How to “do justice” and “love mercy” at work
One of the best 2X2 charts I’ve ever seen to help you evaluate how deeply your faith is connected to your work, how a waitress, actress, and public school employee are “doing justice” in tangible, bite-sized ways, and 2 things your pastor can do this week to help the mere Christians in their congregations more deeply connect their faith and work.
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[00:00:04] JR: Hey, everybody. 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 missionaries, but who work as travel agents, and game wardens, and mediators? That's the question we explore every week. Today, I'm posing it to Lauren Gill. She's the author of a phenomenal new resource called The Missional Disciple: Pursuing Mercy and Justice at Work.
On this episode, Lauren, and I talk through one of the best two by two charts I've ever seen, specifically, to help you evaluate how deeply your faith is actually connected to your work. We talked about how a waitress, an actress and a public school employee are doing justice in very tangible bite-sized ways. We talked about two things that your pastor can do this week to help the mere Christians in their congregation more deeply connect the gospel to their work. I think you guys are going to love this conversation with my new friend, Lauren Gill.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:21] JR: Lauren Gill, welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.
[00:01:23] LG: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
[00:01:27] JR: Times have been running away from us. We’re clicking record later than we usually do, because we're just new friends, but are acting very old friends.
[00:01:35] LG: Yes. Having both been in the space for a while. Yeah.
[00:01:37] JR: That’s right. I love it. Hey, so your official title, you're the Director of the Global Faith and Work Initiative at Redeemer City to City. You spent most of your career working as an actress, a producer. What got you excited about this space and this connection between faith and the work that Mere Christians do in the world?
[00:01:57] LG: I first encountered faith and work, theology. I guess you would say. In 2008, 2009, I was an actress at Redeemer Church in New York City. I encountered the Gotham Fellowship. I felt like growing up in a small town or rural community in Kentucky. They did not understand why you would want to move to New York City and be an actress and the Christian community there. I think the unintentional message was to serve God. You need to be a missionary or work in youth ministry or something like that.
[00:02:35] JR: Yeah.
[00:02:36] LG: I knew I always had it in me that I felt God was using me in the art space. So I just felt very counter to what I felt intuitively, but I didn't have legs to articulate it. So I was really grateful I did Gotham, which was a nine month faith and work discipleship program, and really got the teaching that I needed to say, “Okay, now I understand why this is important and how God is using work to shape me, and using the work I do to push towards his future kingdom. How work is a mechanism to love and serve my neighbors.” Then I went and asked David Kim around the Gotham Fellowship for a job after that. I've worked in the arts space at the Center for faith and work for several years. Then moved over to City to City to do faith and work more broadly, not just with artists, but globally.
I also in there did a stint as a counselor for six years and did mostly vocational counseling alongside my work at GFW. That was wonderful, because I think that allowed me to see the struggles and decisions that people in all different industries in New York have to make, and how they're how the brokenness in other parts of their lives affects their work, and vice versa. Those things really all – it's very interesting, because it's a weird, varied career path that I've had, but those things have all really informed each other, the arts background, and the counseling and the faith and work piece of all. I see how God has used them all to connect to each other in ways that I never could have planned.
[00:04:11] JR: Sure. I love that. I love how you articulate how. Even something like the arts can move us closer to a vision of the kingdom. That's really what this book is about, that you and your team have published, called The Missional Disciple, and very specifically an element of the kingdom, pursuing mercy and justice at work. I told you before we started recording, I've been recommending this resource to everybody I possibly can. I'm excited now to like recommended to my whole audience publicly. What's the 30-second, one-minute, whatever overview of what the study is, who it's for and what it's going to help them do?
[00:04:47] LG: Yeah. I think we really felt like in the faith and work there was a faith and workspace, right? Then there was a way that churches talk about pursuing mercy and justice, which meant in your volunteer time, right? Everyone's working 2,200 hours a year or more, 40 to 60 hours a week, whatever it is. We want that to be activated for mercy and justice. We want to be missional in all of our lives, not just in the margins of our volunteer time.
I frankly, have very little margin at this stage in my life. I work a full-time job. I have a part time hustle, and I have two children. There's not a lot of margin for me to pursue mercy and justice, if I'm not doing it actively through the work that I'm already doing, right? Or if I don't think that's part of my job as a mother, is to equip my children to have a passion for these areas.
I think we just really want the workbook to be something where anyone in any job, we have great case studies, with people who are from a waitress to a banker and Goldman Sachs. We want people in whatever area they are working in to be able to say, “How can I be a restorative presence in my workplace, and think about how my work impacts those who are on the margins of my city or community? How can I bring them more to the center?”
[00:06:12] JR: I love this. We're going to talk real practically about what this looks like. First, I do think it's important that we lay some theological foundations. One of the things I loved about this study, The Missional Disciples that you guys did this, in this study course, workbook thing. You hit on something that I talked about a lot, when I called the five-chapter gospel, or the unabridged gospel. This larger biblical narrative of work, can you give our listeners a summary of that narrative to frame the rest of the conversation?
[00:06:44] LG: Sure. I think we really wanted to situate people within the biblical story, because as I'm sure you've probably talked about with people many times, a lot of people think that work is part of the fall, right? That I have to work, because the world has fallen and in reality, we see that work was part of the creation narrative, and it existed before the fall. That the fall, of course, affects every aspect of us personally and systemically, right?
We know that the systems that our workplaces operate within are now broken, and corrupted by sin. We know that our own hearts as we exist in workplaces and try to navigate relationships that work are corrupted by sin and need redemption. We wanted to situate people to be able to then say, “Okay, well, how is God using my work to push towards redemption?” Right? There is a future reality, physical reality in the new heavens, the new earth, when these systems operate without sin. I as someone working within an industry or field I am part of pushing towards that. I can start to be part of that process now.
So, that's the lens that we really wanted to give to people when we have an exercise and one of the lessons where we ask them to walk through their industry with a creation/fall redemption lens, and say, “What was the original creational goodness of my industry? What is broken about it? How do I see it starting to be redeemed? What are the places I see God working now?” That requires a lot of Holy Spirit imagination, but I think it's a really healthy exercise, to not just view our professions through the fall. It's very easy to do that, right? But we wanted to also point people towards the future of their work.
[00:08:43] JR: Apply this to the vocation you spend a lot of time sinking your teeth into acting, right? Apply creation/fall/redemption to that to try to make this a little more practical and tangible to our listeners.
[00:08:57] LG: Sure. I spend time even now doing acting, but also producing. I think there's so much creational goodness in the idea of God using story to reveal himself. I mean, so much of the Bible is story and parables in how God, that's how God is communicating his truth to us and his reality to us. So I think that's really important. I mean, the things that have taught me the most about forgiveness, and death, and restoring relationships are movies or plays that I've seen that really hit on those issues in my heart. It's not because someone told me, “Hey, the Bible says this is important in this verse.” It's because a story gave my imagination a picture of what that could look like.
I think that's really the creational goodness and also just the idea that God was a creative God. He created something out of nothing. He took the raw materials of this world and turned them into more amazing things. He wants us as co-creators to also be doing that. That is really – I mean, when you make a film, from the production, it is a miracle that it ever comes together. It really is because you hire all of these people, they have never collaborated until they all show up on set, right? Everyone has to be doing their job to a certain level or it's not going to happen. You have you have the sound people. You have the cinematographers. You have the makeup people. You have the set designers, the actors. Everybody has to be doing their piece.
If you do everything, and the person who was holding the boom mic, didn't do their job, well, then you don't have sound and you don't have a movie. It just takes so much collaboration. It's really miraculous, actually, and beautiful to see all of these people coming together and making something bigger than themselves. That being said, there's a lot of brokenness. I mean, there's been a lot of discussion in the film industry in the last year around how crew are treated, are they given adequate rest periods? There's a lot of conversations around, which stories get told, and are they representative of all viewpoints or are we elevating some viewpoints over others? Who has access to funding is a huge issue, right?
It's very difficult now to get really creative new stories made. A lot of the things that get made or things that they know have been made money before. So we'll just repeat the same patterns. It's not always the best idea, right? That's being made, so that's a real area of brokenness. I think that one of the ways I see redemption happening is, I made a movie recently. My cinematographer was very vocal about the things that she felt were would be most honoring to her crew and things that she felt like were needed to be put in place, and maybe would make it more difficult to do the film in certain ways, but would be honoring of their dignity and their work in ways that allowed them to work with healthy rhythms.
I think, I mean, I don't know, 10 years ago, would a female cinematographer on an indie project have felt like that was something that she could say. I'm not sure. I thought that was really lovely. I think there are areas of redemption where people now feel more comfortable speaking up for the dignity of others, themselves, and others. I think because there are so many more platforms now, even if you can't get funding in certain ways to do a project, maybe to the extent that you would like to. You can do it in a smaller way and put it on YouTube or put it on Vimeo or whatever. There's the ability to be creative, even if it's not maybe at the level that you would desire.
[00:12:49] JR: Yeah. This is good. Yeah, I think, if our listeners are going to get a vision for how they can do justice and mercy through their work, they have to first catch a vision for what you're alluding to in this example of acting, which is not just personal brokenness that we preach so much in church, right? Like, I as an individual sinner, my sin severs my relationship with God and I need to be reconciled. What you're talking about is systemic brokenness, right? The fall of an industry, right? You just talked about this in The Missional Disciple. Can you go a level deeper and help unpack what you mean by systemic brokenness? Because I know in a lot of faith traditions, even today, we don't talk a whole lot about this.
[00:13:36] LG: Yes. I mean, I think, we have this great lesson where Missy Wallace has made this thing, it's a two by two and she calls it Faith and Work Amidst Brokenness.
[00:13:46] JR: Yes. I am such a sucker for great two by two –
[00:13:48] LG: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Missy is –
[00:13:49] JR: This is one of the great ones. Yeah, talk us through this. This is very helpful.
[00:13:53] LG: Yeah. She basically says, if you have a low view of personal brokenness and a low view of systemic brokenness, right? Then you're probably a nominal Christian, right? If you don't really think you're a sinner, but you also don't really think that anything in the world is fallen, right? I'm not sure what category that falls into. If you have a low view of systemic brokenness, but you have a high view of personal brokenness, then if you're in the faith and work space, you might have an evangelism, and ethics focus, right? You'll very much believe you're a sinner saved by grace and others are sinners saved by grace, but maybe not think that sin really impacts workplaces or systems or cities or governments or anything like that. So you'll say, “Well, we need to focus on ethics, right?” Are you doing the right things and evangelizing to co-workers, to colleagues, to customers, right?
Not that those things are not very important and absolutely in the Bible that you should be doing right? But that's not the full picture. Then on the other end, you have people who perhaps have a lower view of personal brokenness, but often say, “Well, the system is broken and the system needs to be fixed.” Again, yes. Very valuable to say we need to be doing really strong work to fix the systems that we're in and put a high priority on that. Sometimes, if you don't have a high view of personal brokenness, your own blind spots can impede that, right? You may have a savior syndrome mentality about, we're fixing the system, but not see your own brokenness and blind spots, or may not be as sensitive and empathetic to the brokenness of others who contributed to that system.
If you have a high view of both, right? Of personal and systemic brokenness, it really unleashes the fullness of the gospel, because then you can care about all of these facets and feel like your work needs to be inclusive of all of them. So, I think it's a really powerful lesson. So yeah, it's a great way of thinking through all of that.
[00:16:01] JR: I think this lesson alone is well worth the cost of admission to the book and the study. It's so good. What I loved is, you're hitting on something I talk about a lot here on the podcast. We had my friend, Andrew Scott on the podcast, arguing that, in the last 200 years of church history, pretty much alone, many church traditions have focused so much on personal brokenness that the Great Commission is functionally become the only condition of the church, right?
We've largely ignored the cultural mandate of Genesis 1, right? We've largely ignored the great commandments to love God and love others. We’ve ignored what you all call, and I don't know that I've ever heard anyone refer to Micah 6:8 in this way, as the great requirements, right? To do justice and love mercy. Now, I do want to unpack this for a second, Lauren, because Michael was written to the kingdoms of Judah and Israel hundreds of years before Christ, right? So what in Jesus's teachings can help us see this as the great requirement, that's a strong word, of every single believer today?
[00:17:10] LG: Yeah. I think we also have a lesson where Robert Guerrero talks about how Jesus could have come anyway, but he came as a marginalized person. He came to an unmarried, pregnant teenager. He came and incarnated the margins himself. You just see in the way he interacts with people. He chooses those over and over again to spend time with who are on the margins of society of the society of His time. I think you really see that incarnated throughout His life.
I do want to just touch on, it's hard when we talk about systemic brokenness sometimes, because I think, then it can feel so big that we say, “Well, I don't know how to do anything about that.”
[00:17:58] JR: I can't fix the film industry.
[00:18:00] LG: I can't fix the film industry or I can't dismantle the issues of the public school education system in New York City's, someone who has children as part of the education system in New York City like, I can't fix that system. So, there's nothing I can do, right? When we see systemic issues. I was so grateful, one of the teachers in our courses, a woman named Dennae Pierre. She introduced me to this idea of being a restorative presence. If I walk around New York City, and I think, well, I have to dismantle broken systems, right? I have to participate in cultural renewal as I walk throughout my day.
Those feel very intangible to me, but if I go throughout my day, and I think about: how can I be a restorative presence? Someone who's building up and not tearing down in every interaction and every relationship? That changes the way I interact with the bodega owner I buy my coffee from, the person who's driving my subway. All of these, the teacher when I dropped my kids off at school. It really changes the way I interact with the people around me and my city. If I carry that phrase in front of mind, in a way that I think the broken systems conversation can sometimes feel too heavy for.
[00:19:25] JR: I do think this topic feels overwhelming, right?
[00:19:28] LG: Yeah.
[00:19:29] JR: How do I as an actress, as an entrepreneur, as a barista, as the bodega owner, use my work to do justice and love mercy? It is why I want to get to the ground level here and get real practical with our listeners. It's why I loved the many case studies you guys share throughout this study, showing what this does look at a practical level. My favorite case study by far was this restaurant hostess and waitress named Tina. Can you share with our listeners how somebody like Tina is doing justice in her work?
[00:20:04] LG: Yes. It's actually my favorite faith and work story, because I feel like when you hear it, then no one has any excuse to not be thinking about –
[00:20:12] JR: I love it. Yeah.
[00:20:12] LG: How they bring their faith to their work. She basically gives these examples about how she was a waitress. That the temptation is as a waitress is to focus on the tables that you know will be big tippers.
[00:20:24] JR: It’s basically, people ordering drink after drink.
[00:20:27] LG: Yeah. The people who come in and they're very well dressed or whatever. You think, “Okay, well, they're going to be the good tipper. So I need to give them a really great hospitality experience, because I want the big tip.” Understandably, right? How she had a pastor, Jim Mullins, who really encouraged her to think through praying for how does God want to use you differently as a disciple in this space?
She started thinking about, “I think Jesus wants me to give those who come in and who are maybe less affluent. Those who do not go out to eat regularly, who may be out just for a special occasion or something, a really excellent hospitality experience, even if I don't get the tip that I would if I focused on those other tables.” I think that's a lovely example of someone in an industry saying, “Who would Jesus love here? Who would Jesus focus on here?” It's not what the world would tell us to focus on. I think it’s a beautiful example.
[00:21:29] JR: I love it so much. What's another example you really thought was tangible and practical, from the course of how to do justice at work?
[00:21:38] LG: Yeah. Lisa, who's in the course, she really talked about it at a heart level. She worked in the New York City public school education system. She worked for the Department of Education.
[00:21:47] JR: I love this story. Yeah.
[00:21:49] LG: Yeah. It was a very vulnerable story. She talked about how she essentially realized there were voices in her workplace that she was not valuing as much as others, that there were non-white voices that she was not valuing as much as white voices, and that she was convicted, “This is not right. This is a heart issue. I need to ask them for forgiveness. I need to invite their voices in. I need to value the process more than just the outcome,” because she talks about how she was when the outcomes were good, then it felt like fine, right? That actually, she was not honoring people in the process by the way she was navigating the process.
We paired that case study with our lesson, which I think is really the important piece about mercy and justice, which is what are the areas of brokenness in my heart that are keeping me from pursuing mercy and justice? What sin or idols are keeping me from doing this? Because you can get a to do list all day long of, you need to do X, Y, Z, to think about these things, but really, it stems from a heart issue, right? So, we really dig into, are you worried that by giving other people voice, you'll lose power or influence? Are you worried that if you advocate for someone the way my cinematographer did, right that that means other people might not be respectful of your advocacy and you might lose approval? Like all of these things that we have as idols. How are they keeping us from loving people in the way that Jesus wants us to be a loving people?
[00:23:32] JR: Well, what are those for you, Lauren?
[00:23:34] LG: Yeah. So I think for enacting, there's always a temptation for status and approval, certainly. I think my best example of not pursuing mercy and justice personally, were when I was doing my clinical hours to get my counseling license. I was working in an outpatient psychiatric unit in New York City Hospital. The people had schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, most of them were homeless, and a lot of them had violent histories. Some of them express violence towards me at times. It was not out of anything other than the brokenness of their minds, right? They were mentally ill, but I really struggled in that job.
I was there for 10 months. Every day I would go and I was like, “Oh, I don't like doing this. This is checking a box.” Right? Like for me to get my internship done so I can get this counseling license. These are really hard people to love. I would sit across from people every day who you would supposed to be counseling them and they would describe the same hallucinations to you day after day. So it just felt like, I wasn't really helping, except by making sure they were being medication compliant. At some point in the year, I realized the job is sitting with these people and being present with them. Their lives are in such upheaval, right? Because of their mental illness, and they are God's people, and he wants me to just sit with them.
If it means that I'm not actually doing anything to move the needle forward on their care, but I'm just being present with them listening to them talk about their hallucinations, or delusions, or struggles, right? Then that's the job. That's the way to love them. I think for me, it really showed me that I cared more about productivity than loving people who were really broken, because I felt useless in the situation, right, because I didn't feel like I was useful. My skills were not being utilized or helpful. That was what I cared about. That idol was more precious to me than loving these people.
It makes me sad now, because I think now that I've gone through this course, I wish that I can go back and do that time over with some of these ideas in mind, because I think I would have loved them better.
[00:25:58] JR: Yeah.
[00:25:59] LG: Yeah. I think for me, that's the most tangible example I have of my idolatry impeding me from mercy and justice.
[00:26:09] JR: I appreciate you sharing that, because if I were in your shoes, I think I would have done the exact same thing. Thank you for being vulnerable. You know what's interesting to me? In Tina's example, the waitress, seeing people come in and out of a restaurant. In Lisa's example, physically interacting with parents at school. In your example, physically interacting with patients. It was relatively easy for you to spot a group of people who are being treated unfairly, right, because they were like, literally right there in front of you. I'm thinking about our listeners who work remotely, right? An increasingly great percentage of our listeners, how do they even identify the people in their workplace or their industries who are on the margins that they're called to do justice and do mercy for?
[00:26:55] LG: Yeah. I think that's a great question. I think prayerfully and by examining your own idols, but I do think there's something now about the remote workplace that makes the people coming in to the workplace, this might not always be the person who you feel called to love who's on the margins, but it is difficult to come into a remote workplace.
[00:27:17] JR: Yeah.
[00:27:18] LG: Just a really easy, low hanging fruit one might be, and there's been articles written about like the remote workplace impedes the career progress for certain people, because if you always worked in the office with some people, there's more relational glue there, right, for you to move up the ladder. So it's difficult, I think, to come into a new organization, you’re remote, everyone's remote, and build those relational connections that will help you do the job well, and also advance in your career.
One easy way might just to be thinking about like who are those people who are new and coming in? How can I love them well? How can I help them acclimate to this organization, which is all online?
I think it's one thing to think about who our work is impacting internally. I think that we also have to think about who our work is impacting externally. Sometimes that's the mercy and justice work, right? I think one of the case studies is Regina, and she talks about her work at Goldman Sachs and how they are intentionally investing in small businesses of Black and brown and underrepresented populations, women entrepreneurs, because those are people who have historically not had access to capital at certain banks, right? So that that's something that she's really intentionally a part of now. So that's more of an external facing mercy and justice work.
[00:28:45] JR: I love that. There was this acronym you guys mentioned in the book that that was really, really helpful. This GEAR acronym, so basically, once we've identified a group of people to serve in our workplaces, right, it's time to look for really practical opportunities for how can we serve them well. Talk to this GEAR tool to help us identify those opportunities.
[00:29:05] LG: Right. I highly recommend this. It's from an article that Tim Keller wrote called ‘Justice in the Bible’. He talks about how you see that justice is at the very heart of the character of God. He defines it with scripture and says, if you look at the Bible, these are the four facets of justice that you see God really caring about. One is generosity that we're supposed to be radically generous, because God has been radically generous to us, right? We were undeserving of what he's done for us. We're supposed to advocate for those who cannot speak up for themselves. That's why I love that example of my cinematographer, because that's like advocacy, right?
I'm speaking up for these people, because I have a position of power that they may not have, right? I'm the cinematographer and you have to listen to me, but you don't necessarily have to listen to the person who's like the boom like person down on the totem pole, right? The quality and responsibility. Responsibility, he talks about I think that's part of that systemic brokenness piece. He talks about, that there is a corporate responsibility for things, even if we haven't directly been involved in some of the injustices that have been caused, or some of the brokenness that's been caused. That there is a responsibility you see in the Bible of being people of repair, right? Not just saying, “Well, what am I responsible for fixing that I broke?” But saying, “Well, there's brokenness and I am supposed to be a restorative presence.” Right? I'm supposed to be someone who seeks repair. So how can I think about being a person of repair?
[00:30:43] JR: Yeah. I pulled up the article. Keller has this quote, “Are we responsible only for our own sins or are we also complicit, responsible, and involved in the sins of others, as well?” Anytime this topic of justice comes up, I know my temptation to be, well, I didn't cause that problem like directly. So is it really my problem to solve? But then I always come back to the picture of Jesus. Jesus didn't sin. He had no sin. I mean, yeah. He entered into our brokenness, became the poor son of an unmarried woman and a refugee. Let's not forget that, right? To save me, wasn't his job to save me. He didn't have to do that, but he entered into my brokenness.
If Jesus is the model for our lives, if Jesus is the model for our work, then you're right, Lauren, we are called to be, what did you – called restorative presence, not taking care of our own problems, but looking for – What are the other problems in culture that people don't have the power ended up themselves to fix? How can I be generous, fight for equality, advocate, and be responsible for those things that take ownership of those things, right?
[00:31:53] LG: Yeah. I think that can feel overwhelming, right?
[00:31:57] JR: Yeah, totally.
[00:31:57] LG: I have a friend and she's a lovely movie actress, DeWanda Wise. She often talks about in her advocacy work, what is one thing I can do today? Right? I don't have to fix the whole problem, but what's one thing I can do? I can do one thing today. So I think that has been helpful for me also, because if you tell me I'm responsible for repairing all the ills that I wasn't even responsible for creating, that can feel overwhelming.
But if you say being a person of repair means I have to look around me and say, “What's one thing I can do to work towards restoration for God today?” Then that feels more tangible to me. Sometimes, it shouldn't feel tangible. Sometimes, we are called to do things that are really difficult and really time consuming. We won't see the needle move forward. God's calling us to do it anyway. I'm not saying doing one thing puts us off the hook for bigger things, but I am trying to just make it tangible for people.
[00:33:04] JR: Yeah. We've been talking about how the gospel compels Mere Christians to do mercy and justice in their places of work. Your work at the Global Center for Faith and Work is much broader than this one topic. I'm really curious if you were to write another one of these workbooks next year, to help Mere Christians apply the gospel to their work, what would the topic be?
[00:33:24] LG: Yeah. Well, it's interesting, we're actually spending some time right now thinking about how to get pastors to think about building this into their churches and equipping people for this, because that's part of who our audiences at the Global Faith and Work Initiative. I think that there's something about that, that is also for laity, just in thinking about how can my church better equip me to serve in the workspace and to be missional? How can I advocate for that? Right? Vice versa, how can my work gifts, maybe help serve the church, right?
There's so many things that I can do that other people can't do. I had a woman in my small group recently, she wanted to make a crowdfunding video for her nonprofit, but the idea was so overwhelming to her to make a video on a shoestring budget. I was like, “Well, I have pretty limited video editing skills, but I can tape you on an iPhone on a tripod and cobble together for the video with some photos. She was like, “I had no idea you could do that. That would be amazing.”
I think there's ways we can we can serve and love each other that we just haven't even explored, if we can encourage our churches to help us think through that.
[00:34:44] JR: I agree. There are so obviously, as the name suggests, this is a podcast for Mere Christians, but I do know we have a lot of pastors listening, right? I'm curious off the top of your head. What's one practical thing a pastor could do right now to help their congregations more deeply connect their faith in their work?
[00:35:03] LG: Yeah. Start putting it in your sermons.
[00:35:06] JR: Yeah.
[00:35:07] LG: Yeah. I mean, so many I forget what this the exact number is, but so many of Jesus's parables were about work or –
[00:35:16] JR: Vast majority.
[00:35:17] LG: Mention of work. Yeah, the vast majority. So it's because he knew that was the context that spoke to people, right? That was the context that was their lived experience. I think there's two great ways to do that. There's resources, Jordan, you've probably written some. I mean, I know you've written lots of devotionals. I'm sure people could go search through your blog on a particular scripture that they're going to be preaching on and see if you've written anything about it. There's also the Theology of Work Project where you can look up the Scripture and see how it connects to work. There's a Faith in Work Study Bible, edited by David Kim, which I think has some good material.
All of those things are great resources, but I actually think one of the easy things that you can do that also then gets a real relational connection with a Mere Christian, is to know what your sermon is going to be. Let's say you’re preaching about the prodigal son, and go ask someone, “Hey, I know you work in healthcare. How does this hit you? Like is there something happening at your work that brings out in you a sense of self-generated elder brother righteousness that I can use as an example? Not anonymously, of course, but can you give me an example from your work of how this dynamic would play out that I can put into my sermon?”
I think if you do that twice a month, then you have learned about the context of 24 different workplaces, and built relationships where you have affirmed that God is using the work of 24 other congregants.
[00:36:54] JR: Amen. It's so good. It's so good, if you're a pastor listening. I hope you’re paying attention this or just sending this section of this episode to your pastor to listen to. It's a really good tip. I wholeheartedly endorse the theology of work, commentary for pastors. It's such a good resource. I'll give one other thing. I've never seen a church do this. Come to think of it. I don't think I've ever even asked my pastor to do this. I'm writing this down right now to ask them to do it.
I want to see churches commissioning people in new jobs every week. Like we're so used to seeing “full-time missionaries” being called upon to his stage to be commissioned to go somewhere else, I wish that every Sunday or maybe once a month, maybe every Sunday is not practical. Once a month, a pastor would stand on stage and say, “Hey, if you've started a new job in the last 30 days, stand up. We want to pray and commission you to go be able to be a restorative presence, living out the Great Commission, and the great commandments, and the cultural mandate, and the great requirement, right where you are.” That would preach.
[00:37:59] LG: Yeah. Even – September school is starting. If you're a teacher, or you work in the school system, stand up. Let's commission you for the New Year. During COVID or even now in New York, I mean, the hospitals are so overwhelmed, because there's COVID, RSV, and flu, if you just said to everyone, “Hey, if you work in healthcare, stand up. Let's commission and bless you this week, because we know that this is such a difficult season for healthcare workers.”
[00:38:24] JR: Amen.
[00:38:24] LG: Whatever the felt needs are in your community. I think it's so affirming. I know in his book, Work and Worship, Matt Kaemingk and talks about how he, I'm paraphrasing, but there were all these sermons he will never remember, but there was a church service where his mom as a nurse was commissioned and that he will never forget that, right? That like, his mom's work was affirmed as a nurse, as a Mere Christian, right? Not as a church worker. I think that is really powerful.
[00:38:57] JR: It's so good. Hey, Lauren, three questions. We wrap up every conversation with number one, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to others?
[00:39:07] LG: Okay. I have recommended – there is a Psalm 23 bible study by a woman named Jennifer Rothschild, that I just randomly purchased for myself and I have gifted to so many people.
[00:39:20] JR: Really?
[00:39:22] LG: So many people. I think it's a Bible Study meant to be done in small groups, but I've just given it to people going through hard times, because she spends six weeks unpacking Psalm 23. It is just incredible.
[00:39:34] JR: Yeah.
[00:39:34] LG: Yeah. Then a friend of mine wrote a memoir. Her name is Wayetu Moore. I recommend that book. I recommend The Dragons, the Giant, the Women by Wayetu Moore. So Wayetu was raised in Liberia during the Civil War. She actually became separated, she and her father and her sister became separated from her mother, because her mother was back in school in the US, when the war broke out, and they became separated from each other for a very long time. Through a very miraculous set of circumstances were eventually reunited. It's just such a God's story. I really, I really love that memoir.
[00:40:12] JR: That's good. That's great recommendation. Hey, Lauren, who to want to hear on this podcast, talking about how the gospel influences the work they do in the world?
[00:40:20] LG: I think Tina Derr the waitress from our case study series would be a fantastic person to have on your podcast.
[00:40:27] JR: I'm glad you said that, because when we hung up, I was going to ask you for an introduction to Tina. I would love to have Tina on the podcast. Man, what a great answer. All right, Lauren. One thing you want to leave our audience with, before we sign off, what is it?
[00:40:42] JR: I think the idea that God has put you where you are in your work, whether it's paid or unpaid, for this moment in your life, because He is using you there. Whether you're working at home, taking care of your children, sweeping up Cheerios off the floor repetitively every day, or you're a truck driver driving Christmas packages across the country right now, God is using you in that work for His glory.
[00:41:13] JR: Amen. Lauren, I want to commend you for being aware of how God's using you and your exceptional work for His glory in the good of others. Thank you for reminding us of the great requirement to do justice, to love mercy, and for just making it a little more practical for us to understand how exactly a Mere Christian can do that important restorative work.
Guys, I cannot recommend this study highly enough. Lauren, talk for a second about the format of this book. It's a workbook. It's a course, all the things. Can you just give a quick summary of how this thing is structured, because it's fairly unique?
[00:41:54] LG: Absolutely. It is a video-based workbook. When you buy the workbook, there's a website where all the videos are and also QR codes. There are videos to watch with lessons and videos with case studies. Then there are discussion questions, a practical exercise each week and prayer prompts for you to process in community ideally. Although it can be done on your own, we think there's something really, that activates and it's very special about doing things in community with each other.
[00:42:25] JR: Yeah, I agree. I did this on my own. By the way, the study is called The Missional Disciple: Pursuing Mercy and Justice at Work, you can find on Amazon or on the site of Faith and Works website. I did it by myself, but I agree. I think this is most powerful in a group. Lauren, thank you for publishing this terrific resource for Mere Christians. Thanks for joining us today.
[00:42:48] LG: Thank you.
[00:42:51] JR: Hey, do you know waitress, a public school teacher, somebody who's a Mere Christian doing justice and mercy at work? I want to know. Let me know at jordanraynor.com/contact, nominate them to come on to the show. Guys. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast this week. I'll see you next time.
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