Becoming a Spiritual Influence at Work

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture, brought to you by Dallas Theological Seminary.

Bill Hendricks:

Hello, I'm Bill Hendricks, Executive Director for Christian leadership at the Hendricks Center and I want to welcome you to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. In Ephesians 4, Paul talks about four different kinds of gifted people and their work, the passage says, is to equip the saints for their work of service. And the word saints there means every day Christians in the every day world.

Bill Hendricks:

We want to talk today about what is it that causes those everyday Christians in the everyday world to have a spiritual influence in the places where they live and particularly where they work. And to help us with that I want to welcome Dr. Bill Peel, a Dallas Seminary graduate, a longtime friend of mine. He is the CEO of 24Seven Faith and has written extensively on having a spiritual influence in the workplace through his work. "Workplace Grace" is the name of the most recent work that he has put together on that.

Bill Hendricks:

Bill Peel, welcome to the table. Thanks for being with us today.

Bill Peel:

Bill, it's great. I wish there was a real table between us now but praise God for electronic things.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, that's exactly right. And I just want to point out to folks that Bill and I are longtime friends and we have been joined together as members of what is commonly known as the Faith, Work and Economics Movement. And for years, Bill and I have been co-conspirators, if you will, on trying to help people think through how to integrate their faith and their day-to-day work. And this really relates to what we like to call whole life discipleship. That's why I like this name 24Seven Faith.

Bill Hendricks:

That our faith is not something we do as a weekend hobby. But our whole life is to be lived out under Christ's lordship, to His glory and by the power of His Holy Spirit. And I can't really think of too many other people that I'd rather come and talk to us about.

Bill Hendricks:

When we go particularly into our workplaces or for those who are doing unpaid work, their workplaces in the home or the school or volunteer work but wherever it is that you live out your day-to-day, you've got other people around you that are not at all Christians, they are not at all believers, they have very different worldviews and the New Testament says there in Titus that we effectively give us sort of an aroma and a light that shines in the midst of spiritual darkness.

Bill Hendricks:

Bill, I need to turn this over to you. When you think about having a spiritual influence where you work, what are the key things that we need to quickly start to think about?

Bill Peel:

Well, Bill, it really is a pleasure to chat with you. We've been working together on something for off and on for about 25 years now.

Bill Hendricks:

That's right.

Bill Peel:

It's fun to connect here. And I have to say, your dad and his best friend at Fort Worth were huge in helping me come to understand this.

Bill Hendricks:

You're talking about Bill Garrison.

Bill Peel:

Bill Garrison.

Bill Hendricks:

The late Bill Garrison.

Bill Peel:

Sat me down at the Fort Worth Club one day, not long after I've graduated and he said, "Peel, you realize God's heroes don't stand behind pulpits, don't you?" And having just completed 120 graduate hours of theology, that was quite a shock. But what he wanted me to understand, he was Chairman of the Board of Dallas Seminary so he obviously believed in training pastors, and he was trying to get a point across to me that my job, when people came to church was not about getting them to church but about sending them out from there into the world. That's where their ministry was.

Bill Peel:

And about 10 years later, I took a leap of faith and started discipling people in the workplace. It was really about the same time you and Doug Sherman published "Your Work Matters to God," and we've been off and running since then. In 1987, that was 1987, yeah, a few years later when I was working for the Christian Medical Association, I asked the fellows that were part of that organization to tell me how we could serve them.

Bill Peel:

And what they said was over and over again, "Teach us to make our practice a ministry." And when I probed into that a little bit, I understood what they were doing. They came to Christ somewhat like I did through Campus Crusade and they had a method of evangelism that was somewhat confrontational that they learned on the college campus, certainly I learned it. But it didn't work very well.

Bill Hendricks:

When you say confrontational, I don't think you mean smacking people in the face but it was more, I guess I'd say aggressive in the sense ...

Bill Peel:

Yeah, you would talk to strangers or anybody and the whole idea was to get them to listen, to admit they were sinners, Jesus could be their savior, pray to receive Christ right then. And that didn't work very well in the doctors' world.

Bill Hendricks:

In the medical setting, yeah.

Bill Peel:

And it certainly didn't work well for them to use it. Actually it's a great question and has a little bit more relevance today that Jim Kennedy came up with, "Pardon me, if you should die tonight, where would you spend eternity?" Now, that really didn't go well at the bedside.

Bill Peel:

But I had done some thinking about this for a while about what does it look like for people to actually be spiritually influential in their workplace? And so we put together a course called "The Saline Solution" where we really put together all these principles and actually taught physicians and dentists and healthcare providers how they could actually interact with a patient in a way that actually created some real interest in the doctor's faith.

Bill Peel:

And so that's where all of this came from. And it really starts, Bill, the very first thing is not what you say, it's what you do. And it starts with doing excellent work. In their case, it was being a really good physician or a really good dentist or a really good nurse or whatever healthcare profession they were in.

Bill Peel:

In the early 90s, we actually translated all that into the form of the book "Workplace Grace" as you were talking about. But most important thing I would want people to understand is it doesn't begin with words, it begins with the relationship. That's especially important today because people more and more need to see the love of Christ, not just hear about it. Because there are things that we used to assume, when I was on the college campus, I suspect this is true for you, everybody knew they were a sinner. Okay? They didn't think about all that that much but every once in a while they did, but we didn't have to argue with people.

Bill Peel:

Today, that dot does not exist anymore. So how in the world do you help a person come to the place where they can even begin to understand what Christ did for them if they have no sense of guilt, no sense of sinfulness in them. So they've got to see that. They've got to see, something's got to happen in their life where they realize, "You know, I can't do this." They have to look around and hopefully there is a Christian around them who's been gracious, who's been kind, who's serious about their work, and yet has also demonstrated some godly character and real concern about people because they might actually ask you a question.

Bill Peel:

How do you do this? How do you live through this? How do you get this? And then that opens the door for us to be able to talk about faith with people in a way that is intriguing to them.

Bill Hendricks:

You mentioned two things there that really striked me right off the bat. So before we go on, I just want to camp on those. One, you mentioned that piece of excellence in our work. I think what you're getting at there is that excellence gives us credibility. Let's take the medical professional or the healthcare professional that you're talking about. If you're botching the procedure, if you're prescribing the wrong medicine, if you're sloppy in just your practice if you will, that lowers the person's opinion of your professional skills and therefore, whatever you have to say on any other matter, obviously, it starts to erode the credibility of those other matters.

Bill Hendricks:

Whereas if your name is known as if you want that done, you need to go see this doctor, if you're going to be in that wing of the hospital, the nurse you want is so and so, that changes things. Then when they speak about other matters, you're like, "Well, they know what to do professionally, maybe they know what they're doing in this other matter." So the excellence piece is critical, it gives you credibility.

Bill Hendricks:

But then you also alluded to the person has to have a sense that you care. And that's a little more difficult to pull off in these days because what I'm finding is so many of us get, I found this myself, I get so wrapped up in my own affairs, my own concerns, my own agenda. Beyond that, there is what I guess I'd call compassion fatigue. "You want me to care? There is so much to care about, I don't have that much care in me." Here is a need, here is a need, here is a need, here is a needy person, here is a needy person, et cetera. I start to run out of care by a certain hour of the day.

Bill Hendricks:

But without that, if you really don't care then what motive would you have then to even be aware of what somebody's need is, right?

Bill Peel:

Well, Bill, that's really important. So competence lays the groundwork. Ephesians 6 and Colossians 4 talk about we're to do our work as unto the Lord, we're to put our whole selves into it and that lays this foundation. We tell people still, remind people regularly that if you want people to pay attention to your faith, first thing you need to do is pay attention to your work. And on top of that, there is something important before you get to the concern and that is godly character. And Christians are ripe to run first to that, but I think the very first thing, our very first responsibility in sharing Christ with people is the quality of our work.

Bill Peel:

I don't mean you're the best in town but that means you are putting yourself into it.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, you're doing your best.

Bill Peel:

You are doing your very best, using the gifts that you've got. And then what people are able to observe Christ-likeness in you, they see the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control. Those things, when those two things go together, when competence and character go together, it really produces authority in our words. But, so who cares?

Bill Peel:

Well, people care about us that we care about. And when we care about them, that allows them to come to us with situations or needs or make them a little more readily available to us but that's something we ought to be doing on a regular basis anyway. Just watching for people and how they are doing and paying attention to them.

Bill Peel:

When competence, character, and concern go together, it really creates a beautiful opportunity for us to talk to them about what particular things are going on in their lives. And that lays this foundation for really wise communication with people about the faith.

Bill Peel:

But, I think this is really hard these days because when we work together in an office or when we spend time with people, it's easier to pick up on some felt need that they might particularly have and we might be able to encourage them with. And so we have to, in some ways, go out of our way to find out what those things are and pay attention in these days.

Bill Hendricks:

You're talking about this new way of working that we have which is largely remote and we don't often have as much touch with people as we normally did. And because work has gotten so transactional, we get the work done and we don't slow down to pay attention to the person.

Bill Peel:

Yeah. There is all kinds of work besides paid work. There is the work of running a family, there is the work of being a good neighbor, too. And all this stuff applies. What does it look like to live like this in your home, what does it look like to live like this in your neighborhood where people do see you potentially a little bit more than they ever before.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, I mentioned Ephesians 4 back at the beginning of our conversation and you mentioned Bill Garrison. There is another character in the Mount Rushmore that you and I know of in the Faith and Work Movement. Ray Steadman was also a great friend of my dad's, and of course he knew Bill Garrison. He was the founder of Peninsula Bible Church out in Palo Alto, California. Wrote a very influential book back in, gosh, the late 60s, early 70s called "Body Life." And I have a recording of Ray Steadman, and I think it was at the same conference where Bill Garrison also spoke back in 1984 at Dallas Seminary, because it was a conference on what at the time was called the Layman or the Layperson which is really just a modern day version of that word that I used out of Ephesians 4, the "saints," the every day Christians in the every day world.

Bill Hendricks:

And Ray Steadman is making the point in there, he was talking about the role of pastor and he was saying, "We typically think of pastors as the paid professionals of the church. And we use that term in that way." But he said, "Actually, the gift of pastor is far more widely distributed in the body of Christ than we possibly realize." He said, "Because God's got the saints, that is everyday Christians in the everyday world, distributed everywhere, in workplaces, in schools, in communities, in neighborhoods, in homes, on and on. All these different places, you've got followers of Christ living out their lives and interacting with all these people who don't yet have a relationship with Christ."

Bill Hendricks:

And really, my colleague Dr. Bock, Director for Cultural Engagement, points out Ephesians 4 really gives us God's strategy for evangelism. In churches, we sit around and try to dream up plans and schemes and strategies for evangelism and all the while God said, "Well, actually, I already have one and it's Christians, everyday Christians would be out in the world and they'd be living a certain way and working a certain way and treating people a certain way."

Bill Hendricks:

And Ray Steadman's point was, "All around us are people who have pastoral needs," spiritual needs would be another way to put it, just like you mention. And you show up to work and here is a coworker and something is not right with them that day. And you say, "Tell me what's wrong." "Oh man, my wife and I, we had the biggest fight last night and I don't know what's going to happen for us." Well, there is a pastoral need. Over here is somebody, "How is it going today?" "Oh man, I'm just beside myself." "How come?" "Well, I found out last night, my mom's got cancer. I don't know what to say to her, I don't know how to help her." There is a pastoral need.

Bill Hendricks:

All around us are these spiritual needs and every single one of them is an entry gateway if you will, a doorway into a person, into a life and of course when we, as Christ followers, are willing to go through that door, we bring Christ with us and that's the key. And I think that's what you're talking about.

Bill Peel:

Well, yeah. This is the "don't tell them, show them." People see Christ in us. Maybe they'll be attracted to Him. I mean, this is the Holy Spirit's work. And I guess one of the great reliefs that most people have is to realize, "Okay, I don't have to make this happen. This is the Holy Spirit's job. My job is just to have my ear to the ground to some extent and watch for what the Holy Spirit is already doing in another person's life and join Him at that particular point."

Bill Peel:

And one of the most important things for I think all of us to realize that evangelism is a process, that sometimes it's a really long process. I've got a girl who cuts my hair that I've been praying for and talking to for 20 years. And it's amazing. We have talked about all kinds of things, I've even actually talked about Christ and the specifics of the gospel on certain occasions. And she just has never been interested, has never been interested.

Bill Peel:

And so I can't do anything about that. That's the Holy Spirit's job. He's got to be at work there. Jesus said, "No one comes to me unless the Father draws him." And He tells us that that's the Holy Spirit's work. So, we watch for what Christ is doing, we pray diligently for them to realize their need of Christ, and then pay attention to what's going on.

Bill Peel:

So the idea of evangelism, a lot of people think of it as "boom," once the door is open, you're going to go all the way to, "Are you ready to pray to receive Christ right now?" And evangelism is a process, they are like stages in some ways. And actually, all throughout the gospels in the New Testament, Jesus and Paul for example, talk about evangelism as an organic process.

Bill Peel:

So what does it take to grow a crop? It takes a farmer going out and tilling soil and hoeing up hard ground. How in the world does hardpacked soil become fertile? You go from a place where the gospel has no penetration to being very fruitful. There is a farmer out there with his hoe or a tractor or something, tilling up that hard ground. And obviously, that's a big part of the Holy Spirit's work as well.

Bill Peel:

But you pay attention to where this person is, cultivation is where we use who we are in our caring for people and letting them see Christ in us. At some point when the door gets opened a little bit, we can start planting, but you don't want to throw seed on hard ground. I mean that just feeds the birds and brings Satan running.

Bill Peel:

So, He's got to break up that hard soil and He does that very skillfully, just not on our schedule a lot of times. Then we can start talking about Jesus when we sense that open door there.

Bill Hendricks:

I mean, you make such a great point about the hard soil. I think that we forget so often when we encounter people who don't know Jesus and they look like they don't know Jesus, they are surly, they are negative, they may be toxic. It's not like they are bad people, they are lost people.

Bill Hendricks:

But oftentimes, they bear the wounds and the scars of a lifetime of mistreatment, from parents, from siblings, from ex-spouses, from all kinds of directions. And they are lost, just like Ephesians 2 says, they are walking around but they are dead inside, dead in their trespasses and sins, and no, they are not particularly attractive, if you will, oftentimes.

Bill Hendricks:

But, what you're suggesting is even that cup of cold water that we offer them, that may be the first cup of cold water anybody has ever offered them. This really came home to me a couple of years ago when, as you know, I grew up in a seminary professor's home which means I've been around the gospel and the church since nine months before I was born, okay? I came to faith at 4.5 and I've never run away from the faith.

Bill Hendricks:

So I come from a very different background. And I grew up hearing about, "Oh, you need to live a life that's a certain way so that people will be attracted." And I thought, "Oh, well, you're just saying, 'Be a nice person.'" And to me, I thought, "What good is that going to do? Everybody is a nice person, particularly here in Texas, where I grew up, everybody is polite, courteous, treats you decent. What good's being nice going to do?"

Bill Hendricks:

Well, that's shifted. That's shifted dramatically and I discovered that a couple of years ago when I came down with a sore throat. I already knew the drill of what was going to happen. I checked into the kiosk at the pharmacy to see the doc-in-a-box, I knew she was going to say, "Okay, here is a prescription for this, go right to the next desk, pick it up, I'm done." No muss, no fuss. So, sure enough, I wait, finally the physician's assistant sees me, she's probably 35 years old. I could tell that she was not a native-born American, she had immigrated from some other culture but seemed very professional and sure enough she takes all my vitals, cultures me, does it all and says, "Yeah, I think I'm going to prescribe this penicillin or whatever for you."

Bill Hendricks:

So she does the drill, she's typing in my information in a computer and she asks me, "So is there anything else I could do for you today?" I said, "No, you've been very helpful, thank you very much." She stopped, she put her hands down, she turned to me and she said, "Wow, that's the first time I've heard that today." And I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Oh, nobody ever thanks me." And my heart just sank.

Bill Hendricks:

She said, "Most of the people, by the time they get to see me, they've been waiting a while and they are feeling bad to begin with. So they are usually in a bad mood because they had to wait. And sometimes, they get downright abusive to me and I have to push back." And I just thought to myself, "Okay, Bill, just being quote "nice" in and of itself is a bit of light in this dark world that we now live in." And I didn't get to ... she was busy, I needed to get on, and so we didn't get into any sort of quote "spiritual things." But I thought, "Well, at least just my treatment of her was somewhat, I'm hoping, would be how Jesus would have treated her. That cup of cold water on a really parched day for her. Who knows how the Holy Spirit might use that."

Bill Peel:

Yeah, who does? What the Holy Spirit can do with that - she starts thinking about, "What was different about that person?" And she could not connect all the dots there but that's, again, the Holy Spirit's job.

Bill Peel:

Bill, every interaction with every person we have is spiritually significant, no matter where the conversation leads. Kathy and I every morning pray together and we say, "Lord, help us to be a blessing to everyone we come in contact with." And I've had to do this prescriptively because I'm that person that gets real irritated when I have to wait in line and I say this just to make the point here, by way of confession, I had just actually spoken to the Christian Medical Association group up in Bristol, Tennessee.

Bill Peel:

And Kathy and I were flying out. It seems like every other flight out of Bristol back to Atlanta and then to Dallas is delayed and sure enough, we get up there and we don't know whether we're going to be able to get out.

Bill Peel:

And I really gave this poor gate attendant or the gal at ticket desk there the "what for" and as we're walking away, my sweet female Holy Spirit next to me says, "You think she'd be interesting in hearing about Jesus from you today?" Oh my gosh. I hope that was the last time I was mean to somebody like that because the fact is, people are watching and who knows what God can do with that. That certainly wasn't a help to that lady for sure.

Bill Peel:

Anyway. So every interaction with every person, especially people, they are in some kind of service industry, just stopping and thanking them or pointing out to them, "You've done a really great job, thanks for serving us so well. You're really gifted at paying attention to the people at your tables there and I just want to commend you for that. God's given you a real gift."

Bill Hendricks:

I know that you and I, in addition to all the faith work and economics stuff, we've worked on ... a key part of that has also been this shared interest in the whole phenomenon of giftedness that we both worked on. And I just want to affirm that that most people have never had anybody remark about or comment on, in a positive way, their particular giftedness. And this isn't flattery. We're not telling them they are doing something well when they are not. This is when you can tell the person is putting their heart into the work because they are gifted to the task, they do it well, they are gaining energy from it. It's almost like you're doing them a favor by letting them do whatever their service is for you.

Bill Hendricks:

They sort of distinguish themselves from people who are just doing it for a paycheck. And to point that out to somebody to say, just like you said, "Wow, you know you are really gifted to that? Thank you for your work." They've never had anybody do that before. And that, in and of itself, may open a door of some sort.

Bill Peel:

Well, I tell you what, it does a lot actually. I have friends that have this kind of technique, they were at a restaurant, used to be in a restaurant, and the waiter or waitress would come up and take our orders and brings our order. And they say, "We're going to pray, would you like to join us?" I always feel slightly uncomfortable about that although it's been really interesting how some people have responded. But the fact is that they are there to do a job and that's important for me to respect that.

Bill Peel:

But I tell you, when we do something like commend somebody, that doesn't take time from them and if they want to continue the conversation and stop what they are doing for a little while and talk to us, I think that's a real open door. That's what Walt Larimore who was my co-author in "Workplace Grace" called "raising a faith flag." Just to say something, "You know, God has really gifted you with that." And you just drop it at that point. And a faith flag is like running up a flag, that you're somebody that pays attention to God, that you have a spiritual side, whatever.

Bill Peel:

And those are very easy things to do. Faith flags are just short, 20 second comments that identify you as a person of faith, to pay attention to God, pay attention to prayer, whatever. And it let's them know that there is something that they can pursue when they want to, at their pace, when the Holy Spirit nudges them along. And I can't tell you how many ... we've had doctors that we taught 25 years ago, "So here I was at a Saline Solutions conference, back in the 90s, and faith flags, faith flags, I still do this."

Bill Hendricks:

Still remember faith flags.

Bill Peel:

Yeah, it's such an easy, non-threatening thing to do that allows us to get into the conversation potentially and let people know that we have something of spiritual depth that they might be interested in at some point.

Bill Hendricks:

You mentioned the whole idea of offering to pray for somebody who is in a bad way, a need. I will tell you, in my own experience with that, I've never had anybody say no to me. Usually, when people are in a fix, they'll take any help from any direction. They may not even believe in God but they are like, "What harm can it do?" And I have a friend who's an actor and it didn't turn out for him to go to Hollywood but he works a lot of community productions and apparently, a troop of actors after the performance will get together backstage and celebrate the performance. And it's like a football team, getting together after a victory and everybody is like, "That was great hit, man." They do that as actors.

Bill Hendricks:

And anyway, one night, they were all cheering and he was feeling his oats and he was like, "Man, can I just stop and pray, this was great." And everybody of course knows that he's the token Christian in this troop. And nobody objected. They were like, "That's a great idea." And so he just says a simple prayer, "Thank you God for helping us tonight, everybody did a great job."

Bill Hendricks:

Well, the next week, they all get back together and somebody says, "Tom, say that prayer again. Yeah, that was great." And it became part of the ritual. And then one night, I think he had to leave early to go get his wife at the airport and he said, "Guys, I got to leave early, I can't be a part." And somebody said, "Oh, you can't leave yet. You haven't said the prayer."

Bill Hendricks:

And he wrote us an email later and he said, "I realized in that moment one of the reasons God gave me that gift of acting. I thought it was going to be to be on big stages and stuff but I realize I was able to be the only connection most of these people have to God." And he just realized that that gave him an entrée with this people. They've started to give prayer requests when he prays - "Hey, would you pray for my daughter, she is sick. Hey, I'm looking for this job, I have a final interview tomorrow, could you pray over that?"

Bill Hendricks:

And it's like, if I can use the word, he is like the priest for them. And what a faith flag that is.

Bill Peel:

Absolutely. and that just points out the reason why the workplace is so important because likely, some of those people would have never knocked on the door of a church.

Bill Hendricks:

Absolutely.

Bill Peel:

And so this is ... Jesus is operating. God is operating. He doesn't wait for us to come to Him, He goes after us. In John 4, Jesus is talking to the woman at the well, talking about worship and He says, "Those who worship God must worship Him in spirit and truth." And for such worshipers, God's a seeking God. He is out to find us, He came to the Garden of Eden, seeking Adam. He knew where he was but He comes after us. Jesus came after us which is what Christmas is really all about.

Bill Peel:

And we go out. That's our job. And that's how, by the way, that's the place where most non-Christians have the most contact with Christians, with the people that know the gospel is the workplace. That's what makes it so important. And Bill, that's historically true. In the early church, the early church grew from a few hundred people on the day of Pentecost in AD 33 to millions by the end of the third century. And the way that the gospel spread was ordinary people.

Bill Peel:

Yeah, Peter was a good preacher, some of the others, Paul. But the way that the gospel spread throughout the whole world, by the way, not just Europe but it went east as well into India and Syria and south to Africa and further east, even into China before it even became a European religion of actually people going out. And it was ordinary people who were-

Bill Hendricks:

Bill Peel:

One guess is gossiping the gospel to the people that worked around them. And so it's really interesting. This doesn't get translated right a lot of times but for those of you guys who are listening to this who know Greek, go look up and see how the word ... hook at the Greek word for house or sometimes it's even, sadly, it's the word oikos, and so you've got in Acts 2, the meaning from house-to-house or oikos-to-oikos.

Bill Peel:

And actually, the oikos was more than just a house and it's more than just a nuclear family. It was a whole set of people who lived and word together. The oikos was the basic economic unit of the Greco-Roman world. And it was on the back of commerce that the gospel spread. Paul set up a school in Ephesus and trained people but the whole of Asia heard the gospel. Why? Because business people who were traveling back and forth to Ephesus and then back to their home town somehow came in contact with the gospel and took it back, that's how Colossi, for example, heard about the gospel and why there was a church there, for example.

Bill Peel:

But that happened all over the world. Ordinary people who were not apostles, not gifted evangelists, just ordinary folks, taking the gospel back to their oikos or their workplace and sharing it with people around them.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, it sounds like the Holy Spirit was preceding them because the people were receptive and they said, "We want to hear more." And ultimately, they came to faith.

Bill Peel:

Actually, that's exactly right. Now, one of the things that I get asked regularly is, "Wait a minute, that sounds like I'm going to be this perfect person in the workplace." That's definitely not true, obviously, because none of us qualifies for that, for sure. In fact, I suspect that there's...well, I won't say that, never mind, but our fallen tendencies can show up in almost any place.

Bill Peel:

The deal is that if that's the case, if you've hurt people, if you've done things, you've not responded right to people that you work with, you've got an incredible opportunity to go back to them and say, "Hey, you know what? I was really wrong. Would you forgive me for what I said or what I did in some way." And I got to tell you that, that goes miles down the road to helping a person see that, oh, this person, they are more like I am than they put on here. They have a need for Christ like I do.

Bill Hendricks:

Yes. And you're demonstrating grace at that point. You're saying, "You know what? I'm a really imperfect person and I need to apologize to you. I'd wronged you and I want to ask your forgiveness." Well, right there, now we're into categories of confession and forgiveness and they realize, "Well, if this person can do it." I mean, they know you're not perfect.

Bill Hendricks:

But it demonstrates the gospel at its core is about grace. The gospel at its core is about grace and I'm perceiving in our culture on an increasing basis that our culture doesn't know anything about grace. It knows a lot about judgment and condemnation and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth if not more. But the idea of grace, of forgiveness for sin and wrongdoing, that, too, is becoming a new category.

Bill Hendricks:

So, when a Christian humbles themselves to say, "You know what? I failed you and I'm sorry and I want to make it right," that in itself becomes a whole new testimony.

Bill Peel:

That's really true. And I can't think of a more important time for us to be gracious than right now because there is a lot of bitterness, a lot of moralizing going on right now. And let's just remember that there is a kingdom that's more important than the one we physically reside in right now. We're already members there. And Bill, it just reminds me, I'm reading Andrew Murray's book "Abide in Christ" again right now. And when we abide in Christ, Christ's character exudes from us. That's a beautiful thing.

Bill Peel:

You cannot turn away from the beauty of who Christ is. We talk about irresistible grace. Jesus' character is irresistible. And when people see that in us, they do pay attention to it. So that's a great thing. That's a great thing right now and a great opportunity to show love and grace to a people that we disagree with.

Bill Hendricks:

Absolutely. You've probably heard the illustration my dad gave that is similar to your story about Bristol. He had a deal where he was supposed to catch a flight and it was oversold or whatever, canceled. And he was mad and frustrated and tired and he let the gate agent have it. And then walked off in a huff and then, just like Kathy sort of confronted you, the Holy Spirit somewhat confronted him and said, "You got to go back and apologize to that lady." He goes back up to the counter, waits his way up and he gets up there and he says, "Ma'am, I need to tell you something, I need to apologize for the way I just treated you. The truth of the matter is, I'm a Christian and I shouldn't have done that."

Bill Hendricks:

And the lady leaned forward and looked one way and looked another and said, "You know what? I'm a Christian too. How else do you think I could handle this job?"

Bill Peel:

Oh gosh.

Bill Hendricks:

Even the best are going to have those moments where they are not exuding Christ-likeness.

Bill Peel:

Yeah, so even when you screw up, that's an opportunity to witness.

Bill Hendricks:

Absolutely. And I think that everyday people in some ways expect us to be more human than many times we as Christians expect ourselves to be human. We're not perfect people. We are saved people that are slowly but surely being conformed to the image of Christ.

Bill Peel:

Hey, Bill. It might be helpful, by the way, let me say this, I really appreciate your work at the center.

Bill Hendricks:

Thank you.

Bill Peel:

And what you and Darryl are doing there. But I also appreciate your work on the Theology at Work project.

Bill Hendricks:

Thank you.

Bill Peel:

And thankfully, you all just approved an article that I have worked on really hard on evangelism in the workplace. It would be great if you guys could put a link to that. There is a lot more we can talk about.

Bill Hendricks:

We sure can do that.

Bill Peel:

And there is a lot more there that people could take a look and really study and think about about the influence that they are having to the people around them and that they live with, even in their own families.

Bill Hendricks:

Thank you for mentioning that. For our listeners, "Theology of Work" project is a project, that we went through all 66 books of the Bible and asked the question, "What does this book contribute to our understanding of work?" And you can find out our findings on that at theologyofwork.org. And there is a whole bunch of other topical articles, including articles on living out our spirituality in the workplace and Bill Peel is one of the contributors to that.

Bill Hendricks:

Bill, our time is gone today but I really want to thank you for being with us and sharing your wisdom on this topic. And I want to thank all of our listeners for being a part of today's Table Podcast where we consider issues of God and culture.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to the Table Podcast. For more podcasts like this one visit dts.edu/thetable. Dallas Theological Seminary, teach truth, love well.