A Fool's Wisdom

A Spiritual Journey 1

2008-06-05T14:31:00.005-04:00

Part One - A Preacher Finds Jesus

I had been a pastor for seven years when I asked Jesus Christ into my heart. This is my story.

I am an only child. My parents were always faithful churchgoing people. Our family was Methodist first, and then around 1976, when I was about 12, we started attending a Presbyterian Church. The two denominations were pretty similar in the "feel" of their services, though the Presbyterians tend to be more intellectual. Both denominations fall into the category of "mainline", meaning (IMO) there wasn't much spiritual vibrancy there. The services were staid, quiet, reserved, "reverent", traditional, and—for a young person—deadly boring. Both denominations lean liberal theologically, so they had reinterpreted the Bible till it almost didn't mean anything anymore. At the Methodist churches we attended in those days, the sermons were more apt to be full of psychology and sentimentality than much of anything about Christ and His ways, which is why we eventually left.

The Presbyterian Church was a little better in that it was more substantial, more biblically focused, but still liberal, heady, and dry. I don't think it's unfair to say I got very little out of the services. I don't recall ever being aware of the presence of God there. As an older teenager I did learn to appreciate the hymns, and that has stayed with me and deepened over the years. But that was about the extent of what I'm conscious of getting out of those services.

To be fair, the people in that church, including the leaders, genuinely loved me and cared about me. They were (and still are) very kind to me and supportive. They saw my gifts as a young person and invited me to use them at an early age. As a teenager they had me playing my guitar and singing for services on occasion, helping out with the youth group, and even teaching Sunday school every so often. That Presbyterian church was one of the first places where I ever felt like I belonged.

My parents were a significant influence on my approach to spiritual things. During my early childhood, faith did not often appear to be a significant matter in our family. However, in my mid-elementary-school years my folks began to experience some deepening and renewal of their own faith, which culminated just before we moved to the Presbyterian church. From that time on they were (and are) essentially evangelical in their beliefs. So sometimes we almost felt like conservatives battling liberalism and unbelief in our denomination.

Our youth minister was an evangelical, though, and he had a strong influence on me as well. He reinforced a lot of what my parents taught.

My perception in those days was that the emphasis was mainly on an intellectual approach to faith as opposed to an intimate relationship with Christ. The focus was on believing the right things and doing your darnedest to put them into practice--pulling yourself up by your spiritual bootstraps, so to speak. There seemed to be a lot of focus on serving Christ but not so much on knowing Christ.

In the Presbyterian denomination I grew up in, there was little emphasis on personal salvation. People are not confronted with questions like "Do you know the Lord?" or "Have you given your heart to him?" or "Have you asked Christ into your heart?" or “Are you saved?” There are no altar calls or invitations given in church and few evangelistic sermons. About all that was emphasized was making a "commitment" to Christ, and this mainly in terms of personal effort.

So there was little emphasis on the Person of Christ and coming to understand and know Him as a living Lord today who is active and a personal friend and companion. Little emphasis was placed on receiving the Holy Spirit and living the Christian life by His power. Most of the focus was on Jesus as portrayed in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), and trying to imitate Him.

Well, to fast-forward things a bit, this was my background as I entered seminary in the mid-1980s to prepare for full-time ministry. The seminary I attended (Princeton Seminary, a Presbyterian School a few blocks from Princeton University but not affiliated with it) was middle-of-the-road by liberal-Presbyterian standards, but would be liberal from an evangelical perspective. We spent most of our time debating the truthfulness of Scripture, so it was not a place in which to become grounded in the Bible and spiritual things, certainly not a place in which one was encouraged to know Christ more intimately.

I think I went to seminary to face liberalism head-on. I had been exposed to it all my life and secretly had grave doubts about the evangelical beliefs my parents and youth pastor had tried to instill in me. In seminary I came in order to look liberal beliefs straight in the eye and see for myself what was the truth. At the same time, though, deep down something in me knew the liberal approach was a lie. But I didn't know why, and I couldn't defend biblical beliefs against it, which threatened me.

So in seminary I was on a personal quest. I spent most of my time and energy exploring and defending the authority of the Bible and its teachings in all my classes. In doing so I learned why liberal views don’t hold water and why it’s best after all to believe the Bible; and for the first time in my life I KNEW it, and these were certainly rungs on the ladder God was leading me up to bring me to know Him.

As an interesting side note, in one of my church history classes we were required to read a book by J. Gresham Machen from the 1920s called “Christianity and Liberalism.” This fact was rife with ironies. Machen had been a Bible-believing New Testament professor at Princeton who was forced to resign when the liberals took over the seminary during the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy back in the ‘20s. In the book, Machen claimed that liberal Christianity wasn’t really Christianity at all, but instead a completely different religion, a false gospel masquerading as the Christian faith in modern guise. We were assigned this reading as an artifact of history, but for me it was a lifeline. While most of my classmates ridiculed Machen’s ideas, I was soaking them in and agreeing wholeheartedly with every word. This was but one of several discoveries I made at Princeton which served to unhinge the liberal agenda in my own thinking.

So I came out of seminary at least no longer threatened by liberalism, seeing it for the sham that it is, and with a lot more confidence in the truth of the Bible. But in many ways I had not experienced the realities the Bible conveys for myself. What I knew were intellectual ideas, more than relational and experiential realities.

When I finished seminary I wasn't that keen on becoming a pastor, because I didn't really feel suited for it, and I had a lot of misgivings about the Presbyterian denomination. I didn’t agree with infant baptism for starters, my classes in Reformed theology notwithstanding. I also disagreed with the fact that they ordained women as pastors, elders, and deacons, and with the feminist agenda that seemed to accompany this practice. This is not even to mention the homosexual activism that was going on in the denomination at the time, and still rages to this day. But my parents had paid all that money for school and I really didn't know what else to do, so I went ahead and looked for a church position in that denomination.

As a pastor I found that I didn’t know how to rely on God for the things I was doing--in fact, I wasn't really even inclined to do so. So I felt pretty helpless and at a loss. The unbelief in the mainline church was so daunting, and I didn't know how to address it in myself, much less in anyone else. I felt like the whole system was arrayed against knowing God, and perhaps it was....

I accepted my first call out of seminary in 1991, where I served as an associate pastor in a fairly large church. During my time there the senior pastor and another pastor on staff got into a big fight. In my youthful zeal and self-righteousness I took sides and got drawn into the conflict, too. It wound up being a very painful and disillusioning experience. Before it was all over, the entire presbytery in our region had been affected by this conflict. It was a huge, sad mess.

After 4 years at that church I left there and became the pastor of a small church in East Tennessee, still licking my wounds over what I had gone through in the previous church (not a good way to start one's ministry in a new place...). In my new church I was dealing with a lot of pain and guilt from the conflict in the previous church, and felt very alone and unsure in the new situation. As a single pastor it was hard to find friends and hard to find potential women to date (how many young women really want to date a preacher, after all?). I felt abandoned, I guess.

This is when I began to really search for God. I was climbing more rungs up a spiritual ladder toward knowing Christ. One of the very ironic and good things that came out of my experience in seminary is that it actually served to increase my faith in the Bible as God’s Word. All I had been through as a pastor just made it more clear how true the Bible really is. By this time I was searching in earnest. I began to suspect that something significant was missing from my Christian life, but I didn’t know what it was.

I finally concluded that if I wanted to find whatever it was I was searching for, I was going to have to look outside my denomination. This is frowned on in Presbyterian circles because they think they have the smartest way. But I was to the point that I didn't care anymore what my colleagues would think. I just wanted healing and deliverance, and had become willing to go wherever I needed to go to find it.

So in 1997 I started meeting with some of the other ministers in town for fellowship and prayer. Most of them were Pentecostals and Baptists. My parents had had some good experiences with charismatics in the Methodist church, and I had been close friends with several spirit-filled kids in college, so I felt comfortable with them, even though my denomination probably would have thought they were flaky.

An Assembly of God pastor friend invited me to a prayer retreat for pastors in early 1998, and I decided that was just what I needed, so I went. I figured being with those folks for an extended period of time would help me find what I was looking for.

The retreat was great, and I had a chance to share my burdens and sins with the other pastors. They encouraged me to meet with a small group of laypeople and pastors who were there praying with those in attendance for healing and restoration.

So on the third and last night of the retreat, a group of five people prayed with me, two pastors and three laymen who were intercessors. We were actually led by one of the laypeople. I began by confessing to them some sins that were weighing heavily on my heart. Then we began to pray. During the time of prayer I was delivered from some demonic oppression I’d been fighting for several years. At one point the man leading us in prayer identified a demon that afflicting me and asked my permission to cast it out. I said yes, and so he commanded the lying spirit to go in Jesus name. I literally felt something in my chest release its grip on me and depart. Afterwards I felt released from a tightness in my chest that had been with me for several years. I was free!

All together, the confession, the prayers, and the deliverance were all very healing. I could tell God’s Spirit was truly at work.

A real surprise came a little later, though. At one point the man who was leading the prayer team asked me, “Have you ever asked Jesus into your heart?” I responded by telling him of my involvement in the church since my early teen years and that I had made some commitments to live for God around age 13.

“That’s good,” the man replied gently, “but it’s not exactly the same thing. Have you ever asked Jesus into your heart?”

The truth was I couldn’t remember ever having prayed such a prayer in earnest. They don't think like that in the Presbyterian church--asking Jesus into your heart. To be honest, I’d always thought the idea was a tad sentimental and not really necessary. I felt that what you believed about Christ and whether you trusted Him was the main thing. I was convinced that this man’s question to me wasn’t really that important, and that it was already taken care of in my life. So I answered that I couldn’t remember asking Christ into my heart but I thought the issue was already dealt with.

He replied, “Well, since you can’t remember a specific time, why don’t you do it now, just to be sure. Then in the future if anyone ever asks you this question again, you’ll be able to say yes.”

Now you have to understand, under different circumstances I might have tried to offer some “clever” arguments as to why I didn’t think I needed to pray a prayer like that. After all, by that time I’d been a pastor for seven years.

But in that moment it was pretty clear that God was at work, and I had no desire to stifle whatever it was he was doing. In my spirit I suspected the question was on target. So within myself I said, “Lord, if this is what you want me to do, I’m not going to fight it.” I agreed to pray and ask Christ into my heart.

Just the same, I wasn’t really expecting much to happen, because I did assume the matter was already taken care of. I was essentially praying the prayer as a formality. But I was in for a surprise, and a very pleasant one at that.

I bowed my head and prayed a simple prayer in my own words: “Lord Jesus Christ, I do want you to come into my heart, and into my life,” I began. Suddenly I felt a change in my heart, a sense of peace, love, and joy filling me up--a feeling I had never felt before.

As C.S. Lewis said, I was “surprised by joy!” All those years I had sought to serve God, but I had never felt or experienced his love for me until that moment. For the first time I began to understand what it meant to call God my Father.

Afterwards I was in wonder and amazement and floating on cloud 9 like I never had in my life, and scratching my head over what had just happened. It was night time, and so after the prayer time I went back to my room at the retreat center where we were staying. As I brushed my teeth, I noticed the chorus to an old hymn was “playing” inside me. This had never happened to me before, for it wasn’t me singing the song, but something inside me was “singing” it. I stopped to listen.

He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today!
He walks with me and He talks with me
Along life's narrow way.
He lives, He lives, salvation to impart!
You ask me how I know He lives:
He lives within my heart.

The amazing thing is, this was not a hymn I knew that well or had ever sung very often (they don’t sing hymns like that much in the Presbyterian church). And yet that night my heart was singing it as though it was an old favorite. Then I remembered the Scripture that says, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children” (Romans 8:16-17, NIV). As long as I had been in the church, I had wondered what that verse was talking about, because I had never experienced the Holy Spirit testifying to my spirit that I was a child of God. I suddenly realized that this was exactly what was happening! The last line of that hymn says “You ask me how I know He lives--He lives within my heart.” The Holy Spirit was using my absolute favorite medium of communication—music—to give me a most important and excellent message! Truly God knows our deepest desires and how to speak to them…..

After my experiences at that pastors’ retreat I noticed some subtle but real changes in my life. For the first time I began to feel genuinely loved by God. I noticed that my prayers packed more power and punch. Scripture came alive in a deep and beautiful way. Passages I’d never understood before began to make sense. I was less prone to doubt than I had been before. I was also less prone to anxiety. And, much to my relief, my love life also began to take a turn for the better.

In the weeks that followed the retreat, I tried to better understand exactly what happened. It was certainly more than a mere “rededication” of my life, because after that time I experienced something I’d never known before--the reality of God’s love and presence in my life. Yet I thought I had known the Lord to some degree before those events: I felt that at times He had spoken to me and led me by His Spirit, and I had believed in Christ and sought to follow him.

As I thought and prayed about it, I came up with several ways to talk about this change I experienced:

1) Originally I had believed in the Lord intellectually and felt I had some level of relationship with him, but He always felt pretty distant. It’s almost like before asking Christ into my heart, I had something like an Old Testament relationship with God. I believed in Him and knew a lot of facts about Him. I believed He had given the Bible and that it was His Word. I believed in and knew His laws and tried to live by them. I even believed Jesus was the Son of God and had died for the sins of the world (it was harder to get my mind around the idea that He had died for my sins). I knew the Holy Spirit was given to live in believers and I even believed in the gifts of the Spirit. But the idea that God truly loved and accepted me was a foreign concept. Talk of God as my Father, or of His grace, didn’t mean much to me. I had rarely, if ever, experienced the reality of God’s presence in my life, or His power. Love was not much of a reality in my life. I didn’t feel loved by God, and I didn’t have much love to offer others. I wasn’t capable of giving or receiving love. I related to God from my mind and was hardly even aware of my heart. I didn’t know that we relate to God through our hearts. My heart and mind were split off from each other. I was a man divided from himself, and didn’t even know it.

As I thought about all this an analogy occurred to me from the business world. Before I asked Jesus into my heart, it was as if a business deal had been all set up and fully negotiated, but we had never actually “closed the deal.” It seemed “the deal” was actually “closed” that night when I prayed to receive Christ. I began to conclude that Jesus does not force His way into our lives. He wants to be invited.

2) The difference between the “before” and “after” in my relationship with Christ was sort of like the difference between a couple who are engaged and a couple who are married. Both couples have some kind of relationship with each other, but only the married couple has been united to one another. At some point we need to actively receive Christ in order to be united with him for eternity and sealed with his Spirit. It is not until then that we can truthfully say that we are “in Christ,” and He is in us. Before my experience at the pastor’s prayer retreat I had never understood the Christian life as a spiritual union between Jesus Christ and myself.

3) Before, as I said above, I had more of an Old Testament relationship with God: I knew him, but I feared him. I saw him more as judging than as loving. After my conversion I came to know him in the New Testament sense, as my loving Father. The difference is subtle but important.

4) Perhaps the best explanation--certainly the most biblical one--is to simply say that I was “born again” or “born anew” (John 3: 3), which in the Greek also means “born from above.” Scripture makes it clear that this is a work of the Holy Spirit, not something we human beings can do for ourselves. And it happens when we receive Christ: “...to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1: 12-13). Before receiving Christ I had trusted him to some extent with my intellect but had never actively received him into my heart and life.

5) One other Scripture I discovered for the first time after my experience was Eph 3:16-17: “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith (NIV). There it is, right in the Bible, and I never knew it.

6) Before receiving Christ, I struggled with doubts about my salvation. After my experience at the pastors’ prayer retreat I had assurance of salvation, because the Holy Spirit had testified to my spirit that I was a child of God.

On that last night of the pastor’s retreat, as I lay in bed unable to sleep due to the excitement and wonder of all I had experienced, I knew I had a choice before me—whether to keep this change and this new discovery to myself, or to share it with others. Sharing it would be risky. It might raise questions about my legitimacy as a pastor. If I had been mistaken about my relationship with Christ all those years, would people want to follow me anymore? How would my congregation respond? On the other hand, though, it would be a shame to keep such great news to myself. I realized that if I had been mistaken about my relation to God all those years, I was probably not the only person like that. I concluded that there were probably a lot of other people in churches who had never truly encountered Jesus in a personal way.

It really wasn’t that hard of a decision. Good news is hard to contain. I decided to take the risk and be open about my experiences. I’ve always been a pretty open person anyway, so it would have gone against the grain to keep such a wonderful experience all to myself, especially since I had finally found what I’d been searching after for so many years! It occurred to me that perhaps God had even allowed this to happen to me so I could share it with others. So I decided to tell what had happened to me that night.

The pastor’s prayer retreat ended on a Thursday. At the closing session in which we were sharing what God had done in our lives during the retreat, I couldn’t contain myself and burst out with it before my fellow pastors. The room erupted in exclamations of surprise and delight, in “Hallelujahs” and other acts of praise. One of the other pastors there, who led a large Evangelical Free church in Knoxville, asked me to come and share my testimony in the evening services at his church. I agreed, and we made plans for me to be there that Sunday night.

After the retreat it was back to regular church responsibilities, back to “reality,” as they say. I decided to share my experiences with my congregation in the Sunday morning service.

When the day came, I was a bit nervous, because I wasn’t sure what their response would be. After all, this was a Presbyterian church in a liberal denomination, so I just didn’t know quite what to expect....

(To be continued....)

Why This Blog?

2008-05-29T14:36:00.000-04:00

To be perfectly honest, growing up in the church, I thought the Christian life was an act. I knew the demands of the Bible and the Christian life were very great, and I thought it was my job to act like I was the kind of person I was supposed to be. That's all I knew. I knew me down deep inside, I knew how far I fell below the ideal, but the demands were there, and the only way I knew to meet them was to play the role. I just thought that was what the Christian life was, to pretend to be what you were supposed to be.

To be fair, my pretense was sincere, if you can say that. I was doing the best I could at what I thought I was supposed to be doing. I was working hard to appear to be what my parents and people at church seemed to think I was supposed to be. But I didn't realize that the Christian life rightly lived is supposed to be the outcome of the heart.

This effort led me to become a pastor. Being a pastor was the highest expression in my life of this pretense that I believed the Christian life was supposed to be. It may very well be that on some level God called me to be a pastor. But even so, the only way I knew to be one was to pretend.

What motivated this pretense? The desire to please. I wanted so badly to please my parents and other people and be who I thought they wanted me to be. And I wanted to please God. Yes, on some level I actually thought God might buy my pretense, too. My facade was also motivated by the fear of rejection: The fear that others and even God would reject me if they knew who I really was inside.

Pretending eventually gets old, though. It takes a lot of effort, and you can only keep it up for so long. Eventually the longing to be real becomes stronger than the fear of what might happen if people actually get to know the real you.

About 10 years ago I decided I didn't want to pretend anymore. I began to determine that whatever I did and whatever my life looked like, I wasn't going to intentionally keep up any longer the facades I'd been maintaining for so many years.

This determination was fueled by the work of God in my life. I met Christ for real around that time and learned for the first time that I didn't have to pretend because He loves me and accepts me like I am. So I began to find the courage to start shedding the layers of pretense in which my life had been shrouded up to that time.

Don't get me wrong--I know I probably haven't rid myself of all forms of pretense yet. I'm sure there are ways I'm still pretending that I'm not aware of. Pretense is motivated by fear. It's a desire to hide the truth, the desire to hide who we really are for fear of rejection. Ever since Adam and Eve hid from the presence of the Lord because they were ashamed of their nakedness, we have been pretenders and actors.

But thankfully, "...whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.... And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Cor 3:16-18,NIV). In Christ we can come out of hiding. We don't have to hide in shame anymore, for He has taken away our shame through his death on the cross. We don't have to pretend anymore to be something we're not. We are set free to be who we really are.

Nevertheless, in the church the pressure to pretend is ever-present, even in the best congregations, even in the churches that strive to be free in the Spirit and to not put undue burdens on people. Because the reality is that the truth of who we are and where we are in our Christian journey is not pretty at times, and can be quite messy. And we get tired of the mess after a while. We grow tired of seeing each others' weaknesses and sins. Others sense this, and the tendency to hide returns. Plus, there are just some sins that are too embarrassing to admit. We just don't want our dirty laundry seen by everyone.

There are some things you're not supposed to talk about in the church, things you're not supposed to say. I'm creating this blog as a place for me to talk about some of those things, a place to be honest and real and say some of the kinds of things we're not really supposed to say, to talk about subjects we're supposed to avoid at times.

Because I am trying to be honest about where I am in life, a lot of what I say here will be reflections of my own weaknesses and folly. That's why I've called this blog "A Fool's Wisdom." My desire here will be to comment on various subjects from the perspective of my own experiences. But my life is pretty messy; it's not all neat and tidy. So I don't claim to have a lot of answers or to be someone whose life is an example for others, or someone that anyone else ought to listen to. I just like to write. I find it helpful to put my thoughts down on paper. My hope is that there might be something here that will resonate with others and perhaps be of some benefit.

There's a lot of renovating that still needs to be done in my life and heart, to borrow an idea from author Dallas Willard. But my desire from here on out is to let God do it rather than trying to do it myself. Any changes and improvements that come into my life, any growth I display, will be to His glory, because He will have to do it if it's going to be done. I just want to cooperate, and not hinder His work in my life.

Is That Really Why They Call It Work?

2008-05-29T14:14:00.000-04:00

(or

"Don't Try This At Home!")

Almost every Christian I know is unhappy in their work. I've had many conversations with friends in recent months who've made comments like "I just don't know if I'm cut out for this job..." or "I don't know how much longer I can do this!"

Me? I quit my job over two years ago due to severe job dissatisfaction. Those who know me know that wasn't the first time, either. Eight years ago I left behind a 9-year career as a "church professional" (13 years if you count the schooling required beforehand). In the two years since I quit the more recent job, I've been pretty unhappy in the short-term jobs I've had since then, too.

I may be an extreme case, though. You see, the truth is, I hate work. It may sound like I'm just lazy (and in fact, maybe I am!). But I did pretty well in school. I graduated Magna cum laude from college with a GPA of 3.9. Likewise, my GPA in grad school was a 3.5. So I think I do know how to work. I do know how to strive for excellence in areas I care about. It's not the work itself I mind. It's the fact that I do my best and my best never seems to be "right" or enough. I think the real problem is I hate the atmosphere in the workplace and the rules governing it. I'm a contrarian. I just don't really want to go along with a lot of the B.S. that's required in so many jobs. (And to be honest, I felt pretty much the same way about church work, too. Hope that's not too much of a shock for anybody....)

But even though I may be an extreme case, evidently I'm not alone. For as I said, a lot of people I know are unhappy in their jobs.

What are the sources of all this job dissatisfaction, especially among Christians? I can only share what I myself have felt, and what I've heard from others.

Sources of Job Dissatisfaction

The Feeling of Wasted Gifts and Time

One of the common themes that often comes up with Christians is the feeling that their job is getting in the way of their service to God. "I wish I could quit my job so I could serve God full time," they (we) pine wistfully. Often they have a pretty good idea, too, of the way in which they'd like to do this. It's not just a vague fantasy they've resorted to on really bad days. Many of the people I've talked to have given this a lot of thought and have come up with some kind of vision or plan.

The odd thing is, when I was a pastor, I felt the same way--I felt like my job was preventing me from really loving and serving God. That may sound strange, but the role of pastor in the average church sort of takes on a life of its own, and therefore requires you to spend your time doing certain things, no matter what. Whatever else is going on, you've got to spend a certain amount of time each week preparing your sermons, Sunday school lessons, and Bible studies; responding to crises in people's lives; visiting the sick and those in the hospital; preparing for and attending an assortment of meetings; and the like. Ideally you should be doing a certain amount of visiting of the folk who are well, too. If you want to be involved in your larger denomination and your community, then those activities require additional time as well.

The old joke that pastors only work one day a week is just that--a joke, and not a very funny one really. If you add all the above together, most of your time for a given week is already committed--in fact, all of it is, and then some. Therefore, if you're going to be a pastor, you better like doing all those things enough to have all your time taken up with them, and you better not have many other interests, because you will soon find yourself feeling frustrated about not having time to do some of the other things you love.

That was me--I didn't fit the mold. I had other interests that didn't fit my job description, and there were quite a few aspects of the job I didn't enjoy enough to be forced into spending all my time doing them, particularly when it was to the exclusion of other things that were important to me personally but not to my congregation. These other interests were not sidelines or insignificant for me, either. They were integral to who I am, such as my music and songwriting.

So ironically, as a pastor I also felt inhibited by my job from being able to serve God in some of the ways I most wanted to. I attribute some of this to the fact that the very way in which most churches do church leadership is out of kilter, but that's a topic for another blog entry.

Job and Skills Mismatch

Another common source of job dissatisfaction I've heard from friends is the feeling that the skills their jobs require from them don't fit with who they are. I felt this way as a pastor, also. That, of course, can only be solved by finding a type of work more suited to one's interests and abilities.

Crummy Corporate Cultures

Yet another source of job dissatisfaction I often hear folks talk about is the people they work with, or the corporate culture where they work. While I didn't experience this so much in the church, I've certainly experienced it in the secular companies I've worked for. There are some real bozos out there in the business world, and they make life unpleasant for everyone around them. (Of course, someone I worked with may have felt that way about me, too!)

I think one of the roots of this problem is the moral and ethical slide of the society we live in. Greed seems to be the driving force behind a lot of corporate decisions, and individual workers pay the price. Meanwhile, the global economy has made competition a lot more fierce, adding to the "dog-eat-dog" nature of today's workplace. It truly is "survival of the fittest" out there. This causes people to strengthen their defenses and to become more ruthless simply out of a feeling of sheer self-preservation.

A number of my friends are teachers in the public school system. Though not in the business world per se, even they feel the pressure from our society's moral and spiritual decay. They see it in the attitudes of their fellow teachers, especially those who aren't believers, as well as in their students' behavior, their outlook, and their schoolwork. Cheating is prevalent and seems to be "no big thing". Parents are more prone to side with their children when there's a problem in the classroom. When I was a kid, if the teacher called to talk to our parents, we dreaded it, because we knew our parents were most likely going to side with the teacher. Not so anymore.

This is just one example of how our society's moral decay makes work more unpleasant for everybody. I'm sure you could offer examples as well.

What Is The Solution?

I think all these factors--the desire to serve God more effectively, the feeling of not being a good fit for their jobs, and the decay of corporate culture--all contribute to the dissatisfaction so many Christians feel in their work. So the question is: What do we do about it?

I myself have had a chance to look at this dilemma from many sides. Since I quit my "real" job two years ago, I have all the time in the world to pursue the things that matter to me most. The problem I've faced (as you can imagine) has been paying my bills and putting food on the table. And quite frankly, it has been a real problem. I have no family to support, so that has kept things from being truly catastrophic. But that's why I jokingly (or not so jokingly) tell my friends "Don't try this at home."

But are we always to be stuck in this dilemma of either having the time to do the things we love or putting food on table, but not being able to do both? Are we always relegated to being able either to work or to serve God, but not to do both? We know we have to work, because the Bible is clear that everyone is supposed to provide for their own needs through work, and ideally make enough money to have some extra left over to give to the poor (see 1 Thess. 4 and 2 Thess 3).

Ministry in the Marketplace

I suspect my pastor and some of the people in my church would respond that this is a false dichotomy. They would say we should focus on ministry in the workplace and see our jobs as, among other things, the very arena in which we are to carry out our ministry. And they certainly have a point. Instead of seeing our workplace as a hindrance to our ministry, why not see it as the location for our ministry? Why not see it as a mission field? If we're called to do a certain type of work, then it seems reasonable to assume God means for us to witness to Him in that work.

So what might this approach to work and ministry look like? Well, first of all, we can pray for the people we work with and the company we work for. That could be quite a task in itself. I don't know about you, but many of the coworkers and businesses I've been associated with have needed a lot of prayer! We can also look for opportunities to witness to unbelievers and to encourage fellow believers, both in words and in actions. This can be a challenge, though, because many businesses are not keen on proselytizing or faith sharing. Another matter for prayer, perhaps? We can also look for ways to care for the day-to-day needs of those around us, just in trying to be kind to them and take an interest in their problems. (Easier said than done sometimes, I know.)

But this still doesn't address the other issues: What do we do when we feel as though our work is hindering us from fully using our gifts to serve God? And, how do we deal with a corporate culture gone awry?

The Desire to Use Talents Directly For God

To illustrate the first question, one friend I know handles media all day at work for a secular company, but what he'd really like to be doing is using his media skills full-time in the church. After all, the need he sees there is great, and it would give him the feeling of really being able to do what he loves in a way that concretely serves God. He would have the chance to use his gifts directly for God and the church, as opposed to feeling like he has to use them all day in a way in which the direct benefits for the kingdom are very hard to see, if there at all.

This is the issue for many of us--simply longing to be able to use our gifts directly for God, in a way in which we can feel like they're having an impact of eternal significance, as opposed to using them for the business world and only secondarily ministering through our relationships in the workplace. I'm sure there are those in the Bob Briner mold (author of the book Roaring Lambs) who will be quick to respond that the world needs competent people in every secular field and that this in itself provides a very strong and needed Christian witness. That's fine if you really do love using your gifts in the secular marketplace. If so, I say more power to you.

But there are some of us who desire to use our gifts in ways that we feel directly serve the kingdom of God. Is this merely establishing a false and unwelcome division between the sacred and the secular? Or do some have a legitimate, God-given desire to utilize their gifts in direct service to him?

One consideration which determines how we answer this question is our world-view. There are many Christians who seem to agree with our culture's expectation that Christians should keep their faith to themselves; that religious matters are not appropriate in a public forum. These folks might argue that using your gifts in direct service to God is inappropriate or unnecessary because all ministry should be carried out quietly in the secular arena, or else carried on in a clandestine fashion that doesn't offend anyone.

But for those of us who do want to use our gifts more directly in the service of God, how do we discern the will of the Lord? How do we tell whether the desires we have are from God? Could it be these desires are sometimes really rooted in a desire to escape a challenging work situation in which we find ourselves? (More on this question below.)

"Get Me Out of Here, Please!!"

There are those of us who'd like to change jobs or careers because we have a desire to serve God more directly, and there are others who may want to change jobs simply because their coworkers or the corporate culture is driving them bananas! If you fall in the latter category, the most obvious solution would seem to be to find a job with a different company, perhaps a company with better values, maybe even a company run by Christians?

There are two objections to this answer. The first is, if you leave where you are, how do you know you're not jumping from the frying pan into the fire? From what I observe, the corporate culture is pretty bad everywhere. Few workplaces are unimpeded by aggravating people and Dilbert-like absurdity. So could it be we need to learn better methods for dealing with difficult people and a corporate culture with stinky values?

The second objection--to the idea of going to work in a Christian company--is: If all the Christians leave the secular marketplace to work only for other Christians, then doesn't that rob the world of its salt and light? Perhaps, but the other side of the coin is, when Christians work together perhaps it can show the world how a business could be run utilizing Christian values. Working together, Christians can show that, contrary to worldly wisdom, businesses operating with the values of honesty and integrity can be profitable and successful.

Mixed Motives

The latter two causes of job dissatisfaction I mentioned above--the desire to use one's gifts more directly for God, and the aggravations of an un-Christian corporate culture--can foster motives for changing jobs or careers (especially a change to "full-time ministry") that are less than honorable, though. We can be motivated to make such a change simply because we're unhappy where we are.

Though I'm not proud to admit it, I originally went into full-time ministry in part because I was afraid of the pressures and demands of the business world. My experience was that the secular world is unkind and unforgiving toward those who don't measure up and, being a sensitive soul, I didn't really want to subject myself to that kind of treatment. I thought the church would be a kinder and gentler place in which to work. I should add that my motives were mixed--in addition to these fears, at the same time I really did want to serve God, and I had a genuine desire to use my gifts in more direct service to God and the church.

In some ways I was right about the church. Overall the people I served in churches were kinder and more gracious than many I've encountered in secular work. The thing I didn't count on was how trapped I would be made to feel by my job responsibilities. (I also felt out of sync with my denomination, but that's also a topic for another day.) So my solution to my distrust of the business world really didn't work in the way I had hoped.

For these reasons, I would caution those who are thinking about leaving a secular job for work in the church: Check your motives carefully. If you discover that your desire to serve in the church is motivated in part by a wish to avoid something else unpleasant, maybe it's time for some real soul-searching and prayer. If I ever serve in full-time ministry again, I don't want it to be because I'm trying to escape something else. I want it to be because I know I have been called and led by God to enter into that ministry. And I want it to be because I want to, not because I feel compelled to by other considerations.

I've been doing some reading lately on co-dependency, and I've been reminded how well that description fits me. Co-dependency is a complex dynamic, but simply put, one aspect is that co-dependents try to do a lot of seemingly "good" things for questionable motives. Co-dependents tend to have a lot of their self-esteem wrapped up in feeling like they are able to "help" others, but often they wind up being manipulative and controlling in order to try to get others around them to do what they "should" do. Co-dependents are often suckers for the helping fields in employment, too. Not that all people who work in helping fields are "suckers." But there are positive and negative motives for going into the helping fields, and if we are drawn to that sort of work in order to bolster flagging self-esteem, we're liable to be in for a rude awakening.

"That's Why They Call It Work!"

At any rate, with respect to job satisfaction, maybe the bottom line is that in a fallen world we're always going to feel dissatisfied in our work to some degree. I guess it goes back to that thing in Genesis about toiling "by the sweat of our brow," due to Adam's sin. One wry quote I've heard from people is "That's why they call it work!"--meaning, of course, that labor is to some extent unpleasant and unsatisfying by nature, which is why it's called "work" in the first place.

But is that really true? After all, there are those seemingly rare and fortunate people who really love their jobs. "I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this!" is their exclamation of delight. I must confess I envy those people. Referring to my pastor again, I think he would say that people who love their jobs are people who know who they are and who are doing work that's in keeping with their true identity. That rings true with me. My challenge in working this out has been actually knowing who I am (that is, who God says I am), and knowing how that should direct my vocational choices. Ultimately it brings me back around to one of the dilemmas we started with: I think I know what I want to do. I just can't figure out how to make a living at it.

The Importance of Attitude

I'm starting to think, though, that part of what enables people to love their work is their attitude about work and life in general. I would wager that people who love their jobs are people who are able to put a positive spin on almost anything they do and enjoy it. If that's the case, then I need God to do some work on my heart, because I don't enjoy work most of the time. I'm pretty sure I'm in need of an attitude adjustment. Maybe what I need is what the apostle Paul described in these words:

"I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want: 13 I can do everything through him who gives me strength." (Phil 4:11-13, NIV, colon added)

And also:

"6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that." (1 Tim 6:6-8, NIV)

I will conclude this reflection on work and job satisfaction with a quote from the song "Great American Novel" by Larry Norman:

"Don't ask me for the answer, I've only got one:
That a man leaves his darkness when he follows the Son"