Barry's Blog

Doug Holladay, with Park Avenue Equity Partners, first began thinking about the relationship between faith and work while working with a Washington-based ministry geared for business and political leaders. "I really wanted to make a difference, and it seemed at the time that the people I regarded as the most alive to God and making an impact were people in the full-time ministry. I had never met a lawyer or a doctor or an investment banker that said, 'I love what I'm doing, and this is where God's placed me.' "

Holladay gradually became convinced, however, that  though his passion was to integrate faith and business, his impact was limited. "Ministry" would be the last place the integration of faith and work would happen, as it was the "secular" business professionals who were having the greatest influence. Yet surprisingly, these business professionals whose lives had a significant faith component rarely recognized the obvious, that it was they, not the ministers, who were impacting others the most.

This fact was made abundantly clear to him on one occasion, when he was having dinner with a business executive. In an interview with Holladay conducted by Michael Lindsay for his book, "Faith in the Halls of Power," Holladay recounted this story: "I was having dinner with the head of a large oil company...at the Key Bridge Marriott. We were up top in the dining room, looking down the Potomac. It was a lovely, inspiring sight...This guy was telling me how great I was, affirming the fact that God is really using me (in ministry)...Finally, I decided maybe I should ask him about what he does, and I said, 'Well, how's it going with you? Why are you in D.C.?' He said he had dinner with Henry Kissinger last night (and later) met with the President, but he kept changing the subject. Then he looked at me in the eye and said, 'Doug, someday I want to really make a difference and do what you're doing.'

The executive's words stunned Holladay: "It was jarring to me because I realized that I was part of the problem. There's a religious caste system, and if somebody will...fund people in the full-time realm, then they get a pass in their own life. They don't have to really wrestle with questions (of vocation. Christian ministers say to business leaders,) 'If you will fund our ministry, we'll never ask you any questions again about what you're doing'...Basically we don't want business people to be engaged in ministry."

Subsequently, Holladay decided to switch to what he calls the "other side of the table." And as Lindsay reports, he has since held senior positions in the White House, the State Department, and Goldman Sachs, and today runs Park Avenue Equity Partners. Holladay also served as one of the executive producers of the PBS video series, "The Question of God: Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis," based on the critically-acclaimed book by the Harvard doctor, Dr. Armand Nicholi.

So how did we get to this present state of affairs between faith and work? And where did this false dichotomy between the so called "sacred" and "secular" calling come from? Do we really believe it is true that clergy are "paid for being good," while the laity are "good for nothing"?

In his excellent book, The Call, Os Guinness rightly calls such muddled thinking a "Catholic distortion." He writes: "Calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to His summons and service...yet this holistic character of calling has often been distorted to become a form of dualism that elevates the spiritual at the expense of the secular. This distortion may be called the 'Catholic distortion' because it rose in the Catholic era...Protestants, however, cannot afford to be smug. For one thing, countless Protestants have succumbed to the Catholic distortion...the fallacy of the contemporary Protestant term full-time Christian service--as if those not working for churches or Christian organizations are only part-time in the service of Christ."

Into a rigidly hierarchical and spiritually aristocratic world that Martin Luther encountered as an Augustinian monk in early 16th century Germany, Luther recommended the abolition of all orders and the abstention of all vows. Why? Because there was no warrant from the Scriptures for such a clerical contemplative life. But even more telling were these words of Luther:

"The works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they be, do not differ one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks, but that all works are measured before God by faith alone...Indeed, the menial housework of a manservant or maidservant is often more acceptable to God than all the fastings and other works of a monk or priest, because the monk or priest lacks faith." Writing about the "Estate of Marriage" in 1522, Luther, who did much for our recovery of a Biblical sense of calling, observed that "God and the angels smile when a man changes a diaper!"

So what is the role or purpose of faith in the workplace? Or rather, the role of work in the faithplace? In reality, life was never meant to be lived as either secular and sacred, but rather to be lived as an integrated whole. Malcolm Muggeridge was right, "Either all of life is sacred, or none of it is sacred."

Do you want to accept the challenge that will be the integrating dynamic of your entire life? One that will engage your loftiest dreams and aspirations, your most dedicated exertions, your deepest emotions, all your abilities and resources, to the last step you take and the last breath you breathe? Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer His call... 

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow