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12: This Time Tomorrow (Justin Mertes of Made to Flourish) · Finding God at Work

0:03
(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, I'm Chris.
0:08
This is Finding God at Work.
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Just a reminder that Finding God at Work
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isn't just a podcast.
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It's also an online course.
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Check it out at findinggodatwork.org.
0:26
Our current series is A Mysterious Business, bringing
0:30
ministry and marketplace wisdom together.
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And today we have a special guest with
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us, Justin Mertes.
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He is the director of program engagement at
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a ministry called Made to Flourish.
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And he also says he is a proudly
0:43
twice-failed entrepreneur with five young kids and
0:46
even more chickens.
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Justin, thanks for being with us today.
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Thanks Chris for having me.
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Looking forward to spending some time together.
0:53
So I know that the question or the
0:56
bio I just introduced will make people ask
0:58
the question, what's the story of the twice
1:00
-failed entrepreneur?
1:01
Well, I will keep it very short.
1:04
Suffice it to say there was a time
1:06
that a group of us made an app
1:08
that was meant to help people manage their
1:11
quotes.
1:12
And it was a wonderful simple app that
1:15
grew and grew and people kept using it.
1:19
And we had associated all of our business
1:23
with an email that we hadn't checked in
1:24
a while.
1:25
And so we had our database on Blue
1:27
Ocean and our credit card did not get
1:29
updated.
1:30
And Blue Ocean reached out and said, hey,
1:33
you need to, if you're going to use
1:34
this database, got to update your payment records.
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And we didn't.
1:38
And they gave us warning after warning after
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warning.
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And we never checked that email.
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And then one day, all data gone completely.
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Oh my goodness.
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That's one.
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And then another, and that was more of
1:48
a side idea.
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And then another one was, I left a
1:54
role in the software world to be co
1:57
-founder of a multimedia startup called Parable, where
2:01
we helped grandparents and older adults pass on
2:06
their stories and their legacy via high quality
2:08
video for future generations.
2:11
And that did not make it in the
2:13
market.
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Just because you have a valuation and you
2:16
know your ICP and you've done your business
2:17
model canvas, all the things that doesn't mean
2:19
that you have buying customers.
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So after many months of that and then
2:26
going through our family savings, as many entrepreneurs
2:29
have done, we said it's time to look
2:31
elsewhere.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Well, we were grateful for the fruit of
2:36
failure.
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That's right.
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One of the big themes in the stories
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that we share on this podcast.
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So one of the fruits of those failures
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is you've ended up at Made to Flourish.
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That's right.
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That's absolutely right.
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Tell us more about what Made to Flourish
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is.
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I'm like a Made to Flourish fanboy, but
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I think a lot of my listeners don't
2:55
know what it is.
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Well, I'm happy to talk about Made to
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Flourish.
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Made to Flourish is a national nonprofit based
3:01
in Kansas City, the Kansas City metro area.
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And we empower pastors and their churches to
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integrate faith and work and economic wisdom for
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the flourishing of their communities.
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We were born out of a church where
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the senior pastor, Tom Nelson, went through a
3:21
breakthrough moment in his own study of scripture
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where he realized that he had been committing
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what he called pastoral malpractice.
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That is, he confessed to his congregation that
3:31
he was spending the majority of his time
3:33
as a pastor focused on the slimmest minority
3:37
of his congregants' time.
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That is how they spent their Sunday mornings.
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And he realized that a flip needed to
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occur.
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And that flip changed their staffing strategy, their
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residency strategy, the way that they preached, taught,
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brought in new members, changed their missional strategies,
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expectations of pastoral care, elder leadership, et cetera,
3:56
to become a church for Monday.
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And at the time, there was no organization
4:00
that was specifically working with churches.
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In many ways, churches had kind of washed
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their hands of that maybe Monday discipleship.
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Not all churches, certainly.
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And in many ways, the work that pastors
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were doing was good, honorable work.
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And pastors had, in some ways, become less
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and less vocationally conversant.
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What we mean by that is you don't
4:21
have to be an expert in business.
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You don't have to be an expert in
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healthcare and technology and being a stay-at
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-home parent or whatever.
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But you do need to be conversant that
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you might engage with your congregants and help
4:29
them see, as Jesus did, just how relevant
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the gospel is to their daily life.
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And that should be one of the lenses
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by which pastoral faithfulness should be measured.
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And so, with the curriculum that he wrote,
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a book was published, and then a foundation
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came alongside and started Made to Flourish over
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10 years ago, and we serve pastors all
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across the country, again, helping them integrate faith,
4:54
work, and economic wisdom for the flourishing of
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their communities.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So grateful for Pastor Tom and for all
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of you at Made to Flourish.
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I have this book of his, Work Matters,
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sitting on my stack of books here for
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quick reference.
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This was, what, 2011?
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That's right.
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So it's been a while, and a lot
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has happened in the past 15 years.
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And he's updated, either this year or last
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year, there's a second edition called Why Your
5:25
Work Matters that takes the theology and the
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practicality of work matters and ties in new
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workplace realities, new cultural movements, AI, et cetera,
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which are all, again, critically important for a
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pastor who's seeking to be vocationally conversant, and
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for non-pastors who are trying to say,
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I have my Monday realities, I have these
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gifts, these skills, these passions, these areas I'm
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called to, what say God to those daily
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realities?
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This book speaks to that.
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Praise the Lord.
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Speaking of updating things and data about what's
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on the ground now, some of your work
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at Made to Flourish is about something called
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scatter.
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Can you tell us about scatter and what
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you do with that?
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Yeah.
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In many ways, the conversation on faith and
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work can be a highly academic and theological
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and abstract conversation.
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And one of the things that Made to
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Flourish was seeking to do was seeking to
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equip pastors to do something right now, something
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to sink their teeth into.
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And what we provided, what we created is
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a platform, a digital platform, a software called
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scatter.
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Scatter is a survey-based vocational assessment that
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allows for congregants to fill out 25 questions
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about their skills, their passions, their gifts, their
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calling, their daily realities, how they're integrating faith
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and work, how they're understanding their own work,
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and how they want their church to support
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them.
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And through those 25 questions, congregants fill that
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out and then submit it, and then pastors
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log into their scatter account, and they get
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both macro trends of where's my congregation, how
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many entrepreneurs do we have, how many folks
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do we have that are skilled in the
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trades, how many stay-at-home parents are
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there, retirees.
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And I want to be really careful here.
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When we talk about work, we're talking about
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paid and unpaid.
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So we're talking about contribution, not compensation.
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So this gives a whole picture of where
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are your people on Monday, and who are
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the people that are hurting?
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What are the gaps?
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Who are the people that feel as though
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their Monday work doesn't matter to God, they
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don't see it mattering to their neighbor, they
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think their work is having a negative impact
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on the world.
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These are all things that are relevant for
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pastoral leadership and spark pastoral imagination and empathy.
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So that's what we've created with scatter to
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help pastors shepherd their sheep with clarity.
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So it sounds like it's a tool that
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really just sort of draws things back so
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pastors can see what's going on for their
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people.
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That's right.
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So it's a visibility tool.
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That's right.
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Sidebar for listeners here, I got to meet
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Justin at a conference where he was presenting
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data from scatter.
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So Justin, thinking about that data, is that
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something that all the churches that use scatter
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share with you?
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Or how did you kind of get that
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bigger aggregate view of visibility, not just for
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the pastors, but also for you as Made
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to Flourish looking at multiple churches?
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Yeah, when we created scatter, it was important
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that not only did pastors have a roll
8:23
up data of all of their congregate responses,
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but that we as Made to Flourish had
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a roll up data of all the congregations
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that are using scatter.
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So we can take a look and say,
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how are all these people doing?
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What are some of the larger trends around
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these areas?
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What are the top needs that congregants across
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all occupation types, all work types have?
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As well as that, we can understand what
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is unique for some denominations, for some regions,
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for different church size dynamics.
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There's all kinds of ways to split the
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data, and this allows us to be able
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to split it.
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And again, that's important for us as our
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role is to come alongside pastors and churches
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to equip them.
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And we can only do that if we're
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collecting data ourselves of what are the felt
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pain points, what are the daily realities, and
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then who are these churches that we're serving?
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So it's really serving us as well as
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we're trying to serve them.
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Yeah.
9:09
Yeah.
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So with that kind of visibility that now
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you all have, what are one or two
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insights from the data that you weren't expecting,
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that have sort of educated you and the
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rest of the team at Made to Flourish
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from what these respondents at various churches have
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contributed?
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Yeah, I would say that one of the
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things, I wouldn't say that I'm surprised by
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these, they make sense.
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And yet it's really poignant, one of which
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is how much congregants would like to be
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connected to other congregants that are doing similar
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work.
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This is not, again, it's not a surprise.
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We know that we are made to be
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in community, and we know that bearing one
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another's burdens is a critical role of the
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local church and how it's expressed.
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And so many people from healthcare to, oh,
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okay, I think of an educator, a professor
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who left a comment.
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They said, I have not met with people
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in the same field as me in the
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last 12 months, and I would like to.
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So that's one of the things we do
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is we ask questions, what have you experienced
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in the last 12 months?
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And then would you like it in the
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future?
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And they've said, I haven't in the last
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12 months, and I would like to.
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And they left a comment in an open
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text field that specifically said something to the
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extent of I'd love to talk to other
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professors because students come in my office during
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office hours, and inevitably, pretty often, maybe daily,
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weekly, a student shuts the door.
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And the conversation quickly goes from their thesis
10:37
or their trajectory and their coursework quickly moves
10:40
into questions about their faith, conversations about their
10:44
sexuality, about their family, about roommate relationships, about
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trying to understand who they are.
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And I would love to talk to other
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professors working at state schools, how they are
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a faithful witness to Christ and come alongside
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students as they're asking these very human questions.
11:00
And so they're not asking their pastors to
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say, hey, pastor, do you have every answer
11:04
for us?
11:04
But they are in many ways asking local
11:06
churches to set the table to say, hey,
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would you mind gathering us together so that
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we can have these conversations?
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And so, especially as most people work in
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places where they're not Christians and their professional
11:19
development tracks do not always address spiritual and
11:23
ethical questions, it's really valuable to gather with
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others.
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So that's one thing that is telling.
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Another thing that's telling, we knew this, is
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just how many people are remote workers.
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When you look at the daily work realities
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of those who are employed, nearly 30%
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of all SCADA respondents are remote workers.
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And so when you're a pastor thinking about
11:44
this and you're talking about faithful presence, you're
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talking about faithfully showing up and the impact
11:48
you can have and talking about Jesus in
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the water cooler moment where you're talking about
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the World Cup, whatever it may be.
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What do you do when a third of
11:55
your congregation only interacts with people via email
11:58
and Slack and Discord?
12:00
That's a different pastoral question.
12:02
And that's a different type of faithful presence
12:04
that it is clear that congregants are asking
12:06
for and that the church has a unique
12:08
opportunity to step into and say, as work
12:10
is changing, what does the unchanging Word and
12:14
work of God look like contextualized into these
12:16
shifting realities?
12:19
I think about even the language that we
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use, like a lot of times when I'm
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talking about people's workplaces, I'll say, so when
12:26
you walk into the office or when you
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walk onto the factory floor, right?
12:30
But am I saying when you open your
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laptop in your home office?
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Yeah.
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When you log in.
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Yeah.
12:34
That's right.
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Because like for a lot of people, that's
12:37
the reality.
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And it does present different challenges.
12:39
Like the water cooler dynamic is different when
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you're in remote work.
12:43
It doesn't mean there isn't a way to
12:45
make those relational connections, but it works differently.
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So looking at all those things, I mean,
12:51
it sounds like pastors can play like a
12:54
connective role, like connecting congregants to each other.
12:58
And then also like an equipping role in
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terms of like, hey, this is your mission
13:03
area.
13:03
This is what it looks like for you.
13:05
Even if it's remote.
13:06
What does it look like for you to
13:08
lean into the missional opportunity there?
13:11
What's your view of like what pastors can
13:13
really do to help their congregants based on
13:16
the data that you've gathered?
13:18
Yeah.
13:19
I mean, there's so many ways that the
13:22
pastors can serve their congregants.
13:27
Looking at Ephesians 4, the idea that God
13:32
gave ministers, pastors, to equip their saints for
13:36
the work of ministry, that the word ministry
13:38
is not a word in the New Testament
13:40
that is applied exclusively to employment in local
13:43
church.
13:44
And so a pastor's job is to equip
13:45
their ministers, their little priests.
13:49
Peter talks about the priesthood of all believers.
13:50
That role of the priest is a mediator
13:53
between God's covenant and his presence with the
13:57
world around them, that that is what every
14:00
Christian is as they go.
14:02
And so I would say that one thing
14:04
a pastor can do is take inventory of
14:06
the language that they use around who is
14:10
on mission, around what does it look like
14:12
to be a minister, being very careful with
14:16
the word called.
14:17
Because these things when used in certain ways
14:20
might subtly reinforce an idea that when you
14:24
are doing Sunday things, you are doing holy
14:26
work.
14:27
And when you are employed at a place
14:30
like a church whose public presence is maybe
14:33
most manifest on a Sunday, they are the
14:36
holy people.
14:36
They are the ones who are called.
14:38
They are the ones who are ministering.
14:40
If you really want to do missions, then
14:42
you'll go to Nicaragua or to Rwanda.
14:47
And that's not to say that there's not
14:48
an importance of the local church and employees
14:51
of the local church, nor is it to
14:52
say there's not importance and goodness in short
14:55
-term mission trips or long-term mission trips.
14:57
Absolutely.
14:58
But there is a question of does the
14:59
average person see themselves as a part of
15:01
God's story?
15:02
And the language we use can subtly reinforce
15:06
a narrative that God's story is for the
15:09
holy people doing holy work, and it doesn't
15:11
include the photographer.
15:14
It doesn't include the labor union manager.
15:19
And it doesn't include the grocery store bagger.
15:24
And so I think the language that pastors
15:26
use, that's one thing.
15:27
And I would say that another thing that
15:28
a pastor can do to keep with that
15:30
is to elevate the laity, to bring up
15:34
the everyday person, ask them what God's up
15:36
to in their life.
15:37
In our church, we call this a this
15:38
time tomorrow interview, where once every six weeks,
15:41
we bring someone up and we ask them,
15:43
where does God call you at this time
15:46
tomorrow?
15:47
And I've done that with preschool teachers.
15:50
I've done that with account managers.
15:53
I've done that with fundraisers and with software
15:55
developers, for folks that work for the government
15:58
and for folks who work at nonprofits that
16:00
promote the gospel.
16:02
So all kinds of people.
16:04
We've done it with middle school students, because
16:08
if we truly believe that all work matters
16:10
to God, and specifically, as I think my
16:13
animated heartbeat is from Colossians 1, for in
16:18
him all the fullness of God was pleased
16:19
to dwell.
16:20
And through him to reconcile to himself all
16:23
things, whether on earth or in heaven, that
16:25
a pastor should do their best to show
16:27
how Jesus is reconciling to himself all things,
16:30
and that includes all callings.
16:32
So bring up people, highlight all your people,
16:36
retirees, students, children, manufacturers, controllers, and accountants, and
16:44
ask them in front of the congregation, just
16:46
like you for a missionary moment, what is
16:50
God up to?
16:51
How are you seeing God move?
16:52
What's breaking your heart?
16:53
And how can we pray for you?
16:55
And that can provide a new imagination for
17:00
what God's up to in the daily life.
17:02
Yeah, yeah.
17:03
So thinking about scatter as like a visibility
17:06
tool, it helps pastors see their people.
17:09
But this is also a bigger conversation about
17:12
visibility in a sense of how do congregants
17:15
see each other?
17:15
And also like vision, how do they see
17:18
themselves?
17:20
Do they see themselves as somebody who's on
17:22
mission in their context?
17:24
Do they see themselves as somebody who's called
17:25
by God in their everyday context?
17:29
So that's really beautiful when it becomes not
17:31
just like, oh, this is a few interesting
17:33
data points, but like it's a vision that
17:35
a congregation can step into as a community
17:38
in terms of how they celebrate their people,
17:40
in terms of how people see their own
17:42
lives in God.
17:44
That's really amazing.
17:45
I just want to reinforce that I am
17:48
continuing to learn that perhaps the biggest difficulty
17:57
of modernity is to unlearn a limited Western
18:03
left brain imagination of what faithfulness looks like.
18:08
I think an imagination that is robust, that
18:11
is multifaceted, that is artistic and limitless and
18:16
boundless, that is how God operates in the
18:21
world.
18:22
I think that recovering that imagination of what
18:25
God is up to through everyday people is
18:27
critical for everyday faithfulness because otherwise in my
18:30
own life as a dad of five, I
18:33
can say because I'm passionate about these things,
18:36
because I'm gifted in these things, this is
18:38
what faithfulness looks like.
18:40
I need to escape out of my daily
18:42
realities of little kids and managing a budget
18:44
at work and planning the next software features
18:48
in order to do something really meaningful for
18:51
the kingdom.
18:52
And I would say that I need to
18:54
unlearn that phrase.
18:56
What is meaningful for the kingdom?
18:57
If we look back to what Jesus said
18:59
with their story after story of everyday obedience
19:02
and everyday faithfulness and Paul planted churches where
19:04
everyday people did their everyday work and that
19:07
is how the gospel grew.
19:08
The good news of the renewal of all
19:11
things, the kingdom of heaven is at hand,
19:12
not that I need to exit out of
19:14
my life to enter into the kingdom, but
19:15
the kingdom is burst in to my normal
19:18
realities and reanimated it.
19:20
This is, I think, the great work that
19:23
we have before us.
19:25
Amen, amen.
19:26
Well, I wish we could keep going for
19:28
a lot longer, but Justin, could you just
19:30
pray into that Colossians 1 vision for our
19:33
listeners to wrap us up here?
19:35
Absolutely.
19:36
I would be happy to.
19:37
Yeah, let's pray.
19:40
God, first of all, we thank you for
19:42
your good story.
19:44
And we thank you that you have written
19:46
us into it.
19:49
We thank you that this human experience that
19:52
we live into every single day, you and
19:56
your triune majesty were pleased to enter into
20:00
it in all of its difficulty, in all
20:03
of its limitation, in all of its brokenness,
20:08
so that you might redeem it.
20:11
And I ask that each of us, as
20:13
we listen and go into our normal days,
20:17
might be animated by the spirit of Jesus,
20:20
who not only raised him from the dead,
20:23
but is also drawing us near to him.
20:26
That all of our activity, whether cooking or
20:29
cleaning or crafting or creating, whatever it might
20:33
be, that we might see it as reconciled
20:38
to you, united to you through your spirit.
20:42
And might we be amazed again and again
20:44
at the goodness and the unfathomability that you
20:49
have allowed us to be makers with you
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in this good journey.
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May our work be holy.
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May we set it aside.
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May we be conformed not to this world,
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but to you.
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And in so doing, may you see our
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work as an offering and be pleased with
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it and use it for your glory.
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Thanks for listening.
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Finding God at Work is a production of
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Mission Central, a ministry based in Aurora, Illinois,
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dedicated to forming Christians for mission in everyday
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life.
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You can subscribe to the podcast wherever you
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listen to this episode to get 10 minutes
21:23
of teaching on faith and work every Thursday.
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To get resources to go deeper with each
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podcast series, read our blog and get info
21:30
about upcoming courses on faith in the workplace,
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go to our website, missioncentral.church.