Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the R.W. Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. I'm your host, Darren Scheer, and this is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On this episode, we're joined once again by Dr. David Gill. David has served as a seminary or business school professor of ethics for over 40 years. Wow, 40 years. Old. Really old. Now wise, wise. And uh what a legacy. He is uh he was also the inaugural Makler Phillips Professor of Workplace Theology and Business Ethics at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, where he was also director of the Mockler Center for Faith and Ethics in the Workplace. He's a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and the University of Southern California. I think he likes California. That's actually where where you are now, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01I was too poor to move anywhere farther away.
SPEAKER_02That's not what I heard about California. I heard it's quite expensive there. He's the author of nine books. Um David's one of those guys where you gotta ask him, like, is it still nine or is it 13 now? Or is it actually it was seven when I first um drafted this bio out here? Is it it's is nine books now or ten?
SPEAKER_01No, it's nine. Uh this Workplace Discipleship 101 is my ninth book.
SPEAKER_02The ninth. Well, the the 10th one's coming, I'm sure. Um, and of those nine books, that also includes a two-volume introduction to Christian ethics. One called Becoming Good, Building Moral Character, and Doing Right, Practicing Ethical Principles and a General Market Business Ethics book. It's about excellence, building ethically healthy organizations. And if you go back to a previous episode of the Christianity and business podcast, you'll hear us kind of honing in on that theme of that previous book. And his latest book, and the focus of our discussion today, is Workplace Discipleship 101, a primer. David, welcome to the show. Welcome back to the show, I should say.
SPEAKER_01It's great to be with you.
SPEAKER_02So this is uh a 101 book, but what surprised you the most in writing this book or about people's reaction to it? Uh you've really kind of brought us back to the the blocking and tackling of Christianity and workplace Christianity in particular with this, but what surprised you the most in writing it?
SPEAKER_01What surprised me the most? Um, I don't know that I had any big surprises. I mean, this is something that's been uh really developing for the that whole 40 years, you might say, or even back as 50 years to when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley. And I was a very passionate Christian at that time in that place. Uh, loved being there, loved being there in the free speech movement. But you know, at that time I wanted to use my free speech to speak up for the gospel and speak up for Jesus Christ. And I was a history major at the time. And uh so, you know, it really occurred to me at the time what does my faith mean for the study of history? And then eventually for teaching history, because, you know, in church and in my personal life, I believe in a God who's active in human history. But here I'm studying at the university where they they never talk about God. I don't expect them to. I actually didn't go to Cal to be taught about God and history, but still I didn't want to have that big gap in my life. So, in a sense, um, that was the beginning of my workplace discipleship quest and all the stuff I've done, you know, trying to figure out more precisely and organically what are the values and insights, um, the principles, you might say, of life as God wants us to live it. You know, so what are the ethics that really come out of scripture? I don't just want philosophical, some school of philosophical ethics out of the enlightenment or whatever, plus Bible verses. No, I I and I don't want to just have an ethics that's out of suburban or urban Christianity. I want to know what is what is really organically biblical about right and wrong and good and bad. So I studied that a lot, wrote my books about that. But the other side is how do you apply this in people's work lives? And for most people, I think the biggest category would be business. Most of us do our work in some context of business or other, but I wanted to write about the workplace in a more in a more gener uh generic sense, you might say, because I I don't want to just talk about marketing or Christianity in the marketplace, you know, the buying and selling of goods. I want to talk about the production of goods and services. So that could be a stay-at-home mom or dad. It could be a retired person who's a volunteer, it's a kid doing work in their neighborhood, it's blue collar, it's professional work, it's the arts, as well as uh, you know, software, engineering, and everything else. So looking at it in that big sense, what does it mean for Jesus to be Lord of how we do that stuff?
SPEAKER_02Would you say that the workplace is the primary place where people are discipled one way or the other?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I define, I mean, there's a couple ways of talking about discipleship. One of them is to use it as a verb and say, I need to be, I need to have somebody discipling me, or I need to, we all need to be discipled, or we need to disciple other people, meaning teaching them. But also discipleship is a noun in the sense that it refers to this whole process in all of our lives of learning how to follow Jesus Christ. So when I say workplace discipleship, I mean what does it mean to follow Jesus Christ? That's what a disciple is, a learner and a follower of Jesus Christ. And yeah, for most of us, um, you know, I say often have said we we spend about one third of our life in bed, you know, eight hours if we're lucky, out of 24, we're sleeping. And so the implication is if you're if you're smart, you ought to buy a good mattress. You know, you're gonna be spending one third of your life there. But the other third, one big third is is working, you know, eight hours a day or whatever it is, but it's either learn, you know, studying to prepare for work in school, or it's working, or it's looking for a job, uh, whether we're paid for it or not, all of us need to work. Uh, and then there's another one third, which is our home life and our relational life and our rest and eating and drinking and all, and that's incredible in church, and that's incredibly important, that kind of catch-all for life. That's incredibly important. But it turns out that most of our theology, most of our pastoral attention, most of our preaching addresses that catch-all, one-third about what happens on church turf and what happens in home turf, you know, in terms of raising kids and building friendships and being in the neighborhood. And what's been neglected is that huge one-third called work. And part of that is a theological mistake that people have sometimes made, thinking that work begins when sin enters the world because of those statements, you know, in the sweat of your brow, you're going to be laboring out in a field, and there's going to be thorns and thistles, and in pain, you're going to bring forth your kids. And, you know, it's not just painful when they're born, it's painful raising them sometimes, too. So I think that's part of the deal. Well, yeah, there's pain and toil and sweat involved, but all those other aspects of work, the fundamental aspects, were part of the creation story. They're part of what God does in the world, and they're part of what all of us made in the image and likeness of God have been commissioned to do and not just told to do this, but it's in our DNA because we're made in the image and likeness of a working and resting God. So that's really what my focus is on that one third of life. Uh, and you know, when I started working on this, Darren, you know, uh, in the 70s, especially, uh, there was hardly anything written about it. There were a couple books, but not too much. We were starting to talk about what does it mean to have a Christian mind? Uh, you know, Francis Schaefer and a lot of others were pushing us, and that was really helpful. But I'm thinking, what about the Christian mind at work? And uh, and so in in that sense, we were just beginning. But now there are hundreds of books, and there are dozens of institutions and organizations, and most of our theological schools now have some course on faith at work or the theology of work. So we've made tremendous progress. But as I looked at all the books out there and all the programs, I thought there isn't really one book that I found that really speaks to individual workers and basically says, look, no matter what your work is, no matter what country you live in, um, whether you get paid for it or not, whether it's enjoyable or not, how do you get ready to serve God in the workplace? And then in the workplace, what are the plays that you run? You know, I think about it like uh like an athletic contest that what are the plays that you run? You know, passing plays and running plays. Well, I think there are five basic plays that God calls us to run, but we can't run the plays if we're not fit and we're not in condition. And so I before that have five steps that I recommend for how to get ready, how to get prepared for this. And then I have a couple chapters at the end about, you know, life isn't just work. So we got we've got to avoid being workaholics or idle, you know, turning work into idolatry. So there is a life outside of work, and we need to pay attention to that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. From a pastor's perspective, do you think that the the short-sightedness in terms of the Christian life is just um not a not a broad enough view to understand what God's interest in the workplace, or is it more just a deficient view of discipleship itself and and the and the calling to discipleship? Because, you know, we we'll have a sermon preached, there'll be some music, but in terms of I was in a seminary class and the professor, it was it was called Biblical Models of Discipleship was the name of the class. And on day one, the professor said, Raise your hand if you have if you have never been discipled before, like you've never had somebody that was really uh intentional about your personal spiritual growth to help you grow as a follower of Christ. And and 80% of the hands went up. So we've never been discipled. And these are the these are going to be our future pastors, church planters, and so on. Is it or do these things really just kind of go together, the workplace and discipleship? And just if there's a lack of understanding of how the workplace fits in, it's really because we miss understanding how discipleship fits into the Christian life.
SPEAKER_01I think there are you know there are a lot of reasons for for uh what happens and where we are today. Um, but I do think uh one uh issue is is the training of our pastors, you know, and I love pastors and I've been a pastor myself. Not that's not my primary calling, but it certainly is my secondary calling. And I've been an interim pastor uh three years. That's not a lot of big percentage. And then also I've always been a very active church, church member and lay leader and preacher and all that kind of thing. And I I love it. You know, I wish I could have had a second life and been a pastor. So I love pastors, I love churches, and I love getting together and singing and you know, just lifting our voice. And I love hearing about what Jesus has done and you know, all of that. I love that. Uh, but you know, most pastors that I know, I and I I think this is really true, have never actually worked outside of a churchly kind of context. Uh, they they didn't grow up working in factories or uh, you know, this kind of thing. And and also many, many actually went to Christian schools and then they go to Bible school or a Christian college, they major in youth ministry or major in Bible. And so they don't really personally have experience in the marketplace or out outside of the church, church turf. And then uh when they go to seminary, there are no classes really on work, the theology of work. And so it tends they they're not being prepared to pay attention in any significant way to the work lives of their uh their parishioners, their their congregation. And I just see this over and over again. I was at Gordon Conwell seminary, my my position, I was called Mockler Phillips, professor of workplace theology. And the Mockler refers to Coleman Mockler, who was the longtime CEO of the Gillette Corporation and a Christian man. And uh, by the way, the primary example of top-flight level five leadership that Jim Collins gives in his book, Good to Great, which is the best management seller in the last 20 years. Well, anyway, Coleman Mockler said to his wife, Joel Joanna, uh, she told me this a couple of times. He he said to her once, you know, I've gone to church all my life and I like it, but I have never heard one word from the pulpit or from the pastor that is interested in or affirmative of the work that I do leading Gillette. Uh, and I've just heard this over and over again from other pastors anyway. So as a result, uh Joanna at Coleman died uh suddenly just after he retired, but his widow donated a bunch of money to help fund my chair uh at Gordon Conwell so that the future, future pastors hopefully would understand that more. So, you know, I I think that's that's part of the problem, is pastoral experience and and uh and training in seminary. So that's hopefully that's changing a little bit. But you know, at the back of my book, I have postscript for pastors in which I encourage things like I encourage pastors to get out, get out of the church building and go visit at least one, maybe two or three of their uh people in their workplace and just ask them to show you around and tell you what they do. I encourage pastors not just to have commissioning services for short-term missions, not just for ordination or the recognition of our elder or deacons or something like that. But let's bring forth all of our healthcare people and let's challenge them and commission them to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ in their healing work in the world. And now, today with the pandemic, of course, we can't have those face-to-face meetings, but hopefully pretty soon we're going to be able to do that. But it's taking some steps like that to get our churches more focused on seeing that our ministry is not just the ministry of sharing the gospel with unbelievers. Our ministry is the ministry of healing. Our ministry is setting people free. Our ministry is getting people out of prison and getting them ready to live a life of integrity and joy in our world. You know, Jesus said, I came to get set the prisoners free, you know, and so uh I think just in so many ways, we need a robust theology of what God is doing in the world. And, you know, my book, one of my chapters is is called A Line. And that's kind of the fundamental idea is how do we decide what to do in our work? What does God want me to do? I mean, I know what my company wants me to do with circuit boards or whatever it is, but what does God want me to do? What is the what is the additive? What's the salt that God wants me to bring into this school where I'm working or this tech technology company or into this parenting group? And I think that's where we, the more we know the character of God and the action of God in the world, the more we become uh, we want to integrate our efforts and align our efforts with that. So, what does that mean? It means God is the creator, God is the sustainer, God is the redeemer, God is the uh the standard bearer for justice and fairness and righteousness, God is the giver of truth and wisdom and so on. So it's understanding what is God doing in the world and how can I line my efforts up, whether I'm working for a big corporation or in a factory or in my neighborhood or in my family, how can I align my efforts with what God is doing? I think that's kind of the key to how we salt the earth and light the world. And we need preaching that challenges and supports and equips people to do that. So when we are preaching from scripture, we need to help our people make the application. We don't make the application for them. I don't believe in that, but what we do is we challenge them. So just one example is one of my favorite texts is Romans 12. You know, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Okay, so there's a beautiful text. But you can either kind of let it stand there generically, or we can say, So, my friends, tomorrow, when we are in our workplace, wherever that is, let's question authority. Let's question the tradition. Not that we're gonna reject it all, but what we're gonna do is say, Lord, what is your will? I know what my company's will is, my school's will is, but what is your will? I want to be, I don't want to be conformed, just simple-mindedly molded by my workplace. I want to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, my mind, so that I can do your will, Lord, in my workplace. You know, if pastors or teachers would just say that, it challenges people, the people to walk out of the church and say, I think I I'm gonna do that tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love that. Um and you've packed these two just power-packed words, workplace and discipleship, into the same book title, Workplace Discipleship 101. And I'm I'm wondering if and I'm all for getting pastors to take a look at what's going on in the in the workplace, but I think at the same time, we have uh we we have a lot of Christians in the workplace that they understand that their work matters to God, but we're still we're still not making disciples. Um discipleship still isn't kind of the um the order of the day. And yet it's it's the Great Commission. And I I just wonder if if we really understood discipleship, it seems like the workplace emphasis would would just be a no-brainer. Because if you're if the goal is for a life to be transformed in in every respect to reflect the Imago Day, which is Jesus, right, and becoming a follower of Christ, then discipleship is that's what it's about, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, God is at work in us. So it is about being born again. I mean, in that sense, making disciples begins by helping people take the first step, which is to say, I am going to follow Jesus Christ, I am going to accept Jesus Christ as my savior and my Lord, my God. Okay. And so uh discipling people or making disciples in the workplace is important. And, you know, if if we just do a little mathematical consideration, you know, in a church, I my my home congregation, I think we have about 500 people, maybe something like that. But, you know, may so maybe there's 20 visitors every week. I I don't really know what the numbers are, but you know, we're a real welcoming crowd, and there are people who come. And so I think, you know, maybe there's 20, 20 visitors. But when the 500 leave the sanctuary, uh, let's say 300 of them are, well, really all 500 of us. Uh I guess you can't, some of the kids are too small. To do this if they're still in the nursery. But anyway, we go out and we all have like anywhere from five to ten significant relationships with colleagues, customers, you know, it in our workplaces, wherever they are, whether that's a school or a stay-at-home parent, but it's the neighborhood or it's a nursery or it's a mom's group or something like that. So if you just say, okay, there's five significant relationships and there's 500 of us, that's 2,500 people. So if we want to evangelize the 20 who come into our sanctuary, that's one thing. But if we want to go out into the workplace and make disciples, you might say, uh, you know, bring people into relationship with Jesus, well, there's 2,500 prospects out there. So really that's the main evangelistic territory, you might say. And so in my book, I have a chapter on how do we share, how do we share our faith with people in in that sense. And I, you know, I talk about some of the strategies people have have used, but I I urge that most of our strategies, I think, should, well, first of all, we need to be prepared to tell our stories. So, you know, we need to be ready to tell our Jesus story, you know, of how we came to know Jesus and then how that other person could too, and give reasons, you know, gently. So there's a little bit of preparation here, but mostly it's a pretty simple thing. But how do we do that when uh, you know, we're in often very secular environments and sometimes we're prohibited from wearing any religious symbolism, we're we're not supposed to proselytize in the workplace. And and you understand why companies would say, uh, you know, I I hired you to write software, not to come in and proselytize for your religion. Yeah, I can understand that. So, but you know what? If people ask us, where are you coming from? What is your background, that's a different story. And uh that's the most effective place to share the gospel. So I give examples in in my chapter on sharing the faith of how to elicit those kinds of questions. And mostly what it has to do with is how we show so much care uh for our workers and where they're at. We reach out to somebody who seems to be hurting, we celebrate with those who are celebrating. And also when we have conversations, we ask people their opinion on things like that. We say, you know, you hear about all these evangelicals doing uh this or that politically, or, you know, or or you know, have you heard about the, you know, all this attitude about what Muslims do? Have you ever met a Muslim? What do you think about Islam? You know, or have you heard about anti-Semitism or Catholic priests or, you know, so it's raising questions like that in a gentle way and actually caring about what people's opinions are? I mean, we ought to be curious and find out where people are at. But I find that if we show interest in other people, they will eventually turn around and say to me, Well, David, you're always asking me questions, you know. But I where are you coming? Did you ever have any experiences? Do you have a religion? Do you have a faith? You know, and bingo, that is when they're ready to hear me say, Well, actually, you know, I've been a Christian since I was a kid. And uh, you know, so here's how I look at something like that. And so I really believe in that. But then the question is growth, because Christian life isn't just about being born again. We don't just, we're not just a nursery where we spend the rest of our life looking at pictures of babies on the wall. No, there's a life of growing. We need not only to be born again, we need to grow up again or grow up in in our uh in our faith. And that's going to mean asking about every aspect of our life. Uh, what does the Bible call me to in terms of making friends or the opposite relating to the opposite sex, you know, all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And and even aside from um, you know, sharing our testimony and evangelizing in the workplace, I mean, as you're pointing out throughout this book, this we we live out our identity as disciples, as followers of Jesus primarily in the in the workplace. Like that's where we what the navigators talk call living the life. Like that's where we live the life. And and it's either evident or it's not. You know, we're we're gonna be something's gonna be evident, and whether it's something people want or not, that's that's gonna make the difference. And whether they are attracted to to Jesus, I mean, they will they'll start to I mean, we ought to be setting the standards, right? And in meeting and exceeding, there was always that that block on uh our performance reports in the military. Meets exceeds standards. And you know, hopefully you you you got that. And and so Christians really ought to ought to be that. And people will ask those those questions in a lot of different ways, but there's got to be something that they want. And where can you where else is that gonna be demonstrated if not in the workplace? Like it's probably not gonna be demonstrated sitting in a pew, you know, with everybody looking the same direction and not actually uh people putting their best face on, but people see the good, the bad, and the ugly of us and whether we've got the fruit in keeping with repentance, whether we've got the kindness and the joy and the peace and the patience and all of those things that Jesus promised would be evident from his from his followers. Um what what is what's one of your favorite? Um each chapter is is so well organized, um with different functions of the of the disciple in the in the workplace. What's um one of your favorites, maybe that has a story to go along with it to illustrate it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I uh I actually have five basic chapters, you know, on on presence in the workplace. And the first one is align. Um, but another one is is on model. It's about, as you were just saying, Darren, about our our character and our our day-to-day, day in, day out model, which means our work ethic, our honesty, our attitude. And in that chapter, I talk about what does a beatitude-shaped worker look like? Who starts out by being poor in spirit, uh lamenting, you know, our mistakes and what have you, being gentle, hungering for righteousness, being merciful, pure at heart, and being a peacemaker, you know, a team builder, that kind of thing. And I give some other examples of how do I give an account of a fruit of the spirit kind of worker? What does that look like? Um, and then I have a chapter which I call light, which is how do we not just live it out, but how do we how do we express biblical insights about work at work? How do we do that? And so, and then I have a chapter on sharing the faith, which we were just talking about, you know, sharing the gospel. And then I have a fifth aspect, which is how to overcome when we see conflict or we experience it among our workers or with customers or whatever, and how do we overcome wrongdoing? Um, you know, how what is a biblical pattern for that? Well, let me go back to the uh the insight thing. And you know, one insight is um is that the Bible gives is the importance of teams, you know. So it's you know, in creation, it's not good uh that we should that man should dwell alone. I'll make a helper for him. And Jesus sent his disciples out two by two, not one by one. We have this throughout the Bible that life is a team sport, not a solo sport. You have individual responsibility, but really most of life should be lived in partnership. So what we do is we we promote that in our workplace. We try to we try to be people who promote working together in partnership and teams and not being isolated and you know in in that sense. Most of the time, not all the time. Um it's being a leader is being a servant, uh, and not just being a domineering kind of person. So here's an example. My my sister was uh was working uh as a as the executive assistant to the CEO of Citibank in the Western United States, and uh and and they had a they had uh adopted or they had acquired a smaller bank. Uh city City had acquired Bank of the Western, I can't remember what it was. I probably got the name wrong. But anyway, uh at Citibank, there was just all this uh uh upset in in the executive headquarters, my sister told me about. And and uh they just couldn't accept these new folks from this bank that they'd acquired, and the the integration of the two banks was just not going well. And so my sister suggested to her boss, the CEO look, why don't you have all of this secondary tier of executives and managers uh go fan out and go to these branches and actually work a couple of days alongside the people in these branches and then bring them back and talk about integration and all that. And they did that. The boss took the example, sent them all out, they all came back, and it was a totally transformed experience because they were sent out to actually work in the trenches. And that was all because my sister really believes that if you're gonna be a leader, you need to get down and wash people's feet. You need to, and so it was a powerful Christian idea that got applied there. And, you know, there are a lot of other examples uh of things like that. When I uh was consulting for companies and they would bring me in to try to help them build a better uh or create a better code of ethics uh and uh ethics training programs. I often said, well, you know, I believe in, I would say, you know, I okay, I could study companies in this industry and write you a code of ethics. But I'll tell you what, it'll be a lot better if what we do is mobilize the company and have people write, help us write the code of ethics because we'll get their insight, number one. And secondly, we'll get their ownership because they wrote it. So we would do these things to get everybody involved. So it's the sales force that writes the basic ethical guidelines for salespeople. And we basically tell them look, you you already know how to operate, but for new people coming in, write some guidelines about how to get it right and not cross any boundaries in the sales department. Well, you know, in the end, and of course, I would work with the executive management just to cover some of the bases that didn't get covered. But in the end, what am I doing? Well, it's it's really that Roman stuff that says people who have the law, the law of the Lord, that's great, you're responsible. But you know what? If you don't have the law, if you're like a Gentile and you don't have the law, you're still accountable because it's been written on your heart and your conscience bears witness. So what I'm saying, Darren, is I go in there, think, believing in Romans, and I try to challenge people to express that law that's written on their heart and their conscience. Now, some of us, some people can get so uh you know hurt by life and so messed up that they don't listen to the law written on their heart. But what I find is when you challenge that in people, they often resonate resonate with that. And so it's yeah, I'm really doing ethics consulting, uh, not really learning it from Wikipedia, although I think Wikipedia works because of a similar kind of thing. So, anyway, that's the kind of stuff that I find most exciting is saying, how can we bring biblical ideas into the workplace? You know, the fact is Jesus had more to say about money, property, and wealth than he did about heaven and hell, gay marriage, stem cell research, these other things. Now, these are important topics, but we don't know the basics a lot of times about what Jesus could teach us about money, property, and wealth, debt, interest rates. And it's not easy to just quote a Bible verse out of Leviticus and reply it in Citibank, for example. But there is something to be learned. There is a lesson, there are lessons to be learned and about law and justice from cover to cover in the Bible. That needs to be applied in our criminal justice system by our civil law attorneys as well as criminal law attorneys, by politicians and political activists and policy wonks. We we have insights that come from scripture, and it's by studying the scripture, getting some help from our pastors and others and experts and commentators, but also one of the things, Darren, that I emphasize most is that all of us workplace disciples, which means everybody, we need a posse. We need two or three or maybe four other uh workplace folk uh that we pray with regularly and we consult with and we bring up these issues and say, okay, I have an idea. What do you think about this? Or I have a problem. How would you suggest that I respond to this? Could you pray with me as I'm in this business meeting or whatever it is? And so it's depending on you know our prayer life, church life, our Bible study, but also our posse to help us figure out what's the best thing to do in these complicated circumstances.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I love that because I know somebody's listening and thinking, oh, there's no Christians in my workplace, or there's there's no way I can connect with other Christians that understand the the challenges that I'm facing in my workplace. And I think the apostle Paul probably felt uh even worse about his situation when he came into to Corinth. And Jesus appears to him and says, Don't be afraid, for I have many in this place. Absolutely. I think I that that was what the Lord spoke to me when I had a similar complex back in the military. And that just shifted my whole mindset. And I started to just gather with other believers there in the Air Force, um, especially when I was deployed, and just found that there's a a tremendous um um representation of the body of Christ in in my workplace, they're in the military. And I and I think the same applies, even if you're a CEO, plenty of those Christian CEO groups out there for people to find their posse. So I love that um that point you just made. David, as we wrap it up here, where can people connect with you? I know davidwgill.org. Is that the best place for people to go?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's my personal website. It's actually, you know, I retired from um Gordon Conwell four years ago, and I and so I don't have my uh sidekick who used to help me maintain my website, but I I need to uh I I so I don't have a description at my davidwgill.org website of my latest two books. So I I've got to get that taken care of.
SPEAKER_02That's why it's seven books on there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, in the meantime, Darren, I uh after I, well, as I was writing this new book, Workplace Discipleship 101, a primer, uh, I was teaching that in my home church and also just uh, you know, around the Bay Area here, San Francisco Bay Area. And I realized very quickly, well, actually, I need a follow-up resource for people who you know who do read the book or who take a do a six-hour seminar with me or something like that. And so with with uh, let's see, it's 10 other friends. There's 11 of us on our board. Uh we started an a not you know a non-denominational, nonprofit uh organization we call workplace 313. So, you know, the 313 has to do with the 313 days of the year other than the 52 Sundays. So we're saying we're 313 Christians. We believe in Jesus being Lord of those days, and we're not just 52 club Christians. But um, but anyway, so we started this Workplace 313. So I have a we have a website, it's it's got a lot of really interesting stuff there already, but it's not as fully developed as it will be in a few months or a year from now either. But it's it's WP for Workplace, WP313.org. And we have a monthly easine that has a little article and uh some reviews and usually a you know some link to another uh organization or website that we think would be helpful to people. So it's really resources, it's uh it's promoting and supporting and enabling people who are in the workplace. And we do do these monthly forums now online. Uh last month uh it was about uh chaplains on the front care health lines. And we had two really phenomenal women who work as chaplains, and they talked about that workplace. That was phenomenal. And not just for chaplains, but you know, we all have kind of a chaplain role to play sometimes, caring for our colleagues. And even online, you know, when you see somebody online is looking pretty uh depressed, maybe I had to call them up after our Zoom meeting is over. You know, this kind of thing. Uh, and coming up uh at the end of March, on March 27th, Saturday morning, we have a free uh forum on uh privacy and security in a high-tech world. And Michael McNally, who worked for Google and Facebook for like 13 years, is there in their security data security uh anti-hacking uh and anti uh you know falsehood, you know, trying to fight against problems. It's an ongoing struggle. Anyway, now he works for another uh leading anti-hacking organization, but he's going to talk about data security and privacy and give advice to us as workers and individuals, but also what businesses, small businesses and others can do in this in this time and what's coming down the pike. Uh, and then in a month, uh next month in uh April, we have one on blue collar discipleship. And this is with uh Dave Haytag, who runs Edgerton Gear Company, a manufacturing firm up in Edgerton, Wisconsin. Um, and then we have one on Enron 20 years later with Sharon Watkins, who was the whistleblower on the cover of Time magazine. And so, what have we learned in 20 years after Enron about corporate malfeasance and whistleblowing and what to do? So we do this kind of thing once a month. They're always free, uh, 90 minutes on a Saturday morning, or in Houston, it would be a Saturday midday. But uh, we love everybody to get involved and be part of this. And you know, every month in our zine, we also call attention to something else like Houston Baptist or anywhere there's something going on. Eventually we're gonna get to them and give people a little introduction and a link because there are so many great uh resources today. There's too much actually to be able to follow it all. So people have to kind of look for something that fits with their uh with their needs at this time and use their uh time wisely. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02Excellent. Well, wp313.org is the website for workplace313 and uh DavidWgill.org. I know it's not a hundred percent updated, but you'll get a lot of good good stuff there. Um, David, we sure appreciate uh your your partnership with the Center for Christianity and Business, and thanks for sharing again with our listeners today.
SPEAKER_01It's been my pleasure. Great to be with you, Darren.
SPEAKER_00We hope you've enjoyed this episode, and if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity and Business at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.