Leading from a Christian Worldview

Nancy Pearcey

From: Total Truth (Crossway Books, 2004)

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When Christians talk about the importance of developing a worldview message, they typically mean learning how to argue persuasively against the “isms” of the day. But having a Christian worldview is not just about answering intellectual questions. It also means following biblical principles in the personal and practical spheres of life. Christians can be infected by secular worldviews not only in their beliefs but also in their practices.

For example, a Christian church or ministry may be biblical in its message and yet fail to be biblical in its methods. Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, said that the Lord’s work must be done in the Lord’s way, if it is to have the Lord’s blessing. We must express the truth not only in what we preach but also in how we preach it. A Christian organization may be doing the Lord’s work—but if it is acting on human zeal and willpower, using secular methods of promotion and publicity, without visible love among staff and coworkers, then it is merely another form of human achievement, accomplishing little for the Kingdom of God.

A complete perspective includes both the seen and the unseen aspects of reality. Christians are called not merely to assent intellectually to the existence of both parts of reality but also to function practically on that basis. Day by day, they are to make choices that would make no sense unless the unseen world is just as real as the seen world.

What does this mean in practice? It means we sometimes act in ways that seem irrational to those [who are naturalists], who see only the physical world. It means we do what is right even at great cost, because we are convinced that what we gain in the unseen realm is far greater than what we lose from a worldly perspective.

Sadly, many Christians live much of their lives as though the naturalist were right. They give cognitive assent to the great truths of Scripture, but they make their practical, day-to-day decisions based only on what they can see, hear, measure, and calculate. When confessing their religious beliefs, they sit in the supernaturalist’s chair. But in ordinary life, they walk over and sit in the naturalist’s chair, living as though the supernatural were not real in any practical sense, relying on their own energy, talent, and strategic calculations. They may sincerely want to do the Lord’s work, but they do it in the world’s way—using worldly methods and motivated by worldly desires for success and acclaim.

The Bible calls this living in the “flesh” instead of in the Spirit, and Paul addresses the problem in the book of Galatians: “Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Gal. 3:3). Many believers act as though becoming a Christian were a matter of faith, but being a Christian afterward were a matter of their own drive and willpower. They are striving to be “perfected by the flesh.”

Working in the flesh, they may well produce impressive results in the visible world. Churches and parachurch ministries may generate a great deal of publicity, hold glamorous conferences, attract huge crowds, bring in large donations, produce books and magazines, and wield political influence in Washington. But if that work is done in the flesh, then no matter how successful it appears, it does little to build God’s kingdom. When the Lord’s work is done in merely human wisdom, using human methods, then it is not the Lord’s work any longer.[1]

The only way the church can establish genuine credibility with nonbelievers is by showing them something they cannot explain or duplicate through their own natural, pragmatic methods—something they can explain only by invoking the supernatural.

Gold, Silver, Precious Stones

If we find ourselves thinking [we] can do the Lord’s work in the world’s way, as though worldly weapons were adequate, then we have drastically underestimated the nature of the battle. For the real battle is not in the seen world only, but chiefly in the unseen world. The battle is not “against flesh and blood,” Paul says (Eph. 6:12), and if we try to fight it in the flesh, we will be merely shadowboxing. Sheer activism may bring about results that look impressive to those sitting in the naturalist’s chair, whose only frame of reference is the visible world—but they will not be the results the Lord wants.

We can go so far as to say that if Christians win their battles by worldly methods, then they have really lost.[2] Visible results can be deceptive. In the seen world, we may appear to make a great advance—win professional recognition, attract people to our cause, raise money for our program, distribute tons of literature, win passage of an important bill. But if it was done by humanistic reliance on technical methods, without the leading of the Spirit, then we have accomplished little of value in the unseen world.

The opposite is likewise true: If Christians use the weapons God has ordained—if we lay our talents at His feet, dying to our own pride and ambition, obeying biblical moral principles, empowered by His Spirit, guided by a Christian worldview perspective—then even if by external standards we seem to have lost, we have really won. Outsiders looking on may conclude that we have failed. Even Christian friends and leaders may shake their heads disapprovingly and advise us that we’ve made a mistake. But if we have genuinely given our lives over to God’s purposes and are being led by Him, then we have won a battle in the unseen world.

An old spiritual classic says the Christian life really begins when we understand by hard experience that “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). It’s a verse many of us have memorized and can quote at the drop of a hat. But it rarely becomes real in practice until we encounter an overwhelming crisis that pushes us to the end of our own resources.

When life ends and we stand at the believers’ judgment described in 1 Corinthians 3, some of our most successful and impressive projects may prove to be nothing but wood, hay, and stubble—devoured by the flames. But the activities that were truly led and empowered by God, in obedience to His truth, whether the results were visible or not, will sparkle as gold, silver, and precious stones. And God will set them as jewels in our heavenly crown.

Results Guaranteed

Looking back over the history of evangelicalism [covered in previous chapters], we can understand better why there has been a strong temptation to split belief from practice—to do the Lord’s work but in the world’s way…

This explains why many Christian churches and ministries today continue to treat areas like business, marketing, and management as essentially neutral—technical fields where the latest techniques can simply be plugged into their own programs, without subjecting them to critique from a Christian worldview perspective. Start the business meeting with prayer, by all means, but then employ all the up-to-date strategies learned in secular graduate schools. Douglas Sloan calls this “the inner modernization of evangelicalism.”[3] That is, we have resisted modernism in our theology but have largely accepted modernism in our practices. We want to employ the latest techniques and quantitative methods, where the results can be calculated and predicted.

For example, a Christian ministry once hired a young man who had just received his master’s degree in marketing to head up its fundraising department. Immediately he set about implementing the standard techniques he had learned in his courses, including a sharp increase in the number of fundraising letters sent out. When other staff members questioned the new strategy, asking whether increased mailings were a good use of funds given sacrificially to the ministry, his response was, but this works. Brandishing graphs and studies, he said: “Statistics show that if you send out X number of letters, you will get Y rate of return—guaranteed.”[4]

But if any secular organization can achieve the same results using the same “guaranteed” methods, where is the witness to God’s existence? How does relying on statistically reliable patterns persuade a watching world that God is at work?

Doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way means forging a biblical perspective even on the practical aspects of running an organization, instead of relying on mechanical formulas derived from naturalistic assumptions. We may reject naturalism as a philosophy, but if our work is driven by the rationalized methods we have learned from the world, then we are naturalists in practice, no matter what we claim to believe.

“The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism,” Schaeffer writes—or even hot-button social issues like evolution, abortion, radical feminism, or homosexual rights. The primary threat to the church is the “tendency to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than the Spirit.” Many church leaders crave a “big name,” he continues: They “stand on the backs of others” in order to achieve power, influence, and reputation—instead of exhibiting the humility of the Master who washed His disciples’ feet. They “ape the world” in its publicity and marketing techniques, manipulating people’s emotions to induce them to give more money.[5] No wonder outsiders see little in the church that cannot be explained by ordinary sociological forces and principles of business management. And no wonder they find our message unconvincing.

Marketing the Message

What are some examples of “aping the world”? In their marketing strategies, many Christian organizations borrow heavily from commercial enterprises, creating idealized images of their “product” to motivate people to “buy” it. For a familiar example, think of the ubiquitous fundraising letters that sound like they were all written by the same person—because they were ghostwritten by staffers all trained in the same techniques. Each letter creates a crisis mentality that is enhanced by melodramatic anecdotes, fake highlighting in the margins, and a signature produced by a machine. Often a little card is enclosed announcing a premium, a gimmick to induce us to reach for our checkbooks.

Where is the authenticity in all this? The name of a ministry leader appears at the bottom of the letter, but clearly it is not an authentic message from that person. It was produced by a committee of writers, marketers, and fund development professionals, carefully calculated to elicit a response. As often as not, the crisis is half-manufactured and the anecdotes half-fictionalized for greater emotional impact. A young man who traveled on staff with a respected Christian leader once told me that when their experiences were written up later as fundraising anecdotes, the stories were so heavily slanted, they were “practically unrecognizable to anyone who was actually there.”

Should we shrug this off as benign deception? Or is it a serious moral failing that could spread corruption through an entire ministry? Can we compromise the truth without undermining our effectiveness for the Lord?

Where is our passion for truth and authenticity? Where is our respect for the reader as a person made in the image of God, not a mass of emotions to be manipulated? In short, where is a Christian worldview perspective on marketing and fundraising? This is just as important as framing a worldview perspective on the “isms” of our day.

Yet its importance is often overlooked in discussions of Christian worldview. Because evangelicals have historically accepted methodological naturalism … in their minds there is no distinctively Christian perspective in fields like marketing and management—and thus they have uncritically accepted whatever methods and techniques the secular world develops. In doing so, however, they have unwittingly limited their own thinking to the conceptual categories allowed within naturalism. They have absorbed what H. Richard Niebuhr calls a “depersonalized and disenchanted” perspective that lacks even the conceptual vocabulary to deal adequately with the human person. In this naturalistic framework, persons become merely “objects for objective manipulation in the market and the political arena.”[6] Though Christians would never accept naturalism as a philosophy, many have absorbed a naturalistic approach to marketing, adopting techniques that treat a target audience essentially as passive “consumers” to be manipulated into buying a “product.”

More Money, More Ministry

I once addressed a group of Christian graduate students earning advanced degrees from some of the nation’s top universities in fields like philosophy, literature, and political theory. When I raised the need to develop a Christian worldview approach to practical fields as well, like business and marketing, they were startled. Having defined worldview study in terms of ideas, they had never even considered its relation to practical areas. Yet practical fields are not religiously neutral; they are shaped by fundamental assumptions about reality just as much as any other area of life.

By overlooking this fact, many ministry leaders have uncritically absorbed a nonbiblical view of business and success. “They are deeply infused with an American capitalist culture concerning the gospel,” writes historian Joel Carpenter. They unconsciously assume “that God measures success by the numbers, that more money means more ministry, which means more success for God’s kingdom. So they tend to measure their own success as disciples and servants of the Lord by the size of their ministry.”[7]

Do we recognize a pattern here? We are witnessing history come home to roost…The pragmatic attitude of using whatever works…The habit of borrowing marketing techniques from the commercial world. The celebrity style of leadership. The focus on measurable results.

“The nonprofit economy has become more like the for-profit world,” writes Thomas Berg. Religious fundraising has become “extremely fast-paced and sophisticated, relying more and more on high technology [and] carefully targeted direct-mail campaigns.”[8] Many large religious organizations have entire departments of trained and credentialed marketers to create a constant flow of fundraising letters and promotionals. They conduct marketing surveys on how to position their “product” better. They organize focus groups to determine where to aim their efforts. They angle for articles and profiles in Christian magazines. They hire ghostwriters to write copy under the leader’s name for columns, newsletters, daily devotionals, and websites. The overriding question is not, “Is this morally and spiritually right?” but rather, “Will it sell?”

This is the ultimate danger of doing the Lord’s work in the flesh: It may eventually lead to outright sin. We can be so driven by ministry goals that we are blinded to the use of unethical methods. Without really thinking, we begin to stretch the truth to enhance our image and attract donors. A former high-ranking executive at a parachurch organization told me he had resigned after discovering an internal “culture of lying”—a regular pattern of shading the truth and cutting ethical corners in order to look better and win influence—all for the good of the ministry, of course. It is a modern form of thinking we can “speak lies in the name of the Lord” (Zech. 13:3).

Imagine that you were to wake up tomorrow morning, Schaeffer says, and that by some magic, everything the Bible teaches about prayer and the empowering of the Holy Spirit was gone—it was erased from history and had never been said. Would that make any difference in practice in the way we run our churches and organizations? The tragic fact, Schaeffer says, is that in many Christian organizations, “there would be no difference whatsoever.”[9]

Operating Instructions

The same contradictory pattern often emerges in the way Christian churches and organizations function—in their management of the workplace itself, treatment of employees, and leadership style. Many groups are Christian in what they profess but not in the way they operate.

Consider, for example, ministries that demand excessively long hours on the job. This common practice produces a line of destructive domino effects: It breaks up marriages, erodes family life, and eliminates outside sources of renewal, like involvement in a local church. Cut off from external emotional resources, a person often becomes overdependent on relationships at work and thus vulnerable to control and manipulation.

After working eight years in the U.S. Congress, a talented office manager switched to an executive position at a Christian parachurch ministry. “I wanted to get away from the typical congressional office, where everyone was so focused on the Big Name politician,” she told me. “The staff was expected to sacrifice their personal lives, their families, their professional identities.” And she added, “I hate to use the language of the recovery movement, but many staff really had codependent relationships with their member of Congress. They lived derivative lives, feeding off his fame and public identity.”

When she started her new job, however, she was disappointed to discover exactly the same dynamics at the parachurch ministry. “Staff members were expected to live for the ministry—work long hours, have no outside life, make all their social relationships within the organization. It was the same codependent relationship with a Big Name.” The emotionally unhealthy pattern was all too recognizable, and wisely she left the new position after only two months.

These patterns can be physically unhealthy as well, producing stress-related ailments that result in absenteeism and reduced productivity. An executive at a Washington think tank once worked at a Christian ministry where the atmosphere was so negative that he developed stress-related physical symptoms. When he sought medical treatment, the doctor said, “Why is it that everyone I see with this particular ailment works at that same ministry?”

From Good to Great

Happily, there are many positive counter-examples, and a study done in 2003 by the Best Christian Workplaces Institute[10] identified several of them. The study uncovered forty organizations that rank highest in worker satisfaction. It found that the most effective leaders are those who regard workers as part of their mission, not merely as a means to larger goals. Instead of asking, What can this person do for my ministry? they ask, What can I do to help this person develop spiritually and professionally?

In the top organizations, the study found, employees consistently described their leaders in terms like humble, approachable, caring, and godly. At Phoenix Seminary, President Darryl DelHousaye is known for asking his staff, “How can I help you? How can I bless you? How can I help you succeed?”[11] The best organizations regard the nurturing of their own employees as a spiritual mandate.

At Whitworth College, another top organization identified in the study, President Bill Robinson says, “I am trying to lead ‘from amongst’.” The reference is to John 1:14 (“the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, . . . full of grace and truth”). Robinson has a habit of wandering into the dining hall unannounced and sitting down with students to find out what they think of the college. “I hope it can be said of me that I dwelt among the people, bringing grace and speaking truth.”[12]

Examples like these give concrete evidence that servant leadership is not an abstract ideal; it is completely practical and workable. Having a Christian worldview means being utterly convinced that biblical principles are not only true but also work better in the grit and grime of the real world.[13]

Even secular businesses are starting to recognize these principles. The best-seller Good to Great, popular in Christian management circles these days, is based on a study of business leaders who started with a good business but turned it into a great one, propelling it to the highest echelons of success. Contrary to the common stereotype, says author Jim Collins, these successful leaders “are not charismatic, nor are they celebrities.” They are not “hard charging” leaders who feel they have to whip up employees to perform. Instead they are humble, modest, even self-effacing people, who share decision making with their staff.[14] One of the most damaging trends in recent history has been the tendency to select dazzling celebrity leaders, Collins concludes. It’s a strategy that typically creates mediocre businesses, which eventually go into decline.

Clearly, biblical principles are not just Sunday school pieties. Because they are true to the real world, they actually work better in making people and companies more productive.

Loving Enough to Confront

Hard as it may be to believe, Christians sometimes exploit their workers… denying them recognition for their God-given gifts. It can happen among coworkers—when someone discusses an idea with a colleague, who then presents it to the boss as his own. It can happen when a leader or supervisor takes credit for the success of a program without mentioning the creative work of team members. Or it can happen when a boss claims authorship of a work written by a staff writer. In every case, the offender is essentially co-opting someone else’s spiritual gifts and calling by claiming them as his own.

It is scandalous that Christian ministries and publishing houses often turn a blind eye to this form of deception—especially when it involves top-selling names. Not long ago an editor at a major Christian publishing house told me that he had managed to get a Big Name to write a foreword to a forthcoming book—then added casually, “But of course he didn’t really write it.”

Clearly, any practice that deceives the public ought to be off-limits—no matter how much money it brings in for the ministry. “Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice” (Prov. 16:8). There is nothing shameful in hiring someone to do things that you cannot do for yourself, says top-ranking journalist David Aikman. Hiring a professional writer to help you is like hiring an accountant to do your tax returns. But it is morally wrong to pretend to the public that you wrote something yourself when you did not.[15] When a Christian organization violates ethical principles in order to get results, it cannot expect God to use those results. We cannot “structure sin into our method of doing business” (to use a phrase my husband once coined), and then expect God to bless it.

No Little People

The operative principle is that each member in the Body of Christ has been given unique gifts—and the Body as a whole functions best when each is recognized, honored, and allowed to flourish. A Christian organization should aim to cultivate each worker’s gifts, not stifle them or build up leaders at the expense of others. As Schaeffer put it, “with God there are no little people”—which means we cannot treat anyone as a mere means to other goals.[16]

If you want to know what a Christian leader is really like, don’t ask his peers or board members or adoring fans. Ask how he treats his support staff. That is a lesson Jerram Barrs presses upon seminary students at the Francis Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Seminary. “When I come to visit your church someday, I will not ask people about what a great preacher or leader you are,” Barrs says. “Rather I will talk to the secretaries, the office staff, the janitors and cleaners and ask them what it is like to work with you. That will tell me far more about the kind of ministry taking place in the church, and whether you are the kind of leader Christ desires for His Church.”[17]

To use biblical language, God charges shepherds (whether in the pulpit or in other forms of leadership) to feed the sheep, not to fleece them. He thunders against the leaders of ancient Israel: “You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, and slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep” (Ezek. 34:3). Bad shepherds are those who exploit other people’s gifts and talents to meet their own needs and advance their own agendas, instead of asking what is good for the sheep themselves.

Paul was scrupulous in refusing to take credit for what others had accomplished: “We do not boast . . . in the labors of others” (2 Cor. 10:15). In the Body of Christ, the eye is not the ear (1 Cor. 12:14ff.), and it should not pretend to be, by claiming the ear’s work as its own.

We can take a lesson from the political realm, where it is now standard for people to give public recognition to speechwriters. Everyone knows that President Bush’s main speechwriter is Michael Gerson, because there have been several magazine and newspaper profiles about him. There is no attempt to hide the fact. A few years ago, I went to hear a lecture by Senator Rick Santorum at the Heritage Foundation. “Before I begin,” he said, “I want to thank the two people on my staff, Mark Rodgers and Sydney Leach, who did the research for this lecture and wrote it.” He then proceeded to deliver the lecture.[18] There are many ways to speak truthfully in order to build up those around us.

The other side of the coin is that it is quite proper for members of the Body to claim ownership of their own work. Psalm 95:5 is a key verse in a biblical defense of private property: “The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.” The implication is that the earth belongs to the Lord because He made it. The same principle applies to humans, who are made in God’s image: What we create belongs to us. Taking responsibility for our own work—accepting both the credit and the blame, the benefits and the losses—is a crucial element in human dignity. Our work is one of the most important ways we express our inner self and character in external form—it is a principal “fruit” by which others can know who we really are. That is why it is profoundly dehumanizing to separate a person from the “fruit” of his work. Time and again in Scripture, a sign of God’s blessing is that “you will eat the fruit of your own labor,” whereas a sign of His chastisement is that “others will eat what you have planted” (for example, Deut. 28:30; Mic. 6:15; Mic. 4:4; Ps. 128:2). In the New Testament, Paul advises, “Let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor” (Gal. 6:4).

The consequences of exploitive and deceptive practices ripple in ever-widening circles. There are many “little people” whom God has gifted with an important message or ministry that could benefit a wider segment of the church—if their work were properly recognized and better known. But who can compete with the head of an organization with the resources to hire half a dozen writers, editors, and PR professionals to put out material under a celebrity name? A larger-than-life standard is set up that attracts financial and other forms of support from donors and foundations that might otherwise have gone to worthier causes. The church as a whole then loses the benefit of their gifts. The purpose in assigning proper credit is to identify gifts within the Body of Christ, for the sake of more effective ministry.

Real Leaders Serve

When Kurt Senske was only thirty-six years old, he took over leadership of a company that was losing money rapidly. Yet in only three years, he pulled together a team that turned the company around. The key to their success? “We followed sound Christian leadership strategies that included incorporating the principles of servant leadership from the bottom up, creating a healthy culture that valued its employees.”

What is a servant leader? It is someone who, in Senske’s words, refuses to use people as means to an end—who always asks, “Am I building people up, or am I building myself up and merely using those around me?” A servant leader creates an atmosphere of “transparency” in which all relevant information is shared openly, so that everyone has an opportunity to make responsible decisions. Finally, a servant leader lets go of command-and-control methods, and creates a culture that allows everyone to grow into leaders, stretching their own God-given talents.[19]

None of these biblical principles were merely fine phrases for Senske. He devoted months of sweat and prayer and sleepless nights to making them real. And his efforts paid off in terms of business success.

Every Christian needs to be equally convinced that biblical principles are true not only in some abstract sense but in the reality of our work, business, and personal lives. If we become aware that a ministry or business is violating biblical principles, we need to stop being enablers and start calling people to accountability—even if it means paying a price. An employee who takes a stand may not ultimately succeed in changing anything. In fact, he may run the risk of losing his job. The church’s task is to make sure that he does not bear that risk alone. As Lesslie Newbigin writes, fellow Christians should stand ready to support those who speak the truth to power and pay a price for it, even providing financial assistance to those whose moral courage costs them their livelihood.[20]

We must never forget that going along with unbiblical practices is not only wrong, it is unloving. Acquiescing in an unjust situation typically stems not from love but from fear of possible negative repercussions. If we aspire to a godly, holy love for others, we must be willing to take the risk and practice loving confrontation.

There is too much at stake to be complacent. If you and I do not have the courage to confront worldly and sinful practices in our own ranks, what makes us think we will have the courage to stand against powerful secular leaders? If we cannot run with the footmen, we are fooling ourselves to imagine we will be able to run with the horses (see Jer. 12:5). Only by sitting in the supernaturalist’s chair will we have the courage to do what’s right even when it costs.

Excerpted from Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcey, copyright 2004, pages 361-376.  Used by permission of Crossway Books, a ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois 60187, www.crossway.com.  Download for personal use only. Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright (c) 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.  Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Nancy Pearcey is the Francis A. Schaeffer scholar at the World Journalism Institute where she teaches a worldview course based on the study guide edition of her book Total Truth, which won the 2005 ECPA Gold Medallion Award for best book in the category of Christianity and Society. She is also editor-at-large of The Pearcey Report (www.pearceyreport.com).