Podcast: Dr. Bill Peel, President of 24Seven Faith on "Connecting Faith & Work to the Public Square"

Open the original episode on Substack for the synchronized transcript.

0:06 Greetings and welcome to another edition of the Faithful Presence podcast. I am your host, Reverend Michael Langer, founder and president of Faithful Presence, a ministry in Washington, D.C., equipping servants and leaders in the public square to flourish as they participate in Christ's mission of making all things new. We do that through providing spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational, ideological,

0:31 cultural, and evangelical discipleship, which spells service, and supporting the local church and equipping their members for Christ-centered participation in the public square. As we say each week, in other words, that is whole life discipleship in the whole of life for the whole of the public square. Welcome back. It is great to be back with you.

0:56 We hope you have been enjoying some of our newest podcasts, the one with William Monroe on AI, the one with David Bonson on a whole cornucopia of Christian issues related to work, related to making money, related to the fact that people are policy when it comes to hiring in the government.

1:17 We had just had Patrick Novikoski on to talk about Pope John Paul II and the important work that he has done to help Christians both inside and outside the Christian church or in the to help Christians inside and outside the Catholic Church to think about faith and work and public policy,

1:37 and what does it mean to be a human being? So this week, it is my pleasure to introduce to you William Peel. Dr. Peel is the founder of 24-7 Faith. He's worked as a custodian, a house painter, a construction worker, and a pastor. He's also served on university and seminary faculty.

2:00 He is an award-winning author and co-author of eight books in multiple languages. He is co-founder of the Faith at Work Summit, which gathers business, academic, and ministry leaders worldwide to collaborate and learn from each other. He speaks at churches and conferences and consults with individuals, churches, and business leaders,

2:21 helping Christians bring their faith to bear in every area of life, which Abram Kuyper would absolutely love. Bill earned a doctorate in workplace theology, ethics, and leadership from Gordon Conwell Seminary, a master's degree in biblical exposition from Dallas Seminary, and a BA from SMU and a certificate in entrepreneurship from Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University.

2:50 Bill, thanks again for joining us on the podcast. How the heck are you, man?

2:57 Michael, it's a good day. I get to talk to you. Man, man. We are blessed people to be able to be spread across from D.C. to Dallas here and still be able to communicate.

3:08 You know, speaking of faith, the integration of faith, work, and economics. Yeah. Uh, you know, I remember before, before COVID, I can remember very clumsily using video, uh, video relays to like have some kind of thing. And it was this huge cumbersome process and you hated to do it.

3:31 And then COVID just proved the concept and said to everybody, Hey, we're going to change the way people communicate. And here's what, here's why I wanted to bring that up. Uh, There's no pastor in the world who invented Zoom. Like we don't know. We don't know. We don't know enough things to do that. Right.

3:51 But it's because of the technical work of somebody else that, you know, maybe is a Christian, probably wasn't a Christian who came up with this technology that you and I get to get to use right now. So one of the things I'd love to do just to kind of start.

4:08 is kind of talk a little bit about 24-7 Faith, what you do there, how the Faith at Work movement came about. And then I want to dig in to what you were doing over in South Korea last year. So tell us a little bit about the Work at Faith movement.

4:28 Yeah. Yeah. 24-7 Faith is a nonprofit organization that I founded 37 years ago or so right now. And that was way before talking about faith in the workplace was cool. But there's a history of this movement that actually goes back over 100 years. But there have been waves of it that have kind of come and gone.

4:57 And this last wave probably has the most capability of enduring because it involves people like myself that have independent ministries, pastors, academics, and business people. And it really is a grassroots movement. As one of my friends says, there's no pope. There's no pope running things in the faith and work movement. It's all just been grassroots.

5:25 And so I feel particularly privileged to be part of this, although there have been a lot of years, you know, that it's been very difficult. I used to argue with pastors all the time about the importance of the workplace in discipleship. And I don't... I don't argue with that anymore with pastors. Largely,

5:45 people understand that we need to be serious about whole life discipleship and discipling people in the workplace. Now, it still gets neglected a lot, Michael, because a lot of pastors don't know what to do with it. And I would be one of those people. I do have a certificate in entrepreneurship, but my deep background is theology.

6:14 But I learned very early in my career as a pastor that I needed to spend time out in the world with people. My first church I worked at, an elder took me to lunch one day, and he looks across the table at me and he says, Peel, you realize God's heroes don't stand behind pulpits, don't you?

6:37 And I was taken aback seriously. You know, I spent 120 graduate hours of graduate theology, you know, trying to be God's hero. And this guy was actually the president of the board of Dallas Theological Seminary. So he obviously believed in pastors and training.

6:55 But what he wanted me to understand, Michael, was that when people showed up at church, When they sat down with us somewhere that's part of our world and not their world, our job was to get them ready for the other six days of the week. And so I started spending time with people out in the workplace.

7:21 And I would call at least a couple of times a week. would set up a lunch with somebody. I'd call and say, hey, Bob, I want to grab lunch with you sometime. And I said, okay, great. Where do you want me to meet? And I'd say, no, we're not going to meet in a restaurant.

7:39 I want to come by your place of business. I learned more about the struggles and the difficulties and the joys and sorrows of what it meant to bring your faith in the workplace. Doing that in those casual situations meetings than I could possibly imagine.

7:57 It really changed the way I looked at a business and the workplace in general and it helped me understand what it what they needed to actually bring their faith to work. And so this ministry that I have right now is all about basically pulling all of

8:17 that together and helping people understand what it means to glorify God in their work. I just came from a lunch meeting with a fabulous ministry business here in Dallas. And I say it's both because it is a for-profit business, but they are dead serious about how they minister to their employees, the products and services they provide,

8:44 the atmosphere that people work in, their integrity, the trust they build with customers. Their whole goal is to reflect who Jesus Christ is to everybody that comes in contact with this business. fabulous place to work. And this guy really understands that his work matters to God and his business matters to God,

9:09 and that he's a steward of that. And so this is the highlight of my week, I can tell you.

9:17 So, you know, the way that we met, if I remember this correctly, I think that we met I think we met for the first time in Dallas, Texas. And I think the chronology, if I remember it right, I went to seminary at 30, it was 36 when I went to seminary.

9:35 I'd been in the business world for 15 years selling industrial process measurement equipment to chemical plants, lethal gas detection systems, things like that, vibration isolation, all the good stuff is what I was doing. So I went to seminary and then worked 30 hours a week during that time.

9:55 Anthony Bradley, who was one of my professors at the time, sent me to an Acton event. I came back with my head completely screwed on differently about faith and work and economics, planted a church in Iowa City. And there I... For whatever reason, the Lord led me and connected me to be involved in the downtown business district,

10:19 because that's where our church was. So I wanted to be a part of those meetings, to be a part of the local homeless coordinating board, because there were homeless people there. And we worked together to make some regulation changes that would benefit both groups of folks there.

10:38 And I spent a lot of time at the University of Iowa hospitals because probably a third to maybe even half at times of our congregation was working there in some way, either in data or IT or whatever. And when I moved to Chicago, the Kern Family Foundation reached out to me and said, hey,

10:57 we're starting this thing called Made to Flourish. We want to try to help pastors understand the importance of integrating faith and work. And I think it was through that that I ended up in Chicago or in Dallas at the Faith and Work Summit and got to hear from just a ton of people.

11:17 I think one of the people you had was from the U.S. Mint. who came and talked about, yeah, about minting coins, um, for the glory of God and not meaning, and this is where I, where I want to go. And by that not meaning I get to print, you know, in God, we trust on all the coins.

11:37 And I remember an article, I think it was, was it, was it Paul Miller or David Miller who wrote the, the kind of four paradigm of, David Miller, who wrote, you know, when they study people and they say, oh, well, how does your how does your does your faith apply to your work? And people say, oh, absolutely.

11:56 Faith is a part of my work every day. Oh, well, how is that? Tell us tell us a little bit about how faith is a part of your work. Well, I always leave a tract in the bathroom, right? Because I'm doing evangelism. I work every conversation about electrical circuits back to the flow of the Holy

12:15 Spirit so I can do evangelism. I don't steal the stapler because the Bible tells me to be an ethical person. I make sure that I contribute 10% of what I make there to the church so the church can do the importance ministry work, right? And then I pray for my boss because, you know, he needs Jesus.

12:38 And so, yeah, faith is totally a part of my work. And that's not what the faith at work movement is about, is it, Will?

12:46 Right. Well, the faith at work movement, I guess you could say, is about helping people understand that the actual work that they do itself, the actual labor, the actual thought processes, the actual serving, the actual making, the actual manufacturing, actually matters to God. I've missed this for years because I've read the Bible from a pastor's perspective.

13:23 rather than a marketplace perspective. But God introduces himself to the world in the book of Genesis as a worker. Right. And he, you know, and so when he makes us in his image, guess what? He made us to be workers, too. That's right. You know, that is the thing that, you know.

13:42 Work's not the curse, right? Work is not the curse.

13:46 This is before the fall, obviously. And, you know, God can't. do evil work, obviously, although there is evil work because of the fall. But in general, you have to think about the everyday things that people do to survive and live. Those are wonderful things. And God thinks it's really important. God put Adam and Eve in the garden.

14:14 And what does he say? To work it and keep it. The Hebrew word there is really interesting, too. because it's the word avodah, or from the avod, which means to serve. It also means to worship, and it also means to work. And it's the same word that is used of priests who were working or serving or

14:36 worshiping in the temple. And so it's a rather broad word that God actually uses there. And some people, you know, have said, well, we're supposed to You know, the work can be worship. And you know what? I absolutely agree with that. When we do anything that is aligned with God's will, that honors him,

15:01 and we do it for his glory, that's worship. That's giving God the proper place in our lives that he deserves. And that's actually what worship is. It is recognizing the worship of God. And so just narrowly defining worship as what we do on a Sunday morning or my personal quiet time, that sort of thing,

15:26 is way too narrow a perception of worship. Worship is anytime we do something for the glory of God that fits within the framework of his moral framework and is contributing to human flourishing. There is stuff that doesn't fit there.

15:45 No, there is, for sure. And so this brings me... I think I was... I think I had participated in a, like a pastoral cohort with our friend, our mutual friend, Steve Garber. Um, and, and Steve Garber, uh, who, um, who was, I think he wrote his book is visions of vocation is the book that we used. Um,

16:08 and he was talking about how in, in sermon, in sermon preparation, you need to be thinking about the work that your people are doing so that you can apply a passage to their work. Like, cause that's, what's going to be helpful. And so right before a sermon, I was speaking to this young woman married.

16:27 She had a couple of kids. And she was working at the time as a hostess at a Mexican restaurant. She worked part time. Her husband was a police officer. And we were just talking before service. And she said, I was telling her what the sermon was going to be about.

16:43 And she said, oh, well, you know, I said, you know, all jobs matter to the Lord. And she said, yeah, except for mine. And I said, oh, no, you think your job doesn't matter to the Lord? She goes, yeah, I'm just a hostess at a Mexican restaurant. The Lord doesn't care about that. I'm like, OK, let's see.

17:00 And so in the sermon, what I did is I said, you know, let's talk. It was a smaller church. People knew who I was talking about. But I said, you know, let's take a server at a Mexican restaurant or any restaurant. And you go in and you go in after church.

17:16 And all of a sudden, you know, there's like 50 people at the door just like that. And the server just seats everybody all at once, just sits them all immediately. But there's only two servers there. The hostess just sat every single person at the door at the same time. So now the servers are overwhelmed.

17:35 The kitchen takes orders. They're all out of order. The kitchen's way backed up. People start complaining. The servers can't get the food out on time. People give bad reviews. They have to start cutting back on services and all of this stuff. And two years later, the restaurant goes out of business. Or the hostess says to herself,

18:01 My work is worship and it's important for me to do my job well. And so I'm going to make a list and, you know, I can seat probably three tables in each section and I'm going to have to stagger them in slowly over time.

18:15 And I'm going to have to explain to the people who are a little upset about that, that like, hey, we only have two servers today. We want you to have the best service possible. So it's going to be about a 15 to 20 minute wait. And then people's food comes out on time. It's hot.

18:28 They get what they ordered. They leave a nice review. The servers get really nice tips, right? All because the hostess or the host did their job well. And pastors should know that Whether or not that hostess or host gives 10% of their money to the church or leaves a tract in the bathroom,

18:57 the thing that's really important is that they do their job well. And so talk about the fact that you've put together this national summit to bring folks together to learn this stuff.

19:11 Let me comment on that just a minute, because in the conversation I was just in with this business, one of the passages we looked at was Ephesians 5.21, where it says we're to be imitators of God. And the question I asked this group, it was pretty much the

19:28 you know, the leaders in the company, says, okay, how is your job imitating God? Well, that hostess is imitating God, isn't she? That's exactly what God was doing, or one of the things he was doing in Genesis 1. He was creating order. So there wouldn't be chaos. She was reflecting the character of God there. That's 100% correct.

19:53 That was beautiful.

19:54 Okay, so you want to talk about this? I learned it from you. I learned it from you and the Faith at Work movement. So this is on you. So talk about the Dallas Summit and the summits that come after that.

20:06 That was great. We've actually had four summits now. When I was in the doctoral program, by the way, I got my doctorate degree and my Medicare card the same year. And so I'm an old guy. It's okay. It's all right. But anyway, so when I was in my doctoral program,

20:27 the Kern Foundation approached David Gill at Gordon-Conwell and said, we want to give you some money. What do you want to do with it? And he said, I want to have a summit. And so he got his cohort teacher, a guy named Al Erisman. So it's Al Harrisman, David Gill, and they invited me, a student,

20:45 which I was incredibly honored, to work with him. So we founded this thing called The Summit. It is a gathering of people that are in the faith and work movement, like myself, that run ministries. There's also pastors. also academics, but also the practitioner, the person who's actually out there doing the work that we're trying to help

21:12 understand more. So it's the person in the business, it's the person in government, it's the person in service industries of different sorts. So all of those four groups all convene to talk about what it means to bring faith into seriously into their workplace. There's all kinds of aspects of that. I mean, it is true.

21:37 I mean, we have a responsibility. The workplace is the most strategic place for the spread of the gospel. But that's not its only value. I mean, the reason it is valuable and the reason that it is so valuable to evangelism is because the actual work that's going on in these places that is serving all of humanity.

22:00 Okay, so let me... You have gone right where I wanted to go, which is you were just in South Korea, right? And you weren't there as a tourist. You were there to do important work with, and this shouldn't stun anybody, that the church, the evangelical, confessionally orthodox church, exists outside of the United States.

22:29 It is actually, it's like a global thing, right? And people have work globally. And so talk a little bit about what you were doing at the Luzon Summit and about this initiative of the workplace as a place that pastors and ministry leaders should care about and the role in evangelism, because that's really what Luzon is about.

22:55 So tell us a little bit about what you were doing in South Korea.

22:58 Well, let me go back 50 years. The Luzon Congress on World Evangelism was started by Billy Graham and John Stott. And they gathered, I think they gathered about 24, 2,500 pastors, missionaries, and evangelists in Luzon, Switzerland. back then to talk about how they were going to complete the Great Commission.

23:20 So that's basically been, A, the constituency, but B, also the focus of Luzon. This was their fourth meeting. They met in Luzon, Switzerland in 74, in Manila in 89, in Cape Town, South Africa in 2010, and then in Seoul, Korea, just last September. And so I'm part of a group of that is called the Workplace Ministry Network.

23:48 They have a Luzon is a bunch of special interest groups that work on different things. There's a climate one. There is a government one. There is a business's mission group. There is human trafficking. All these different groups that focus in on, okay, where does the gospel need to be brought into this particular place?

24:18 And so I got involved with them probably 10 years ago or so and have been working to help Luzon understand that, hey, if you don't talk about the workplace, you're missing the boat here. Because the work is so central to everyone's life that if we're not talking about what it means to follow Christ there, we're

24:49 We're whistling in the wind here. And if we expect there to be a revival apart from the workplace, I quite frankly can't imagine that that's actually going to happen. Because, Michael, somebody can't take, what, 70, 80% of what people spend their time on over here, push it over here, say, God doesn't really care about that.

25:13 And then here are the things that God really cares about that really, quite frankly, only I'll be able max about 10% of your life was going to church and your quiet time and what we think of as religious activities. If that's I tell people this is, look, if all God expects of you is to sit on,

25:33 you know, show up on Sunday, drop a 20 in the plate, and don't give the pastor trouble, then just how serious do you need to be about your discipleship?

25:42 On the other hand, if you know— You shouldn't give your pastor trouble, though. We can all agree, right?

25:46 You ought to do all this. But there's a little bit more to it than that. If I am a key player, which every child of God— Everyone who has been redeemed is to turn around and be Christ's ambassador. That's very serious business. And I need to be serious about my walk with Christ and serious about developing the

26:14 spiritual life in my relationship of abiding with Christ. Those are critical.

26:21 Yeah, you give some—so there were four articles, four essays that you wrote in advance of Luzon, and readers who subscribe to our Presence Weekly will be familiar with those because over four consecutive weeks, we linked to those and encouraged— folks to read those.

26:40 So what I want to do is I want to just kind of go through those four essays if we can and just kind of take them in order because you gave an order for them as well. And you started off with this essay on workplace evangelism. And this goes really kind of directly to the, yeah,

26:58 whenever my neighbor tells me he's done something that I don't like, I, you know, I tell him to repent and I give him the gospel and I leave a tract in the bathroom. Right. And you're pretty clear in this about like, hey, maybe sometimes you want to do that, but that's probably not the lead.

27:17 And it says in here, and this is actually from the Cape Town commitment in 2010. We call on Christian leaders to recognize that the workplace is the most strategic mission field in the world. and commit to equipping Christians in the workplace to fulfill their role in the Great Commission.

27:40 So talk just a little bit about the role of the Christian in the workplace as it relates to flourishing and why that matters.

27:50 Well, you know, it's interesting to think about the Great Commission because a lot of times we think about just in terms of evangelism, but the idea is that we're to be making disciples. And that's not just teaching people how to have a quiet time or share their faith whenever they feel like it.

28:10 It's about learning to abide with Christ and growing in Him. having more and more of my life come under his sway and his authority and more and more of my affection, you know, going toward him. And that obviously, you know, puts us in a position where we can and should be impacting the spiritual life of

28:36 other people around us. I tend to look at evangelism and discipleship as one big continuum. Yes, there is a marked place where a person trusts Christ. But the whole process, we should always be helping somebody. What is it to take the next step toward Christ? Whatever that is.

28:59 And our role in the workplace is, first of all, to do good work. If we want people to pay attention to our faith, we better pay attention to our work because, hey, you don't want to hear from somebody about what's important in their life. or their relationship with Christ, if they're slackers,

29:19 if they do not do quality work, if they are absent or chronic absentee, you're just not, you're not a faithful worker at that particular point. So that is, that's very critical. But then as we spend, what makes the workplace so critical is, for both, if we say evangelism and discipleship here,

29:43 it's because you're spending time with people and people see whether your faith is actually making a difference in your life. Is it helping you deal with difficult people? Is it helping you do the work that you do? Is it helping you to stay with it when it gets difficult? when it gets really tough?

30:05 Is it helping you to make strong ethical decisions? Is it helping you to treat people well so that they feel loved and appreciated and cared for? All those things are absolutely critical to our witness and the place where people could see that usually most easily is in the workplace. So I tell people, look, you know,

30:36 the pastor may have an hour a week max, you know, to have an impact on somebody. You're working a lot of times with people that need to know Christ, you know, eight, 10 hours a day, multiple days a week. And you have the opportunity, even though you're not talking about it,

30:55 People can see your faith being lived out in various ways that can be very impactful. Now, the other side of that is the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, nobody comes to me unless the Father draws you. The Holy Spirit has to be at work there. But we have a place.

31:11 God wants to use us in that place, in that way of drawing. And when we recognize that, we can... We can't impact people.

31:22 One of the things that I find interesting, and occasionally I'll engage somebody on this, is one of the... One of the defeaters, and you talk about defeaters in one of your articles, but one of the defeaters that often comes up is, well, you know, the Bible teaches slavery. The Bible promotes slavery, right?

31:44 And you're having the reaction that I usually try to stop myself from having in front of the person because I don't want them to become defensive with me. And so I try to listen. I try to listen. And I try to say, okay, I hear what you're saying. The Bible for sure does not condone chattel slavery.

32:04 That's not our, the vision of what happened in the United States. with Africans being brought to this country as chattel slaves to be mistreated and horribly abused and raped and all of those things was abhorrent in the eyes of God. It was never defensible by scripture.

32:28 It was totally evil that people had to twist and ignore scripture to be able to pull off. Well, the thing I wanted to just say is that, that being said, some form of indentured servitude and slavery does exist in Scripture, and what's important to recognize—

32:51 is that Peter and Paul understand that there are people who are on the weak side of that power differential, right? They are like, I am the slave. I have a person who I'm indentured to, and they kind of run my thing. And they addressed it. They addressed it in their letters like, okay, hey, masters,

33:17 here's how you have to treat your servants. Aristotle couldn't have imagined slave owners being told, hey, by the way, you have to treat your slaves. You can't just treat them however you want. That was no part of Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics. But it was part of Paul's and it was part of Peter's and slaves and servants got to

33:40 be in church and hear their masters being told, hey, you have to treat him well. But they also heard, hey, when you're out in the field doing work, don't just work when he's looking. Work all the time. right? You be the best worker. And that's not condoning slavery. So talk a little bit about the way that we,

34:07 just the misconceptions about those types of relationships and how they influence the way we think about work, the dignity of work, and the value of certain kinds of work.

34:17 Yeah. I guess, you know, first thing I'd say is, do you realize that Old Testament law required a death penalty for kidnapping, for taking somebody and enslaving them against their will. That's a pretty severe indictment against it. But you're right. Most of the slavery that was in the Mediterranean world, that there was really indentured servitude, people could

34:51 by their way out of it, usually, in some way. And it was usually not a lifetime sentence, although there was a ton of abuse, obviously. But the idea that there are dealing with these different levels of power, that's a reality even today. But But here, Michael, you hit the nail on the head.

35:23 You know, the Bible talks about doing a good job, you know, on the servant side. But then he turns right around in Ephesians and Colossians and says to Ephesians, he says, and likewise, masters, treat your servants what is right and fair. And Colossians repeats that as well. They, while not having the power to erase slavery socially,

35:57 they undermined the whole idea of slavery by putting both master and slave, in some ways, on equal terms before God, both being responsible to him. And so we don't have that idea. legally in the United States anymore, although I know that it does take place here and certainly around the world. By the way,

36:25 I would remind somebody that the only anti-slavery movements ever in the world have come from Christians. Ever. And so... You know, when I look at the scripture, I see Paul setting up, you know, the actual social structure that is eventually going to undermine, totally undermine slavery.

36:54 Yeah, that's right.

36:55 And where Christ is honored in some way.

36:58 Well, and this is really what the letter of Philemon is about, right? Is this slave Onesimus has run away, and Paul does two things. First, he says to Onesimus, go back. I need you to go back and take this letter with you and give it to Philemon.

37:15 And the beauty of the letter is he's like, hey, Philemon, how you doing, man? Uh, so had your, your, your slave kind of came and saw me and, uh, I'm sending it back to you. Right. So there you go. And, uh, you know, I would hope that you would, uh,

37:30 understand the gospel and what you've been set free from, uh, and the debt that's been forgiven you. But if you have a debt, if he's, if you're holding a debt over his head, uh, I'll pay it. I will pay the debt that he has. And in doing so, Paul is echoing. the gospel, which is, hey,

37:51 somebody paid my debt that I could not pay and paid it with really no, like, well, Paul's going to be a great apostle. That's the only reason I'm paying his debt because I'm not paying debts for losers. That's not the gospel. And so Paul's like, hey, if he owes you something and he's pointing him to

38:16 Listen, this is how God treats us. God's inclination towards us is grace and forgiveness. And so treat your workers with the inclination towards grace and forgiveness. And, you know, one of the things that I, you know, in my work is sometimes I'm not often on the hill, but I'm on the hill sometimes.

38:40 And probably one of the most disappointing things to hear from Christians who serve on the Hill is to hear about the various congressional offices that are kind of well-known on the Hill as the place you don't want to work. Because the chief of staff or the elected official, but most of the time it's the chief, is...

39:10 just a brutalist and is just heavy, heavy handed. And they're very happy to make it known that they're a Christian and the complete, right? The complete devastation. That does, right? To say, we're not going to tolerate that kind of talk in here because I'm a Christian. And then everybody will work till 10 p.m.

39:35 and you will do what I say when I say to do it. And that's one of the things you talk about in this next article is, hey, the way that you do this matters. Like the way that you treat people, like the ethics you use is you're apologetic.

39:56 Talk a little bit about how the apologetic of vocation works as evangelism.

40:05 Correct. Well, yeah, it begins with the quality of our work, and then our people seeing Christ in us. When those two things come together, it really gives our word some authority. So people see Christ being lived out, not just talked about, which is a big difference.

40:30 In fact, I think we need to keep our mouth shut for a with people for a long time, until we kind of figure out where they are spiritually. So we can, as Paul says in Colossians 4, answer people wisely. But those two things, if all you have is competence and no character,

40:53 you have exactly what you're talking about. It's very offensive. But if all you have is character, then... It's not really what God has intended for us, and it's just kind of mealy-mouthed as far as I'm concerned. When you put those two together, when you say something, it gives your words authority in lots of different ways,

41:21 not only in the gospel speaking, but when people sense that you're a person of integrity, that you care about them, as well as doing outstanding work. And sometimes that does mean working long hours when the work requires that. And, you know, I can't imagine, you know, the hours that have been worked in the last few days,

41:43 you know, to get one of these bills passed, which is quite frankly amazing to me of what they're able to do, you know, in congressional offices there. Those two go together. And then there's a third. Now, that still doesn't mean anybody may want to listen to you.

42:03 And besides the fact that the Holy Spirit does have to work in a person's heart to make them ready to move toward Christ here. The third element here is actually caring about people or being a concerned person, remembering their name, stopping and saying hello. Just doing kind things, helping somebody that's under the pile,

42:30 picking up a load in some way, asking, how can I help you? Doing all these little things that show, I care about you. You're important. We do that. That's how we should be living in the workplace every day. You know, there's small ways that we can stand out in any kind of workplace.

42:54 One of the things I try to do when I go out to eat with somebody is always find out my waiter or waitress's name and use it. And I show an interest in them. If they've done a good job, I may say something like, you know, you'd You're really, you are a great waiter, waitress, whatever.

43:25 You've really served us well. You know, God has really gifted you to pay attention to people.

43:33 And that matters because not everybody is saying that, right?

43:39 Well, I got convicted about this a number of years ago because I was, you know, I was, overly demanding of service people. I'll never forget being aggravated for the upseat time at an airport that had flights that were chronically late. And I got up to the counter.

44:03 My wife was with me, thankfully, who called me out on this, my personal Holy Spirit. And I let this gate agent know what for. about this always happens. Why are y'all so incompetent? Yada, yada, yada. Kathy, as we're walking away, says, Bill, do you think that lady would be interested in hearing about Christ right now?

44:30 Yeah. Oh, man. That's the Widowmaker, isn't it?

44:35 That laid me low. And so that was one of those things where, okay, I... You know, I'm Christ representative, even in that situation. And I'm not going to stop and share Christ with her. But if I had been understanding, if I had been affirmative, look, I know you didn't have anything to do with this.

44:59 And I really appreciate your patience. I know this is hard. You know, God's given you a lot of patience to deal with all of us. Thank you. Yeah. That may be the end. That probably would be the end of the... The end of the story, but, you know, it's a seed that's planted.

45:18 The Holy Spirit could take that and do all kinds of things with it. Even if I just made that person's day a little bit easier, that's a good thing. That's right.

45:30 I did it that day, unfortunately. It is kind of a learning curve, I think, for everybody. One of the things that I think you just alluded to, which I travel probably once a month. I'm on a plane somewhere. is to recognize that the gate agents are not in charge of scheduling airlines to show up there.

45:55 What person gets what gate, where they have to hold out on the runway because there's another plane that has to be there. And people are just like, what is your problem? Well, my problem is... I'm not the regional air traffic hub thing that's sorting all of this out. When that plane is here and the door opens,

46:18 I will then be able to do the thing that is actually the job that I have. But right now, there's no plane here and there's, I can't get on the phone and say, Hey, make a plane be here. Like that's, that's, that's not a number that I, and, but we, and we forget that because we're like, Oh,

46:39 I just, I, I am not understanding the value one, the value of work, but two, we don't even understand what the person's doing. Like think, think for two seconds about the work that they're doing before you complain and realize, Oh, Well, that would be just a pointless complaint because you have literally nothing to do with that.

47:00 I am so sorry that you were in this place where you're having person after person, including us, come to you and complain. So the thing I want to do next is talk about this third article, kind of fostering redemptive conversations. And it says here in your article, It says, behavior that honors and reflects Christ through competence, character,

47:27 faithfulness, and concern is a vital part of what it means to be a witness. But words are important to the apostle Peter explain in your hearts, set apart Christ as Lord, always being prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that you have, but do so with gentleness and respect and

47:47 And one of the things that I sent you and try to have everybody who comes on the podcast kind of take a little bit of a stab at this is these four questions of faithful presence. What is good that I can encourage? What is broken that I could help repair?

48:03 What is missing that maybe we need to work on developing or creating? And what is evil that I can oppose? And so part of the apologetic that we work with at Faithful Presence in having conversations with some folks in the workplace, sometimes it comes down to this, is you have a seat at a table, right? Right.

48:27 And people are going to make a decision about, well, you know, what should we do about foreign aid? What's the best delivery vehicle for foreign aid? What should we do about adoption law? What should we do about, you know, environmental practices? And there you are and you have a seat at the table and it's critically important

48:47 that you understand that. What goes in those categories, you know, good, broken, you know, missing and evil. And so I'd love to hear you just, you know, because this article does just a great job of like, there you are, be ready to have an answer. And most people hear that and say, oh, they're going to ask me,

49:08 well, how do I know Jesus rose from the dead? Yeah, well, that question can come, but sometimes the question can come, how or why should we improve care for homeless people? That the answer you give right there is an answer for why you believe. Talk a little bit about the whole life discipleship piece of redemptive conversations.

49:31 Well, what a great question. You know, I love your questions here. all for them because they really get at what it means to be, you know, God's disciple in the workplace. There's stuff that is broken. There's stuff that needs to be fixed. There's stuff that needs to be resisted.

49:56 There's stuff that needs to be, you know, invented and developed. And it's evil to be resisted. I guess, you know, I would start with, you know, just saying, first of all, actually knowing that things are broken. There's a lot of people that we believe different things about what's broken. Right. That's exactly correct.

50:28 It's pretty important. We have elections about that, really, where that's like the central part. What's good, what's broken, and what's evil, and there's no agreement on it.

50:36 Well, that's a problem. And so if you want somebody to listen to you, you need to know what you're talking about. I mean, the Bible actually is pretty clear about... There's a standard of right and wrong, okay? And it has to do... It's not just somebody's list. It's not the churches don't do this. It's...

51:04 It's things that are wrong because they're contrary to the character of God. That's what makes something wrong or evil or broken. Anytime, you know, we are forced culturally or within our own, you know, way of thinking things into activities that don't reflect, you know, the character of God, we're treading a really thin ice here.

51:34 And so it's important to realize that the right and wrong things are there. Now, you can be gracious about that or you can be a jerk about it. And the problem is a lot of people really have been offensive in the way they talk about things. You know, I've been fortunate enough to be around people, you know,

52:02 that in the evangelism world really realize that, hey, people are not our enemy. Satan is the enemy here, okay? And Jesus died for these people I'm talking to. And so they may be espousing something that I, you know, am 180 degrees opposed to. But I still need to treat them with respect.

52:28 I may not treat their ideas with respect, but I need to treat them with respect. And be careful about how I respond to them. But the line between what's broken and what's evil is sometimes, you know, a little difficult to discern. And that's where your relationship with God really is important. And so, you know,

52:53 I don't want anybody to think, well, you know, having your quiet time and going to church isn't important because it really is. We need to spend time with Christ, just He and us. or in the presence of other believers that are focused on Him, so that we learn who God is more deeply,

53:13 and we can hear from Him in those circumstances where we're put under a great deal of pressure to either stand up for what's right, resist what's wrong in a situation. Yeah. Let me talk about something else here that hits on this, or that's one of your questions,

53:37 and that there's new things that need to be developed as well. God is a—I feel bad even saying this. He's ingenious, obviously.

53:49 He's creative. Thinks out of the box, he does.

53:52 He's incredibly innovative. Who would have fucked up this whole thing? It's just crazy. And, uh, but he is, he is about, you know, getting his agenda done in the world and it's, it's happening. And so, uh, but we, there are things that are still yet to be developed that are just beautiful things.

54:18 You know, this whole thing of, you know, of being able to talk to each other. Right.

54:23 Exactly.

54:23 It didn't exist 15 years ago.

54:26 Well, you know, it,

54:28 You know, I didn't like to talk to people on the phone long distance, much less. But you know what? I've developed some great relationships with people over Zoom. I would have never tried that before because I just didn't think that was, well, that's all you've got? You know what? God can use that.

54:46 And so there are things that we're going to invent, including things like AI. This is going to be very helpful. Now, all these things. can be used for evil as well. I was on a Luzon call that was interrupted by somebody without any close-up. And all of a sudden, this person bombed the call.

55:16 And obviously, there are people that use that and use it regularly for that sort of thing. That's obviously... It's obviously evil, but what a beautiful thing it has been for not just God's direct spiritual work, but his work, you know, in business and communications and all these things.

55:37 I think, you know, artificial intelligence is going to be the same way. I've taken some right now. I'm actually working on my favorite book. It's out of print. It was written 30 years ago. And it really needs to be updated. It's basically about how do I discover what I'm supposed to be doing with my life?

56:03 I've got a bunch of my peers that are aging baby boomers that are selling out of their business, so they're retiring. And they don't have anything to do except for play with their grandparents, kids, and play golf, which is great. But you're here for something more than that.

56:21 The Bible doesn't talk about that very much. The retire and go play golf is not a biblical concept, really, is it?

56:31 We're here to work.

56:32 We talked to David Bonson about that, and he was very kind of like, hey, just so you know, this whole work-life balance thing, there is a biblical work-life balance. It's given to us in Scripture. It is you work. And then you have a Sabbath. And that's the balance.

56:51 The, oh, well, but, you know, I don't work after five or, you know, I'm 65, so I'm done. I did my time. Yeah, that's not biblical. There's no part of that that comes anywhere in Scripture, and it's completely foreign. So I want to do kind of like, I don't want to say rapid fire.

57:09 Yeah, it's really not healthy for you either.

57:12 No, no. Especially for a man. It's almost a death sentence, quite frankly. Yeah.

57:17 If you're thinking about retiring right now, be careful. Well, retire from maybe your paid vocation, but there's all kinds of things that need to be done. So I want to give you an opportunity to kind of give some kind of like short answers to... practical and potentially radioactive things that are happening in the world right now,

57:39 that the faith and work movement and having a concept of the integration of faith, work, and economics, spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational, ideological, cultural, and evangelical formation might play a part. So right now there is a pretty heavy move, not just in Washington, but in companies kind of all over the place to kind of dismantle the DEI initiatives,

58:08 right? And and what's what those were about. And, you know, as a as a person who who's a Christian, I have I have thoughts about the word diversity and what that word means and what the word inclusion means. I'm very I'm very happy to be included in God's people. Right. I did. I don't deserve it.

58:33 It's given to me by grace. But talk a little bit about the important, maybe the way in which an informed Christian might reframe a conversation about DEI into terms that they're like, yes, but let's talk about what that really means.

58:54 Yeah. Well, God loves diversity, obviously. He made, what, $8 billion. Different fingerprints times 10 right now. I mean, he loves diversity and he loves, you know, just, I mean, just look at creation. And so that's something that's really important. Where that comes into hiring, which is, I guess, you know, where it's the most,

59:23 where this comes to play. The, you know, diverse workplaces are very good. because you get a lot of different perspectives on things. But there can be diversity of decision-making sometimes. I mean, somebody has to make decisions, and the business and the work has to get done, and it has to get done well.

59:49 And that's incredibly important to realize. A lot of pushback has been... on this has been people that hired people that were not necessarily competent to do work, but they fit a certain demographic. That's problematic in that sense. But I think, I guess, the E part of this diversity, equity, inclusion,

1:00:18 is where a lot of the problems, you know, have taken place. I believe I want there to be equality of opportunity, but we can't control, nor do I believe it should be, equality of outcomes. That has never been something that, you know, that I've seen, I see anywhere in the scripture that we should necessarily work at.

1:00:45 But to give people opportunity, to give them chances, you know, we have We have a big chunk of our population here in Dallas who are under opportunity, which is my favorite word that I've invented. Yeah. I'm concerned about that. And some of these people that are retiring, you know,

1:01:08 that have run businesses have some opportunity to do something there, to go help create opportunity where they are. And they're very capable people. to do work, but just have never been given the opportunity. And so all those things are things to really be weighed out.

1:01:27 When I saw that on your question list, I thought the first thing that came to my mind was the passage at Acts where Paul and Barnabas have a real falling out over work. Yeah. And they, you know, so there's your DNA conflict. They're like, hey, I'm going to go take this guy. Right.

1:01:48 That's right.

1:01:49 So Mark was a slacker, so to speak. I mean, he didn't pull his weight. He bombed on him. He left. He got concerned, I guess, for his safety and didn't leave. And Paul says, no, we cannot take this guy with us. He will get in the way. He will keep the work from being done. You know what?

1:02:12 He was right. If Paul had taken Mark, he would have ruined him for life. Now, on the other side, you've got Barnabas who wanted to give this guy another chance. But you know what? That's what Barnabas did with Paul. Right. That was his giftedness. That's right.

1:02:32 He took Mark and made him useful to Paul by caring for him and giving him another chance. Those two people, you know, it was obvious they needed to split because God had different missions for them. So, you know, that points out to me something. I mean, Sometimes, you know, the mission of the business, of the ministry,

1:02:57 of whatever it is, says, no, we've got to have this kind of person here to get this job done. And we can't take a risk on just anybody here. There has to be something important there about that. Right. So that's how I would, you know, approach this.

1:03:15 Yeah. The, the, the thing that I, I've, I've used in, in conversations that I've had over the course of the past couple of weeks about, you know, DEI and, you know, what is scripture, how can scripture help us is kind of what you said. But then I also say, you know, um,

1:03:31 Racial strife and kind of ethnic strife was huge in the first century, right? There's Romans, then there's Jews, then there's the Christians. You know, the Jews don't like the Christians. The Christians are being exiled, like, get out of Rome, we don't want your kind here. Get out of Jerusalem, we don't like your kind here.

1:03:51 But then even within the church, you have Paul planting primarily the churches for Gentiles, right? That was his primary focus. There were certainly Jews in them, but he even says, so from now on, I kind of went to the Gentiles. That was like my primary church planting mission.

1:04:10 On the other hand, you have Peter who spends most of his time kind of working within the Jewish context. And so the picture that I have is this kind of overlaid geography of Pauline church plants and Petrine church plants, maybe multiple in the same town, just not too far away from each other.

1:04:30 But both of them had to write letters saying to each other or saying to the people who were listening, hey, you can't discriminate against these people. There's no discrimination based on, oh, this person's a Gentile. Oh, this person's a Jew. I don't want them here in my worship service. They're causing issues. You can't say that. That's wrong.

1:04:55 That's a sin. You can't discriminate. And so one of the things that I mentioned to people is, DEI is one thing. Discrimination is another. And saying, well, we need to bring an end to DEI is not saying we need to start allowing discrimination because clearly we can't, right? Okay, so the next one. Go ahead. No, please, please.

1:05:27 That's probably why DEI came about. It's, you know, in some ways a pendulum swaying because of the discrimination that it was and still is in some ways a real problem. Way less so. Goodness. I've been alive a long time, and our country has drastically changed about that. Now, that doesn't mean there's still pockets of that around,

1:05:54 but we really have changed, which has been a wonderful thing to watch.

1:06:01 Yeah. So one of the things that happens every four years is you have a whole group of people who the president has appointed to do work, right? To serve at the pleasure of the president. And, you know, we're going to, you know, these are the things that are going to matter in these various cabinet agencies.

1:06:21 This is where we're going to do commerce. This is where we're going to do agriculture. This is where we're going to do everything. And what that means is that all the people who were there before, who are working really, really, really hard to build this beautiful agricultural system are shown the door and say, bye now.

1:06:43 And the person who's taking your job basically disagrees with kind of maybe your entire outlook on that. So if you were able to sit down across from somebody who's being shown the door after four years of working really hard and saying, hey, my work is worship,

1:07:05 and that guy just took and threw four years of my worship in the garbage can and then lit it on fire, what would you say to that person?

1:07:15 Well, first of all, I'd say God knows. He knows what you've done. And this is not, Michael, this is not an unusual situation. This is not just, you know, government employees. This happens all over the place. I've been, I've worked in four different churches. I've been more, let's put it this way.

1:07:42 I've been treated worse within the church than I have outside the church. I'm sorry. First of all, It's one of those broken things. We're going to have to resist if we can, create new systems if we can, but we are in some ways going to have to live with some of these things.

1:08:09 I say, okay, look, we are blessed in the United States of America. We have so many career choices that the world has never had before. So let's thank God for that. And you know what? There's another job out for you there. And if you feel like you've done a good job here,

1:08:30 then go take that experience and go somewhere else. Almost every leader will want their people around them that that they feel like is going to bring success in their, in their area. And that's, you know, that's a coached, you know, football team, it's pastor of a church, it's the leader of an organization. They'll do that because they,

1:08:56 they, you know, want people around that they, they know they can trust and move forward with things. We don't, we, you know, I guess I'd say, you know, We don't own these jobs. And as much as, you know, as hard as I work at this, there are decisions that are above my pay grade.

1:09:18 And I do have to accept that. I don't have to accept abuse. I don't have to accept, you know, injustice. I should speak up to that. But I do. There's a difference between accepting it and living with it. we do live in a fallen world and things are not going to go our way. And by the way,

1:09:42 they happen, you know, whether it's the Democrats or the Republicans coming in, the same kind of thing happens. And we need to realize that. I guess the other thing is that I would say one of the things that is being exposed right now is the lack of stewardship, apparent stewardship. Now,

1:10:10 I'm not excusing everybody for not being a good steward, but there has been enough lack of stewardship that has brought about an overreaction. But the fact is, Stewardship is a good thing. And we need to give people some space to be able to bring stewardship back into the place. Does that mean I'm going to lose out sometime?

1:10:37 Yes. Yeah, it does. It does. You know, God knows. And he cares more about my welfare than I do, trust me.

1:10:46 When I'm talking to people, sometimes it's, you know, they're on the other side now. They're out the door, and other people are coming in, and that's a lot of the conversations I've been having lately. But one of the things that I try to do is remind them

1:11:02 that everything that they are charged with undoing from the previous administration and the manner in which they do that, right? Both things matter. But the thing that they have to remember is that in four years or eight years, someone else is going to come in from a different administration and

1:11:22 And they are going to undo the things that you did. And so when you start using language that says, well, that work was worthless and that work was like, you want to be very careful with the way that you're framing that because That's that's what you're saying about their work is what you're saying about your work.

1:11:46 And that's again, we have to make that distinction about what is morally good and morally evil like that. That's a that's an important conversation. But to just denigrate somebody's work is, you know, this is not what we're supposed to do as Christians. Right, Bill?

1:12:06 Well, absolutely. And, you know, somebody believes strongly in what they believe. what they did, even though, you know, it may be contrary to what, what you believe, uh, to, you know, you do need to honor hard work with, with people and give credit, give people credit, uh, for that and say, Hey, you know, I realized you,

1:12:26 you worked hard. We're going in a different direction now. Yeah. I think you'd be more comfortable elsewhere.

1:12:32 Right.

1:12:32 That's right. You know, again, it's a reality. And, you know, I, I, You know, it's kind of a terrible indictment, isn't it, that every four years you had to throw everything out and start all over again. Right. Hopefully there's a better way to do this. I don't know.

1:12:51 We would hope above my pay grade, but go ahead. Well, one of the things that I, I also tell people is, you know, cause that's usually the people that when I'm speaking at a church, that's, those are the level of people that they're talking about. And I say, well, you know who you're not asking about?

1:13:08 You're not asking about the, you know, 200,000 people who experienced that as federal workers and being told, build a sandcastle, build it this way, here's the plans. And then four years later, somebody comes by and says, That's the ugliest sandcastle I've ever seen. Who told you to build that?

1:13:28 Build this other one and build the next one on top of that. And then they've been doing that for 25 years. And they continue to do it. And part of the hope of the gospel and the faith at work movement is to be able to tell them, hey, just like Paul said to the slaves—

1:13:48 Your work is received by God as worship, even though the people who are giving you direction, hey, I want you to make bricks without straw. Yeah, guess what? That's still worship. God still cares about that. So with that said, I'd love for you to do this.

1:14:06 Tell us how we can pray for you as we kind of move to a close here on this episode of the Faithful Presence podcast. What can we be praying for? Yeah.

1:14:17 OK, so I've got a list here of one, two, three, four, five different projects I'm working on. OK. Right now, which is overwhelming. I feel like, OK, I'm the guy who's been, you know, the government is hammering away, pounding my fist at something. And then all of a sudden I say, OK, let's go.

1:14:44 And I've thrown so many things against the wall, and all of a sudden they're all sticking. And so really discerning the best use of my time and influence right now. I have more influence than I deserve in the faith and work movement, but I want to really use that well.

1:15:07 And I have a lot less years than I used to have. And so I really want to make sure and use that well. There's a lot of the people that have worked really hard in the Faithful Work Movement are people in their 60s and 70s.

1:15:26 And we haven't necessarily done a really good job of bringing in younger people. And so this is a really, really important thing that I'm thinking about a lot. How do we actually... How do we actually do this? The faith and work movement globally, one of the things I learned at Lausanne was, A,

1:15:51 the church does not look like you and I anymore. Right. It used to, probably 100 years ago. Today, it looks like a woman in Central Africa. And that is awesome, as far as I'm concerned. My goodness. But the other part of this is that the faith at work movement is a global movement now.

1:16:20 And how it happened, I don't know, except for the Holy Spirit. And so there's several of us trying to figure out how do we work together to fan the flames of the gospel, and to fan the flames of workplace discipleship or whole life discipleship around the world right now.

1:16:43 Because there are people all over doing this and trying to figure it out. We know some things. They know some things. They've seen things work. They've developed things. So have we. What would happen if we all really worked together? That's a pregnant question these days.

1:17:03 Do you have any tasks that come out of the Luzon thing? Like are you working on like, oh, now that Luzon is over, hey, I've got things now. We've got to get to the implementation stage, or are you kind of done with that?

1:17:15 Well, that's – I walked up to a friend of mine there, and I wrote out – something on one of the placemats that we were sitting in it and signed it. It's a project that helps unite all these people. That's the big takeaway that I walked out of Lausanne with.

1:17:44 It's going to be interesting to see what God does with that. We'll see. But that's my job walking out of Luzon is trying to figure out how we can— how we can band together, you know, and do things together that none of us could do separately.

1:18:08 And when's the next summit? It's not this summer, it's next summer, right?

1:18:12 Yeah, the Faith and Work Summit is going to be in June of 2026 in Cincinnati, Ohio. And we're working on that. That's one of my projects. I'm not leading it, but... you know, I am offering, you know, and engaging in conversations with, you know, what I know about that, not only from hosting it, but also, you know,

1:18:36 for being able to use my position in faith and work movement in some way to help.

1:18:41 Well, well, Dr. Peel, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We, we, we give you every blessing.

1:18:48 Michael, I want to thank you so much for what you do. What you're doing is really important. And, uh, I, I, I can't think of a better place for a person that loved people and cared about them and their relationship with Christ and their work to be right now than you in Washington, D.C.

1:19:09 And so thank you for your work. It is very important.

1:19:13 It's very kind, and in a lot of ways, you're a Yoda. You're one of the Yodas in this movement, and so I'm happy to have spent some time with you in the swamp, and I look forward to getting back together with you again soon.

1:19:34 Okay, I'm not going to be offended by it compared to a little green guy, but anyway. Okay.

1:19:41 Blessings, sir. Okay, so that's it for this episode of The Faithful Presence. If I can get the mute buttons to work right, because I don't know what I'm doing. But thank you so much for tuning in, for checking this podcast out. You know how this works.

1:19:59 We put these out there to equip servants and leaders to flourish in and for the public square. And the way that you can help is simply by promoting this podcast, linking to it, liking it. leaving a review. We'd love your feedback on those things. Thank you again to Dr.

1:20:22 Peel for coming on to talk about the important intersection of faith and work and helping us connect that to the public square. If you are interested in a discipleship cohort, a Bible study, pastoral care, or connecting with other Christians in the public square, Please reach out to us so that we can know how we can serve you.

1:20:43 Thank you to Andrew Brinkman, our post-production guy who's got a lot of work to do on this episode. Thank you also to Josie Reisinger, our chief of staff. And now receive this blessing. May your Father in heaven make you one as he and his Son are one, so that...

1:21:01 The world will know that he loves them and sent his son for them. Amen. Go into the public square with the peace of the Lord to seek its flourishing. Bye now.