“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
—G.K. Chesterton, Chapter 5, What’s Wrong With The World, 1910

In my circle of friends, people are still chipping away at the problem of business spiritually engaged. A friend in the restaurant business sent me what he wrote his wife and adult children about his attempts to fully integrate his life. Here’s an excerpt where his letter touches on spirituality and work.

Christians are just as much in a hurry as everyone else—more so really because we try to do everything everyone else does plus have a quiet time, go to church, run a ministry.
“Got to be there in 10 minutes—and it’s a 20-minute drive. Haven’t even had time to say hello to God this morning—so I grab a tape and use the 20-minute drive to listen to a sermon. It’s good stuff. I arrive and get out of the car feeling better…” This is the daily pattern for many of us.

Good sermons replace personal Bible study. Digging for ourselves (in the yard or the Scripture) is just too hard and time consuming in our hectic day, so we hire it out. The gardener digs the hole to plant the flowers, and though I get to enjoy their beauty, my muscles don’t develop, and I learn nothing about the soil. And I skip spiritual digging too, allowing the hired pastor’s sermon to show me the beauty of God, yet I never develop my own mind, faith or understanding by wrestling through the verses on my own. My life remains unchanged—and I don’t even realize it. I think I’m spiritually well fed, but in reality I’m starving to death!

The resultant me is someone who thinks he’s operating on a biblical foundation but is in fact operating on a worldly one.

I start my morning in the Bible with a quiet time. God affirms my beliefs. I remember the values I hold dear—humility, servanthood, trust in Christ. Then I head off to work to try and behave “Christianly.”

I don’t get very far. A guest’s complaint letter greets me. Then Dave calls to say the new pantry cook quit. The daily report shows we had a $60 shortage in the till, and Marie reminds me I’m not prepared for the team meeting. Fear, anger, pride and frustration all well up. I dash off an answer to the unhappy guest, making a note to meet with Conner and the server whose rudeness caused the letter. I sigh aloud as I prepare to run yet another ad for a cook, fuming inside about Dave’s continued ineptness as a manager. I wonder if the new hostess is a thief. And I sit down to prepare for the team meeting feeling like a failure for being unprepared—and mad at Marie for “making” me feel that way. None of those behaviors flow out of my biblical beliefs. They’re all typical worldly reactions to everyday stress.

It seems to me there are three questions I face every day:

1. Whose glory: God’s or mine?
2. Where’s my trust: In God or myself?
3. Where’s my hope: In the Creator or in created things?

I keep getting the answer wrong—not every day, but way too often. And I’m sick of it. I’m sick of it and I really want to get it right.

My friend is not alone. It’s important to say that because he feels like he’s all by himself. Honestly, why are there so few people in leadership positions who tell the truth about such things when, really, anyone who’s paying attention knows we’re all rowing the same boat? Are there really so few leaders paying attention? Or are we lying . . . or at least withholding the truth . . . about our deep need for support? This is one reason we developed the Working Together module in The Scriptural Roots of Commerce series. It’s designed for a few friends committed to helping each other work “Christianly” (as my friend put it) in the face decidedly difficult circumstances.

Everyone I know has something to gain from that kind of support. Because, really, no one should have to lie when they answer the question, “How’s it going?”

I have a friend who, when he asks someone how they’re doing and they give him an automatic fine, replies, “Yeh? Compared to what?” That’s not a bad question if you’re prepared to listen to the answer.

Here’s an email from a friend who gave me a straight answer.

I am coming to grips with the harsh realities of working for a public company. I see the dreams of being part of a great company filled with great people fading into the heartless pursuit of shareholder favor for the sake of a small handful who hold significant numbers of shares. I hate it.

Each day it seems more difficult to put on the right persona to lead a group of people in a quest I no longer believe in. I feel trapped by the needs of my family. I even find myself resenting having so many people dependent on me. My head knows that ultimately they are not truly dependent on me but that theology has failed to carry most days.

I know all the stuff about being grateful for what I have and being content in all situations but I’m neither grateful nor content. I know about networking and the other elements of looking for something else to do. I don’t want something else to do. I want something to be excited about, to believe in and to enjoy. After the last two years I’m not sure I know what those things are. I have such a bad taste in my mouth that everything sounds okay at best and just as bad at worst. I find no joy in work. I find this quite ironic since we are currently studying Module 5 on the meaning of work.

I have even found myself daydreaming about running away or about what my life would be like right now if I didn’t have so many people needing so much from me. These daydreams are usually directly followed by an acute sense of shame that shrouds my heart.

That’s tough to read from a friend. But, as tough as that is, I happen to know this guy is one of the lucky ones. He’s surrounded by friends who want a real answer when they ask how it’s going. Even then, there are days when he dreams about running away. But he hasn’t, at least not yet. The Module 5 in his email is Module 5: The Meaning of Work from InsideWork’s Scriptural Roots of Commerce. The SRC is a group learning experience through which a few friends make a commitment to help each other recapture the holy nature of working in a unholy world. I don’t know anyone who can’t benefit from that kind of group. After all, no one should have to lie when they answer the question, “How’s it going?”

Still intermittently lurching through The Shaping of Things to Come – working its content into my thinking between the end of the activities of a day, and my eyelids falling like blinds across my eyes. One image (pp.85-86) that has stayed with me these last few days:

The image of a “billabong” — “an Australian term for a pond or lake that was once part of the bend of a river or creek but which has been cut off from the flow as the river slowly changed direction.” Frost & Hirsch use it to talk about generational changes that happen in churches. “Where once their parents or grandparents were part of a church that was like a flowing stream,” now the current generation are feeling themselves to be “trapped in a stagnant backwater” — a lake or a pond within which life is slowly being choked off.

I remember a story being told of a tribe of people who lived on the bank of a river, and the river was either dammed or diverted by another tribe further up the river. It seemed to be making a similar point, but I can’t remember the detail or in which book I read it (was it Mike Riddell, Douglas Coupland…?). Has anyone read it (based upon my poor description), and can they point me to it?

Anyway Frost and Hirsch’s reference to the billabong struck me in this way. Life, culture, and the world around seems to have moved on well ahead of church, moved in new directions, are grappling with new contexts and issues, meanwhile many churches are stuck, passed by, remote, and unable to bridge the culture and gospel divide. The gospel is rendered ‘life-less.’ The ‘gap’ grows bigger by the day and like a billabong over time, the church shrinks, people leave and new people with a nose for ‘death’ don’t come. The ‘flow’ of the Spirit is in all of creation, the flow continues, he/she flows in places many churches have long lost touch with.

I guess something else I wonder is how present and active the Spirit of Life is amongst ‘our’ (generic) gathered life as church. Not to imagine that he/she is not present, but more to wonder if a “billabong” church stuck effectively in the past loses an ability to read the Spirit “wind,” an ability to sniff the “scent of God”? Not sure that “if” they lose that ability, “how” they lose it? How do we get “stuck,” “cut off from the flow as the river slowly changes direction?” Perhaps as E. Glenn Wagner has said, the reason is that “we have forgotten what it means to be the church and to do ministry.” Perhaps there is more of the Spirit outside of the church, active in the world outside the ‘four walls,’ and perhaps like Jericho it’s time for the walls to come tumbling down!

Read it here!