FAN FAVE FLASHBACK: Josh Thompson (Janitor)

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 H vac technicians, product designers, and assembly line workers. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to Josh Thompson, a janitor at an elementary school in Oregon. Josh and I talked about what the dirty jobs of God mean for you and me. The power of dwelling on what God has saved us from and how to choose joy even in a job you don't love. I have been begging you guys to send me a janitor to come out of the beer Christians podcast. Josh did not disappoint. Please enjoy this great conversation with my new friend, janitor Josh. Josh Thompson, welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

Thank you for having me.

So I was reading the bio that my team gave me.

Here's what it says.

Says, quote, josh is a grade school janitor who loves making the children smile with his crazy hats he wears and fun Janitor Josh Merch. End quote. I have to learn more. Please tell me all the things about Janitor Josh merchandise.

So I'm going to take you back to a photo that started this all. It was me hugging my vacuum that I gave out to my teachers for Christmas. When they came back from Christmas break, they all had a photo of me on their desk the next year that evolved into a. An ornament that I made of me hugging or holding a plunger sitting on a toilet and gave them all an ornament for Christmas. Then I think that was Covid year 2020. No one's in work. I'm actually at work because we were considered a essential business because we had essential preschool for first responders. And so I still had to work all through Covid. And so photographer friend of mine who had no work because he was out of work, we decided the day after Thanksgiving, hey, let's take some photos. That turned into a calendar that turned into all the students in the high school. Cause it's. We're a small, small community. We have three schools, elementary, middle, and a high school. Everyone knows everyone. And so the kids were like, we need some janitor Josh stuff. Like, I had a design made. And then I just, you know, please, you know, don't be in a rust. Remember to flush quotes, putting on shirts and stuff. And then I'm Also in the 4th of July parade where I throw toilet paper out. I throw candy out of a garbage can because it looks funny and so that's kind of where all the merch is.

Is the greatest thing I've ever seen. So I just went to janitor josh.com. i actually bought the calendar yesterday because it's the greatest ever. It's going to replace our family calendar. How did this start? Like, why were you like, oh man, I'm going to hug this vacuum cleaner. Like you really love your job. What's, what's the story there?

Because I'm a goofball. It was. Honestly, I was waiting for a classroom to go to PE and I was in the hallway with a. One of the educational assistants. I said, hey, take this photo of me. It's really funny. And I messed with it on my phone after we took it. And then I. That's just where it started.

What is a typical day in the life of Josh the janitor look like?

It's not as crazy as everyone thinks it is. I don't think I do as much as everyone thinks I do. I'm always on the move, just cleaning up at 4:45 to get to work around 5:15 or so. And then just making sure the stuff's ready for the school to open up at 8 or 7:45 or so. I am on parking lot duty because we're so short staffed that they pulled the janitor out to be on parking lot duty when students are dropped off. So that's where the funny hats thing come in. I just started wearing crazy hats.

More about that.

So I wear.

You just wear crazy hats in the parking lot?

Yeah. Yeah. So the calendar, the one you got is the crazy hat collection. I'm on the street. I direct cars in and out of the parking lot and buses. And so if the kids are smiling when they see me, hopefully that smile lasts them while they go in the building, break the ice of the morning type of thing.

And then all day long you're just doing various jobs around the house.

I'm in the cafeteria a lot cleaning up. We have. It's busy from 8 to 9. I'm in there two or three times emptying trash cans to keep it clean and sweep it up. And then I'm on call. There's. I mean I'm. I clean everything. I've cleaned everything. I'll just leave it at that. And then for lunch duty I'm on cleaning the cafeteria again. Then it gets a major clean with the machine. Basically a huge mop after lunch. And then I'm off around 13145 or so. I actually have my own business being a janitor. It's my old youth pastor, owns a building in the next town over and I do his janitorial every day. So from the grade school to cleaning some more bathrooms, and then, then it's family time after that and then whatever we got going on.

I was reading this commentary a few months ago from Wayne Grudem, who is one of the editors of the ESV Bible, and he says that that word subdue in Genesis 1 simply means to make the earth, quote, more useful for other human beings benefit and enjoyment, end quote. And that's exactly what you do every day, right?

Like our IT guy, a good friend of mine, you know, you don't see him unless you need him. And so. But he's working his tail off on the back end. And same with janitors. We come in and clean and we're there when no one else is there. My night guy, my evening shift guy, he's here late into the evening, no one else is here, and he's cleaning so that it's ready for me and for the school in the morning.

But you pointed out something that's really important, right? The world doesn't necessarily value your work very highly compared to other jobs. Right. I think what's interesting, when you look at scripture, we see God himself doing some pretty dirty jobs, right? I mean, Jesus washed feet. God planted a garden in the east in Genesis 2. And of course, Christ did the ultimate, quote, unquote dirty job of taking the punishment for our sins. What does that mean to you? That God himself rolls up his sleeves and does dirty work.

That's why it feels normal to me to do this job, because I have a great leader that shows me, hey, it's okay to do this job. He doesn't look down on it, so why should I? Yes. Society might look down on it because, you know, I get in the way of, of you doing a, a normal bodily function. If I'm, let's say, cleaning a restroom and I've closed it, I mean, people can be very rude to me when I'm got the restroom closed.

Well, you also work at a school where, like, kids are punks, right? I remember grade school where kids would, like, intentionally make the generous life more difficult. Like, how do you respond to that? How do you respond to that kid today? How does your faith enable you to.

Respond with, oh, I respond with love and, you know, a stern look. But I'm also the fun guy at the, at the school. I'm the fun parent. I think being that fun parent, I don't get a lot of Kids who do destroy the bathrooms on purpose because they know me, because I'm in the hallways and I'm high fiving them. And so I think there's some sort of respect there that I'm not going to destroy the bathroom because janitor Josh has got to clean it. Granted, we do get our, you know, pencils and writings on the wall every week. I got to clean something, which, by the way, hand sanitizer takes off pencil off a wall. And I just treat the kids with love like it's the. Please don't do that. Mr. Josh has got to clean this up. Let's clean up after ourselves. And for the most part, that's enough. That's a stern enough talk to have them not do it for at least the rest of the day. Tomorrow's a new day.

Talk about. You mentioned you're the fun guy on campus. You're the joyful guy on campus. You're the playful guy on campus. Is this connected? You described your calling as a high calling a few minutes ago. Are these two things connected? Do you think that's part of the reason why you're so joyful on the job?

I think I wake up and try to choose joy. Granted, we all have our days, but. And that goes back from just, you know, we're not here on earth to have a horrible day. God wants us to be nice human beings.

Josh, I want you to talk to the listener who has a hard time choosing joy. You mentioned that term. I love that. What advice would you give to them when they wake up tomorrow morning? They're going to a job they don't particularly love. It seems like you love your job, so it may be hard to put yourself in their shoes. But what advice would you give to them for how they can access the resources of the gospel to choose joy in their work?

I was at a job that I didn't like towards the end, and my wife reminded me this of yesterday when we were talking about the questions from the show. She's told me that as long as I'm taking care of my family, I'll clean a toilet if it puts food on the table. And I don't remember saying that. She's remembered it all these years. We've been married almost 23 years at this point. And it's something I said when we were first married. And so I think choosing joy is by when you wake up and you're looking in the mirror in the bathroom, I smile. I try to tell people a lot, smile at the person in the mirror because Most likely that person's going to need it the most. And so you have to start with yourself and, you know, just be happy. You know, we weren't put on this earth to have a horrible day. You know, I try to follow Christ and to be happy in things, and not necessarily happy, but be just joyful. Just it's. It's a weird. I can't answer without. I don't know, what's that called, where you answer a definition with the word that you're trying to answer. Granted, I have my days, but I've also gone through tumultuous times. I mean, at the end of this podcast, I'll give you my book and it's going to throw you for a loop because in the beginning of our marriage, I got the ultimatum from my wife. You know, you go to anger management class or figure something out or me. And at that time, we only had two children. We're going to move on. And so I spent three years in anger management. And to this day, it's not a daily struggle, you know, but it's something that I go back and it was a Christian led anger management class. And so I didn't like that. That person I didn't like, that job I didn't like. So I just made the decision to choose Joy and just to be nice. And like I said, we've all had our hard days, but at the end of the day, how I look in front of Christ is the ultimate goal. And did I do him good by what I've done today? If I'm going out and being mean to everybody, that's not Christ.

Like, I think you're hitting on something really profound. Looking back previously in your story to this time when your marriage was in trouble, you're having these significant anger issues. Because I find the people who are the most joyful and the most alive are the people who can remember what God has saved them from. The people who take the time. I was just having a conversation with a buddy a couple months ago, and he went through a really rocky time in his marriage. And he said, jordan, the first thing I do every morning is I get down on my knees on the floor and thank God for saving my marriage. Thank God for saving me from myself, right? And that can't help but produce joy knowing that in Christ we're forgiven in front of the father, right?

And it starts at home for me, my wife could have left and should have left. You know, I was a very angry person. And I don't know what it was. I mean, Maybe because we had two small children, we had two toddlers. We were newlyweds. And, you know, it was six months after we were married. We got pregnant with our first 15 months after he was born, we had another one. And then we had two more within five years total. The oldest four are within five years. We always tell people we don't remember our 20s, not because we were alcoholics, but because we were just trying to survive. And so in that time, that's when, you know, it was sleep deprivation. I'm trying to make sure there's food on the table. Working ridiculous amount of hours at one job. Took on a side job on a weekend delivering pizzas. I wasn't home a lot. She was, you know, just being a mom of four and short fuses on both sides and. And I look back at that and we've grown so much.

I love it. And that inevitably produces joy.

And it does produce joy by looking back and seeing what you've gone through. And you're like, you can just breathe and take a minute. You just said that Your friend, you know, prays. Every morning. I walk this empty building, I open up one of the doors that I have to open up every day, and I go outside, rain or shine, and I go outside and I thank God for the day because that's my time to. I take three deep breaths out there. I know this sounds weird. I take three deep breaths just because I also have to go unlock some more doors. I don't have a lot of time. I give myself three deep breaths and just thank God for the day today. The sun is just now coming out where we're at, and it's going to be a good day. No matter what happens today, no matter what we're going to go through today, no matter what I'm cleaning today, it's going to be a good day because at the end of the day, it's just the people around me need to know I want them to be better by my interactions with them today. And that's how I choose Joy.

You mentioned in our pre interview, you're in a public school. You can't explicitly share the gospel with kids, but you can share the love of Christ. Explain what you mean a little bit by that. How do you do that? How do you show these kids? How do you show the staff the.

Love of Christ just being here for them? I mean, there's kids. I'll high five that. Or, you know, we do elbows since COVID I mean, even now we. Even now we high five now. It's Fine. There's enough hand sanitizer in this building to clean everything, Janitor Josh.

Make sure of it.

Well, yeah, we've. Well, yeah, there's hand sanitizer, like, two or three dispensers in every hallway. But just being kind to them, because some of these kids are. Might be going home to who I was in the early stages of my marriage. And what I mean by that is this might be their safe spot, safe place. This might be the only time of the day where they have a positive influence from adults. And it's not my job to. To tear them down. It's my job to build them up. And even as the janitor, I can build them up by just offering them a clean spot to be in. They see me cleaning up in the cafeteria. That's where I get most interaction with the students is the cafeteria. They see me in there sweeping and cleaning, and they come to me when they spill something and apologize, oh, Mr. Josh, I'm sorry. I spilt this. And then I show them, you know, the love of Christ by just saying, hey, it's all right. Let's clean this up. You know what? No big deal. I'll take care of it. You go outside and have fun at recess. That short interaction is how I show, you know, Christ's love. If I were to come across to them as harsh, well, why did you spill that milk? You know, which we've all known that.

Janitor.

Yeah, I've worked with people like that. It's not okay. And so I show them love by just showing them love. I know that's a weird way to answer it, but just cleaning up and not being harsh on them and because they got a lot more going on, especially now, now that we're coming out of the COVID or, you know, the last few years they were in quarantine. I mean, our youngest adopted daughter was four months old when she came to us, a month before the world shut down. So her whole beginning stages of life was in quarantine. And we didn't go anywhere. We went to the store. I went to the store. There was times where my wife didn't leave the house for four or five days because, you know, we were under lockdown orders. And so these kids have lived through that. I don't even know what they're going through. And if I'm harsh to them, it's just not fair. And that's not showing Christ's love, man.

I know you know this, but I just want to encourage you and our listeners to this and those actions are good and God honoring and of themselves. You're not able to share Christ's love verbally to these kids, but you're able to show it through your actions. And as you're talking, I was thinking about one of my heroes, Mr. Rogers, who's in a very similar position. There's a Rogers quote I pulled up that I love so much. He said, quote, I'm so convinced that the space between the television set and the viewer is holy ground. And what we put on that television set can, by the Holy Spirit, be translated into what that person needs to hear and see. End quote. And Rogers never explicitly preached the gospel on air.

Right.

But the same can be said of you, Josh, because you, a Christ follower, indwelt with the Holy Spirit, are on your campus. That campus is holy ground. And the Holy Spirit can take your wordless evangelism, refusing to scream at a kid, your simple acts of love and kindness and high fives and joy, and translate those actions into exactly what those kids need to hear and see. Amen.

Amen. Yeah. And we used to be only a two building school, so K through 8, and then we had the high school. And when the middle school was here, I would clean the outside of the lockers. Like I would daily go through and clean their locker dials. As I was doing that, I'm praying for these children. Not specifically, not specific child to that locker, but specifically, just as I was walking by and wiping down, spraying these locker knobs and whatever. And I do that now. Like during the pandemic, we had to clean doorknobs and so, or wipe down doorknobs and as I'm wiping doorknobs, I'm praying for that classroom. That's not a, you know, I wasn't saying it out loud. It was just a heartfelt prayer. As I'm cleaning throughout the day, as I'm cleaning these doorknobs, praying for these children, praying for everything. You know, there's a lot of quiet time being a janitor because you're not in front of the students, you know, teaching. And so even when I'm cleaning, it's quiet because no one's around. There is a lot of prayerful time, especially here. And, you know, our admin are believers and so we don't chat about it because we can't really. We all know, we all know who we are in the building and we can go to them. I've gone into my, my boss's door, shut the door. She looks at me and says, are you okay. And I broke down and. And told her, no, I'm not okay, because of something that's happening, you know, with a foster child or one of our adoptive children, what we're going through through there. So.

Yeah, but every one of those prayers matters. There's this great quote from N.T. wright. He's commenting on First Corinthians 50, 1558. He says, of course, every prayer, all spirit led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, all of this will find its way through the resurrecting power of God into the new creation that God will one day make. In other words, every one of those prayers that you utter at that lock are somehow is not in vain, as Paul says in First Corinthians 15:58. And I love that you have the space and the silence and the solitude to do that during your day. I'm curious, with so much silence on your hands, so much quiet time on your hands, do you find that the job allows you to just commune with God more than somebody who's, you know, on zoom on their laptop all day talking?

Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm not in prayerful time. The entire day I'm present, but like, when I'm cleaning the. The cafeteria after lunch, it's an hour and 15 minutes that I'm in there, you know, either behind that machine. I have been listening to your podcast during that time and other podcasts and stuff, and so. But for the most part, I. I get to be prayerful, which is. It's a weird place to be. A lot of people can't go to work and spend time praying or spending time with God. And it's a weird spot to be in. I think if you make time in your workday, you can be like, I was a truck driver for a soda company, you know, in between stores, it's quiet. You know, when you're stocking the shelves, it's quiet. So if you choose to walk with the Lord, you're going to find a lot more time to be able to talk to him and be in prayer than you think.

You just got to look for those crevices.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. If you're in front of a meeting, there's not a lot of time. As one of my teachers, you know, there's not a lot of time. I'm sure there's teachers in this building that, you know, once they're done with instruction, they go to sit down and have the kids do quiet whatever. I'm sure they're praying.

Hey, we've been talking about the intrinsic value of your work. But there's also a lot of instrumental value because you and your wife have used some of your excess income, maybe a lot of it, I don't know, to care for orphans. Something near and dear to my heart. How many kids are in your home today?

In my home we have four bio children. The two older ones actually live apartment together, not in our home. And then we have four girls and three boys, so there's seven. As of today though, we'll probably get a foster. Probably tomorrow morning we'll get one. So there's, there's always about eight or nine children. We've, we've had up to 11 in our home. At one point you said something about spend our extra money or whatever, but yeah, it's quite the process. There's a village that helps to take care of us when we get new fosters. We have people who say, hey, put your Amazon wish list out and we want to help support it doesn't happen all the time. And believe me, we struggle. I have this main job, I do a side janitor job and then I just started driving for Uber just to be able to, to make sure there's food on the table. And so that's our calling in life is right now, is, is to help the kids that need it the most.

Well, I mean this is pure and undefiled religion. James 1 I'm curious. You've been listening to the podcast. What do you want your kids to know about work?

It's funny because the teenagers and even the I say teenagers, I mean my oldest is 21, they all have done my job, even the little ones, even all the way down to my 3 year old. And I think because with the side business, it's one that I can, you know, hey, can you go clean for me today? My daughter did it all weekend for me just to give me a break and to. Well one, she likes the money because I have to pay her and so she does it to have some coffee money before she goes to school. But they know there's nothing wrong with being a janitor and I'm grateful for that because on the totem pole of jobs, janitors aren't very high up. They know that it's okay to be a janitor and there's nothing wrong with it. Then anything they do above this is a frosting on the cupcake. It's a tough job.

Not only is there nothing wrong, man, I just keep coming back to the example of Christ. The crazy humble professions we see God doing, we just don't See God ever, like, sitting in the CEO suite, we see him doing really humble jobs. I would argue in the upside down kingdom of God, your job is one of the greatest in the kingdom, brother. I love that you're showing that to your kids.

Oh, yeah, it's super. They all know. I'm gonna. I'm gonna tell you a quote, and I mentioned it in my pre interview.

Yeah, I love this quote.

Martin Luther King Jr. And if a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets. Even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry, he should sweep the streets so well that all the hosts in heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well. And it tears me up to think that God holds me so high and I'm just being a street sweeper. That quote was given to me by a good pastor friend of mine who a preacher at a church. And he was like, when I first took this job, early 2014, I think it was in 2015, he said, hey, look at this. No matter what you're on, you're on top no matter what you do. And so I take pause in that quote because, you know, God's right there with me. You know, this is a great job and this is a great profession. You are glorifying me by doing this. Ultimately, that's the. That's what I strive for.

That's the win for all of us. Whatever that vocation is to your well done, good and faithful servant man, I love it. All right, Josh, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to other people?

Now, I'm going to throw you for a loop. A lot of people give you a book that they love, and I'm going to tell you that book. But I'm going to tell you a book that I've never read. But this book has changed my life. I spoke about being angry and I spoke about having a hard marriage in the beginning. I'm going to recommend, and I do most often, the Power of the Praying Wife. My wife read this book and it changed our marriage. I only know a little bit about it because it's not. I'm not a wife. She said, instead of blaming me for everything and our marriage being my fault, she asked God to help protect our marriage. And by reading that book and going through that book and going through the process of that book, it changed her, which changed me to not be bitter. And so honestly, that's. That's the one book I'm not A big reader, if anyone knows me, take the movie over the book any day. And even on that, I take back in our day, it was Cliff Notes. I take Cliff Notes over reading. But that book by far is the best that has changed my life for the better.

That's such a good answer and fun fact because I don't know when the heck I'm ever going to be able to share this useless piece of knowledge. Stormy O Martian, who wrote that book, was in like a serious relationship with the comedian Steve Martin, like really early on in their careers. Kind of wild. Yeah. Hey, by the way, you mentioned your book. Tell us about your book.

So in all the craziness of Janitor Josh, a good friend of mine, Graham, who turned me onto your podcast, suggested that one of the office ladies. I'LL cut back real quick. One of the office ladies drew me in a comic strip, the Adventures of Janitor Josh. It was a the Daily Life and it was like this five panel comic strip. Showed it to my buddy Graham. He said, you guys should do a children's book. I mentioned it to the one of the office ladies and within two days she had drawn 10 pages of different things I do in the building. Just fun things. It is now up to and it's published now it's up to 31 pages. And then I, not being an author, I had to write this book. And so I basically just explain what the pictures are type of thing. And then it's an interactive children's book. There's one picture where I yell out good morning to one of the other office ladies and make her jump. That lady is my good friend Natalie. And I do it every morning and I get the look and I get the jump and it's in the book. But the interactive part is, should Janitor Josh use inside voices in the building? The answer is yes. You know, janitor shouldn't yell out good morning. And so it was brought up April 5 and it is now on Amazon. It's called the Adventures of Janitor Josh. We're hoping it could be a series. She's going to draw some more this summer. So good, so good.

Adventure Janitor Josh. I can't wait to read it. Hey, Josh, who do you want to hear in this podcast talking about how their faith influences the work they do.

In the world close to me? I want to see an admin of a grade school, of a building or, you know, somewhere maybe a superintendent. That's a tough job that cannot have religion in it. You know, I don't know anyone specifically. I mean, so if there's anyone out there that is a superintendent of a school system because there's so much politics with, you know, religion and schools and so how do they get through their day? They got so much on their head. Yeah. And I love that answer.

Superintendents Write in@jordanrayner.com Hey Josh, what's one thing from our conversation you want to reiterate to our listeners before we sign off?

I said it before. It's when you wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and be kind to that person that's looking back at you in the mirroring. Be kind to that person that's looking back at you in the mirror because that person is probably going to need it the most that day. And that will take you on to be kind to everyone else that you come in contact with. If you can get past your faults and your, your shortfalls and just choose joy just to be kind to that person in the mirror, I love it.

It's a great way to end. Josh, I want to commend you for the extraordinary work you do every day, the good God, like God, dignified work you do every day for the glory of God and the good of others, for showing the love of Christ, your kids, for loving your neighbor as yourself, as you administer the ministry of excellence through your craft. Guys, if you want to keep up with Josh, you could do so@janitorjosh.com buy the calendar, buy the T shirt, buy the book, support he and his family raising these foster kids out there in Oregon. Josh, thank you so, so much for the joy of hanging out with you today, brother.

I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

I love that episode. I hope you guys did. Hey, by the way, this episode came in because a friend recommended that Josh nominate himself for the Mere Christians podcast. Maybe you know somebody, maybe you know a superintendent who you'd love to see on the show. I want to hear from him. Go to jordanraynor.comcontact to tell us all about the mere Christians you know, who are doing interesting work in the world. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in this week.

Week.

I'll see you next time.