A Manifesto on Integrating Faith and Work - Jon Tyson

Well, thank you for being here this morning and I absolutely joy to have you. People ask me all the time, what do you love about New York? It's like, well, listen, man, Central Parks are not awful. So many things I love about New York culture, I love the architecture, I love the density, but they're not it. You can get that in other cities. What I love about New York is New Yorkers. I love the people, they're the most fascinating people I've ever met. They're people with vision. They're people who are willing to pay a price. Everybody has at least a minimal sort of entrepreneurialism to even get here in the first place. And so what has sustained my heart and what gives me vision? Again, it's not how well our church is doing though I'm tremendously grateful for what God's doing in it. It's how can we actually make disciples that take everything God's put in them and direct it towards a kingdom end? So I love why you're here and I love what's in your heart that is from the Lord. And I'm excited about seeing how that plays out over the course of time to shape this city to look more like Jesus wants it to. So thank you for having a dream. New York's that place where everywhere else people misunderstand you. And you come here and you're like, wow, you're weird like me. You're my kind of weird. I love that. So it's New York's the first place I've ever been where I felt like I could exhale and be accepted for who I truly am. And so I'm grateful for that, grateful for you being here. I also want to just give a couple of framing thoughts before I jump into the talk this morning. I was very, very tempted to give a talk on the creation mandate and how Genesis frames what we do, what it means to bear the image of God, the Amago Day, the four-part gospel, all of that. But I'm not going to, but I was very, very tempted to. But I feel like there's probably a low enough, I mean, there's a high enough bar of understanding around that. I also think it's, I wanted to talk more about how we really are in a war for kingdoms. And we don't like that language because we talk about imperialism or we feel like the church has had a bad reputation with this. But I do want to say somebody's going to shape the future. And I don't want people more zealous for Godless ideologies than people are for the kingdom of heaven. Now the spirit in which we do it should not be in the spirit of the world. We shouldn't be driven by fear or control. But we should care as much about the future of the city as any other person that does not know Jesus. So in some sense, what you do with your work is aligned in some sort of largest spiritual conflict. We have to see that. I also wanted to maybe talk about, we're not going to get to that. But I also wanted to talk maybe about how Jesus said that the real goal is to disciple nations. And we've forgotten that the great commission is disciples nations, not just meeting one lost person. And Jesus has. Therefore go make disciples of all nations. I've always probably, you know, top three heroes of my life is William Kerry. And I've recently read William Kerry's biography written by his grandson. If you tend to our church, I've mentioned this many times. But one of the things people forget about the father of modern missions that most of his ministry was done as a professor. He was an educator. He didn't do it as a quote unquote missionary. The first five years, he wasn't even allowed to be a missionary. So he ran factories. So the greatest missionary in history got most of his work done through work, not in spite of it. And by the time he died, he came very close to laying the foundation of disciples and nation. William Kerry brought a modern understanding of finance and banking to India. He radically impacted literacy. He brought the first printing press to the nation. He touched agriculture so that they could use their rich soil. He impacted education and justice. Twenty six areas of society when he died had a massive theological vision for the Lordship of Jesus because he came to the nation. He wasn't sitting there just having coffee, sharing the gospel. This was a holistic work-oriented nation-discipling vision. And so when people say the church cares about revival, church cares about, yes, mission, all of these things are integrated together into one thing and I think the best examples in history show that. So you with me, that's all the stuff I wish I could talk on but don't have time to talk on. So here's what I do want to talk on. Out of you work in this very challenging cultural moment. So this is one Thessalonians 4 versus 11 through 12. Here's just the framing passage. You should mind your own business. Some of you that would be enough. This is the word of the Lord going to likewise. You should mind your own business and work with your hands. As we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. Now that is an enobling vision if there ever, this was a revolutionary passage upon hearing it. I want to unpack that more but I want to just sort of give us an analysis of where we are when it comes to the workplace right now. Last night I read the State of the Global Workplace Gallops survey and it's not looking good out there. Here's employee engagement. 21% of people down two points are engaged in the workplace. 62% of people are not engaged and 17% are actively disengaged, aka sabotaging their jobs. 33% of people view themselves as thriving, 58% are struggling and 9% are suffering. Look at the emotions experienced during a lot of the previous day. This is at work. 40% of people, dominant emotion is stress. 21% anger, 23% sadness, 22% loneliness. Job market, 51% of people feel like it's a good time to find a job. 50% of people have an intent to leave watching for or actively seeking a new job. What the heck? That is not a sort of encouraging analysis of how people are viewing work right now. It's been pointed out, you were spent 100,000 hours or so of your life at work. A third of your life will be spent at work by the age of 30. This is radically different at this time of history. Most people have had seven or eight jobs. Most people come to New York for work. What we spend most of our life doing, we often have very little theological reflection beyond paycheck and margin for why it is that we do what we do. This has led many people to what is called the great disconnect. Great disconnect. And again, listen, I believe the church matters. It's why I'm a pastor. The church is central to the heart of God. But the church doesn't exist to extract people out of life and build itself up so that pastors' egos can feel good about church success. And unintentionally, if we're not careful, that's the message that we give. We'll value to the degree that you participate in the thing that the church is running. And so again, I face a great risk saying this is a pastor because it means a lot of you may not volunteer and actually do need you to serve in the church. It's why pastors never bring this up. But it can lead to a great disconnect where you really can't feel like, well, what is the point of what I do all week long? Murphy Sayers famously said, "In nothing has the church so lost her hold on reality as her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation." She's allowed work and religion to become separate apartments and is astonished to find that as a result, the secular work of the world has turned to purely selfish and destructive ends. And that the greater part of the world's intelligent workers have become irreligious or at least uninterested in religion. But is it astonishing how can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concerns with 9/10 of his life? So the majority of people view their discipleship and following Jesus as completely separated from what it is they do all week. So for the most part, this results in two responses. One is a response of futility. The other one is a response of idolatry. And I want to give you a vision that is neither futile nor idolatrous. I want to give you a biblical vision of work. So let's just unpack these briefly. Workers' futility, 87% of people are currently unhappy with their jobs. So let's look around this room here. That is a terrifying number. How many of you were like, I'm here hoping this was actually a job fair, not just a Gallup said 50% of people are doing the minimum possible to stay employed. We could add trillions to the global economy just by employing engagement if people were more motivated to actually shop with a whole of their hearts. Here's a terrifying statistic of cupbers where one partner spends 10 plus hours more than usual at work, compared to the average rate, they are twice as likely too diverse as people that do not have that dynamic. Gen Z experienced particularly during the effects of COVID, the great resignation. This is when people were like, you know what, I think we're done here. Gen Z didn't want to do that in an angry manner so that we had the whole movement of quiet quitting. And quiet quitting was just like, I think we're done here. And so for a lot of folks there's just this inbuilt sense of futility. Work was designed by God to glorify Him and fill our hearts with joy. It is a gift not a curse. Futility came as a result of sin. That work is not futile. And so a lot of times if you don't have a kingdom vision of what it is you do, you will experience only the effects of sin without the redemptive power of what the gospel can do to change work. So I want to say this to you, if you currently feel like work is futile, don't stop there. Do not settle for futility as your vision of what work is. Now on the other side of that, and I think this in many ways is probably for many people here in New York, the real challenge, work becomes idolatry. When you get rid of God as a reference point, which in essence is what secularism is doing, you re-reference everything through yourself. And therefore the way the kingdom of self is built is through work. It's an article that came out called workism. Redefining work as religion, workism is making Americans miserable. The decline of traditional faith in America has coincided with an explosion of new atheisms. Some people worship beauty, some worship political identities, and others worship their children, but everybody worships something. And workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants. One of the benefits of being an observant, Christian, Muslim or Zoroastrian is that these God-fearing worshipers put their faith in an intangible and unfalcible force of goodness. But work is tangible and success is often falsified. To make either the centerpiece of one's life is to place one's esteem in the mercurial hands of the market. To be a workist is to worship a God with firing power. Achievement, and then Mary Boe goes on and says, "Achievement is the alcohol of our time. These days the best people don't abuse alcohol. They abuse their lives. An achievement addict is no different from any other kind of addict." So on one side you've got people who are feeling like the acute pain of futility. Like it just feels riddled with the shrapnel of sin. It feels like work is meaningless. Maybe it's bad management. Maybe you can't find intrinsic meaning in the task at hand. Maybe you're working on projects that you feel around a theoretical tool of values, but you have to do it because you need money and you're stuck and it just feels like you are living in futility. On the other side you get people and this is just all-eyed dollar tree. This is you living project self, building a kingdom of self for yourself. And a lot of times in all honesty, if you don't have a larger framing vision, Christians just peign between the two. It's like, their hope is rooted in their next position. I hate this one. I'm looking for a better one. Not this one, it's not as good as I hope looking for another. Just pegging between futility and idolatry. I do not believe that our destiny as Christians is just to wallow and strive and to swing in this cultural malaise. I think the Christian vision of work is one of the most compelling reasons why the Christian story is true. Let me say that again. It's a big statement. A recovering of the theology of work may be one of the greatest apologetics for the story of God of our time. And the church has failed to tell that story well. So here's what I want to do. I want to give us a theology of vocation and why having a sense of calling has the ability to free us from both futility and idolatry root us deeply in our life with Jesus and give us a vision for his kingdom in the world. So let's just unpack a few of these things together. Why does work matter? Now listen, because God is a worker. That sounds so obvious, but I want this to settle in. The goal of discipleship is becoming more and more like God. If God is not a worker, the more you work, the less you are like him. But if God is a worker, the more you figure out how work integrates your relationship with him, the more you will become like God. God is a worker. Now this passage, one Thessalonians four, is quite a revolutionary passage. It says here that you should work with your hands. This is a dignifying passage for human work. In Greco-Roman culture, they didn't want to do anything with their hands. Manual labor was for the slaves or for the poor. The real work was the work of philosophy and ideas. And so for this passage to come along, for Paul to write to the Thessalonians, by the way, whose faulty theology was stopping them actually working, he says, you have to work with your hands. That you may have a daily life that wins the respect of outsiders so you will not be dependent on anybody. Did you see that vision? There's a sense of the restoration of agency and dignity. You have the ability, like God, to build something that not only blesses yourself, but provides for others. You will win respect amongst outsiders. How many of you know what a terrible thing it is when there's somebody who is absolutely terrible at their job? And then you go to your firm or your companies are Christian prayer meeting and there they are leading the prayer meeting. And you're like, dear God, just be better at your job, man. So the respect of outsiders comes in our daily lives through being financially independent to the point where we can be generous, honoring what we do with our hands and earning respect amongst other people. Paul Steven says, this the Old Testament opens with the description of God himself engaging in the work of creating the world. God continues to work throughout the Bible and that the biblical writers metaphorically describe him as a worker engaging in almost every trade, craft and role in a human experience. For example, God has called a gardener. God has called a shepherd, a potter, a physician, a teacher, a vine dresser, a metal worker. God is showing us through metaphor that these things matter to him. And we forget there is a call in Genesis chapter 2 to work. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to what? To work it and to keep it. That is the primal human job description. Work and keep, create and cultivate. You don't have to be a follower of Jesus or a Christian to do these things. This is the primal human job descriptions. You put one man on an island or one woman on an island and immediately not just for survival. When they break through those lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy, they will start to work and they will start to keep because that's what Christians do. David Banson, who is our next speaker, happened to say this in his book on work. I believe it's abundantly clear from the plain teaching of Scripture that God created mankind for the purpose of work. We must not be content with the theological framework that merely allows for work, encourages a certain kind of work, or offers broadly positive statements about work. Rather, we must recognize that from the very creation of mankind, God intended us to be workers, producers and agents of growth and dominion. He connected our identity to work. He established our tell us, our purpose, as cultivators of creation. He called for a flourishing garden, a productive and beautiful place where our work does important things. God did all this. So this is obvious, but bears repeating. When God put Adam and Eve in the garden to work and keep it, the rest of the Earth was not eaten. The garden was the temple and the As you remember a couple of weeks ago from my sermon on the temple, the goal was to expand Eden to cover the earth. So he put us there as image bearers of God to work and to bring water out of chaos from the rest of creation. That's why God put us here on the earth. And that goal has continued through every season, theological position, rebellion, idolatry. This is the primal human job description. Now this is particularly important for Gen Z. Is there anybody from Gen Z in the house who just put your hand up? Is there anybody from not from Gen Z in the house who put you? Wow! Look at these millennials. Hello! Is there anybody from the Gen X in the house? Yes, a very, very small unenthusiastic number. I'm very Gen X. One of the challenge I think, perhaps an over correction for Gen Z, has been around the idea of Sabbath. And I don't say this disparagingly. I understand that the workforce is changing greatly. I understand that AI is making things disruptive and confusing. I understand that COVID was very hard. I understand that the markets are changing and many of you are paying off debt from degrees that infields that no longer exist already. So a lot of time the emphasis has just gotten to life is hard, life is about Sabbath. And I love the Sabbath. Yesterday I did a Sabbath stroll with my parents on Little Island and on the High Line. I ate food for the glory of God and drunk world-class coffee for God's glory. I love the Sabbath. A lot of time though, we kind of think that the point of life is Sabbath. And then you have to go to work. Like work is a curse and the goal of life is Sabbath. And you know what? That is robbing Gen Z of the beauty of participating in God's work of redemption in the world. This is actually a terrible framing of the point of Sabbath. The goal was a beautiful partnership with God through rich vocational integration all week. Meaningful, significant work. And then you had a day to celebrate and rest and reflect on what God had done throughout the course of the week. Work is not a terrible thing where Sabbath is the goal. Work is a gift and Sabbath is a chance to reflect on that so we can sustainably participate on what it is that God is doing through the world. So we have to have then a theological vision for work. Well what is that? Let me give this to you quite slowly. I was going to say quite quickly but then that would be dishonest, wouldn't it? There's a word that I think in many ways is a word that needs to be recovered and made central in our understanding of what it is that God wants us to do. And that is the Hebrew word Aveda. And it's a word that has a wide semantic range. Within that semantic range there are three distinct ideas. The first one is the idea of work, literally, labor. The second one is the idea of worship which is a God would orientation of the heart manifests through various forms of practice. And the idea of service which is using what we have for the good of other people. You can see this word played out at Exodus 34, it says on six days you shall work Aveda. Then in Psalm 104 it says the man goes out to do his work Aveda to his labor until the evening. In Exodus it says this is what the Lord says, let my people go so that they may worship me Aveda, same word that's used here. And then in Joshua 24 but I said me in my household we will serve the Lord. Aveda the same word is used again. If we can bring up the next slide. So you get this beautiful root word that I think genuinely fits into these three very meaningful categories of how we understand what it is we do a week. The first one is worship, this is about doing what we do for the glory of God. The second one is vocation, this is about meaning and fulfillment. This is an internal sense of joy and alignment for what is the God has created as for. And then there is service, this is doing what we do for the good of the world. I do want to say to you if you spend time unpacking this Venn diagram alone and working out what this means for your current role. You will find an infusion of joy for what it is that you are currently doing. So let's just spend some time leading into the various parts of this Venn diagram. By the way, do you know where Venn diagrams come from? Venn was a mathematician who was the grandson of one of the Clapham sect. The Clapham sect were producing people impacting every sphere of society and the Venn diagram is the gift that keeps on giving. So part one work as worship, for the most part when we think of worship, what do we think of? Singing. The first thing we think of is singing. Now singing is very important. If you've studied any work on the concept of awe, there are eight ways that trigger awe in the human heart. Communal singing is one of them. It is a pathway into the transcendence. So worship does include singing. But it's amazing to me how many other central verses have nothing to do with singing. How about this one from Romans 12, 1 and 2? Do you remember that verse? Therefore brothers and sisters, I urge you in view of God's mercy to offer your voices as living sacrifices. Now what does it say? To offer your bodies, your whole cells. That's true spiritual worship. Work as worship means that there is an internal orientation of the heart that is God would manifest through a schoolful practice of what we do in the world. Colossians 3 and whatever you do, whether in Word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. It is building in the heart a theater for the glory of God, in the motivational structure of your heart. Many of you have heard my story before, my first job was a butcher. And being a butcher, there's not particularly glamorous, though it is having a bit of a resurgence right now. I was in the meat packing district yesterday going, "I can fill some roots here." But it was a panakostle church that I became a Christian in. I'm talking fire, tongues, power, glory. And one of the great challenges I had was how firepower tongues and glory had anything to do working with my mate Steve, who was supplementing his income by growing marijuana in his basement and deeply unmotivated in his job. How does tongues firepower and glory get into the meat factory? And so I began to sort of offer these sacrifices to the Lord and saying, "Lord, could this at least have an orientation towards you?" And I found that in many ways this was the point of true worship anyway. One rabbinical teaching says this, Joshua said, "If people recite to Halakot Jewish laws in the morning and to Halakot in the evening and the rest of the day is occupied with their work, it is imputed to them as though they had meditated upon it day and night and thus fulfilled the entire Torah, all of it." Morning prayer, evening prayer, an orientation of the heart towards God as if they'd spent the day studying the Word of the Lord. And I came across this very simple content, I've used this over the years, but it was so life-changing to me. The idea of Kovarna, again, it's another rabbinical teaching of the power of imputing holy intent. And the simple teaching said that at the creation of everything, everything was filled with the glory of God. Synrapshed that glory, but there's a potentiality in creation that when we with holy intent work towards the Lord, it somehow redeems it. The idea of glory, Kovarna, in the Hebrew literally means weighty or significant. And a lot of times we feel like our work is not weighty or not significant. And so part of the Amago day and the part of making our work worship is to impute into our work with holy intent, taking things which are meaningful, are meaningless and mundane and doing them for the glory of God. Now, you don't think this matters, this sounds maybe a touch-trivial theoretical. Have you ever been at a restaurant with a demotivated employee who does not want to be there? And then have you been there with someone who for them this is their passion and their calling? The way to transform a city as much as anything else is to put Christians in every sphere of the city, doing things with excellence for the glory of God out of a different motivational heart structure. When's the last time you had a repair on your apartment? You're just like, "Oh gosh!" And then someone good comes in with a cheerful eye. And so, these are the last times you had an appointment and the person showed up at the time it was scheduled for. You want to win the world? Show up on time! It's very, very simple things doing things for the glory of God when I was a butcher, one of the ways I did this. I would go to the shop. get down on my knees, I would get in early, had the keys to my workplace. And I would offer sharpen my knives and offer them to the Lord like in the book of Job. And I would say, Lord, this is for an audience of one. If nobody on earth sees this ever again, this is done for your glory. May people say, that's the best rib-eyed steak I've ever had. That's the best customer service I've ever had. These chicken fillets are the best chicken I've ever had. It's like, because I did those for the Lord Jesus Christ. If every Christian in every sphere worked as worship unto the Lord, the fundamental nature of what they did would be transformed. Second area of this word is work as service, which means it's the idea of making sure that what we do does exist for others. And I think in some ways, the church has let the world lead on this. They're telling our story better than our own. For almost a decade, I worked part-time doing spiritual formation for entrepreneurs in an organization called Praxis Labs. And I was here in the city, led by a friend of mine, and they basically focus on entrepreneurship. And what I loved about being a part of this was their idea of how work can actually transform the cities in which we live. And he was the phrase they used. They talked said, "Redemptive work is creative restoration through sacrifice." Creative restoration through sacrifice. I've used these charts before. I hope you can see them next slide. These are the Praxis slides. They basically say that there's three primary ways that people work in the world. The first one's exploitative, which means it's just like purely bottom line without secondary concern for outcomes. People have rejected this. People are so angry at exploitative companies or leaders. And so the big response was an ethical response. Everybody in a Starbucks, yes, they wanted to charge in $19 for a latte, but two dollars of it would go to a local cause. So everything all of sudden, had a foundation that was attached to it or a social good component that happened in their work. And what he basically says in this frame, which Andy Crouch helped come up with, which is like, "Christian should not be in the exploitative business period." We should at minimum do ethical work, but the goal is to figure out how we can move what it is that we do towards the redemptive edge. So they're a redemptive frame if we can zoom in. The exploitative model, the strategic intent was to leverage culture. The operating model was to use people and the leader's script was to live for self. In the ethical model, can you see this on the screens? I'll need a little more feedback than that, yes or no. I'll send these slides out. In the ethical model, the goal was to respect people, improve yourself and produce culture. But in the redemptive frame, they say the strategic intent is to renew culture, bless people, and part of the goal of this should be to die to self-flight Christ, taught us. Unfortunately, in the faith and work movement, quite often because it was so dependent on money from unaccountable business people in the world, just an observation. Nobody ever challenged them on where the money came from in their business. As long as they were writing checks for the nonprofits, the church would take it. And as a result, there could be disparities there that confused younger workers about the nature of how business was won. So we should be taking into consideration how what we do does have a redemptive edge. Antichrath talks about game theory and he basically says it works like this. The explotative frame is win-lose. Like, I win you lose, sucks to be you good for me. The ethical frame is win-win, which is like, hey, can we find a way where we both do okay? But the real goal, the redemptive model is I sacrifice we win, which means I am willing to forego some of which I could get for the sake of our mutual benefit. Martin Luther says this, God doesn't need you good works, but your neighbor does. But your neighbor does. And Christians should find ways beyond just doing their work for the glory of God to serve others. Third part, work as calling. Now, you understand this part of the radical nature of the Protestant Reformation was a correction on the priesthood of all believers. The Catholic church had sort of a two-tiered system. You had people who had a vocation. And a vocation was basically a call to holy orders. So nuns and priests, these were people who had a vocation. Everyone else just did their jobs. Luther came along and said, actually, I think that all of us have a vocation. Vocation having this idea of being called. Now, without a godly vision of calling, by default, you will have narcissistic tendencies in your work. You just-- like the whole thing is just stacked to produce that in you, particularly in New York. Let's just touch on narcissism for a second. According to DSM5, here's a definition of narcissism. Has a pervasive pattern of grandiosity. Needs and requires excessive admiration. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance, exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commesurate achievements. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, has a sense of entitlement, like empathy, takes advantage of others to achieve his or own ends. How many of you see traits of narcissism baked into our society as a whole today? Is there anybody just fault-fired, scrowing? How many of you are sitting next, I'm just kidding. It is quite remarkable. And if you study the research, like the scores on narcissism have leapt extraordinarily as our culture has gotten rid of God, we have replaced God with the sovereignty of self. And so if we're not careful, all work exists for, is for the personal maximization of my own good. Whether that be money, time, attention, fame, or recognition, power, whatever it is. And when a Christian falls into that same framework, it's not healthy. They have to realize they have a calling unto the Lord, but it is an internally joined sense of fulfillment. Of a partnership with God for His kingdom, not just success in the eyes of the world. Japanese practice of Shikunin. The Japanese word Shikunin is defined by both Japanese and Japanese English dictionaries as craftsmen or artisan. But such a literal translation does not fully express the deeper meaning. The Japanese apprentices taught that Shikunin means not only having technical skills, but also implies an attitude and social consciousness. The Shikunin has a social obligation to work his or her best for the general welfare of the people. This obligation is both spiritual and material in that no matter what it is, the Shikunin's responsibility is to fulfill the requirement. Now, I'm amazed at how many people have been robbed of the sheer pleasure of watching Giro dreams of sushi. Who has seen this documentary? If we could just produce Christians who thought and worked like this in New York City as a baseline, this place would not be the same. It's worth watching tonight. I mean, this thing's end after lunch. What are you doing? Kind of cold outside. Walk home, watch this. I simply say this, it's an inspiring vision of the possibility of having a sense of call and excellence to what it is that you do. So I want to give this framework because I think this is very important. I've pointed this out before. The unemployed person fundamentally experiences a sense of shame. There's a sense, regardless of how it's happened, if you've ever been let go, there can be that sense of rejection. Like, you didn't want me? I'm not good enough now. Talked to a lot of older folks. One of the great tensions is like, I'm just not wanted in the workplace anymore. Feel obsolete and unvalue. That there's a sense of shame that can come with that because you know your worth more and you know you have a contribution to make that people in essence are rejecting your sense of calling. If you get someone who is under employed, which means they're capable of more but don't have a vocational place to express it, you will experience futility. How many people would you meet and they're sitting there gone, "There's more to me than this!" That's why I always ask people, "What's the dream in your heart that brought you to New York?" I want to wake that up. I want to get you out of futility and bill playing, moving you more towards calling. If you have a job, you'll have a sense of dignity. This is very, very good. I remember just like the sense of wonder when I was working full time, just like, "Man, I'm paying my own bills." I bought a house when I was 19. I'm living on my own. JT Money has a little money. And it wasn't a lot that every dollar I spent was like, "I earned that." I did this. I'm a young man building a life. and I've done this with my old hand, there's a sense of dignity that I owned. Now, as many people will say, particularly sort of in immigrant communities or working class communities looking for more social mobility, the typical parents will say, don't just get a job. Get a career. Go to college, get a career. And a career is around personal flourishing. That's around you figuring out what you can do. This is about breaking generational barriers or whatever that is. But a career and personal flourishing is not enough for a Christian. You gotta get above that. Here's what that is. You gotta get a vocation. And this is about a sense of redemptive calling. There has to be a divine sense of delight in you. God's got me here for this. I like how Beacon puts this. The place God calls you is a place where you're deep gladness in the world's deep hunger meet. And I was like, listen, man, if I could do an overlap of what I love about New York, it would be the world's deep hunger and my deep gladness. People say, it must be so hard in New York. Yeah, it's hard, but it's gloriously hard. It's beautifully hard. Where else would you want such hardness but here? So the power of a Christian vision of work, Aveda, worship, we do this internally for the glory of God. We have an audience of one. It's a sense of vocation and calling. There's deep meaning and fulfillment as we grow and the skill and excellent for which we do this. Honoring God and blessing those around us. And then it's an act of service. We're using what God has given us for the common good, renewal of the world through which we are a part. Now, if I could just say a couple more practical thoughts. I wanna say, I think part of the posture with which we do this. Here's a phrase I think is worthy of deep consideration. Influencing culture through redemptive participation. Sometimes the church has an imperialistic controlling instinct. And I'm always have some hesitation around that. You can do tremendous violence to the good news of the gospel by trying to exert cultural force. But then on the other side, you get people who just like, a little bit like the Thessalonians, they think we need to just sit out in Bible revival camps, never working, raising our salaries to sit in the woods and pray. And I don't think that's it either. I think we are called to exert influence over culture through redemptive participation, which means we show up, desiring that it's not just faithful presence, I do not believe that is enough. It is fruitful presence. Sultan Light is not just faithful. It exerts a different effect because the Christian is there. But the spirit on which they do what is different. David Bruce Hatchman says this, "God cares not only about redeeming souls, but also about restoring his creation. He calls us to be agents not only of his saving grace, but also of his common grace. Our job is not only to build up the church, but also to build a society of the glory of God. As agents of God's common grace, we're called to help sustain and renew his creation, to uphold his created institutions of family and society, to pursue science and scholarship, to create works of art and beauty, and to heal and help those suffering from the results of the fall. When you are walking around with that kind of a framework and showing up every day, you will show up different." So here's, I think, four or five practical things that you can do after you watch the sushi documentary. Number one, you've got to have a theology if you're calling. You should be the biblical expert on your field. If you're in your field. Here's my starting questions. I've used these so many times. These are not final questions, they're starting questions. What drew you to your work? What did God have in mind for your kind of work? Why does it exist in the created order of God? What do you love about your work? What do you hate about your work? What scripture's shape of theology of your work? What are the ethical tensions of your work? What are the best practices for people of faith in your industry? You're not starting at zero. How have Christians who've been in this space before you figured out how to follow Jesus well and do this job for His glory in that place? What can you do to release beauty through your work? What can you do to resist brokenness in your work? What does excellence look like as a Christian where you work? Like I said, this is like 101. You could innovate out of this to an extraordinary degree. But if you showed up with this as a baseline of your workplace, you would show up differently than the majority of Christians in America. Second, you've got to have a direction for your calling. Most people think about their career in terms of advancing maybe social status or financial compensation. Rather than how do I maximize this towards God's ultimate ends. Folks, I don't know how to tell you this. You're going to have a job in heaven. It says this, the kings and rulers of the earth will bring the glory of the nations into the new creation. They're still kings. They're still nations. And each leader and each ethnic group tends to produce cultural goods and cultural distinctives that are a unique expression of what God has done within that community to glorify God with a distinctive from their people. And the New Jerusalem is more like a giant interactive mat where everybody is bringing the absolute best of every nation, tribe, and tongue for the glory of God than some ethereal realm dressed in white singing for eternity. And so we need to realize where we are headed and what we are participating in, which is joining God in the renewal of all things. And so your work should be moving towards that trajectory. You should also-- again, is there any greater example than the inklings, OK? The inklings-- I'm assuming you know who they were. This is C.S. Lewis Tolkien and the boys, OK? The inklings were a circle of instigators, almost of incendiaries, meeting to urge one another on and the task of redirecting the whole current of contemporary art and life. Stop that, stop that. Did you get that? They are redirecting the whole current of contemporary art and life. I want to meet some of these 20 to-- I'm like, what are you doing? Well, I am trying to redirect the art and culture of crypto. I am trying to redirect the whole culture around whatever it is. This is massive vision, OK? But as history would record, however, modest their pretensions that their ideas did not remain half-formed nor their inkblots mid-dablings. By the time the last inkling passed away on the eve of the 21st century, the group had altered in larger, small measure the course of imaginative literature, fantasy, allegory, mythopoetic tales, Christian theology and philosophy, comparative mythology, and the scholarly study of the Beoworth author of Dante, Spencer Milton, courtly love fairy tale and epic. And during as much from their scholarship is from their experience of a catastrophic century, they had fashioned a new narrative of hope amid the ruins of war, industrialization, cultural disintegration, skepticism, and enemy. Out of the text they studied in the tales they read, they forged new ways to convey old themes, sin salvation to spare and hope, friendship and loss, fate and free will, in a time of war, environmental degradation, and social change. They also could be seen regularly on Tuesday mornings, gathering for food and conversation in a side nook of a smoky pub at 49 St. Giles, known to pass us by as the eagle and charred, but to habituies as the burdened baby. I love this. I'll whip might say that the Inklings aim was to turn the bird into a dragon and the baby into a king. For their sympathies were mythological, medieval, and monarchical, and a great hope was to restore Western culture to its religious roots, to unleash the powers of the imagination, to reenchant the world through Christian faith and pagan beauty. You know why we started a Center for Vocational Mission? Because we thought someone should get a vision like that again. That you in your sphere should get together with some friends and co-workers in whatever sphere you work in and you should do that. What a vision. Birds into dragons, babies in the kings. Through a wardrobe door into a secret world. Next, set of your ethics in advance if you're calling. Listen, man, there's so much coercive pressure in the workplace. So many levers that can be pulled against you. If you don't figure out your ethics in advance, many of you will fold under the pressure of the moment. So you've got to have a clear ethical vision of the tensions of your industry. If you work in finance, you need to have a really strong ethical understanding of money and a Christian vision of what it is. You work in the arts. You need to figure out what it is that you do. If you work in HR, you need to figure out what it is that you do. You've got to settle your ethics in advance. You need to figure out what you'll get fired over. And the healthiest thing you can do. I've managed people for 30 years. The healthiest thing you can do is be good to manage. Be a great employee. Let your employer know about you. Here's what I'm passionate about. Here's the areas of my expertise. Here's where I want to go. Be someone that is easy to lead. One of the clearest ways to do that is to say, here's my ethical Christians as a follower of Jesus. And by doing this, you will know where I'm at. I have a friend who managed, coming out of MIT, went to Harvard, then MIT, graduated, and then went to manage money for Michael Dell. Do you remember Dell computers? That had a moment. He sat Michael Dell down and wrote him a letter of his ethical convictions about money. He said, this is my ethical convictions as a follower of Jesus on money. And when he left several years later after printing money for Michael Dell, Dell took the letter out of his top drawer, handed it back to him and said, you're the first Christian I've ever met who's followed through on their vision. Major respect. My simple point is you can do this at a high level with respect. Next, you've got to have patience with your calling. You understand this, but I don't know if we do. I often find that people at 24 want what their parents had at 48. And it's like, hey, listen, man, get in there, work hard, humble yourself, and don't expect to be an overnight success. Real work and real excellence takes time. So you've got to have patience in your calling. A lot of times we talk about entrepreneurship, but sometimes it's just entrepreneurship. Get into your company or organization, or whatever it is that you do, and slowly over the course of time, work your way up by doing your job well and with excellence. You will grow in responsibility. Then you'll have power underneath you to shape what it is that you do. I've mentioned this before, but it's so important to know. It Christians with all their zeal. It's like, if we could just get a Christian CEO of every company, then we would Christianize the world. It's like, no, you wouldn't. Mate, those boards would fire them so quick. It's like if you get one soldier in World War II behind German lines, all he can do is hide in a cave and maybe sabotage a car at night. Does not have a lot of power. The goal is to get a wedge. The goal is to build a front. The goal is to hire people of similar ethics and vision and tell us and ends to grow in cultural power to move it in another direction. If that makes you comfortable, you've got to understand. That's been the LGBTQ strategy for 40 years. That's been the Muslim strategy right now. That's every group's strategy. Get a key person in place, build a wedge, flood the wedge, shift culture. And then Christians complain that the world's going to hell while they absolutely withdraw from any vision of participating in culture. You get it. I close with this. I close with this. There's a study done in Thailand between two groups of people who were sent to do missions work in Thailand. Thailand is one of the hardest places on earth to do the gospel, to bring the gospel to bear. Very, very close and resistant. So they had two approaches. Approach one was what they called the converters. And the converters said, we are there to explicitly just share the gospel with people. So we go, we find people, we tell them about Jesus. And they had another approach. And that approach, they were called the blesses. The blesses, the blesses. Their goal was to bless people. And they would just show up and they would love and serve. And they started businesses with coffee shops, start businesses. And they'd do them with excellence. They'd care for the employees. Here's what they found. The blesses actually had 50 times more people to the Lord in a five-year period than the converters. And if you have an approach of faith and work that simply says, the workplace is for evangelism. And all I do is go to convert. You will have limited success. But if you go to bless everybody, you come in contact with, if you mind your own business, if you work with your hands, you will win the respective outsiders. And you will have something to share. And it could just be that a timeless verse from a small community in Thessalonians started by Paul, who made tents to fund it, could be the key for people like you and I here in Manhattan today. Amen? This concludes my talk. [APPLAUSE]