#215 | Working from the Inside Out with Jeff Haanen, Pt. 2

Every conversation, every missionary encounter is yourself. You are bringing yourself to every single missionary encounter. And so, you know, Calvin would say this. He'd say, how do we grow in wisdom?

It's knowledge of God and knowledge of self. And we. I. I went a lot further down the knowledge of God route.

And then, you know, with lots of gentle nudgings from my team, sometimes not so gentle from my wife, from those around me, I just had to face all these things. I'm like, why do I do that? So. So going back into the heart and going back into some of my past and going back into what I am and what.

I'm not getting more comfortable with those things. Just, yeah, it was a very important journey for me, and I'm still on that journey. I'd say.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's time for Apollos Watered a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming, and I am your host. And today we're having another one of our.

Deep conversations.

Who are we? Not who we claim to be, not who we want to be. Who are we really? I want us to take a hard look in the mirror and see who we really are.

But I don't want you to listen to that voice of condemnation that's coming at you.

I know that for many, the idea or even the possibility of taking a moment to quiet yourself, turning off your phone, pausing your song, or closing your show and just staring in the mirror is actually a very scary and lonely thing, because all you do is hear voices of condemnation. My purpose in this little exercise is not to condemn you, not at all. It's to give you hope. Our guest today is Jeff Haynan.

We talked to him last week, and it was a really phenomenal conversation.

And today we're going to pick that up again and dive even deeper into understanding our vocation and what it means to have a missionary encounter with our Western world. Because that's the one thing that is constant. Who we are. How are we being formed? Better yet, how does God want to form us?

How does God want to form you?

And if you haven't heard the first episode, then I would encourage you to go back and listen, because what we're doing now is building on that conversation. And in this conversation, we're talking about how having a missionary encounter with our culture is not just something we do.

It's not just a set of ideas, but it's the way that we're actually formed. You see, for many of us, we don't have a missionary encounter because we can't see how the culture is actually different. It just is what it is.

But when we are truly being formed by the word of God, we're going to look at our culture differently. We're going to see some of the idols that are in it and actually influencing how we live and what we go after.

This actually happens in the church when we are addicted to being bigger, building bigger, having everything bigger to justify who we are and what we're doing. And we get caught up in these ideas that bigger and better is always better. But that's not the case at all.

In fact, ministry and most of life is not about the flash and the pan. It's, as Eugene Peterson said, a long obedience in the same direction.

Jeff has spent a big chunk of his time thinking and working on the intersection of faith and work, where we all spend most of our time, especially.

The ways that our work is actually.

Forming us and how we can be faithful in it, no matter if we're professionals or working class, whether we have the kind of job that spends a great deal of time with ideas and people, or if we're making the things that allow everyday life to happen.

Now, often, and I would say too often, when it comes to work, we look at the outside, the measurables, to determine our success, worth, and our meaning. Don't get me wrong, measurables are important, but they're not everything.

In fact, we have to know whether we are making a profit or not so that we can make money to take care of people and our obligations. So I don't want to say that measurables don't matter. They do, however. We have to know if the things that we make can do their job, can perform.

And we also need to know how we even get there. You see, just contention is that the definitions of success and worth that we tend to use in our minds that we set as our end goal.

That's how we direct our thoughts, our.

Achievements, how we define ourselves. And those definitions are actually malforming us.

That we need to be formed from.

The inside out according to the word of God. So that we can truly have a missionary encounter with our culture so that we can truly pursue Christ's mission.

Today we're going deeper into the book. What does formation look like? What's involved? What are the things that can help us to change, to be formed into the image of Christ? Let's dive in.

Happy listening.

The same thing you bring to every conversation, every missionary encounter is yourself. You are bringing yourself to every single missionary encounter. And so, you know, Calvin would say this, he'd say, how do we grow in wisdom?

It's knowledge of God and knowledge of self. And I went a lot further down the knowledge of God route.

And then, you know, with lots of gentle nudgings from my team, sometimes not so gentle from my wife, from those around me, I just had to face all these things. I'm like, why do I do that?

So going back into the heart and going back into some of my past and going back into what I am and what I'm not, getting more comfortable with those things. Yeah, it was a very important journey for me and I'm still on that journey, let's say.

Well, you've brought out something that I think many in my tribe and I would say this in a sermon, I remember Aw Tozer saying, what do I believe about God is the most important thing about me? The problem is, is that we've relegated that to just this knowledge aspect and not the orthopraxy or the interaction that we have.

I mean even orthopraxy, it's a theological word, how I act with people around.

But in the tangible day to day conversations and the means by which we employ, quote unquote success in ministry, which we equate to numbers and influence and platform rather than necessarily holiness surrender, becoming more like Jesus dying to self. The more the tenets of the upside down kingdom. And we find this juxtaposition in our culture, just like with anybody.

I mean you've got a book that IVP is going to be publishing, they're going to love you. But if the book doesn't sell, then you know you're not. Yeah, but it's the reality.

If people don't listen to the show, it's, it's one of those things where we have to know in our culture how to be able to, to give what is worthy, even if it may not have the numbers per se. And it's, it's that it's worthy in that and of itself.

Yeah, and that is a tension in book world or in ministry world is we, we do want the impact. And of course we want people to come to faith, right? Like we do. We do want all these things to happen, right? But what if it doesn't happen? Right?

Well, there's one phrase that at least I've been telling to myself recently is that just do today your good small thing. And I think God is in those things. This is, I think, a concept of Christian vocation.

If he summons me to himself in all areas of my life, then right before me are all these small things. Right? It's a podcast interview. It's spending time with somebody, listening to them, a donor. It could be figuring out a new distribution plan.

I mean, there could be lots of different things, but each of these things can be a place of living a holy life before God. The Corm Deo kind of concept. And I actually think to be more content with living in the presence of God in the moment and just let. Let the.

Let the impact come or not like let the Holy Spirit do that work. And I just think that that at least is what I needed to be healed from, is I just wanted so much to.

And I realized this was my own sense of needing to be important much more than it was. God needed me to do XYZ things. Right? God is calling us first and foremost just to himself and to enjoy him.

Well, that's the idea of we're wired for status and how do we find that status within God himself? And you've also alluded to it. Something else that I found is very interesting. Have you read Alan Kreider's book the Ferment of the Early Church?

So in it he talks about how really the early church grew is in four ways. One was in patience, how they were patient with the unbelieving world that was around them.

They also practiced self control, which was a Greek or a Roman virtue. He mentions worship in catechesis. They spent a lot of time spending teaching and also being in the presence of God. Third was habitus was this.

It's a French sociological word which is like reflexive bodily behavior, really hospitality, how they interacted. I mean, there's more of that that's involved in it. And then fourth was ferment, where the.

It was the invisible hand of God just started working and seeping, if you will. I mean, fermented with people. I think though we have traded that for the tangible, the measurable very quickly. I mean, we even call measurables.

And it is that juxtaposition between what is measurable and fits on a stat sheet and what does not. And it can't be always the stat sheet that determines everything when the immeasurables don't fit. Like holiness doesn't always fit on a stat sheet.

As we go about this, as you've gone through this book and you've written it out, you talk about these five categories. What are these five or principles as a way forward for all of us to integrate faith and work.

Yeah, so this is, yeah, the nut of the book is these kind of five core ideas. The first is seek deep spiritual health. And this is the context of a lot of our conversation, right?

It is actually to seek to live in the depths of the kingdom, in the moment by moment. The second is think theologically is how do we, and this is very much the new beginning.

How do we fit everything inside the biblical story, whether that be our work or community or whatever it might be. The third is embrace relationships. God himself is relationship.

And actually workplaces and workplace culture and the norms that get set up there, they're all relational nature as well as how we interact with our boss, with our co workers that work for us as well as with our family, how we do relationships with others is really, really critical to living out the life faith, I think to everybody. The fourth is create good work. And that's sort of the, the probably the most common aspect of the faith the work movement is talking about.

The work itself is important because work serves the needs of others, right? Whether you're an architect or whether you're an electrician, like do good work because it's a reflection of God's own work in creation.

And then the fifth is serve others sacrificially. And this is sort of engagement with culture rather than sort of a conquest or a triumphalistic vision.

How do engage in our society of sacrificial servants? Right. And particularly if Christians find themselves in places of influence or power, how do we give that away for the well being of others?

So I think everything from a trucker that serves others sacrificially by doing the route and caring for their family and doing a good job when they don't have to, right. To somebody that works at a foundation that's working on social issues in a city.

I think that way of seeing our engagement with culture as a sacrificial servant is an incredibly important way to engage with culture. So that's just sort of our language for holistic discipleship.

And the concept of working from the inside out is that let's not first look at the external impact or what we're doing out in the World. Right.

It's actually continually a process of going back to your interior world, seek deep spiritual health, think theologically, that then moves its way out into your exterior world, which is embrace relationships and create good work, that then finally moves its way outward to our civic world, which is what I talk about with serve others sacrificially. So that's what working from the inside out is.

How do we do this work in an interior way that then moves its way out, that doesn't get maybe stuck in navel gazing? Because the issues of the world and our society, they matter deeply because people are involved in those.

And there are systemics and there are those issues as well. But the way in which we show up to those, are we doing that as those people that are deeply filled or that are unfilled and have a need?

There's one quote from Bernard of Clairvaux, I'll paraphrase it, that I put in the book, but it's been really helpful for me. It's saying, do we show up to life more as reservoirs or canals? Yeah, yeah.

And the reservoir concept is there's a ton of water right in it, and a small amount of water can be taken out of it without diminishing the reservoir. But so many of us live our lives like canals that whatever we receive on Sunday, we go to church, it's gone, and it's gone on Monday.

Or maybe like my family, it's gone when you're on the minivan, drive home with all your kids and work angry at each other coming home from church. Right. But we live our lives as canals as we take in and we're gone and we're just depleted, depleted, depleted.

But Bernardo of clairvosted, let's not try to be more generous than God.

Let's actually become more like reservoirs that we have so much of the life of God that there is going to be stress and difficulty and pain in our life. This is the human, you know, this is just the human condition.

But when we do that, then we can show up to our communities and our workplaces in our society as people filled with the life of God and they're still more left over. This is. This is the bread and the loaves, Right. There's immensely more in Jesus. Right.

And so that's the concept is living and engaging our society as people in a missionary, you know, encounter, yet doing so from a very whole interior place and just deciding to be. I want to be on that journey. I want to be honest with myself and grow in that area.

Taking that into Consideration. You wrote this. Similarly, we grow into deep spiritual health not just through ideas or good intentions, but through practice.

Why is it so important to keep that idea of building becoming reservoirs by building these, these practices into our lives?

Yeah, well, when one of the chapters I wrote on sort of how I imagine change and it's not, you have a lot probably smarter people in this podcast that could verify this if it works or not. But there are three major movements of how I think we change and practices are in there. They're particularly in the second movement.

So the first movement is, I think we change when we look at our pain and we join some sort of a high commitment community and we decide to be vulnerable instead of looking away from our pain or coping. But we look at it and we're open and vulnerable with a community that we then start to open and bear our souls with.

I actually think those are the contexts of change. We tend to change more through our suffering than through our successes.

The second I think aspect of that, in these communities, this could be a church, small group, it could be a family, it could be a group of best friends. Right. But in those contexts of vulnerability, I think the stories we believe and the practices that we have are very much connected.

So it could be a macro story, like a cultural story. Also could be a story of telling myself about whether I'm valuable or not based on what happened to me when I was in seventh grade.

There could be a lot of these stories and then we start to develop certain habits and practices out of those stories. So James K. Smith has written on this quite a bit and it's been very helpful.

But when we have different loves and the stories that we believe, the practices tend to flow from those. So I think communities are a good place to say what are the stories I believe? And then what are the practices I'm doing on a day to day basis?

And on those practices, gosh, the spiritual, the classic spiritual disciplines, they're. They're great, they're hard. Like, who really? I don't know, maybe you have more people than I do in my context.

But like, who does the prayer of examine every night, right? I do sometimes. But to actually think, where was God present to me in this moment?

Or where did I feel him distance and start to understand where he was with me in the moment of that day, it's those little practices that shape us over a lifetime. Just like checking my iPhone 280 times a day, that too shapes me. Right. So the things we do all the time deeply shape us.

So to be Thoughtful about those practices. It's one of the most important things. And I also think it's pretty hard to change those practices by ourselves. We need. Yeah, we need communities.

We need people that can help saying, huh, that's, that's not what I see of you. You need people that can be really honest over those. So I think the practices piece is very important.

Well, you have alluded to this. You actually referred to the beginning and I was turning to the page of your book when you started talking about the. The importance of community.

Rarely do I find anyone. I mean, we all talk about community. But today church serves more as a function of religious goods and services with a high experience.

And then you, you gather and then you quickly scatter, but without any type of personal communication. And one of the reasons why we aren't experience transformation is because we don't have any. We are very thin relationally.

Yeah.

So we're seeing the need to recover this thick relational idea. And that's why you have a brace relationships as one of your parts. But you wrote this.

You said formation begins when an individual self identifies a problem, need or point of suffering and then joins a high commitment community, which you've already said.

The community is formed by an emotional and relational context of genuine vulnerability bound together by a common story or universal history and defined by a set of shared habits and practices. Over time, change is solidified by a deeper engagement of ideas and concepts discussed in community that affirm the story.

A broader relational network that exposes learners to new emotions, stories, ideas, habits and practices.

Significant work which the learner is called to perform using new skills and knowledge and public recognition for accomplishment which shapes the learner's identity long term.

Change happens when the learner chooses to grow in self awareness and cultivate new spiritual disciplines which open the soul to the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. That's a mouthful. Let's take each one of these movements one by one.

That is kind of a mouthful, but that's sort of my three paragraphs of how I think change happens.

Yeah, but no, I think you are absolutely correct. I don't think I've seen anybody write it any better.

And not to make your head float like the Macy's Day parade, but I think that it's a very great picture.

And I realize in many of the different people that I talk to, one of the reasons that they are so frustrating and dying on the vine is that they are doing the disciplines. But what they're lacking is the community recognition and the deeper engagement at a place of vulnerability and authenticity.

Yeah.

In a culture such as ours where relationships or the religious goods have been upon getting the experience, getting the great preacher, the charismatic person, and then we send them off with great worship and everything else, but yet we are relationally thin. Do you think one of the reasons why we have an aspect of deconstruction today is because that we are thin relationally and not thick relationally?

Yeah, absolutely. I do think that's one. And I think our digital age and some of the research on smartphones and what that's happened to us has hurt us.

I think we've gotten more isolated. Right. And even to the church context. I wrote about this in that article, God of the Second Shift that I mentioned earlier in this interview.

Obviously church worship, Eucharist, baptism, preaching, these are obviously very central. But at the church, potluck is one of the things that we don't do quite as much anymore.

But when you start to just meet other people and then you hang out and there's kind of more of an opportunity to connect with people on a relational level. If I had my druthers, every church would do a potluck like every week. Right. This is like small church world.

Like how do you do that with, you know, if you're at big mega church in Texas? I don't know.

But I do think that's really important and I think that's important to connecting people to the mission of God because we have a relational context. And then I also think, at least in my context in my life, you have to choose friendship. We really have to choose friendship.

And in a place that can be very success oriented or time, at least in my life, like here are the things they need to accomplish and then I need to have my kids accomplish all these different things. Time to be slow and to be together. That's why I want this. As I said the interview, I want this.

I actually think it happens in slow context of community. And again, that could be a church small group, right?

It could be a group of friends, it could be your neighbors, it could be, I think, a few different things. But I think it's important that you find community that you will choose to be open with.

I think all of us have been a part of communities too, where like I knew the right thing to say in this group right now. I've certainly done that. And then there's other contexts where you're like, no, this is actually what I'm feeling and believing right now.

This is what's really going on in my life. I think that's the fertile soil for where change tends to happen.

And then actually moving into some of those other things that I talked about in terms of our habits, our practices, the ideas that we have, the people we meet, the work we do, what are we getting praised for by others? I think those things are important aspects of transformation as well. But to your point, that community aspect is very important.

I'm so excited that I can't even begin to formulate the words and how.

Much I agree with you.

If I. If we were in church, I'd be amen. Amen.

Amen.

That's what I would say. Amen. I. I see it having moved from the pastorate into a local church context outside of the region that I've grown up in.

I'm in the Southeast, I was in the Midwest, and I see it all the time. We visited several churches around, and some of them are the biggest churches in the United States. And there's.

I mean, some of these churches we walked into, there are disco balls in the middle of the room with lights shining all around them, and they're bid to attract people. But there is not the slow burn. There's not the discipleship aspect that's there.

And I keep going back to the fact many of these churches are still following the Willow Creek model. And they said our discipleship failed largely because we didn't build those intentional relationships, because relationships take time. You.

Like you said, we have to choose this.

Yeah. And that's the word. I think even not just to pastors, that we ought to do that, but from pastoral leaders to our communities. You have to choose it.

I just want to say that you have to choose it because everybody could say, I just don't have quite the time. Maybe I could come to church, but I don't have the time for any sort of these communities.

Like, if you don't have a place where you can be growing in the faith genuinely and you can be open and vulnerable with people, then you have to reassess what is the. Like, what are you doing? What is the purpose of your life?

If it's to be conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of participating in his redemptive work in the world, we have to think about the practices of that and then allocate time appropriately. Right. And that may be doing hard things, like, I will say no to opportunities and get less of a promotion. I will say no to these kids sports teams.

I will say no. Like, what do you say no to? But even that core practice of Sabbath, that no Leads to lots of life. If you can get yourself to say no. Right.

And to do it with community.

Because that's those new counter rhythms that we have is pushing back against the culture that wants to be heard 247 and to do it 24 hours a day.

Yeah. Amen.

One of the things that you said when you were talking about community, you said this. Yet change begins when we choose neither rebellion nor resignation, but consent to God's presence inside our suffering.

And then you go on to say, once we decide to look squarely at our suffering rather than fleeing from it, the next step is to join a high commitment community characterized by emotional and relational vulnerability. Why is it so important to consent to God's presence in our suffering? That's the first question.

Yeah, so that's language from Jacques Philippe, his book Interior Freedom, which I really like that book, it was really influential on me. And he says that when something goes wrong, we usually do two things. One is we rebel or resign to it.

And the rebel is sometimes it's like, let me fix that. It's not that wrong. I'm going to.

Or it could be rebel in like coping mechanisms, like, I'm going to make myself feel better because something went really wrong. This could be the. The death of a friend. It could be not getting a promotion. It could be lots of different stuff.

So sometimes we will just rebel against the thing going wrong. The second way he says is sometimes though, and I see this actually as people age. I wrote another book actually on the topic of retirement.

But as resignation is, people just say, well, this is the way the world is. You know, life's hard. What you gonna do about it?

And I actually see people start to disengage from work or community and they just again, they just sort of live resigned lives, lives of quiet desperation, as Thoreau would say.

I think the magic is what Philippe is saying is that consenting to God's presence, inner suffering is important, is that you sort of lay your suffering before God and you say, I'm either gonna rebel against it nor fix it, nor I'm going to resign. But I'm going to say, I think you can be in it as you are a crucified savior and that you can work this in a way that can transform me.

And when we start to look directly at some of the deepest wounds and the most difficult things in our life, we say, God is here now, and I'm not going to take it back into, you know, level five and go achieve all the things I want to, but just sit with it for a while, then God is here. I think actually that's when the spirit really tends to do some of his best work.

So I think that consent piece, this is language also from the welcoming prayer from Thomas Keating's welcoming prayer, where we sort of recognize what's going on in our life and we sort of will say, I welcome this moment as it is, and I. I'm gonna just step back from my need for security, affection, and control, and I'll consent to God's presence. To me in this moment.

I think that word consent is a powerful one because I think it says two things at least. One is that it says, God is already initiating with us right now in this moment. To our listeners on this show. God is initiating something within us.

Right. Do we then, number two, do we consent to his transformative power in this moment, here and now? Right.

So whether it's Frank Laubach or Brother Lawrence or practicing the Presence, right. There are people that have done this work to say, God is initiating and I want to consent to your work.

I think when we look at our suffering, we don't flee from it. We don't cope. We don't do the Netflix thing forever. We don't do a thousand different things to keep ourselves busy. But we say, this is hard.

I'm going to sit with people that I love. It is. It is the job. And the friends that should have just sat with him in the ashes, that's actually where they think the magic is.

Just sit in the ashes for a while. Jesus is good at bringing resurrection from ashes, but oftentimes we'll think, let me just clean up these ashes myself. I'm on it.

And God says, well, if you don't. If you don't invite me into this, I won't be in this. So I think that consent thing is important.

What made you put that in a book on vocation?

Yeah. So broad topic. This is a book on vocation and faith and work. Right.

For us, the word vocation in our society, or even sort of in the subculture, I think it really ended up being something about job choice. What type of work should I do or what do I feel most able to do or excited about doing where I can have the biggest impact?

I don't think the word vocation belongs principally in the context of job choice, though there is good historical reasons why that is. I think it belongs mostly in the category of spiritual formation, because vocation is about listening to God's voice.

It's responding to God, the voice, the vocare. Right. The voice of God in all these areas of our life, in the moment, to moment.

Your ability to listen and to respond to the spirit in the moment is the essence of vocation. That is really what vocation is. It's not so much about whether you should take this job, this job, or this job. Right. And those are important. Right.

But you may actually need to develop the muscle on listening to God's voice with, you know, my dog ate the donuts yesterday and I got really angry. My kids got a little frustrated at everybody. Like, in that moment, where is God? So here I preach to myself.

My dog did eat the donuts yesterday and I was ticked off. This is not a hypothetical one, but man, I was not happy with Milo the dog at all.

What kind of dog is it?

Oh, man. Yeah, he's a golden doodle that over time, give him a little scrap. He gave him a little scrap and a little bit more.

And then he thinks it's his duty to jump on the table when we're gone and eat my kids donuts, which.

Does the same thing. Just so you know, my dog does the same thing.

Well, it's. And so I'm doing this and my daughter made these donuts and the dog ate it. And like, I'm a dad with four daughters, so I'd kind of do that.

I get, I get angry. Like, you just offended or hurt my daughter's feelings. I'm going to beat them down for your listeners.

I didn't actually, but I certainly for the night. Right. But in that moment, right back to your friend Jim Wilder, like, gosh, where's the mission of God now? You know what I mean?

The kingdom is what we're called to invite into. How can I get to the point where, wow, I can hear God's voice and respond in a mature and patient way in that moment.

So my kind of prayer practice right now is love is patient, love is kind. You were asking about the word vocation. Vocation is about spiritual formation. It's a spiritual formation that then does influence our public life.

So a guy named Michael Ware, for instance, he has done lots of stuff on faith in public life. I don't know if you had him on the podcast, but he's doing a fellowship and his fellowship that looks wonderful.

But it's on spiritual formation and politics and those in politics. It's because it's those types of hard things inside of us. That's where the battle is truly there. Right. And then we'll let God do the battle.

And culture.

I, you know, that's That's I think where the big growth curve for the church in the world needs to be is to become like Christ, which isn't easy to do.

I mean you've alluded to not easy pieces that and especially when people are going into their workplaces and as you said it's listening to the voice of God wherever you are. But some people say wait a minute, I have a very hard time doing that.

I have a very hard time because it's made known at my workplace that faith is not allowed. And I try to just keep it private.

You tell people to discern the environment that they're in for their workplaces and how they have to understand the context of how they're thinking. You mentioned I think four or is there five ways of viewing faith? Five, you mentioned five. Do you want to. Do you remember what all those are?

Let's see if you're testing if I can remember what I wrote which oftentimes I cannot. But that's from a friend is a scholar's name is David Miller. But he talks about these four postures toward faith in the workplace.

And this tends to be how sort of corporations or businesses or larger institutions tend to see faith and how they treat faith in workplace. So he had these four paradigms.

One was faith avoidant that we're totally going to avoid faith and it's inappropriate for the workplace and you shouldn't talk about it here. Two was faith tolerant like fine, you can do that.

We'll make some sort of accommodations for you in this context for you to do your, your religious thing. Right. The third is faith based and this would probably be the most common, I think thoughts in terms of how we think about faith in the workplace.

But contexts that are are through and through imbued with their founders values.

So this could be the Chick Fil a sort of in our world, but it could be, you know, Mackie at Whole Foods and the Buddhist faith like it's very much kind of put through a system right there. So very faith based.

And then he also talks about faith friendly environments that very much invite other people's faiths and kind of core convictions to the table. And then I added a fifth one. There are some contexts globally, quite a few contexts that are faith persecuting. You could get killed. Right.

So I think in a western context we need to hear that as well.

So what I wrote that is just saying there it can be helpful to discern of those five, which environment are you in because it influences your missionary encounter. Right.

If you're In a faith based context, you probably will want to like say a small dentist office and everybody's a Christian and you hire one person that's not. You really want to make sure that that person feels the openness to talk about their core convictions and doesn't feel pushed out. Right.

In other context of maybe faith avoiding, you may be really called to be courageous and courageous public witness. That may be very costly to you right now. Do it with wisdom, do it with gentleness and respect, but do it to read very boldly as a witness to Jesus.

That may be that context for you. Right. And there are other contexts where there'd be face persecuting that you have to rethink how do we do a missionary encounter in this context?

And so that may be martyrdom, but there may be other ways to think about the Christian mission in very difficult context.

So I do think being thoughtful about the context you're in and then the rest of that chapter, I talk a little bit about reimagining your workplace culture in light of the gospel as well as thinking about the language that you use. I don't mean like curse words or not. I mean like I have a buddy who worked at a large private equity firm.

So private equity, they buy and sell companies and he told me that their de facto values were greed, greed, money and more greed. Though they did of course didn't say that, but that was a de facto values. But right up on the board in his office, he had five values.

He had excellence, integrity, grace, humility and love. So he didn't, he didn't say necessarily every people knew that he was a believer. Right.

But he's, that was what he led with in that context because he realized that it's a very not faith friendly context whatsoever. But he says, how do I do this?

Well, I first start with values and then I have the conversations and then I get to where, where I'm coming from and people get to know me. And he was an incredible witness in a. He did lots of missionary encounters with a lot of powerful people in his context.

And that could be lots of context.

You may be in a very not faith friendly context, but I do think that first discerning and then thinking about what is the distinctiveness that then leads to the gospel can be important.

You refer to that.

You also talk about being in the workplace, how you reimagine it and you talk about what has been distorted, what is fallen, what needs to be redeemed and what you know, even the consummation, you bring that out there's four different aspects.

But then you also mentioned, and you allude to Daniel thriving in Babylon idea, where you decide what practices you'll engage in, what you'll abstain from. And I think we've actually talked about this. We're developing a whole course.

We've, we've talked about it kind of ad nauseam at different churches and groups where we ended. We are in a Daniel moment.

The guy's forced off his land as a young man, he's castrated, he's going to a pagan school, he's got a pagan name, he has to learn pagan history.

And yet he survives without compromising the core integrity of who he is in the midst of a very difficult environment, to the point where when you get to the book of Matthew, you have the wise men showing up because of the testimony of what he had done and his understanding and how he laid the groundwork that affected generations after himself. For those that are listening, you still need to take the class.

But, but with that, why is it so important for people to understand and identify the practices they'll engage in and which ones they'll abstain from and how do they go about that? Because they oftentimes don't know until they're in the middle of it.

Yeah, I think that's a real tough one. I do. And I love that you brought up the Book of Daniel because I kind of wish we had more details.

Not only the prophetic visions and the kind of the, the highlight moments. Right. How did he do work in the government under the Babylonian and the Persian empire, like on a day to day basis and completely be faithful. Right.

So there's things, certain foods he wouldn't eat. Right. Chapter one. But then like pretty interesting. He would pray three times a day toward Jerusalem. The time of the evening sacrifice.

3pm at a time when evening sacrifice hadn't happened for like 50 years or something. 40, 50 years. And he prayed toward Jerusalem. He was just utterly faithful with the certain practices that made him stick out.

But he did his work really well. And I think that is really key for how do we be missionaries in our culture. You should stick out. And people should know you have limits too. Right.

So how do you figure those ones out? I do think you have to think about what are the values in my company? What are the practices that come from those values?

Which ones can I fully get behind as a person of faith? And which ones will I not get behind as a person of faith?

So it could be everything from, you know, a sales role, one in nine People in the American economy works in sales. Sales is a good thing. You're selling goods and products that people need, right. However, there can be sales practices that I am only selling.

I'm sort of digging holes that I cover up. I'm only selling you something, right? Because I'm incentivized to do that.

And I'm going to convince you you need that, and then I'm going to make money on this. But you may not actually, there may not be a real human need there as well. So there's a little soft differences. And even thinking about what can you.

How do you do sales?

Well, as a person of Christian faith, which I have but a few questions on that topic in the book on sales, because so many people work on that, from my colleague Brian Gray, actually at Denver Institute. But it's those types of things that I do think it requires thoughtfulness.

And so just to be very practical for the listeners, take some time thinking about what are the values and what are the things we regularly do here, and just make a list, right?

These are the things that I could say, here are the verses or here are the areas where I could get behind all of these things for the best version of what this company could be. And here's where I'll draw limits. Here's the things that I won't do. And I just, I'm not going to do that.

And that could be social things, but it also might be just some workplace practices that could lead to hard conversations, and they may even lead to either getting fired. Honestly, they may lead to a promotion, too. Like, wow, we could do this way better, way more ethically. That's interesting.

And I think Daniel actually did a lot of that in his life. Like, wow, you have some real talent there discerning these visions, right? So I do think it could lead each way.

But your heart needs to be open to be either it could be. Go badly for me in this context to be faithful, or it might go well, either one.

Like, spiritually, you have to be okay with that to be very faithful in those contexts.

Just to elaborate on this, talking about Daniel is something that's been very dear to our heart because we've written a lot about it. But I don't think people realize half the story of what Daniel went through.

I mean, yes, we talk about it, but when you delve in and start zooming in on his life, he just served Nebuchadnezzar, just Nebuchadnezzar for 43 years, and then he served his son for two years another one after that for four years, another king for two months, another king for two years who was assassinated. And then he gets into Belshazzar for 13 years. Then Darius the Mede slays Belshazzar and becomes king. So his rule is very short. As Cyrus becomes king.

That's the king before that. All in all, he was in service for 64 years.

Yeah. You think you have a bad boss, right? Wow.

But I mean, if you think about it, he endured government transitions, assassinations, coup attempts, and even stayed in power after Babylon is defeated by the Medes and the Persians. And he stays in his position in the middle of all this. That just shows the degree of faithfulness.

To reiterate your point even further, of how far his integrity got him in the midst of it, to endure so many different transitions and not be, you know, tossed out of power. I mean, his influence might have ebbed and waned, but it's incredible looking at his life and what he endured and what God did through him, really.

Yeah, Travis, that's a brilliant point.

He stayed because I think our context, especially in our culture, that tends to think if something's not going well for you, you should leave or find something that's more financially, psychologically satisfying. And God may be calling you to go find a different job or start something new. And that. That very well may be the course.

However, he may be calling you to do the long hard work and staying in an institution that's broken, but being salt and light in that context. And I think that's most people that maybe don't have the ability to go on to. And this is that sort of professional versus working class perspective.

The vast majority of workers can't just pick up one day and go from one thing to the next. Right. How do we be faithful in contexts that are less than ideal? Is a global conversation about work that I think we all need to have.

So I love you said that he stayed important.

It is important. I mean, this whole book, your whole book is important. And I feel like we've only scratched the surface of all of the things.

That you could get into.

And I highly recommend the book. As a matter of fact, I had it sent to me by ivp and I. I don't remember asking for it yet. And it came to me and I thought, well, who's this?

I didn't know who you were. And I thought, okay, well, let's talk about it. We want to talk about a vocation and work. And then you mentioned new Begin.

And I went, oh, I'm Very curious. And then you kept reading and I went, we could have written this book. But you did it masterfully.

And I don't say that very often of many of the different books on the show. So for those who have listened and have been a frequent listener to the show, I do recommend many different books.

But this is probably one of the top books that we would recommend because it's so in line and so influenced by what we see going on in our culture today, this missionary encounter and where people are, where they work, where they are. What is one concluding water bottle? As we say, we're Apollo's watered.

We want to give something, a spiritual truth for people to sip on throughout the week that they can take with them wherever they go. What is the water bottle that you would like to give our audience as they go about their week?

Yeah, I'll say one thing and then a follow up. But the one thing is choose to live from the inside out.

And what I mean by that is choose to take a look at what's going on inside of you, to look at your suffering, to invite a community into it. Right. And invite the spirit into that and allow him to then work in our lives and our hearts. That is transformative.

Because if you're transformed, your family, your work, your community, it flows from transformed people. So I would say that just make the choice and I'd make the choice to do the hard work.

If there's something you haven't addressed, there's something that you've been avoiding, or if there is a person that you need to talk to or a practice that you think is out of whack with your Christian faith, just choose to do that work of living from the inside out.

Even for the sake of this podcast, in my view, it's the most important thing you can do to have a missionary encounter with our Western culture is to live in the fullness of the kingdom. And that just requires getting into the real hard stuff on the inside if we're going to live for Christ on the outside.

That is a very encouraging word.

How might people follow you that are curious to learn more about what you're doing now and maybe get a hold of some of the other articles, materials that you've written.

So a couple things, I have a writing website, jeff haynan.com that you can go to and there's a free study guide for the book as well, available at denverinstitute.org Working from the inside out. So there's a couple of ways that you can connect. But on my personal website, that would be fine.

I don't do a ton of social media, so unfortunately my way to a minivan in Colorado and you will find me. So I'll send you back a note.

Well, Jeff, we are so glad to have you on the show. I'd love to have you back just to be able to continue discussion.

Very, very so many people need to hear the truth that you've laid out within your book. And I do hope and pray that God blesses it and uses it as an opportunity to grow his kingdom.

Thank you for writing it and thank you for being a guest on our show.

Yeah, thanks for your incredible ministry that's influencing so many people. Grateful to be here.

It's really simple, isn't it? Choose to live life from the inside out. It sounds very simple, but as my conversation with Jeff is shown, it's not always easy.

It takes hard work to work and he actually showed from the examples in his own life. I really appreciated that kind of transparency. It's a reminder that we don't just get the right information and fix everything as we like to say.

We need to rethink, reimagine, and then redeploy.

Yes, we do need new insights, new information, but really what we need is a new perspective and we need to figure out ways to integrate that information into our everyday nine to five lives.

Whether we're working in the professional class, whether we are in the working class, or whether we're just staying at home all day, we need to know how to do this. And that takes an exercise in holy imagination.

And it means we have to do something with the rethinking and reimagining that Jeff is talking about here. And as Jeff said, we can't get stuck in navel gazing. We talk to a lot of authors on our show.

We read and recommend lots of books and many of those books make sense for a part of our audience. But frankly, not all of you or not all of you at the stage of life that you're in. However, in this book, I think it's for everybody.

And honestly, I can't recommend this book enough.

Our executive editor likes to say that he knows when I really like a book because the amount of times that I read quotes in an interview, I quoted a lot today because Jeff captures a lot of what we believe. If you have listened to the podcast much, then you know that I have a deep appreciation for the thinking of Leslie Newbegin.

He's one of my heroes, one of the Apollos watered horsemen. His thought really helped to form my own thinking about our missionary encounter.

And he influenced Jeff a lot as well, because Jeff captures a lot of what we believe. If you've listened to our show often, then you know that I have a deep appreciation for the thinking and ministry of Leslie Newbeginning.

His thought has really in large part shaped my own, especially when it comes to having a missionary encounter. He influenced Jeff quite a bit as well.

That is a large part of why.

We resonate so much with what he's doing.

We believe strongly that for the church, for us to be what God calls us to be, we have to be formed from the inside out, because otherwise we'll not be able to stand up to be Christ's ambassadors.

In this time of massive cultural change and upheaval, the very questions we ask, the possibilities and ways that we understand reality are up for grabs everywhere we turn. All of those things press on us from the outside. And if we haven't been formed strongly enough, well, we're going to be crushed.

We're going to be tossed back and forth. We're going to be miserable, anxious and depressed.

Our work and our closest relationships are where we experience that formation or malformation most clearly. And this does take hard work. But it is in that hard work that we can be present to God and what he has called us to.

And one of the things that Jeff said, and this I probably appreciate more than anything else, is that we can't do this alone. Real transformation takes place in community. We need community to become what God is calling us to be and what he is calling us to do.

It is my hope and prayer that conversations like this will help you to live out your faith holistically in your everyday relationships and your work and in your missionary encounter with your culture. I want to thank you for joining our conversation today. And I want to take a moment to pray for you.

Whether you're on the treadmill, you're driving a car, you're washing dishes, doing laundry, mowing the yard, whatever it might be. I want to take a moment to pray for you that God might be with you in the middle of this.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you created work, that you've given us a purpose. And I pray that each individual that hears me today might be able to consecrate their work to you, no matter what their work may be.

Lord, please show yourself to be the sovereign God. Give them hope, give them peace. And Lord, let your light and your love be seen in their everyday. We ask this of you in Jesus name. Amen.

Again I want to thank you for tuning in to Apollos Watered. And I also want to thank our Apollo's Watered team for helping us to water the world.

This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered. Stay watered, everybody.