Our Reputations

It's depressing to me when I think of the way that some groups, who include me, have lost their good reputations.  One of the most apparent to me is the way that Texans are viewed.  It seems that it wasn't even that long ago that Texas was "Everything's bigger in Texas" and "Don't mess with Texas."  It was the independent, fun-loving, extra-friendly capital of country music, good manners, and great food.  Now it seems like Texas' independence given way to rebelliousness, fun-loving has given way to a sense of being better than everyone else, and whatever happened to extra-friendly?  Texas is no longer highly respected, it's derided and made fun of.

It's happened to other groups that represent me too.  America was once highly respected in the world and considered a model for good governance and economic strength.  The reasons for why America is now intensely disliked and even ignored as a sideshow are well-known and too many to try to get into.  It's happened to my University of Texas, where an article I was reading the other day talked about their fickle sports fans who show up late and leave early because of the sorry state of their athletics programs.  The university's leadership and donor base is fractured by infighting and the school is suffering as a result.  It's happened to Lutherans too - we trace our roots back to the father of the Reformation and have a great history of good doctrines and standing up for the truth.  Today, however, I'm generally ashamed to call myself a Lutheran among other Christians.

Perhaps no loss of reputation hurts as badly as the damage that has been done to the reputation of Christians, however.  It was reported in the early days of the new faith that Christians were turning the world upside down with their compassion, mercy, and love.  They of course had their unjust charges leveled against them, but Jesus was pleased to say that the world would know we are his disciples by our love for one another.  Today, however, Christians have been pushed to the margins as mean-spirited, divisive, argumentative or, at best, irrelevant.  Christians are not known for their acts of charity, but for a thousand years of fighting Muslims, for being anti-everything, for their money scandals, and for being self-absorbed.  I'm thankful for cultural artifacts like Duck Dynasty that do seem to help bring up the reputation of Christians, but they are few and far between.

Christ calls us His ambassadors.  We quite literally carry His name in ours.  The Bible is full of statements where God is acting for the sake of His name, but we're not doing a very good job of serving His reputation through our own.  Life is not all about paying attention to what others think of you.  But sometimes we would be wise to watch what we do to our own reputations.

Supervisor Conflict

I've noticed something lately in my interactions with friends.  I've noticed that I have very few friends my age who have a good relationship with their supervisors at work.  Most are unhappy with their jobs, their hours, their responsibilities, their boss' character, the organizational system, and so forth.  Even my ministry friends live this, both in churches and in nonprofits.  It's like there's a general culture of discontent and conflict at work among my generation.  Why is this?  I'd like to hear your comments, but I have a few ideas to start the conversation.

I have sometimes noticed a failure of both supervisors and the supervised to recognize their own limitations.  Perhaps both think they know better, or perhaps one holds age and experience over the other.  Without each person recognizing how they are contributing to the problem, and recognizing that the other person may have some valid reasons for their behavior, conflicts will never be solved.

Other times I've seen unhealthy expectations of perfection.  Millennials, in valuing authenticity and transparency, can often make the quick jump to hyper-critical when they sense that transparency is lacking.  In this type of attitude, every mistake is a deal-breaker and once we judge somebody or lose respect for them, it's very hard to regain it.  I'd ask, however, why we have to expect such things out of our bosses.  Why is that necessary for us to do our jobs, and to do them well?

Further, people may expect their own jobs to be perfect.  Nobody loves 100% of what they do.  Every job has sizable elements of things that we put up with doing as well as things that we downright dislike.  If we sense ourselves being asked to do things we don't want to do, we need to avoid the impulse to get angry or rebellious.  By persevering and putting our noses to the grindstone even when we don't love what we do, we develop character, integrity, and we may just learn something in the process.

Are you unhappy at work?  Why do you think it is, and what do you think is the way out?  Or, are you a boss who knows the young people who report to you are unhappy?  What do you think is the solution to the conflict?

Countering the Myth of the Millennial

This morning's New York Times had an article encouraging companies to incorporate the "millennial's mind-set" into their culture.  It's often touted that if companies will just give their new, young team members the freedom to fail and the resources they need, they will change the world.  There's a lot of excitement over my generation.  Now, the thought-leaders who are encouraging managers to give people the freedom to fail are certainly correct, and there's nothing wrong with their logic.  It's also true that there are very few leaders out there actually following this guidance, despite what the experts say.  The problem is, would it work?

I'm speaking up, as a member of the millennial generation, to say that I'm not so sure my generation should be trusted so much.  This NY Times article touches on the issue of what makes millennials excited and motivates them to work.  It talks about transparency, and authenticity, and so forth, but what if it's actually deeper than that?  What if my generation has taken to heart all the encouragement that we heard growing up, and we've gotten our heads a bit too big?  I believe that, indeed, companies and the world ought to give millennials more credit, give us more opportunities, and listen to us more.  I also believe, however, that we millennials have got to shrink our egos, take a long view on our lives, and build our foundation.

My fear for my generation is not that we won't change the world.  It's that we will try to do it too early, and one of two things will happen.  Either we will change it in a way that we regret later, or we will make great icons and celebrities out of ourselves without the character to sustain it.  I've written about this before.  The challenge with companies recruiting millennials is not that we want more freedom, it's that we have this idea that by the age of 30 we should be respected leaders well on our way to changing the world.  It's time for us to embrace the challenge of playing the opening moves of the chess match.  What we do now will set the foundation for the rest of the game....and yes, there is a rest of the game.  We don't win by the time we're 30, we win when we are at the end of our lives - with a long string of small victories, the wisdom that comes from a life well-lived, and the enduring legacy of a lifelong leader.

How Is Your Spiritual Walk?

Have you ever noticed that we modern Christians have invented all sorts of language for describing spiritual things?  We talk about things like "accepting Jesus into your heart" and ask each other "How is your spiritual walk?"  I wonder sometimes about the meaning of these phrases.  When you ask someone about their spiritual walk, you're probably expecting to hear "It's going fine, but I am a week behind on My Utmost for His Highest and missed my quiet time the last two mornings."  What?  What does that have to do with anything?

I'd rather people asked me "How are you following Christ lately?"  That is a lot more directed.  I believe that God is more interested in how our daily lives look than whether or not we're current on our devotional schedule.  I'd like to ask someone how they are following Christ and hear "I'm having a hard time.  Things are good, but my wife and I spent $450 last month at restaurants and I know that's not how Christ wants me to live."  I'd like to hear, "Christ is leading me overall, but last week my boss asked me to do something I feel uneasy about, and I'm not sure what to do."  Then they'd ask me, and I'd say "I'm struggling with following Jesus' lead in my apartment complex, where I stop short of developing real relationships with people I talk to more than weekly."

Let's broaden our conception of "the spiritual walk."  Sure, things like our devotional lives and going to church are important.  But I am convinced that our relationships with our neighbors, how we handle our finances, and our behavior in our workplaces is just as much a part of our spiritual lives as prayer is.  Our sermons like to dwell on doctrine, beliefs, and Scripture.  Those things are good.  But we hesitate to really get into behaviors and attitudes.  I was wondering this week in my readings through Paul whether our attempt to side with Paul on faith vs. works has led us to avoid works too strongly.  Are we misreading him?  Paul's letters are right alongside James' letter that says, "Faith without works is dead," and I don't think the two would disagree in a conversation.

How are are you following Christ lately?

So You're Unhappy....

I was inspired by a conversation with my wife last night to write a response to the popular current post, "Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy."  If you haven't read that original post, go read it now and then come back.

There's a lot in this author's writing that is really true, and that's why it's got over 750K social networking hits right now.  It really hits a chord with a lot of my generation, us millennials as I like to call us.  There's no doubt that we've been told that "You can do anything you set your mind to," which has some nugget of truth in it.  There's no doubt that we've been told that "You're special," which also has a nugget of truth in it.  The truth is, we have been handed every imaginable opportunity, including wealth, education, the Internet, English, lots of free time, and more.  We want to change the world, and there's little doubt that we could if we wanted to.

Where I shrink back from this inspiring article, however, is right at the outset.  I have a hard time defining happiness as reality minus expectations.  The author accepts this as true and bases the rest of his article on it.  We have a problem as a generation if this is how we will define happiness.  How often will reality actually meet up with our expectations?  You might say that I lived this article my first couple years out of college.  Maybe it was doing what appeared to be menial tasks at work, or maybe it was only clearing $1000 per month on a full-time job with college degree, but somewhere in there I heard the message that I wasn't good enough, or qualified enough, for valuable work.  I fell into a year and a half of depression that I needed professional counseling to recover from.  My reality was definitely nowhere near my expectations, and it did hurt.  I was unhappy.

But I learned a few things.  One, that my happiness should have a lot less to do with expectations like this author is suggesting.  I now believe that my happiness should have a lot more to do with enjoying and making the most of each moment that comes my way, and that I should be making a lot fewer expectations.  Life will rarely live up to our expectations if we allow our expectations to run out of control.  Once Lucy books the plane tickets for a vacation, she will spend the next two months dreaming about how wonderful it will be.  No vacation can live up to two months' worth of dreaming.  The author is right that many people base their happiness on this equation, reality minus expectations, but offers no way out of this trap.  That's not an equation that will ever result in real happiness, only temporary excitement whenever we are surprised.

Two, I learned to take a long-term perspective on my life.  I wanted to change the world now, but I realized I couldn't.  Now I still want to change the world, but I have no misconceptions about doing that before I'm in my fifties.  I'm 28 years old, which in the career world is very young.  I'm just starting out.  It's a rare person who changes the world in their 20s or 30s, and it seems like most of them end up like shooting stars who don't last long.  Our generation's danger is that we will achieve greatness in our 20s or 30s, but lack the character to hold on to it and use it for the right things.  Jim Collins famously wrote about the enduring greatness of a Level Five leader in his book Good to Great.  Few reach it, but his hard-to-notice caveat is on the next page: to truly achieve it, you must have mastered each of the four levels below it.  Nobody reads the book and shortly becomes a Level Five leader - it takes a career to get there.

In short, there is a great deal that I agree with in Wait But Why's post about unhappiness.  Yet I think by the end of his post, his three recommendations are a bit shallow.  He fails to resolve one of the major challenges facing Lucy - she can't decide what to do.  I have plenty of friends in dead-end jobs, or no jobs, partly because they just can't decide what their "truest calling" of their heart is, to use Wait But Why's lingo.  His three suggestions are definitely valuable, but more helpful would have been these:

1. Stop basing your happiness on reality vs. expectations.  Happiness is a choice, an emotion that you can decide each morning to put on.  Don't worry so much about the future, or the past, but focus on the present.  How can you make the most of your right now?  And stop forming so many expectations about others, yourself, and the future.  It's a sure ticket to a letdown.
2. Take a long-term perspective.  Not to contradict the last point, but think about how you can use your right now to build your future.  Think about your résumé, and about how your experiences and education can set you up for enduring greatness and a legacy later in life.  Plan to change the world...when you have the foundation of twenty years' worth of career, continuing education, and life's wisdom under you.  And be sure not to miss the wealth of many mentors along the way.
3. Don't be afraid to make a choice.  There are a world of opportunities out there, but for most of the situations that you will face, doing something is better than doing nothing.  You will frequently find choices that seem challenging, but underneath are really choices between multiple good options.  You can find value in any circumstance, so stick your neck out there and make a decision, then make the best of it.  Don't look back, hesitate, or wish you had made a different choice.

Humility Before God and Man

One of the things I began processing through in the last couple weeks of our summer adventure in Peru is the idea of humility before God and man.  It's no secret that Katie and I were surprised by the summer and what it ended up looking like.  We had very different ideas going in, and different hopes, and we ended up doing a lot of things that weren't much fun to say the least.  However, one of our goals going in had been to serve Inca Link's long-range goals in whatever way was best for them, and so as we got going that goal had to take precedence over the others.  We had been asked to work hard toward the physical completion of the children's home.  If that was how we were going to serve Inca Link, that's what we needed to do.

It goes beyond our goals of serving, however.  Regardless of our thoughts or preferences toward our job descriptions, we felt like serving to the full extent of our capacity was our sacred duty.  The Bible speaks about authority, and gives examples: even Jesus submitted to His parents (Luke 2:51).  After speaking with a centurion about authority, Jesus commends his great faith at recognizing Jesus' authority (Matthew 8).  The Bible also talks about humility, namely that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34 and 1 Peter 5:5).  Finally, Colossians 3:23 and Galatians 1:10 ties it all together for us to make it clear that we do our work for the Lord, not for men.  To do our daily manual labor on the children's home was service not just to our director, but to our Lord.

This past summer was challenging in many ways.  We had some conflicts and differences of values with the organization.  However, we came to learn that conflicts and disagreements don't necessarily reflect that anyone is wrong, merely that they are different.  Therefore, it was our duty before God to work as hard as we could, as well as we could, for our directors at Inca Link as if it were for the Lord directly.  It's a good life lesson for all of us.  Our labor is not for men, or for ourselves - it's for God, and He demands it all.  When you're working for the Lord, there's no room for laziness, low-quality work, or not finishing well.  I hope that Katie's and my work ethic over the summer - whether it was painting, ministering to the teams, ministering to the interns, or just sweeping the floor and doing dishes - was a reflection of how we felt about serving the Lord directly.  Let's all pray today that our labor looks to others as if we believe we are serving the living God Himself!

Final Week

We wanted to write one more time as we come into our final week here in South America.  Amazing that time is passing so quickly - in no time we'll be on that plane back home!  We're writing this from the border of Peru and Ecuador, a town called Huaquillas.  We passed through here a couple times before on the long bus trip.  We were sad to say goodbye to so many new friends yesterday in Trujillo as we left for the bus.  Most of the other interns left the night before, as they wanted a few more adventures in Ecuador, but Katie and I were leading one final mission team so we are now making the trek on our own.  This border exchange has been eventful, including a taxi driver who seemed to lie to us twice and wandered into a situation where he (meaning we) had to pay a bribe, but we found a bus for tonight and a cheap hotel for the afternoon to sleep and shower.

Leading the team last week, from a Chinese Alliance church in Winnipeg, Canada, was really awesome for me (John).  I'd been looking forward to the opportunity to lead a team all summer, though I'd been contributing some leadership to all the teams all summer.  I felt in my element as much as ever all summer, and formed some great bonds with the team.  They were really blessed by their experiences, and certainly blessed us interns and the albergue.  We've left the albergue a lot closer to being done than it was when we arrived, especially with all the painting.  It's exciting to see all the work that was done, but we still know there is plenty left to do to reach the point when it can open to children.  As of when we left, there's still another team coming before the season of mission teams ends, then it's just up to the various missionaries and hired workers.

Before we left, we got to say our final goodbyes to people and do an exit interview with our director.  It was good to reflect over the summer.  It's certainly been challenging, but we do feel like we rose to the situation and overcame successfully.  While our time didn't look like what we had hoped, I think we found fulfillment in serving God through serving our earthly bosses.  We both feel strongly about Colossians 3:23, which speaks about serving the Lord rather than men, and we both threw ourselves fully into the tasks that were asked of us.  With constancy and dedication, we did what we were called to do and accomplished a lot.  The mission field is often a changing world, with different demands and little steady job descriptions.  Whether this is due to God's design or man's shortcomings is irrelevant, but it is an opportunity to practice obedience and submission to authority.  One of our goals this summer was to serve the long-term interests of Inca Link, and we hope that we have done that through the tasks we accomplished!