Armed @ Work – Breastplate of Righteousness

Don’t you just hate “righteous” people? Don’t you sometimes want to take a pot-shot at them, or uncover some dastardly deed from the past?

And yet, in the armor Paul says we need to wear on a daily basis, the second “with the breastplate of righteousness in place” (Eph 6:14b). The question is what do we mean by righteousness? Is it the same as “self-righteousness”? Actually no, in many ways it’s the exact opposite. I’m struck by the words “in place” in the Ephesians verse – not that this is what Paul means, but there is a place for righteousness of the right kind.

In the Bible, righteousness and justice are almost interchangeable. And both of them essentially speak of doing the right thing for the right reasons or, even more fundamentally, acting as God would. For a Christian, right can only be absolutely defined in terms of God’s character – what is right is what is good and pleasing to Him – His will (see Romans 12:2 – “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” It is no coincidence that the precondition to knowing this will of God – the right way to act – is to be transformed by the Holy Spirit, rather than conforming (moulding) ourselves to this world’s patterns.

The self-righteous person is in fact conforming to this world’s ways – I am right, I have rights, I am entitled to seek self-justification. The truly righteous person is seeking to be transformed back into the image of God, following Christ’s example. This means seeking justice (even at personal cost), making the right ethical and compassionate decisions, and in all ways modeling the humility, love and grace of Jesus.

How does this act as a breastplate in the workplace? This piece of armor is, of course, designed to protect the heart and other vital internal organs. For the Romans and Greeks, as well as for us, the seat of the will and emotions was in this area and Paul surely had this metaphorical meaning in mind. Our heart needs to be protected against temptations to play safe, or to take the easy path, or even the path that will maximize benefit for ourselves. The only antidote is the protection of seeking God’s righteousness in every aspect of our lives.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Romans 12:2 (and am preaching on it on Sunday) – it is truly something of a life verse for me. The change in me – the metamorphosis (which is what the Greek word for transformation is here) – must be radical. The change from self-righteousness to God-righteousness is one I can’t afford to continue without. After all, what soldier in his right mind goes to war with no breastplate (aka bullet-proof vest)?

Armed @ Work – Belt of Truth

“Does this dress make me look fat?” Every man knows how dangerous this question is from our spouse or girlfriend, but what about from a colleague? Should we always tell the truth at work?

In the armor recommended by Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, the very first item is the belt of truth: “Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist” (Eph 6:14a). How does truth protect us from attack in the workplace (whether spiritual or any other kind)? There are times it seems as though the truth is the enemy.

“Did you finish that report I told you must be done today?”
“Well no – actually I was watching the basketball on espn3.com”

This hardly seems calculated to win us any battles. Obviously there is a different solution to this one. The truth will not be our friend if we are not living lives of integrity.

But actually I don’t think this kind of truth is really what Paul is talking about. I’m not saying we shouldn’t tell the truth in this sense – lying is certainly not going to protect us in the long run, regardless of the situation. But truth in the Bible is for the most part not about factual accuracy, but goes much deeper. It is about the ways things really are – and more specifically the way God has laid things out. It is about His sovereignty, His grace and mercy, His love, His justice, His compassion. To put it another way, truth is what we find in the Word of God (Jesus himself said, during his great “high priestly prayer”: “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.” (John 17:17)

A belt surrounds us, protects our vulnerable (and for some of us rather outsized) middles, and provides a sense of security (not least that our pants won’t fall down!) Truth is the same way – it is always safe, can always be depended upon to guide us to the right decisions, the right attitudes, to integrity. “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” (Psalm 119:105).

So what does it mean to wear the belt of truth at work? It means being familiar with God’s Word, and with His idea of what is good and right. It means being so familiar that God’s precepts are a vital part of who we are, that we have absorbed them so fully that they shape our every action, thought, motive and attitude. We need to be quite simply so immersed in the truth, the Bible, that we find ourselves meditating on it at unexpected moments, repeating verses to ourselves in times of need and of joy, turning to it for comfort, wisdom, and hope. God’s words to Joshua sum it up: “Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” (Joshua 1:8)

Next time you go to work, don’t forget your belt – it could be embarrassing!

Armed @ Work – The Whole Armor of God

I just learned (and didn’t want to know) that my boss, the company owner, keeps a licensed firearm in his office drawer. It is true that some of our borrowers get pretty desperate if we have to foreclose, but still … On the other hand, I know how desperately I need to be spiritually armed while I’m here.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul says: “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes … [and] so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” (Ephesians 6:10-12) To stand firm under attack, to remain faithful when tempted, to proclaim the hope of the Gospel when all is falling apart around me – this I want to do. So the next few posts will look at the individual pieces of spiritual armor.

But, you might say, this passage is talking about spiritual warfare, not business. I would respond that you have fallen into the common trap of wanting to separate worldly matters from the spiritual realm, which is something the Bible never does. If, as I believe, there is such a thing as spiritual warfare, then it surely takes place where we spend most of our time, which for many of us means at work.

If there is spiritual warfare going on in the workplace, then it is most likely focused on the Lordship of Christ – His spiritual enemies will work toward getting us to follow our own (or their) desires and inclinations rather than being submitted to and ruled by the Spirit within us. I don’t know how to distinguish between actual spiritual attack and the impact of my sinful nature. But in either case the result is temptation to anger, selfish ambition, pride, greed, injustice, and so on.

What Paul offers in this great passage is some protection. Just as it would be foolhardy to walk into a battle zone without appropriate protection and weaponry, so it is foolhardy to enter the spiritual battle zone at work without preparation. This is very practical stuff and hopefully I can learn something as I study and share on each item: belt of truth … breastplate of righteousness … readiness that comes from the gospel of peace ... shield of faith … helmet of salvation … sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:14-17).

Does my boss need a gun in the office? I hope not, though we’ve had some pretty out of control borrowers, and in truth it isn’t impossible. This is a just in case precaution, against the remote possibility of a homicidal client. Do I need spiritual armor? For certain, yes, because the enemies of God, personified in the Bible as the Satan, will most certainly do what they can to prevent God’s will being carried out where I work. I need (and you need) the full armor of God at work.

Justice @ Work – Apathy or Action?

You see something at work that just seems wrong. What do you do about it? Do you look the other way, to keep yourself out of trouble? Can you do anything about it anyway?

One of the great things about being a “big fish in a small pond” is the opportunity to get involved, to fix things that are broken, to right injustice, and to influence a whole corporate culture. When I was a much smaller fish in a much bigger pond (Bank of America) though, it seemed like there was nothing I could do to address things that weren’t right. So it was tempting to be in denial, even going so far as defending my employer when I had sincere doubts about what they were doing.

The Biblical call in Micah 5:8 “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” is well known. But it is much more comfortable for us to think of this as something remote – writing letters to our US Senator about atrocities in Darfur, for example. If we have to apply it to our daily lives things get much more dangerous. The reality is that any time we confront injustice we are taking risks.
So we need discernment along the lines of the great serenity prayer:

     God grant me the serenity
     to accept the things I cannot change;
     courage to change the things I can;
     and wisdom to know the difference.

We need to know when to simply accept that we cannot impact injustice, and when to take the risks inherent in acting against it. I think of our reactions to injustice, whether at work or elsewhere, at four levels.

Apathy. When we turn away, or deny, or tacitly or actively defend injustice, we are being apathetic – literally not feeling for the victims of injustice. Can this ever be right? I don’t think so. Acceptance that I cannot change things does not require that I have no feeling toward those who are impacted.

Awareness. I may not be able to change anything but I need to be aware of the impact of injustice on those around me. I may not be able to change the personnel policy of a large company to provide adequate time off, or to pay appropriate wages to thousands of people. But I will be contact with those who are impacted, and I can show compassion. Later on, as I rise up the company, or if I join a smaller company, I can remember these lessons and have a real impact. This is exactly what has happened for me in, for example, improving the vacation policy for my smaller company.

Activism. Even though I can’t directly change unjust practices, I can help with raising awareness, and I can petition those with the power to make changes. Most companies have opportunities, through mailboxes, public meetings, or corporate email, to raise concerns without fear of recriminations. In some cases, we may have to rely on “whistle-blower” laws to protect us – this is extremely uncomfortable but there are times we know it to be right.

Action. When we are in a position to directly change unjust practices and policies we simply need to do it, regardless of the impact on the company’s bottom line. Now that I am in a top executive position in a small company, this comes up constantly. Doing the “right thing” rather than the most profitable thing is a constant challenge and conversation among our senior leaders. But it can be very difficult (such as whether to lay off some staff in order to protect the jobs of the rest, and who to lay off).

The bottom line is that we serve, and are made in the image of, a God of justice. He demands it of us and equips us to administer it in all sorts of ways. Apathy is never going to be an acceptable answer (that is what Micah’s prophecy complains about), but we need to be constantly aware of injustice around us, getting involved through activism when it will make a difference, and taking action when we are in a position to do so. What if all Christians did this?

Love @ Work Always Perseveres

“Love always perseveres” according to 1 Corinthians 13:7. How do I square that with having just today laid off half our staff? Wouldn’t love have found a way? We’ve tried, but it’s not quite that simple.

We’ve been struggling (as I’ve recounted in other posts) for more than three years to survive through the economic downturn that hit our commercial mortgage lending business so hard. Despite our best efforts, and some heroic financial and legal sacrifice by the company’s owner, our cash issues have become greater and greater.

Despite having already reduced in staff substantially (releasing contractors, not replacing people who leave, and some prior lay-offs) we are still unable to make our payroll beyond this month. Therefore we have had to tell six of our eleven staff that they are being laid off or (in a couple of cases) must work radically reduced hours. Each is a person I have sought to show love to, and each is a person for whom I have genuine appreciation, value and honor. Each is seriously impacted by these changes and we feel as though we have let them down.

Have we given up on them by laying them off? How far does this “love always perseveres” go in the workplace? A dictionary definition of perseverance is “steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., esp. in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.” Thomas Aquinas qualified this though, defining perseverance as “the long persistence in any kind of difficult good.” From a Biblical perspective the “good” is an important element.

Would it be good, for example, if we were blind to our inability to make payroll in December without this action, and ended up with nothing for anybody at the end of the month and the need to close our doors completely in January? I don’t think so. “Good” in the Biblical context includes a consideration of the good of the community, and it also considers far more than material well-being.

I do know that it would not be loving perseverance for me to hand out severance notices and say goodbye, without another thought for our employees’ welfare. Some things are straightforward – each impacted employee needs to know they have my support in their job search, as a reference, reviewing resumes, talking over opportunities, and in any personal way in which I can help. There are practical limits obviously. But above all, though perhaps not so easy, perseverance doesn’t stop loving just because circumstances change. It is implied in the string of “always” statements in 1 Corinthians 13:7 – love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. In our prayers, our encouragement, our availability, our belief in our staff, even if things don’t go well for the business, we show a persevering love.

We cannot give up seeking the good of our work community (including clients, investors, etc). We cannot give up seeking the good of our employees who have to be laid off – offering hope and support and prayer for them in any way within our power. Pray for me that I may show a group of struggling but wonderful people a persevering love.

Power @ Work

As I picked up the spoon for the ninth time from the restaurant floor, carelessly tossed there by my tyrannical eleven-month-old granddaughter, I was struck by how innate the desire for power and control seems to be. How quickly children learn the enjoyment of being in control! And can there be any greater control than that exerted by a little girl over her grandpa? (Could you resist?)

Sadly, that innocent desire never seems to completely die away, and morphs into far more dangerous forms. Despite various efforts to overcome these urges, I confess to feeling a certain delight when team members rush off to do my bidding, or employees come to me for permission, or approval, or even disapproval. As I think about bosses I’ve worked for, just about all of them sought some form of power and control. (It also seems as though men tend to wield raw power, while women specialize in exercising control. Perhaps this is a figment of my chauvinistic imagination, but it seems that way. It could be cultural, or could be truly a matter of gender differences.)

We talk of pride being the most basic of sins – remembering that Satan said to Eve that “you will be like God” (Gen 3:5). But perhaps it is also about power – after all, isn’t Satan encouraging humankind to cast off the shackles of God’s control over us so that we can be truly in control? For many people, perhaps in the end for all of us, power in its various forms is as attractive as fame or fortune.

The problem is that we were made not to exert power or control over one another, even in the workplace, but to love. Even the spiritually esoteric psychotherapist (and contemporary of Sigmund Freud) Carl Jung saw that the two are mutually exclusive. “Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other.”

But surely God manages it? Well yes, but His version of power is quite different from ours. It isn’t manipulative, self-seeking, or destructive. Because of His grace, His power made and sustains His good Creation, it is redemptive, it is sacrificial, and it is unselfish to an extreme. It is, after all, by His astonishing power that Jesus became human, and was ultimately raised from the dead, conquering sin and its inevitable consequence, death.

Of ourselves, we will not exercise power in God’s way. And yet, God has indeed given us power, and has even called us to exert control over Creation. When he said to Adam and Eve “fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Gen 1:29), He gave us power as His partners in Creation – our call to daily work – but He expects us to use it in His image (Gen 1:27). Made in His image, our use of power was to be driven also by love, grace and mercy. Love was to be paramount. How far short we have fallen!

The good news is that there is a way back to God’s intention. If we have the Spirit of Christ Himself in us, as is true of all who have been called by His Name and surrendered to Him, then we can again walk in the image of God. The power we are given can be truly exercised in love. Our motivations, actions, thoughts, and words as managers, leaders, team members or indeed customers or suppliers can be driven by God’s original mandate to care for Creation, and for one another, by using the power He has given us, in the way that He would have us use it – in love for Him and for one another.

Success @ Work

I just got back from the SF Giants World Series victory parade. What a great experience! Vast crowds lining Market Street got to watch this unlikely group of players who conquered the world (well America anyway) in the baseball classic. Success excites everyone. But what is it?

Well, you might say, it is winning of course! The Giants proved that. Closing the deal, beating the analyst forecasts, getting the top sales rating, achieving the promotion. Our culture craves success, and our culture defines what its idea of success is. In a competitive culture, success is defined by beating the opposition. I win only if you lose. Obviously it isn’t quite that crass in the business world – you and I can both be successful provided we meet or exceed our goals. But if our goals are mutually exclusive, then one of us will succeed and one will not.

What is Biblical success though, and how does it translate into the workplace? The first reference I find is in Genesis 24 when Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac. Success is prayed for or talked about five times in that chapter. It represents completion of a God-ordained task. When Rebekah is found as a bride for Isaac, Abraham’s servant has been successful. There is no particular wealth in view here, no public acclaim, no victory parades. And yet … through this successful trip, God has carried out the next stage of His covenant promises to Abraham, in establishing a nation for Himself through Abraham’s progeny.

For us in business, the definition of success does include the meeting of business goals. But if the business goals are not consistent with God’s plans for us and for our business, or if they are not in line with the intentions God has for us in the workplace, we will not be successful, no matter what our colleagues tell us.

Which defines success for you? Is it the temporary adulation of your colleagues (because you know they’ll forget by tomorrow)? Is it the fatter paycheck at the end of the month or year? Or is it even having everyone tell you that you’ve made a difference in your community? Or is it not really about what other people think at all? Which would you prefer – a victory parade for an afternoon, or hearing our God say “well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:23)?

As I write, the victory celebrations are still going on at San Francisco’s Civic Center. But this time next year, unless they can do it again, most of us won’t be Giants fans any more and the faithful will be complaining as they always do. Meantime, God’s faithfulness and acceptance will continue forever.

Bible @ Work

What does a motley collection of history, poetry, prophecy and advice columns from thousands of years ago have to do with the modern business world, with all its technology and sophistication. When it’s the Bible, the answer is everything!

By the way the advice columnist in question was probably mostly Solomon – the Proverbs read that way, and probably have as much to say about business as any book in the Bible. But then by some counts the Bible talks about money even more than it does love. While I’ve been writing this blog, it has become more and more apparent just how vibrantly, relevantly and critically the Bible speaks to my workplace. It talks about business relationships, negotiations, contracts, ethics, employee justice, budgeting and planning, and much more on a practical level.

But even more, it provides a foundation for work itself. Our purpose is tied up with God’s initial calling to humanity to be workers in imitation of Him, the greatest Worker. Our individual calling is into all of life, including our daily occupation, to be His priesthood – those who become the place where heaven and earth come today, those filled with the Holy Spirit. Our perspective is to be God’s, informed and led by the Spirit of Christ who lives within us. This radically impacts our view of work.

Regular readers of this blog will have seen previous postings that addressed these topics (especially the Theology @ Work series). I’ve also found it very helpful (though very challenging) to work through some Biblical lists – the fruit of the Spirit, the attributes of love – applying them to real situations in the workplace. In case you’re interested in looking back at any of this, the cumulative blog document is organized by topic and posted in Google Docs at https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0z67UIBKzjZOWQ0NTY0NmUtMGJiYS00NmU3LWE0MWEtNzRiZTdmNmZjODgy&hl=en. The blog web site also has a link to the archive. Here’s the list of major topics:

• Discovering God @ Work – my voyage of discovery of God’s presence in the workplace
• Fruit of the Spirit @ Work – an attempt to explore how each part of the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 plays out in the workplace
• Theology @ Work – an ongoing series laying out the beginnings of a Biblical foundation for faith in the workplace
• Justice @ Work – an ongoing series exploring various topics of justice and ethics
• Prayer @ Work - occasional topics related to prayer in and for our work
• God’s Perspective @ Work – trying to see the workplace through God’s eyes
• Love @ Work – attribute-by-attribute exploration of love as described in 1 Corinthians 13
• Church @ Work – reflections on the church’s role in the Christian’s work life
• Miscellaneous topics - individual posts prompted by a passage of Scripture or an event at work

Some of these topics are still being added to, and others will come (for example the “whole armor of God” from Ephesians 6). Bottom line – I’ve read lots of management and leadership books, but none that remotely came close in value and depth to the Bible.

Love @ Work Always Hopes

"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more." (a line from the nihilist 1960s play “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett). Our world desperately needs hope, and love in the workplace must offer it.

I struggle with this in the midst of an extended real estate downturn, as we see blow after blow to the our prospect of recovering our investors’ money (not to mention fees that would pay our payroll). The obvious answer is that I say to our employees and investors that money isn’t everything, and that it will all work out OK in the end – just trust in the Lord. But I’m sorry, that just doesn’t work for me. I don’t mean it isn’t true, just that this isn’t an environment for glib statements. Still, if we are to offer love to the people we work with, we have to be able to offer hope – that surely is one of the greatest gifts love has to offer?

The Bible acknowledges the sense of futility that can come from a dependence on human effort, particularly in Ecclesiastes (a book most students of the Bible have grappled with at one time or another). “When I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun” (Eccl 2:11) says the Preacher (possibly the ultimate over-achiever Solomon!). But in the end, even the Preacher concludes “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.” (Eccl 12:13-14).

How is this a message of hope for our colleagues and business partners? Quite simply that it is a matter of perspective. What we see, in our financial desperation, is the end of the world. But clearly that’s not what God sees. When others around us see their self-worth challenged by failure, love reaches out to them and declares the value God places on them. When others see the loss of material possessions as the end of all that matters, love shows that God (in part through us) has a present and future hope that transcends things and offers relationships – even relationship with God Himself through Jesus. When others fear death (their own or their loved ones), love boldly proclaims the hope of the resurrection – the confidence that God is not limited by mortality and death, but brings renewal – new life, new bodies, a new heaven and earth (1 Corinthians 15, Revelation 21).

However, coming back to the glib response – it is not sufficient for me to tell someone not to worry about loss of job, when I have a retirement fund in reserve, meaning I’ll still have food on the table if I’m out of work, while I know or suspect that they do not! We need to be sensitive to the reality of the present for others, without losing sight of and being driven by God’s greater reality. This isn’t easy, but keeping God’s hope to ourselves is distinctly unloving!

Love @ Work Always Trusts

“But he promised …” or “she said she had a buyer lined up” are not good excuses in my business for failing to address a borrower’s delinquency. Compassion and reasonable forbearance may be acceptable within reason, but simply taking a borrower’s word for it – particularly when most of our borrowers are real estate speculators – isn’t considered to be very smart business practice.

"Love … always trusts” says 1 Corinthians 13:7. Always? Isn’t that a recipe for being walked all over, being constantly hurt or disappointed, and opening ourselves up to being ripped off by all and sundry? On a business level, it just isn’t how things are done is it? Gone are the days when deals were struck with a handshake and the “word of a gentleman”. So what on earth is Paul talking about?

Perhaps a good place to start is asking whether Jesus took this approach? Did He always trust what was said to Him, or entrust Himself to others? How about John 2:23-25 (emphasis mine)? “Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man's testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.”

So most likely this isn’t about blind, naïve trust – we need to know what is in a (wo)man. Perhaps Jesus’ statement to the disciples “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16) is helpful. Trusting in this context involves looking for the best, expecting others to be honest and ethical, but still taking the necessary precautions in case they are not.

In business, the precautions involve legal documentation of the consequences of non-performance in a contract. For example, if a borrower doesn’t make the loan payments promised, they stand to lose the property against which they have borrowed. I’ll take a shot at the current residential foreclosures debate in an upcoming Justice @ Work post, but the key here is that it is prudent to in some way insure against dishonesty or failure to keep promises to minimize the damage.

On a personal level, there are precautions we should take too. “Love always trusts” suggests that we should expect the best, but prepare for the worst. Some people have been hurt and disappointed so much that they have become gun-shy, and feel that they’d rather never take the risk of trusting another person. I have been fortunate on the other hand, and have suffered relatively few personal disappointments and as a result tend to assume another person is trustworthy regardless of evidence to the contrary. Either extreme has its dangers. Trust without precautions may be an unnecessary risk, but failure to trust runs all sorts of other risks (failure to build relationships, loss of business opportunities, etc). If we are “shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” we will have our eyes open, and take all reasonable precautions, but at the same time we will believe in the other person and take the risk of allowing them to show their trustworthiness.

With this balance, it is indeed not just possible, but mandatory, for love to always trust.

Vacation @ Work – Return

Why is it that vacations seem to lose their effect so quickly? Just an hour back at work and it’s as though I was never gone! In fact, it’s a real struggle not to spend the last couple of days thinking about what might be waiting for me on my return to work.

Am I the only one who feels like nothing got done while I was away, and that the clear instructions I thought I’d left somehow didn’t get followed? Or that no old crises were resolved but several new ones have arisen? Or that the activities that had plenty of time to complete have now become emergencies because no progress was made.

No wonder returning to work is so hard sometimes. In my case, I found a complex deal not advanced, a legal issue not noticed, negotiations with a tax authority on a go-slow, and hold ups for a cash influx that would cover our end of October payroll. None of this is really so out of the ordinary. The question is how do we handle it?

In theory, I returned from vacation refreshed, reinvigorated and ready to go. In practice, I must confess that this deluge of disappointment got me down within an hour of my arrival back. When I say it got me down, what it really did was to drag my eyes down – looking at the immediate challenges and issues and no longer looking to the sovereign, gracious God who called me here in the first place. How easily we can fall sometimes!

Where was my gratitude to my colleagues for keeping things going (even if not in the way I would have done them) so that I could take time off? Where was my acknowledgement that if things didn’t get finished, they wouldn’t necessarily have done if I’d been here (certainly true of some of them)? Why was I not prepared to admit that it was my poor preparation and delegation that had led to some of my disappointments? You’d think I’d learn.

OK enough self-flagellation! There are several lessons here to be learned I think.

1. Vacations provide an opportunity not just to relax and rest, but also to refocus ad recharge. This is done by taking time with God, extending devotional times, walking or sitting with Him, talking through difficult spiritual matters, and sharing love with others.
2. Preparation for vacations is important – providing clear statements of expectations from others (and making sure they’re reasonable)
3. Preparation for return to work is more than just forcing stress and worry under the rug till we get back. We must expect surprises and approach them with the healthier perspective our vacation should have provided.
4. While we are on vacation, others are trying to take up the slack – their stress and workload have gone up. Recognizing this with gratitude is far better than complaining about shortcomings.

Hmm – perhaps I should take another vacation in short order so that I can try these things out.

Vacation @ Work – Camping

Just two work days to vacation – I can’t wait. I need this break so badly. But why? Aren’t vacations a modern invention? Not according to the Bible.

The stress level lately has been so high that even 11 hours on a plane to London is amazingly attractive. But part of me feels like if I was “giving everything to God”, if I was fully experiencing His peace, then I wouldn’t need a break so badly. However, since I’m no paragon of virtue, vacation is very much a necessity.

As it turns out, this is quite biblical. I was recently researching the Jewish feast of Succot, known as the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. (This was for a sermon on Nehemiah 8 and John 7, both of which occur around this festival). It lasts 8 days, starts and ends with a party, and in the middle everybody goes camping. Seriously! Take a look at the instructions in Leviticus 23: “Celebrate this as a festival to the LORD for seven days each year. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come; celebrate it in the seventh month. Live in booths for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in booths so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.” (v 41-43). This vacation is a time to refocus on God’s gracious provision for us, a time to get our perspective back – our Sovereign God is in control and will provide for our needs as we fit into His plan. The Jews were to live out the memory of their wandering in the wilderness when they were absolutely dependent on God, but He came through with everything they needed.

We need a break from our daily work for several reasons. For some of us, the work environment is very stressful due to business conditions, or difficult boss or co-worker, or a sense of being out of our depth. For some it is very tedious and mind-numbing. For some it is physically exhausting and for other mentally exhausting. In all these cases we need a break, a rest – a time for our bodies and minds to heal and to be rejuvenated. In our vacations we should be seeking re-creation – renewal of minds, bodies and spirits.

But just as much we need to be restored spiritually. No matter how hard we try it seems as though work concerns swamp our relationship with God, and vacation allows us to step back from it and put God firmly back in the center of our lives. There is time to reflect, to rebuild relationships with Him and with friends and family. There is time to simply enjoy Him and His creation.

Some people don’t take their vacations, and think they’re heroes. I am not supportive of this attitude in my staff – I strongly encourage them to take decent vacations and not to carry over a whole lot, because I haven’t met anyway who couldn’t benefit from a good vacation. How the vacation is spent will of course impact its value – but I can’t influence that.

As for me, I’m off to England in autumn – camping of course – not!

Love @ Work Always Protects

There’s nothing better than a juicy piece of gossip at the water cooler is there? Except, of course, when it’s about you. Then harmless gossip suddenly looks like hateful slander.

The NIV translation of the first part of 1 Corinthians 13:7 says that love “always protects”. The King James and many derivative translations have “bears all things”. Apparently the original Greek word stegei actually means “covers” – it is derived from a root word meaning “roof”. There are a few ways in which love covers all things. God has shown us what this looks like with His own example toward us.

1. Love holds secret those things that would have a negative impact on others, unless it is essential for some reason to share them with someone else. Love does not gossip. Period! God’s example: He covers all of our faults, failings and sins because of His grace. In other words He forgives us so thoroughly that He acts as though we had not sinned (even though the consequences of our sins will generally still get played out).
2. Even deeper, there is an allusion to the Hebrew concept of covering as a form of redemption. Love will carry the burden (hence “bears all things”) and will protect others from the implications of their actions (“always protects”). This appears in the idea of the kinsman-redeemer (Leviticus 25:25) which is better known in the story of Ruth (4:1), who provides a cover for Ruth by purchasing her from poverty and loneliness to be his wife (and a direct ancestor of the Messiah Jesus!). God’s example: He provides a Redeemer – one who will take the most serious consequence of our sin, which is eternal separation from God, and buy us out of it.
3. The word is also used with the sense or bearing with, or forbearing (e.g. 1 Thessalonians 3:1,5). God’s example: it is obvious that God is constantly bearing with us – our rebellions, our tantrums, our stubborn pride. We’d need to be pretty self-delusional to deny this!

When we see wrong in another at work, whether directed at us or not, we have a responsibility as bearers of God’s image, and as those redeemed by Jesus, to behave in the same counter-intuitive ways:

1. We will not gossip about other employees, whether we’re sure of the facts or not. We will in fact restrict our communications to those that are strictly essential to the good of the employee and the company. This isn’t always an easy judgment, but it is much narrower than most people’s practice would imply.
2. We will forgive and in that sense cover over wrongs done to us, on the grounds that we have been forgiven far, far more by the gracious God who made us. (See e.g. the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:23-35).
3. We will bear with the ongoing faults of others, just as we need God (and actually other people) to bear with ours. Oh boy this is hard isn’t it? How hard must it be for God to love us though – surely in response it makes sense for us to seek through the Holy Spirit in us to move in the direction of doing the same?

Justice @ Work – Rationalizing

What is the biggest challenge to justice in the workplace? Is it greed? Or selfishness? Or hunger for power? Much less obvious, but insidious and almost universal is rationalization. I suffer from it – so probably do you.

Raymond Chandler says “However toplofty and idealistic a man may be, he can always rationalize his right to earn money.” How true! Rationalizing is a technique we use to convince ourselves that some action or outcome that we might otherwise find morally questionable is in fact OK. For example a person evades paying taxes and then rationalizes it by talking about how the government wastes money (and how it is better for people to keep what they can). Or I excuse the difference between what I earn and what our receptionist earns by any one of a number of things:

• We’re in a capitalist society in which prices (including labor) are driven by supply and demand
• The company would be impacting far more by my leaving than hers
• She’s become accustomed to living on much less than me
• And so on

I’m not sure why I started writing this, because it is really uncomfortable. There is no Biblical mandate that requires financial equity – that is that requires everyone to own or possess the same amounts. What we are given is entrusted to us by God to be used for Him anyway.

My point here is that we can find an excuse for any action whatever if we want to. So how do we catch ourselves from going down what my boss calls “the slippery slope”. I am fortunate in having a boss who is very ethical (almost to a fault in that he pushes an ethical point so far in favor of one group that it damages another group – it is often a zero-sum game). Given the extreme financial challenges we’re facing – he as owner and I as his operations executive – we have plenty of scope for going down a path that is expedient but not ethical, that skirts the law, or that benefits one party at the expense of another.

There are rarely straightforward answers. He is open to my perspective on Biblical justice (though doesn’t necessarily agree) – but that’s not always clear-cut either. What we do have is a willingness to challenge each other, pointing out the beginning of the “slippery slope” and pulling one another back. I’m very blessed. So my recommendation is that, whatever your work situation, you try to find someone with whom you can talk through business decisions, large or small, to challenge you and hold you accountable to stop rationalizing.

The other approach is always to seek to see situations through God’s eyes. This sounds impossible, but to a degree I’m convinced it is not. “Pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) means keeping our communication channels with God open in everything at all times. Combined with daily, in-depth, Bible reading and study we can truly see God’s perspective to the extent our limitations allow. And God does not rationalize!

Love @ Work Rejoices with the Truth

“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32).
“There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.” (Agnes Repplier).
Discuss.

The Truth is a tricky beast. Yes I know I’m supposed to love it, but there are times when (a) I’d rather not know, or (b) I’d rather nobody else knew. Whether it’s truth about me or you, both apply.

Of course Jesus was talking about a different kind of Truth wasn’t he? Wasn’t he? Well at least it was Truth about God, about life, and about reality. His Truth goes so much deeper than factual stuff. But it is hard to deny that the factual stuff is a part of Truth.

OK so let’s explore this idea that “love … rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). First it is in opposition to last week’s phrase “love does not delight in evil”. In a sense it is like one of those proverbs that uses poetic parallelism to give a positive and a negative way of saying the same thing, like “A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son grief to his mother” (Proverbs 10:1). It emphasizes the point, just as our present clause does.

We should expect, therefore, that this is the flip side of the coin from not delighting in evil, and so I believe it proves to be. Not only do we not have little internal parties when our rival falls flat on his or her face, but we DO have such a party when our rival has pulls off something that improves their position. OK it was hard enough damping down our enthusiasm for the other person’s failure, but surely we don’t need to get all pumped up because they did something well do we? Or do we? Well of course we know the answer.

I don’t know about you, but I often draw the line when their success impacts me negatively. It would be like a soccer team all jumping for joy when the other team scores on them! I mean, come on – have you ever seen that?

The other aspect of this is in our truth-telling. I’m not sure about “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” (I have some sympathy for the “naked truth” quote at the beginning) but truth without embroidery, exaggeration, or avoidance. There are times the truth, particularly about someone else, is unnecessary. If it is necessary there are ways to tell it – compassionate, confidential and constructive would be good words to apply. Without these, the truth easily becomes the “evil” of the previous phrase.

Underlying all these, though, is Jesus quote – “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”. His Truth shows us the reality of who we and others are, how much we are valued and loved, how rich are God’s plans for us (both together and individually), and just Who is really in charge. Now that is truly Truth we can rejoice in, Truth that transforms every action, word and even thought in the workplace.

Justice @ Work – Restoration

I had dinner at an amazing restaurant in Charlotte, NC on Saturday. The King’s Kitchen employs solely the “unemployable” and devotes all its profits to feeding the poor in Charlotte. The employees are typically people trying to reenter the workforce after prison, or addiction recoveries or other major problems, or else at-risk youth. It was opened by a local master chef (Jim Noble) earlier this year and is an amazing picture of the merging of gifts, talents and resources for God’s Kingdom. Appropriately it is a “Soul Food” restaurant – providing far more for the soul than the eponymous Southern cuisine. See http://www.kingskitchen.org/ for more information and, if you’re ever in Charlotte, visit – you’ll find that the service in particular is quite outstanding!

Chef Noble was determined to combine his great culinary and restaurant management skills with his passion for justice. Unfortunately I just missed the opportunity to meet him – a broadcaster friend had interviewed him and been blown away by his faith-driven passion for the marginalized in society.

It raises for me a really significant question of justice in the workplace – that of restoring those who have in some way failed in their duties to society. Our faith is all about restoration isn’t it? Without God’s mercy and grace we wouldn’t have a chance. Paul’s letter to the Romans is particularly clear on this point, but really it is one of the key messages of the whole of Scripture. Who are we, then, to deny restoration to those who have failed in the workplace?

It isn’t always that simple though. How do we balance business risks against grace? If someone has failed in the past, aren’t we risking our company’s money by giving them another chance? I recently supported the hiring of an attorney who had been suspended by the state bar association, had gone through all his required rehabilitation steps, and was trying to reenter the legal profession. Unfortunately, he isn’t performing well at all. There was a risk that doesn’t seem to be paying off – does that make my decision wrong?

In a more general sense, we face this challenge all the time. In a way it is related to the question of forgiveness, which I’ve written about elsewhere (http://faithatworkplace.blogspot.com/2010/08/love-work-keeps-no-record-of-wrongs.html). We face the same tension of our business responsibilities and our desire to show love to the individual. As managers we have a responsibility to our employers, our employees and ourselves to do everything we can to coach through challenges, to address performance issues and to overcome weaknesses before we give up on someone. As colleagues, peer coaching is equally important (and often terribly underestimated in value).

Bottom line – nobody, thank God, is beyond redemption. But redemption may involve a change of job or responsibilities. For those staff at The King’s Kitchen, who are doing such an amazing job, restoration means a completely new career, a new way of living. For us as managers and colleagues, the same may need to be proposed and made to happen. Even if we are forced to part ways with an employee because there is no alternative in our company for them, the approach must be one of helping them to see and seek true restoration in a different environment. In our loving actions and prayers, may we be able to help!

Love @ Work Does Not Delight in Evil

Do you get a secret thrill when your business gets one over on a competitor? Or, closer to home, when a rival for a promotion makes a big mistake? Come on, be honest!

Our natural self-centered first reaction is to rejoice when something goes wrong for someone we view in some way as a competitor or, as 1 Corinthians 13:6 puts it, “delight in evil”. In this context, we’re talking about something going wrong for someone else. Of course things do go wrong for other people. Of course we are entitled to do what we can (ethically and morally) to accomplish business and personal goals. But our attitude toward our opponent is to be one of love, not hate. When Jesus says (John 6:35) “love your enemies, do good to them”, I don’t think this just means people who are actively attacking us. Even more it means the people who are in our way, or who don’t like us (or we don’t like).

We can get quite conflicted can’t we? When someone else wins the promotion, we wish something had happened to slow them down. Conversely when something does happen to someone else, we rationalize our celebration by thinking that they obviously didn’t deserve it, we are clearly better than them, or they’re better off as they are. Where is our compassion? Where is our love?

This can be a factor for managers too – one of the toughest parts of management is dealing with difficult or poorly performing employees. How often have we wished something would happen that would cause such people to resign, or have to leave, or else would give us clear grounds for dismissal? I inherited an employee many years ago, an experienced programmer who had all sorts of bad reports against him from various people. My job was to go through a process to terminate him. So I started with him, of course, and let him talk about what was going on. Then I started to listen to what other people had to say, and it began to dawn on me that there was more to this than met the eye. Fortunately, before I went through the disciplinary process I realized that this was a very talented man with some communication challenges, who had received no support whatever from a manager who was in fact “delighting in evil” – grabbing onto the bad reports he’d received as ammunition to get rid of what he saw as a difficult employee. This programmer became my star performer, my number one ranked team member. He also went from being morose and dissatisfied with work and life in general to a cheerful and actively contributing member of the team. I’ve experienced this scenario several times during my career and can attest to the joy of reversing the situation and discovering and unleashing the potential in discarded employees. It doesn’t always work out that way of course, but we are bound to try.

As so often, this comes back to how we view our colleagues as unique, valuable, gifted individuals, loved to the extreme by God. When we see people that way, even if we can’t resist some jealousy if they succeed ahead of us, we will not rejoice in evil. We will instead be concerned and compassionate, and will seek justice on their behalf if necessary. In fact, if they deserve a promotion ahead of us (and we often know it) we will speak out on their behalf. When was the last time you did that?

Church @ Work – Teaching

I suspect that Jesus’ disciples, especially the Twelve, started to look like him, walk like him and talk like him. Not always. But enough that they could be picked out in a crowd.

That’s the impact of a special kind of teaching called discipling. In the old Jewish Rabbi-disciple model (like similar models in several cultures) the goal of a disciple was to become just like his/her master/mistress. (Sadly these were mostly male but the model clearly supports female teachers and adherents). Rabbi means teacher. Disciple means learner, but in a very intense way.

How do we learn to be natural, consistent and transformational as Christians at work? When we’re surrounded all day by people who don’t necessarily believe as we do, where priorities are far from being Kingdom priorities, and where values are distinctly worldly, it is hard to be a disciple. Yes, we have the Bible, and prayer, and perhaps a small group with other people where work sometimes comes up as a subject. But to look, walk, talk and act like Jesus we need far more than that.

Isn’t this where the church comes in? There we are in fact surrounded by people who, at least in principle, also share Jesus’ values and priorities, or at least want to. In the early church, Christians learned about these things at least as much from one another as from their private devotions. This wasn’t always easy - just look at the conflicts between the early leaders (e.g. Paul and Peter, Paul and Barnabus), and the descriptions of church conflicts in 1 Corinthians and other letters. The church is designed to be a crucible, where faith is tested and refined. It is designed to be a place where the members of the Body of Christ come together in dependence on one another and on the Head of the Body, to worship, to grow, and to serve.

Teaching takes many forms in this context. It occurs in the classroom, where we can have in-depth discussions of the things in daily life that we are really called to struggle with. Those of us who teach in this formal way have a wonderful opportunity to present a basis for workplace faith, to work through real issues, and to help one another grapple with specific problems. Teaching also occurs in one-on-one contexts, as we become used to sharing one another’s burdens, most of which occur in daily life and many of them in the workplace. In some context or another, we are all teachers.

Teaching also starts very young – typically with preschoolers and kindergartners. Hopefully we’re not quite ready to send them out to work. But this is where the foundations are laid – the idea of God’s unique purpose in creating each one of us, the beginnings of awareness of His Kingdom and His role for us in it. That continues through elementary, middle and high school with increasing awareness of calling, challenges and the like.

In all our teaching, let’s be inclusive of the whole of life, and especially the way we are spending the bulk of our days – at work, or school, or other calling. Let’s share with one another what it means to be called by God to this, to be privileged to be part of His Kingdom purpose. Let’s share one another’s burdens as we talk through real daily issues. Let’s help one another as disciples of the Master to increasingly look and act like him at work.

Love @ Work Keeps No Record of Wrongs

Jesus told Peter that he should forgive not just seven times, but seventy times seven. But surely an employee can’t keep making the same mistake? How does this square with workplace realities?

There’s a delicate distinction here that we could easily hide behind in the workplace. I had an employee once who consistently failed to carry out an important part of his responsibilities adequately. We would discuss it, he would seem to show understanding of the failure, then turn around and fail at it again. This got very frustrating – needless to say that I as his manager bore the responsibility and the consequences of this failure, particularly since it was something I couldn’t just pick up and do myself or give to someone else. Ultimately disciplinary action was unavoidable, and he had to find a job to which he was better suited – this was just a not fit for him.

The distinction that is really hard to make is between the managerial accountability for effective employee performance, and the personal responsibility for the individual employee. Because this employee’s repeated failures impacted me professionally, each time it occurred I got more and more frustrated, and it impacted my view of the person. I kept a record of his wrongs, not just as a manager but also as a fellow-human. The first was OK, and the second was not. Disentangling them is really hard though.

The different roles in which we inter-relate with people make some of these statements about love quite difficult to work through. In a non-work relationship we often have a hard time treating each new “wrong” as though it were the first – forgiving for the 7th or the 490th time. Hurts don’t go away just like that and with the best will in the world they build on one another to the extent that we simply don’t know how to treat the 7th occurrence the same way as the first. Perhaps that’s not the point though. God has observed and been offended or hurt by each one of our sins, our disobedient acts, our ignoring of Him, denying of Him and all the other ways we turn our backs on Him. And yet, His forgiveness of our latest slight is every bit as full and unconditional as the first. It is this behavior we are to model, and this behavior that is represented in keeping no record of wrongs.

At work we cannot ignore this call to model true agape love, 1 Corinthians 13 love, even while we meet our occupational responsibilities. I guess it is a variant on seeing the sin not the sinner … in this case seeing the person behind the worker, and valuing God’s image behind the imperfect employee. It’s a struggle sometimes, particularly when we’re under deadline or performance pressure, but it’s a struggle that can be addressed by prayer. Note to self …

Technology @ Work – Dependency

My computer had a huge temper tantrum yesterday, throwing all its toys around, then locking its door and refusing to come out. In the absence of an effective locksmith all I could do was obliterate the room and start again. A day and a half of reformatting, reloading, hunting for keycodes, forgetting passwords and the like and I should be back in action. Mostly. (There’s all the web favorites, lost documents, etc to maneuver through yet).

In the meantime, even though my trusty IT department (Harold) is doing all the work for me, and has set up another PC for me, my productivity has gone down to next to nothing. All the tools I depend on, several of the files I need – I am all but lost! And this even with web access to email – if I lost that, withdrawal would be complete. Because, yes, I am utterly dependent on technology to do my job. Bereft without it, I am frozen into inaction.

Do you remember the days before this addiction? (No of course not, you’re too young. Well take my word for it, there were such days!) Those were the days in which we were OK with sending out a letter (typewritten or even hand-written) and waiting three or four days for a response. Those were the days in which research was something done at the local library, over hours or days with the help of a friendly librarian, not committed to Google (usually quite uncritically). Those were the days when we were dependent upon the mental resources God had given us, and the help of colleagues who sat in the same office, and admittedly sometimes by telephone. There were no “virtual communities” – we were it.

What have we gained and what have we lost? Is technology moving and changing so fast that we don’t have time to stop and seek God’s intervention and wisdom? Are we so swamped with information that we’ve lost the ability to step back and see things in perspective, a proverbial inability to see the wood for the trees? Or is this simply a matter of viewing the past through rose-tinted spectacles?

I think I’ve concluded that the Biblical virtues of patience, love, faith, grace and wisdom (among others) are technology-independent – unlike us. These virtues are learned the hard way regardless of the speed of email and the volume of Google searches. But they were just as hard before computers. And no more or less necessary. Perhaps we have deluded ourselves into over-valuing technology, but if it wasn’t this there would be another excuse – the reality is that sin does not like God’s way and only by being “transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom 12:2) can we be truly dependent on the only valid object of dependency – God Himself.

Love @ Work Is Not Easily Angered

When I discovered that she hadn’t completed a vital task a couple of months previously, and as a result had seriously jeopardized a multi-million dollar transaction, anger was inevitable. Or was it?

In this case, there was a history. It wasn’t that clearly defined tasks didn’t get done (albeit late). But if thought was needed, or initiative, it seemed “Suzi” (name changed of course) always took the “easy” path – “you didn’t tell me to do that”. How frustrating it was – a senior, experienced person with more knowledge than me, not prepared to think through the implications of what we were doing.

But this time it was really serious. We had taken an action that needed to be carefully documented and recorded, followed to the letter of our agreement with the other party. Now it might all go up in smoke! So my voice started to rise as, incredulously, I repeated back that we really had not completed our part of the deal, even though I thought I had expressly requested it. Yes I was angry and I was getting ready to express it in full force to Suzi. But something held me back: why was I angry?

This anger expressed several things that had been building up over time:

• Disappointment that employees didn’t have the confidence and initiative to explore beyond the letter of instructions – that they wouldn’t take initiative, or realize their potential
• Fear that our deal would unravel
• Fear that I would look bad – that I would have failed – if the deal did unravel
• Frustration that my incomplete knowledge of how such a transaction should work had led to my giving incomplete and somewhat vague instructions
• Guilt that I had not followed up to make sure that everything was completed successfully

In other words, most of my anger had more to do with me than with Suzi. Other than the kind of “righteous anger” that responds on God’s behalf to injustice, I suspect most of our anger has more to do with us than the other person. Our hopes are dashed, or bad memories stirred up; we’re caught in a lie or an error, or blocked from achieving our goals. There are so many reasons. I’ve struggled with anger at different times in my life, and it always has welled up from within me, like acid reflux escaping the lower esophageal sphincter, rather than being externally caused. The acid, it turns out, was already there!

So “love …”, which focuses on the other rather than on us, “is not easily angered” (1 Corinthians 13:5) because the other is not generally the primary source of anger. Except in the cases of true injustice, where our concern is truly for God’s glory or other people’s welfare, anger is not an appropriate response to love. More to the point, when we love, and are focused on the other, we simply aren’t going to get angry. I continue to pray for this grace, to love more and more as Jesus does.

By the way, on this occasion by God’s grace I didn’t explode. A little later there was a “coaching opportunity” as we talked about having the courage and initiative to think through the implications of the whole transaction rather than the specific assigned tasks. But far too many times in the past I have had to go back and apologize, by which time it is too late and the hurt has been inflicted. Love must not be easily angered because anger causes untold damage.

Love @ Work Is Not Self-Seeking

Children can be unsubtle about demanding their own way. Their worlds revolve around themselves. Adults are supposed to be more mature, and see the needs of others. But sometimes I think we’re just more subtle about our self-seeking!

1 Corinthians 13:5 says that “love … is not self-seeking” (NIV) or “does not insist on its own way” (RSV) or as Phillips translates it, “does not pursue selfish advantage”. Jesus said to his disciples: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23) This self-denial seems to be at the heart of this attribute of love. It is this self-denial that causes many to turn away from a complete, radical following of Jesus.

Love shows itself most in relationships. It shows itself in subtle ways sometimes, because while it is love that drives our motivations, sometimes our actions initially suggest love when our real purpose is something else. Our role model is, as always, Jesus. And, as always, His example is radical and extreme. Paul puts it best in Philippians 2:5-8 (likely quoting an early Christian hymn).

    Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
    Who, being in very nature God,
        did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 
    but made himself nothing, 
        taking the very nature of a servant, 
        being made in human likeness. 
    And being found in appearance as a man, 
        he humbled himself 
        and became obedient to death— 
            even death on a cross!

This is as far from self-seeking as anybody has ever been. Setting aside all the privileges of deity, all His riches, all His power, all His rights, Jesus went to the opposite extreme. Note how the passage starts – Paul says this is how we are to be! Love, flowing out from the presence of the Spirit of Jesus in us, should have this same attitude. Whatever our role at work – whether executive or assistant, professional or laborer, artist or mechanic – we are called to seek the welfare and good of others and if necessary deny those things for ourselves.

Why would we do this? Because as followers of Jesus, we have given up our rights to ourselves and offered everything to Jesus. And this is what He wants from us! He wants us to become like Him, in every part of our lives including (especially) at work, and this is what he is like! Getting there will take a lifetime, but how about starting intentionally to pray for the grace to move forward on the road to authentic Christian love? How about asking the Spirit to draw our attention to times we are being self-seeking, and then asking for Him to free us from our sinful selves so that we can stop. By His power and grace alone, all things are possible!

Church @ Work – Preaching

How can preachers speak to the challenges of our daily work when they don’t have “real” jobs?

This is the second in a series of posts on how the church could be (but for the most part isn’t) helping each of us to grow in our understanding and Christian living in the workplace. The question posed here isn’t an entirely fair one of course, for several reasons – pastors clearly have very “real” jobs, many pastors have significant workplace experience, and many preachers are not pastors (present company included). But many of us feel a disconnect between the pulpit and the shop floor, between the Word as preached on Sunday morning, and the life as lived on Monday morning. Is this inevitable as my first question suggests?

There are several ways to address this question. I was trained and licensed 30 years ago or so in the Church of England as a Reader, a lay minister able to lead services and preach and be otherwise involved in pastoral ministry, but intentionally as someone whose Mondays looked like everybody else’s. The CofE recognized this need, and so implicitly acknowledged the gap. (It was also a way of dealing with significant shortages in parish priests, but that’s another story). Many of my closest friends have been pastors, and this has issue been a frequent topic of conversation. I’ve heard frustration from congregation members too, and appreciation for those preachers who are able to talk about their significant work experience from the pulpit.

But we can’t lay all the blame on the system of professional clergy that our churches have largely adopted, or on the seminaries, or on the pastors who either haven’t spent long in the workplace or have forgotten what it was like. We have a responsibility too – listening to God’s Word isn’t just about being spoon-fed, but also about grappling with the Word, asking God through His Spirit to show us how it applies to our situation. For example, even though I have been in the daily workplace for decades, my experience is radically different from that of an artist, or a construction worker, or a trucker. My challenges are just as far removed from them as are those of a pastor in his or her work. Preachers must learn the art of application of the Word and pass on that art, teach its principles, to congregants.

However, those of us who preach can raise levels of expectation. We can continually draw attention to God’s 24x7 plan and debunk any ideas about Christianity being a Sunday religion. We can draw on our practical experiences to demonstrate the applicability of Scripture to all of life, generalizing in ways that help us all to see how the Scripture sheds light on our unique situations. When Paul says to Timothy that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (1 Tim 3:16-17) he is not just talking about “holy work” or “church work” but all of work which, as Genesis 1 says about God’s own work is “very good” (Gen 1:31). If our preaching does not hit home on Monday, then it isn’t really very useful. This doesn’t mean we switch away from theological depth, or from intensive Biblical exegesis and exposition though. I would argue strongly that if our theology and our preaching do not interpret, shape, encourage and challenge in daily life situations, we’re wasting our time, no matter how academically interesting our studies!

So here’s a challenge to myself (and other preachers who read this): I need to add a success criterion to my preaching that every person in the church is in some way taught, rebuked, corrected or trained in relation to their daily work.

Love @ Work Is Not Rude

“Love … has good manners” (1 Corinthians 13:5 Phillips). Sounds reasonable enough doesn’t it? Except that somehow at work, I seem to find all sorts of reasons to be bad-mannered to others.

There are all sorts of behaviors tied in with this. The Greek word translated “rude” in the NIV (aschemoneo for those who care) has the sense of “to act improperly, dishonorably, indecently.” What does this look like at work? When I get frustrated with a customer service representative at a vendor and raise my voice, or make the issue personal, I am being rude. When I am short with an employee who is trying to explain why something went wrong, I am being rude. When I use language that is not normally acceptable in “polite company” in our culture, I am being rude. And so the examples could continue through this whole post.

Why is this rudeness a problem? After all, it is generally just a matter of words. Other people must understand how stressful and frustrating my job is – they should make allowances. Right? Well that would be nice, but it isn’t a reasonable expectation. Why not? Because of what I am doing to each of these people in the way I react to them. I am failing to show the respect, honor and courtesy due to a person created in the image of our gracious God. In fact, I am in a sense dehumanizing them, and down-valuing them. This is quite the opposite of love.

Love will look at every other person as an individual with unique value, as someone whom God considers of exceptional importance. I have developed some bad habits in my lack of love. Perhaps a particularly insidious one is my rudeness with people on the phone. I think it is perhaps subconsciously easier for me to be rude when I can’t see that there is a real person on the receiving end. Not that my rudeness is restricted just to the phone – any time things don’t go my way, I’m likely to take it out on whoever I happen to be dealing with. Usually it is someone who has no control over the situation, which further compounds the rudeness.

My solution is similar to that proposed in previous posts on this topic – through prayer, I need to learn the habit of seeing others, as it were, through God’s eyes. That’s why prayer is critical – that two-way communication is the primary time that God opens my eyes to His perspective. Without it, my vision of others is seriously flawed. This is a challenge for me. Perhaps it is for you too. If so, I invite you to join me in putting on this seemingly rather trivial but actually very important aspect of love!

Church @ Work – Not!

Do you go to church to discover how your faith affects your daily work? Do you get support, guidance, and encouragement in your work-life issues from church? Most people would say a resounding “no!”

Why on earth would this be? Surely, if we spend something like 40% of our waking hours at work (far more than we spend on any other activity), you would think our churches would place the highest importance on the workplace, particularly in teaching, discipleship, etc. Yet, with a few shining exceptions, we will rarely hear a work-related sermon, we don’t see teaching on our calling and role as Christians in the workplace, we have nowhere to go to raise work-related issues or celebrate God’s presence at work. Our worship services hardly ever even acknowledge the fact that we go to work. Even our small groups tend to be focused on more esoteric (or more social) activities, although here we can find far more diversity and there are groups in which people find some support for their daily work.

At different times, the church has tried to address this. I’m no church history expert, but I’m told that Luther, for example, was adamant about the absolute integrity of all of life under God, with daily work to be specifically integrated with the rest of Christian life including worship. Calvin felt similarly. The Second Vatican Council addressed this issue at length, and various Catholic organizations have tried to follow up. However, in most churches of all denominations, what we do Monday to Friday barely warrants a mention.

Some authors blame the clergy-laity distinction that arose in the early church, was fought to a degree by the Reformers, and rose again in the past couple of hundred years with the rise of the professional clergy. This caused several issues. It set “spiritual” calling above normal callings, so downgrading most of our occupations to something less important – hence questions about whether we’ve ever felt a call to “full-time Christian ministry” as though those of us in “normal” occupations weren’t already full-time ministers. It also, meant that those leading the church, those called to equip its members, often had limited experience themselves of the daily workplace, and were also barely prepared by their seminary education to overcome this limitation.

Other authors blame our ongoing cultural influence from Greco-Roman philosophies which impose a divide between sacred and profane, between spiritual and secular. The Bible has a much more holistic approach than this, but many interpreters of the Bible have nevertheless bought into the idea that daily work is a necessary evil, and that the world of the mind and spirit are much more important.

Whatever the reason, it seems to me it is time to start actively and intentionally raising this issue in our churches. I’m trying to think through what a holistic church-work relationship might look like for the average believer. This little series of posts will try to work some of it out. Comments welcomed!

Love @ Work is not Proud

“He takes no pride in his work”. Is he, then, a loving person according to 1 Corinthians 13:5? And is the converse true – that if I take pride in doing a good job, I am being unloving?

Pride is a complex thing. It has been said that pride lies at the root of all sin, because in one way or another sin says that we know better than God, which is the ultimate pride. On the other hand, as we saw last week in http://faithatworkplace.blogspot.com/2010/07/love-work-does-not-boast.html, there are certain kinds of boasting that are clearly acceptable. In the same way, there are aspects of pride that have their place in the workplace.

We are clearly called to do our best at work (“whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord” Colossians 3:23). The big question is our motivation. Are we taking pride in our work product because of our gratitude to God for His gifts to us, and our desire to lay them at His feet for His service? I don’t think this has ever been my whole motivation, though perhaps there’s a bit more of it now than there used to be, by God’s grace. I do it because (a) I want to be recognized, (b) it makes me feel valuable, (c) I can show that I’m better than my rival, or at my best (d) because it helps someone else (so they’ll be grateful to me!). Sometimes all four come into play.

The problem with pride, above all, is that it sets me above the other person or, at its worst, above God Himself. I guess another way of putting this is that pride has a tendency to make comparisons. Pride says things like “I can do this better than you”, or “my job is more important than yours”, or “I deserve to be paid more than you”. In other words pride says I’m better than you, which hurts you and denies the reality of God’s creation of each one of us in His image.

Love takes quite a different approach. Love says “you are every bit as important as me, because God made us both, loves us both passionately, and even gave His Son for us both”. In the workplace, love says “what I do is important, but what you do is every bit as important”. Love takes pride in what we do together, because our employers are well served. Love points out that what I accomplish, and what you accomplish, are both possible because of the gifts and experiences God has given us.

So I take pride in my work and in my company. I take pride in the accomplishments of my team. But this pride is a pride in God, and in the people He has created (including me – there is no need for false humility). In particular the fact that God has chosen to build His Kingdom through you and me is indeed something to be proud of, knowing that it isn’t because of anything particularly special about me, but because of the extraordinary grace of God.