You are here: Home / Archives for Resource

Braden Greer: We Love God by Loving Others in How We Work

December 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

At our Marketplace Ambassadors monthly meeting last Friday Braden Greer spoke on the connection between loving others and our work.  It was a defining message for us.

He gave this message in longer form here at the How We Work series.

Why do I think this was a defining message?  I invite you to explore that for yourself by listening, but I’d say because his message was self-evidently clear and authoritative, which is how the plain teaching of Scripture should land on us.

Colossians 3:23-24 makes the clear point that our work is to be motivated by love and allegiance to Christ:

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

Yet, if we are to serve Christ at all, we must submit to his call to love others as inseparable from loving God.  This is the authoritative answer Christ gives to the famous question of Matthew 22:34-40:

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”  And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Which is the greatest commandment?  Note the singular, as in “commandment” not “commandments.”  Yet, Jesus offers two avenues of fulfillment: Love God and love others.  And in both cases, the call to love is comprehensive.  Love God with all we are, and love neighbor no less than we love ourselves (a clever way of also undercutting our self-love and pointing to the self-sacrificial nature of His love in us).

What an economy of words in this powerful answer.  Do you see how Jesus seized this opportunity and gave us a model for how to love others in our work? His careful, thoughtful answer was an act of love to this lawyer and to all the hearers.  Jesus produced an unforgettable saying in this moment, a product whose value ripples out to us in power and love today.

When God the Son became man, He set Himself to a unique work of redemption that alone could reconcile God and man.  By virtue of our union with Christ, this same love is poised to get working in our work as Christians.  We have an opportunity each day to vigorously exert Christ’s love to others, and at the same time offer loving worship to our Creator.

What is your view of your work?  Might this view redefine work for you?

Filed Under: Braden Greer, Love

It Can be Done

November 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I have three children under six, so reading nursery ryhmes is a regular event at the house. The more I read them the more I’m convinced that these rhymes are written more for the parents than they are for the kids and that adults often miss out on them, because they think they are only for children. I recently read “It Can be Done” the other day and had to put it on the bog for others. Here you go adults. May it inspire you not to miss the fun or reward of hard work.

The man who misses all the fun

Is he who says, “It can’t be done.”

In solemn pride he stands aloof

And greets each venture with reproof.

Had he the power he’d efface

The history of the human race;

We’d have no radio or motor cars,

No streets lit by electric stars,

No telegraph nor telephone,

We’d linger in the age of stone.

The world would sleep if things were run

By men who say, “It can’t be done.”

 

 

Filed Under: Diligence, Keith Welton

John Piper’s Thoughts on How to Glorify God at Work

September 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

John Piper, commenting on a marketplace-focused conference in Australia called Engage, was asked how young workers can glorify God.  Based on 1 Corinthians 10:31 he suggested the following priorities:

Dependence. Go to work utterly dependent on God (Proverbs 3:5-6; John 15:5). Without him you can’t breathe, move, think, feel, or talk. Not to mention be spiritually influential. Get up in the morning and let God know your desperation for him. Pray for help.

Integrity. Be absolutely and meticulously honest and trustworthy on the job. Be on time. Give a full day’s work. “Thou shalt not steal.” More people rob their employers by being slackers than by filching the petty cash.

Skill. Get good at what you do. God has given you not only the grace of integrity but the gift of skills. Treasure that gift and be a good steward of those skills. This growth in skill is built on dependence and integrity.

Corporate shaping. As you have influence and opportunity, shape the ethos of the workplace so that the structures and policies and expectations and aims move toward accordance with Christ. For example, someone is shaping the ethos of Chick-fil-A restaurants with this video.

Impact. Aim to help your company have an impact that is life-enhancing without being soul-destroying. Some industries have an impact that is destructive (e.g., porn, gambling, abortion, marketing scams, etc). But many can be helped to turn toward impact that is life-giving without being soul-ruining. As you have opportunity, work toward that.

Communication. Work places are webs of relationships. Relationships are possible through communication. Weave your Christian worldview into the normal communications of life. Don’t hide your light under a basket. Put it on the stand. Winsomely. Naturally. Joyfully. Let those who love their salvation say continually, Great is the Lord! (Psalm 40:16)

Love. Serve others. Be the one who volunteers first to go get the pizza. To drive the van. To organize the picnic. Take an interest in others at work. Be known as the one who cares not just about the light-hearted weekend tales, but the burdens of heavy and painful Monday mornings. Love your workmates, and point them to the great Burden Bearer.

Money. Work is where you make (and spend) money. It is all God’s, not yours. You are a trustee. Turn your earning into the overflow of generosity in how you steward God’s money. Don’t work to earn to have. Work to earn to have to give and to invest in Christ-exalting ventures. Make your money speak of Christ as your supreme Treasure.

Thanks. Always give thanks to God for life and health and work and Jesus. Be a thankful person at work. Don’t be among the complainers. Let your thankfulness to God overflow in a humble spirit of gratitude to others. Be known as the hope-filled, humble, thankful one at work.

This good stuff to chew on over the weekend…and over many weekends.

Filed Under: John Piper, Work

Communication in Crisis

September 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Audio from last Friday’s Marketplace Ambassadors meeting at Covenant Life Church is now available for download or streaming here.

I wanted to quickly recap my talk, and also thank our good men and women who attended and continue to attend our meetings.  Thanks to those who keep showing up at 7am on a Friday!  We know there are other very good things you could be doing with your time.

A Tale of Two Lives

I shared my personal testimony as a child who, like so many, “grew up in a Christian home but rebelled.”  My rebellion story is not unlike that of many others–I went the way of the world, and for me given where I lived and with whom I associated, that meant I lived two lives.  One life was what my parents and other authority figures saw (what I wanted them to see), and the other was what I did with my friends and within the broader community of young people in high school and college –partying, getting into trouble, flirting with disaster and even death on a regular basis, etc.

The Christian training of my youth, rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ, created a crisis in my life.  As much as I wanted to live a secret life, at some point I had to choose my path.  And try as I might to say the life with my friends was truly real and satisfying, my upbringing showed me better, and I knew it.  Jesus Christ is the final authority over all life, and repentance and faith in His name is the real path to life–His life.

What I’m Not Saying

I could say a lot about the impact of the gospel in my adult experience as I “do life” with those in the wider world and marketplace–many of whom are not Christians or are not active in any local church to gain Christian training.  I don’t want to suggest by my testimony that I somehow assent to an insular, segregated vision of life in the church that is too often largely divorced from the concerns of others–outside their repentance and faith.  I don’t believe that is the loving, Biblical, Christ-like way to live out our faith and engage the marketplace.

Seeing the difference between an inward-facing and outward-facing Christian life is another kind of crisis altogether.  I am seeing that it is bound up with the secret life crisis of my youth, but still it is very different.  This is not about where I stand in relation to Christ, but in relation to others.

So, let me leave that distinction in place for now, and maybe we can come back to it.  The key thing here is that a crisis can come in many flavors—at home, in our nation, in the marketplace.  It comes to us as Christians and non-Christians.  It is part of life in a fallen world.  But it is also more than that.  It is a training ground.

Where do you see crisis in your life?

Defining “Crisis”

Crisis is not just when bad things happen; it is more properly defined as a moment of truth or a turning point.  As I mentioned in my own experience of crisis–and I used 9/11 as a powerful example in my own life–the reality is that when a crisis arrives, especially when it comes upon us suddenly, the foundations of our faith will be revealed.

Oswald Chambers, in the famous devotional My Utmost for His Highest, offered this comment on crisis in his daily devotional entry for September 10th:

We presume that we would be ready for battle if confronted with a great crisis, but it is not the crisis that builds something within us— it simply reveals what we are made of already. Do you find yourself saying, “If God calls me to battle, of course I will rise to the occasion”? Yet you won’t rise to the occasion unless you have done so on God’s training ground. If you are not doing the task that is closest to you now, which God has engineered into your life, when the crisis comes, instead of being fit for battle, you will be revealed as being unfit. Crises always reveal a person’s true character.

Once you’ve discerned where crisis is confronting you, then ask yourself, What is this saying about my character to those around me?

Communicating in Crisis

Christ taught that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.  Crisis has this amazing tendency to churn up things in our heart, and much of how our true character is revealed takes place in our words.  How do we communicate in crisis?  This is a rich opportunity for us as Christians to be different, to genuinely though perhaps gently, demonstrate our true faith.  And this is not about us showing ourselves superior in any away–that is self-righteousness, and we all know what that kind of communication feels and sounds like.  It is offensive, and Jesus attacked it regularly.

No, Christian faith is a gracious gift from God, available in recognizing Jesus Christ as the God-given way to God, and it is available to all the world in the simple act of repentance and genuinely calling out to Christ as Lord and Savior.  Christian communication in crisis must never be from self-superiority.  This is where we turn to Scripture, to some foundational truths from 2 Corinthians 5 that I have laid out to shape our communication in crisis.

Our communication in crisis situations in work or in any area of life begins with the gospel.  This is where Paul begins.  He starts with the new creation in Christ.  From there, you can see a clear progression in 2 Corinthians 5 from our new identity to a new style of communication.   Here it is in short form:

New creation: “If anyone is in Christ—a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come.” (v17)

New love: “For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died.” (v14)

New identity: “Christ reconciled us to himself…therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.” (v18, 20)

New perspectives of others: “From now on we regard no one according to the flesh.” (v16)

New mission: “God through Christ gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” (v18)

New communication: “Knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others…[as] God is making His appeal through us.” (v11, 20)

It takes effort to apply this new creation reality to how we communicate in a given situation.  I want to argue that it is nothing more and nothing less than a necessary part of regular Christian discipleship.  Each of these “indicatives” can and will be fleshed out further here, but more important than that is wrestling with them yourself.  Can I ask you to carve out time to read and re-read 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 using the above as a lens?  Doing this has served me well, and I can commend the exercise to you as well worth the time and effort.

Application

Once we wrestle with the text and understand Paul’s intentions to his initial audience (and I suggest using a Study Bible or commentary to guide your study), we then have the next level of effort.  We need to get these truths worked out clear enough in our minds so we can bring them forward in our lives, into real flesh-and-blood crisis situations, to serve those with whom we work.  It will take effort, but with the Holy Spirit promising to finish the broad work of sanctification He started in us, we can have confidence we have “divine power” (2 Peter 1:3) working along with us in this effort.

To guide your application of the above truths into increasing effectiveness in your life and work, I offer the following “5 Ps” of gospel-centered crisis communication:

Power: Believe the gospel powerfully transforms us from rebels against God to representatives for God!

Preparation: Preach the gospel to yourself daily and meditate frequently on 2 Corinthians 5:11-21.

Prayer: Ask the Holy Spirit before, during & after your various conversations to help you regard no one according to the flesh.  Our mission and our highest concern for others should be reconciliation to God.

Persuasion: From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks…if the love of Christ controls you, love will define your speech, and you will be persuasive.  God will be making his appeal through you.

Perseverance:  Expect all this to happen over time.  Work on these things now, so when the crisis comes, your foundations in Christ will be revealed as sure, true, and attractive.

Conclusion

I hope this is helpful.  We will continue pressing forward in this study of 2 Corinthians 5 and Paul’s experience in the difficulties in that church.  I am also excited that our Sunday sermon series on 2 Peter, starting with this fog-lifting overview message of the epistle by Robin Boisvert, is arriving into our church at what seems like just the right time as we face our own season of difficulty.

This is nothing new.  The church has a mission, and it is not mainly about us. Effective communication, particularly in the crisis situations we face at work, is a unique mission field.  If we can get gripped by the Holy Spirit’s work as intended for us individually and as the church, as modeled and taught by Christ and Paul, which we have been given to study and apply in Scripture, then I am confident we will not only emerge through our crisis in a God-honoring way, we will also be better trained to serve and love others in their crisis situations with the love of Christ gifted to us by a merciful God.

Filed Under: Mark Fedeli, Meekness, Monthly Meeting, Work

Go For It or Punt?

September 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Should I Fold the Business or Keep Pressing On?

I was recently talking with a friend going through a very difficult time with his business. Bills are mounting and income is disappearing. It’s a very tough situation. They have been through difficult times but nothing like this. After sharing what is going on, he turned to me and asked, so what do you think? Should we fold or keep pressing on?

I use to freely offer my thoughts on that question, but I realize how complex these questions are. It’s kind of like someone coming up to you and asking if you should go for it on fourth down. Anyone remotely familiar with football knows that is not a yes or no question. You need more specifics. Is it forth and two or fourth and twenty? Are you on your side of the field or theirs? Is it early or late in the game? Does your team need a spark?

There are many specifics that need to be determined before one can accurately make a decision on their business, and by the way, I m a pastor not a business expert. So as I realize the complexity of the situation and my limitation in deciding the future of a business, here are some principles I now recommend for people trying to make this decision.

Get Advice from Others

Proverbs 24:6 instructs us that in an abundance of counselors there is victory. Don’t rely on yourself. Ask your wife, friends, pastors what they recommend. Their input will be very valuable but don’t end there.

In addition to these you should ask someone with business smarts. Ask someone who runs a business and understands the business issues to look at things and give you some input. If you don’t know anyone hire a professional consultant. They are expensive and the reason is they are worth it. How much would you be willing to pay for advice on how to make your business profitable or to finally realize the ship is truly sinking and you need to save what you can before it goes under.

Too many people rely on themselves or the advice of friends who know little about business. This decision is too important to make without sound advice.

Determine the Battle You Want to Fight

Decisions to press on or give up are easy when the evidence and advice falls overwhelmingly in one direction, but it is more difficult when it could go either way. It’s these times you look at the evidence and make a decision where to fight. The battle could go either way, but you need to gather the troops and decide where to focus your energy and resources.

You also need to be sure those involved and supporting you are willing to fight the battle. Perhaps you could make it work, but your wife and family and exhausted and exasperated, and they are ready to move in a different direction. Perhaps you talk through it and everyone is excited to press on in hopes that the Lord may provide. People often fail or make their problems worse not because their decision was wrong but because they went about it without the support of those near them.

When the battle could go either way it is essential to look at the options, make a united decision, and move in the chosen direction.

Seek the Lord

Ultimately the decision you make is your responsibility.

In ten years when you look back you cannot blame other people for the decision you made. When you stand before the Lord you will have to give an account for what you did. This means we get advice from others and weigh it, but ultimately the decision and responsibility resides on our shoulders. This should drive us to have a biblically informed, family supported, colleague advised, and faith-filled decision. It puts the weight squarely on our shoulders to either accept or reject the advice of others.

The advice of others is not without fault. Many people succeed even though others told them it would never happen. We must seek the Lord and consider what faithfulness to God should look like in that time. Our decision does not guarantee the business takes off, but that we have been faithful with our responsibility and could stand before the Lord in good conscience that we have honored him.

Go Forward with Humble Resolve

Proverbs 16:3 tells us, “Commit your work to the Lord whatever you do and your plans will succeed.” Once you make a decision as to what actions most glorify God, commit it to the Lord and go after it humbly. Don’t second guess yourself every step of the way. There will be difficulties to press through. If you did the above steps and determined this is where you should go then do it confidently.

At the same time don’t be arrogant. There may be tweaks and adjustments along the way that you will need to make, so don’t think your decision is perfect. Go forward resolved to give it your all and not double minded, but also be humble so that you are learning as you go.

Conclusion

This is not a fool proof game plan by any means, but some helpful principles to apply as you go. To press on or fold is not a simple yes or no question. It is a big, intricate, complicated, and messy question that you need to put much thought into. If you follow through on these, I think you will be doing yourself and loved ones a favor before you make your ultimate decision.

Take the steps necessary, so you can move forward full of faith and peace!

Filed Under: Diligence, Keith Welton, Perserverence

New Series — Work: Why it Matters

September 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I recently did this 4 part series at Covenant Life Church called “Work: Why it Matters.”

The purpose of this class was to see how our faith connects to work and that what we do each and every day at the office really does matter. Let me know what you think!

 

Filed Under: Speaker, Work

Audio and Other Resurces Now Available

August 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

We’ve added two new pages of resources for your benefit.  We will keep these pages updated and posted in the top header above.

The first page includes is audio from our monthly meetings and other work-related messages from Covenant Life Church on topics including work, money, creation & science, church & state, and wisdom.

The second page includes outside resources on topics like Christian vocation, leadership, worldview, business and mercy, as well as a list of organizations and initiatives focused on work and worldview training from a Christian perspective.

Filed Under: Resource, Work, Worldview

Sebastian Traeger Speaks at CLC on Friday

August 18, 2011 By 1 Comment

This Friday August 19th at Covenant Life Church my friend Sebastian Traeger will be speaking at our monthly Marketplace Ambassadors meeting at 7am.  Last year I had the immense pleasure of meeting and spending a week with Sebastian and over thirty other young men and women at the MarketplaceOne leadership forum, the One Institute.  Sebastian was a standout there for all the right reasons.

He will speak on “Avoiding the Idol and Idle of Work.” We’ll post the audio as soon as we have it.

Sebastian has spent the last 13 years starting and building various businesses. Most recently, he co-founded and served as CEO of Razoo.com, a social fundraising platform that has raised over $47 million dollars for over 8,000 causes. He also co-founded, built, and sold the web-based businesses Christianity.com, a popular portal featuring news and resources and Silas Partners, a web consulting company that helps organizations with online strategy, marketing and fund raising. In 1998, Sebastian helped launch Village Phone, taking the lead for their operations in El Salvador. He started his career at the management-consulting firm Dean & Company where he took a quantitative approach to solving strategic business problems.

Sebastian attended Princeton University, where he played baseball, served as an RA, ran a campus cafe and carpet business, was active in Athletes-in-Action and studied politics.   He lives on Capitol Hill where he is married, has three children and serves as an Elder at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. When he isn’t working he likes to eat comfort food, travel and compete in just about anything.

Filed Under: Event, Speaker, Work