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Interview with Marcus Goodyear - Part 2

August 07, 2009

Continued from Page 1

I do think that focusing on the end goal is important, but I also think that we overlook all kinds of ways our work glorifies God outside of the work itself: interaction between employees, my relationship with my boss as a reflection of an appropriate submission to authority, my relationship to people underneath me (and sometimes submission to them, when appropriate). So much of it comes down to relationships, but there is that issue of the overall vision. I don't think you can have a religious calling if you're making pornography. The work needs to be noble, is how J. I. Packer put it. Whenever we talk about honoring God through work, there is the assumption that the work is noble, that we're not doing unethical or degrading things.

When it comes to the presence of God in the midst of work, I don't know what exactly that means, because it implies some kind of conscious awareness of God. For me, experiencing God in my work is a matter of constantly reminding myself that God is with me and cares about my work. We have a fallen world now, but we're still able to do the thing he originally created us to do, which is to work.

This can be used to support workaholic attitudes, but God definitely cares about the way we order the world around us. Adam and Eve were creating order within the Garden, and we are called to do that too. So we experience God's purpose when we do that, and God's presence is more of a discipline of reminding myself that He is with me and this is important.

This has been a great discussion. Any closing words?

I think one of the biggest challenges facing Christians in the workplace is that the American workplace in particular defines success in a very rigid way. It's really easy to get trapped into that definition of success. At Laity Lodge, the retreat center that fuels many of the ideas underneath TheHighCalling.org, our facilities only hold eighty people. It was constructed to be intentionally limited in size and scope, a place of depth and not breadth.

So much of our definition of success these days is about breadth: large numbers, big salaries, mass communications. Success is something I struggle with, too. Here I am an editor of a magazine, and I'm trying to grow the subscription base. But I can get trapped into thinking about success in terms of larger numbers of page views and subscribers. If people aren't being nourished and God isn't being glorified, then it doesn't matter how many people it goes out to.

Finally, I want to remind people that I don't necessarily have these things figured out. It is easy to talk about them, but much more difficult to actually pull it off on a daily basis. Much of what I've said here is a summary of what I've learned in my work with Mr. Butt, my time at Laity Lodge, and the great authors who write for TheHighCalling.org.

Read the first part of the interview by clicking here.

This appears as a part of the Faith@Work Consultation. See also:

Peter Collins, The Ethics of Firing, Part 1 and Part 2.

Galen C. Dalrymple, The Curse of Busyness, What Are You Building?,

Timothy Dalrymple, The Holy Ghost in the Machine, and first and second articles on the Moral Dimensions of the Financial Crisis.

Mary DeMuth, Marketing Without Manipulation.

Jonathan Dodson, Do Worldly Honors Matter?.

John Hoyt on Courage in a Time of Darkness.

William Miller, On Building Trust.

Mark D. Roberts, Remembering the Sabbath

David Rupert, Wipe Your Feet

Nolan Sharp, When Work Teaches Faith

Tim Stafford, Believe in Your Calling.

John Terrill, Reframing Business Education.

Photo courtesy of Christopher Chan via C. C. Commons license at Flickr:

Page: 2 of 2

8/7/2009 4:00:00 AM

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