Chapter One

Welcome

Like the people we interviewed in our survey of businesspeople and clergy, you are probably looking for ways to live your Christian beliefs and values in every part of your life. As Church on Sunday, Work on Monday makes very clear, we believe that the challenge of fusing faith and work is both important and difficult from a conceptual and experiential point of view. We offer this study and discussion guide as a framework to help you hold to the important and exciting exploration you are now beginning.

You do not have to join a group to make new discoveries. As an individual, you can use this study guide to help clarify your own thinking about integrating religion and business. Beyond this, however, we strongly urge you to undertake this challenge in community . This step is especially critical at a time when many people have already undertaken serious spiritual quests and are now looking for resources to go further. The book and this guide can help you create the right setting and conceptual openness for successfully engaging in a common exploration of what Christianity means for today's businessperson. In so doing, you will in some sense "live the book"--developing your ability to provide effective, mutual support, offering and entertaining diverse insights, and summoning the collective energy to tackle business problems in a way that reflects the ideals of Christianity. It has been our experience that a discussion group--composed of some combination of interested friends, family, business associates, professionals, fellow congregants, and clergy--can be a fertile ground for generating and exploring ideas and making new connections, even (perhaps especially) if their ideas are different from your own.

We hope you will use this guide as a way to begin talking and thinking about the many issues we have raised in Church on Sunday, Work on Monday . The book presents a picture of the significant gap that exists today between life at church and life at work, the persistent misunderstandings and miscommunications that divide clergy and businesspeople, and some of the efforts that are being made to repair and strengthen the bond between the two. This guide suggests ways you can join these efforts by reflecting on important issues, discussing them with others, and using these insights to formulate plans of action that will not only make the material meaningful, but may perhaps initiate personal and societal transformation.

As you begin to explore your own attitudes, listen to and hear the attitudes of others and engage in dialogue, conflict, and resolution. You will likely find that some of the same problems we report in the book arise naturally in your group. People get angry, people don't understand. People say, "I question whether this other person is truly capable of understanding business. I question whether this other person is truly capable of understanding Christianity." Stick with it! You're exploring territory that is emotionally and intellectually charged, and you are going to be challenging your unconscious assumptions as well as some of your cherished beliefs. Welcome this opportunity to grapple with the question of creating an actively engaged faith and to find your own path toward integrating the worlds of faith and work.

Forming Your Study and Discussion Group

The formation of your discussion group is both paramount and a true challenge. When a group of seekers gathers to know God and discover how their Christian beliefs might be applied to the conduct and experience of business, it can be the "tipping point" that will cause your faith to "spill over" into every part of your daily life, and especially into your work. But group dynamics can also turn tipping point into tripping point. Please read Church on Sunday, Work on Monday carefully before starting. As the book makes strikingly clear, it is easy to get stuck in these discussions. To help your group travel successfully around potential potholes, it is important to put serious thought into how you form your group.

Right now-- before you start making plans-- take some time to reflect on your personal goals regarding your faith and business life . People will have very different reasons for wanting to form or join a group. Here are some of the things people we interviewed were seeking:

• Personal support to carry out a difficult course of action when they were already certain about what their religion demanded but couldn't quite get the strength to carry it out

• Ongoing fellowship and the chance to share expertise on problems held in common

• A desire to be better known in their church community for who they were as businesspeople

• General knowledge of religious wisdom texts and guidance on how to make the crossover work

• Information about how others apply their faith

• New perspectives on work as seen through a religious lens

• New cognitive resources for worship and for business change

• Healing in the face of a work life emptied of spiritual content

• The formation of collective power to accomplish social goals

• A place to air their doubts about business and about religion

• A new model of business behavior

Now ask yourself this: What do you most want to get out of a discussion on these issues? Are you looking for diverse viewpoints or similar viewpoints? Your study and discussion group is an opportunity to explore the dimensions of familiar problems, but it is also an opportunity to hear new perspectives--from others as well as yourself. Make space in your group for unfamiliar voices, innovative ideas, new directions, and unexpected connections.

We have seen study and discussion groups succeed splendidly, but we have also seen them reach dead ends--not because the people in the groups were doing something "wrong," but because they plunged into discussion without adequate planning. Please plan carefully, giving thought to the following questions.

What kinds of people do we want in the group?

Deliberate beforehand on the composition of your group. As we noted, many different types of people will be interested in this discussion, including the primary groups identified in the book: businesspeople, clergy, and spouses.

How diverse should the participants be? There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. An exclusive group--of CEOs or middle-managers or fellow congregants or businesspeople and spouses or pastors--will naturally tend to share the same types of problems. Although a homogenous group of this sort can make communication simpler, you probably won't hear the very perspectives and alternative experiences that might truly enlarge your point of view. On the other hand, it may be easier to get your own point of view on the table for thoughtful response when you are talking to people who "understand the territory."

If you do choose to limit your group to one profession, you also need to think about whether you will limit it to people on the same level of professional accomplishment or invite members with diverse levels of responsibility. Again, there are obvious advantages in diversity, but in this case diversity may backfire: differences in worldly power can promote suspicion rather than trust. Is the CEO using his or her power to stifle discussion? Is the pastor showing favorites based on people's views or status? Is the CEO being "used" by others in the group seeking special business favors? Watch out for these assumptions, which work like silent contracts between participants. Use this opportunity to think about the composition of the group, and air these issues with potential participants in advance.

Pay attention also to the question of gender diversity. Will you have men and women or a single-sex group? Will spouses attend together, or will they meet separately? Much of your decision, of course, will depend on your particular needs and situation. The point is to pay attention to potential issues that may arise from the composition of your group and plan accordingly. If, for example, you have a couples group, those who do not work for pay outside the household may find it more difficult to enter the discussion. Special attention needs to be paid to ensure that their voices are equally important in the group.

Allow the possibility of altering the group's composition for some discussions. You may want to form smaller breakout groups, composed of people in more or less similar situations, to talk about the most sensitive issues.

How many people will be in the group?

The optimum size for small-group discussion is between six and twelve people. Your group may be larger or smaller than this. For example, if you are using this book at home, only you and your partner may be involved, or you may want to invite several like-minded couples to join you in discussion. If you are planning a church-based study group, more people may want to join. If you find yourself with too many participants, consider dividing into smaller groups for discussion and meeting in the large groups to share your small-group insights.

How will invitations be issued?

Forming a group on business and faith clearly calls for leadership. Being willing to take on this responsibility is great. Keep in mind, however, that there is a danger in overwhelming the process with your own enthusiastic leadership at the start. Forming the group may be your idea to begin with, but in the end the group will belong equally to each member. It's a good idea to set the stage for that on first contact.

The way in which you choose to issue invitations will signal how power will be shared in the group. If you call everyone personally, this tends to suggest that it's "your" group, especially if you are a person in a position of power, in which case people who are not really interested may even feel compelled to join. Others may say yes out of interest, but feel resentful or powerless to suggest improvements or feedback once the process is under way. Such feelings will undermine honest and open participation.

We have found a few simple ways to diffuse this possibility. First, you might find a neutral third party who will agree to explain the concept and invite people to join. Or you might invite the first two people, have them call the next two or three people, and so on--in effect, an invitation tree. Or you might adopt a dual-founder setup, with the responsibility for convening and hosting shared by the entire group once it has formed. In the right situation, you might put up a flyer asking interested people to sign up for more information.

Who will host the group?

Successful discussion depends on enough leadership to hold the group to a focused conversation, and enough flexibility and sense of experimentation to invite new thinking.

You will need to find a way to truly engage everyone on an equal level, and your choice of host can make all the difference. As with issuing the invitations, if a CEO hosts the meeting, his or her voice and power can be so large that people may feel they have to defer. If a pastor hosts the meeting, congregants may feel uncomfortable expressing frank questions about business or the church. If congregants host the meeting, and your group is composed mainly of congregants, you may want to schedule private time to ask for your pastor's input on how he or she feels it is going.

You don't have to limit yourself to a single host or discussion leader. Consider having a pastor and a businessperson cohost the session or a pastor, a businessperson, and an academic to ensure that all points of view are given equal time. You may also decide on a less-formal structure, where leadership passes from person to person each week.

Where will meetings be held?

It can be a good idea to hold your first meeting in a fairly formal place to signal the importance of the undertaking and your own endorsement and sponsorship. After the first time, however, you will probably want a neutral and less-formal meeting space.

The type of meeting space you choose will influence the tone of your meetings. If you are the host, ask yourself how strongly you want to underscore the symbols of your own power. Again, if you are a CEO, and you hold a lunch meeting of executives at your corporation's boardroom lunch table, you are sending a strong message of authority and hospitality. A more neutral setting would be a quiet room in a mutually agreed-on place: a restaurant or a study room, for example. Similarly, if you are a pastor and announce that meetings well be held in your office, the balance of power tips your way. Holding the meeting in your church guildroom signals your intention to be inclusive.

Depending on the makeup of your group, you may decide to hold meetings in one or more of your homes, or to rotate meeting places. It is also possible to hold these sessions during a retreat.

How long will meetings last?

Experience has shown us that the optimum length for these study and discussion meetings is about ninety minutes. Anything short of this doesn't leave enough time for discussion, and most people lose concentration by the time the two-hour mark rolls around. If you're doing a weekend retreat or a two- or three-weekend retreat, divide sessions by chapter and hold each session for ninety minutes.

Some groups are more reflective than others. Flexibility is key. Check in with each other periodically to see if you should adjust the balance of time at each meeting. If you find that your group is constantly commenting that there's "not enough time" to fully explore a chapter or to report back and assess the action assignments, then take an extra session to catch up, or schedule two meetings for the next chapter.

Setting Ground Rules for Discussion

Most people are familiar with meeting formats--what works and what doesn't work, what galvanizes a group, and what causes attention to stray. Your group is meeting for study and discussion--it should be closer in tone to a book group than to a PowerPoint presentation, a lecture, or a sermon. You will not need Roberts' Rules of Order here! The point is to look inside for your own ideas and bring them into an informed conversation with others. This way the discussion can help you challenge your view with deeper religious perspective and can provide support for practical insights. A successful discussion process strives to reach a delicate balance between challenging familiar assumptions and developing consensus on ways to move toward integration. To avoid frustrating digressions or miscommunication, it pays to agree at the outset about the ground rules for discussion.

At your first meeting, allow members time to introduce themselves and then initiate discussion about ground rules for future meetings. Will you be able to interrupt each other? Will someone be taking notes? Will you begin and end the meeting with a prayer? Ask for all members of the group to give input. This is a great opportunity to begin talking with one another about topics that are less emotionally charged and controversial than those you will be getting into as the weeks go on.

Make sure to touch base on the following issues. Write down the decisions on which you all agree.

Agree on How Meetings Will Be Structured

You can follow the structure suggested in this guide nearly word for word or take its components and add in the special practices of your religious tradition, such as a moment of meditation, prayer, or Bible reading. We strongly urge you to take all the suggestions here into consideration but also to experiment. You are engaging in a spiritual inquiry for which there are no airtight models. The conditions of modern business have changed so radically, and expression of American religion has become so much more diverse, that it is important to stay open to new paths of discernment that interest you and the group. That can include a return to foundational concepts within Christianity itself as well as the more personalized, experiential forms of worship that are developing within the new spirituality programs.

Beginning with the second meeting, it's a good idea to start with a "check-in," where each member gets a chance to report on his or her experience with the previous week's action question and reflection question (described in Part Two of this guide). Then you can move on to the discussion question, followed by the group action questions. Consider the personal action to be homework for the next session.

Many groups add other pieces that enhance a sense of religious community experience. You may want to begin or end with a prayer, or bring your faith into the group in some other way. If the group is multidenominational, make time for everyone's frame of reference. You may even want to develop a special symbol for your effort, to remind the group of its intention to fuse business and faith.

Again, make sure each person shapes the meeting in some way. For example, each week group members might bring a symbol from their own work life, read a Bible passage, lead an opening prayer, and so on.

Set Clear Goals

Address the goals of the group right from the beginning. Why are you there as a group?

For example, your goal might be to gain clarity on some of the ethical issues faced in business; to heighten understanding of essential career choices; or to grapple with problems that take you further from your knowledge of God, such as understanding how to effectively deal with questions of money. Some people might have a deep need to establish a feeling of vocation; others may want to create strategies to balance work and family in a way that's consistent with their faith practice. Your group may be an entry point for a church that's having trouble strategizing on business issues--how much someone should be paid, whether to invest in low-income housing--before decisions are made. Some people may be looking for a sense of community within the workplace or a personal coaching partner. In all cases, you will be looking at an aspect of economic engagement where the fusion of religious and business values feels incomplete.

Brainstorm about your goals at the first meeting. Just speak them out and write them down, without censorship. Then review your list, find the goals you have in common, and decide which of those your group will explore. One or two goals will probably stand out as urgent questions. Formulate your goals into very concrete language and write them down. As the group continues to meet, revisit your goals from time to time to make sure you are staying on track.

Give Everyone an Equal Voice

Again, encourage each person to be a lively, equal, and active participant in the group. Even with the best of intentions, the tone of discussion and your ability to communicate can quickly be derailed unless everyone has an equal voice and is allowed to bring in their unique perspective. Remember, if the language begins to create uncomfortable stereotypes about reforming either profession, back off. If you feel that the contributions are not sufficiently based on an understanding of salient facts, suggest specific facts that you think should be considered.

Encourage Effective Communication

As the book makes clear, we discovered that many discussions are stifled by the impression that others "just don't understand" the business or religious basics that you feel are obvious. Rather than stifle these thoughts, it is important to give them oxygen. Observations in the book and the questions in the study guide will help you formulate your concerns in ways that allow them to be aired without destroying the group's sense of mutual respect and trust. Make clear rules for communication to help you avoid the predictable pitfalls.

• Always speak from your personal experience and put your remarks in context. Avoid generalized lionizing or attacks on "the system."

• Avoid beginning your contribution with an assertion of institutional territoriality over the right to dictate a solution.

• Build on each others' remarks. Many people have a sentence about business and faith, but not a paragraph. When you hear a comment with which you strongly agree or disagree, try to take its implications further. Find an analogous example from your own experience and share your conclusions.

• Work from religious concepts that express the personal opportunity to fuse faith and work: calling, sense of justice, sacred awareness. You will not get far if most of your discussion falls into a negative groove about the past evils of business or church.

• Do your best to avoid unintentionally alienating your opposite number in the group. If you are a member of the clergy, stay away from the "Four P's": profit, poverty, polemics, and proselytizing. If you are a businessperson, steer clear of platitudes on "doing good to do well," Jack Welch's sainthood, and making it sound as if Jesus was essentially about business activity devoid of consideration of other aspects of life.

• Check for inherent differences accountable to worldview (see especially Chapter Six of Church on Sunday, Work on Monday for a discussion of worldview differences): critical idealism versus practical optimism, subtractive versus additive approaches to securing a moral marketplace, and personal resonance toward images of strength or weakness.

• Agree on a phrase members can use when they want to call a time out from discussion to explore a misunderstanding.

Don't Assume You Understand What Others Are Saying

As you know from reading the book, people may use the same words, but they may intend to convey completely different meanings! Pay attention, listen for hidden subtexts, and test how your own understandings may be limiting your desire or ability to understand. If you hear things that make you uncomfortable, reserve judgment. Keep listening. If you really don't understand, maybe that's a point for discussion.

Try to avoid stereotyping the other side, and don't stereotype yourself either. Always speak from your heart about what you are struggling with professionally. Concrete examples (of actions and of feelings) from your own experience are extremely helpful in this process.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Church on Sunday, Work on Monday by Laura Nash and Scotty McLennan with Naomi Lucks. Copyright © 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Church on Sunday, Work on Monday : A Guide to Reflection

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