Golly, Dad Fudged the Sales Numbers!

Remember the Blues Brothers? They told people they were on a mission from God. Bradley Moore recently learned that he is too. Today he writes about his own search for help with integrating faith and work. And he insists, "My life as a Christian executive can not be distilled into five-bullet-points and a bible verse." Here is an excerpt to whet your appetite for the whole post, Lord, Wilt Thou Not Leadest My Blog to Reach 1000 Page Views Per Day?:

I was frustrated by the lack of compelling content I saw on internet sites around the idea of integrating faith, spirituality, work and career. Some I found to be mainly interested in using the workplace as a stomping grounds for evangelism (ready, set, convert!). But I am not interested in targeting my employees and co-workers for conversion, so this did not appeal to me very much. I would much rather have genuine relationships with people at work, respecting their existing faith wherever they are on their spiritual journey. If we do end up having faith conversations, it happens naturally, out of mutual respect, trust and genuine influence. Other work-faith sites were offering inspirational bible study applications to address token workplace issues, such as dealing with annoying employees or handling straightforward ethical questions (Golly, What if my Sales Manager asks me to fudge the numbers on my expense report?). These generally came off as a bit too simplistic for me. I highly doubt that all of the complex issues I face in management and leadership can be boiled down to a few Sunday School adages from scripture. To make matters worse, I noticed that many of the well-intentioned authors of these work-faith articles had little to zlicho experience in corporate management. This, to me, came off a little bit like asking for marital sex therapy from a celibate priest. Not that we shouldn’t apply scripture to encourage and direct the decisions in our lives, but I sometimes fear that the overzealousness for bible-quoting misses the nuances and complexities of the deeper, real-life complications that must be teased out in the process. What I couldn’t find, it seemed, was anyone talking from a smart, spiritual perspective on the very things that I was struggling with at work, like:

• The angst of searching for a spiritual purpose in my career
• Ideas on how to positively channel my drive and ambition
• Managing the constant pressure and insecurities of delivering on corporate performance expectations
• Balancing my desire to make money with spiritual priorities
• Dealing with peer competition and skanky corporate politics
• Working through periods of stress and burnout
• Allowing an honest faith struggle where it’s okay to ask challenging questions now and then.

Those are hard issues. And they remind me why we're here. HighCallingBlogs.com was never supposed to be another Christian ghetto. We're making things up as we go here, two steps forward one step back. On bad days, I don't know if we're really making progress or not. But like Bradley says, we're not called to make progress. We're called to be faithful. My bottom line kind of mind doesn't like to think that way. I'm more like David, who asked twice, "Now, tell me again what reward I get if I kill Goliath?"

At one point in the essay, Bradley writes, "the feeling I was left with was that business and spirituality don’t really go together."I get that feeling sometimes too. I think we all do. I've had bosses that yell at me. I've worked jobs that were barely livable wages. I've worked 60 - 80 hour weeks, and I've wondered if I was working my life away.

At TheHighCalling.org we say it this way: God cares about your daily work. He does. And because he does, we need to care about it too. Work has intrinsic value. It is not just a mission field. It is not just a paycheck. It is not a game. Whatever your work, it is a high calling. So let's stop our complaining and our moaning and our fussing, and get the job done.