Whistle While You Work
From the Series—The Office
October 25, 2006The average American will spend 100,000 hours in the workplace over the course of their lifetime. It probably makes sense to make the most of it. Enter The Office. To watch the webcast or subscribe to the podcast, visit theaterchurch.com. Or check out my daily blog at evotional.com.
Mundane Tasks
Several years ago, a team of NCCers went on a mission trip to Jamaica to help build a Teen Challenge Center. The work was pretty grueling. Our task was sanding the cement walls to prepare for painting, but we didn’t have sand paper. We used cement blocks to scrape the cement. Have you ever heard nails on the chalkboard? Cement on cement isn’t much better.
After awhile it started getting on your nerves. But there was this moment where I really felt like the Holy Spirit whispered something Spirit-to-spirit: "this is music in My ears."
And in that moment a mundane task was transfigured into an act of worship. I began to think about the people with addictions whose lives would be transformed in that place. I thought about the miracles that would happen in that place. And a frustrating job was turned into an act of worship.
In his best-selling book What Color is Your Parachute?, author Richard Bolles says, "The story in the Gospels of Jesus going up on the mount and being transfigured before the disciples is to me a picture of what calling is all about: taking mundane tasks and figuring out how to transfigure them." Transfiguring mundane tasks! That’s half the challenge when it comes to living out our faith in the workplace.
That’s the message of I Corinthians 10:31 in a nutshell: "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God."
We’re called to transfigure the mundane.
What could be more mundane than eating and drinking? But the message of I Corinthians 10:31 is that even the most mundane tasks can be transfigured into an act of worship! In the words of Oswald Chambers, "It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God: but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things."
Cupbearer
Exceptional at ordinary things. That makes me think of Nehemiah. He had a mundane job—a waiter-slash-busboy-slash-dishwasher. And Nehemiah didn’t want to be a cupbearer in Babylon. He wanted to be a wall-builder in Jerusalem.
So how do you get there?
Here’s my advice: be the best cupbearer you can be.
Don’t whine. Don’t complain. Don’t check out.
If your job isn’t very exciting, then bring some excitement to the job. One of the greatest acts of worship is to do a good job at a bad job. And that’s what Nehemiah did. Based on the biblical record, I think it’s fair to assume that Nehemiah had an upbeat attitude. He brought positive energy to his job day-in and day-out. How do I know that? Because Nehemiah 2:4 says: "I had not been sad in his presence before, so the king asked me, ‘Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of the heart’."
If Nehemiah had checked out or copped an attitude then the king would have thought to himself, Nehemiah is having another bad day. But it was his good attitude that set up a conversation that changed Nehemiah’s life.
Long story short, the king sent Nehemiah gave him an all-expense-paid trip back to Jerusalem. And Nehemiah went on to become Governor of Jerusalem. But it was his good attitude that set the stage! So if you want to be Governor of Jerusalem then be the best Babylonian cupbearer you can be!
Attitude Checklist
Other pastors often ask me what I look for in the people we hire at National Community Church. I could honestly care less about experience and education. Care less may be a little too strong, but we hire for attitude. Your resume and transcript aren’t nearly important as your character and personality. When we’re doing interviews I make sure that people know how to laugh. That’s at the top of my list. I’m not going to hire someone who can’t laugh at my jokes! That was a joke. Sort of.
I would take someone who is teachable over someone who is knowledgeable any day of the week!
Do they have a spirit of humility? A servant’s heart? Are they trustworthy? Self-motivated?
Basically, I look for people who bring positive energy into the workplace. And by positive energy I mean the nine fruit of the spirit! We think of the fruit of the spirit in far too abstract terms! Think of them in the office context. Someone bearing the fruit of the spirit will be the jokester who brings joy. They will be an office peacemaker. They will be the gentle diplomat or the faithful assistant.
The Gift of Encouragement
A few weeks ago I got an email from Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and author of The Purpose-Driven Life. He had stumbled across my blog (evotional.com) and shared some encouraging words with me. Rick Warren shouldn’t even know who I am let alone take the time to write a note of encouragement. So do you think that email made my day?
A little bit of encouragement goes a long way! And it doesn’t matter who is encouraging who. I have a file filled with notes of encouragement. Encouragement is to the human spirit what oxygen is to our respiratory system. And you don’t have to do exceptional things! Write a note. Say thank you. Offer some encouraging words!
What if we lived out Ephesians 4:29?
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
The word "unwholesome" is the same word used to describe rotten food. Rotten food will make you sick, but rotten words and rotten attitudes are much worse because the effects are longer-lasting.
Here is my dream:
Give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Emotional Intelligence
According to Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, IQ factors only account for twenty percent of career success. In other words, emotional intelligence (EQ) is more important than IQ when it comes to vocational success.
There is a fascinating example in Scripture. Joseph was an emotionally immature teenager in Genesis 37. How do I know that? He was still a tattle-tale at seventeen!
Joseph reported to his father some of the bad things his brothers were doing.
If you’re still tattling on your siblings when you’re a teenager you’ve got EQ issues. But evidently it ran in the family. Joseph’s father, Jacob, wasn’t exactly an emotional Mensa! The entire family was emotionally dysfunctional because Jacob played favorites.Now Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other children because Joseph had been born to him in his old age. So one day he gave Joseph a special gift—a beautiful robe.
Then Joseph has a dream. And he was so self-absorbed and emotionally oblivious that he thought his brothers would actually appreciate his dream of them bowing down before him.
One night Joseph had a dream and promptly reported the details to his brothers, causing them to hate him even more. ‘Listen to this dream. We were out in the field tying up bundles of grain. My bundle stood up and then your bundles all gathered around and bowed low before it!"
What were you thinking? Either Joseph was arrogant or clueless. And either way, he had a very low EQ.
So his brothers sell him into slavery. Yeah, they weren’t high on the IQ or EQ chart either! Joseph becomes a slave to Potiphar and eventually gets thrown into an Egyptian dungeon. Sometimes it takes a little suffering to help us overcome our self-absorption. A little suffering can produce a little empathy. Suffering is often a graduate course in our emotional education.
Joseph develops some EQ. He starts considering the feelings of others. How do I know that?
Because Genesis 40:5 says:
One night the cup bearer and the baker each had a dream, and each dream had its own meaning. The next morning Joseph noticed the dejected look on their faces. ‘Why do you look so worried today?’ he asked.
Is this the same person? He had zero emotional intelligence when it came to his brothers, but now he notices a discreet facial expression that seems to reveal an ounce of anxiety. Not only does he discern subtle emotional clues, but he is compassionate enough to get involved. He could have thought to himself: I have enough problems of my own. He was sharing the same prison cell after all. But Joseph had developed an acute emotional sensitivity to the people around him. And that emotional intelligence saved the nation of Israel and changed the course of history.
Let me explain. Joseph interpreted the cupbearer’s dream and the dream came true: he became cupbearer to Pharaoh. Several years later, Pharaoh had a dream and the cupbearer remembered Joseph. Joseph not only interprets Pharaoh’s dream, he lands a position in the administration as the Prime Minister. Because of Joseph, his family finds safe-haven in Egypt during a seven-year famine. And the family of one hundred turns into a nation of more than a million people during 400 years of slavery. God delivers them. The Israelites occupy the Promised Land. And hundreds of years later, a descendant of Jacob named Jesus is born in Bethlehem. And as they say: the rest is history.
One of my favorite branches of history is counterfactual theory. It asks the what if questions. What if Joseph hadn’t noticed the dejected look? He wouldn’t have interpreted the cupbearer’s dream! And what if he hadn’t interpreted the dream? He would have never met Pharaoh! Joseph would have died in prison. His family would have starved in Canaan. End of story.
So the nation of Israel owes its existence to one act of emotional intelligence. Joseph noticed a dejected look.
Your attitude will make you or break you. Your emotional intelligence may be what it takes to get you out of prison and into the palace. Maybe noticing a dejected look is more important than your report or project or meeting.
Personal Signature
Barbara Glanz is a corporate trainer who does workshops for Fortune 500 companies. During one workshop with a supermarket chain, she talked about adding a personal signature to one’s work. She gave some examples and encouraged each employee to come up with their own. About three weeks later she got a telephone call from a grocery bagger in one of the stores who had Down syndrome. He told Barbara that he’d gone home from the conference and learned to use the computer. And each night he would come up with a thought for the day; print out multiple copies; and drop them into customer’s grocery bags as they check out.
One month later, the manager of the grocery store called Barbara Glanz.
You won’t believe what happened today. When I went out on the floor this morning, the line at Johnny’s checkout was three times longer than any other line! I went ballistic yelling, "Get more lanes open!" But the customers said, "No! We want to be in Johnny’s lane-we want the thought for the day." One woman approached me and said, "I used to shop once a week, now I come here every time I go by because I want the thought for the day."
The manager ended the conversation by saying, "Who do you think is the most important person in our store?"
What difference can a grocery bagger with Down Syndrome make? The answer is all the difference in the world.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven will pause to say, ‘There lived a great street sweeper who did his job well‘."