You Can Pay Him Now… or Pay Him Later

            “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.”

            That was the tag line for an old oil filter commercial from the 70s. The idea was that you needed to change your oil filter on a regular basis (with that particular brand, of course) and if you did not, you would face the consequences. It was implied was that your car would break down.

            I've been thinking about that lately because we have begun an overview of the book of Job in our small group. This is not an easy book to look at. The book raises hard questions, but they are good questions to raise when it comes to faith. If we don’t let Job raise the questions, then life will.

            The bottom line to Job is this – can you trust God? That's what Job struggled with, and that's what many of us struggle with as well.

            Real life experiences of sickness, suffering, pain, disease, and death weave themselves into the tapestry of this question. And they certainly played a vital role in the book of Job.

            Through the years I have seen church leaders and preachers try to steer people away from believing God's involved in this world. The views they advocate range anywhere from “God always leaves people on their own” to “anything that looks bad came from the devil or people—and God had nothing to do with it.”

            I have seen leaders seek to comfort folks in moments of pain by explaining that God saw the bad things happen, and he felt awful for the people involved. Unfortunately, they portrayed God as caring but helpless.

            Furthermore, the problem with those beliefs is this: through instinct, observation, or biblical knowledge, people recognize God’s power. God either involves himself directly in what happened in this world, or he voluntarily holds back his power to change an outcome —and, like it or not, that means God is unwilling to change an outcome we perceive as negative.

            I am not saying it is our job to figure out everything that happens in this world. Scripture typically assigns credit (or blame) to one of three factors:

1. God’s activity
2. The Devil’s activity
3. The consequences of sin and a fallen world

            In the case of numbers 2) and 3), God withheld his fire and allowed the “negative” to occur.

            Job teaches that it is our job to have peace with whatever happens in this world, and to trust God with it. For those who refuse to do so, they win in the short term because God allows them, in their free will, to have it their way—they get to hold their own opinion.

            Here’s how that plays out:

• It is the parent who chooses not to trust a God who allows his child to suffer or die.
• It is the adult who chooses not to trust a God who allowed her to experience abuse as a child.
• It is the spouse who chooses not to trust a God who allowed her to experience a bad marriage.
• It is the worker who chooses not to trust a God who did not allow him to get the job he wanted.

            You can freely choose to not trust God. You can choose to do so in an active and angry way, or you can choose to do so in a passive and angry (and hidden!) way.              

           But guess what? It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because you are engaging in a decision and a life that is based on a lie. Your decision is based on the idea that God is not worthy of your trust. The TRUTH is… God is worthy of your trust. That is the message of Job.

            Moreover, if you refuse today to recognize that God is worthy of your complete trust, you will recognize it someday. At the very least you will recognize it at the end of the world. This truth is behind Paul’s words in Philippians 2:

            9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

            To put it another way: you can pay God (homage) now, or you can pay God (homage) later.

            Some of you without realizing it will pay him homage out of your own flesh.

            That mysterious pain you are experiencing is not a self-contained, organic physical problem. Rather it’s root is spiritual and rooted in the consequences of your lack of trust in God.

            For some of you, that disease you are battling does not have anything to do with genes, or dank, or catching a germ or virus. Rather, it is rooted in your lack of trust in God and the avalanche of stress that created in your life.

            For some of you, that depression that you are battling is not the result of chemical imbalance passed along by genes; rather, it is rooted in your refusal to trust in God and the way he has chosen to participate in this world.  

            People often cannot function well when they do not trust in God. They bodies and minds cannot hold up under the weight of distrust.

            Believe it or not, I wrote the previous statements very carefully. Let me emphatically assert: what I said does not apply to all people and all pain. It refers to some people and some pain.

            If it helps any, I have been guilty of the same sin myself from time to time. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of forming a new support group and calling it “Trusters’ Anonymous.” Care to join?

A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America

            “What are you doing these days?”

            That is a question I’ve been hearing a lot the past month. My reply usually goes like this, “I have formed a chaplaincy company offering spiritual care to employees in the workplace.”

            What follows typically is one of three responses:

1. a blank stare
2. a request to describe in detail what I do, or
3. a question as to why spiritual care is needed in the workplace.

            When I first heard about chaplaincy in the workplace I experienced those same responses, well—maybe responses # 2 and # 3. I want to address question # 3--why spiritual care is needed in the workplace. Check that, I want to allow Ian Mitroff and Elizabeth A. Denton to answer it.

            A few years ago, Mitroff and Denton wrote a thought-provoking book called A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America. Mitroff held the Harold Quinton Distinguished Professorship of Business Policy at the Marshall School of Business at USC. As an organizational consultant, Denton was in high demand and employed by several Fortune 100 companies. Clearly, these were not preachers or pastors pushing a Christian agenda.

            One area of research that caught my attention was their interviews with employees working in U.S. corporations. The authors stated that two answers summarized well the sentiments of those surveyed:

•             1) “Organizations feel free to beat up on us 40 to 60 hours a week. Then they put the burden entirely on us to repair ourselves on our own time so we can come back for more!”
•             2) “Organizations are constantly wanting and demanding more and more of us all the time. But they can't have it both ways. They can't have more of us without getting and urging the whole person. Organizations must give back and contribute as much to the whole person as they want in return.”

            Employees in the corporate world do not hold those feelings alone. People holding jobs ranging from factory workers to teachers share them as well.

            Sadly, too often organizations and businesses do not seek to integrate the spiritual with the realities of the workplace. Many go in the other direction. Many seek to address the challenges of the workplace by walling off employees from their souls. Leadership too often demands that their employees compartmentalize their spirituality from the workplace.

            Ironically enough, according to Mitroff and Denton, many business leaders attempt to draw upon the spiritual without realizing it. They challenge their workers to show enthusiasm—failing to realize the word’s original meaning was “God within.” They pimp spirituality trying to energize their workers!

            Enthusiasm in its purest form is a spiritual concept. Employers must tread carefully. If they succeed in eliminating the spiritual from the workplace, they will ultimately kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

            I believe Mitroff and Denton are correct in their assessment, and that is one of the reasons I have chosen this course. I am convicted that employers must face up to the fact that people are spiritual beings and that they must address the spirituality of the employees. To do so offers the worker tools for finding deeper meaning in his or her work. Thus, the employer transitions from functioning as a competitor of God to a servant of God. Rather than creating fragmentation in the life of the employee, the employer offers integration—of mind, body, and spirit. This raises the enthusiasm, energy, and creative levels of the employee. To borrow an old slogan, the employer is symbolically saying to the worker, “Be all that you can be.”

            In that kind of workplace, everybody wins.

A Sacred Calling

“69% of the country believes that a bad day at the beach is better than a good day at work.”–Gallup poll

            I think this is sad. When an ancient Jew heard the word we translate “work” read from the Old Testament, the concept it brought to mind was not simply engaging in some type of compartmentalized labor. Rather he thought of work and worship. The notion was service (sacrifice) to God as offered through work. Six days a week in ancient Israel, the Israelites were to offer to God their work.

            The other side of the coin was the Sabbath. On the seventh day, the Jew was to rest. But rest here was not simply a cessation from labor. Rather, it was understood to be, again, a service to God. This rest was an offering to God—worship. The byproduct was re-newal and re-creation.

            The biblical understanding was never that a person would work until he or she reached the point of retirement, and then that person would be able to finally begin doing what he enjoyed. Instead, the biblical ideal was to work until death. The good life was to find work in something about which one was passionate. That person would work six days, and rest one. Both acts were offerings to God.

            And if a Jew was not passionate about her work? She could find consolation in the fact that she was offering a sacrifice to God through her work. Work was truly a sacred calling.

How You Can Impact an Overchurched Culture—Pt. 2

          Elaborating on last week's theme, I want to emphasize that one of the most effective ways of reaching an overchurched culture is by serving the poor. I write this for two main reasons:

1. Overchurched (and in some cases, unchurched) people identify this ministry with Jesus—and rightfully so. The Gospel of Luke is a gospel highlighting Jesus’ ministry to the poor. In Matthew 25, Jesus makes serving the poor a salvation issue.
2. When we live by Jesus’ ministry, it authenticates our message. In survey after survey, numerous young adults who have left churches–obvious examples of the overchurched–have stated that they place a high priority on helping the poor. They have revealed that churches that attract their attention in a positive way are those who demonstrate a clear commitment to fulfilling Jesus’ mission of serving the poor.

            The North Main church of Christ in Winters, Texas made a huge impact on their community of overchurched people because of their commitment to serving the poor. When we lived there, people who were “hard on their luck” would occasionally pass through town needing help. After 5 PM and on holidays, some of these people would stop by our house. They had been sent to us by local establishments such as Dairy Queen–all having received a variation of the same message: "If you need help, go see the Church of Christ. They help people."

            I must confess; there were times I was not wildly excited to have my holiday “interrupted.” Having said that, I realized at the time that it was a whole lot better being known as the church who helped people rather than being known as “the church whose members think they are the only ones going to heaven.”

            The servant hearts of those North Main members changed outsiders’ perception of the congregation. (Incidentally, let me emphasize, those Christians were already serving in that way before I moved there. I had nothing to do with forming their faith.)

            Writing this, I think about several of the Christians of Shiloh I have observed over the last few years. A number of them have spent much time ministering to the poor in ways such as partnering with Christians of other churches to feed the homeless of Tyler, working with other Christians in serving the “working poor” at a downtown location, serving people in the fields of health care by offering help as dentists, nurses, and doctors. I have seen Christians become foster parents and adopt children. All of these actions are like deposits accumulating in the “good-will bank accounts” located in the hearts of the overchurched.

            Now, let me emphasize, we need to watch out for the temptation of downplaying opportunities to share our faith. The world is full of organizations that began as beacons of light seeking to serve people and call them to Jesus… only to devolve into do-gooder organizations indistinguishable from secular charities.

            The world is filled with materially affluent people who are spiritually impoverished. We should never be satisfied simply because we helped a person climb out of physical poverty and ascend a materialistic ladder. Rather, our prayer should be that all of these cups of cold water open the doors to many human hearts, so that these might receive the ultimate supplier of human needs: Jesus.

How You Can Impact an Overchurched Culture

            I have shared how I see myself engaging an overchurched culture. What about you? I think there are ways you can do so effectively.

            If you are not on a church staff, you have an advantage over those who are: for instance, those of you who have jobs outside of the congregation have special opportunities to penetrate the overchurched culture’s protective shell.

            To illustrate, let me take you back to the North Main Church of Christ in Winters, Texas–where I preached for seven years. I never saw a congregation where such a high percentage of members sought to take the presence of Jesus to the workplace. One example was found in the field of teaching.

            Teachers would minister to their students who lived in dysfunctional families and in poverty. Indeed, North Main’s greatest ministerial legacy arose out of a teacher’s ministry to three children from the same family, who did not have enough to eat.

            I remember one mother of children who occasionally attended our church. One weekend, she overdosed on drugs. She was hospitalized in Abilene–40 minutes away. I visited her there and found with her a junior high teacher who was a member of our church. The teacher had stayed the night with that frightened and very sick mother.

            Winters was an overchurched community at that time, but let me tell you–it was ministry of members like the teacher, which lent authenticity to their name–Christian.

            Had you asked someone in the community about the congregation during that time, you might have received a response like this, “I am not certain about all that they believe, but they sure love people.”

            To summarize, here’s what you can do:

·      show Christ at work

·      serve people at work

·      search for opportunities to serve people who are in the extended families of those you impact through your work

This will lend authenticity to your message.

            Many people who are overchurched have left their churches because they were disillusioned with people who were in their churches. Observing somebody live a life of Christ-like service often destroys that disillusionment. This in turn will go a long way toward demolishing the hardness of their hearts.

The Road Ahead for Mark Edge

            Last week I talked about how I had mistakenly spent my years in the Shiloh pulpit trying to think of strategies to reach the unchurched. After I stepped down from the pulpit, it occurred to me that Tyler was mainly comprised of overchurched people, not unchurched people. “Now what?” I thought.

            About two months ago, a friend mentioned to me that Interstate Batteries had a corporate chaplain located at their headquarters in downtown Dallas. I had never heard of a corporate chaplain and was curious. I could not find any information on their website, so three weeks ago last Thursday, I decided to drop by their offices while in Dallas. The receptionist could not have been nicer, but the chaplain was in meetings all morning, so she promised to have him call me.

            He did and we had a good visit by phone. He later sent me their corporate policy on chaplaincy. However, in that moment I was still curious, so I went to the largest bookstore I knew of in downtown Dallas. I searched for information about corporate chaplaincy or chaplaincy in the workplace, but the store had nothing in print on the subject. I went to the coffee shop, fired up my laptop, and began researching online. I discovered that a movement of chaplaincy in the United States had been at work for quite a while.

            Business Weekly, Fortune, The New York Times, and other media sources have all reported on the concept of offering spiritual care to employees in the workplace–and occasionally outside the workplace.

            Some people interviewed spoke of facing a crisis such as the death of a loved one, and not having a church home. They needed someone to help them with their grief and to conduct the funeral. Who better to turn to than a chaplain?

            My mind spun back to my days living in West Texas. I had officiated a number of funerals there for people who had no church affiliation and I found it a wonderful opportunity to minister to hurting people. Many of those people had been overchurched. Occasionally, these opportunities opened the door for people who wanted to hear about the Lord or to return to him.

            Returning to the present, I began to ponder the possibilities regarding workplace chaplaincy. The concept definitely appeared to reflect the scriptures. For example:

1. Work is important to God. The second commandment God gave to Adam and Eve involved a job–take care of the earth. He told them again to work in Genesis 2:15. He further commanded Adam to work in Genesis 3; only it was after the fall. Consequently, God told him the work would prove much harder.

2. God often provides images of workers to describe him in Scripture i.e. “builder” (Proverbs 8:27-31, “metal worker” Isaiah 1:24–26…)

3. Paul tells Christians they ultimately work for Jesus (Colossians 3:22–23.)

            The biblical ideal sees work as a sacred endeavor. This is good news, for we spend approximately ¼ of our adult lives (before retirement) working.

            In previous decades, Christians and non-Christians have harbored a view that work was a compartmentalize task, separated from the spiritual part of the Christian life. In early 2000s, Princeton University established a think tank dedicated to uncovering the connection between spirituality in the workplace.

            I believe a chaplain entering the workplace can bring the presence of Christ and assist workers in the spiritual pursuit of serving God through work. Indeed, by reconnecting the workplace with the spiritual, workers can further maximize their potential. This will in turn assist employees in reaching their potential. All of this affords the bosses and owners of businesses and corporations their best chance to earn profits for themselves and their shareholders.

            I am commencing today with the chaplaincy service to the East Texas area. I am assuming that I will be addressing overchurched employers and employees, who don’t want to be sued by the ACLU or any other special interest group. My approach will be holistic—I am addressing the spirit while others address the needs of the mind and body. I think I am going to call my service:

WorkEdge as in:

WorkEdge

Maximizing Lives

Maximizing Productivity

            (Quick! If this is a bad idea—tell me… before I print up my cards!)

            As I mentioned, I have been researching for over three weeks this subject. I have related a few of the reasons why I'm excited about serving in this manner in the Kingdom of God.

            All things considered, I see this as the best way yet for me to witness to the power of the gospel to an overchurched community. Let me emphasize, the mission of workplace chaplaincy is not evangelism. It is to provide spiritual care to the employees. However, a byproduct of that relationship could very well be evangelism. In addition, I would certainly welcome that opportunity. It would have to be at the employees’ request—not mine. Yet, it is inevitable, if I minister to enough people, some will want to know the Lord better.

            I think this is an opportunity from God, and I will find out soon. I don't plan to borrow money. If God is not behind this, I will have to do something else before too long.

            I pray God blesses this ministry so much that I have to ask others who are qualified to assist me. I would be pleased pay good money to these Christians gifted by God for this ministry–men serving men and women serving women—in the marketplace.

            I have been reading recently H. W. Brands’ new biography of Ulysses S. Grant. During the early part of the Civil War, various Northern generals squandered opportunities to win the war. Grant on the other hand, was dealt the tougher challenge from the beginning. Yet, he established a pattern of winning through persistence. If one strategy did not work in Vicksburg, he would attempt another… and another… until he won the victory. He used the same strategy of perseverance in Virginia in the later stages of the war. 

            Grant to this day is known as a great general. His genius lay mostly in his relentlessness, a quality few generals had.

            I think we Christians, especially those of us in overchurched locales, need the courage to remain relentlessness. We try a strategy; if it does not work, we try another.

            We try relentlessly.

            That is my aim when it comes to reaching out to the overchurched.

The Road Ahead

            Shortly after I stepped down from the pulpit last August, I realized I had made a mistake. No, not stepping down from the pulpit. Rather, I had preached for over 20 years about reaching the unchurched. That worked in some cultural contexts. For example, I spent almost 5 1/2 years living in Argentina in a city of half a million people, most of whom were definitely unchurched. That has not been the case in my ministry experience in the United States.

            A month or so after I left the pulpit, it occurred to me that most of the 80% of the people in Tyler who were not part of a church were not unchurched–they were overchurched. There is a big difference.

            Unchurched people have little knowledge of God, Jesus, or Scripture. They are truly secular.

            Overchurched people know a lot of information about God, Jesus, and the Bible. They have simply chosen to not allow it to impact their lives. Overchurched people, for various reasons, have been vaccinated against Christianity. It is as if they have received a tiny injection of Christianity, and they have built within themselves a spiritual immunity to Jesus and his church.

            I spent almost seven years asking the same question every day–how do we at Shiloh reach the unchurched people of Tyler? I was asking the wrong question. We are a generation away from Tyler comprising itself primarily of unchurched people. All along, I should have been asking–how do we reach the overchurched people of Tyler?

            That question raises an entirely different set of questions, yet they are equally important. Neither the unchurched nor the overchurched know the Lord. However, each group is strategically approached in different ways.

            I am still raising questions about how to reach the overchurched. I have some ideas, though. More on that to come.