Younger Perspectives on Faith and Work

In the very last paragraph of his blockbuster book, Good To Great, Jim Collins makes the perceptive observation that people crave meaning. But he goes on to say that it’s very difficult to have a meaningful life apart from meaningful work, and today young adults are demonstrating that reality by droves, because they want work that matters. They want work that gives them a sense of purpose and meaning, and they want that at the beginning of their career, not at the end of their career. And so today, we have two young adults who are students at Dallas Seminary with us: Kevin Gottlieb from the Washington D.C. area, and Tristin Tenney who is from West Virginia.

The name of the fellowship, by the way, William M. Garrison was an attorney in Fort With, a very good friend of my father, Howard Hendricks, and also on the Board of Dallas Seminary for many years, and he was an outstanding example and model of how you integrate your faith into your day to day work.

And so in his honor, we named this fellowship for him, and it is underwritten by the Kern Family Foundation with a very generous grant to make it possible for students to take this fellowship.

And what it entails is that for a half a day each week, the student, the fellow will visit a business somewhere here in the – or another work place here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, under the sponsorship of a Christian leader who works at that place, and the idea is for them to understand the kind of work being done there, the kind of theological issues that that work raises, and to think meaningfully about how would I go about pastoring these people who work here, if I was their pastor?

Kevin, since you are the first fellow, and sort of helped us inaugurate the program, tell us just a little bit about your experience with it, what attracted you to it, and we’ll get into some of the things you actually did.

I’d learned a lot about the Bible and how to teach and preach, but one of the areas that I felt was lacking was the area of integration into the workplace.

For many years in my seminary career, I was working full-time and doing seminary part-time, and what I discovered is I kept running into a lot of ethical issues and just complicated situations that weren’t so black and white.

And I think a lot of times the church presented workplace issues as here’s right and here’s wrong, and there’s kind of nothing in-between, and so when I was – when I saw the fellowship, I realized wow, this would be a great way to kind of explore what does it mean to be in the Christian workplace and what does it mean to actually work for the glory of God?

I think that’s an area that’s not often discussed. So that’s kind of what drew me to the fellowship.

They yearn to have their work matter, and to be able to show them how it does is really powerful to them.

Because we spend so many waking hours at our places of employment, and I want that to be a meaningful time period for God and for his kingdom, and so I was really interested in seeing how that maybe I could better be able to do that, but not only do that as my job, but also as a pastor.

He was just that kinda guy and so when my grandpa passed away, he had my grandpa’s funeral, and we met the guy for the first time and I felt like we were meeting a celebrity because my grandpa talked so highly about him, and the only way he knew him was from his job, from his workplace.

Whereas today in these global cities that so many knowledge workers live and work in, you know, pastors have their campus where they hang out, and then the workers are all dispersed across the city, and it would almost feel odd if a pastor said hey Kevin, can I come visit your cubicle today?

I mean they were so honored that – uh not even the pastor but just a student, like a Dallas Seminary student would show up at their workplace and take an interest in what they did.

They may say hey, how is work going? Oh, it’s going good or oh, it’s not going good. Oh, okay, and then the pastor moves on, but to actually have someone in that type of authority or that type of spiritual realm come in and say hey, you know, tell me what you do, tell me why you do – why do you make the decisions you do?

What do you love about your job, what do you struggle with at your job? That was a huge honor for them and a lot of them, you know said man, I wish my pastor would come see what I do. I wish my pastor would take an interest in what I did, and not just in a passing way but in an intentional way.

They don’t know what questions to ask, and so there’s kinda this awkward tension there, rather than the pastor going in with the humble attitude of learning, saying, hey, tell me. Tell me more about what you do, you know, allow me to learn here.

You know, we’re here to learn about what you do and I think that type of attitude really opens the door for people to ask questions, because they know you’re not coming in saying here, I have all the answers, and then come in and start like lecturing you, but it’s hey, I’ve been coming in, and tell me what you do and why do you do it.

That opens the doors for great conversations because then they get to say well, why are you here, and then it actually – it allows you, it gives you a platform to share about the concept of faith and work being integrated.

What are the things that I could do as a pastor? So a lot of it was me looking forward and saying hey, I’m gonna be in the pastoral ministry one day.

What are things I should know, so that I can help people like you and they love that question. I think that question was really powerful because a lot of them were floored, they said no one has ever asked me that question.

As an entrepreneur, you invest. You know, you put your savings down sometimes, you do a mortgage on your house. A lot of times, you invest everything, and so if it fails, so do you and it’s —

They put a lot out there and it’s a risk, and so like they come to church with that burden, knowing that I have to make this work because if I don’t, you know, it’s not that I just lose a job. I lose everything I’ve invested in it, and so I think knowing that, that they’re carrying that burden and I think adds – it adds a way of pastorally caring for them.

You can use illustrations that connect with people’s workplaces and that – that validates their experiences in a sense because then they’re – you’re not just using examples from the home life or from their personal and devotional life, but you’re using an example that’s very relevant and tangible to them.

I mean one of the things you’re taught in preaching class is to make things tangible.

I talk to pastors that say they use a workplace illustration in their sermon every week, or maybe even including some of the people in your congregation.

I was talking to a guy who said that he empowered the people in his church to give him illustrations that they had encountered —

I mean I have a – I know a guy who is an Atheist and you know he has Christian co-workers, and because they’re lazy and they don’t work hard, he doesn’t respect them, so they can share the Gospel with him but it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t respect them because of their work and uh —

Let’s apply it sort of pastorally to the guy that Tristan mentioned who is up there, you know, on the roof with his co-workers, in the hot sun, you know, sweating like a dog and just hating life, and wondering why do I have to do this job?

And I should have listened to my mom more and studied harder in school, and you know this work has to be a curse. Like where would you even start with a guy like that, because there’s a lot of them out there.

He was a carpenter. He worked with his hands. He was out there in the sun probably – this was a guy who understood probably —

Maybe it’s to shelter families who are oppressed or are in some kind of – you know, diverse or difficult financial situation that —

You know, one of the things that we often talk about, we meaning Dr. Bock and I talk about is the web of economic relationships that there are in the world and so you know, he likes to take a bowl of Wheaties, you know –

And somebody had to finance all that, and somebody had to educate the people that did all that work, and somebody has to care for their health needs, and somebody has to care for their spiritual needs.

We say this is a more important job than this, you know, this is a job of higher honor, but Paul says don’t do that in the body of Christ because don’t say that oh, this person does this, therefore, they’re more valuable.

Every part is needed. Even the ones that seem menial are actually really important because without them, the body can’t function properly, and so even in the economy we shouldn’t – I think there’s a tendency to talk down about blue collar jobs, or you know —

There were some people in West Dallas, which as you know is an impoverished community, and they needed jobs, but they needed jobs where they didn’t – you know some of them didn’t have high school educations.

Some of them frankly don’t speak English but they need to work, and so what this hotel did was arrange to transport these folks to the hotel from West Dallas, and trained them in how to service the rooms.

And you know from one point of view you think oh great, they give you a job of cleaning the toilet, you know.

You’re providing a clean and hospitable place for travelers and people that come to the city to visit, to work, to carry on transactions and so forth, you’re providing them with a place that’s inviting and that’s healthy, and you have a huge part in that.

And the people are – they get a tremendous sense of meaning in their work and of course, it helps that they also get paid to do that work.

They’re going to internships and churches to you know learn how to work with youth, or learn how to do discipleship programs or you know, whatever.

And the first person that posted a video said Tristan, if you’re gonna be a pastor, I think that you should get experience in the workplace [laughter.]

And it came up because of my fellowship and I have a – one of the guys in the group wants to go to Japan and be a missionary, and Japan has a very intense workplace culture, and because of the fellowship, because we talked about it, you know he’s now excited to see an integration of faith and work in a Japanese context.

So just because of that discussion, you know he wants to go find a way to speak into that work culture. So I think that’s been one of the cool outcomes of this.

We’re not saying they should stop all that and somehow spend all their day in people’s workplaces, but we’re saying keep doing that but do it from the standpoint that the people you’re trying to pastor are workers, and you need to understand their context.

It doesn’t have to be you devote this huge span of time, but even just the small things about checking in on them and seeing how they’re doing is really powerful.

But I know in my experience through the fellowship, being able to go to different workplaces, I was able to build relationships with people, friendships that in turn I felt like they were – they were mentoring me as well.

It means something to them. It’s important to them, and they would say they really love their job. They certainly feel it’s an important part of their life.

They’ve been keeping that statistic since about 2000 and basically what it shows is that about 70 percent of American workers are not engaged with their work. It’s just a job, you know.

And if they view it as that way that I think maybe would be more engaged, and when you’re engaged, you’re looking for opportunities; opportunities to be the hands and feet of Christ, opportunities just to be a faithful presence maybe in the workplace.

But people don’t often think oh, I’m still at my work, I should go to my pastor for advice, but I think if pastors could put themselves in that situation where their congregation knows they’re available.

So if you know like oh, I’m dealing with a bad boss, they can go to their pastor and say hey, you know, here’s a situation I’m dealing with. How should I – how can I handle this, and the pastor can then speak into it.

I think that’ll help workplace engagement because I think a lot of Christians in the pews are – they go to work and they feel like they’re alone there, that no one – you know all they know how to do is maybe complain to their fellow co-workers.

But if they had a pastoral voice they could talk to and get reflection on, I think that would help them.

It’s very difficult to put heart into work that your heart’s not in. You know, now you have to gin up energy.

Your problem is maybe the type of job you’re in, or your attitude towards work, or maybe management or something so that you can then as well.

You know like these folks that I mentioned working at the hotel, cleaning those rooms. You know that’s not easy work but that’s a lot better life than you know sitting on a porch in West Dallas with nothing to do.

And I don’t wanna overlook the fact that many times what people in the workplace need is a prayer, or is a word of encouragement from scripture, or a perspective sort of theologically on God’s mind on a given matter.

It’s interesting that we apply the spiritual disciplines to certain spiritual categories. So you know if somebody’s gonna go on a mission trip, we call them down front, we pray over them and you know —

But I don’t know, when’s the last time you ever heard somebody go to their pastor and say listen, I need to call a prayer meeting because I’m getting ready to make a key higher and we can’t get this wrong, and I just need the Lord’s mind on this thing; would you help me organize that?

When you are praying – when you are publicly praying over someone’s work, it suddenly adds value to it, and I think the problem is in the church what we’ve done is because we only pray for missionaries and people doing quote-unquote ministry, therefore those are the most spiritual categories that you know, unless you’re a pastor or missionary, bible teacher or something like that, you are a second-class citizen.

And it was one of those things that I didn’t realize it at the time but it was enforcing that dichotomy, that divide between faith and work that you know, those things you know what I should have been saying is bring – no, bring all those things in here in your brokenness.