4) and after, whether through Twitter, Facebook, your blog, or all of the above.
  3. Share ideas in the Facebook group on other ways to help get the word out about the book to as many people as we can.

(And, of course, note that you don’t have to be a part of the launch team to do these things (except item 3), so please feel free to do these whether you are a part of the launch team or not!)

How to Sign Up

To become a part of the launch team, just email me through the contact form on the blog by Tuesday, February 25. Send me your name and email, and we’ll get you hooked up with your electronic copy of the book, the Facebook group, and other details. It’s that simple!

(I suppose I should add that the team will be limited to a certain number of people; I’m actually not sure how many yet. But everyone who asks to join the team before we reach that cutoff point will be part of the team.)

More on the Book

You’ve heard some things about the book as I’ve blogged about it during the writing process, and the description is up at Amazon. I’ve also started building out the page for the book here on the blog, where you can see a brief description and all of the endorsements (including the ones I haven’t been able to get to show up yet at Amazon), as well as the link to John Piper’s foreword. I’ll also be blogging more on the book in the week leading up to release (next week).

Update: Thank you everyone who joined the team! We had over 100 people sign up, which is fantastic and amazing. If you missed the deadline, there are still many things you can do to help by blogging about the book, writing an Amazon review, tweeting about it, and posting to Facebook. If you would like to formally join the launch team, go ahead and contact me through the contact form here on the blog (link above) and we can still add you to the Facebook group.

The Importance of Stating the Obvious

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There are many passages of Scripture where we fail to take the main point to heart, either because it seems so basic or because we immediately go to the more complex questions we have.

For example, Hebrews 13:5 says: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” That is an amazing truth! But we often fail to grasp it, because we immediately go to the difficult questions about this text, like: “What if a person stops believing? Will God forsake them then?” That’s an important question to ask, but before we go there, we need to stop and be amazed at what is crystal clear.

And in this text, what is crystal clear is this: God never forsakes his people. Sometimes one person will betray another or abandon another. This happened to Jesus. Judas betrayed him, and the rest of his disciples left him on his way to the cross. The point of this text is: God never does that. He is not like a human being in this way. He always, always sticks with you.

That is amazing! God is not like us, who sometimes fail one another. He never leaves us. That is an incredible promise to trust in.

In addition to missing the sheer force of this simple reality by immediately turning to the more detailed theological issues like perseverance of the saints, we can also miss the force of this reality by thinking to ourselves “well, of course God would never forsake his people. Duh. What kind of God would do that?” And we move on.

We never stop to ask, though, why it is obvious that God would never forsake his people. And it’s precisely because of texts like this, so clearly stating that truth over and over, everywhere. It has become obvious because God has said it so clearly.

It would be possible to conceive of a god who is not faithful. Such a being would not be worthy of the name “God,” but it is conceivable. God has made it clear that he is not such a being. He is faithful, and he is so faithful that he stated this truth so clearly, forcefully, and often that it has become “obvious” for us — a given — so that we never have to wonder about it. But in having it as a given for us, it’s easy to take it for granted. So, let’s not do that. When we see amazing truths that we almost take for granted stated in the Scriptures, let’s not take them for granted. Let’s marvel at them once again and be grateful, not missing the obvious truth in our quest to ask the deeper questions (as important as those are). 

The Bible affirms the importance of stating the obvious. For if the obvious was never stated, it would never have become obvious.

Good-to-Great Organizations Do Not Rely on Lay-offs as a Strategy

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Important words from Jim Collins in Good to Great:

The good-to-great leaders were rigorous, not ruthless, in people decisions. They did not rely on layoffs and restructuring as a primary strategy for improving performance. The comparison companies used layoffs to a much greater extent.

I’ve heard some people say that Jim Collins’ metaphor of “get the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus” is advocating lay-offs as a central tool the managers strategy. That is an utter and complete misunderstanding. A careful reading of his chapter on “First Who, Then What” in Good to Great reveals the exact opposite. (Note: This misunderstanding does not just, or even mainly, reside with folks that are trigger-happy with layoffs; it also comes from sincere people that I’ve heard express concern about business ideas being wrongly used in the church. The great news here is that this is a misunderstanding of Jim Collins’ metaphor, and his teaching coheres with and upholds a biblical view.)

Further, and just as importantly, you need to correctly define who exactly are the people that need to be sent off the bus. It’s not people that are in a department you might be downsizing (which is a bad strategy most of the time in itself, but sometimes happens), for he says “If you sell off your problems, don’t sell off your best people.” (Translation: If you do have to close a department or division, keep the talented people who were working in that department, and are committed to the vision.)

The people you fling off the bus are the people that are not on board with the values of the organization. The people that are passionate for what the organization stands for are to be kept at all costs. You simply cannot have enough of such people.

Yet, so many organizations do the reverse. Their leaders see people, including those most passionate for the vision, as expendable based on how they as leaders are seeking to conceive of the strategy. They have failed to grasped Jim Collins’ core point: first who, then what. That is, you get the right people on the bus first (that is, the people who love the mission and values of the organization) and then, through an empowering management model (rather than top-down approach), you decide where to go.

Or, as John Wooden, one of the best coaches in history, had to say: you move from the people to the plays—not the reverse.

Lay-offs and top-down leadership are absolutely contrary to good to great management.

The Cornerstone of Winston Churchill's Time Management

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It is fascinating that when you study the most effective individuals throughout history, you see the same theme coming back again and again in how each of them managed their time. The key was focus and concentration on a few very significant priorities, always keeping in mind what is centrally important at the moment (that is, what’s best next).

We see this especially in Winston Churchill. Here’s how Steven Hayward very effectively summarizes Churchill’s approach in Churchill on Leadership: Executive Success in the Face of Adversity:

Despite his wide-ranging attention and interests, he always kept in mind what was centrally important to the moment. He was always able to focus his full concentration on the immediate task at hand, and he sent clear signals to his subordinates when an inquiry or directive was of special importance. “When his mind was occupied with any particular problem,” Sir Ian Jacob wrote, “it was relentlessly focused upon it and would not be turned aside.” Ultimately this served as the cornerstone of his time-management system. 

….His general method of work…was to concentrate his personal attention on the two or three things that mattered most at any given moment, and to give to each of these all the time and attention that it merited.

This is the same observation Peter Drucker made about effective executives in the midst of his 50 years of observing them: “Effective executives put first things first, and do one thing at a time.” That’s the key.

Note one misunderstanding we can fall into, however, about what it means to focus on a few core priorities. It doesn’t mean that you are getting less done and doing fewer things overall. Rather, it means you are doing more things overall. That’s why you do one thing at a time — precisely because you have so many things that need to be done. Hence, you focus on one thing at a time because “doing one thing at a time means doing it fast. The more one can concentrate time, effort, and resources, the greater the number and diversity of tasks one can actually perform” (Drucker, The Effective Executive).

So the key is you identify that which is centrally important, and work on that all the way until it’s done. Then you work on the next thing of central importance until it is done. And so forth. (And, of course, above all of these and governing the choices you make about what to do next are just a few, overall, chief goals for the current quarter or year or season.) Drucker summarizes this well:

Effective executives know that they have to get many things done — and done effectively. Therefore, they concentrate — their own time and energy as well as that of their organization — on doing one thing at a time, and on doing first things first.