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What Christians Can Learn from Secular Business Thinking: My Article in Christianity Today

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As a companion piece with the article on Jon Acuff, I wrote an article for Christianity Today on why Christians need to be learning from secular business thinkers.

More and more Christians have been learning from secular business thinkers over the last few years. I think this is a really good thing. What I seek to do in the article is lay out a brief case for why this is a good thing — something you don’t hear articulated much.

I also highlight two of the most important trends in the best business thinking that we can especially learn from as Christians.

Some Christians are hesitant to learn from business thinking. I think in most of those situations what is happening is that bad business thinking is being confused for the whole of business thinking. 

In other words, there is certainly bad business thinking out there. Some Christians have rightly critiqued that and said “this doesn’t belong in the church.” I agree — it doesn’t. But not all business thinking is like that. There is also good business thinking that is based in principles of character and respect for the individual. This business thinking is something we can — and must — learn from.

Often, those who have critiqued bad business thinking haven’t realized that they’ve only encountered one strain of business thinking. By then implying that all business thinking is like that, they close us off from learning the lessons that we really do need to learn and apply in the church.

We need to move past that and redeem good business thinking. Even more, when we do that we can also stop giving bad business practices a “pass” by saying “that’s just business.” No, it’s not. Business is required to seek the good of the other person just as much as every other area of life. That is the guiding principle of all good business thinking, and that’s why we can indeed learn from it in the church.

So take a look, and if you have any thoughts, let me know what you think.

 

Theodore Roosevelt: In Praise of the Strenuous Life

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In 1899, a few months after becoming governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt gave the speech “In Praise of the Strenuous Life.” It remained one of his most popular, and has excellent things to say that are affirmed by the biblical doctrine of vocation. Here is how it starts:

In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself, and from his sons, shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole.

Read the whole thing (it’s short). And you can find more helpful resources on vocation at MondayChurch.org.

Dorothy Sayers: Clamor to be Engaged in Work Worth Doing

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Sometimes, Dorothy Sayers sounds like Seth Godin. Here’s what she says in her superb essay “Why Work?,” referring to one of the main implications of the view of work she has just outlined:

A fourth consequence is that we should fight tooth and nail, not for mere employment, but for the quality of the work that we had to do. We should clamor to be engaged on work that was worth doing, and in which we can take pride.

The worker would demand that the stuff he helped to turn out should be good stuff….

There would be protests and strikes — not only about pay and conditions, but about the quality of the work demanded and the honesty, beauty, and usefulness of the goods produced. The greatest insult which a commercial age has offered to the worker has been to rob him of all interest in the end-product of the work and to force him to dedicate his life to making badly things which were not worth making.

Fast forwarding about 70 years, I think Sayers would agree whole-heartedly with the vision for work Godin outlines on his blog and books, especially Linchpin: 

In bestsellers such as Purple Cow and Tribes, Seth Godin taught readers how to make remarkable products and spread powerful ideas. But this book is about you-your choices, your future, and your potential to make a huge difference in whatever field you choose.

There used to be two teams in every workplace: management and labor. Now there’s a third team, the linchpins. These people figure out what to do when there’s no rule book. They delight and challenge their customers and peers. They love their work, pour their best selves into it, and turn each day into a kind of art.

Linchpins are the essential building blocks of great organizations. They may not be famous but they’re indispensable. And in today’s world, they get the best jobs and the most freedom.

As Godin writes, “Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.”

Destroying the Success Ethic

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There is still sometimes in the church today the thinking that success is a sign that a person is following God well, and difficulty and adversity are signs that they are likely doing something wrong.

While following God’s commands often leads to success, sometimes (due to injustice in the world) it leads to hardship and the opposite of earthly success. Hence, we cannot evaluate whether God is blessing someone simply by their outward success and circumstances. We have to look at character and obedience.

Here are some incredible quotes from some of the greatest theologians in church history on this matter, from Leland Ryken’s book Redeeming the Time: A Christian Approach to Work and Leisure:

Puritan Thomas Watson: “True godliness is usually attended with persecution.”

Puritan Richard Baxter: “Take heed that you judge not of God’s love, or of your happiness or misery, by your riches or poverty, prosperity or adversity.”

Luther: It is “utterly nonsensical” the “delusion” that if someone “has good fortune, wealth, and health, …God is dwelling there.”

Samuel Willard: “As riches are not evidences of God’s love, so neither is poverty of his anger or hatred.”

Thomas Hooker: “Afflictions are no argument of God’s displeasure…but the ensign of grace and goodness.”

Paul Helm on the Call to the Ministry

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From my notes on his book The Callings: The Gospel in the World:

The call to the ministry is extraordinary, not in the sense that it is miraculous or accompanied by visions, but because “by it a man is taken out of many of the routine commitments of daily life.” Specifically, “he ought to be freed from the need to earn his daily living in order to give himself exclusively to the word of God (1 Tim 5:17).”

It also is extraordinary in that it arises out of the ordinary. A person generally will carry on a normal calling, and “it is when he is inwardly constrained to preach the gospel, and his gifts — his ability to handle Scripture, to preach, to give leadership — are recognized by the church, that his inward call becomes outwardly ratified. It is as these inward and outward circumstances combined that a man has a warrant for leaving his regular calling and attempting to obtain a position of pastoral oversight.”

Four Points on Faith and Work from Keller’s Every Good Endeavor

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I’m going through Keller’s Every Good Endeavor again and taking some notes. Here are four central points from my overall summary of the book (quotes are, interestingly, from the dust jacket — which for most books does a great job of highlighting the core points):

  1. A Christian view of work is “that we work to serve others, not ourselves.”
  2. We can indeed have “a thriving professional and balanced personal life.” This is a Christian goal, not just a worldly goal (though, due to suffering and the priorities of the gospel, sometimes it is not possible for some seasons – and that does not mean we are sinning or disobedient).
  3. Excellence, integrity, discipline, creativity, and passion in the workplace all matter and are to be done as acts of worship — not just self interest.
  4. We are able to — and called to — serve God through the secular arena as well as the ministry arena.

Why are these points so important, and why have I focused in on these? Here’s why.

Point four addresses the dichotomy between “sacred and secular” that robs work of meaning for so many people. It is life giving and liberating to realize that Christ can be served through the so-called secular tasks of reconciling bank statements or taking out the trash just as much as in ministry work.

Points two and three address issues which I find Christians sometimes disputing due to a some incorrect views of the fall, human nature, and God’s expectations of us. Because of the fact that we live in a fallen world, some Christians fall into the notion that we are to work only for a paycheck. Sometimes it is reasoned that life is so hard that the most you can expect out of your job is to provide for your financial needs. To seek meaning in work is just not possible or, at best, a nice bonus only available to a select fortunate few.

But that view treats us as merely economic beings. It is an overly reductionistic view of people. Since we are social, intellectual, and spiritual as well as economic, work needs to tap into those capacities as well. This is part of how God has designed work. The fact that the fall really screwed things up does not deny or remove this reality. It simply means that in each of these realms we will have hardship as well as success — not that we should reduce work to merely the economic dimension.

I would submit that one reason life does feel so hard sometimes, in fact, is because of employers who try to treat people as merely economic beings. If employers did a better job of managing to the whole person, quality of life for everyone would go up.

More could be said here, but the statement affirming the possibility of “a thriving professional life” affirms this reality (as does the rest of the book) that it is indeed possible to thrive in our work beyond just the economic side of things, and that it is good and right to seek this as Christians. So also creativity, passion, and excellence in our work are right, and in fact part of how we find meaning and purpose in our work, when done for the glory of God, because these things especially tap into our social, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions.

Finally, point one is the foundation of any truly Christian view of work. In the world, work is often viewed as something we do ultimately for ourselves. This often results in work that may benefit the company (in the short-term), but doesn’t really give the customer what they actually need (and want).

Of course, self-interest is not wrong in itself. But a Christian view of work is that we work for more than ourselves and even more than our families. We work for the good of everyone (cf. Jeremiah 29:7, which applies to us as Christians because we are in exile, 1 Peter 1:17) — especially the good of the customers our organization services.

This means that it is not enough to simply work in order to make the sale or get the paycheck. We have to work in such a way that people will truly be benefited. If doing our work in a certain way will earn the money, but not truly benefit the other person (perhaps by cutting corners on quality), we are not doing our work in a Christian way. Christians in the workplace should seek profit, but they should also seek more than profit. 

If more people worked this way, the entire world would be a better place. And, perhaps, if we worked this way from distinctly Christian motives and were tactful and winsome about our faith, more people would ask us for the reason for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15), and the gospel would spread more fully throughout our vocations (that’s the meaning of a close reading of Matthew 5:16 and Ephesians 5:8-17; for more on this in the Ephesians passage, see Peter T O’Brien’s commentary).

 

MLK on Creative Street Sweepers

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I love this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep the streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of Heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.” (Quoted in Tom Nelson’s Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work.)

Here’s what I love about it: He calls everyone to high expectations and recognizes that creativity and excellence can be exercised in any and every type of (lawful) work.

This stands in contrast to the thinking I encounter sometimes among some Christians of the more cynical variety. Most Christians don’t think so poorly, but sometimes I encounter people that actually have a problem with the call to exercising creativity and finding meaning in our work. They say things like “how can this or that person find meaning in their work — they sweep streets [or whatever]. You have your head in the clouds. They need to focus on just paying the bills, not finding meaning and purpose in what they do.”

This view is then justified on allegedly spiritual grounds as being “liberating” by “freeing” people in difficult jobs from the “obligation” to find meaning and purpose in their work.

But in reality this perspective is fueled by cynicism and low expectations. It is a very un-Christian way to look at work.

The call to find meaning and satisfaction in our work is not a new burdensome law; it is, rather, an invitation. The point is not “you better find meaning in your work.” Rather, it is: “guess what: you  can find satisfaction in your work, whatever it is.” It is pointing to an opportunity, not one more burden a person has to carry.

And MLK here captures it perfectly. We can all find meaning in our work, whatever it is, by doing it for Christ and doing it with creativity and excellence. This is something any person can do in any vocation — even street sweeping or collecting the garbage.

In fact, in my view, a sweet sweeper who does his work with excellence and diligence and creativity is creating just as much a work of art as anything Michelangelo did. Michelangelo’s art was on the canvas; the street sweepers is on the streets and the beneficiaries are everyone who walks by.

Art is more than just paintings and poetry. Anything you do with emotional investment and creativity is a type of art, and all work is to be done in an artful — rather than merely utilitarian — way.

How Can Work in the Church and Marketplace be Equally Important?

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It is an important truth that work in the marketplace is just as important as work in the church.

Nonetheless, sometimes saying this doesn’t necessarily feel right. For example, we can easily think something like this: “But work in the church seems more directly connected with issues of eternal salvation, so how can that not be more important?”

Part of the answer lies in recognizing that the gospel is not just about individual salvation, but also entails the renewal of all creation. So even the work we do in the secular arena is connected to God’s ultimate work of redemption. Further, all work is equally valuable because all work can be done as worship.

But I think another key part of the answer may also be this: when we say that work in the marketplace is of equal importance to work in the church, sometimes we can unconsciously interpret that to mean that work in the marketplace is more important than work in the church. We can almost hear this great truth as a diminishing of church work rather than an elevation of marketplace work.

If the equality of all vocations is taken to subtly mean that church work is less important, that should feel off-kilter. But when we recognize that the equality of all vocations truly means the equality of all vocations, we see that it is an affirmation of the significance of church work just as much as it is an affirmation of the significance of marketplace work.

This is a very liberating reality. If you work in ministry, what you are doing is incredibly important. And if you are working in the marketplace, what you are doing is also incredibly important. The equality of all vocations means that both marketplace work and ministry work matter immensely.

The equality of all vocations is a radical affirmation of the significance of work in the marketplace as well as work in the church. 

So no matter where you work, be encouraged and know that your work has immense value.

 

How Can I Help? A Children's Book on Vocation

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Gene Veith’s daughter, Mary Moerbe, has published what looks like an excellent book on vocation for kids called How Can I Help? God’s Calling for Kids.

As you know, Gene Veith is the author of the excellent, defining book on vocation in our day, God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life. His daughter’s book takes these concepts and applies them to kids.

Here’s the Amazon summary:

God sends people to help in little ways and big ways. He calls all of us to love and to serve others, to help however we can no matter how old or young we are. Christians have multiple vocations: at work, in church, as citizens in society, or as family members.

A child’s call to love and serve is the same as an adult’s.

Work = developing their talents
Church = going to Sunday School and learning about God
Citizens = learning how to act and behave in public
Family = learning to honor their parents

How Can I Help? teaches children that God
1. provides for their needs, sometimes through others he places in their life
2. works through them to help others
3. has a plan for their life no matter what vocation they choose
4. sent Jesus who was not just a helper, but their Savior

That description captures the doctrine of vocation so well that even adults can learn from it. Notice four crucial things.

First, vocation is about serving others! Jesus placed a high priority on service. What we often fail to realize is that the Scriptures actually bring these teachings together into an actual doctrine — namely, the doctrine of vocation. The heart of the doctrine of vocation is that we are all here to serve, and we serve others through our daily work and roles.

Second, right along with this, we are also served through others’ vocations and, more than that, it is ultimately God himself who is working in all of this. When we are serving others, it is God working through us to meet their needs. Likewise, when others serve us, it is ultimately God working through them to meet our needs. Hence, the doctrine of vocation points us to an understanding of life that is infused with the presence of God, and glorifies him as the ultimate servant (which is the ultimate mark of greatness — Matthew 20:25-28; Acts 20:35).

Third, notice how the summary captures the essence of work as “developing [your] talents.” Though the book may not go into this in detail, I think that captures something very important. We often think of work as something ultimately done to earn money and make a living. But that is a very reductionistic view of work. It treats people merely as economic beings, rather than people who are in the image of God and full of incredible potential that is worth developing. So developing our talents and using them for the good of others (in a way that is profitable and meets our needs) is actually a fundamental, essential aspect of our work.

Some people have gone so far as to say it is selfish to seek to develop your talents in your work. I think that is ridiculous. In fact, I think that work is thankfully a zone where God protects us from the bad theology of these zealous over-spiritualizers by actually mandating that we care very much about the exercise of our gifts in our work — not just making money.

Fourth, vocation applies to everyone, even children. It is an amazing thing that, as Gene Veith says, even “being a child is a vocation.”

This looks like a helpful book for helping anchor young children in this very important doctrine, right from the beginning of their lives.