24 Seven Faith

When I was a kid, like most boys my age, my mind was filled with heroic figures. My age-revealing personal favorites were The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, and Hop-along Cassidy. I wanted to be like those guys who righted wrongs, captured the villain, and rode off into the sunset after single-handedly saving the day. The fact is that there was nothing singlehanded about it. Every one of my heroes had a “sidekick.”

The same goes for real life as we seek to become the men God created us be. God made us, like Himself, to live in community. But sadly, men have a tendency to isolate, making us, as one friend puts it, “a security risk.” Read more

When we try to go it alone, we become easy targets and can be picked off by the “bad guys,” (lust, greed, power, etc.) before we can even get our gun out of the holster. Search the Scripture and consider your own experience and you’ll recognize that men who isolate become a danger to themselves, their family, their community, and the cause of Christ.

Twenty years ago when I began helping men establish small groups, the following verse became a constant reminder of the importance of guys getting together.

Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. (Matthew 18:19-20)
Christ promises His presence and power when a group of His followers meet and pray together. Today, I’m more convinced than ever that we need a cohort of other Christian men to encourage, sharpen, and support one another as we seek to follow Christ 24/7. We just can’t do this alone. That’s why I meet with other men and encourage other guys to do the same.

I just finished writing a free downloadable study guide to accompany What God Does When Men Lead. I encourage you to read the book and study through it with a group of guys. If you don’t have a small group of men with whom you meet, start one. Download here.

Recently, at the Global CEO Network meeting in Dallas, I met a truly remarkable man. Bill Job moved to China in 1987 to study Mandarin Chinese and in 1988 began Meixia (Mesha) International obtaining a license to produce handicrafts in the Special Economic Zone of Xiamen in Fujian Province. Today with 500 employees, Meixia manufactures studio quality art glass products for markets in the United States and Asia. They are also changing lives and changing their city.

Bill’s company is not only committed to producing quality products, but seeking the “peace and prosperity” of his city by wedding good business, community, social responsibility, and eternal value. Check out Meixia’s website.

Click here to watch a short video of how Meixia combines business and ministry. Then ask yourself why this can’t happen here in the United States in your business.

Last week I had the privilege of connecting the Global CEO Network, serious business men and women committed to doing business internationally and carrying the love of Jesus Christ with them. The organization that sponsored the event was EC Group International founded by Tom Sudyk. These men and women gather twice a year to share wisdom, discuss guiding principles, and help each other operationalize their desire to take their business global or begin a new business in another country with a Kingdom agenda.

What marked these individuals as unique in my mind was their tenacious commitment to make a profit both financially and spiritually. Who would have thought these could go together? (Oh, that’s right. God) Their common values: commercial excellence and expressing God’s love through business. If you see your business as your ministry, you need to know about this group. Click here.

What’s interesting about this growing group of Kingdom entrepreneurs is that they have largely taken on this Kingdom Agenda on their own without help of mission agency or church. They just felt called to do what they could for world evangelism using what God gave them: a heart for God and a mind for business. Kind of reminds me on the Early Church, business men and women compelled by the love of Jesus taking the gospel all over the Mediterranean world after they heard it from the Apostles.

Periodically, I want to introduce you to men and women who are living their faith in the workplace. Some are well known, some unknown. Today’s is one of the best known surgeons in the world.

Dr. Ben Carson is a world-renown pediatric neurosurgeon. Dr. Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, is living proof that faith and science fit together in one heart and mind. Having worked with physicians to integrate faith and practice , I know the pressure to separate these two worlds.

Read about him and link to videos in a recent blog at Red Letter Believers. You’ll want to subscribe to this one.

I usually write about faith in the workplace in this space, but I want to pause and talk about another kind of work we are called to do that must brought into rhythm with our career.

Some of you know that this time last year ago my precious wife Kathy was battling breast cancer. As we worshiped at the Easter Service at our church a few days ago, my memory turned back a year to Easter 2007. Just four days before, Kathy had undergone a radical mastectomy. But there we were sitting near the back of the auditorium, me in my suit and Kathy dressed in a roomy coat that covered the drain tubes that ran from her scared body. She refused to miss Easter and the opportunity to sing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.”

A year ago I wrote the following in an email to friends:

God has a reason for Kathy to be here, and I am so thankful. Kathy continues to have a growing impact on America’s families—and I get to be her husband. What a privilege! We love helping each other do the will of God—a husband and wife’s highest calling, according to George MacDonald.

As I watch Kathy at her work today, I am so thankful for the positive outcome of this trial. I have to admit, I can’t image life without her nor doing my work without her help. But neither can I image her mission cut short. It is my privilege to help her do the will of God. And I continue to be amazed at the impact Kathy has on the people she works with.

Rather than slow her down, cancer has expanded her impact on others. (Why should I be surprised?) Just last week when she was at her surgeon’s office for a checkup, she took the opportunity to pray with her doctor about a trial sin the doctor’s life. I love that about my wife. She’s always seeking to serve others, even when she is the one who is supposed to be being served.

So gentlemen, along with honoring God in your workplace today, remember that you have another job as well. And it deserves just as much hard work and dedication: to help your wife do the will of God. If you have no idea what that is, let me encourage you to pre-order a copy of What God Does When Men Lead. You’re likely to get “brownie points” from your wife just for ordering it on your own. Click on the image and it will take you to straight to Amazon.

The headline in the Dallas Morning News reads “Pilgrim’s Pride to cut 1,100 jobs as feed costs soar.” I also noticed that the stock price of the nation’s largest chicken producer has plummeted over $10 in the last six months. Even though the headline implies a simple exchange, I’m sure that the business equation for Pilgrim is much more complicated than trading employees with families to feed for chicken feed in order to increase stockholder value. My hope is that company officials weighed the needs of all the “shareholders”—not just the stockholders—when they made the decision to furlough workers.

The Bible is very positive about work, business, and profit. Obviously without profit everyone loses. But profit is not the only end of business. Business leaders face a huge dilemma when stockholders pit their demands against the other stakeholders in a company. Employees, suppliers, customers, and local communities all have a stake in a company, not just those who own stock. In his book, Joy at Work, Dennis Bakke suggests that company leaders need to consider all the shareholders in making business decisions. Business leaders who choose to increase shareholder value at the expense of everything else might gain praise from Wall Street, but not Main Street—and not from Him who makes their business possible in the first place. There’s a reward more important that a fat executive bonus for increasing stock value and that is to stand before the Ultimate Stakeholder in your business and hear from his lips, “Well done good and faithful servant.” Read more about God’s values in the workplace in Colossians 3:22-4:6.

I try to read several blogs on the workplace regularly. One is Wally Bock’s Three Star Leadership Letter (http://blog.threestarleadership.com/). Today Wally referenced an interview with Steve Martin that interigued me. At the end of his interview Charlie Rose asked Martin about the advice he gives to people who want to be a success in show business. Martin’s reply was “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

I couldn’t help but consider how profoundly simple and biblical his advice was. Proverbs 22:29 says, “Do you see a man skilled (gifted) in his work? He will stand before kings; He will not stand before obscure men.” Colossians 3:23 says, ” Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.” It sounds like doing our very best at our work is pretty important to God. Makes you wonder why we don’t hear more sermons on this topic doesn’t it. I think Dorothy Sayers was right when she wrote, “The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.”

People pay attention to good work well done. It not only paves the way for success in your career and pleases God, it opens the door for spiritual influence. If we want people to pay attention to our faith, we have to first pay attention to our work. Work at your work with “all your heart” and people will notice. And as Steve Martin says, “They can’t ignore you.” Work at it “with all your heart as for the Lord” and people won’t be able to ignore your faith either.

Read more about becoming a spiritual influence at work in Going Public with Your Faith. To order a copy click here.

In this blog I’ll address the fourth Big Idea that can change the way we do church.

Big Idea Four: Being a person of spiritual influence is every Christian’s calling, not just the responsibility of a gifted few. The greatest communication success story in human history is how the gospel message spread across the Mediterranean world. Followers of Jesus grew from a few hundred on the day of Pentecost to more than six million people by the end of the second century. That’s an amazing number, considering the only media were word-of-mouth encounters and hand-written letters.

The evangelists of the first century were the nameless thousands of men and women who followed Jesus without fanfare or notoriety. Even the Apostles were quite ordinary men. Before they were biblical heroes, they were someone’s neighbor just trying to make a living. They were street-level men with a noble mission that moved them beyond their fears and beyond themselves. Yet while their efforts were important, more important was the attitude of ordinary Christians, who recognized that sharing the message of Jesus was everyone’s mission. The gospel spread like wildfire from house to house (the workplace of the day) as men and women personally gossiped the gospel to friends, relatives, acquaintances, colleagues, masters, slaves, students, teachers, customers, shop owners, and fellow soldiers in their everyday networks.

Because ordinary men and women lived out and then shared the gospel with their colleagues, customers, and clients in their workplace, the early church grew as it did. If men and women in the workplace today seize the spiritual opportunities they have and work together to have an impact for Jesus, who knows what extraordinary things God will do with the ordinary workplace moments they give to Him.

These four Big Ideas are discussed in detail in Going Public with Your Faith. To order a copy click here.

In this blog I’ll address the third Big Idea that can change the way we do church.

Big Idea Three: Our job in evangelism is to discover where God is already at work in people’s lives and join him there. This means that being a person of spiritual influence can begin with something as easy as having a cup of coffee with a colleague, listening compassionately when a customer shares why she’s had a hard week, or doing something above the call of duty for a boss or employee who’s under the pile. We don’t need to be the office pariahs, poised to attack unsuspecting souls at the water cooler with Gospel tracts. Instead, small actions and simple acts of service in the course of everyday life have a bigger impact than the “spiritual interruptions” that we often attempt out of guilt.

These four Big Ideas are discussed in detail in Going Public with Your Faith. To order a copy click here.

In this blog I’ll address the second Big Idea that can change the way we do church.

Big Idea Two: Evangelism is a process, not an event. As I examined both the Scripture and my own experience, I stumbled on a fact largely ignored by modern evangelistic methods: evangelism is not an event, but a journey that takes place over a course of time as a person makes a multitude of small, incremental decisions leading to faith in Jesus.

If I had intelligently read passages like Matthew 13 and 1 Corinthians 1, I would have seen this, but I took my cues from men and women who seemed to be ahead of me spiritually, and so I accepted their idea that evangelism is all about telling the message. In John 4, Jesus makes it clear that the “harvest” (a person coming to Christ) is dependent on the “cultivation” of the soil (preparation of the heart). What this means is that each time a Christian has an encounter with a non-Christian—whether we talk specifically about Christ or not—we are either drawing or repelling a person to Christ. Of course, God wants us to intentionally seek to draw them by both our words and actions. But most people today will need to develop a trusting relationship with the gospel messenger, before they accept the message. In fact, on average, nine to sixteen individuals help cultivate the soil of the heart and plant seeds of truth before a person finally decides to trust Christ. That’s why I define evangelism as not just telling the gospel message, but helping a person take the next step toward a relationship with Christ. This is not to reduce the importance of the message in any way. It needs to be told “clear and simple.” But the seed of truth needs to fall into a heart well cultivated in order for growth to occur.

So where do we find hearts that need cultivating and where can we be most successful in this organic type of evangelism? For most of us it is in the workplace. It is here as colleagues, clients, and customers discover whether the gospel is credible by watching us—words and actions. What would happen if churches equipped people to live the good news at work as well as tell the good news? What would happen if pastors began to realize that the words, thoughts, values, and actions of their congregation Monday through Saturday were more important to the Kingdom of God than what was said and done on Sunday? It would certainly change the way we do church.

These four Big Ideas are discussed in detail in Going Public with Your Faith. To order a copy click here.