Being an enthusiastic proponent of the gargantuan significance there is in the body of believers being scattered throughout the workplace, I’ll begin there. Heatley identifies this potential influence as “informal authority.” I believe this influence lies at the crux of the free and responsible stewardship of our lives. What it means at work is that within the context of our job itself, our profession, our field, we have a creative and redemptive role to play. We participate in the content and direction of medicine, law, education, fashion, entertainment, public safety, architecture, research, art, etc. etc.

We do not need to avoid immersing ourselves in the issues of our job in order to avoid absorbing the values of the world. If in our efforts not to lose our way by making too large an investment in our jobs, we risk missing our callings by making too little an investment in our jobs.

Having said that, Heatley wisely warns against searching for aspects of life in one’s job that one’s job can never provide. Hence the boundary. Valuing family, other communities, other forms of service, rest and reflection all build and sustain a healthy, whole human person.

We want our lights to shine, but we do not want them to burn out. We want to make a difference for God by being one of his in our respective jobs, but we want to do so in a way that makes us and those around us more fully human, not less.

What was your main take-away from this chapter?

Thanks Bill for a great contribution to the many believers desiring to show up at work both fully engaged in the task at hand and fully participating in God’s redemptive work in the world.

Each week I post my reflections from one chapter of The Gift of Work by Bill Heatley. If you are just joining the discussion now, we are concluding our discussion today. Catch up on the entire series here. Next week join us as we begin reading Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality by Henry Cloud.

The metaphor cuts across my tendency to complicate and over think my views on work and faith.

My best bet for contributing to a healthy and bountiful crop is to prepare and tend the soil. My best bet for contributing to a meaningful and productive workplace is to become a certain sort of person. Instead of attempting to control the production process (which by definition in this metaphor is out of my control), I should focus on becoming the sort of character who can participate well whatever the process. Becoming a certain kind of person is in my control.

What sort of person? A learning person. An engaged person. An attentive person. A healthy person. A grounded person. A God-connected person. A maturing person.

Instead of asking what sort of decisions does God want me to make, I’d be better off asking what sort of decision-maker does God want me to become. Foster a healthy maturing process and the capacities, insights and perspectives of maturity will be available to inform and resource everything I do.

Now I (Karl) am more open to hearing about these “spiritual disciplines” that Heatley asserts are so important. Instead of esoteric, ethereal and obsolete religious rites, they become accessible, practical and relevant life tools. Sold on the value of tending the soil… becoming a certain kind of person, I am motivated to invest in my character, my soul, my relationship with God.

Instead of my faith being separate and unrelated to my professional efforts, it becomes core and foundational. Not because I start doing explicitly religious things at work like organizing Bible studies or inviting people to church or lobbying for less profanity at the water cooler; but because I need to possess the depth, soundness, strength and poise to address the explicitly work-based issues that are influencing my community and this planet for good or for ill.

What do you think? What was your main take-away from this chapter? Join the conversation!

Each week I post my reflections from one chapter of The Gift of Work by Bill Heatley. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series by clicking here.

That’s my term for what Bill Heatley identifies as ethics that confines itself to avoiding either litigation or offending people. There’s a problem with defining or limiting anything to what it is not.

I hear the grieving of what has been lost in terms of moral vocabulary, social mores, and behavioral standards. Being the veritable pragmatist that I am, though, I want to move immediately to thinking through creative options for facing this current reality, however tragic, and creating, developing and experimenting with alternatives for maturing into a working community that is, in fact, characterized by love, goodness and justice.

It might be more effective to have our working communities back into their ethics. If it’s not going to work to begin with the concept and move to the practice, then let’s talk together about our practices. Teams would discuss and agree upon what behaviors they would like their working relationships and administrative processes to consist, and if anyone wanted later to apply conceptual labels to those practices, many of us would hope those labels will be, “loving,” “just,” “beneficial,” “edifying,” “healthy,” “ennobling,” etc.

I wonder what sort of ethics would emerge from such an egalitarian, diverse, and straight-forward discussion.

A second component of this chapter that struck me related to developing a personal discipline of bringing God into our awareness little by little. Step by step. Inch by inch. Moment by moment.

While physically it seems like we are separated by the space between us, we are in fact quite connected by the very real, however imperceptible, atoms that fill that “space.” God is present, available and participating everywhere and all of the time. But how do we improve our capacity to recognize him, experience him and collaborate with him?

Do you remember those prints that were so popular in the ’90′s that at first glance looked like a colorful, abstract design? Upon closer look, no… upon a less close look, in fact an almost unfocused look, a quite distinct and detailed three-dimensional scene would emerge.

The image was there all along. It was our capacity to see it that needed developing. Similarly with God’s reign, activity, and role, we often do not have the capacity to “see” him, even though he is assuredly involved.

Steps. Small steps. Any sort of step at all will be a step closer to being able to discern God’s presence. But until you find a way to begin taking steps, it is futile to wish that God were more accessible.

How do you discuss with co-workers how you want to go about working together? What practices help you enhance your awareness of God while immersed in work?

What was your main take-away from this chapter?

Each Friday I post my reflections from one chapter of The Gift of Work by Bill Heatley. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

Many of us who share a Christian spirituality struggle to relate our faith and our work. They seem to function in separate categories, and that’s just fine with us thank you very much. The links our religious leaders suggest (be ethical, strive for excellence, convert co-workers, etc.) feel like a reach and we intuit the deep disconnect.

Bill Heatley suggests an insightful and helpful alternative. Instead of two separate compartments that need to be connected, he offers God as the reference point out of which and from which all of life flows.

To the extent that we are familiar with, deeply connected to, and highly interactive with this one who is the reference point, so will we be able to contribute richly and benefit deeply wherever we choose to show up in life… at work, at home, in relationships, in the midst of challenging issues, in unexpected opportunities, playing on the floor with our kids, reworking our budgets during an economic crisis, or fighting for government services with a system that doesn’t really care, just to name a few.

God’s given us a compass. To keep asking for a map and directions is to miss the point. Having God as one’s reference point doesn’t answer the questions or solve the problems or tell us what to do. In familiar, connected, interactive relationship with God we get our bearings, renew our resources and recenter ourselves. The results of which are the clear minds, caring hearts, energetic spirits, creative inventiveness, and collaborative resourcefulness that the free and responsible human person needs to choose well, engage fully and live meaningfully.

Give this chapter a close read. Heatley suggests concrete practices that will help you move God from being one of many isolated categories of your life to your central point of reference.

Join the discussion! What did you think of Chapter 4? What is your experience with God as a reference point versus God as one of many components of your life?

Each Friday I post my reflections from one chapter of The Gift of Work by Bill Heatley. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

What I need, though, is not another critique of the culture’s twists and perversions of the truth. Nor, on the other hand, do I need another vague, conceptual affirmation of the eternal biblical principles by which my work should find its purpose, motivations and methods.

So I especially enjoyed Heatley using four work-based categories, (success, competition, loyalty and service) to think through the shortcomings in most workplaces and the alternatives a faith-based perspective would contribute.

While I agree that “love” holds the key to unlocking the creative juices that will eventually result in a plethora of practical alternatives emerging in workplaces around the world, I’m anxious to get on to brainstorming what these practical alternatives might be.

For example, let’s take a variety of workplace processes: hiring, training, firing, planning, meetings, compensation, performance reviews, approval processes, budgeting, adopting new technologies, etc., and having teams work through what those need to look like if we’re to achieve, “market strength, employee focus and customer value.” In other words, put some feet on love in the context of work.

How do you find ways to give practical form to your faith-based values at work, in the context of work’s issues, processes and structures, and within a culture where work is a daily reality on which our survival depends?

Each Friday I post my reflections from one chapter of The Gift of Work by Bill Heatley. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

From the outside in… practicing habits of healthy living until proficient. From the inside out… becoming increasingly open to the involvement of God in the training process.

Such are the spiritual disciplines: twin and simultaneous trajectories toward becoming the kind of person you were meant to be.

Reflecting on the workplace, it is my stewardship of the life God has given me that determines the character of my presence and contribution there. Hence the power of Heatley’s now obvious, but usually overlooked, linkage between our stewardship within God’s kingdom with the role of kings.

How I show up matters.

Whether or not I choose to engage fully—authentically, energetically and creatively—matters.

The choices I make at work improve, restore, and create; as well as harm, exploit, and destroy. The exercise of my “lordship” has real effects.

I‘m observing that my reflections are revolving around the impact this chapter is having on my own personal motivations for embracing the crucial and urgent value of practicing life over and over and then over again.

Instead of rote religiousity or mindless conformity, practicing the spiritual disciples becomes an exercise of powerful freedom and personal responsibility. I become more human, not less human, by preparing intentionally and diligently for the unknown choices that lie ahead.

Read along and join the discussion. What was your main take-away from Chapter 2?

Each Friday I post my reflections from one chapter of The Gift of Work by Bill Heatley. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

Faulty Frames of Reference

Powerful from the get go is his challenge to our basic frame of reference about work as “a daily humiliation.” (p. 24) Such starting assumptions: work is but a necessary evil to pay the bills, TGIF, and working for “the man”—among others—is where we get our equation backwards. It’s as if we suspend our lives while at work in order to make the money we need to finance the lives we want to live while at home. We have to get ourselves dirty in the workplace (read “the world”) in order to serve God and others everywhere else.

Instead of investing, engaging, reflecting and improving, we end up keeping work at arm’s length.

A huge hurdle to becoming open to alternate frames of reference is learning how to identify our own starting assumptions. It can be like asking a blind person why they tripped on the cracked sidewalk. How can I figure out what I’m not seeing if I’m not seeing?

More Ordinary Than You’d Think

I love the way Heatley, almost matter-of-factly, asserts that work is merely one of life’s many structures. The Christ follower’s responsibility is simply to love within whatever structure one finds oneself.

Our role shifts from judging work as a bad or worldly place from the sideline to jumping into the game and participating fully as a caring and creative steward of our lives.

More freedom and more responsibility. Hence Heatley’s guiding categories that work has both caring and creative components. If we’re going to show up and engage unreservedly, then where do we begin and along what lines to we function?

I would add a category. Like other life structures, work also has a learning or maturing or personal development component. We are fundamentally growing, changing, improving beings and our work/professional direction is best served by incorporating this reality from the beginning.

Using my own vocabulary, work is where our love task takes the form of finding meaningful ways to contribute, connect and develop.

What Do You Think?

1. What is your experience with work as one of your life structures? Love it? Hate it? Mystified by it? Weighed down by it? Distracting, fulfilling or depleting?
2. What was your own main take-away from Chapter 1? What struck a chord, challenged an assumption or left you puzzled?
3. What do you think about what I said? Add your insights or push back.

Join the conversation. Let’s learn from each other.

For many of us spirituality and work operate in separate, unrelated compartments. But what if your work were an integral expression of your faith?

What if you weren’t asked to change the subject to evangelism or early morning prayer groups or promises not to take office supplies home in order to think about what it means to be both a faithful employee and a faithful believer?

Join me as I delve into this insightful piece. I’ll be posting my thoughts chapter by chapter, and hope you will interact with your own comments, insights and opinions.

Contents

1. Changing Our Minds About Work
2. Kingdom Living
3. Redefining Success
4. You Are Here: God As Our Reference Point
5. Not a Trivial Pursuit
6. Training as a Disciple of Christ
7. The Nucleus of Change

Get your copy and read along!