James 24:7

The following is a speech I delivered at Milligan College on the celebration of the 5th year of their MBA program. I gave the speech in March, 2009. 

How To Never 'Work' Another Day in Your Life

In June of 1998 I embarked on a grand adventure.  I decided to leave the pulpit and the lectern behind, turn myself into a “Martian anthropologist”  and enter the corporate world.  At the time I was 48 years old.  I had several reasons for doing so.

First, I had been feeling that there was too great a divide between the pulpit and the pew.   I had the sense that I, and perhaps many ministers, did not adequately understand what life is like for those to whom we preached, those who clocked into the corporate world and gave 50-60 hours or more hours per week to that enterprise.

Second, I wanted to see how the practices and pressures of corporate life worked to shape the character of Christians who worked there.  I wanted to know how the assumptions and practices of the corporate world- i.e. corporate culture- affected those who name Jesus Christ as their Lord.

Third, I wanted to see how Christians went about being Christian in the corporate context.  Did they check their faith at the door because of corporate constraints?  Did they feel prepared to live as Christians in the corporate world or were they unable to cross the divide that seems to exist between 11 a.m Sunday and 11 a.m. Monday?  Or did Christians find ways to express faith in even those environments that frown upon that?

Fourth, I wanted to do what I could to encourage, edify and assist Christians who were serious about being Christian but who were struggling in the corporate context.  I wondered what I could bring from my pastoral and academic background to help anyone I could to be a strong Christian presence.

And fifth, I wanted to get out from behind the church pulpit and the college and seminary lectern to serve Christ in whatever way I could on daily basis in the marketplace. Although there is plenty of important ministry that can and does occur from in those two places, I wanted to be out where people were having to deal with the daily ups and downs, the constant pressures and constraints of the marketplace.

In summary, I wanted to learn everything I could, assist in any way I could and serve in any way I could but do so- not as a pastor nor even a “marketplace chaplain” or “marketplace minister”- but as an employee who happened to have a lot of experience in ministry and teaching in his background.

My adventure as an “anthropologist from Mars” was cut short by a health crisis and, I went back into the pulpit after working for a few years in a couple of Internet based financial services companies.  I can’t say that I contributed a lot but I can say that I learned aplenty. (During my excursion into the corporate world, someone asked me how my “faith and work” project was going and I replied “I’m working too hard to get around to the faith part.”  I mean to tell you that I got a great “education” in the marketplace.)

Even though I am no longer in the corporate world, I have continued to keep up and try to learn answers to my questions from those who are.  One consistent theme I hear- one that is usually expressed as an afterthought- is that many who are in the corporate world wish they weren’t.  Many, though not all, are dissatisfied and looking forward to the day they can escape it.

That dissatisfaction gets expressed in a number of ways.  Some express it in the form of shared daydreams (“If I had my druthers I’d be doing this or that but as it is….”).  Some express that in the form of vision (“I’m doing this until I can retire and do what I really want to do…”)    Some express themselves in terms of the  “daily grind.”  I hear it expressed in a lot of different ways.

Now I admit that I have listened to a skewed sample.  After all, people tend to seek out pastors when they are feeling discouraged.  I know there are some who can’t get enough of their work.  I know that the saying that no one who breaths his last ever says “I wish I had spent more time at work”, is true for many but not for everyone…some can’t get enough of the office. 

Some of what I hear is to be expected.  Part of it is wrapped in our understanding of work as well…WORK!  What is that saying?  “If this was supposed to be fun, it wouldn’t be called ‘work’?”

And part of it might be attributed to that very human tendency to think the grass is greener somewhere else or as the poet Wendell Berry suggests… we seem to always think life would be good if we could be somewhere other than where we are, being someone whom we are not.

And part of that desire to get away from the corporate world may be simply a function of being in a tedious or over pressured job, in a less than stellar company, run by inept people, working for a demanding boss and doing work for which one is not suited.

And then there are those who have compelling personal reasons to leave the corporate world behind: aging parents who need attention, young children at home or other important matters screaming for attention.

However, having spent a lot of years on this side of the pulpit and the lectern and a little time on that side of the pulpit and lectern, I would like to suggest another reason, a 2-sided explanation, for the dissatisfaction so many people feel about being in the corporate world.

On the one hand, people seem to expect more from their work than their work can deliver.  The bookstores are loaded with books that direct you on how to find meaning and purpose and true happiness in your work.  Of course, on the surface there is nothing wrong with trying to find meaningful, purposeful work or even in trying to make your work more meaningful and purposeful.  The problem is that we push that notion too far and seek from our work that which only God can provide.

That we do that is not surprising.  We tend to do that in every aspect of our lives.  We seek more from money, popularity, power and status and our various kinds of relationships than those things can deliver too.  Our marriages, our children, our levels of success and attainment are all supposed to deliver the great end of happiness, meaning, and purpose.  While those aspects of life can contribute to our sense of meaning and purpose, none of them, alone or together, can deliver what we are seeking.

The reason is plain: we can never derive from the creation that which only the Creator can provide.  Our ultimate sense of assurance or security or meaning and purpose or peace, which is part of what we are seeking, can only be provided by God.  To seek those things from the created or by use of the created is the essence of idolatry, which I define as seeking from the creation that which only the Creator can provide.

That is why Jesus cautioned us about giving ourselves to Mammon or placing our ultimate trust in anything within the realm of that which moth and rust corrupts in the realm where thieves break in and steal.  We cannot obtain the eternal from the temporal, the incorruptible from the corruptible, the things of God from the vaults of Mammon.  To seek to do so, as Jesus said, is to build our house upon a foundation that cannot weather the onslaughts of life.

So, one side of this equation, this problem of being people dissatisfied in our work, is that we simply expect more out of work, and so many other things in life, than any of it can deliver.

Then on the other hand we have these inadequate understandings of God, understandings which fit well with our idolatries just mentioned. During the past several years, I have had many opportunities to speak about these things in churches, retreat settings, and classrooms.  In those settings, when I can engage in some conversation with folks, I like to ask people to tell me about their dominant image of God.  I usually get three answers:  (1) God as Savior of the soul, (2) God as Companion in the Garden, and (3) God as the Lord of the Temple.

Those who think of God as “savior of the soul” think that God’s particular emphasis is the salvation of an interiorized soul.  That salvation occurs at a point in time and is accomplished so that at the end of one’s life one can die and go to heaven.  The two important moments for the Christian then are (1) salvation of the soul at a point in time and (2) going to heaven when one dies.

Several difficulties emerge with that view.  First, the focus of salvation is upon the individual soul, not the totality of his or her existence, but his or her soul.  Second, that model offers little guidance as to what that “saved individual” is supposed to be doing between the point of salvation and the moment of death.  And third, there is little emphasis given to the ethical dimension of faith, how the “saved individual” is supposed to relate to others.

People who emphasize the garden variety God must have been highly influenced by that hymn composed by C. Austin Miles in 1912.  The chorus of that hymn, a favorite of many, is “And He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I am His own…”  To them God is a constant and comforting companion, a kind of nurturing presence who listens to them and cheers them and reassures them that He is with them and they are His.

The other group of people, those who favor the temple variety of God, do not say this so much as they live it.  They believe that God usually only shows up on Sunday morning in this building we call a church.  These folks, which are most of us, “go to church” to “worship God.”  Once they are “in church”, the architecture teaches them that the real action is not only “in the church” it  is up front on the stage where the religious symbols are and from whence they are led and taught by something on the order of specialists in these highly sacred matters.

Whatever else might be said about these common visions of God, they are visions of God which require little to nothing of us.  They fit neatly with each other, neatly into our culturally prescribed ways of life, and neatly with our idolatry.  Because each of them is focused upon us- our salvation, our assurances, our schedule-  they do more to fit God into our lives than they do to shape our lives to fit with God.  About the best those visions can offer us is the assurance that  because our souls have been saved and we have given God his due on Sunday that God will follow us through the week reassuring us that we really are “okay”…just as we are.

Well I am here to disavow you of those views.  God is not simply interested in our “souls” and not merely waiting until the day he can punch our tickets for the glory train to heaven.  God is not simply “in church” on Sunday morning waiting for us to show up and sing to him and God is not simply following us around patting us on the head for being good moral citizens of the realm.

God is a missionary…THE missionary…and is afoot in our history, our world, our community, and yes, even your company working to realize his purpose of “bringing everything in heaven and earth under one Head, even Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 1:10-11)   God is at work seeking to “fill all with the fullness of Himself.” (Ephesians 3: 19)  God is at work to achieve the final Shalom, the richness of wholeness, healing, and holiness through his Son Jesus Christ. (Revelation 21)

God is by nature and purpose a missionary and if we are going to be with God, we must learn to “go with God,”- to be God’s co-laborers in mission, to join with the God who is “at work.”

If you, as people who spend hours in the one of the largest and most influential mission fields in the world, will embrace this vision of God you will find that much of the drudgery of “work” will vanish and you will arise out of bed in the morning ready to embrace this adventure of being co-laborers with this missionary God.   If you will attend to this way of thinking about God- a way of thinking about God that is in almost every verse of scripture- your life, in every aspect, will be absolutely revolutionized.

In a second, I will tell you how and why this will revolutionize every aspect of your life but please understand, the point is not YOU.  I am about to tell you the graces that accrue to anyone who adopts this way of life.  However, this way of life is good and right, not because of what it does for you, but because it aligns with the nature and purpose of God.

Here’s a paradox:  the less you make your life about YOU and YOURS, the more you will experience an abundant life.  Isn’t that what Jesus said: the one who seeks to save his own life, to preserve his own life, to enhance his own life will lose it, but the one who lays down his life for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, and for the sake of this good news will save it, preserve it, enhance it?

So…and this key..:  even though I’m about to lay out the graces of thinking and acting on what I’m telling you, YOU are not the point.  Rather, these graces accrue to you as forms of a larger blessing that comes from aligning yourself with the purpose and intentions of God.  Even though I can’t seem to escape the self-centered reasons for living this way- i.e. the graces that accrue to you- please know they only accrue to you as an overflow of the blessing of serving this missional God. 

So here are some of the graces that come to you when you live this way:

The first grace is that you will live a life of integrity.  You will find that the disparate pieces of your life will be integrated under one overarching mission and you will realize three smaller graces:

First, the struggle to find balance between your life and your work will disappear because you will see that you and your family (insofar as they ‘get’ this) - no matter where each of you goes in any given day doing whatever each of you does in any given day- is engaged in the same work, that of co-laboring with God in the realization of God’s purposes on earth.  Whether you are being a parent or being an executive you are always engaged in the same ultimate mission.

Second, you will see the line between what you take to be “secular” work and “sacred” work disappearing.  All work becomes sacred- indeed, all of life becomes sacred because there is no area of your life that is not aligned behind the great and ongoing mission of this God who is cutting his path of justice, salvation, reconciliation and love in the world.  Whether you are at home, working in a corporate office or coaching a little league team, your eye is always focused on the same thing:  discerning where and how God is moving and discerning how you can join God in that moving.

Third, you will see the distinction between “clergy” and “laity” disappear.  The one behind the pulpit and the one in the pew is engaged in realizing precisely the same mission- the mission of God.  Each may play his or her own role in that but each is clear that there is only one mission- and that mission is God’s.  Another way to say this is that in this way of thinking everyone becomes “clergy” or to be more biblically straight, we all start realizing what it means to be a “nation of priests”.

The second grace that comes to you is that you will discover your reason for being.  You will never again wonder why you are here.  You will come to see more fully not only why you are here but why it matters that you are here.  You will come to see that you are here to join God in the greatest mission there is, the mission of God, and that God has uniquely outfitted you with talent, skills, gifts and experience so that you may take up your part in this adventure of God’s.

You will never ask again: “Is this all there is?”   As you come to embrace the mission of God you will see the truth of that saying that the mission of God is “larger on the inside than it is on the outside.”  In the beginning you may think that God is doing this one thing but discover, once you get into it, that this thing is somehow related to that thing and that thing is related to the other.   (The main thing you will discover is that while you are out and about following God into this situation that you are being brought to life!)

You will not spend another second of your life agonizing over “God’s will for your life.”  Listen…we Christians waste more time agonizing over God’s will for our individual lives!   YOU are not the point…remember?  God is the point!   When you get that you start to ask a different question: “What is God’s will for God’s life and how can I help God toward what God is after?” 

Isn’t that what Jesus taught us to pray when he said: “THY kingdom come, THY will be done on earth as it is in heaven?”  You can begin helping God get what God wants within the next minute or two or you can sit around pleading with God to show you what his will for your life is.  (However, if you choose the latter do not neglect to ask yourself: “If I was God, which condition would I bless…the one where my people are sitting around agonizing over themselves or the one where my people are already out and about engaged in helping me get what I’m after?”)

You will stop yearning to be anywhere other than where you are being someone who you are not!  God is moving where you are and God has prepared you to join him now!  God is here and God needs you…now!

At work, you will wander out among the cubicles no longer seeing people as so many worker bees but rather subjects of God’s eternal love, the very souls among whom and through whom God is working to realize his purposes on earth.

At home, you will begin to see your family- your spouse, your children, your parents- as people just like you, called to become a nation of missionary-priests, each called to join the missioning God.  And you will begin to ask yourself: how do I go about helping each of them to become who God is calling them to be?           And you will do the same with your friends and you will begin to invite them to join you in the grand adventure. 

The third grace is that you will begin to see God show up in your day.  You will become more discerning of where and how God is moving within you and around you.  As you learn from observing the life of Jesus and the contemplation of the word of God just what it is that God is after, you will spend your day teasing out how God is doing that all around you.  And you will begin to think of yourself as one who is involved in the most significant work there is or can be…that of lending yourself to helping God get what God wants more than spending all your time simply getting more of what you want.

I can tell you from personal experience that this can and does happen all the time.  Since I have begun to grow in this way of thinking I have been astounded by what happens in my own life.  Just today I was talking with a woman about how she can use her business success to help us dig a well for a maternity hospital in Nicaragua.  While we spoke I thought about someone I know who is in prison.  I don’t know why it came up but I had no sooner thought about him than the woman to whom I was speaking said: “Can I ask you something that is a bit off topic?”  I replied that she could.  And she asked: “Do you know how I could get involved in prison ministry?”

Now, that’s a little thing, a little moment, but I tell you, when that happens and you start seeing it happening all the time, you quit doubting whether there is a God and you start looking for him to show up behind every rock and tree!  And you start to ask yourself whether why you are doing what you are doing is really why you are doing it!  And you start thinking that you do not so much “have God” as God “has you”!

That happens to me all the time, not because I’m some special person, but because I have come to believe that every day God is out in the community ahead of me and that if I enter my day being prayerful and attentive I will see him duck into this store and behind that person.     

The fourth grace is that your work and your life will be lived as an adventure rather than drudgery.  You will stop seeing yourself as the much-put-upon protagonist of your own story and begin to see yourself as supporting character in the story of God, the eternal protagonist.

That will change how you read the Bible.   You will stop looking at those folks in the Bible as just so many “ robed characters in the Bible” and begin to see them as “characters in the ongoing story of God” and not unlike yourself who is also a “character in the ongoing story of God.”  Those people will begin to feel less ancient to you and you will begin to see them as other versions of you, playing their part in the narrative that God is living on this earth.

The fifth grace is that  you will find yourself entering into risky territory but empowered to do what you are being asked to do.   Like Philip who stood there in the middle of nowhere looking down that desert road at that eunuch from Ethiopia, you will begin to hear the Spirit of God whispering in your ear, “Go stand next to that chariot. Go stand next to that chariot. ”   And you will go forward, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do, not knowing what to expect…way outside your comfort zone but living life in the grand missional adventure of God.  You will find yourself engaged in the life of the hurting, standing in the court of the Caesars speaking truth to power.  You will discover the pain of the cross but not without seeing the joy that is set before you. 

Now I know how you business folks are…I’ve been and taught a lot of workplace Bible studies and I know…Some of you, many of you, all of you are saying: ‘Well this is all well and good, but what’s the ‘take away”?   I learned a new word out there in your world: “Actionable”.  You like things that are “actionable.”

So here are the “actionable items”….

(1) Tomorrow is Sunday…As you are driving “to church” tomorrow I want you to say a prayer:   “God/ this the last time/ that I will ever drive to church./  From this day forward/ I commit myself/ to being the church.” 

(2) When you get “to church” tomorrow, I want you to walk up to your preacher and say to him:  “I am committing myself to hold you accountable to help us become a place of missional training that happens to have a worship service and stop being a worship service that has some optional missional “add-ons” for those who want them.”

(3) Then on Sunday night, I want you to sit down with your family and say “Even though each of us will go our separate ways tomorrow, I would like for us to agree that from now on we all serve the same mission- that of helping God get what God wants more than helping ourselves get what we want.”

(4) On Monday morning, before you walk into to your place of employment I want you to pray this prayer: “Lord, make me a beacon of your grace and a channel of your love to whoever crosses my path this day.”  And then I want you to brace yourself for those who cross your path.

(5) On Monday night, as you gather- and this may be the hardest part- as you gather around the supper table with your family ask everyone gathered “where did God take you today and to whom did he send you?”

I can promise you if you will do these things and do them over and over again you will never “work” another day in your life.           

           

 

           

"I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test." (Isaiah 7:12)

The words sound good.  So righteous.  So pious.  So noble.

They belong to Ahaz, the young king of Judah (8th century B.C.)  Ahaz is in the midst of a political storm.  Assyria is a threat to the north.  The kings of Israel (the northern kingdom) and Aram have approached him to join an alliance against Assyria.  If he refuses to join them, they threaten to topple his kingdom and set up a puppet king who will do their bidding.

Isaiah, the prophet, has promised Ahaz that God will shield him from the two "smoking firebrands."  He has assured him that the kingdom will stand if he, Ahaz, resists the temptation to take matters into his own hands and puts his faith in God.

Isaiah even offers the guarantee of a sign: "Ask of the Lord anything you want, Ahaz.  Ask for a sign in the highest heavens or even in the depths of Sheol.  The Lord wants you to know beyond all doubt that He is faithful to you.  All he wants is for you to be faithful to Him."

That's when Ahaz replies that he will not test God in that way, that he will not ask for a sign.

So noble.  So pious.  So righteous. 

The truth is that Ahaz does not want assurances from God.  Ahaz does not want a demonstration of God's faithfulness.  Ahaz does not want to "risk" faith when he has already decided what he will do.

Why place your faith in the unseen God when you can trust your own abilities, your own plans, your own agenda?

Ahaz has already plotted to join the king of Assyria against the kings of Israel and Aram.  (II Kings 16)  Ahaz already knows what he wants and what he will do.

We might think that Ahaz is a fool.  Why any one of us- when given the option of trusting God or trusting ourselves- would trust God...wouldn't we? 

Well...wouldn't we?

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For resources related to the season of the church year or the Revised Common Lectionary go here.

For a series of questions for personal reflection/small group discussion on the RCL texts for the week go here.

Our beautiful grand daughter, Sarah Isabella, made her entrance into the world on Friday, February 24th.  She is gorgeous even if she does look like her daddy!  (Her mom did a splendid job of ushering her into this world!)

A couple of days after her birth we learned that she has some medical challenges.  That scared us to death.  To be drawn and quartered by your own emotions is quite an experience!  To simultaneously feel supreme joy and supreme fear is a wrenching thing. To trust in God and brace for the worst is a heart-rending experience.  To stand prepared to defend your beloved ones against an unknown and invisible threat is to be shown an utterly helpless fool.

As the week progressed we gained a better understanding of her challenges and were relieved to learn that she will live a normal life with the help of medicine.

Let me tell you...grace can feel like exhaling.

I started searching  the Internet to help my daughter find the best way to give a pill to a newborn.  I was so excited to find a reference on a bulletin board from a mother who recommended a particular device that she had found to be the perfect solution to the problem.

I emailed my daughter the link that described the device.  When she read it she felt there was something familiar about the name of that device.

As it turned out, one of my daughter's dear friends had given her that very device at a shower a couple of weeks before the baby was born.  At the time she received the gift, my daughter wondered why she had been given that particular gift.  After all, there was no reason to believe there would be any need for it. 

Isn't that something?  The specific thing she needed was provided even before anyone was aware that she would ever need it!

To me that just shows that God drops these little hints...these little crumbs...these tiny clues to remind us that though things seem dark that He is ever-present, ever-involved, ever-caring. 

God knows our need even before we do!

I wonder how often things like that happen in our lives.  And, I wonder how often we take notice of them.  And, I wonder, even when we do notice them, how often we pass them off as mere coincidences or insignificant little accidents of chance.

I believe that even while we are stumbling in the dark that God drops these hints to remind us that He meant it when He said that He would never leave us nor forsake us.

Maybe we just need to open our eyes a bit more to see God's hints!