Gospel teamwork

I often find myself being sucked into work culture and leadership articles. For some reason, leadership studies and workplace culture-building are important to me. Some of that is formed by my teen years in Civil Air Patrol, in which I discovered how difficult it is to transform children into serious, mission-minded adults. So when someone claims to understand what it takes to motivate and lead their colleagues to success, I pay attention. When someone goes on about emotional intelligence and the need for leaders to be trust-worthy and servant-like, I nod along vigorously.

But I keep having a nagging thought: Why are "team culture," "company culture," and "leadership" such studied disciplines by well-paid consultants in our day? Is this because we've always put up with horrible leaders and coworkers in the past and just now we've decided to study it for the sake of our mental health and productivity?

No. The reason we study this and pay money to consultants is because the need has grown.

Frankly, we are spending a lot of money studying and attempting to learn basic virtues. Except that in a culture without shared values or a law of kindness, we are now learning them as adults, and only as tools to get ahead. Put more bluntly, we are dealing with the fallout of the loss of law and love.

"There is no consultant, influencer, or motivational speaker who can impart wisdom in the vacuum of unchanged hearts and revolutionize our work, family, or civil spheres."

This article in Vice, grapples rightly with the rudeness "epidemic." It's somewhat banal and focused on symptoms, but it does actually point the finger in the correct general direction:

It all speaks to a childishness, but some people are just rude and have a slightly sociopathic element to then in that they don’t care what you think. It really doesn’t have any bearing on their life, so they go around doing these things. And they may end up getting paid more at work and being promoted through the ranks because of it. It works for them. But for the rest of us, who want to work with each other, we tend to stick to the rules that are unwritten. We don’t feel the need to write them down because it just makes sense.

Except these rules are not unwritten! They have been written for centuries by the finger of God. One need only spend time reading Proverbs or Paul's letters to see how contemporary prescriptions to deal with bad behavior (or a rudeness epidemic) are shallow and strictly derivative. Solomon's insistence that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom is so perfectly illustrated here: Secular efforts to modify bad behavior without acknowledging God's law are vanity. There is no consultant, influencer, or motivational speaker who can impart wisdom in the vacuum of unchanged hearts and revolutionize our work, family, or civil spheres.


One of my supervisors once approached me and told me he really appreciates how I conduct myself on the job and in relation to my coworkers. He then said "You almost make me think I should go to church."

While I cherish his ability to connect my conduct to my faith, all I could think of in response was to attempt to explain, in the simplest terms, that this wasn't the reason I go to church, but that going to church was about humbling myself and seeing myself constantly in the context of my need for Christ. Yes, there is the practical effect of loving my coworkers better -- here lies wisdom. I just didn't want him to think that Christian virtue is something that can be merely borrowed for it's practical value. It has to be the byproduct of a truly humbled heart.


But a humble heart isn't always practical and "childishness" reigns in the workplace. Leaders manipulate and blame instead of inspiring and serving. Employees grumble. We serving each other until we feel threatened or used, and then we step on each others' necks. We are happy to be kind to someone else in order to feel better about ourselves but just as quickly cut someone down when we don't feel appreciated. Ecclesiastes teaches us that "there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing."

In short, we will be discouraged if we expect our conduct and wisdom to always have a sanctifying effect on those around us and spare us pain. Many will so easily conclude, using Solomon's refrain: This too is vanity. So we must infuse our conduct with right motivations: If God is glorified, that is enough.

Being content with this objective takes real discipline but, ironically, offers the greatest possible blessing to those with whom we work.