Fourth Principle: Work is
Developmental
I would finish hoeing my garden."
— Francis of Assisi
when asked what he would do if he were to die at sunset.
Neither Rome nor the world was built in a day. Why, we ask, did God speak a word to bring the universe into existence and then take six days to work out the details? The simplest answer is that something cannot be created out of nothing gradually, primary creation is always instantaneous. Once God had brought the world into being, however, He worked according to the principle of secondary creation: to make something out of something. It takes time and must be done in stages. By His example, God demonstrated the developmental nature of our daily work as partners with Him in the task of secondary creation. Four developmental principles are given to us in the Creation story.
Creative work takes time,
Creative work is done in discrete but interdependent stages.
Creative work advances toward higher and more sophisticated levels of achievement
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Creative work comes to maturity when human nature reflects the image of God.
Note these principles in action through the calendar of God's working days.
First Day: light is divided from darkness to make night and day,
Second Day: water is separated from waters to make the sky,
Third Day: the sea is separated from the land and vegetation is made.
Fourth Day: sun, moon, and stars are made to mark seasons, years, and to govern day and night,
Fifth Day: fish and fowl are made with the instruction to fill the earth,
Sixth Day: after the creation of animal life, God created Adam in His image as representative of humankind. Adam is then given dominion over all creation, instructed to fill the earth, tame it, and tend to it along with the promise of sustenance from all living things.
By direct inference we see that our work is also developmental. As God laid the foundations of the universe through primary creation, we can also anticipate foundational work to do. As God took time to do His secondary creation in stages, we too can see our daily work developing over time and in interlocking stages. As God's creation progressed through advancing levels, we can too can anticipate higher and more sophisticated levels of achievement. And as God crowned His work with the creation of man in His own image, we too can anticipate the maturity of our work in fulfilling God's purpose for our
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human nature in relationship to other persons — to love, serve, and glorify Him.
OUR FOUNDATIONAL WORK
When God created the heavens and the earth ex nihilo, "out of nothing," He laid the foundation for all of the rest of His creative work. We too have foundational work to do.
Our vocational foundation must have height, breadth, and depth. Educational achievement gives us the dimension in height, career options give us our breadth; and spiritual disciplines give us our depth.
Our vocational height. Educational achievements are the building blocks for
height in our vocational foundation. Literacy is the first block upon which
to build. Only in recent years have we become adequately sensitized to the
widespread evidence of illiteracy in our nation. As a resident of Kentucky,
I was shocked by the news that twenty- five percent of the people in the
counties just east of us are functionally illiterate. As a person
who had taken reading for granted, I had to rework my assumptions to make
literacy a cause to which I am committed as a Christian. On several occasions,
I have met poets, artists, songsters, philosophers, and theologians of the
hills whose genius lay dormant because of their reading handicap.
Other levels of illiteracy are also being uncovered. Survey after survey reinforces an alarming fact: despite being blessed with the most extensive educational system in the world, many Americans are culturally illiterate. A large number do not know the dates of the Civil War, the year of the signing of the Constitution, or the century in which Columbus discovered America. Even more alarming is the finding that well-schooled Americans, even Christians, are a-literate. They can read, but they don't. Whether the deficiency is illiteracy or a-literacy, a Christian's vocational foundation is weakened if the fundamentals
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of reading are missing. To answer God's call to vocations, Christians must know how to read, understand what they read, and cultivate a thirst for reading.
Closely aligned with a commitment to literacy is a love for learning. Whenever I counsel students on careers, I invoke an axiom which reinforces what we call our second vocation: to be called to the consecration and development of our gifts. Translated into foundation building for our calling, it means that we should rise as high in the educational system as our gifts will allow. There may be rare exceptions, but it is safe to say that we waste our spiritual gifts if we do not cultivate them. Just the other day, a student with unusual gifts for intellectual inquiry, social awareness, and interpersonal sensitivity came into the office to tell me he was dropping out of seminary to work because he had no focused future. I accepted his decision to drop out, but not without the caveat, "Build an educational base commensurate with your God-given gifts. Otherwise you will limit your options for the future and short-circuit the full potential which God has in mind for you." He thanked me and promised to build the base.
Our vocational breadth. Our vocational foundation also needs breadth. Most
of us cannot claim to have chosen a special career early in life from which
we never varied. Rather, we fit the typical pattern of changing fields of
interest three or four times before we make our career choice, and then changing
three or four times in succeeding years. Yet, there is another brutal fact
of life with which we must deal. As we move through our careers, the options
tend to narrow down by age and opportunity. For one thing, in a rapidly changing
world we have to retrain ourselves in order to move from field to field.
Even then, there are limits to retraining — our background preparation,
our economic status, and especially our competition.
Furthermore, our age and vocational identity begin to work against us. As we grow older and gain obligations, it is
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more difficult to take the risk that a career change often entails. More difficult yet is the identity we develop in a given field of work and the network of contacts we create. A career change that requires retraining, risk and new networking is not easy, despite the success stories we read about "opening horizons" and "freedom from stress" for persons who make mid-career changes. Especially as we grow older, we emphasize with the displaced worker who said, "I'm too young to die and too old to learn a new trade."
All of this is intended to emphasize the broad base of work-related experiences we need as part of our vocational foundation. Whether after-school or summer jobs, curricular or extracurricular activities, early career moves or lateral transfers, all lend breadth to our vocational foundation which opens up multiple options for our future. A working rule is, "The broader the base, the wider the options."
Our vocational depth. Both the height of our achievements and the breadth
of our career options need the counter-balancing depth of spiritual discipline.
Otherwise, educational achievements can lead to pride and career options
dissipate in wandering. Spiritual discipline in the Word of God and in prayer
keeps us humble in spirit and focused in direction. Also, spiritual discipline
builds in us the ethical convictions and moral character which become the
integrity base for any career, religious or secular. God calls us to a depth
of spiritual integrity that opens up the height of educational achievement
and sets us free to explore that breadth of career options.
OUR VOCATIONAL STAGES
Just as God's work in Creation advanced through progressive but independent stages, so our long-term work plan should show the same progress. Imagine a pyramid of work built upon a strong vocational foundation.
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Strata I is production: to sustain human existence. The most elementary
work of all is to sustain human existence. The idea that menial work at minimum
pay, to provide food, clothing, and shelter, is less dignified than a better
job at higher pay, to supply our wants rather than our needs, is a serious
distortion of biblical vocation. Both Old and New Testament Scripture are
clear and firm in giving dignity to the labor of the hands. First and foremost,
then, God calls us to work in order to meet our subsistence needs. His call
also extends to offering political, economic, and legal support for persons
whose circumstances make it a struggle to earn a living wage. For instance,
I have been involved in community service programs for single, working mothers.
Because of early marriage and motherhood, many of them lack the skills to
compete for jobs which pay above the minimum wage. Their disadvantage compounds
because most of these jobs do not include the benefits of health insurance,
sick pay, or retirement. These mothers suffer most when their children are
sick, hungry, in makeshift day-care programs, or on the streets as "latchkey
kids." They deserve not only our assistance in wages and benefits, but also
our respect for their efforts to hold "life and limb" together.
Strata II is transformation: to change human structures. All human
institutions and systems are flawed and capable of improvement. Christians
cannot be satisfied with just keeping those institutions and systems running
in order to produce the goods and services to sustain human existence. As
"brooders" over our work, we will envision ways to change the climate, improve
the system, and even transform the institutions with which we are associated.
This attitude is consistent with our "second job" — to work for change
as well as subsistence. In modern management language, change agents within
an organization are identified as intrapreneurs, in contrast with
entrepreneurs who create change outside of established institutions.
Christians can be either intrapreneurs or entrepreneurs in our vocational
work. For most of
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us, whether we are change agents inside or outside our organization is a matter of gifts. Our secular society has put a premium on the visionary ventures of entrepreneurs even when their tactics push ethical margins. Donald Trump, for instance, draws mixed emotions of awe and hate for his entrepreneurial appetite that ingested Atlantic City gambling casinos and his extravagant lifestyle that includes a floating palace in the form of a yacht. But the greed of some does not mean that Christians cannot be entrepreneurs. If we look back on the advancing movements and enlarging horizons of the church through history, we see that spiritual entrepreneurs have led the way.
At the same time, not enough credit has been given to Christians who are intrapreneurs. Our fast-moving society tends to reward the flash in the pan ahead of the faithful person. God, however, puts a premium on faithfulness. In the Book of Revelation, we read, "Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life" (Revelation 2:10).
Although intrapreneurial changes may not be as spectacular as the innovations of entrepreneurs, the result may be more substantive and lasting. Mainline churches, for instance, are in membership decline and in need of spiritual revival. Rather than staying within the church and working for change as intrapreneurs, many pastors are leaving the established denomination, becoming entrepreneurs, and founding their own churches. For the most part, they trade one set of problems for another. Somehow I feel as if we need to honor those clergy or laity who faithfully work for renewal within a denomination, as much or more than we honor those who leave for their independent achievements. Whichever the case may be for us, our single desire should be to hear God say, "Well done, good and faithful servant" (Matthew 25:2).
In Studs Terkel's book Working, he tells about the bus driver who greets a crowded bus load of grumpy commuters at the end of the workday with this greeting: "Welcome aboard.
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Until you get where you are going, this is home. Let's enjoy our time together." In his own inimitable way, he is an intrapreneur who is creatively transforming one of the most routine plodding, and impersonal of human systems — public transportation.
Strata III is ministration: to serve human needs. Quickly we recognize
that service to human needs is a common thread that runs through all levels
of our work, whether producing goods and services for the subsistence needs
of those to whom we are obligated, transforming structures for human betterment,
or more directly ministering to human hurts. By spirit and heartbeat, a Christian
never loses sight of human hurts as integral to his or her vocational calling.
Not only will we Christians be sensitive to hurting people and responsive
to their needs but we will also rigorously avoid causing hurts by demeaning
their humanity or devaluing their work. There is no exception. No matter
how menial our job or how minimal our wage, we are called to be masters of
ministration with rich rewards for our servanthood. Especially, we are reminded
of our responsibility for the bound, the blind, the bruised, and the broken
among us. As we found in a study of domestic violence in our community, the
hurts do not know the boundaries of race, sex, age, social class, economic
status, or church affiliation. Wherever we work and at whatever level,
ministration is our ministry.
Strata IV is actualization: to fulfill human nature. Certainly one
of the goals of our daily work is to realize our potential as men and women
created in the image of God. From a psychological standpoints, Abraham Maslow
has made "self-actualization" the goal of human development in his well-known
hierarchy of values. In a paper that shook up the psychological world, Maslow
dared to identify the qualities of the self-actualized person. He said that
these persons exemplify the two criteria of optimal mental health: the absence
of significant inner problems and the "full use and exploitation of talents,
capabilities... (and) potentiality."1 Expanding
these two criteria in detail,
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Maslow ascribed these distinctive qualities to the self-actualized person:
self-acceptance
acceptance of others
autonomy
spontaneity
aesthetic sensitivity
frequent mystical and transcendent experiences
democratic rather than autocratic style
involvement in a cause outside oneself
good-natured, kind humor
earnest desire to improve humanity
search for privacy
detachment from trivia
exemplary values by which one lives.2
Coming directly to the self-actualized person's attitude toward life and work, Maslow spoke of an "outpouring of creativity."3
In this sense, there can be creative shoemakers or carpenters or clerks. Whatever one does can be done with a certain attitude, a certain spirit that arises out of the nature of the person. One can even see creatively, as a child does.
As good as it sounds, Maslow's description of the self-actualized person is deficient in spiritual values, even though most of his distinctive qualities imply moral integrity and religious maturity. We need the redemptive power of Jesus Christ to make us His new creation and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit to lead us to our full human potential. Then, all of Maslow's qualities take on the transcendent dimension which the Apostle Paul identified as "Christ in us" (Colossians 1:27). Actualization for the Christians, can never be "self-actualization." Rather, it is "Christ-actualization." This is why Maslow's hierarchy
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of values is like a truncated pyramid. The apex is missing. And if we stop here in relating our daily work to our human development, we will lapse back into a self-fulfillment ethic which we have already seen to be carrying the seeds of its own destruction.
Strata V is redemption: to glorify God. Of course, this level of work
is the apex of our efforts. Yet we must not make the mistake of assuming
that it is separate from the rest of the work or more spiritual than the
lower levels. Because God created humankind in His own image, the redemption
of human nature is the crowning glory of our work. And the task is not so
exotic as we might make it. Redemption means to restore human nature to its
intended purpose, namely the fulfillment of human potential in the image
of God. To see men and women become fully human and whole again is our highest
vocational calling and the greatest reward for our work.
I cannot forget that my spiritual heritage began at a workbench in a tool-and-die shop. Grandpa McKenna had the reputation as a rough-living free spirit with a genius for anything mechanical, from steam engines in railroad yards to precision lathes in a tool-and-die shop. His bench partner angered Grandpa because he hummed strange tunes as he worked and read a Bible during lunch breaks. At first, my grandfather ridiculed and cursed him, but to no avail. One day Grandpa's insatiable curiosity got the best of him, so he asked his coworker about his reading. Soon he was sneaking snatches of Scripture on his lunch break and asking his partner for an explanation. One day a packing box in the corner of the shop became an altar as Grandpa McKenna confessed his sins and trusted Christ for his redemption. From then on, he and his partner hummed hymns together and literally transformed a dingy tool-and-die shop into a sanctuary of the Spirit. Even more important, Grandpa McKenna stopped wandering, took his faith home, won the respect of his neighbors, and lived to hear his grandson
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preach his first sermons!! In his life, the strata of production, transformation, ministration, actualization, and redemption all came together in the fullness of life, or better yet, in the fulfillment of his human nature as created in the image of God.
OUR VOCATIONAL MATURITY
Along with the wholeness of our work in the pyramid of vocational development, we gain a maturity of skills, experience, and intuition as we labor over a period of time.
Every job has an opportunity for developing skills. When I worked for a building contractor during the summer of my college days, for instance, I didn't know much about pounding nails, digging holes, laying tile, and carrying bricks with efficiency. Unschooled laborers and apprentice carpenters prided themselves in the moments when they taught or taunted a college kid.
After almost thirty years as a president of a college, university, or seminary, I am equally amazed at how much I have learned and how much I have yet to learn. At one time or another I have had to acquire skills in curriculum, instruction, faculty development, accounting, financial development, public relations, space allocations, building construction, government relations, and student life. Most recently my "growing edge" for skills development is in strategic planning and investment portfolios. One of the arguments for heaven is becoming more real to me. I need heaven as a continuation of my learning experience where I can continue my work.
Speaking of experience, the value of what I have seen and done is becoming priceless. Rich memories and nostalgic stories are now a part of my life experience. Turning points, traumatic events, failures, and successes stand out in my mind. Particularly, I recall the decisions of choice that opened one door and closed another: from engineering to pastoral ministry, from pastoral
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ministry to psychology, from psychology to higher education, from public university to Christian College, from Christian college to Christian university, and from Christian university to the theological seminary. Behind the scenes of those choices are others which represent the roads not taken. Either by my choice or that of others, I did not follow my desire to pursue medicine, politics, or business; I was not chosen as an editor of a national magazine, the director of a multimillion dollar foundation, or Secretary of Education in the Cabinet of the President of the United States. Whether winning or losing, moving or staying, choosing or not being chosen, all of these experiences form a rich and varied fabric woven by the Spirit of God. All my experience complements the skills which have been sharpened by both incentive and demand.
Someplace between skill development and experiential learning in our work is a mystique of intuition which plays a larger and larger part in our vocational role as we grow older. Intuition is a "sixth sense" of decision-making that develops out of the broad perspective we often call "wisdom." Some part of intuition may be inherited as a gift to a right-brain person but, for the most part, intuition is a product of skills and experience which cannot be rushed. The older I get, the more intuitive I become in sensing human needs, driving to the root of problems, weighing the alternatives, anticipating the consequences, and making decisions.
Vocational maturity has a synergetic effect when advanced skills, experiences, and intuition come together to make us efficient at all levels of our work and effective in achieving our most important work goals. Put in the context of our models for vocational development, it means that we will find the way to be productive, transformative, ministrative, actualizing, and redemptive in our daily work and thus follow our calling as men and women of God "thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:17).
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SPIRITUAL REFLECTIONS
ON OUR WORK AND GROWTH
.... always in every prayer of mine making
request for you all with joy... being confident
of this very thing, that He who has
begun a good work in you will complete it
until the day of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 1:4-6
* * * * * * *
A PROVOCATIVE QUESTION
Think back over the past few years of your vocational career. What
have been the most meaningful and satisfying experiences in your work? Did
you learn more from your successes or your failures?
A PRACTICAL EXERCISE
Chart the developmental level of your work. Is your daily work at the level of: (1) Production; (2) Transformation; (3) Ministration; (4) Actualization; (5) Redemption? What experiences from your daily work illustrate each level of development?
A PERSONAL PRAYER
O ever-present God, teach me patience in doing my daily work so that I can build on the past, be effective in the present, and anticipate the future. Amen
_____________
1. Edward Hoffman, The Right To Be Human: A Biography of Abraham Maslow (Los Angeles: Jerry P. Tarcher, Inc.,1988), 157ff.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
