Is joy an underrated asset in your leadership? In our latest article, Matt Rusten explores why joy, much like humor, plays a vital role in building a thriving company culture. From increasing team engagement to fostering resilience, joy can transform workplace dynamics and inspire purpose-driven work. Discover three key ways to cultivate joy in your organization and why it’s essential for leaders who seek both results and fulfillment.
‘Do not worry.’ We’ve read Matthew 6:25-34 in the Sermon on the Mount, but what does that look like on a day-to-day, minute-by-minute basis? God knows our every worry, fear, and concern – and He can handle it. Many thanks to Darrell Passwater, Convene Forum Team leader, for his encouragement to think about how our lives might be different by truly living out this scriptural principle.
Got a quick minute to chat? I’ve been wanting to share something with you as you lead in the midst of the election cycle in the USA or when your political election takes place in your country. When the dust settles on the election and the new country leader is declared, one thing will still be as true as it is right now. You’ll still be the one leading your firm the day after the election. Your team members will still come to work the day after the winner is declared. They’ll still be looking to you for leadership, for a paycheck, for a sense of community at their workplace.
What do they want most that only you can deliver? It’s meaning. That meaning they’re looking for begins with you and your leadership. To be sure, what Washington DC does actually can impact your business significantly, however, the president of the United States or the leader of any country does not lead your firm. You do. It’s an enterprise entrusted to you to lead as a steward. It’s a place where people look to you for answers, where people want to be part of a team that cares about them and where people want to be valued, appreciated, and loved. The next president of the country will not show up this week at your office to encourage your team, fix a broken piece of equipment, hire the next team member, sell a big account, or cast a bold vision about how your team will reach your goals and impact the culture.
As we find ourselves mid-October and a blink away from a new calendar year, it is an opportunity to prepare for how we view transitions. Transitions allow for reflection and renewal, for letting go and beginning anew, and for learning from the past and creating the future. Instead of laying out trends for the next year, I would like to comment on a fundamental enabler of any transition: hope. Leaders who want to improve, CEO’s who work toward excellence, HR professionals who aspire to deliver more value, and employees who seek well-being all achieve their transitions by realizing hope.
Hope integrates many of the positive traits that shape transitions for others and matter to me personally: learning, patience, service, faith, humility, optimism, gratitude, and so forth. I send hundreds of formal and informal e-mails every month to invite people to programs, to thank people for attending programs, to check in on those I mentor, and to stay connected to those I care about. I begin almost every one of these notes with “Hope you are well.” Hope is one of my personal desires, tag lines, and biases and an enabler of any transition.
If I could implant one trait in my family, friends, and colleagues who are undergoing continual transition, it would be hope.
Ask most people about their Church experience and you’ll discover categories of subtle discontentment to consuming frustration. “The worship’s too short/long, the music’s too loud, the message was too soft, too condemning, too long, they didn’t make me feel welcome,” and on and on. For starters, the Church is not supposed to be a one-way delivery system for our happiness or our fulfillment.
Do you believe the everyday activity of ordinary Christians has deep religious significance? The answer really depends on when in the history of the church you ask it.
Prior to the Reformation, Christians in the medieval church would have answered no. They believed only priests did spiritual work. All other activity was secular.
It was the sixteenth century reformers, men like Martin Lutherand John Calvin, who rediscovered the biblical idea that everything we do is important to God.
These men encouraged Christians to be salt and light in the world. They believed it was possible to maintain integrity of faith while injecting Christian influence within society.
They were right.
Western civilization is replete with examples of followers of Christ who positively shaped culture through their work in the fields to which God had called them.
Many American evangelicals during the last seventy-five years have let the sacred/secular distinction corrupt their worldview in such a way that they leave their faith at home when they enter the public square.
They are ambivalent about engaging with social and political matters, as the Reformers urged.
They fear involvement in such secular matters will compromise the integrity of their faith.
They are convinced faith is a private matter and best kept that way.
They have lost sight of the spiritual significance of their work.
To be sure, the risk they have identified is real. Being in the world but not of it is not easy. It is not safe. But it is what we are called to be.
These thoughts came to me recently as I was finishing Carl Henry’s Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, published in 1947. In this book, Henry, an American evangelical theologian who served as Christianity Today‘s first editor-in-chief, wrote a stinging critique of Christian fundamentalism in the late 1940s.
Almost prophetically, Henry argued fundamentalists did not present Christianity as a worldview with a vision for impacting culture. Instead, they chose to emphasize personal salvation. In doing so, they offered a truncated, impoverished version of the gospel to the world. This gospel was too other-worldly and anti-intellectual to be taken seriously.
And so, in their efforts to preserve orthodox Christianity from modernity and liberalism at the beginning of the twentieth century, evangelicals lost an important ingredient that has been a powerful influence throughout the 2,000 years of Christian history. They forgot how to be leaven in the loaf. (Matthew 13:33)
The good news is that sixty years later, many of Henry’s hopes for evangelicalism are beginning to be realized. Today’s evangelicals are re-engaging many social and political issues and working together to influence culture for the kingdom.
Yet the importance of our daily vocational work in the furtherance of God’s kingdom is still lost on many believers. Many still feel they need to quit their jobs and start working for ministries or non-profits to truly make a difference in the world. They don’t. They can be salt and light right where they currently work.
Bringing faith to work or anywhere else in the public square runs many risks, but it is essential if Christians are to be leaven where leavening is most needed.
If Christianity is to once again become a positive influence in American public life, all Christians need to be present within that life as salt and light. Christians need to leave the safety of their Christian ghettos and take the risks necessary for reforming, renewing, and recalling today’s culture.
The legacy of the Reformation invites us to engage the world. It instructs us in how to do so with integrity and as public witnesses to the power of the gospel.
So, do you believe the everyday activity of ordinary Christians has deep religious significance?
The real question should be “Does the Bible teach that the everyday activity of ordinary Christians has deep religious significance?”
The answer is yes, absolutely yes, in any age.
Originally published by the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics (IFWE). ©Institute for Faith, Work & Economics 2015. Used by permission.
