Dr. Denise Daniels (Author of Religion in a Changing Workplace)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes. But first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back guarantee on this book. I'm so confident you're gonna love this book that if I'm wrong, if you pre order the book, you don't love it, I'm gonna send you a $20Amazon gift card as a money back guarantee. Why? Two reasons. One, this is a different book for me, right. I know this is a very different biography. What is Jordan Rayner doing? And I know it's risky, so I'm going to de risk it for you. Because listen, in my other books, Redeeming youg Time, the Sacredness of Secular Work, Master of One, etc, etc, I am telling you and me how we can glorify God in our work, but in five Mere Christians, I'm doing something very different. I'm showing you what that looks like practically through these unforgettable life stories of five Mere Christians from history. These are the top men and women that I would love to have on this podcast today if, you know, they weren't dead, right? So that's the first reason this is a risk and I'm gonna de risk this book for you. Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended. End quote. But here's the thing. In order to qualify for this money back guarantee, you got to do two things. Step one, pre order five Mere Christians in any format, hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever. And then step two, go to 5meerchristians.com and fill out the form on that page and that's it. But you got to do it by midnight Eastern Time on May 9. By filling out that form, you'll also get all the pre order bonuses listed on 5merechristians.com and be entered to win this crazy, epic trip for two to Europe. So visit 5meerchristians.com right now to sign up. Now, please enjoy today's episode. Hey friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as writers Gardeners and marriage counselors. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to Dr. Denise Daniels. She's a brilliant researcher and professor of entrepreneurship at Wheaton College and the co author of a terrific new book called Religion in a Changing Workplace based on five years of rigorous research on faith and work integration across religious lines and 15,000 research participants. Dr. Daniels and I talked about the data that shows that your non Christian co workers want to talk about faith, but they sure as heck don't want to be treated like salvation projects. We talked about why I am begging you to stop calling your business a quote Christian business, end quote. And we talked about why mere Christians disagree with their pastor's assessment that they talk about work from the pulpit. This is a fascinating conversation you're not going to want to miss with my new friend, Dr. Denise Daniels. Dr. Daniels, welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

Thank you, Jordan. It's really great to be here.

I'm excited to have you on. Hey, so you and your colleagues have spent the last five years or so researching the role of faith at work. What was the impetus for this study?

Really? The impetus was the impetus has been a long time in coming. I have been really interested in the faith and work space for probably 20 plus years. Why? I'm middle aged at this point, but a long time ago I wasn't and I have four young adult children and about 20 some years ago I had two toddlers and I was working full time and I was a Christian and I thought I was working at a Christian university at Seattle Pacific University at the time. And I was like, you know, I should be doing something that's more integrative with my faith. But I can't quite figure out what that looks like. I thought, well, maybe what I'll start with is I'll start with trying to figure out Sabbath because I could use that day, one day a week as a young mom.

That sounds great.

And then I was like, well, how does that work with diapers and food and all that kind of stuff? So anyway, as a good academic, I started researching sab. So that was kind of my entree, to be frank, into this whole world of faith at work. And that really opened up later into conversations with colleagues not just about Sabbath, but what does it mean to be a faithful Christian? How do we live out our faith in the workplace, in the work that we're doing, in how we're trying to communicate to students? Because here I am teaching in a business school in a Christian university and I'M like, I should probably figure this out if I'm going to be teaching this stuff. And so that really led to a lot of thinking and writing. And then ultimately I ended up connected with Elaine Howard Eklund, who is a really excellent sociologist at Rice University. And she and I decided to kind of put our two worlds together. And she has historically done a lot of research in the area of science and faith and how scientists think about their faith. And I said, you know, could we do this more broadly and think about this just in terms of the workplace and people who work and what does it mean for them to engage their faith? And so we did. You mentioned it's a five year project and it's been a long term project. We surveyed over 15,000 people in the United States. A representative sample of the US Population.

And not just evangelical Christians, correct?

Right, exactly. So a representative sample of the US population, which means there are evangelical Christians in that mix, but there's a lot of other in that mix as well. And so we have a whole spectrum of religious identity, including people who don't have a religious identity, who we would call nones. N o N E the folks who don't identify with a religious tradition or faith. And we asked them a bunch of questions. And then we followed up the survey with interviews with about 300 folks. And so we have hour and a half interviews with these people. So just a huge data set of both quantitative and qualitative data. And so it's taken us a long time to put it together and figure out what we have and try to compile it. And you mentioned the one book that came out this fall that's Religion in a Changing Workplace and that's really targeted to a little bit more of an academic audience. It's an Oxford University Press book, but we have another book that is coming out this coming summer that's published through InterVarsity Press called Working for Better. And that book is really targeted to a Christian audience and people who are asking these same questions of how do I live out my faith? What does that look like? And I think my questions have changed over time. So it's a little bit less about how do I balance work and rest. Although that's still true. Like I still have that challenge in my life, but it's a little bit more about how do we live in a very pluralistic context. How do we live our lives, our Christian lives, in a way that is winsome and healthy and faithful and legal. You know, all those things all at the same time.

Yeah. And there's a lot of fear associated with that. And I want to talk about the implications of your findings for both employees and employers, because we have both listening. But let's start with employees, because you said in the book that the most common concern you heard about bringing up the topic of religion in the workplace is that it'll lead to conflict, including conflict from people trying to change each other's beliefs and evangelize. Is that fear grounded in reality or is it an excuse?

Yeah, no, it's a great question. I think there is an element of truth in that fear. In other words, there are real things, and particularly in a very contentious cultural moment that I think we find ourselves in, where people are looking to find a fence, or it seems that way anyway. There are some real fears about how you might engage, but I think much of it is fear that's grounded in a concern, but maybe not grounded in reality for the most part. So what we found was that people across the spectrum, again from various religious traditions to nothing, were actually much more open to the idea of conversation with colleagues about religious topics. Now, I, I want to be cautious here because they weren't crazy about the idea of somebody trying to convert them. So that is a true concern that people have and well founded because people don't want to feel like somebody's a project.

They don't want to feel like a salvation project.

That's exactly right. They don't want to feel like somebody's targeting them so that they're supposed to do something to please someone else. That that's just. That doesn't feel good.

Which, oh, by the way, Jesus didn't do either.

Right, right, exactly. But they are interested and truly interested in engaging with others and trying to understand what MOT and so on.

It's fascinating. Did you find any particular expressions of faith at work that do consistently lead to conflict? I mean, you mentioned treating somebody as a salvation project. Were there any others that were like, oh, no, this will inevitably lead to conflict in the workplace.

Honestly, the examples of conflict that got raised most often were not on the part of Christians. They were on the part of people from minority religions.

Interesting.

Who, who really do feel like they are under the thumb at times. And so we had people who gave us really explicit examples of people mocking people just not taking their faith seriously and, and them feeling kind of oppressed or discriminated against because of their religion. And so we're talking about Muslims and Jews and Sikhs and others who in the United States are the minority religious identity populations.

I thought it was Interesting. By the way, I know Oxford University Press published this and it's an academic book. I found it terrifically accessible as a non academic.

Oh, good. I'm glad to hear that. We try to make it that way.

I really loved, I thought it was really well done. I thought this was fascinating. 52% of evangelical Protestants surveyed agreed with the statement, quote, I feel motivated to talk about my faith or spirituality with people at work, end quote. And I'm interested in that because I would be shocked if even half of that number were actually sharing their faith at work. And I could say this because I spent 10 years full time as a tech startup CEO and it was very rare that I had those opportunities, or I should say engage those opportunities to explicitly share my faith. And so I'm curious for you, and this might be getting out of the realm of the study and into just general advice, but what advice do you have for bridging that gap between clear motivation, I want to share my faith with others and actual action in the workplace.

Well, let me back up for just one second and say that particular question. The 52% that you cite means that 48% of evangelical Christians are not motivated to talk about their faith. And I was like, oh, that's.

We should talk about that.

A little sad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So that's number one. But number two, you're right, if over half or just over half of folks say that they are motivated to talk about their faith, is that really happening? And again, I think that a lot of this is not so much I want to share the four spiritual laws or whatever, you know, framing that might take, but it's much more of this is something that's important to me and I want to be able to express it in an appropriate way in the workplace. And how do people do that? It's mostly not proselytizing. It's mostly talking about what your faith means to you. And so those were the kinds of things that we heard from folks that was actually seemed to be meaningful both to them and to their colleagues. Now I want to be careful here because we're talking to people and they're self reporting what they do. And I'm not talking to their colleagues. So I don't really know how those colleagues are perceiving it. But according to the self reports, they're best received when people are self referential in some sense. And so they're talking about their own faith and talking about how they are understanding it, living it out, playing it out, and how God is shaping their own practices or their own decision making or their own behaviors at work.

That's welcome. Because nobody can dispute that. It's my story. That's my experience.

That's right.

And so that's welcome across the board, across religious lines. People want to be having those conversations.

Yeah. And the other thing that I would say also that tends to be pretty welcome is people expressing care for others in a way that has some faith infusion. Now, not always. In other words, sometimes people can say, hey, I care about you and I want to know what's going on in your life. And that's the extent of it. And that's good. And that might be faith motivated with no explicit reference to faith. But sometimes there are ways that people can engage and say, hey, I'm praying for you, or is it okay if I pray for you? So asking those kinds of questions or engaging with somebody in a way that edges into a faith conversation to see if there's openness to it, and then you can say, you know, if there's not, that's okay, too.

I've never met a non believer who is offended when I told them I was praying for them. That's it. Like a lot of my neighbors. Right. Like, I'll tell them, hey, I prayed for your surgery. I prayed for whatever it is.

Yeah.

And I've never experienced somebody who's like, how dare you? Or, I'm so offended by that.

Yeah. I mean, they might view it as a placebo. Right. Sure. You can do what you want.

It's not do what you want. You know, find your own truth. Right.

Yeah.

I wasn't planning on asking you this, but you mentioned the nuns, no religious affiliation.

Right.

And this conversation with Sky Jatani, who we were talking about before we started recording, he's right down the road from you, and we were talking about this license to license gap within the local church. So sky was explaining this to me. He's like, listen, most pastors understand that they are going to lose kids between the moment they get their driver's license and the moment they get their marriage license.

Oh, interesting.

And what happens in between those two things? You're only thinking about two things. One, one, dating, two, work. And because the church doesn't talk about work, of course these kids disengage. Of course they disengage because they want to go be discipled about work. And they don't need the church to do it. They'll go to the world to get that discipleship. I'm curious if you saw anything in the data or in the follow up interviews amongst those nuns that would support Sky's hypothesis that, hey, if we were talking about work more, we'd have a better chance of keeping these kids engaged in that license to license gap.

Yeah, it's a great question and it's really, it makes me think about how could we actually assess this really well.

I was going to say, can you please research that? I want that data.

So to be honest, I don't have good data that I can draw from and say, okay, here's your answer. I can make some conjectures. So one of the conjectures I can make is based on the idea that many of the nuns that we spoke with used to be Christians. And so you're exactly right that there is an attrition, there is a walking away from faith. And so these people who say, look, I don't have a faith identity, but I used to, I was raised in the church, I was raised in a family of faith of some kind are folks who are like, today, I just don't believe it. They were also in some ways maybe the most cynical of all of the people that we spoke with because yours and my friend Al Ehresman has talked about the inoculation theory of Christianity, which is if you get a little bit of exposure to it, it can be enough to kind of turn you off. And in some sense I feel like that's what some of these nuns had experienced. They had some exposure, but it was enough to like prevent them from ever wanting to access the church again. And I find that really sad, obvious, and all sorts of potential reasons for that that we could talk about, you know, for a long time. So I think there is some pushback on the part of nuns towards issues of faith, particularly if those nuns were raised in a faith based context. We didn't see that so much with nuns who were raised with no faith. Like they were kind of curious about what's this faith thing that people talk about. Right. So there are two categories of nuns, I would say, some who are resistant to faith and some who are open to faith. And it's probably up to us to kind of try to figure out what some of that looks like as far as what the church can do. My own hypothesis is that the church can be doing a lot more with respect to the workplace. And what was really interesting is that we talked to, like I said, 300 people, but of those 300, about 50 were pastors. That was very intentional. So we sought out pastors to talk to, to ask them what they do with Respect to talking about work. And so of the 250 who were not pastors, most of them said, my church, my pastor doesn't talk about work. Almost all the pastors said, oh, yeah, I talk about work.

I've heard this before. In a separate study, I've heard the exact same thing. They think they're talking about work, but it's not translating to the mere Christians of the pews. This is fascinating.

Yeah, this is exactly right. And I don't know what the disconnect is.

I think I do.

Do you? Okay, I'd love to hear it.

I think it's a few things. One, I think it's language. Right. I think the language the pastors use from the pulpit doesn't translate to the terminology that the mere Christians in the pews understand and are using Monday through Friday. Two, I think what a pastor says, they talk about work from the pulpit. What they mean is. And again, this is all just. This is all just a hypothesis. I don't have data to back this up. I think it's. Oh, I gave an example in the application section in the last two minutes of my sermon to apply the text to the workplace. They're not preaching on what God's word says about work. They're applying the sermon to work, which is great.

Right.

But we should also be teaching about God's plan for work from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. And I don't think most churches are doing that.

Yeah, that may be exactly right. So it may be that the pastors think they're talking about work because they're referencing it. It may be that they are talking about work, but they're talking about it in such generic terms that people don't appropriate it for their own workplace or their own experience. Yeah, it's a little hard to know, but it is. Right. There is this huge disconnect between pastors and parishioners with respect to what their experience is or what their observations are in terms of whether the church is talking about work.

Yeah, it's fascinating. All right. Hey, let's turn our attention to the implications of your study for Christian employers.

Okay.

In the book, you really kind of net out at encouraging employers to lean into this trend of encouraging employees to bring their whole selves to work, something I've advocated before, and for that to include bringing conversations about faith to work. Can you share a summary of why you believe this is good for employers?

Yeah. So there is just a lot of data that suggests that when employees feel like they are fully welcome in the workplace and When I say fully welcome, I mean all aspects of themselves. They are more motivated, they are more committed, they show up to work, you know, they're absent less all these kinds of things. They feel known and they feel cared for in some sense by the workplace, whether that's their colleagues, whether that's the boss or whatever it might be. But there's a sense that the workplace is a meaningful place to them because they are able to bring their whole selves to the workplace. And so, so we talk about this in other domains. We talk about people being able to bring aspects of self into the workplace as a parent, aspects of self as, you know, somebody's racial identity or gender or whatever. We don't talk about this with respect to religion. We seem to have this real kind of bifurcation between the allowance of what's legitimate to talk about at work and what's not. And religion's one of those kind of third real topics that we don't want to talk about. And yet there is evidence to suggest that when people feel like they can be themselves in their spiritual identities, and this is again, across the board, this is not just Christians, these are everybody, including nuns. So people who feel like, yeah, I want to say I don't believe stuff and feel like I'm accepted for that, I talked, I had this really interesting conversation with a young woman who is an atheist and she actually works in a workplace where the leadership are Christians and she is a closeted atheist because she felt like if she told them what she really believed, she would not be able to get promotions in this workplace. And I thought, wow, this is like the inverse of what I expect, but it's a real fear. And so these bosses weren't doing a very good job of allowing these Christian bosses weren't doing a very good job of allowing a full spectrum of a faith identity to be expressed at work. And maybe because that's scary, you know, maybe if you're trying to create a workplace that has Christian values and so on, you don't want to kind of allow for the openness to something that's not that. But on the other hand, this young woman was saying, I really appreciate the faith based values of this workplace. I really like coming to work, I like what it produces, but I can't be myself here.

And I thought, wow, that's interesting, that's fascinating. You're going in the direction that I want to ask about. Fascinated by this, because I'm imagining some listeners falling into two camps here. The first camp is, I think there's some Christian leaders listening who aren't super vocal about their faith within the workplace. And they're thinking, all right, Dr. Daniels, if I encourage my employees to talk about religion at work, my Christian faith is now competing, in a sense, with Sikhs, with Muslims, with Jews, etc, and I'm going to be opening up Pandora's box. What would you say to those leaders?

I would say bring it on. Because really, if we have access to truth.

Amen.

Then we have no fear about having that challenged or questioned or exposed to the light. I mean, that's exactly what we want.

Amen. I could not agree more, for the record. But all right, let's ask the harder question. Let's go to the other camp. Because the other camp, and I know these. I know these Christian leaders very well. Some of them are very dear friends of mine who are super vocal about their faith. They're praying before meetings. They're putting scripture in their company's core values. They're talking about glorifying God in their company's mission statement. And on the one hand, I love. Listen, I'm a part of this faith and workspace. I love this super public profession of faith and work. But on the other hand, it does concern me a little bit because I fear for the atheist that you talk to. I fear that it can drive non believers away from the business who desperately need to be there to smell the aroma of Christ.

Yeah.

What's your opinion on this, based on what you found in the research?

Yeah. So I think there are some tricky lines. There's not like a clear black and white answer in every case. Yeah. I'm an academic and we like nuance. So there's nuance.

I love nuance, too. This is why I love academics.

Okay, so let me preface with that, and then let me say that I do think there are real good places for leaders of companies who are Christians to say, hey, this is my faith, and I want this company to reflect these aspects of these values. I have no concerns about that. There are concerns. And this. They are both kind of ethical concerns and legal concerns. If you start to value and prioritize those who share your faith in terms of allowing only those folks to get promoted or only those folks to be hired, that's illegal in the United States. You can't actually do that.

And, oh, by the way, theologically, with the doctrine of common grace at our disposal, we don't want to do that.

No, you want to. You want to both be salt and light to everybody, but you also want to access the gifts that God has distributed broadly. Amen. In people across the world. So you want to be cautious, I guess, about not letting that bleed into sort of a hiring fundamentalism of some kind. So again, no problems at all with expression and talking about what that means. Be very careful about how that plays out with some of the decisions that get made about personnel. How? Well, I think you have to be really focused on performance and not so focused on who is like me and who do I agree with in this particular domain that may not be workplace related. Now, those criteria can be really great criteria for deciding who you can be friends with, but they're not good criteria for making decisions about who you're going to hire or promote or allow into leadership in an organization.

Yeah, because I got a lot of empathy here. Right. Like, I get it. You are leading this organization. You're naturally going to have stronger friendships with the people that you see on Sunday and Monday. Right. Those leaders within the organization that you happen to go to church with and share this faith with. But yeah, to make sure that we're not crossing a legal line, which is out of line with Christ's commands or just doing something foolish for the sake of the gospel. It's got to be a really strong culture.

Performance.

Right. Everything's got to be real, measurable, real performance based. I think Chick Fil a is actually really great at this based on the little I know of the inner workings of Chick Fil A. I mean, they're super explicit about their faith in the mission statement, but that's an extremely results oriented culture.

Yeah, that's. That's right.

They do a great job of promoting based on performance and not religious preference.

I want to say too that I think a lot of times we talk about Christian companies.

Yeah, yeah.

Chick Fil A maybe is a good example.

Companies don't have souls.

That's exactly right. That's exactly what I was going to say is that these companies are not going to go to heaven in the same way that people do. And so we want to be really cautious about what that means to have a Christian company. You can have Christian leadership in companies, you can have Christian values in companies, but you don't have a Christian company.

And I actually think that term, not only is it theologically ridiculous, it also turns away nonbelievers.

That's right. Right.

Like it's a giant badge of like, I guess I'm not welcome here.

Yeah. So it's not. It's not meaningful on the one hand and it's problematic on the other. So don't use it.

Yeah, listen, I don't think people use it. What people mean when they say it is, I'm a Christian leader and I happen to own this business. That's what they mean. But semantics matters. Words matter. Let's use correct terminology. You're not a Christian business. You are a business run by Christians, led by Christians. Right?

That's right. And endeavoring to lead like Christ would or lead with Christian values in a way that is going to honor God.

And we should be transparent about that and open about that. Talk more about the atheists who liked that their company was led by Christian values. That's fascinating to me.

Yeah, it was fascinating. She basically said, I trust these leaders, like what they say is true, like they're honest and straightforward. But they also. She had this fear again, kind of to what we've just been talking about, this fear that there would be favoritism on the basis of the leadership with respect to hiring or promotion in her case. And she was a good performer and she wanted to, she wanted to move up in this organization, but she was fearful that if she told people that she was an atheist, she wouldn't have the opportunities. That if she just kind of stayed under the radar, she might.

Yeah. I want to talk about one more thing specific to employers before we start recording. I mentioned, I talked to a lot of these Christian or interfaith employee resource groups or ERGs, for our listeners who don't understand. Can you quickly explain what these groups are?

Sure. So an ERG employee resource group. They are groups in organizations, typically larger companies. And there's a lot in tech in particular, so you'll see a lot in Silicon Valley. But these are affinity groups of some kind. And so they range. They can be affinity groups for people who like Star Trek, or affinity groups for people who are Hispanic, or affinity groups for people who are Muslim or Christian. Or sometimes companies will have just a generic umbrella faith based affinity group trying not to provide some kind of preference for one religious identity over another. So these groups are designed and they're employee run, typically with some resources that the organization might provide to them based on how many members they have and so on. And they can do all sorts of things. They can meet together, they can create events that they have that support folks in the organization that have that particular affinity.

Yeah, I love it. And I. Oh man. One of my favorite things in the world to do is to speak to ergs. I love it so much. I love encouraging believers to work in the darkest corners of our culture. I'm curious if your research found any evidence though that these faith based ergs can have a positive impact for the businesses who sponsor them.

So we did not do research on that per se. So from my direct research, I can't answer that. I do know that there is some research that is ongoing in that particular domain that people are looking at that question. So Helen Chung at Seattle Pacific University is doing some research in this area. And then Brian Grim has also done some work trying to identify ways that ergs are helpful or not to Faith based ergs are helpful to organizations and there does seem to be some evidence that they provide positive outcomes, particularly if they're managed well and organized well. So there are a number of big companies that do have these religious ergs and they find them a useful attraction tool, helping to attract good employees. People who want to bring their whole selves to work, for example.

Interesting.

And feel like this is a place that clearly values that they're putting their money where their mouth is. They also have found that particularly when they have multiple ergs from different religious perspectives or the umbrella groups where there's kind of the faith based erg and then maybe subgroups underne that that they're an interesting way for people from different religious identities to try to understand one another. And I think it's an area that's really understudied at this point. I think there is a lot of potential to try to identify what the outcomes of that are likely to be.

It's fascinating. Hey, so before we get to these four rapid fire questions that I round out every episode with, I do want to ask, just open ended, is there anything else that you want this audience, this global audience of your Christians to hear from this study, either employers or employees, Any other data points you want to make sure they hear?

You know, there's tons of data in this book, as you mentioned and as I've kind of alluded. There's just so much data. I think the big takeaway is that it's okay to engage your faith in the context of work. It's good. Yeah. It doesn't have to be this third rail kind of. We don't talk about that here. It can be a part of who we are and who we bring to the workplace. It does have to be done carefully. It can't just be kind of bludgeoning somebody over the head. And I think there needs to be some caution with respect to how you engage with conversation that might be viewed as proselytizing. So. Which we already talked about. But it's okay it's okay. And in fact, a good thing to bring faith to work. And organizations can benefit from it and employees can benefit from it as long as it's done carefully and with respect for others.

There's a lot I took for the book. The thing I think I want my audience to hear most, because if you were to survey my audience on whether or not they're motivated to share their faith at work, It'd be like 92%, not 52%. Your non Christian colleagues want to talk about matters of religion and matters of faith and what you believe, but they don't want you leaving tracks in the break room. They don't want you walking around with a John 3:16 sandwich board.

That's right.

They want relationships.

Yes.

With genuine people.

Right.

So be a friend. I talk about this in my book, the Sacredness of Secular Work. Right. Be so good they can't ignore you. And then be a good friend. And then they will inevitably ask you for the hope to explain the hope that is within you. And then you have a clear opportunity to share the gospel. But listen, just being a good friend is intrinsically valuable in and of itself. Love your neighbor as yourself was a complete sentence. Jesus did not say, love your neighbor as yourself. So that at every turn around the corner you could tell them about who I am. Right. Loving your neighbor yourself is good. So do good work, be a good friend, and trust the Holy Spirit to open up the doors he wants to open up.

Yeah. And Jordan, I would actually add one more thing to that, which is it's not about all the time anyway. It's not about us communicating our beliefs to someone else. It's also about us listening to the beliefs of someone else and being open to really trying to understand the perspectives of somebody who's very different from us.

Amen. Well said. All right, Dr. James, here we go. Four questions to round out this episode. Number one, look ahead to Isaiah 65. We're on the new Earth, long enjoying the work of our hands. What job would you just be like over the moon, excited to do so?

I really do believe, and I think that there's kind of a divide in Christendom on this particular point. But I really do believe there's things that we're not going to know in heaven and that we'll have to learn and we'll have to figure out. And I hope to be kind of a researcher and maybe a teacher.

Yes, yes.

And I think there's things that we will know that we don't see today. But I also think that we will only be exposed to truth in the new heaven. And I would love to be part of kind of unfolding God's truth and being part of that process with God's people.

We just released my second picture book called the Royal in youn that. Actually, I don't think I mentioned this on the podcast.

No, you should say something about it.

The, the, the Gospel Coalition just named Book of the Year, Children's Book of the Year. And one of my favorite spreads that my illustration partner John Voss did was this gorgeous, epic library, like mind blowing library. Like think Library of Congress. And our hero girl kid is like pulling a book down. And the line is you imagine what we'll do in the North. You might spend time learning new subjects and skills with no fear of testing and loud fire drills because we're not God, we're not omniscient. So I think you're right. I think we're going to learn. And I can't wait to take your class on the new earth.

Dr. Well, Jordan, I have a funny, quick, funny story about that. So I was teaching my senior seminar at Wheaton College. These are students who are just about to graduate and we were Talking about Isaiah 65 and the new heavens and the new Earth and what that's going to look like. And at one point I made the comment about that what I would like to do in heaven is I'd like to read a lot. And my students, a couple of them just kind of look horrified.

Oh, they don't.

Yeah, yeah. And they're like, no, no, no, Dr. Daniels, there's going to be like those trees in heaven, the river, but light. But I don't know about books. And at the very end of the semester, one of my students wrote on the student evaluation, she wrote, Dr. Daniels, I sure hope for your sake that there are books in heaven.

That's so good. Well, it's so sad to hear that. Not surprising, but sad because listen, Isaiah 60 makes it clear that we're not just going back to the Garden of Eden. That's right, you're going back to the Garden. Plus culture.

Right, right.

I mean, doesn't tell us explicitly books, but gosh, I'd be shocked if we don't have a literature at our disposal. Speaking of books. Yes, Dr. Daniels, if we opened up your Amazon order history, which book would we see you buying over and over again to give away to friends?

So I think there's probably two besides my books. So, you know, we can just assume I am actually giving away a lot of those to friends. But I think Tim Keller and Kathryn Larry Alsdorf's book Every Good Endeavor is just such a classic and so good about thinking through what does it mean to be a faithful worker. And then another book written by my friend Jeff Van Duzer is why Business Matters to God and what Still Needs to be Fixed. And it's really explicitly focused on business and ways to understand how business can be done in partnership with God and for God's kingdom.

That's good. Dr. Daniels, who do you want to hear in this podcast talking about how their faith shapes their work?

So I have a long laundry list. I mentioned to you before the podcast that I have been involved in a film project called Faith and Co. And this was part of what I was doing when I was still at Seattle Pacific University before I came to Wheaton man at spu, we identified a bunch of organizations where people were engaging their faith in their workplaces. And we created these short, like 10 minute documentary style films about them. These films are available online. You could go look up Faith Co. And find access to these various films and watch them. But out of those films there are three people that we interviewed that I think you should interview. And so one of them is Don Flo, who runs Flo Automotive in the Southeast United States. And he is probably the single person I can think of who has been most thoughtful about integrating his faith with his business. He's just really a remarkable, remarkable man. So he would be one. Another is Helen Young Hayes and she actually started in investment banking and then she had a career change, actually stayed home with kids for about a decade and now has started an organization called Activate Work in Denver, Colorado. And she is also very, very thoughtful about her faith and doing work with people who are hard to employ and connecting them with good employers and making sure that they are successful in those work lives. And she's very driven by her faith. And then the third one is Qiming Chien, who is a partner and founder of DaySpring Partners in the San Francisco Bay Area. And Qiming is really, again, very, very thoughtful about his faith and about the ways that his faith brings to bear in a tech firm, in a tech context. So very different industries, very different people, but all of them really faithful Christians who would just be excellent, great names.

I'd be happy to talk to any of them. All right, Dr. Daniels, you're talking to this global audience of mere Christians doing a bunch of different things vocationally. We got entrepreneurs, we've got academics in secular universities, we have baristas, and accountants. What's one final thing you want to share with that audience before we sign off?

One of the things we didn't talk about is another book that I wrote called Working in the Presence of God. And that book really is almost. It's not a devotional, but it's really thinking about spiritual disciplines and how we can engage those in our lives. And I would say the one sentence takeaway from that book and also what I've really tried to kind of shape my own life around is to pay attention to where God is at work and join him in that work. And God is at work everywhere. And God is at work at work. And so paying attention, looking to see where God is at work, and joining God in that work, I think would be the one takeaway that I would want people to remember.

I love this. Give us a quick case study of that in your own life. What does that look like?

Oh, this is great. This is a good question. So I do a number of different things, and it depends on the day or the week or the month, sometimes in terms of the kinds of practices that I engage in. But one of the things that I do is I think about my workplace as holy ground. And so what that means is. And it's kind of a throwback to thinking about Moses when Moses encountered God at the burning bush. And God says, take your shoes off. You're standing on holy ground. And the idea is that when God is present, you are standing on holy ground. Well, if God is omnipresent, we are always standing on holy ground is what that means. And so I think about my office here at Wheaton College as holy ground. And I have actually, you can see it, but our listeners can't. In the background of my screen is a painting that is actually titled Holy Ground. And it's a reminder to me every time I walk into my office that this space is a space that God inhabits and that God is desiring me to be aware of God's presence and desiring me to engage with other people in a way that makes it clear that they also are on holy ground. So when anyone walks into my office, a student, student or a colleague or anyone, I think of them as walking into holy ground. And so there's a reminder for me of what does God want out of this particular encounter as this person engages with me in this place that God has put me?

I love it so much. Dr. Daniels, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you do for the glory of God and the good of others. For doing the hard work of academically rigorous research to help us understand. I just get, I just get to write about this stuff and share with others. You actually are doing the hard work. But no, seriously, to give us data to understand how to create better workplace cultures that glorify the one true God of the Bible. And thank you for giving both employees and employers practical ways to integrate their faith and their work. Friends, the book is called Religion in a Changing Workplace, Not a changing world. And Dr. Daniels, what's the name of the upcoming trade book that's coming out summer 2025?

Yeah, it's called Working for Better A New Approach to Faith at Work. And again, that one is targeted to us, an explicitly Christian audience and it brings a lot more of I co wrote it with Elaine Eklund, who I've been doing this research with, and both of us are Christians and both of us are writing from a very personal perspective of what it means to think about our own faith in light of some of this data.

I love it. So if you guys want to go deeper in the data, you can check out either of those two books. Dr. Daniels, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks Jordan. I really appreciate you having me and.

I hope you guys enjoyed that episode as much as I did. Hey, I want to hear from you who you want to hear on the Mere Christians podcast. I want you to nominate somebody right now@jordanrayner.com contact thank you guys so much for listening. I'll see you next week.

Foreign.

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