How God Sees Your Work

Usually from 5:00 a.m. until 7:00 a.m. I am a Dallas Seminary student. I'm taking two classes right now and then I'm also a husband, 30 years, with Angie. I have three kids. I think you've met Joshua and Grace and Riley. That's what I do.

So I guess my experience really grounds me in the workplace, but I think the key take-away is that I was discipled by this gentleman and others and have had a voracious appetite for the Word of God. The first book he gave me to read was John Owens' "Death of Death in the Death of Christ". I didn't know young Christians were supposed to read that.

Started reading that and started working on works of B.B. Warfield and Calvin's Institutes. So I just had an appetite for theology and for the Bible, but I was kind of out of place. There wasn't really a category for me in the church.

For the first five years, my wife and I were part of a church plant bi-vocationally in Seattle. We had a small congregation up there. They couldn't afford to pay either one of us so we were bi-vocational, teaching, preaching, and working during the week, during that secular 9 to 5 time period. I guess the feeling from my perspective as someone who is in love with the Lord Jesus Christ, who has a passion for the word of God, a hunger for evangelism and discipleship, as there was not really a category for me in the church, because you tell people that in the church, they say, "Well, you need to be in ministry. You need to go to…" I did some short-term mission work, but "You need to be in the ministry. You have that kind of passion."

There's not really a category for me in the workplace either because there is such a passion for the things I listed earlier. So you kind of feel a bit out of place; maybe broken or disconnected. Homeless would be the best way to describe it because you walk into church on Sunday morning and you're entering into a world where they don't really have a category, if you will, for someone who is working 9 to 5. There is a disconnect there up until about 28 years ago. Up until about two years ago.

The gentleman whose office is two doors down from me, and I think you know this Darrell, lost his son, 17 years old, a month ago. You and I are addressing a loss in the family for a mutual coworker. Last night I received a text from a lady that I work with in Chicago asking for some Scripture references to encourage someone that she works with there in Chicago. Dealing with marriage issues, divorce issues, all kinds of – the same things a pastor is dealing with day-to-day, literally, I am dealing with in the context of… As a leader in the workplace.

When I step into the church, what you hear about is how to be a good husband, a good father, and then how to serve within the church. So we celebrate the missionary who goes out or the – a nursery – a person who works in the nursery, we anoint them and send them out, but I've never seen anyone anoint a plumber going out into the work world and when your toilet is stopped up, you need a plumber, not a pastor.

I sat down with Dr. Bailey in his office just having a conversation with him and said, "I want my life to mean something. I want there to be some significance."

He looked at me and he said, "Steve, your life has meaning. What you are doing at work has meaning and what we need are more professionals who minister." So that's why I'm taking classes and doing these different types of things so that I can bring this theology of work into a pagan culture; we are living between the Cross and the Coming. During that interval, make a difference.

What I heard from The Table and what I hear integrated into the classes at Dallas Seminary the last 2½ years, is no. A) God is a worker. That's what Genesis 2 tells us and that God has gifted us in a certain way that we can express that image of God in the mission he's called us to, where he's called us through our work. My work intrinsically has value and that was a seismic shift in my understanding of my mission in the workplace.

There are also evangelism… I officiated a wedding six weeks ago with a man who; in Seattle, who came to Christ 27 years ago on the sixth floor of my parking garage in Seattle, Washington. I discipled him long distance for five years. I was with his son who came to Christ through that and his two daughters come to Christ through that. So there is evangelism that comes out of that, but that's not why I go to work. I go to work because I am called to image God, his mission in Genesis 1:26-28, Genesis 2:7, 2:8, 2:15, et cetera. As I do my work, I'm carrying out God's first great commission.

Steve, let me ask you this question. I know that you are working closely with your pastor to address the silence that you felt in the church. What are you doing with the pastor and how are you encouraging him about this time of day and how he addresses it from the pulpit?

So last Labor Day I preached to back to back Sundays. One was “Your work matters to God.” The second one was “Your work matters to the gospel.” Now we are hearing more and more, from the pulpit, there is more and more around discipleship. When I meet with him or other pastoral staff, I ask them – invite them to come into my office. I introduced them around; this is my pastor. Introduce them around to the people that I work with so they can see and feel my work environment because I'm not sure –

You think about the apostle Paul who was a fairly good evangelist, he was bi-vocational and his first epistle, 1 Thessalonians, you find in all five chapters he is talking about work. He worked hard among us and we’re to model him. He understood because he was in the marketplace and then he would go to the Hall of Tyrannus. He would go and he would preach, but he was constantly integrated into the world of work. I think that we – you don't hear much about that model.

So that's kind of the conversation with the pastor. I view it as a partnership, Darrell. So it's integrated and seamless from Sunday to Monday and from Monday – and from Friday to Sunday to where he can move easily into my world and I can move easily into his world and it's exciting.

I think the incarnation, the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Jesus of his 33 years, 16 or 18 years, maybe – you are the New Testament expert – was spent as a craftsman, as a carpenter. All of his apostles were called from vocation; called out of work backgrounds. They knew what it was to put in a full day of work.

I don't see that disintegration in the gospel and I think it comes back to an integrated understanding of the atonement. The atonement is more than just Jesus and me. The atonement is cosmic in scope. It is universal and I think that our limited understanding of that secular-sacred divide is dangerous.

I think what would be very healthy Darrell, is if my pastor would spend say a half a day with me, or the pastoral staff, and walk through my day with me maybe once a quarter or something like that. That way he has some context for application and understanding what that looks like in real time.

He said, let me tell you a story. I will make this 30 seconds. He's been mowing this one elderly gentleman's lawn, who is housebound for about two years. He mows it on Thursday. He shares a glass of tea with him. He won't go near the church. One Thursday afternoon after he mowed his lawn, sitting down there with a glass of tea, the subject of the gospel came up.

This young man looked at him and he said, "What I'm about to tell you is going to change our relationship, but I want to tell you about Jesus Christ." He shared Christ with that man through the two years' worth of excellent work that he had been doing. He had an opportunity that none of the pastors would have to reach that man for Christ.

In America, you have a much stronger work ethic. So Max Weber published about that. How do you suggest the international community at DTS to teach about that and preach about that? The work ethics and how our work can glorify Christ? A second aspect, also in this international aspect, how Christians in the workforce can influence their companies to go to areas that are poor, that are segregated, that are lack of – the two thirds of the world that lives under $2.00 a day?

There are other companies, and Steve can certainly speak to this, whose approach to business isn't just the exchange that happens between the business, the product, and the customer, but in fact is asking a profound question about: We serve people in this area. How do we serve best? We have people working for us in this area. How do we unleash their talents to work for us best? That's a different kind of question. It's a different layer of discussion. What it does is it gives people value in their work. In the midst of giving them value in their work, you get a better work ethic. People understand why they are there other than to merely be a piece in a cog.

That means not only do business people have to understand that, but theologians who teach in these areas have to understand that and communicate that logical affirmation to the people that they are teaching and preaching to. So that's my theological answer, Steve, but I'm handing it off now to a business person to fill in the gaps.

The commission piece of that is to bear God's image and the fact that he's given me a mind to know him, a heart to love him, a will to obey him, but he's also given me a mission to go out into his creation and cultivate that. That's the commission piece of it.

The third piece, I do that in community. I think this gets to your second question. Third – yeah, second question. I'm blessed in that I traveled globally and we do great projects. We were the project manager on the World Trade Center redevelopment. We did the redevelopment of the Empire State Building. It took billions of tons of greenhouse gases out of the environment. We do redevelopment in communities.

So that's very hands-on for us. It's very real. It's tangible. It's tactile for us. We do that in the context of community and the workplace sets me in a community; I think of Acts chapter 17; that's unique and distinct for me. Darrell is not in this community. My pastor is not in this community. I am in this community with a clear calling, a clear commission, and it's exciting.

Before I ever go to share the gospel, that person, particularly if they know I'm a Christian, is probably watching to see who I am and what I'm about. In the midst of how I do my work, I actually lay the groundwork for anything that I'm going to do or say when I actually get to the topic of the gospel. I think many people don't even think about that when they are thinking about how they do their work.

Steve.

Second, it starts with an idea and an attitude of servant leadership. It's stooping down. I think that any organization is measured by how they treat the least in the organization. I think Paul deals with that in 1 Thessalonians exhaustively where he talks about the fact that he worked night and day not to be a burden while we preach the gospel of God to you.

So here is Paul. He was in Thessalonica 51, 52. He had a trade. He was a tent maker. He's teaching them eschatology and he is working full-time. He knows this is a nascent church. He doesn't want to be a burden to them so Paul takes that burden by working, he is bi-vocational. Then he preaches the gospel. I think it's a perfect mix. He says, when you get to 2 Thessalonians 3:8, he says, "I want you to model this. I want you to model this in your work ethic and then the proclamation of the gospel is an outcome."

If you enter the workplace with an objective of proselytizing, people will see that as disingenuous. Like I said earlier, the gospel in the workplace is by invitation and it comes through love and through serving others and putting them above yourself.

So do either of you have advice or counsel on how to – one is not better than the other, but how do we go about deciding which – how we're going to make a more effective contribution to the community?

My wife, who is the stable partner of mine, would say, "Let's step back and take a look at what's happened in the workplace." So Matt has come to Christ through that ministry. John, Joe, et cetera, their families; you are discipling these men. This is happening. God has given you skill sets in the business world and these other people are coming to Christ through this ministry and you probably should continue doing what you're doing.

Three years ago, she finally got sick and tired of me and she said, "You keep talking about seminary. Just go." So that's…

Well, that's what she said. She said, "I'm not talking about this anymore. If you are going to go, go."

What I would say to Scott is, you have a unique opportunity to spend time with the men and women in your church and show them how that faith and work is integrated, in a way that would be a much more significant impact that you could've made just in the workplace; and how you weave that into your preaching and your teaching and your discipleship of them. You send them out with that calling, commission, community type of theology of work. That's where you're going to make an impact.

That illustration just rocked my world because no, it's not a hierarchical order. It's a unified, integrated reality that flows out of my identity in Christ. It's who I am by grace through faith in Christ alone. It's going to manifest itself differently in those spheres of influence that the Lord places me in. That illustration was as impactful as Dr. Kreider's this semester on an integrated understanding of the atonement which I don't have time to go into, but those types of theological concepts for Logan, take out the hierarchy.

Is Dr. Bailey still nodding or am I no longer a student?

What I love about Steve is that he talks about having a megachurch of 4,000 people. He's talking about his workplace. So that is an integrated view of life which means that he never takes off his kingdom hat. His kingdom hat is always on the matter where he is, no matter what he's doing, no matter who he is seeing. That is the way I think God wants us to see our lives.

Over here.

We were actually in the military, so I appreciate that. So multi-culture; me, I've been around the world for a lot of different reasons.

The answer to your question is, yes and yes. What I find is that love transcends culture. What I mean by that is right now – and I'm going to say this again. I'll probably say it five more times. Evangelism today in the workplace is by invitation.

So when the tragedy occurred two offices down, I was doing my quiet time. 5:30 am I got a text message that one of my coworker's sons, 17 years old, died. I walked in the next morning as the pastor. We called the leaders together. We got in my office. There are five or six of us. We wept, we hugged each other, and we prayed. I closed my door, I spent time in the Word, and I called our office together and had to walk down in the conference room with a backdrop of a secular culture; comfort these people who are dealing with a very heavy, heavy loss.

Love transcends all of that. It transcends the religious barriers, the religious boundaries, and at the end of the day, this comes – is Dr. Kreider in the room? Is Kreider –

As I travel abroad, what I find – and this was… Dr. Hannah and I had dinner with two DTS grads; one in Dublin and one in Oxford. The one in Oxford ministers exclusively to Muslims. He is amazing. His name is Dr. Smalls. But he is finding the window way open with the Muslim community in Europe. So that was very encouraging.

We do a faith and work chapel every semester. We do it because we think this part of the day is so absolutely significant and that the silence of the church in addressing people with this day builds a secular-sacred divide that is actually harmful to real discipleship.

Father, we do thank you that you have made us in your image to image you. To image you in the places where you have us. Not just on Sunday. Not just on Wednesday night, but in the middle of the day from week to week, month to month, year to year, venue to venue. Our prayer is that as we teach and as we preach and as we live, that we will show your presence where you have us. Help us to do this well by your spirit. In Jesus' name, we ask it. Amen.