Salt & Light - Part 1

When we were kids, and someone asked us, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” we had this magical response for them. What happened to that?

There are such awesome possibilities with the gift of work. Work is about the creation of value. And no matter what your job is, you have an opportunity to live that out every day. Work gives you an opportunity to make a meaningful and significant contribution to the world. Work gives you an opportunity to live out what it means when Jesus says, “You are salt, and you are light.”

I love when our Y is in a groove, especially when we are away at a retreat. We not only accomplish great things, but we become better people in the process. I believe that is the kind of emotional release that is available in our work every day.

It is a shame that many people go to work every day where there is no direct correlation between what they do and any meaning or sense of significance. There is no creation of value. For those of us who are Christ-followers, I believe it is incumbent upon us to create work environments where it is a noble thing to serve.

It is the nature of God to serve. We forget sometimes in our jockeying for positions in the politics at work that we are called to be a servant.

Early on in my career I watched Harry Brace, the late CEO of the Charlotte YMCA. Even though he was from this huge YMCA you never got the sense from him that what you did was any less important than what he did.

Oftentimes, after our YMCA made headlines, he would call me and congratulate me. Sometimes, he would run into somebody from Shelby and he would write me and thank me for doing my job and starting this Y. I saw him talk to Charlotte program directors and thank them by name for doing a job well done. I heard about him picking up the phone and calling a branch staffer and thanking him or her personally for being a part of the team that made a difference in somebody’s life. I bet he knew the names of everybody in the housekeeping department, all those who would come in late at night to clean up and get the facility ready for the next day.

One of the things that I saw Harry do repeatedly was to visit his people and tell them specifically that how they were doing their job had made his job easier. He would thank them for serving. He had a very quiet way of living among us and reinforcing the nobility of what it meant to serve. He had a great impact on me as I started off in my leadership role.

It doesn’t matter what you do if it’s true that God sees work as the creation of value. Everything you do matters. When you serve, you are most accurately reflecting the character and the nature of God. An amazing transformation would happen in our places of work if that emotion was first and foremost in our minds.