3 ways to take a stand for God’s way in a God-honoring way at work
Jordan Raynor sits down with Mimi Chan, Head of Seasonal Events at Amazon Books, to talk about how to speak up for the powerless in your office, how to take a stand for God’s way in a God-honoring way at work, and why we need Christians rushing INTO “secular” workplaces in order to claim them as sacred.
Links Mentioned:
[0:00:05.4] 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 religious professionals but who work as writers and speech therapists and dieticians? That’s the question we explore every week and today, I’m posing it to my friend, Mimi Chan.
She’s the Head of Seasonal Events at Amazon books, so if you’re a reader and Amazon devotee like I am, you’re going to love this episode. Mimi and I sat down to talk about how to speak up for the powerless in your office.
We talked about how to take a stand for God’s way in a God-honoring way at work, especially when you disagree with your employer’s policies, and we talked about why we need Christians rushing into “secular workplaces” in order to claim that as sacred.
I loved this episode and if you’re working in a place that is dark and growing increasingly darker, this may be the most encouraging episode of the podcast for you we’ve ever produced. Please enjoy this conversation with Mimi Chan.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:31.2] JR: Mimi Chan, so good to have you on the podcast. Thanks for being here.
[0:01:34.6] MC: It is a delight, Jordan.
[0:01:36.3] JR: So we’re just talking before we start recording, you just got back from Israel, how was that?
[0:01:40.5] MC: It was incredible.
[0:01:42.3] JR: Is this your first time?
[0:01:43.8] MC: It was my first time to Israel and everybody tells you that it’s life-changing, because you go and you get a walk in the same places that Jesus walked, or you’re in Capernaum and you’re reading him talk about the bed of life while you’re in the synagogue where he actually soaked it ,or you’re on the Mount of Olives looking down at the Temple Mount, and you’re reading, and we had this – it’s just all of it, it feels surreal.
[0:02:09.2] JR: Did it meet the hype? Because I feel like I’ve heard so many life-changing experiences about Israel that I feel like it would be a letdown if I actually went. I’m sure that’s not the case, but what’s your take on this having just returned?
[0:02:21.5] MC: I think it depends on what you do or what you expect from going to Israel. So, my expectation was that I wanted to have a deeper heart for Israel because I realized that for most of my life, I hadn’t made that connection of how important the Jewish people are really to Christianity, and what we all expect to happen when Jesus returns
And the ways that we’ve ended up playing with each other as a community is really critical. Yet, a lot of people don’t think about the importance of Israel to the rest of the world. It’s kind of like a separate group that we know.
You know, it has a lot of persecution and when I was there, I expected to, I don’t know, feel the weight of that, but what I found was actually that yes, that was there, but there’s also just a lot of beauty and joy and this sense of, a tangible sense of promise and expectation. And when you go, you can either do one of those big tours, where you just visit every single site and you stop in site for 10 minutes.
I think if you did that, you would feel really packed in terms of having to visit so many great historic places and probably getting a lot of downlow from your tour guide. If that’s your expectation, I think that can meet that, but I actually found it to be there to—of course, I didn’t do the tour so I can’t really compare, but what I went through was, we had this self-guided experience where we just took our time at places.
We would just go and sometimes we spend half a day just sitting at the edges of the Sea of Galilee and imagining Jesus walking across that, or waking up super early to do a sunrise hike to the Mount of Olives or sunrise hike to the summit. Those experiences to me were more compelling, as well as just the people that we met along the way. There were really divine encounters.
Jordan, there was one day, we were at Capernaum and we saw a pastor that we knew and we’re like, “Hey.” That was pastor Byler, it’s like, “Hi Pastor Byler, how are you doing? You come to our church, we loved talking to you,” and he goes, “Yeah, we should take a picture and send this back to your pastor,” and we were, “Great, let’s do it.” And he raises in the end and he goes, “Lecrae, come take a picture of us.”
[0:04:32.1] JR: That’s amazing, that’s so good. Of course, Byler is just hanging out with Lecrae.
[0:04:37.4] MC: Right? So these kind of divine encounters blew my expectations, right?
[0:04:42.8] JR: That’s so good, Brian’s amazing. I’m a big Brian—
[0:04:46.3] MC: Right, he’s amazing. Yeah, you should bring him on. So yeah.
[0:04:48.1] JR: That’s so good.
[0:04:49.2] MC: There’s times like that that like blow your expectations and there are times when you go to a place and you're like, is this really the garden too? Did Jesus really lay in this? So I think you have a little healthy bit of skepticism for that, but if you just take it as a whole, whatever God brings, encounter He gives you, those actually are the precious moments.
It’s those unintended times when you’re in a place and just everything’s going, and no one else is around or when you meet with somebody like that.
[0:05:12.4] JR: I love it. So you are in a new role. So we connected initially when you are in the Goodreads team. P.S., the only social media app I use on a consistent basis, a huge Goodreads fan.
[0:05:25.8] MC: Thank you very much, we love that.
[0:05:28.3] JR: You're in a new role now, tell us about your new role at Amazon books?
[0:05:32.5] MC: So at Amazon books, we have a number of different times of the year where we see the height of interest in trying to read different books, right? People read more because maybe it’s summer and you want to have books to take with you on a trip like Israel. Maybe it’s because it’s holiday here, looking for books to buy for your family and your friends. And so I head up all the different, what we call, events across those different seasons, in order to help surface the right books to the right customer at the right time.
[0:06:01.9] JR: Got it, especially as you guys are doing like multiple Prime days now.
[0:06:06.5] MC: Yes. Well, one’s a Prime day, the other is what we call a Prime early access sale but yes, we have a lot of special events just for Prime customers now and I do like helping to coordinate all of those.
[0:06:17.6] JR: I love it, that’s awesome. Specifically with books, my team was stalking you on Instagram, I hope you don’t mind, for inspiration for this episode, and they came across this post where you are thanking someone who helped you, “Clarify the purpose of your life.” So I’m curious, how do you articulate the purpose of your life, Mimi?
[0:06:41.0] MC: When I think I got my purpose, it’s on a very general level. It’s about pursuing this, what some friends and I call our one thing, my style, which is, and you know this, Jordan, we’re not good multitaskers. As humans, we think we’re good at multitasking but we’re not good at multitasking.
And so if you try and think of your entire life, having one singular task, then for me, that one task is just really putting that first in everything that I do, and that means being true to Him, also being true to who I am in light of who He is, and also being on mission for what we must accomplish here on earth and then in heaven.
So that means, for instance, within the work context, how do I make sure that and I am actually advancing His Kingdom in the workplace? How do I make heaven real, make God real in my work and to my coworkers? It could be also, you know, on a daily basis making hard choices about, “Where do I go and what do I do?”
Should I be—I had a lot of time where I played at should I actually be going to Israel, is that something that He’s calling me to do, or should I actually be spending that time doing some other thing that He wants? Whether it’s a big work project that I should be focusing on and staying at home for, or if it’s spending time helping out because it just matters, is it like a church organization that I’m really passionate about?
So it’s a number of choices, and trying to make sure that you’re online to what God wants you to do with all these different choices, and that it is something where you turn to Him to really steward those choices, or steward even your resources that help enable those choices.
[0:08:28.5] JR: Yeah, I love how you articulated that. Like, making heaven real, making the kingdom real, making God real at work. What does that look like for you? Can you give us a couple of examples of how you have made God more real in your place of work, in a big corporation like Amazon?
[0:08:47.5] MC: When I think about it, an example that comes to my mind is, I have a coworker who once asked me, “You know, I can see that you are a smart woman, that you understand the business, you’re doing really innovative things that are think big, that are changing the trajectory of what we can do for authors or the revenue line of this one product.”
“But I don’t understand how someone who is like such a great high achiever, at the same time, stay so positive and clearly has this belief in God. That doesn’t make sense to me because I’ve been disappointed by my experience in church and some of the hypocrisy that I’ve seen in people who believe in Jesus. So help me understand, how do you live that way?”
“What is different, how can someone so smart still believe in Jesus?” And we’re citing up this example because I wasn’t actively trying to show this person God, but in just my daily ways in which I was making decisions about my products, times when I had to make choices about, you know, “Do we press it this way or press it that way, do we say one thing or another in our marketing?”
And always trying to make sure that those things were true. And then it would help the customer know that we’re making decisions that weren’t just selfishly for profit, those are decisions that are driven by what I feel is my belief system and my purpose, right? To show that that’s how God’s Kingdom behaves.
That it’s one that’s true, that serves other people, that looks to help your customers or those people around you. That by living that out, just in like those daily decisions, what that coworker picked up on was that you’re a Christian who lives out what you believe and it doesn’t sync up with what I’ve seen of other Christians, but it does for you.
Like, your life is cohesive and has integrity and because of that, he wanted to know more about who Jesus is and how I could believe what I did, and that was just a beautiful door opening that I didn’t expect.
[0:10:57.6] JR: Yeah, and you were just a faithful presence, right? Just going to work, doing your work with excellence and love and in accordance of God’s commands, and the Holy Spirit opens up that door for that conversation. Work cohesion’s really interesting to me. I feel like it’s part of the reason why I’m so passionate about this podcast, is to help our listeners as mere Christians feel more cohesive between what they’re studying in their Bibles in the morning and what they’re plugging away at their laptop doing in the afternoon.
And I think, because that cohesion is really winsome to all people, Christians and non-Christians alike. It sounds like that’s what that coworker was saying to you, he longed for that sort of integration, kind of singularity of purpose and living, right?
[0:11:44.4] MC: Yes, yes, I do agree. There’s a lot of people at work that I think they compartmentalize and they separate it, who they are at work versus who they are at home. One of the keys to you being cohesive and who you are is being really transparent about what you believe as well, and it doesn’t mean that you’re asking other people to believe what you believe.
It’s not necessarily a matter of forcing you – because that is how other people start. That’s not what you want to do but I think you want to just be really transparent about, “This is who I am.” I mean, you asked like before, how do you live out that purpose at work? One of the things that for me, have been really blessed that from the very beginning of my career probably, because I had a coworker who from day one, came to me and was like, “Hey, I want to know more about you and I want you to know more about who I am.”
And right up front, she told me, “You know, I’m a Christian, I would love to invite you to church” and I think for the rest of my career that felt really natural and normal, to be able to talk about Jesus in that way even with people who you don’t know, whether or not, like, what they believe but to be able to say, “Hey, I happen to believe in Jesus.” So I am really transparent about that at work.
Most of my coworkers know, if they ask me what I do this weekend, it’s going to be, “I went to Israel with a bunch of my friends who were all Christians together in tech,” or it’s going to be, “I went to church.” That opened up a door where they’ll ask, “What was that like?” “Well, if you want to know, just come join me, you’re welcome at any time.”
So it’s those casual conversations that I think actually end up helping me fulfill that purpose in the workplace more than any big platform. Times when I’m able to invest in my coworker’s life, learn about the pains, some things that are they’re going through, I have opportunities to pray for them, that’s what really opens up the door. It helps me to advance the Kingdom just one-on-one in those relationships.
[0:13:39.0] JR: It’s seemingly so small but I hope, listeners, you’re picking up on a theme. We hear this all the time from our guests, right? Making this life at work is as simple as raising your hand and saying that you’re a Christian, and in some non-aggressive ways. I.e., “What did you do this weakened?” “I had a great time at church” or “I went to Israel,” if you’re awesome like Mimi Chan.
And then living the life that’s congruent with that statement of belief, and living your life in a way that shows that there’s something distinct about you because of your apprenticeship to Jesus. Mimi, I think the first line in your bio, at least the one I read on LinkedIn points to this. Here’s what it says, it says, “Early in my career, a mentor told me to speak up.” Very common advice, right?
“As a leader, I have learned most importantly to speak up for others.” That’s distinctly Christian. I am curious though, who are you standing up for exactly? Who, because of your faith, do you feel called to speak up for?
[0:14:42.5] MC: Often times, who I find myself speaking up for are those who would not think to speak up for themselves, is usually what happens. So it’s people who, for instance, first of all, if we’re talking about work context, people at work who I see just toiling away, doing a really great job not necessarily expecting praise for that work, and sometimes people actually will praise someone else for the work that they did.
And that’s the point where I’ll stand and be like, “Hey, I want to be able to recognize that this person actually went through all the pain and hard work of making this project happen,” and I want to make sure that that person gets recognized or if someone is speaking against them.
You know, to be able to say, “Hey, I could see that you’ve maybe had a frustrating transaction with that person, but have you spoken with them? Have you talked with them about that? Have you maybe considered asking them what happened, what their perspective was? Because that could change your relationship and how you interact with each other, and basically heal and reconcile that work relationship.”
What I see a lot of times is a lot of broken relationships, where one side is just tearing the other side down but no one’s speaking up. No one’s defending that other person. It’s so much easier to jump on the bandwagon of, “Oh yeah, that was wrong, what they did,” versus saying, “You know what? That may not have been the best way of doing that, but the better path is to look to, how can we change that? What is it that we can do to improve?”
And being one to have that difficult conversation is something that a lot of people don’t want to do, frankly. Speaking up for somebody else can be difficult. Never mind then actually talking to someone that you’re having conflict with and trying to resolve that situation. So I find myself speaking up in a lot of situations like that, speaking up for people or encouraging people to have that hard conversation and speak up for themselves.
[0:16:43.8] JR: Yeah, there is a lot of risk here.
[0:16:46.1] MC: Yes, there is a lot of risk.
[0:16:48.4] JR: Right? So talk for a little bit about—I’m assuming this is connected to the example you see in Christ, in kind of a response to the gospel. Maybe I’m wrong, tell me if I am.
[0:16:58.2] MC: No, it is.
[0:16:59.3] JR: What’s the connection here? How does the gospel inspire you to run into these hard things and these hard conversations?
[0:17:08.1] MC: So one of the things that we talk about is what your identity is. When you’re having these conversations and if you’re solid in your identity in Jesus, and whose you are, not just who you are, then these conversations become a lot easier and again, the crux of a lot of these conversations is how people feel about who they are in the midst of these difficult conversations.
What you’re saying about that identity matters. It influences the trajectory of that relationship. So when I have these conversations, I’m often thinking about, “How do I build up somebody’s identity in Jesus and who they could be even in that identity?” Instead of looking for ways to, again, to tear them down. And if you start from that place of identity, of recognizing somebody as a beloved son or daughter of Jesus, or cementing, grounding yourself in your own identity in Jesus, it removes, I think, a lot of the risk in that conversation.
Because if you already know where you stand and who you are, then you can go in that, and even if the conversation goes badly, even if it means that at the end of that conversation your relationship is broken or you lose something valuable to you, whether it’s a person or a physician or whatever it is, if you come out of that with the integrity of knowing, “I was true, again, who I am and my identity in Jesus and this is a conversation that Jesus wanted to have,” then it becomes so much easier to accept the consequences of taking that risk.
That’s how I think of it in terms of, how do you minimize the risk of that, know who you are in Jesus, know what your purpose is going into that conversation, and then, be true to how Jesus guides you in that? If you’re doing all those things then it’s really easy to accept the consequences and the risks are a lot less, and it’s not because you lose less, because you might still lose as much, but you’re – it’s almost like you’re confident in that loss, that you did the right thing, that that’s how it should be, how it ended up is the way God intended and that He’ll do something with that.
[0:19:18.0] JR: Yeah, that’s so good because I think a lot of times, we feel called to speak up for somebody who is being overlooked, we feel called to speak up for maybe even an injustice that we see at the workplace, but there’s fear of, “I’d lose my job if I speak about this” or even something that’s seemingly small is, “I don’t have time, I got to get my work done.” And as you were talking, remind me of Paul’s word in II Corinthians.
I pulled it up here. It’s II Corinthians 9:7-8. It’s in the context though of financial sacrifice but Paul says this: “Each one should give what he has decided in his heart to give and God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”
So basically, hey, we can sacrifice money, knowing that God will provide for us all that we need to continue to do the good works He’s prepared in advance for us to do. Again, spoken in the context of financial sacrifice, but I’m curious if you’ve seen this play out in sacrificing your time and potential reputation in speaking up for others? As you’ve taken these risks, have you seen God provide what you need to continue to abound in the good works he’s called you to do?
[0:20:36.0] MC: Yeah, I can think of this one situation with someone in our office who actually had a lot of conflict with a lot of other people, but he had a reputation for being really solid as a technical person in our office. I had to have a hard conversation with him because of something that he said that basically put my reputation on the line, and would have made it difficult for other teams, other technical teams, to want to work with me.
And so I asked to meet with him and talk with him and he invited like a bunch of other people to the same meeting. You want to have difficult conversations one-on-one, but we ended up having this meeting with several other people present to talk about what happened. It was not necessarily a fun conversation but I was just really open about the mistakes I made, you know?
And stayed also really open about ways in which I could improve, open to their advice and their feedback on what they would like to see me do differently, and then because of that, I think God really smoothed over a lot of those relationships, with not just him but a lot of the other people on the team that I didn’t even realize that probably had been influenced by how he saw me as well.
So I then attended that, actually had a separate conversation. At the end of that, he’s like, “Well, it’s all resolved, I’m out of here,” and I was like, “No-no-no, we, you and I, still need to have a conversation about the ways in which we spoke to each other.” Not just the work, and that which we were able to resolve, but also, how do we interact better one-on-one with each other in the future?
So we then had this other level of conversation that could have been risky. He could have come out of there and being like, “No way, it was all your fault, what you said,” so on and so forth. But he didn’t necessarily agree but he had a better understanding of where I came from, and out of that conversation at the end of that, I also had a better understanding of who he was and later that year, I was able to recognize, “Hey, this person that he may be kind of rough over here and working with people and that is why I’m not the only person he had conflicts with, but in this other areas, I can see why.”
You know, people really applauded his technical efforts and I did the same, actually. I was like, “You know what? This person is really good at this,” and so I’m speaking up for this person that actually isn’t that popular with people to say that, “Hey, there is something that we can appreciate him for and that we should appreciate him for, and he actually, I think he won an award for that aspect of his work based on things like me speaking up for him and applause, and also giving him props for what he did.
All of that actually, at the end of the day, led to a better relationship with that person, to a point where we we’re actually friendly and we could collaborate more deeply. And he would invite me to be part of these different things that he did with his team. So that took time to shift that, but when I think about the ways in which God turned something into a more worrying relationship, to those little steps that they took of having those conversations.
I was speaking up for somebody, I was speaking up for myself, and I was speaking up for them. All of that, I think plays, into what you described earlier about how God takes something that maybe could have been meant for evil and he turns it to good. He does that a lot. Actually, I see that happen many, many times, especially in my work context. We talk about how, for me, a lot was rewarding about letting us Christians in the workplace, is those one-on-one conversations, that I also managed our multi-thousand group of Christians at Amazon.
Things like this happen all the time, where there’s big conflicts, people are expressing different opinions and I jump in to speak up for one group or the other. And again, what made them meant for evil, God turns really, really good and sweet. So absolutely, I see that happen. They happen both in these really small ways and on these really big groups as well. There’s really difficult conversations going on about really hot topics.
He’ll take that, and I think of one example where we had this really difficult conversation about a cultural topic and we got covered by Business Insider, and not in a positive way, and a couple of weeks after that, we saw our group membership drop 10%, but then within a couple of weeks after that, we saw it rise up and actually, what dropped by 10% increased by 20%.
We’re like, “What is happening?” And then we saw some people joined that we’re like, “Okay, how did you even find out about us?” And we talked to one of them and there’s a potential that one, that will now actually become one of our executive sponsors, someone who is only a few levels up, below Andy Jassy and Jeff Bezos, someone that we would never expect to find out about us, and added up with that person founding out about our group through that Business Insider article, because of the difficult conversations, and that is happening within our group.
So something that could have really divided our group, that could have caused us to lose credibility, that could have gotten us broken apart because of the ways in which we handled that, we did a lot and prayer and fasted over it and we had a lot of really, again, direct conversations with people, where we encouraged people to be really respectful but also be able to listen to other people and try to have ears of understanding.
Seeking to understand, not just to be heard. Through that process of doing that, we’re able to preserve the integrity of our group, to you know we – because of that, also put in more guidelines to help foster healthier conversations with the board. Because of the coverage we got from this difficult conversations, we had people find out about us that wouldn’t usually find out about us.
Our group grew, we actually got a sponsor from it. So all these things that God did out of what could have been so bad, turned out to be so good. I think those are at times where I just look at Him and I just wonder like, “I don’t know how you did it.” But for me it was just taking a step at a time and not knowing exactly where it would lead, but trusting that God was in control of it all.
[0:26:50.9] JR: I’m so glad you brought this up because this is one of the top questions I am getting from my audience right now is, “Hey, I work at a big company. I feel cold to be so in light there but I disagree with X, Y or Z policy that this company is implementing. How do I stand up against something that is clearly contradictory to God’s word in a God-honoring way?” So it sounds like that is the experience you and these, your fellow believers at Amazon, have recently gone through.
What lessons, if you could be explicit, would you give to our audience in that regard, on how to take a stand for God’s way in a God-honoring way?
[0:27:35.5] MC: One, I would say express what you believe and your understanding in such a way that it’s really your testimony, because nobody can refute your testimony. We’ll all –
[0:27:49.3] JR: Yeah, it’s like – yeah, right.
[0:27:50.3] MC: Like, “This is why I believe and this is why.” Don’t try to tell –
[0:27:52.8] JR: Don’t try to bust sayeth the Lord.
[0:27:54.7] MC: Yes. Don’t try to tell people they should believe too. That is where you’ll actually get in trouble, we have experienced that. Three, when you express what you believe, also be open to listening and hearing what other people believe and why, invite that conversation. It should be a two-way conversation, it shouldn’t just be people listening to you or you being forced to listen to someone else. It should be both ways.
It should be both ways and then having to believe to agree to disagree, right? Don’t go into conversations—your purpose shouldn’t be, “I’m going to win this person over to what I believe.” Always, my purpose going in is understand. I want to understand why that person believes what they do and why. What’s at the root of that? Why did they believe something so differently than me? Can I learn something from that?
Is there something I can share that would help that person? If you go in with that kind of a mindset, of that mental model, then you’re going to have a healthy open conversation, and we encourage that. We encourage healthy open conversations on hot topics and to Amazon’s credit, they’ve been really supportive of us having these open forums as well. They’ve never taken down anything that we put up, that we’ve said.
There’s been times that we’ve asked people to be respectful and consider taking down something that was not respectful, that’s happened. The company has been really supportive about us being able to have these really open conversations. It is actually very Amazon-y because we have a principle thus to agree to disagree, and then once a decision has been made though, you commit.
So I think that is how we behave within our context here and that is what I would encourage for people who are like, “How do I speak up?” Be open, be transparent, be truthful, but don’t be legalistic or try to convince other people of what you believe. And then the last thing I would say is that there is an element of this where you have to have no fear. When I was looking at the Sea of Galilei, I was thinking about Jesus crossing that water and telling the disciples, “Fear not, why are you afraid? Because I’m with you.”
Because I’m with – and a lot of times, I think in the workplace we feel like God isn’t there, that Jesus isn’t there. He is not going to back me up. I am alone in this. So many times I hear Christians say, “You know, I’m alone.” I felt like I was alone in the workplace as a Christian. I didn’t know any other Christians and that fear is debilitating. It keeps you from speaking up.
So if you can eliminate that fear, if you can eliminate that fear of being judged or of somehow that will impact your career, or that you would have it, be a good witness for Jesus that instead you can just walk again, tell yourself, “There is no reason for me to be afraid. Jesus is telling me to step out of the boat.” Step out on the boat, keep your eye on Him, know that He is with you.
You are not alone and chances are that what you want to express is exactly how someone else is feeling, who also thinks that they are alone in this in the workplace.
[0:30:55.2] JR: Yeah and it’s so good Mimi. Yeah, I talk to people a lot who are struggling with this and which is like, “Oh man, my company is taking some stances on issues that I know were sin and I just feel like this place is increasingly dark and I feel like I need to escape to a ‘holier workplace.’” And I just don’t think that’s the example of Christ.
[0:31:15.4] MC: Don’t do that.
[0:31:16.6] JR: Right? Well, you can do that but I’ll just say it really explicitly, please don’t do that.
[0:31:20.9] MC: Don’t do that. Please don’t do that. You know why? Because this is why you don’t feel like you can say these things in the workplace today, because somebody before you left the workplace instead of speaking up.
[0:31:31.9] JR: Amen.
[0:31:32.5] MC: As people started leaving, it became harder and harder to speak up because there weren’t any of those voices there, those voices start getting silenced. One of the reasons why I took the job I did is because I was explicitly praying to God for a place where His voice needed to be heard, where I could try and help remove that divide between the secular and the spiritual.
That’s what’s happened around the world today, right? They separate those two things, what was meant to be together. Our work is supposed to be worship and instead, we separate it. We say our work is not worship, worship is something completely separate that I do on a Sunday, right? But Jesus says, “Go and make disciples,” and by going what He means is, as you work.
Go isn’t leave work and go somewhere else to talk about Jesus. Go is, go as you work, as you go along in your work. That’s how you should be interpreting that verse as you do that.
[0:32:27.7] JR: Yeah. I know by the way like secular, what do we mean by this word secular, right? I love definitions. Secular means without God. You want to make that secular workplace over there sacred. You as a Christian, in dwelt with the Holy Spirit of God, stepped through the front doors and that is now a sacred place of work.
[0:32:51.1] MC: Your body is where heaven and earth meet, that is where the Kingdom lives. It is in you. So if you bring yourself into a workplace, that alone will help advance the Kingdom, because you bring a little bit of the Kingdom with you wherever you go.
[0:33:05.7] JR: Amen.
[0:33:06.2] MC: So I get the same thing. I have people who are strong Christians or leaders in our group and they get to a point where they tell me, “I just have this moral tension that I can’t resolve about how the company is doing something that I just don’t believe in.” And the reality is that any company you go to is going to do something that you’ll probably won’t believe in, and even if you go to ministry –
[0:33:31.3] JR: Even in businesses run by Christians.
[0:33:33.6] MC: Yes.
[0:33:34.1] JR: Oh, by the way, also these global ministries.
[0:33:38.0] MC: Exactly, all of them have something that don’t exactly line up with what you believe. That’s why there is so many denominations out there. There is no perfect place, right? So the better question to ask yourself isn’t, “Where can I go where their beliefs are going to line with mine?” The better question to ask yourself is, “Where can I go to make the biggest difference for God and to advance his Kingdom?”
Where am I most needed? Where can my purpose in life most align with what God is doing in His revival? What is the greatest mission field that I can go to? And I remember when I was praying for that before I did this job at Amazon, I had a conversation with Austin as he wrote the call and –
[0:34:17.3] JR: Love Aus.
[0:34:18.2] MC: Yes, me too. And I was grappling with exactly the same thing. Should I go into ministry, should I go back into the workplace? I love what I do when I volunteer at church, isn’t that where I should go? Because I feel alive, that is life-giving to me. He looked at me and he pretty much said exactly the same thing, “No, don’t do that. What are you thinking? Where you’re needed is where there is no God.”
Where you’re needed is where God does not exist, that is where your voice is needed, that is where you need to go. It’s shifted how I thought about that, about what my purpose would be. So I specifically came into this job with this thought in my head, that my real purpose, my real job is to put God first and make Him apparent, transparent, make Him real in everything that I do so that people can discover who He is.
The workplace to me is the greatest mission I feel I could have. At the time when I took the job with Amazon, I didn’t know a single Christian here. I met a bunch of Christians and a bunch of other tech companies, big tech companies at Christian organizations like Google and Facebook, I was interviewing with those as well and then I got the job offer. He and I thought, “Okay, why here? I haven’t met a single Christian.”
There is no Christian organization here. There was maybe about 250,000 people or maybe 300,000 people working at Amazon at that point, that was smaller than the company I come from. I was like, “This doesn’t make sense to me but God made it really clear this is where I want you to go.” So I took the job and it took about a year. There was a year where I felt the same thing a lot of those other people did.
I am alone here, no one I know here is Christian even though I tell people I go to church, no one is responding. At the end of that year, a woman I saw every single day told me, “Oh, I am going to full-time missions.” I’m like, “What? How in the world in a year could we not have talked about this thing that we both, is so central to our lives, how does that happen?” And then why, again, are you going somewhere else as missions when for a whole year of missing that experience, a place that felt like avoided Jesus, that needed Jesus?
After that, I then connected with Faith at Work and met other Christians through an external organization, not within. It was outside of Amazon, I met Christians that work here and then I started praying with some of those people, and then the group grew and then met more people and that God made it a bit clear like, “We want you to start something that can reach more people. So let’s do something, let’s create an organization.”
Let us build a stronger community, that is where Christians at Amazon go about it. So we help found that, and the model that we built for is one that where we want to be as flat as possible. We want as much as possible for everyone to be looking directly at God and not at some leader or head of a Christian group, because we really believe that if you do that, then you are just going to end up building what Peter Tsukahira calls a pyramid.
We don’t want that. God came on this flat. He wants to have direct one-on-one relationships with every single person. So that’s what we encourage and at the end of the day, my prayer for going to a place where I could be a voice for God led to us creating this community, this group, and at the company that now is the second largest company in the world, behind Walmart.
I would not have expected that when I prayed for God to give me, it could be in a company where I could have recon, be His voice in the biggest way possible, that the company itself would grow so huge and that this could, logically thinking, this company probably has one of the most number of Christians worldwide at any company, right?
[0:37:51.4] JR: Oh yeah, for sure, which is why it’s been one of the great honors for me over the last couple of years to be able to speak with your group a couple of times and do Q&As. I mean, I want to encourage believers in the Amazons, in the Walmarts of the world to stay exactly where they are for the glory of God and the advancement of His kingdom, right? Hey Mimi, three questions we love to wrap up every conversation with.
I can’t wait to ask you this one, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently these days on the whole? I know it is very specific for individual people but in general, what are you recommending?
[0:38:29.5] MC: So I always recommend, and this is my surprise, because you talk about this a lot, I always recommend Difficult Conversations. It’s a book by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen. It only came out like, I don’t know, maybe it came out maybe 20 years ago, but it’s a book that is timeless and the earlier you read that book, the better off you’ll be in all your relationships for the rest of your life.
The other book that I think is really great for people who are trying to build organizations where people would have one-on-one relationship with God in the workplace or in any other organization really is, The Starfish and the Spider. That is a book by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom and it is about the power of leaderless organizations, and so that is actually a really Biblical model.
[0:39:12.1] JR: I have never heard of this. This is interesting.
[0:39:14.2] MC: Yeah, I think you’ll really like it, Jordan. And then a book that I am actually just starting but I think that, my suspicion is that this will be very impactful, and it is a book that was handed to me on this trip to Israel is, Equip. So this is a book again by Peter Tsukahira and it is basically a week-by-week study on how to become a disciple of Jesus, especially in the context of a workplace.
[0:39:40.2] JR: Oh interesting, I definitely have to check this out. That sounds fascinating. All right, great, I’ll check that out.
[0:39:44.9] MC: Yes, so those are three books.
[0:39:45.8] JR: I’ll check that out. Mimi, what is the most entertaining book? This is off the cuff, we don’t ask this, what is the most entertaining thing you’ve read this year?
[0:39:52.8] MC: Oh, most entertaining.
[0:39:54.2] JR: Because you went pretty broadly, right?
[0:39:55.6] MC: I do. I think as a matter of fact, the only thing I don’t read that much of is horror because it genuinely creeps me out.
[0:40:02.3] JR: You don’t have to explain here, okay? We know, we get it.
[0:40:06.1] MC: Do you read a lot of horror? I know. I will say that one book that has been really wonderful, powerful for me is Take Back Your Power by Deborah Liu.
[0:40:17.3] JR: So we’re just about to release Deb’s episode.
[0:40:20.5] MC: Are you? Oh, you’ll love it.
[0:40:21.7] JR: As we’re recording this. It’s so good.
[0:40:23.3] MC: Oh, it is. It’s so actionable, everything in there is so simple and clear, things that are mysteriously born like, “How do I get a mentor?” She’s like, “Oh, just do this?” Either it’s like –
[0:40:33.8] JR: Yeah, Deb’s amazing. She’s phenomenal and you guys are going to love that book.
[0:40:38.0] MC: Amazing.
[0:40:38.6] JR: Other than Deb Liu, who do you want to hear on this podcast talking about the gospel influences their work?
[0:40:44.5] MC: Well, having thought before this about some of the authors that I know, like Bob Dugoni or an author like Ronnie Goram, people that you wouldn’t necessarily think are Christian in their vocation I think are really fascinating to hear, like how they’ve still infused Christ in everything that they do.
[0:41:06.2] JR: Yeah, they’re not faith forward but they are faith based. You and I talked about John Grisham before, he’ll be amazing.
[0:41:10.7] MC: Yes. He will be absolutely wonderful. Yeah, let me know. I can help you with that Jordan.
[0:41:14.6] JR: You can help me with that? Send John a text, I know you got him on speed dial. No, that would be terrific. By the way, did you read the James Paterson autobiography?
[0:41:25.9] MC: No, I did not. This sounds like something I need to add to my list.
[0:41:29.3] JR: It’s fantastic. So I don’t read fiction at all but yeah, I mean listen, when you sell 300 million books and you’re an author, you should probably pay attention to whoever is selling that many books. So I thought it was extraordinary. I thought it was really, really great. I have been recommending it a lot to people.
All right Mimi, before we sign off, what’s one thing from our conversation today you want to reiterate to our listeners, this audience of mere Christians out in the world, working at places like Amazon for the glory of God and the good of others?
[0:41:57.5] MC: I think it goes back to what we said earlier Jordan is, stay where you could have the most impact, which is often in the workplace. This is your mission field. As a matter of fact, during COVID there are statistics that have burnt—half of people of ministry are looking to leave ministry for a variety of reasons, and I think that is intentional. God is purposely sending people who are mission-minded into the workplace.
All the time, I am seeing people who are pastors, who have been seminary trained, who were executive directors of ministries, they are coming into the workplace and we need you there, we need you so badly. So please, as Christians, come into the workplace. You will find revival here, this is the staging ground for the next revival ,and so I really hope that more people become a part of that. It is an exciting place to be.
[0:42:52.1] JR: Amen. Mimi, I want to commend you for doing just that, for staying in this corporate environment and doing just exceptional work day in and day out for the glory of God and the good of others. Thank you for reminding us that we are called to sacrifice our power by speaking up on behalf of others ,and thank you for encouraging our audience to stay put and lean into their work, to make their workplaces a little bit more like heaven on earth.
Guys, you could find Mimi on Goodreads. I know Mimi Chan and friends there. You can also find me there, it’s pretty much the only place that I personally spend time in this social universe. Mimi, thank you so much for hanging out with us today.
[0:43:37.9] MC: Thank you, it’s been such a pleasure, and I just look forward to seeing what God does more and more through you, Jordan. He is doing something new and He says, don’t you foresee that. He is doing something new and I can see Him doing that through you Jordan. So God bless you and your ministry.
[0:43:52.3] JR: Thank you Mimi.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:43:54.9] JR: I don’t think I’ll ever said Amen more in an episode of Mere Christians Podcast, consult the transcripts and we’ll find out. Guys, if you are enjoying the podcast, please go leave a review on Apple, on Spotify, wherever you listen to this show. Thank you guys so much for listening.
Hey, actually before I run, I’m really digging into this topic on how to take a stand in the workplace for Christ in a winsome, respectful, Biblical way. If you’ve got something to say on that topic, I want you to let me know at jordanraynor.com/content. With that, thank you guys for tuning in. I’ll see you next week.
[END]