Welcome to the third and last session in the
one-day course on integration of
faith and careers. I need to, because a number
of you are with us for the first
time and some of the people who've been with us
all day aren't here, let me
quickly remind you what's gone before and
preview what will happen during this
hour. At 830 this morning we talked about God's
design for human work, looked
mostly at the creation account in Genesis and
suggested some of the ways
that God had intended for human effort and his
created world to fit together.
Argued that work was a natural part of human
life and a blessing, although at
this point marred by sin, and talked about the
ways in which we might nudge
our experiences back toward God's design and
away from the fallen reality. At 11
o'clock we looked at some career concepts and
stages. Most of that material
came from contemporary social science, some
labels for concepts that guide
people's careers, and looked at the kind of
natural sequence that frequently
occurs across time in individual careers. We
have set aside this last hour for
what we've called contemporary challenges.
Hoping to have some time to
talk about specific contemporary issues that
confront Christians as they in
their individual lives try to integrate faith
and career. And we will begin to do
that, but before I began to call on you to
participate with me in that
discretion, I want to spend a few minutes
talking about some New Testament material.
Some of what I will review is familiar to you,
although perhaps not organized in
this way, and some of the application will I
suspect be a bit new. The New
Testament was not written in a historical
vacuum. Indeed it was written
at a particular time and place and in response
to a particular set of
circumstances. May I take a minute or two to
sketch some of that background? The
most influential ancient culture had been the
culture of the Greeks that had
spread even as far as Palestine. It was a
culture that practiced a good deal of
slavery and regarded a great deal of work as
slave work so that upper-class
sophisticated Greeks engaged in very little
work relatively speaking. That
culture had been supplanted and in some senses
absorbed by Roman culture which
maintained the same kind of attitude toward
work. During the height of Roman
conquests, long trains of thousands of people
were led back toward Rome. They
were the captives of the wars out on the
various fronts and they went back to Rome
as slaves. Their choices were essentially to
live as slaves or to die and given
that choice most people chose slavery. One
found then that there was a long
history of rather extensive slavery in the
cultures where Christianity began to
spread. The slavery they knew was in some ways
very different from the slavery
that infected our own country. It was not
slavery along racial lines or at least
not along skin color lines so that very many
slaves in the Greece or Rome of the
day were not identifiable as slaves by outward
appearance. At one point in fact
the Roman Senate debated a resolution, a law
that would have required that slaves
dress differently from free men and women. Some
of the upper crust were a bit
disturbed that they had found themselves
interacting with slaves and not been
able to recognize them as slaves. As the debate
proceeded it became apparent
someone had done enough demographic research to
to figure out that there
were by now more slaves in Rome than free
people and the fear that came to
the forefront in that debate was that if slaves
were dressed differently and could
identify themselves it probably would not
possible be possible to keep them
enslaved. So the the law was was not passed
indeed it was dropped. Now what
was going on was not only was slavery not
identifiable by skin color but
slaves retained the right to earn money. They
had the right to as they grew more
wealthy to in many cases purchase their own
freedom and consequently the slavery
was not permanent. There grew up both in Greece
and particularly in Rome a large
working class of former slaves and the children
of former slaves men and women
who were now free people and owed that freedom
to hard work over a generation
or two. These working-class people formed
guilds and one finds hiding behind a
number of the comments in Paul's Epistles some
awareness of various
working guilds. Consequently the New Testament
speaks to Christians in a
context where there is a real appreciation for
work among some strata
of society. There is a disdain for work among
an upper strata of society and
there is at all strata some religious thought
that holds up as ideal the
idleness of the Pagan gods who would never have
disdained to to dirty their
hands creating a world. It was therefore a
complicated set of ideas into which
the New Testament is spoken. Now let's see if
we can place the church in that
context. Occasionally one hears that the New
Testament Church consisted mostly of
converted slaves. Certainly there were
converted slaves in the New Testament
Church but more recent thinking that has tried
to actually place the 1st
century church in its sociological context has
almost entirely abandoned
the notion that the 1st century church was a
was a church of converted slaves.
Without going through all the detail of that
argument let me just remind you of
some people you know about and think briefly
about their occupations. We'll
start with Jews that were part of the beginning
of the gospel and move to
Christians that you've read about in Acts and
other places. Jesus, a carpenter.
What's the role of a carpenter in a culture
where the primary construction
technique is wood? Some have suggested it might
be wise to think of Jesus and his
father more as a general contractor. Peter and
Andrew, James and John, Matthew.
Now let's move to some people out in the
Gentile Church starting with the
man who converted a lot of them, Paul. His good
friend the physician Luke. His
employer, a man who owned a tent making
business, whatever that was. Aquila, that
man's wife Prisca or Priscilla. A tradesman or
trades lady, Lydia. When one
starts looking through the Bible trying to
figure out exactly which occupations
we can identify with certainty we come up with
a list of occupations that would
place these Christians in what we might call
the working class or maybe more
accurately the merchant class. First century
Christianity seems to have been
a kind of middle-class phenomenon as much as as
any other social class. Now
when Paul speaks to those people in that time
and other authors of the New
Testament, what are the reasons that one finds
for working? Well I don't think I'll
take the time to read all of these scriptures.
I will read some of them
because some of them will not need reading.
You'll simply want to be reminded
of them and others perhaps are worth reading.
I've got quite a list of
reasons here. Reason number one, to be like
Jesus. Jesus is a servant. Here's
Colossians 3:17, and whatever you do whether in
word or deed
do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus giving
thanks to God the Father through
him. Wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands,
love your wives. Children, obey
your parents. Fathers, don't embitter your
children. Slaves, obey your earthly
masters and everything you do not only when
their eye is on you etc. etc. work
as though you are working for God. Second, and
this reason is almost
unique to Paul, to protect the gospel from
abuse. Several passages I'll mention
one of these, 1 Corinthians 9:7-18. At least in
Corinth there was
some kind of theological problem tied up with
work and Paul insisted that he had
a right to be paid and that he would not be
paid. That he had worked in order to
be able to say that he had preached the gospel
for free and he would not permit
the Corinthian Christians to deprive him of
that right although he insisted that
he did indeed have the right to be paid. A
third reason and I'll turn this time to
1 Timothy. To produce wealth for an employer.
Here's 1 Timothy 6:1
through 2. We don't usually read this passage
in that connection but listen to
it. All who are under the yoke of slavery
should consider their masters worthy of
full respect so that God's name and our
teaching may not be slandered. Those who
have believing masters are not to show less
respect for them because they are
brothers. Instead they are to serve them even
better because those who benefit
from their service are believers and dear to
them. These are things you are to
teach and urge. To provide for oneself is
another reason to work. I would refer you
to 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12. You'll remember that
there was some
controversy about work in the Thessalonian
Church and that is one of
the passages where Paul insists that Christians
ought to be providing for
themselves so that they are not dependent on
the church. Another reason
for work. To earn the respect of non-Christians
and one would almost hear
implied in this passage to earn the respect of
those parts of ancient
culture. That social class in which most
Christians found themselves where there
was a strong work ethic. Here is 1
Thessalonians 4:11-12. Make it
your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind
your own business, and to work with
your hands just as we told you so that your
daily life may win the respect of
outsiders and so that you will not be dependent
on anybody. Another reason is
to provide for one's family and let me read
this passage as well. This is 1st
Timothy 5 and I'm going to call your attention
to three verses. Here's
verse 4, but if a widow has children or
grandchildren these should learn first of
all to put their religion into practice by
caring for their own family and so
repaying their parents and grandparents. I step
down to verse 8, if anyone does
not provide for his relatives and especially
for his immediate family he
has denied the faith and is worse than an
unbeliever. And then verse 16, if any
woman who is a believer has widows in her
family she should help them and not
let the church be burdened with them so that
the church can help those widows
who are really in need. Now one hears in these
verses and in some of the verses
around them a very clear responsibility to care
for one's immediate family and
that stretches back at least as far as
grandparents. It's not a restrictive it
says care for one's family especially immediate
family and immediate family
seems to include both parents and grandparents.
Another reason that one
would find for working in the New Testament is
in order to participate in
benevolence to care for others and I would
mention to you Ephesians 4:28.
Ephesians 4:28 so that you will have enough to
give for others. The last
reason in this long list of reasons for work
that I'm going to mention actually
goes back to some of the things we said this
morning at 830 and the way I have
worded here in my notes is a Christian should
work to participate in the plan
of God, to participate in the plan of God. We
know that in our history we have
sometimes called our movement New Testament
Christians. That's in a lot of
ways an accurate description. It is a positive
description in lots of ways. It
says that we take very seriously the gospel of
Jesus Christ and the letters
written by his apostles and written to churches
of the 1st century. It also
says something that may not be so positive. It
suggests that we may be ignorant of
the Old Testament, that we may give it too
little attention and I mentioned that
possibility because I of course share that
evaluation of our of our history. We
have neglected the Old Testament. We have too
rarely given thought to the meaning
of Genesis and Psalms and first and 2 Kings and
these great Old
Testament scriptures that tell us that
everything that's here has come from the
hand of God. That the fundamental rules and
procedures and laws of creation are
made by God. That we find his handiwork
everywhere we look both above and
beneath and in the earth and we find then
fundamental human institutions,
marriage, families, work, government to be not
modern human innovations but
something that God made or at least planned for.
Interestingly enough if one
reads the literature of our history one finds
that there has been at least a
time when our fellowship did appreciate that.
Many of you would know that early
decades of the American Restoration Movement
brought together two streams of
thinking. Historians in that area sometimes
called them Campbellites and
Stoneites. The Stoneites were Southerners and
churches of Christ. That particular
strain of the American Restoration Movement has
been largely influenced by
the stone followers, the southern part of the
church and this morning I began with
that quotation from Talbot Fanning and that is
an accurate description of the
kind of thinking that's a part of that southern
wing of the movement and you
heard in that a certain hesitation about being
involved in certain kinds of
careers. One did not find the same kind of
hesitation in Campbell. You know I
read you Talbot Fanning's address at a
graduation ceremony for Franklin
College. Had one attended Bethany College in
those days one could have heard
Alexander Campbell as your graduation speaker.
In fact you wouldn't have had any
choice. He spoke every year. So a student at
Bethany College always heard Alexander
Campbell and if one reads through the
graduation addresses what Alexander
Campbell said to senior college students year
after year he regularly told them
to go forth and prosper. His favorite
expression was don't be a drone in the
hive of humanity. His notion was that God had
intended for every human being to be
a productive participant in the economy and
that the graduates of Bethany College
were to go out and be productive citizens and
participants in the economy
and also be fine Christian men and women. It's
not quite the Cotton Mather
quotation I read you this morning where one's
career is one oar of the boat and
it takes one almost halfway to Heaven but it is
clearly a rich appreciation
for a Christian involvement in in economic
activity and I would cite that
as a as a reason for work. Somewhere along the
way that has cropped up from
time to time including Alexander Campbell but I
should but I before I
leave I've been thinking about this New
Testament period and talking about some
of what the apostle Paul says about reasons for
work. Before we leave that
let me tell you that not too many decades after
the time of the Apostle
Paul some Christians began to be less
comfortable with at least some
occupations. By about 180 a number of Christian
leaders were expressing
concern about occupations of certain sorts and
let me read some of these to
you you'll find some of it interesting.
Tertullian noted a whole list of trades
that Christians could not follow. Pandering,
sorcery, divination, now those
probably don't surprise you. He was also
uncomfortable with any occupation that
was remotely related to idolatry. The two he
mentioned were incense selling and
school teaching because of course a school
teacher in our culture one might
be required to lead the Pledge of Allegiance.
In those days a school
teacher pledged allegiance to the Emperor and
Tertullian was concerned
about that. The canons of Hippolytus are even
more specific. They include
cautions for people who are employed as
goldsmiths, silversmiths, painters and
craftsmen that their craft never be turned to
producing idols. They forbid
attendance in the worship service of actors
well unless you've been cleansed
if you've been cleansed you could attend but if
you're one of these occupations
and haven't been cleansed and and I'm not able
to tell you what being cleansed
meant but but you're not welcome you're not
able to attend if you are an actor,
a gladiator, a charioteer, a fighter of wild
beasts, a runner, a huntsman, or a
priest in an idol temple. All of those are
somehow tainted. It's obvious to you
I think why some of them are certainly the
priest in an idol temple and
gladiators are to be watched with some care and
they would not baptize without
absolute proof of repentance. The following
people, political agitators,
politicians, dream interpreters, and we'd call
them bankers today, usurers is what
they're called them in those days. Those were
occupations that were suspect
and then some number of decades later European
Christianity began to celebrate
monasticism. There were in fact two levels of
piety. There were those of us
who were sort of quasi Christians who earned a
living and then the
super Christians who had taken a vow of
poverty, a vow of separation, a vow of
celibacy, and who did not, they worked very
hard in some cases but in very
particular occupations. They weren't out in the
marketplace participating in the
common occupations. That's some, that's
reminded you of some material in the New
Testament and it has tried to put some of it in
context. I'm going to ask you to
start to describe to me some of the challenges
you think contemporary
Christians face but before I ask you to start
doing that I'm going to mention
several, some of which you will have thought of
and some of which you perhaps
will not. I see three as particularly serious.
One is obvious, I think the other
two are less obvious. Number one, the emphasis
on success and the materialism
that is often a consequence. The emphasis on
success and the materialism that is
often a consequence. We live in a time and a
place where success is highly
valued and even our young people learn to
treasure those traits that lead to
success. So it's good to be wealthy, it means
you're successful and it's also
great to be bright, well-educated, or
physically attractive, or athletically
talented because those things will in due
course lead you to have wealth and
be successful. The scriptures do not call on us
to be successful. They don't
disparage success as something that occurs and
if one, as one reads through
the Bible, you find that many of the men and
women held up as spiritual examples
are by secular standards very, very successful.
The Bible never says you have
to be a failure. It is very emphatic though
that your goal cannot be wealth,
that your goal has to be something else, that
you have to be working for some of
these reasons we've talked about enlisted today
rather than in order to
pile up a stack of gold coins. Here is 1
Timothy 6 and these are
verses that are worth rereading periodically
through your whole life.
They are very sobering. There have been times
in the lives of my extended family
and immediate family where parts of these
verses made me shiver with
apprehension but I'm going to read 6-10 and
17-19. But
godliness with contentment is great gain. We
brought nothing into the world and we
can take nothing out of it. If we have food and
clothing we will be content
with that. People who want to get rich fall
into temptation and a trap and into
many foolish and harmful desires that plunge
men into ruin and destruction. For
the love of money is a root of all kinds of
evil. Some people eager for money have
wandered from the faith and pierced themselves
with many griefs. Now lest
you think that Paul is wanting the Ephesian
church to be a church of only
poor people, a little farther down these two
verses. Command those who are rich
in the church, command those who are rich in
this present world not to be arrogant
or to put their hope in wealth, which is so
uncertain, but to put their hope in
God who richly provides us with everything for
our enjoyment. Command
them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and
to be generous and willing to share.
In this way they will lay up treasure for
themselves as a firm foundation for the
coming age so that they may take hold of the
life that is truly life. So what
I hear in those verses is a very sharp warning
about a drive to be financially
successful as a goal, and I would say to you
our culture pushes us in that
direction. A second of the three major
challenges I believe is deteriorating
child care. It is my assessment that we
generally do not provide as good an
upbringing for our children as our parents
provided for us. That is partly
because changes in the workforce have not
brought about a similar kinds of
changes in family responsibilities. We live in
a time where an increasing number
of families need two incomes. Even in some
cases where the family does not
need two incomes, both parties to the marriage
wish to pursue a career, and if
one reads through the whole Bible and takes it
seriously, one certainly cannot
say that that's not appropriate. Proverbs 31
advises young man to find himself
a wife who makes a pretty good living. So it is
my judgment that the church needs
to adapt its thinking to provide room for two
career couples either by
necessity or choice. That's not what I'm
talking about here. I would say to you
that in many cases the consequence of that,
however, almost unrecognized is that
child care begins to suffer. Mom now has a job
and she still has almost sole
responsibility for child care because dad
hasn't made the same kind of
adjustment that mom has. So the children are
increasingly left with people who
may or may not be good role models, who may or
may not be good nurturers, and
children are less and less trained by their
parents. This is not a simple, easy
demographic change to which I have some magic
answer, but I say to you if you are
a parent or hope to be a parent, you and your
spouse as you decide how you will
divide up the wage-earning responsibilities in
your family, you
need to be acutely sensitive to the need to
care for your children. They in the
long run are much more important than any
almost anything else you're doing.
The third and last of these major, I'll mention
two others briefly, but of these
three that I think are major problems, the
third of these is the church is no
longer the primary peer group. Maybe I
shouldn't say no longer, but it's
fading. Interestingly enough, this was a
problem in the 1st century and some of
the passages to which I referred you in Paul's
Epistles have this as a
background, but rather than repeat those verses
let me cite some other verses for
you and talk about why they seem to have
occurred. One finds throughout the New
Testament repeated admonitions to love the
brethren. You've seen that so often
in the New Testament that you just take it for
granted. It's like the wallpaper,
it's always there, love the brethren. Why does
the apostle Paul so repeatedly urge
his hearers, his readers, to love the brethren?
Well an answer that comes
immediately to mind is that of course the
brethren aren't always lovable and
that's true. Those of you who've been close to
a small group of fellow
believers in difficult times or even in good
times have discovered that that
congregation includes a number of people who
aren't very lovable and perhaps we
simply need to be reminded to love the brethren
because it's harder to do than
it seems. But there's probably another reason
lying behind most of Paul's
admonitions. It's because most of his readers
as members of the working and
merchant classes in fact were tempted to view
their workmen's guild as their
primary peer group. They lived in a
neighborhood with other shoemakers or
tentmakers or dyers and these guilds were a
center of social activity. They were
central to the life of these cities and it was
natural to reach out to one's
friends in that shared one's work. It is
probably in contrast to that that Paul
says love the brethren. Look back to the church
for your peer group. Well is that
something that's 2,000 years old? Absolutely
not. One of the major trends
in modern corporations is to develop human
resource management policies that
create a kind of family feeling. We want people
who work at Dana Corporation to
regard themselves as Dana people. That is in
fact how they refer to themselves.
It's a very strong culture. It's a very fine
culture in a lot of ways. We talk
about lifetime employment. We talked about
promoting company loyalty. We talked
about the General Motors family. We are as a
part of modern management practices
trying to make our corporations important
reference groups in the lives
of our employees. Now a Christian who works for
one of those corporations and
is involved in producing that has to have some
second thoughts I think because
there is a danger in that and you and I if we
work with people who are employed
by such corporations need to remember that at
least the way I read the New
Testament business loyalty have to be limited
loyalties. I work at an
institution that works to create a family
feeling but this has to be a
limited loyalty for me. This is not the church.
This is where I work. I work with
some people I also go to church with but there
is a difference between the church
and my employer. Now that's a major trend in
human resources. We are trying to
raise productivity, improve quality, and the
mechanism we're using is trying to
produce family devotion at work and a Christian
needs to hear that that's a
subtle but potentially dangerous change. Now
there are a couple of other
challenges I'll just mention quickly. One of
those is outreach. How in modern times
may a Christian reach out to non-Christians at
work? I'll say to you I
think that if one can indeed work for the right
hands that we'll share in a minute. And the
last one of these I'd mention is
culture. A lot of attention these days to
corporate culture. Now this is not
identical to what I said before about this kind
of family feeling. It is related
but let me just talk about corporate culture
briefly. Some companies have
strong culture some have weak cultures.
Generally a strong culture advocates
values that a Christian is comfortable with. It
is in a weak culture that we may
find relatively open advocation of ideas that
are unpleasant for a Christian.
However, it's not the simple case that weak
cultures are bad and strong
cultures are good. It's much more complicated
than that. I have worked in
organizations ranging from very weak to
relatively strong cultures. Weak cultures
provide the Christian with certain
opportunities because you can pretty
much go your own way and stand up for your own
beliefs and advocate them. You
have a good deal of freedom in a weak culture.
Working in a company with a
strong culture one gives up some of that
freedom. Now usually the strong culture
is in the direction of high moral standards and
quality production but one
doesn't have the same kind of freedom. And that
strong culture if it turns
subtly exploitative or begins to take a
negative turn is very hard to resist.
And it is there sometimes that even a godly man
or woman will almost
unknowingly compromise his or her beliefs.
Well, we've tried to review some of the reasons
the New Testament gives for work,
made some references to earlier material today.
I've said to you I want us to think
about challenges that Christians face today. I
have listed five of those, three
that I think are very serious and a couple of
others that are perhaps not
less important in individual lives but maybe
less encompassing. I'll let me now
ask you to begin to talk to me. I've visited
with some of you between sessions
and over lunch and I know that some of you have
some strong convictions about
parts of this material. What are the, and let
me ask you to address either of two
issues. I'll let you pick and we'll probably do
both of these simultaneously.
What are the challenges that confront
contemporary Christians as they
try to unite their faith in their work? What
are those challenges? And what are
some helpful hints to fellow strugglers? What
have you done that works? What have
you seen someone do that works? What can you
recommend to me or to some of the
rest of the people in the room?
Would one of the challenges be how far to carry
the Christian belief into the work world?
Yeah. Yes. Yes. We have a number of, go ahead.
Yes. There's usually not a problem
with integrity depending on how one defines
that. Some of our brethren have
tried to build companies with a strong
Christian culture and that's a
comforting place for a Christian to work. There
has been some concern raised in
the business press about are those fair to
non-Christians? Do they become
oppressive? That's a tough issue. It's a good
one though.
On your number three there, churches fading as
the primary peer group indicates the workplace
is becoming that.
I'd like to observe that it seems to me that we
have lacked a supportive
people in the business world as they're having
to deal with that primary peer group.
If our relationship is close, where the person
sees him as an expression of God,
a demonstration of God in his work life, then
he has a close relationship with the people
in the church, then this peer group becomes his
available peer group for his
outreach that we have lost due to the moving of
our society away from the close
family knits and the small community cultural
ties that serve as our main
resource for outreach. So it seems to me that
if we reestablish that basis, then
that relationship that is, in a sense, a
threat, can become the opportunity.
Yes it could. And one can even hear a hint of
that in Paul's admonition to earn the respect
of outsiders
because he clearly partly has in mind that as a
shoemaker you are respected by fellow shoemakers
and you're interacting with them. It does
create a potential. I'm talking too much.
But it's a long day and as I get tired or I
talk more, I have to watch that.
What else would you like to say?
I'm trying to reflect on about the past 30
years that I've spent in a career in R&D, in
both very basic research and applied research,
in academia, industry, and government. And it's
kind of ironic that in all three of those experiences,
I think I have found maybe one of the greatest,
one of the easiest challenges that I have had
is oral professional integrity
because of the immense pressure that is placed
either to publish, to produce, or to equate
with originality in whatever specific job
you're tasked with or about.
And yet, it is very difficult for people to
understand that you must be willing to pay the
price of completely separating yourself from
any of those environments
if you get to a point where you cannot maintain
professional integrity and therein lies a
pitfall because of what reasons are we doing it?
Is it for the security to stay in this stable
mind that you mentioned for perfection?
Is it really a basis of Christian principles
that we don't? And that sends sometimes a
conflicting message to the people that you work
with, your peers, and the others that either
work for you or you work for.
And it becomes a very, very difficult thing to
work through that kind of scenario because as
hindsight, it's often easy to see what the
results of those things are.
I think the bottom line, at least that I have
observed with other folks, Christian and
non-Christian, is that the perseverance of the
one individual that made the sacrifices
professionally in other lives to maintain principle
was the most important ingredient that had in
fact persuaded other people either to take a
closer look at the principles of Christianity
or in the case where it was not available, had
completely convinced the people that they were
no part of it.
And that unsaid influence over a period of
time, and that reaches into all disciplines,
it's not sacred to me once we set the discipline.
And it's very, very difficult, it was for me
very difficult to make a lot of decisions early
on. I wasn't really so terribly concerned.
I knew that those were the Christian principles
that I should be living by. But sometimes I
looked in the past and wanted to get out of
guilt that it was not, I made those decisions
for other reasons.
And that was for, and I think what the superb
goal of professional success and then discipline.
And yet, I suppose it didn't make any
difference over the long haul, because again,
all of the feedback that I'm getting over the
years from colleagues and many others is the
fact that it did more to not dissuade people
from looking upon Christianity as a sometimes
or a part time effect.
But that one influence did take effect.
I don't know how to equate all of this, that's
the reason why I asked the original question
and then my question there.
In teaching young people, how do you equate the
quality of the types of things that you can
divide up your resources in terms of time and
resources without doing it without guilt,
without a hang up, and provide them with the
best channel, piece of enterprise?
I want to respond to that or point us in a
different direction.
Some of you haven't had a chance to say
something yet but want to.
I'm not sure, I may be saying the same thing as
the student just said. It seems to me that a
lot of young professional types with young
families, and I struggle with this and still
do, an older professional type with a young
family, is where do you have your balance?
You work in your professional being, your own
personal drive, you want to be successful, and
I've heard people in the business world talk
about, you've got to work, the competition's
out there working 16, 17 hours a week, and do I
have to come in and compete and reach my goal
of a million dollars that third year or five
years down the road, whatever the goals are?
It's biblical, I think, to want to do the best
we can do and use our talent, but how do you
balance that off with meeting your commitments
to your family and so on?
I'm not sure if that's what you were partly
addressing there, but I've heard people discuss
that sort of issue, and basically people come
down to different answers, but part of it is
they look back on their life and many of them
say, well I didn't have to put that time in to
be successful.
On top of that, what have I lost? My kids?
And some of those things are not redeemable at
that point. You cannot back up and redo them.
Yes, Sir?
Isn't the current book that Paul Faulkner is
working on now kind of addressing this, as part
of this issue, how to be successful in taking
the family with you? Are you giving some
lectures on that and probably working on the
book on that theme? It seems to me that he kind
of touches on both areas, not only the family
you're able to work with.
That sounds like a great title. And I know he's
working with some CEOs who seem to have had
success in doing that.
Are you trying to find out what they've done
and the biblical principles there?
You've got an employee that's not performing at
an adequate level, and you want the other
people in the organization to make some changes.
That employee happens to have a sixth child. Or
you can go on a whole series and have the other
person perform. At the same time, the employee
may be trying to support someone that is not
capable of taking care of themselves.
The baby for that would also be the influence
of the business owner, the man that bought the
money to purchase a house that his family lives
in, who loses his job and owes the money.
At what point do you claim the house? If you
want to hear that further, the examiners are
there and they're saying they're going to close
the bank and work it all the way through.
Most of the problems that bother people in the
working world are not as neat and clean as the
cases in textbooks, and it is not a choice of
white or black.
It's more what appears to be a whole series of
shades of gray, and it's hard to tell which is
the darkest and which is the lightest.
I guess I don't know anyone who's made those
kind of decisions over any significant period
of time who would tell you that they know
they've always made the right choice.
They've done the best they could, and they may
feel good about most of the choices. They may
feel that they made the right choice at the
time, every time, but hindsight makes you
wonder sometimes.
And I don't know, maybe some of you do, I don't
know a quick and easy way to give young people
a handy set of rules to go through that. It
seems to me that we can try to encourage them
to develop their character
and their sense of judgment and teach them to
be prayerful and thoughtful and careful, and
then we're back to providing, it's a different
context, but providing a support group for our
fellow Christians as they wrestle with those things.
I don't know many churches where that happens,
where people can bring those kind of ethical
problems to Sunday school. You've got to be
concerned about privacy in some of these situations,
but I don't know many places where a Christian
can bring those kinds of issues, even disguise,
to maintain confidentiality to a Sunday school
class or a prayer group and get help
desperately needed.
The only solution to that, useful, is to have
an elder that I can come to ask for some help.
Maybe he does not have the title of elder of a
particular congregation that I write.
That's a good practice, someone whose judgment
you trust, but who is not a part of the social
circle, so that there is much less danger of
information leaking.
I didn't hear what this man said in regards to
balancing career and family. Without exception,
taking into consideration educational level, or
money earned, or position.
I've never heard a person say, when he got
through raising his family, he got through his
career. I wish I had spent more time with his career.
That's right. Lots and lots of people wish they
spent more time with their children.
Many think that's the easy thing for being a
preacher. Really, that time problem is exactly
the same. If not worse, then you make the
change to have the time, and you're desperate
to take care of a teenage group or family
financially from a new start.
Ministers may especially have this problem of
confusing work and church, because the employer
is the church.
Folks, we have some more time left, but it's my
sense of these things that it's better to quit
early than late.
I'm going to thank you for your participation.
I encourage you, if you'd like, to bend my ear
or talk to someone else. I encourage you to
stay and do that.
I hope you have a delightful and profitable and
beneficial lectureship, and we'll see you all
next year, I hope. Thanks.