Living out Faith in Business and Government

A year later, I met my future bride and helpmeet. So in a two-year period God totally changed my life.

But then some men stepped in my life who were really wise folks and started talking to me about this idea of faith and work. "And that really, Greg, the only difference between you and your pastor is how you guys get funded." And I thought that was an interesting concept, just how we get funded. And so it was that point that I felt that God had called me to be salt and light.

And they were calling us to different places, and we'd plug into new churches, new communities. God blessed us with kids that, when they walked into a room, it was, "Hey, hello, everybody. Let's get – "

In other words, you should care about the performance and how you serve, absolutely. That's important. But the second part of it is taking good care of the people that you're working with.

He goes, "I need to talk to you," he said, "because when I leave work at night – " He was a peer manager, a lot of pressure – "when I leave work at night, I have to stop at a bar a block from my house and drink a six-pack before I can face my family."

And one day I decided – we've got an employees' board here where we do information – "I'm gonna put up a thing called 'the verse of the day,' and just put up a verse of the day." And the first one was – I'm in Houston, Texas – the first one was, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." And underneath I put, "On the administration building at the University of Texas at Austin. Does anyone know what this refers to?" So one verse and one question. And people got simulated by that.

It's the same kind of idea, where you just put an idea in front of someone in an environment where they're not used to seeing it, and stimulating someone's thinking.

And they said, "Hey, but the good news is, we're not gonna make you move to Brazil and be in São Paolo; we'll let you do it out of Miami." And I'm thinking, "Great. I fly down there Sunday night, come back Friday night." And it would just destroy my family. It would have just – And I had two boys at the time that needed serious head-shaping as teenagers, on a daily basis.

I wouldn't even wanna talk to anybody, because I'd never wanna do a job like that. And again, like I told you, later it became critical for me. But I really was daily challenged in my job, enjoyed working. So I thank the Lord for giving me that.

And so with Governor Haslam, we just talked about the idea of how can we make government run more efficient and effective? How can we measure things? How can we pay employees differently to incent them to do work for the citizens? And so that took – In July of '13, then, I joined his team as the first COO in the state of Tennessee. And at the time, I was the second COO in the country. But the one that was in Florida was a different type, wasn't the real COO job.

And then eventually now, when I left a year ago, there was 15 COOs across the states.

And then we ended up saying, you know, we have to pay for performance, which you don't see much in government – kind of across-the-board raises, if you get them. So we started putting performance plans in place.

And in fact, one of the things that we have to wrestle with is the way in which in the context of elections we might have two people in our organization who could be running against one another. I've been in a meeting where, after an election, two people have apologized to one another for how they treated one another in the election 'cause of the pressures of what that represents. And that's all background to ask you this question, and that is, how do you deal with –

'Cause I think one of the challenges of government is, it is a service organization, but it's driven by a lot of partisan forces and a lot of lobbying that goes on, in terms of how things get done.

And so what advice would you give to people who are training for ministry or are in ministry who may never themselves have worked in the workplace, but are supposed to shepherd people in this role? What advice would you give so that the connection between the businessperson and the church leadership, the pastoral team, all the way down – not just the senior pastor – is a healthy one?

And he just said to me, he just seemed to anticipate and said, "Hey, tell you what. The governor needs you. You're about to go into a firestorm. How do we serve you? Don't worry about it. You come here and be served." And I like, "Wow!"

So we sit there and say we want God to be with you in every space that you occupy, but the biggest space that people occupy goes unaddressed.

And what we do at the Center is, well, we're called co-curricular. We look at the curriculum and see where its holes are, in terms of values and experiences, and we step into those spaces for the student. And the beauty is, it's not a class. They don't get graded on it. It's not a box they check to get their degree. It's part of the warp and woof of the way of thinking about life. And that's what we're trying to supply to the student.

And what we've tried to do is to listen really hard to the businesspeople around us here in the city about what they need from spiritual leaders and from their pastors as they engage in the life that they're engaged in, as a way of trying to encourage them and to get acclimated to what is a very different life.

And I see the individuals that are doing it, and my guess is usually that 60 percent of them are believers, the hearts that they have to have. The others that aren't, I know that God's working in them somehow, so –

And I sometimes think that's how pastors should be avail– or at least the staff – be available to the variety of businesspeople, as well as encouraging businesspeople to encourage one another, because they know, those businesspeople know what others are going through in the business space.

I was just such a – individual – growing up, that "big is better." And like, "I gotta be doing something that 500 people are coming to Christ," versus maybe just one life that I'm touching, God's called me to do – And so when I finally got my hand around, you know, the widow's mite –