Make Work Matter

Your Guide to Meaningful Work in a Changing World

,

• Publisher: Baker Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781540901606
• eBook ISBN: 9781493432363
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In the past decades, work has changed dramatically. Yet we are still sent into the new world of work with old, outdated tools, expectations, and strategies. This leaves us ill-equipped in our pursuit of meaningful work that will impact our communities and change the world. The result? Unmet expectations and unfulfilled longings. Not to mention curiosity about how to do the work we sense God calling us to. Make Work Matter provides a blueprint for a better future. Filled with stories and insights from faithful entrepreneurs and built on solid research, this book will help you - discover what God is calling you to do in a changing world
- define where you are in this season of work
- embrace what the Bible says (and doesn't say) about calling
- develop a mindset and habits suited for the new world of work
- reflect on and work out ways that sustain you on the journey It's time to close the gap between what you're doing now and the meaningful work you desire to accomplish. This book will help you chart your own way forward.

Part Two: Who Will You Become?

4
Walk the Entrepreneurial Way

After seminary, Dan and I had a string of apartments and eventually a house that each became kind of a gathering place for our friends. We’d get together on breezy Southern California evenings after our shifts as personal trainers, creative directors, adjunct faculty, and government workers. We’d sit around our weathered picnic table with a six-pack and talk about the stuff that mattered most to us. As the sun went down and we switched the market lights on, our conversations were equal parts laughter and tears—equal parts angst and hope. Our friends were like us, people in their late twenties and early thirties early on in their careers. Over time, our ritual became a time to talk about our work.

Our conversations were split between the work we dreamed of doing and the parts about our jobs that made us feel restless or discouraged. We laughed and lamented about how we were all sort of making it up as we went. We talked about how the rules that guided our parents’ work felt completely off the table for us. And how that made most parental advice all the more frustrating. Inevitably, each conversation culminated with our deeper wrestling about what we sensed God calling us toward and how far we still felt from getting there.

When I started my doctoral work, these backyard conversations with my friends became the soundtrack for my biggest questions. The stories I heard around that table became the guiding voices that shaped my research agenda. I wanted to know the following: What did it take for people to actually do meaningful work that paid well in this new world? What were the rules, best practices, and hidden secrets for living an integrated life? How might God’s big, beautiful, and gritty story serve as a guiding light for the way forward amid so much change?

As I said earlier, I come from a family of teachers and entrepreneurs. My parents are both small-business owners. So from the time I was a kid, my model for work was as an entrepreneur. I learned to pitch an idea to would-be customers before I learned to get a job. I learned to market and do my own accounting before I ever wrote a résumé. And I learned to cultivate listening to my internal hunches about what would sell before I ever learned to ask for a raise.

Somewhat naively, I thought, In a world where everyone has to figure out so much of work on their own, what if I could somehow integrate my faith values and my entrepreneurial instincts into a process or a method? And what if I could teach other people that method? Said another way, what if entrepreneurship could be a model for vocational formation—a model for pursuing the ongoing process of being formed in Christ’s likeness for the sake of responding to God’s callings? And not just for people who wanted to start a business but for any person wanting to faithfully respond to God in our changing world?

So I set out to find anything that could help—practices, principles, data, an existing model—from folks who had started successful businesses and nonprofits and were faithful Christians. I had people nominate entrepreneurs who fit this bill and were motivated by their faith in their work (whether it showed up explicitly or not).

What I eventually discovered is that there are indeed some common characteristics of what it means to be both an entrepreneur and a faithful Christian. And these traits are so wonderfully human that the rest of us can use them as a model for mapping meaningful work in a changing world.

The characteristics came to light in a round of surveys with over fifty entrepreneurs and through more in-depth interviews with ten of the fifty.1 As I worked to distill these features, I paid special attention to the various rhythms of activities, habits, and spiritual practices of entrepreneurs. Then as I tested the applicability of what I found with over five hundred people in classrooms and cohorts and conversations along the way, certain elements of the model were refined while others were reinforced. By the way, I’m not the first person to discover many of these characteristics. In literature ranging from innovation to faith and work to storytelling and art, the common traits of what I refer to as the entrepreneurial way have been well documented under other labels.

Mostly—as is often the case with life—it was people’s stories that revealed the most. So much so that I started asking almost everyone I spent time with some of the same questions I asked my research participants. By far, the most illuminating answers came from the following four questions: How have you learned to define success? How have you learned to define failure? What practices have moved you toward success? What practices have helped you deal with failure?

Listening to people’s answers to these questions has helped me to see that though our stories are different, they are also somehow similar. Whether it’s an entrepreneur dealing with the highs and lows of starting a new business, an artist trying to make a career out of what they love to do, a senior leader looking for more meaning, or someone having to start over after loss, people tell different stories but with similar themes: heartbreak and hope, overwhelm and optimism, chaos and courage.

As a result of all my research, I’ve come to believe in what I’ll call the entrepreneurial way—a way of thinking and acting that is about paying deep attention to the needs of people and creatively joining in God’s mission of redemption in the world. Remember the nesting dolls from the previous chapter? I said that a way to think about calling is like a set of nesting dolls: We are called to follow Jesus by creatively working in love for others, especially toward God’s mission of redemption in the world, through particular relationships, roles, places, tasks, and moments. The entrepreneurial way is a way of working and living that helps us respond faithfully to God’s callings.

For some, walking the entrepreneurial way is something that sounds good but is for people who have loads of strategic creativity or want to start a business. Yes, there are those of us who intuitively move through the world as entrepreneurs. But as I’ve watched hundreds of people experiment with the tools and experience transformation, I’m convinced that the entrepreneurial way is for anyone trying to do meaningful work in a changing world.

I’m convinced that in the face of a changing world, meaning comes to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. What I mean by this is that meaning comes to those who are willing to engage in holy wrestling. Meaning comes to those who are willing to faithfully and creatively press into the foggy unknown, trusting that our dynamic God is leading the way. Meaning comes to those who are willing to do the complicated inner work of sorting through pain and longing so that we can grow in attunement to the day-by-day graces of God on whatever road we are traveling.

Getting Our Bearings for the Way Forward

In order to find our bearings for the way forward, I want to pause and talk about where we’ve been. We’ve already done a good bit of work that I’d like to think of as naming the terrain. We named that the new world of work is demanding and difficult—that it can make us feel overwhelmed, lonely, and anxious (among other things). If it helps to picture an actual map, maybe these feelings show up as rocky, swampy, or desertlike terrain—pick a visual that captures how you experience the changing world of work.

Then we named some of the impacts of larger forces of change such as globalization and accelerated technology. We said that we feel less like we’re riding up a smooth escalator and more like we’re traversing down white water rapids—without always having the skills to do so. Again, if it helps to visualize these forces of change, perhaps picture rivers that cut through the rocky or desertlike atmospheres you’re already imagining.

We also named and unpacked some of the dysfunctional beliefs that permeate thinking on calling, and we set the foundation for a day-by-day, on-the-way theology of calling. It might help to visualize these messages as road signs on your map—places where there’s a fork in the road or a detour, or a sign that says you’re 137 miles from your destination.

Now we need roads. There are, of course, the well-worn paths to work that previous generations used. Why not just try to build on these or adapt them for our changing world? Sometimes this strategy works, but much of the time it doesn’t. The old roads that worked so well on a different map oftentimes don’t carry over as viable pathways in the uncharted world we’re in.

It’s here that I want to suggest the entrepreneurial way as a model for traversing, pathfinding, and ultimately creating roads for the way forward in this new world of work. The entrepreneurial way in its simplest form captures how entrepreneurs think and act. And as I said earlier, it’s a way of thinking and acting that is about paying deep attention to the needs of people and creatively joining in God’s mission of redemption in the world. The word way is important as it reminds us that we live life in motion. We’re all on a journey from some sort of point a to point z.

Here are our ground rules for the entrepreneurial way—the framework for our map to meaningful work:

• Our north star: We are called to follow Jesus by creatively working in love for others, especially toward God’s mission of redemption in the world, through particular relationships, roles, places, tasks, and moments.
• Our road trip mantra: Seize Opportunity. Create Value. Face Risk. We expect this to be a lifelong journey. Along the way, we will learn to notice and pursue opportunity so that we may create value, even and especially in the face of risk (see the next section).
• How we will behave along the way: We’ll be rooted in relationships, trust that we’re creative, and build resilience.
• What we will spend our time doing: We will empathize with our neighbors. We will imagine, What if? We will take the next doable risks. And we will make space to reflect with gratitude on all that God has done.

Each of these bullet points deserves significant attention. We took up our north star in chapter 3, which was about calling. In this chapter, I’ll focus on our road trip mantra. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 are devoted to how we will behave. And chapters 8 through 11 take up what we will spend our time doing.

Our Road Trip Mantra

Seize Opportunity. Create Value. Face Risk.

Recently, I was chatting with Jason. He was a few years into resurrecting a nonprofit that had nearly fizzled out under previous leadership. When he assumed leadership, it had run out of money, was unclear on its mission, and had major personnel problems. As we talked, Jason explained to me that although he hadn’t started the organization, he sort of felt like an entrepreneur because resurrecting the place had required reorienting the mission around new needs and cobbling together a financial runway for the organization to get back on its feet. As he was processing, Jason turned to me and asked, “Do you think I’m an entrepreneur?”

“Well, what do you think?” I responded.

He said, “I feel like an entrepreneur even though I haven’t started a business.”

Jason and I talked about how the word entrepreneur is sometimes more harmful than it is helpful. In my experience, it is one of those words that people either wholeheartedly identify with or completely reject for themselves. The same can be said about the words leader and creative. Because society centers particular types of leaders or entrepreneurs, our collective imaginations can be too narrow. If we don’t picture ourselves as the leader of a giant organization or the founder of a thriving tech start-up, we might doubt that these frameworks apply to us. In my experience, no one is served well by these insider-outsider dynamics. Not you, not others, not the mission of God in the world.

So opt in or opt out if you like. But my bias is that no one type of person has the claim on what it means to be a creative, a leader, or an entrepreneur. Everyone is creative. Everyone has opportunities to lead in some way or another. All of us can walk the entrepreneurial way. Whether you are in a nine-to-five job with benefits, starting a side hustle, or on a job hunt and up against more experienced professionals or more tech-savvy individuals, we can all notice and seize opportunity, create value, and bravely face risk.

Seize Opportunity

At the core of what it means to walk the entrepreneurial way is to seize opportunity. I wrote much of this book in the middle of the COVID-19 quarantine. In those early days of intense lockdown, one of my favorite quarantine errands was to go to our local cheese shop. Early in the pandemic, do you know what the cheese folks were selling? Toilet paper! Why? Because where I live in California, toilet paper was impossible to find. So the cheese shop seized an opportunity. They knew that if they offered something that was in high demand, they would be able to not only generate badly needed revenue but also drive traffic into the store to buy cheese.

Noticing opportunity and actually pursuing it are two different things. We’ve already said that noticing opportunity—especially in the midst of change—takes eyes to see and ears to hear. It takes a willingness to simultaneously grieve what was and hope for what might be. It takes both a posture of reflection and a bias toward action. Plus, in a changing world, we cannot calm our fears with neat and tidy answers. The world is unpredictable, nonlinear, disruptive, and chaotic. Remember the concept lean in and let go (chapter 2)? It’s the idea that in the midst of change, the goal isn’t to grab for control but rather to let go.

Embedded in the entrepreneurial way are certain dispositions that help combat our fears and enable us to lean in and let go for the sake of noticing and seizing opportunity. I like to think of these dispositions kind of like muscles. When I was first trying to identify these muscles, I combed the literature on entrepreneurship looking for patterns of identity because I wanted to ground my research on practices within a larger framework of identity. What I wanted to know is, What is at the core of the people who could notice and pursue opportunity in a changing wo...

Table of contents

• 1Endorsements
• 7Half Title Page
• 9Title Page
• 10Copyright Page
• 11Dedication
• 13Contents
• 15Part One: Where Do You Want to Go?
• 91Part Two: Who Will You Become?
• 173Part Three: How Will You Get There?
• 235Notes
• 243Acknowledgments
• 247About the Author
• 249Back Ads
• 252Back Cover