My friend and InsideWork colleague Donald McGilchrist presented a response to Todd Hunter’s fine address at Restoring the Soul of Commerce, the conference conducted April 25, 2005 by the George Fox School of Management in Portland, Oregon. Here are some of Donald’s reflections on Moral Purpose in business. Thanks Donald.
Todd Hunter laid out excellent priorities and paths towards the transformation first of ourselves then of those "places of realized potential" where we would all like to work.
Mr. Hunter and I share an appreciation for now-retired Herman Miller Chairman Max De Pree. I’ve not met Mr. De Pree but his wise soul shines through his writings and I am definitely a fan. The phrase in De Pree that most gripped me is this:
At the core of becoming a leader is the need always to connect one’s voice and one’s touch.
— Leadership Jazz, page 3
I thought a lot about this. What did he mean? Was I to go around in the office touching everybody? For a reserved Englishman like me, this seemed a little too intrusive!
Then, one day, it struck me. De Pree was talking about the model we call the Incarnation. Ours is a visited planet. The arrival of Jesus Christ on earth, all those years ago, was where the voice of God—which had thundered and cajoled us through the Old Testament prophets—was miraculously joined to the touch of God…His actual physical, material presence among us.
Voice plus Touch
In Jesus, the Voice declaring God’s purpose was joined to the Touch demonstrating God’s presence. The result, the apostle John says, was Grace and Truth…Beauty and Accuracy in reflecting God the Father—the sort of thing Todd Hunter means, I think, by his term "authentic vulnerability," which leads in practice to creating workplaces where every person is connected and involved.
Todd also engaged the idea of Moral Purpose. It’s this idea I want to extend a bit. In the current context, with examples of corporate greed cascading around us, there is much ground to recover.
Echoing Harry Blamires, who wrote, in The Christian Mind—"Purpose belongs to persons, function belongs to things," I am going to move in on moral purpose in terms of the basic specification that God our designer laid down for us at the beginning.
When we go back to the opening scenario in Genesis, we are watching history’s only Perfect Start Up. There is rich material for today’s entrepreneurs in studying the story of how God went about His universal launch. We see God designing, organizing, capitalizing, assigning, branding, evaluating, delegating…in a symphony of collaboration.
However, let me zero in not so much on what God does as a Worker but on what He designed us to do as workers. There are Seven Verbs that fertilize one another to compose what is sometimes called our Cultural Mandate. Here they are:
rule
be fruitful
increase
fill
subdue
work
take care of
These are so relevant, so central, for those who are struggling with the daily mess of reality. Humbly pursuing these Seven Verbs is a large part of what it can mean to live in God’s Image and for God’s Glory.
Daily life is bursting with theological meaning
One example. Years ago, I was responsible for the Passenger Train Services between the cities of Liverpool and London. We were losing market share, because of faster flights to London out of Liverpool Airport. Railways always lose money, but the red ink was spreading.
So, I led my Team in conceiving a new early morning express rail service, the fastest of the day, that would place our customers in central London by 10:00am.
I had every confidence that this would please God, who delights in work well done. I saw the planning and marketing as a spiritual exercise, which would employ all the gifts God had given me. I could feel His pleasure. God and I were working together.
In Todd Hunter’s words, my Team at that point was "a place of realized potential." God’s Spirit blessed our Team and thus we blessed our customers. On such occasions, I believe, we come face-to-face with the Soul of Commerce.
We are to be engaged in increasing the number of such places…lifting the number of such occasions. And we are to do so together. Here’s why. A relational God…Father, Son and Spirit… made relational human beings in His own image. We are not merely individuals, but persons designed for community. From our Creator Himself, we draw the model of unity in diversity.
To bless is to empower. Blessing is developmental. It instills life and energy into our work. Blessing people treats them as ends, not means. As often, John Paul II put it well:
"An enterprise is not just a production structure. It should also transform itself into a life-giving community, a place where people live with and relate to their peers, where personal development is not only allowed but also encouraged. The main enemy of a Christian sense of enterprise is a certain functionalism that makes efficiency the only and the immediate requirement for production and work."
— Pope John Paul II, Barcelona 1982"The purpose of a business firm is not simply to make a profit, but is to be found in its very existence as a community of persons…"
— Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 1991
Resolutely, we must repel the heresy that the Spiritual and the Material function independent of each other, in separate realms. All of life comes within the overarching reality of the Kingdom of God.
Let me quote, as Todd Hunter did, from Eugene Peterson:
"Jesus announced the presence of the Kingdom of God. The word was often on his lips. At the end, he accepted the title King…the rule of God was comprehensive, established over body as well as soul, over society as well as individuals, in our external behavior as well as our internal disposition, over cities and nations as well as homes and churches."
— Eugene Peterson
See also Henri Nouwen:
"Living the spiritual life means living life as one unified reality. The forces of darkness are the forces that split, divide and set in opposition. The forces of light unite. Literally, the word ‘diabolic’ means dividing. The demon divides; the Spirit unites."
— Henri Nouwen
If we are to transform the Soul of Commerce, we have to embrace the fact that Jesus has a claim on the totality of our lives. It is all His.
I suggest that four Simple Propositions can blow away much of the fog that surrounds many workplaces today:
- Our Triune God, a focused community of persons, is a model worker.
- He invites us to be His colleagues…he designed and assigned us to be workers.
- Our work expresses our character.
- Our work is our contribution to His Kingdom.
At the end of time, the Book of Revelation pictures the people of God entering the Holy City. The imagination soars beyond the ability of words to express the scene, but there is one detail that grips me. The writer tells us that the honor and glory of the nations will be carried into the Holy City.
How strange. Isn’t the whole point that we are to worship God? What is this honor and glory that we bring with us to place at the feet of Almighty God? Surely, it is the best things that we have created as we work and as we collaborate in those Seven Verbs. For example…the best software program, the best soufflé, the best passenger train, the best novel, the best legal system, the best educational syllabus.
These are what God expects from us…and what He celebrates today wherever He finds them.
Eventually, there will come a time, as the poet Rudyard Kipling said, when:
"Only The Master shall praise us,
and only The Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money,
and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working,
and each in her separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as she sees it,
for the God of Things as They are."
— Rudyard Kipling (The Seven Seas, 1892)
Lest you judge me as too idealistic, too theoretical, let me briefly acknowledge the mess we’re in…and end with a story about beer.
Recall the Fall: we shoved the Beautiful Launch into reverse! The universe became abnormal:
- We lost innocence…intimacy…initiative.
- We acquired division…drudgery…death.
Yet the Coming of Jesus gave fresh significance to us as workers. Now, work which is done in faith, hope and love is what continues the work of Jesus Himself. The apostle Paul, in his earliest surviving letter, starts this way—"We continually remember before God…your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ"—1 Thessalonians 1:2-3.
We can indeed Live Jesus in the marketplace, as outposts of His Kingdom.
Now, Beer
We are familiar with the great Irish drink Guinness. You may not be aware it was designed by a man who brought shalom to his context through the way he made and sold his product.
Arthur Guinness said he was led by God to adopt the mission “make a drink that men will drink that will be good for them.” He gave it his own name. And his product was so good one used to be able to get it from the National Health Service in Britain. It is almost impossible to get drunk on Guinness because it is so heavy. Mr. Guinness used his business as a way of reducing alcoholism on the streets of Ireland. He also financed much of Hudson Taylor’s groundbreaking work in China and accomplished significant changes in the British legal system.
Which of us is tackling his or her business like Guinness: Commercially successful…living out God’s glory in the marketplace? Designing and producing and selling and servicing things in the marketplace is good in itself…when pursued for God’s glory. And God is watching. This is why we can pray, with Moses—"Establish the work of our hands"—Psalm 90:17.
God is irrepressibly renewing His creation…and our partnership with Him is meant to be restorative. Remember our Mandate: be fruitful…cultivate…take care of.
In the words of the Coventry Cathedral Prayer:
Hallowed be thy name in industry:
God be in my hands and in my making
Hallowed be thy name in commerce:
God be at my desk and in my trading
Holy, Holy, Holy; Lord God of Hosts;
Heaven and earth are full of thy glory.
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For more on all this, check out The Scriptural Roots of Commerce, especially Module 2: Being Human and Module 5: The Meaning of Work to which Donald served as lead writer.
