How to fire your neighbor as yourself
How to fire your neighbor as yourself, why Christians should lean into automation and AI as a means of blessing—not eliminating—people, and why excellence is “your ticket to entry” in sharing the gospel at work.
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[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:04] JR: Hey, friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of Mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as college students, security guards, and occupational therapists? That's the question we explore every week. Today, I'm posing it to Jason Woodard, an operations leader with more than 30 years of experience in the manufacturing industry, who currently manages a plant in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Jason and I sat down and talked about how to fire your neighbor as yourself, why Christians should lean into AI and automation as a means of blessing people and not eliminating them, and why excellence is your ticket to entry to sharing the gospel that work. I think you guys are going to enjoy this conversation with my new friend, Jason Woodard.
[EPISODE]
[0:01:06] JR: Jason Woodard, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.
[0:01:09] JW: Jordan, brother. Thank you for having me on. I am super excited to be a part of this ministry. Thank you.
[0:01:15] JR: Yeah. Hey, longtime listener. First-time caller. You got any favorite episodes?
[0:01:19] JW: Ah, I do. Janitor, Josh. I loved it.
[0:01:22] JR: Janitor, Josh. I love Janitor, Josh.
[0:01:25] JW: Yes. I bought his book for my four-year-old granddaughter. Yes. It was a great episode. I'm like, “What?” I don't know. I just think it was the epitome of what you're doing here. It's like there's this guy doing this job and he's glorifying Christ through it and loving on people and doing his work well. Yeah, I'm a huge fan now.
[0:01:42] JR: Now, you need to write a book for your granddaughter called, Warehouse Manager Woodard or something, like let's go, like you got to catch up to Josh. Hey, just speaking of which. I think before we can understand your specific job, I think we got to understand the basics, just very basics of the company you currently work for. What's the 32nd summary? Is it Geislinger that you work for? Geislinger?
[0:02:06] JW: Yeah. It's Geislinger. It's a family-owned company out of Austria. Founded in, I believe, in 1958. So, really, really cool family story. It's on generation four now of leadership. We have a business here in the US, that's owned by that family or wholly owned subsidiary, I guess you would call it. We manufacture dampers and couplings for very large powertrains. You think 1500 horsepower and above in heavy-duty applications. We're in ships, trains, big power generation stations, and yeah, basically our product takes torsional vibration out of the system and ensures that the drive train lasts longer.
We're well known for being at the high, high end of quality and durability. Our tagline is “Built to Last” and we have products that's been in the field for decades. I've seen a product come into our plant for servicing that was built in the 80s. We're pretty proud of, yeah, the product that we make. That's a little bit about who we are. There are plants around the world in Asia and here in the US, and yeah, the largest facilities there are in beautiful, beautiful Austria.
[0:03:15] JR: I love it. All right. tell us about your role within the company.
[0:03:18] JW: My role is I'm a plant manager. I oversee the operations. I have a small engineering team, a scheduling team, production, maintenance, and human resources. We're responsible for basically, what we call product realization. The raw materials are purchased by our purchasing team and we take it from the raw material state to the finished good state as efficiently as we can, adhering to the quality standards that our customers expect and making sure our employees are safe along that way.
We do machining and assembly in our facility. We take steel and machine to size, holding tolerances down to 20 microns for engineers who know their numbers. I mean, that's like a third of a human hair. We hold tolerances very tight and then do the final assembly and then some painting, and some products and ship it out. That's my responsibility.
[0:04:12] JR: I love it. I'm glad there are some listeners who understand the words you're saying right now because I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm just like dampers. I don't know. They make something physical out of steel like that's about all I took from that. I've also never had a job in a plant or a warehouse for any extended period of time. My parents own a food wholesale distribution business. I spent some time in college working in the warehouse there, but I've never had a job exactly like yours. I imagine many of our listeners are in that boat. So, take us a level deeper, right, into your shoes. What does a typical day look like as you manage this plant?
[0:04:51] JW: Yeah. I mean, I'll give you an example. I guess from a perspective of I've managed multiple plants and multiple industries throughout my career. In the best scenarios, it's a pretty stable day and environment. You come in the morning, typically we're early risers. As a manufacturing person that's responsible for multiple shifts. My third-shift guys leave at 7:15 a.m. I like to be there before seven so that they at least see my face. If they want to come and talk to me about something they have a chance to do that. That's pretty common in most manufacturing plants. You run around the clock. Got to be there early to see the night shift team.
Then it's really just about process monitoring. Frankly, we have a cadence of meetings that we do each day and each week. We categorize everything we do very commonly by safety, quality, and delivery costs in that order, right? First thing we always want to make sure that we're running the plant safely and making sure people are not only following the safety protocols, but if there's any opportunities to improve that, that we're doing. We do audits, we do safety audits and we get input from the employees on that quality making sure that we're meeting the specs that the customer demands and expects of us. We monitor quality through different metrics in different ways.
Then delivery is a big one, making sure the stuff's shipping on time, because somebody's counting on the product that's leaving your building, right, to do their job or to build their vehicle or whether it's a food manufacturing site, someone's counting on that to leave on time. So, we monitor that. We look at that every single day. We do a walkthrough in the afternoon. My staff and I — we walk through the facility. We talk about every work cell and how it's performing, if there are any issues, and then we look at our schedule board and we're looking out a week to two weeks and we're making sure we don't see anything coming up.
We don't like surprises. We certainly don't want our customers to be surprised. I'd rather be dealing with a little bit of chaos internally and it never touches the customer. We make sure we're monitoring, monitoring all those things that way. Yeah, the thing that I love about manufacturing leadership is it's, you're working with a cross-functional group of people that come from a diverse set of backgrounds, right?
I mean, you've got skilled tradespeople, you have laborers, you have engineers that have had a lot of education. Oftentimes, they've grown up outside of the United States. You just bring all these people together to work for a common goal. That's [has] been one of the many things that I love about working in that field is just a big diversity and the people that you work with.
[0:07:22] JR: Yeah. You're an operator through and through, right?
[0:07:25] JW: Yeah.
[0:07:26] JR: You love systems. We talked a little bit about this in your pre-interview, but like, why should operations matter to Christians, particularly? Why should we care about bringing order out of chaos?
[0:07:38] JW: Well, that's it right there is the benefit and the peace, the joy, I guess, even that you bring order from chaos. So, and I'll tell you, Jordan. I've had a couple of opportunities in my career to step into a pretty broken operation, places that were – it was a turnaround situation. The people that work in those environments are under such a tremendous amount of emotional stress, physical stress.
[0:08:07] JR: Why? Tell me why.
[0:08:07] JW: Because it's just a mass chaos all the time. Nobody knows what they're supposed to be doing. They're getting reprimanded for things that are out of their control, these processes and tools that are dysfunctional and broke. These unfortunate people who are trying to do their job with broken processes and broken tools, and yet they're the ones being held accountable for it, which is absolutely wrong.
I've seen people, physically, get hurt very badly and without getting into a lot of gory details, I mean, you can imagine around large equipment, there have been some severe, severe injuries that people will have for the rest of their lives. I think part of my job as an operations leader and as a Christian, that for me to come into an environment like that and help bring order out of that chaos and stability, and some level of peace and clear expectations for the team and give them the tools they need to do their job well is, it's a tremendously rewarding thing to do and to see.
Again, it's still work — and it's still challenging, but I've been able to walk through over the course of a year or two going from, again, very, very broken dysfunctional processes, people that are just, they hate coming to work and they're fearful of their jobs, they're fearful of their safety, and to go from that to people are like, “Hey, I know what's expected of me. I know what's going to happen today.” I can trust the people that I work with,” — coming in as a leader with some level of vulnerability and telling them, “It's okay. I'm here with you. We're all a part of this. It's not me against you, us against them. We're going to come together as a team and get this operation under control.”
Yeah. I mean, operations, it can impact, especially in manufacturing, it can have a positive or negative impact on hundreds and hundreds of people inside of the building that you're responsible for, and it matters. It matters to their physical safety, as well as their emotional benefit.
[0:09:59] JR: 100% and a most fundamental level. Through your work, you are loving your neighbors as yourself. You're coming into something broken, saying this is bad for people, and you're fixing it. I would also argue, you're reflecting the character of God. You wrote to me in a previous exchange, you said, “God is a God of order and control. So, for me, my work is restorative.” I want to try to put words in your mouth and you correct me if I get this wrong, Jason, but when I read that, I was like, “Oh, man. This guy gets it.”
You're connecting God's work in Genesis 1, which is creating beauty, but also creating order out of chaos. You're connecting that to the disorder that Satan brings about that the fall brings about in Genesis 3, and our call to be repairers of creation and to restore creation through our work today. Am I interpreting that right?
[0:10:53] JW: I know, that's exactly right. I am a huge restorative person. In fact, for some people might know there's a book called Strengths Finder. It's a personality profile test, right? You get your top five and one of mine is restorative. I learned that about myself and that it made sense. But yeah, to come alongside a team of people and help to restore things. They don't have to necessarily be totally broken. I mean, I'm fortunate in the role that I'm in now. I stepped into a very stable environment. Frankly, it was, that was a breath of fresh air for me, but there's still always opportunity for improvement.
I look at it a little bit like our sanctification, right? We grow in our holiness. We grow in our sanctification. The Holy Spirit never stops working on us. We're always growing more like Christ. I looked at that in the work environment and I said, “How can I help improve processes and develop people?” It's always those two things. People and process, and restoring, and helping, and developing, and growing them. I'm not the most creative person that you'll ever meet. My wife is an artist. She's an art teacher. She's just super, super creative. I don't have any of that. Yeah, I'm not that person, but I am an executor and I love to restore things that have been broken.
[0:12:08] JR: I was reading the other day, a commentary on Genesis 1 and the cultural mandate of verses 26 to 28. I was reading a commentary specifically on the word subdue or God in the first commission God gives humankind. He calls us to subdue the earth and this commentary was saying, hey, this word subdue, “To make the earth more useful for other human beings benefit and enjoyment” Right? Because that first commission becomes difficult in Genesis 3, but God never once retracts it. He never cancels the first commission, right? In fact, fast forward to Revelation 22. What is it that we're going to be doing for eternity? We're going to be reigning with Christ over the new earth, essentially a lot of the first commission, right?
I just think about that when I look at a job like yours. You're making the world more useful for other human beings’ benefit and enjoyment, right? You're leaning into that aspect of the first commission. So, we can assume that that work matters to God. It makes God smile as you do that work. Do you think about that as you do this work? Like, man, every opportunity I have at work today is an opportunity to worship God and bring him pleasure or not. Is that – are you conscious of that at any point as you're going throughout your day, Jason?
[0:13:24] JW: Well, I will tell you that I am absolutely conscious all the time of how my work glorifies the Lord and probably more and how I interact with my team members.
[0:13:34] JR: Yeah. Talk more about that.
[0:13:35] JW: I have a deep passion and heart for the people that work in plants, because I came up through that. I started off as a welder. I've worked every shift. I've been a production operator. I've ran all kinds of crazy machines. I've worked in maintenance. I went through a skill trades apprenticeship program. I've been a supervisor. I mean, I've worked weekend, 12-hour shifts. I've worked third shift, second shift, first shift, 4/10. I mean, I've done all of that. If there's a job in a factory, essentially, I've done it.
I know the stresses that it can bring. I know the joy it can bring. So, I have a, I think a unique sensitivity in my role to the people that keep the factory running, because I've been in there, literally been in their shoes. I grew up around that type of person. That was the upbringing I had was around my blue-collar industrial people. I think about all the time, how can I, the way I interact with them, glorify God and to be an encouragement to them, speak the truth in love. I mean, there's – you got to speak the truth, but you need to do it in love.
I think about how the scripture tells us that Jesus came full of grace and truth. In my work, you need to bring grace and truth. You need to bring truth to face the brutal facts of the situation. It might be a disciplinary issue with a person, but you can do that in grace and love. I think that's so important. I've had to terminate employees. Again, I did it in a way that was dignified of them, and respectful of them. Anyone I've ever had to do that with, I've prayed for them before and after. I prayed for the situation. I think about, how I want to honor God through all of that and how I interact with all of these people and how I treat them, and how I help them enjoy their job more and get more benefit from it. Yeah, I'm huge on creating a culture like that. That's a big deal for me.
[0:15:30] JR: Go deeper on the case study of firing somebody. I would imagine given the roles you've had. You've had to do that more than you'd like. What advice would you give to the listener on how to fire their neighbor as themselves, right? Like how to make one of the toughest – execute one of the toughest decisions in the workplace in a distinctly God-honoring way? What does that look like?
[0:15:53] JW: Yeah. That's a great question. I have a very clear answer that I've came up, and formulated in my head over the years. Thanks to God and a lot of mentors. Number one is, number one rule, never, ever surprise somebody, ever, because that is mean, that's evil. So, I would say that – number one is always set clear expectations for your team. When someone's not meeting those, address it early, now and address it often and escalate that in a way that's obvious to them as you're escalating this.
I always tell my team, my supervisors, especially if you have a performance issue, do not ever walk into the HR manager's office and say, “We got to fire so and so.” Let that be the first time that HR partners heard about it, right? If you get to that point, you need to bring your HR partner along. You need to let me know depending on the size of the plant. I've had plants where we had 400 people and I can't be involved in all of those, but you have to bring them along as another person. Let them sit in on those conversations. I've done that before. I've sat across the table from a manager that was, I've had conversations with and I don't think they're hearing me. I don't think they're getting it.
You know what? I'm not the perfect communicator. So, I bring in my HR partner. I say, “Let's talk about this together, because maybe I'm missing something. I want this to be really clear that we have an issue and it's not going the right way. So, what can I do as your manager? What can I do to help you be successful? Here's what I need from you.” Right? To have that very open, transparent dialogue with them.
Then in the end, and again, I've had that last final conversation and they knew it was coming. I've had multiple times where that person had cleaned out their office before, and we sat down and met. Now, in a sense, that made me feel good. Now the process never makes me feel good, but it made me feel good to know this was not a surprise because I never want it to be a surprise. I think that's the cardinal rule on that. Just don't ever let it be a surprise.
[0:17:56] JR: Yeah. It's good. But once you've made the decision, how do you do it in a distinct way, right, like you mentioned praying for that employee. What else are you doing that you think is distinct, because of your faith?
[0:18:07] JW: Well, I think it's the way that you talk to them. You're empathetic, you know that this is going to be hurtful to them. I mean, they're going to walk out of that building and they don't have a job now. They don't have a way to make an income, at least not right now. I think being sensitive to them, knowing that they're going to be swirling in their mind making sure that they know that they can reach out after they leave if they have questions, but really being just empathetic in that discussion, knowing that they're going through literally probably one of the most painful events in their life. I mean, aside from losing a loved one. Being fired from a job is depending on the level you're at.
If you're a mid-level manager and you're getting fired from your job, that's a really, really big deal. That's a really big deal. So, having that conversation in a way that's respectful of them, that's empathetic to their feelings and acknowledging that, and doing what you can to help. Different companies have different policies, but if you can give them a severance or extend their benefits in some ways, I think those are things that be as generous as you can, as you possibly can with them, knowing what they're going to walk out of that building and be facing.
[0:19:13] JR: Yeah. Generous in ways that make no sense to non-believers, right? If you're in a position to do that. That's something I've always strived to do in the ventures that I've led and the way that we've let people go. I think when this topic comes up, these ideas of grace and truth are always seen as opposites of each other or to use other words, right, like excellence and love, right? Like love is letting the person stay on your team, but excellence demands that you fire the person. There are a lot of times though, where these are not competing ideas for me. A lot of times, one of the most loving things you can do is to let that person go both for their sake and for the sake of the rest of the team that is staying there at the company. Would you agree with that? Can you talk about that for a minute?
[0:19:57] JW: Yeah. There's a story I'm going to share with you, Jordan, that I've shared for years. This was pretty monumental for me. I was an operations manager. First staff-level management position. I was in a plant. I don't know, we had 150 people. I was responsible for three shifts. We had a lady who, it just was having some struggles, very angry, and having a lot of performance issues. We had talked to her and talked to her, and we finally called her in and let her go. She was very angry. I mean, she was just, she said some things out of anger and that's all right.
Again, you expect that you don't go back at them. Now, this plant and then where we lived at the time was, it was a big plant in a small community. Okay. I'm talking 1200 people population level of community on a plant, good size. Fast forward, to months, I don't know, months, not years, but months. I'm at an event, it was summertime and I'm at an event of a second cousin, something, a bunch of people. “Hey, come on over. We're going to hang out, yard games, and all that.” Okay, cool. I'm over there and then she was there. This has happened to me many times. I've run into people that I've let go. Then you never know how they're going to respond.
She came up to me and she thanked me. She said that she had gotten into real estate and was very successful and got to dress up every day and loved her job and she had been miserable working at the factory and hated it and was so glad. It was the best thing that ever happened for her. I always remember that. I believe very firmly that God has given every human a set of skills where they can go be really good at something. Sometimes we get into positions that don't match that skill set. So, as managers, that becomes obvious at times and maybe you can move them within your team and they can be a fit, but there's times when it's just not within your organization for whatever reason.
To your point, to do it, again, in love, to work with them, to let them know that things aren't going well. Let them start. You know what? If someone comes in, you've been walking through a performance management process with them and before you have to terminate them, they come in and give it their two-week notice. Man, I'm glad for that. They get to leave on their terms and gofers. I tell them that. Good for you. I'm happy for you. I truly am. I've stayed in touch with people over the years who have left my team in that situation and I'm truly genuinely excited for them and happy for them, and we'll help them in any way I can.
[0:22:23] JR: Yeah. I think anytime this topic comes around, I think about Proverbs 27:5, which says, “Better is open rebuke than hidden love.” Right? To make that fire, to make that termination, if you have to, it's better than hidden “love” right? Because at the end of the day, you're loving them and loving your team by making that, by making that decision. There's lots of talk these days in manufacturing circles about the automation of work, right, and taking the human element out of work. How are you thinking about this as a Christ follower, right? Are you spending a lot of time thinking about this these days?
[0:23:02] JW: Well, Jordan, again, 30 years into this and I've seen, I've literally seen factories become more and more automated. When I first started and the first factories I worked in, there were literally zero robots, zero automation. I mean, we're talking the early nineties, which wasn't that long ago. I witnessed the transformation of automation. I will tell you that companies that do it well, automate through periods of growth, and I've been able to be a part of that, where you're not cutting jobs and laying people off while you're bringing in automation. That doesn't have to be the approach you take.
I will also say that what I've seen over time, and it will continue, is that, yes, automation comes in. That just means that the person who used to, let's say, for example, very rudimentary, but they used to do nothing but load and unload a machine all night, all day long, hundreds and hundreds of times. Load, unload. That is mind-numbing, physically draining work. Now fast forward a few years and you automate and maybe now that person has the opportunity to be responsible for what we'd call a sell. Maybe it's half a dozen machines that are being loaded and unloaded by robotics and they're responsible still for the product, and they're learning about robotics, and they're learning about quality control, and they're learning about automation.
Guess what? They're not breaking their back all day, loading and unloading parts and damaging their fingers, and getting their hands pinched on things. If I look around in the plant that I'm responsible for now, we produce very heavy products. We have cranes and hoists everywhere. Our guys do not load machines by hand. Now, at some point in the past history, they would have had to, because that technology didn't exist, but I have guys on my team that have backs that aren't in great shape, but they're able to keep working because they have these tools to do the heavy lifting.
So, we're asking them more to work with their minds than just to bring their bodies to work. I see manufacturing becomes more exciting for people that work in it, because you are able to bring your mind to work and you're able to be challenged through different types of technologies that you're responsible for and become more of a technician than just a general laborer. So, that's where I see the benefit.
[0:25:20] JR: Yeah. You're viewing it through this lens of like, okay, automation isn't just to cut costs and eliminate jobs, but it's how do we make the work more enjoyable, less drudgery? How do we move closer to Isaiah 65 and people long and enjoy the work of their hands, right? I guess is what frame are you looking at automation through is what you're saying.
[0:25:43] JW: Yeah. That's exactly right. That's the frame I see it through. I will also tell you, Jordan, 10, 20 years ago, operators were bringing and I mean, business operators were bringing in automation primarily to drive costs down, because the competition from overseas was so aggressive. I will tell you now, most general managers and plant managers that I talked to, and I would include myself in this. The main focus for automation now is because the helps not available. That's you can't find the people. It's not about, I got to get the costs out. It's, I can't find enough people to run these plants.
[0:26:18] JR: We want to keep them. Want to keep them.
[0:26:20] JW: Yeah. This is one way we can do it. Hey, you sent me a message the other day about how much you enjoyed this episode of mine on The Word Before Work Podcast about how to transform your frustrations into other people's blessings. This series I've been producing called, Thanks for Thorns and Thistles. For those who haven't listened to that episode, assuming you could remember it, that was a couple of weeks ago. Can you give him a quick summary of the main idea of that post?
[0:26:48] JW: Yeah. The main idea that I remember is if there's something at work that annoys you and frustrates you and all of us have that, right? We can all name it. How do you ensure that you're not propagating that same thing to others or you're not creating different frustrations and different barriers for other people? I think that one of the examples you gave was, if you're getting bombarded by emails and you're like, I'm drowning in emails. Why do I get all these emails? So many of them don't even really matter. They're not that important. You need to ask yourself, are you doing the same thing to other people? Oftentimes, the answer is, yes, you are. As believers, we need to, yeah, we need to judge ourselves rightly.
[0:27:29] JR: Yeah. I'm glad my writing was clear enough to remember it a couple of weeks after the fact. Yeah. That was the point, right? I think we can thank God for the thorns and thistles that make our work difficult if, they create empathy that allows us to better serve those that we work with. If we can transfer that pain that we experience in our work and transfer into a form of, okay, how can I make work less difficult for other people? I actually think automation is a pretty good example of this, right? We were just talking about that. Can you think of another example, Jason, of when you've turned the pain caused by thorns and thistles in your work in empathy that allowed you to better serve your team?
[0:28:11] JW: Well, I have an example that comes to mind. It might be a little more selfish, because it's a thorn in thistle, I was dealing with, but my team was dealing with. There's a pretty important business process that we run in our organization. It was just not a good process. It just, it was ambiguous. It was confusing. People would get frustrated every time we'd come together once a week, basically as part of this process, the whole team cross functional group and work through it.
I think everybody left every week feeling like we didn't talk about things that were important. We spent time talking about things that weren't important. Nobody was on the same page. We were all a little confused. So, we worked and I led the effort to work on it. We got to fix this process. Now, I'll tell you that it was frustrating because it was at least the old process was one that had been ran for years. When we broke that up and we tore it up and we started with something very different, it was six weeks of even more frustration.
People are like, “Well, at least I knew what we had before.” But we worked through that. Now, I see that that time we come together, that meeting and that process. Now the stress level starting to come down and people are like, okay, I know what's expected of me. It's very clear. It's very simple to understand. When I walk out of here, I know what I need to do in the next week. I know what you're going to do in the next week. There's no confusion on that.
[0:29:35] JR: Yeah. Yeah, but it was that, you had to experience that pain.
[0:29:38] JW: Oh, yeah.
[0:29:38] JR: To motivate you to solve that other person's problem.
[0:29:41] JW: Absolutely. Yup.
[0:29:42] JR: To love your neighbors and yourself. That's a good result of a thorn and thistle, right? Hey, we've been talking about the intrinsic value of your work, right? How the work you do of just operating this venture more efficiently matters to God. I do want to touch on the instrumental value of your work. Meaning you told me before you've been able to use your work to share the gospel with the lost. You told me this story in the pre-interview about a particular young man. It was a pretty incredible story. I was hoping you would share with our listeners here.
[0:30:11] JW: Oh, I'd love to. Yeah. It's one of those that through all my years of working, it's only time I've had this happen. I was a plant manager at a different facility from where I'm at right now. It was one of the turnaround examples I gave you. So, we came in, it was really bad, a lot of problems. We worked and worked on it. There was a gentleman, a young man there who was a supervisor when I showed up. He stood out to me from the very beginning, just a very talented guy. I got involved in helping to develop him. He didn't report directly to me, but I wanted to mentor him and develop him. I just saw a ton of potential and he was very open to learning.
We worked together, I guess, for three and a half years. I work in a way that people know that I'm a Christian. I talk very openly about my faith. My job is to come in and operate plants and do that well. It's not to proselytize people, but if I have the opportunity to talk with them about the gospel or my faith and we just do, because we just were working together and that stuff comes out, but it was right before when I had given my notice and let everybody know that I was leaving. I gave my two-week notice. I took him to lunch one day. I mean, by then I had even one time him and his wife, and my wife and I went to dinner one time, just as a recognition for something he'd accomplished at work.
We had gotten to be pretty close. So, over lunch, I just asked him, I said, “You and your wife ever, like considered getting involved in a church and just seeking out a relationship with God, like where you guys are, spiritually?” He's like, “You know what? He said, “We have. We've been talking about that like we need to do that.” I'm like, “Really?” I said, “All right, well.” I said, “Why don't you come to my church? You're invited to my church.” He's like, “We'd love to.” So, fast forward, so it's him, his wife, and they have a teenage son. So, fast forward. Months, they start coming. They get very involved. His wife has gotten super engaged and they make a profession of faith. They get baptized.
Jordan, you want to talk about – I’m always pretty excited when anyone gets baptized in our church. I serve as an elder there. It's a big deal. I mean, it's a joyful, joyful occasion. Aside from my own children's baptism, when Jesse — is his name, when he got baptized. I cried. Man, I just had tears going down my face. I'm like, “God.” Man, he orchestrated all that. He allowed me to be a part of that. So, yeah, they're still there. They've adopted some kids and their family is growing. They're still a part of our church and being mentored there. We don't work together anymore. He and I have went different ways. That was incredible. It's just incredible. Every time I think about that, yeah, well, it's just an incredible joy to have been a part of that.
[0:32:41] JR: I love that. I love that you said, hey, yeah, this is the only time I've seen this fruit, but you're not discouraged by that. You're encouraged that you got one opportunity to live. Yeah.
[0:32:50] JW: Yeah. I've had other people come to church. I've invited them to church and they come and then they come a couple of times or for a while and then they don't. That's okay. That's ours is to plant the seed. Ours is to be faithful. What happens is the work of the Holy Spirit. That's not our job. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. It was super, super encouraging.
[0:33:09] JR: There's this John Piper quote I probably said it on this podcast 10 times. I think about all the time. He says, “Our job is faithfulness. God's job is fruitfulness.” Right? We should be faithful representatives and to preach the gospel and word indeed. I'm curious, like back up before that lunch, how did you tend that soil? What were the seeds you had planted with your actions and just the way that you worked with this guy that you think the Lord used to make him receptive to learning about what you believe?
[0:33:38] JW: Well, I will tell you that the ticket to entry for all of us as believers is to go do our work with excellence and integrity. I mean, if you're not, I'm going to say, I'm going to tell you, if you're not doing that, but don't even talk to people about your faith. So, that for me was what laid the groundwork. This is the guy who has a high level of expectation for himself and others. So, as a leader, he's looking for people who come in every day and give 110% every day. He saw that in me. He saw in me my willingness to coach him and develop him and mentor him. By the time I was done in that role there, he was close to being promoted to manager. I had worked with him through that. I mean, I saw his potential.
I was open on feedback with him and coaching him and just investing in him. Just the investment, I guess, was a huge thing. I'm sure for him, because it is for me. People that have invested in me. I earned his trust. I earned his respect, his credibility. I earned the credibility, just the way that I worked and the way that I treated him. Again, he knew where I stood in my faith. Yeah. He also, he had a – and has had, when he was young had a rough background a little bit.
It was funny, because as I came to understand that I told him one time, I'm like, “I did, too. I had a rebellious time in my early twenties.” I said, “The only difference between you and me is I didn't get caught, man.” I said, “I'm not here to judge you for things you did because listen, I did a lot of stupid stuff too. By the grace of God, it didn't go a lot worse for me.” I think that meant a lot to him as well, that I still respected him and treated him with grace, even though I knew some of the mess of earlier in his life.
[0:35:27] JR: Yeah. Treat him as a fellow person in need of grace, just like you. Hey, so I've made this point a hundred times, right? That the ticket to entry to sharing the gospel, as you put it, which I love that is just being so good. They can't ignore you. Talk about why for a minute. I don't know that I've really gone deep on this. Why do you think that's true? Why do you think it was true in this guy's life that that was a prerequisite for you building a relationship with them?
[0:35:54] JW: Well, I mean, I think that's in the work setting that you're – I'll say to your street cred, right? If you're – we're there to work. That's what we're there for. That's what we're being paid for is to do our job and do it really, really well. People look at that and see that. When I've seen people, and it's been only a few in my career, but I've seen people who I believe, they're believers. They're very outspoken believers and they have a bad attitude. They don't do their job well. They don't give it a hundred percent effort. I'm like, people don't respect that. They don't want to hear anything you've got to say about your face, because you're not even coming in here and doing your job well.
I think that people just see that as a huge disconnect that, how can you tell me about your God and your faith and you're a Christian and you don't even come in here and do your job with any excellence. You don't even care. Your like, a lot of – unfortunately, a lot of other people. You're just like a lot of other people that just come in and have a bad attitude and don't do your job well. It's just, there's no credibility in that at all.
[0:36:58] JR: Yeah. This is what Paul's talking about at 1 Thessalonians 4, right? Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more, so that your daily life may win over the respective outsiders and especially at this, I don't know if this has always been true, but at least at a minimum, but this moment in time. If you want to meet people where they're at, well, if they're ambitious professionally, they have a high standard of excellence at work.
Unless you're meeting them where they're at, there's just nothing to really talk about, right? Like you're just not an incredible person. It's also a lack of integrity, I think. I think people get sniffed that out, like if I'm here to do a job and I'm not doing it well, that's ultimately a lack of integrity. I'm telling my employer I'm going to show up and do a job with excellence, but I'm not. There's a disintegration there, right?
[0:37:45] JW: Yeah. There's a huge disintegration, because we're not even going in and earning our wages. We're not earning the ability to be allowed to come back each day. I think as Christians, we shouldn't just earn it. We should exceed any expectations that are given to us, not only in what we do, but in how we do it. It has to go both ways. Yeah, it's exceed the expectations and what you accomplish and the results that you get, but then also exceed the expectations and how you treat your colleagues and how you treat your – if you have a bad boss and I've been through this.
You've got a manager that it's hard to work for and they're difficult to work for, but you work for them and you respect them and people see that and that stands out. You know what? There's been times when I didn't do that well. They frustrated me. I let people know that, but unfortunately, I've had, A, the conviction of the Holy Spirit. B, mentors that came alongside me that said, “You need to buck up. You need to respect that person. You need to learn how to manage up a little bit better.”
[0:38:41] JR: Yeah. There's a reason why Paul spent so much time writing about this. See Colossians 3, see Ephesians 6, because since the first century, at least, probably, hundreds of thousands of years before that. It is otherworldly to serve an employer with excellence, even when they're not looking. Even when they're a terrible boss. Even when you have to manage up, but to do that with excellence and love. Oh, boy. That one's a respective outsider. Amen, Jason.
[0:39:10] JW: Yeah. Work as the working for the Lord and not for man. I mean, if we did that. If we truly, every believer did that in the workplace, it would transform our workplaces.
[0:39:21] JR: Amen. Hey, Jason, you know the drill. Every episode, we land the plane with three questions. Number one, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to others?
[0:39:32] JW: Yeah. I've got a list. I think there's five here, but these are some of the most impactful books I've ever read outside of scripture. Number one, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey. It's a classic, but if you haven't read it.
[0:39:43] JR: Oldy, but a goody.
[0:39:44] JW: Yeah. You got to read it. That's a good one. Chosen by God, by R.C. Sproul. One of the most impactful theological books I've ever read. Chosen by God by R.C. Sproul. Another one that I've read more recently is The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson. It's super impactful, really looks at this whole idea of legalism versus antinomianism and comparing those two errors. Holiness. This is the old one, Holiness by J.C. Ryle. He's been dead a long time, but anything you can get your hands on by him is good. Then the last one, this is more back to the business and leadership book is, The Five Temptations of a CEO by Patrick Lencioni. Excellent book. Frankly, anything by Lencioni is really good from a leadership and business perspective. Those are mine.
[0:40:33] JR: Tell me more about The Whole Christ. I haven't read this book. What's the net of this?
[0:40:37] JW: Yeah. So, The Whole Christ, it's a deep book. This is going to be a really superficial paraphrase. It's thick, but it really, it looks at the two errors of legalism, right? Believing that we can earn our way to salvation, and there's a way that we can earn our way into the kingdom. Then the other opposite extreme error of antinomianism, which means, which is a view of, well, I don't have to do anything different, because Christ paid it all for me. He paid for everything. So, I can live how I want to. I will tell you that over the last 10 years or so, I've really worked through a struggle in those two extremes. It's like legalism. You tend towards, I'm a process guy. I'm a doer. So, I can tend that way.
[0:41:24] JR: Yeah. Legalism is easy. That's the easy one. Yeah.
[0:41:27] JW: Yeah. Yeah. Checking those boxes. It's an incredible book. Again, it's a pretty thick read, at least for me, but highly recommend that one.
[0:41:33] JR: I got to check it out. Hey, who do you want to hear on this podcast talking about how their faith should shape the work that Mere Christians do in the world?
[0:41:40] JW: There's a guy, a friend of mine, he used to work on my team about 10 years ago. His name is James Lorraine. He was an electrical engineer on a manufacturing team that I led. Since then, he's become, he's a leads business development for a software company. One of the smartest people I've ever worked with. He loves the Lord deeply. He's very winsome. He would be a great guest to have on here. I'd love to get you connected. He would be a good one to have.
[0:42:09] JR: Send me his information. I'd love to take a look at it. All right, Jason, before we sign off, we're talking to this global audience of Mere Christians, very diverse, vocationally. I'm sure there's some people listening right now in a plant, just like the one that you manage, but we've also got fortune 100 CEOs listening right now, right? It's a very, very wide range. What's one thing you want to reiterate to our listeners before we sign off?
[0:42:32] JW: I would say this, that your job is not just the way to generate income. That's something that you talk about all the time, Jordan. If they're listening, they probably understand that, but we can glorify God through the work we do as we restore, as I do, or as we create, as you do in ways just like God does. I mean, we can – not, to his level, but that we can honor him as we restore and create.
We should strive to honor Christ by doing our work with excellence. As I said earlier, if you're not doing your work with excellence, then you're not even going to get a ticket to share the gospel with others. You're not going to have the credibility or the respect that you need to do that. Do your work with excellence. First, do your work well, and then pray for opportunities to be a witness, to invite people to church, to share the gospel, and be ready to do that well.
[0:43:25] JR: Amen. Hey, Jason, I will commend you for the terrific work you do every day. For the glory of God and the good of others, for reminding us of why bringing order out of chaos matters. It's nothing less than God-like work that can reflect his character to the world. Thank you for giving us an example of what distinct Christ-like love and excellence can look like in the workplace, even when firing somebody. Man, thanks for just hanging out with us for a few minutes today. I appreciate you, brother.
[0:43:52] JW: Thank you, Jordan. Thanks for your work that you're doing. It's very impactful for people like me out here doing the work. Thank you. Keep it up.
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[0:44:00] JR: Hey, I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. Hey, if you did, do me a favor. Take 30 seconds right now to go leave a review of the Mere Christians podcast on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to the show. Hey, thank you guys so much for tuning in this week. I'll see you next time.
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