Study the Bible to do well at work

Is Christian leadership sufficient for leadership in the workplace? We discussed various common workplace behaviours that are clearly non-Christian and concluded that those aren't good leadership behaviours anyways. Someone gave the example of "shoeshining". (BTW, that's the most polite term I've heard for that behaviour!) Yes, that happens at work all too often. However, are there secular management books extolling that virtue or corporate education programs on how to "shoeshine"? No, because no senior executive would tolerate middle and lower management making decisions based on "shoeshining" and it isn't a good leadership skill.

A more interesting suggestion from the class is that Christians tend to be more forgiving. I suggested that well-lead secular organizations encourage appropriate risk-taking and failures are tolerated as part of the training process. The classic management story in this area is the VP who lost a million and was expecting to be fired. When the president "forgave" and was asked why, the response was that the organization just spent a million on the VP's education and wasn't about to let the competition benefit from that. Conversely, I'd like to suggest Christians are sometimes too forgiving. We can't be too forgiving of the person, but we can sometimes be too forgiving of the behaviour.

More bluntly, do Christians finish second because our faith automatically limits our secular "success"? I'd like to suggest no, Christians can lead in a way that's consistent with our faith and still be successful. Bad leadership is bad leadership. In fact, Christian leadership training can sometimes be superior to secular leadership training. Our leadership skills are rooted in Christ and deep character development. Secular leadership can often be surface-level techniques.

Last week we asserted that long term secular success is largely a matter of leadership. This week we concluded that Christian leadership is sufficient for secular leadership. Christian leadership is based on the Bible. Logical transitivity leads to the surprising conclusion that we should study the Bible to do well at work. Hence the subject line of this post. This also illustrates the gracious provision of God: work is ordained by God and He provides the Bible so that we can do well at it. Praise God!

Churches encourage us to do well in many areas of our lives such as marriage and parenting. Given the centrality of work in our calling, the church should likewise help us do well at work. We then brainstormed on how:

• leadership courses (including: gifts surveys, personality types, etc)
• leadership opportunities
• small groups to share frustrations and situations
• mentors

Comments strongly encouraged as this is the basis of a career ministry at church.