GreatRidge Station

If you do not subscribe to Comment Magazine or the Think Podcasts from Work Research Foundation, you need to do that. The magazine itself is not cheap, but it will make you think about work and leadership in some radically different ways.

Recently, WRF released a new audio resource entitled “Gospel-based Leadership: The total integration of faith and work” by Dennis Bakke. You can listen to his lecture, recorded at Redeemer University College, here. You can subscribe or download any of their links from the Think Podcasts page.

Mr. Bakke makes some excellent observations about the intrinsic dignity of work. Most significant, in my opinion, is the idea that Christians accepting a job ought to be ordained/recognized/endorsed by their church as an affirmation of the value of work in God’s redemptive plan. Bakke gets that right, in my opinion, and he has the scripture to back it up. You can be sure that this is an idea that I am going to bring forward at my church and with my ministry colleagues at CSF.

With a hat-tip to my LCD (Lovely and Charming Daughter), a link to a site with pictures of the bridge collapse. This is from a Russian site (or someplace that uses the Cyrillic Alphabet), so don’t plan on reading the text unless you are far smarter than I am.

There is a presence to these pictures that is hard to describe, and the shot of the three priests is both striking and moving.

The collapse of the 35W bridge in Minneapolis has raised some interesting questions. Admittedly, it’s a big deal from an infrastructure point of view, and for several families, it is a worst-case scenario.

It has, however, shaken our city far more than it ought to have. Miraculously, the number of victims was startlingly small. The bridge incident has become a “cataclysmic event,” “a disaster of historical proportions,” or “our 9/11″ not because of the victims, but because it has shaken the faith of our community. The bridge, it seems, has been revealed as an object of faith in our community.
As Bob Goudzvaard pointed out nearly 30 years ago, it is possible to turn technology, and even infrastructure, into an idol. When we put more confidence in our bridge-making abilities and put our faith in the trustworthyness of our roads and bridges, we forget God. This is not a new problem; the Psalmist noted:

Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. — Psalm 20:7

Not everyone who crosses a bridge or uses technology is guilty of idolatry, but leaders need to consider where they put their faith. Things decay and fall apart. God does not.
I’ve had to ask myself a couple of questions since the bridge collapse:

• What technology or infrastructure has taken on the role of god in my life? Do I have idols of which I am unaware?
• Do I do the right thing and trust God with the same level of faith and confidence with which I sit on a chair, drive across a bridge, send an e-mail, or float in a boat?

These haunt me, as a leader, because I must understand where I put my confidence before I can ask others to put their confidence in me (see I Corinthians 11:1). Because just like a bridge over the Mississippi, a leader can be no better or more solid than the foundation to which he or she is anchored. We must build–and help others build–on a reliable foundation (see I Corinthians 3:10-14).