I don't know. Have you ever heard of this,
this notion of imposter syndrome?
Yeah. Yeah, I assure you.
I don't feel quite like an imposter now.
But it's what it is. It's the inability to believe
that your success is deserved you.
It's kind of like this irrational fear that you
shouldn't be where you are. Yeah, you shouldn't be there.
And as soon as you open your mouth, you're going to get found
out. You know, whether whether it's,
you know, a promotion at work, whether it's a new job, whether
you've joined a team, whether you're starting university,
whatever it is, you have this irrational fear that people will
think, what is that person doing there?
Get him out. Get around.
This is how I felt a few years ago.
I was standing at an open door to a dining room and the dining
room was labeled Speakers Dining room and I had been asked to
come and do a talk at a conference in Philadelphia
called Business as Mission and it was a fascinating subject.
It was looking at the intersection between faith and
work and it was full of academics, pastors, high flying
business people and me. And so there I am.
I don't know if anyone remembers the series Star Trek.
I'm quite old so, but they always put the baddies in the
room and it would have a force field, no door to be a couldn't
get. I felt like I was a baddie in
Star Trek. I couldn't, I couldn't get
through into the dining room because I had this fear.
I had this fear that as soon as I stepped through into the into
that dining room, everybody would stop eating.
There would be silence. Everybody look at me and who is
this fella anyway? I managed to in the end go
through the doorway and I went out and got some food from the
buffet. And I turn around and of course
the next challenge where to sit, you know, and there's people,
all the successful people there, all the confident people, the
people who should be there, they're chatting away and having
a wonderful time. And then there were there's
empty tables. There's no way I'm going to sit
on an empty table anyway. I spot 1/2 full table and I
think to myself, that's the one to go for.
So off I go and I sit down and I sort of say hello.
And would you believe every single person around that table
was from Harpenden? And what God was telling me was
your home, Bruce, your home? Because home is where God is.
And whether we're with family, whether we're on holiday,
whether we're on a bicycle, whether we're gardening,
whatever, and whether we are at work, God is with us.
And you know, I found it a challenge and maybe you have to
to to deal with this idea of faith and work, how to square
that, how to manage that, that that dynamic.
And the problem that that I have is that about 40% of of our of
on average of of a working, working person's life is at
work. So let me say that again.
But 40% of our time is spent working as adults, so it's super
important that we kind of get our head around this.
So why is it a problem? You know, I find myself almost
metaphorically checking in my faith in reception of the of the
office and then at the end of the day I pick it up again.
So. So why do we find it a
challenge? Well, favor of rejection being
seen as as different, upsetting the cultural norms of the
office. Perhaps it's feel it's
appropriate or professional to be able to demonstrate your
faith in the workplace. Perhaps you feel that you might
be upsetting people or getting into an argument, and may even
be a company policy that doesn't allow you to do so.
So it's a challenge. It's a challenge for us, but of
course it's not a challenge for God, is it?
Because he doesn't distinguish the me at work, the me at home,
the me on a bicycle, the me in the garden.
It's all the same. It's all the same to God, isn't
it? We're still a child of God,
whatever we're doing. In fact, he has a word for it,
and that word is a voda. And it's a Hebrew word, and it's
a kind of cool word because it means to work, to worship and to
serve. It's this picture of integrated
faith. Alex.
Thanks, my friend. So six days you shall work a
voda, but on the 7th day you shall rest.
That's Exodus. But As for me and my household,
we will serve a voda, the Lord. This is what the Lord says.
Let my people go so that I may worship a voda you.
So over the last few weeks we've been in a boat, haven't we?
We even in a boat. Marks talked about Jesus in a
boat. Luke 5 and the first, the first
session was around our our our call to be with Jesus.
This idea that you know is that everything comes from being in
that place, of being a place of being with Jesus.
And then there was the call to holiness, you know, the call to
be separate from the world and to be consecrated to him.
And then we've spent the last few weeks looking at the lot,
the Great Commission, and and today we're going to look at our
walk of faith in the workplace. What I want to do, what I hope
to do, is to reframe how we see work.
I want us to relax about it. Yeah.
I want us for it not to be a burden and to get closer to
Jesus in how we approach work. OK, so I'm going to pray, and
then we'll get stuck in. Well, Jesus, I just want to
thank you for this wonderful privilege of being up here,
sharing your message today. Pray, Lord, that the points that
you have encouraged me to develop will land, that we will
get a real sense of the joy you have in being with us and your
desire to be with us all the time, whether we're at work or
whether we're at play. Pray law that you would open our
hearts to receive you today. Amen.
Okay. Next slide, please.
Alex. Oops.
All right. It's true to say that we're
limited by the resources that we have available to us.
Yeah, we've got to work within those limitations.
That might be your wages, salary.
That might be the Turner of the company that you either work for
or the company that you run. Maybe that's there's a budget
that you have to plan to. Yeah, we work within
limitations. Even Elon Musk has limitations.
Yes, he has 175 billion. Yeah, it's quite a large sum,
but he doesn't have 176 billion, so even he is limited.
Yeah, we work with within limitations, but we know as
Christians, don't we, that God is our father, God is our
provider, He's our provider. So if we acknowledge that all we
have is from God. Next slide is Alex.
My God will supply all your needs according to his riches
and glory in Christ Jesus. We acknowledge that we have.
All we all we have is from God that he provides for us.
And what you could say in fact actually is the workplace is his
is his workplace. Yeah, the earth and everything
in it. The world and its inhabitants
belong to the Lord. So you could say we work for
God. Yeah, God's the boss.
We work for God, and God's resources are limitless.
God's resources are limit. We work for a boss whose
resources are limitless. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
And God is able to bless you abundantly so that you in all
things and at all times. Having all that you need will
abound in every good work Abundantly he wants to bless you
abundantly so that in all things and at all times, having all
that you need, you will abound in every good work.
That's pretty that's a pretty strong indictment of a limitless
God, isn't it? But he's saying, listen, I want
you to have my limitless resources.
I want you to tap into these limitless resources.
And that changes. I think I think it changed
certainly changed my perspective on on work.
It changes my perspective on my own business that I'm actually
working for God. So if it's God's business, if
it's God's career, if he's the boss, then, then then what are
we? Well, we're his stewards.
Next slide, please. We're his stewards.
So what is a steward? We are familiar with the notion
of of being a steward from the New Testament, but I thought I'd
just check in with Google. And Steward is an individual
who's responsible for managing and caring for something
valuable on behalf of someone else.
OK, And we know, don't we, that Jesus spent a lot of time
talking about our role as stewards.
Next slide please. Alex, each of you should use
whatever gift you have received to serve others, his faithful
stewards of God's grace in its various forms.
And of course he taught a lot, didn't he, about being assured.
Of course, the probably the most famous one is the parable of the
talents, and that parable is about using God's resources with
respect and wisdom and the big challenge.
And you've heard this many, many times from this stage.
The big challenge we have is to understand as stewards, we
cannot be independent from God. Yeah.
As stewards, we cannot be independent from.
We cannot be independent from the resource that we are drawing
on. Yeah.
So we need to ensure that we are dependent on God's resources.
Yeah. And if a steward is not
dependent on the resources that he or she is stewarding, then
something tricky happens. And what happens is you start to
think that you're the owner of those resources.
Yeah. You start to think actually this
success, it's my success, yeah, I've created this opportunity.
I've created, I've built this, this, this Kingdom, if you like.
And that's when the trouble starts, isn't it?
When we as stewards forget our role?
Yeah, And instead of drawing on God's limitless resources, we
start to draw on our own limited resources.
And Jesus nails it with the the story of the vine and the
branches. He knows this.
He knows this challenge. He knows we're going to slip up.
So he he told us a story, didn't he?
Told us a story about a vineyard and that the key verse for me is
verse 5 isn't John, isn't it? I am the vine.
You are the branches. If you remain in me 9 you you
will bear much fruit. I am the vine.
I am the resource. You are the branches.
You are the stewards. So if you keep drawing on that
resource, if you keep remaining in me and I in you, you will
bear much fruit. And to bear much fruit to be a
good steward, the most important facet that you need, the biggest
skill you need is to be a good listener.
Next slide, please. Alex.
Yeah, we need to listen. We need to listen to him.
Why? Well, you could say that
actually, the problems and the challenges that you have at work
are actually not yours, but actually not your problems.
They're God's problems. Yeah, there's no reason why you
can't Then walk into God's metaphorical office which by the
way he opens it has an open door policy and say to God, listen,
you've got a problem. You have got a problem.
God, what do you want me to do about it?
You see the difference? I've got a problem.
Help me God. You've got a problem with this
resource that you've asked me to steward.
So how are you going to help me? What are you going to How do I
deal with it? How do I deal with it?
Dependency. Yeah.
Whether it's with team dynamics in the office, it's perhaps
you've got a line manager that doesn't support you.
Perhaps you know you're looking for a new role in the business.
Isn't making the money that it used to make whatever it may be,
whatever the problem is, it's not too big or too small.
But God does not want to be engaged with you in that Yeah,
but it's not a choice, is it? It's not an option.
It's a prerequisite for the relationship that God wants to
have with you. And that relationship is a
relationship of dependency. Yeah.
However, what we can't do, and what I do quite often is March
into his office. So you've got a problem with
XY&Z and then March straight out again.
We've, you know, we've, we've got to, we've got to hang
around. Yeah, we've got to hang around
his office and we have to spend time with him, don't we?
We have to spend time in his company and and the biggest
problem with that is spending time with him because we want to
get on. Yeah, we want to get on.
We got to get moving, you know. And it's a wonderful, it's a
message translation of Proverbs 3.
Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere
you go, He's the one who will keep you on track.
And so one of the biggest challenges I've had, and it may
well be that you're cool with this is just waiting.
Yeah, because because our provider, God, our resource, our
limitless resource, you know, has his own timing.
And it's not our timing. I'll tell you a story.
I've been running my business for 15 years and I had a six
month period three years back where I earned exactly nil.
I earned not a bean, not a penny.
You know I would do proposals and normally I'd write a
proposal or a tender for for a piece of work and about 1:00
every three or one every four I'd I'd I'd win.
And that was that was a good ratio.
I think I did about 21 proposals every single time.
It was a no. And what had happened was that
God was teaching me. God was teaching me something,
not in a bad way, in a tender way.
He was teaching me that my understanding, my intellectual
understanding of trust, that he is my provider, needed to make
the journey from my head to my heart.
And when that journey happened, took me 6 months.
He turned the tap on again. I'm not a millionaire.
No, that's a joke. My wife's in the audience, so
she can attest the fact that that's a complete untruth.
But, and of course the fringe benefit of waiting, the fringe
benefit of being in his office is of course that we spend time
with God, we spend time with Jesus.
And that's what he loves. And going back to to to Peter,
you know, he modeled this beautifully for us.
Peter in the boat, he was with the boat.
He was in the boat. Yeah, he was in the boat.
And so when when Jesus said constitute net over the other
side, he just spent all nine doing this.
But I'm the steward. You're the resource over the
over the net when and you will bear much fruit or you will bear
much fish in this occasion. But anyhow so spending time with
Jesus means that you'll see the fruit of doing his one.
And I want to tell you a story from a friend of Michael Bill
who was at the conference that I that I broke into.
And he he runs a very successful business in China and he
manufactures stained glass products.
So home, home, decal kind of products like for example
Tiffany lamps, you know those sort of lamps that have stained
glass. And he's a brilliant, brilliant
man, fantastic Christian, amazing relationship with with
God and he is always looking at becoming more efficient in his
processes. He has incredible process to
take scrap materials. And make them into these
beautiful artworks etcetera. And it's a very successful
business. It's always looking to innovate.
He's kind of like this efficiency kind of person who
just wants to make the thing as as a machine and as a process as
as efficient as possible. And one day God, work him up
with a with a plan for a new process.
And so Bill listened and spent the day throwing up the
blueprints for this new this new machine that that would deliver
this, this, this process. And day two, God wakes him up
again and says, actually, I've got a better idea.
And so Bill spends the day working on this new, you know,
this new better process. Day three, God wakes him up, got
a better idea. So off he goes, Bill, and he, he
just says, blueprint for this new man.
Anyway, this goes on for a week, day eight.
God wakes him up and Bill says whoa, whoa, whoa, time out, time
out. Look, you that, you know, I'm a
I'm a kind of efficiency guy. I'm an efficiency guy.
This is not an efficient process.
Why don't you just tell me the best bit, the best one now.
And God simply said to him, Bill, I just love spending time
with you. And and so the good news is that
when you're in that office, that metaphorical office, you can
chill, you know, have a coffee, spend time with God because
that's where he wants you to be. And all this is going to help
you with the, the point of the sermon.
Yeah, this notion of getting out there, the Great Commission at
work. So it's going to help you what I
call activate your touch points. Alex is still with us.
There he is. Fantastic.
Thanks, Alex. So making connections to share
the gospel, this idea of being out there and modeling faith and
Jesus did it for us. Yeah, all through the New
Testament there was there's story after story after story of
Jesus modeling the idea of activating touch points, of
demonstrating faith. You know whether it's you know
walking through Copernium and and his his literally his his
garment his cloak was touched and the woman who touched his
cloak was was healed or at the pool of Bethesda.
You know where that man couldn't get to the pool in time to to to
when the pool bubbled. And so Jesus got a knelt down
beside him and said, do you want to get well or the conversation
that Jesus had with the, the woman in Samaria at the well,
he, he asked her for a drink of water and the conversation went
on and and and she and her community were saved.
So. So Jesus knows all about this
idea of of touch points. Yeah.
And of of of getting out there and making an making an
impression. And we as people who are work,
who work, have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
opportunities to demonstrate our faith.
Yeah. So there's a few slides here
Alex. I'll let you run riot.
Just just just so you know, just think about it.
Just think about you'll you'll you may well go to the office in
London. So you'll get out of your house,
maybe you'll walk to the train station.
Maybe you'll buy coffee from that nice van barista van and
you'll sit down and you'll so you have a chat with the
barista. Then you'll go through, maybe
say hi to the ticket person. Then you sit down in the and the
train. Admittedly, the train isn't the
chattiest of places still. And then you'll get off of
whatever station you're off. You'll get a tube, whatever.
Then and you'll walk past. You'll say hi to the
receptionist if you're in an office or whatever it may be.
And and the list is endless. So you know, sales people,
directors, neighbors, board directors, IT support desks,
people, accounts departments, canteen staff, assembly line,
interviewers, sandwich makers, storekeepers, warehouse staff,
the list is endless is it not And all these are opportunities
for you to exercise that Great Commission.
Yeah. Hey however what I'm what I'm
not suggesting is you March them all down to the river there to
get them baptized. Although wouldn't be a problem,
but it's but what what I am saying is listen, it's it's
straight out of Sir Francis Assisi's book of how to live
treats the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.
Yeah, So what I'm talking about here is this idea of modeling
faith in terms of how you behave.
Yeah, your actions, how you, you know, how you behave, how you
speak, what you do. Because as a Christian you you
have a different perspective that you're not to those the
world out there. And this, this is wonderful.
And again, Jesus nailed it with the story of the king.
I think it'll come up. The king will say to those on
his right. Come you who are blessed to be
by my father. Take your inheritance.
The Kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world,
where I was hungry. And he gave me something to eat.
I was thirsty. You gave me something to drink.
I was a stranger. You invited me in.
I needed clothes, and you clothed me.
I was sick and you looked after me.
I was in prison, and you came to visit me, and the righteous will
answer him. Lord, when did we see you hungry
and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?
When did we see you sick or in prison and go and visit you?
The King will reply. Truly, I tell you, whatever you
did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of
mine, you did for me. So it's a golden opportunity to
model your faith through your actions, through your behaviors,
through your attitudes. And make no mistake, you are
being watched. I'm not talking about, I'm
talking about you're being watched by the community that
you are in your work community. Yeah you're being watched.
I had a a longstanding relationship with with a company
and we were working for a client and the client was exasperating
and extremely exasperating and and I've been working with this
company for many many years and you you the the the sort of head
of the company very well and after one very very frustrating
interaction I'm ashamed to say I said a bad word.
Luckily the chair of trustees is not here.
It's anyway he's here. Oh gosh.
Anyhow I said a bad word and he turned to me and said you know
Bruce and all the years we've worked together I've never once
heard you swear we've been watched.
Yeah. So and why I want us to relax
about it is I'm just saying this whole thing is around being
yourself in the workplace. Is being yourself as being a
Christian. Yeah, that's the way we're
built. So understanding that God is our
provider is his workplace. Next slide, please.
Alex is his workplace. And we have at our disposal
limitless resources. Yeah, that we are stewards.
We work for him. We draw on his resources that we
need to listen, we need to spend time with him as stewards of his
provision and that's going to allow us to activate our touch
points to model our faith. Easy.
No? So I think personally I found it
daunting to bring my faith into the workplace.
And so I'm going to introduce you to something that's helped
me and and quite a few others over the last few years to to do
that, to meet that challenge, to start to work on that Great
Commission that call that God has given us.
So I'd like to introduce you to Business Club.
It's working. The slides is.
Thank you, Alex. So Business Club, what is
Business Club? Well, it didn't used to be
called Business Club, it used to be called Breakfast Club and
which is a much nicer name and and so I met with Tim Winfield,
I don't know if you've heard of him, he's a big deal here, big
deal. And 15 years ago or so and I had
a an idea for a new business startup And so I wrote a
business plan and ages on it. And over breakfast I kind of
shared my ideas with Tim and gave him a copy of the business
plan. And no, no, don't do it.
So I didn't. I did something else which has
worked very well for the last 15 years or so.
So, but we continue to meet, we continue to have breakfast and
someone else would join us and someone else.
And anyway, after a while we realized that we weren't having
breakfast anymore. So I had to rebrand Breakfast
Club to Business Club. And so we're a Connect group.
We've been going, as I say, for about 15 years.
Numbers go up and down, but we have around about 2025 people
and and I guess about a dozen people come pretty much every
Monday 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM on Zoom.
OK, just one hour. And so many people come along to
Business Club and also belong to another Connect group.
Totally cool. I don't by the way, I'm lazy.
But the point here is that what we what we do is we start to
unpack these challenges and we start to unpack how do we do
this, how do we live out our faith in the workplace.
You know it's all very well Bruce standing on stage and you
know but in the in in in the workplace, you know it's a
different it's it's you know there's a great little pressure
about it. You know you want to to live out
your faith in the workplace. But there are challenges.
So we we we look at the scripture.
We look at how we can take scripture and use it in the
workplace. We we give each other advice
both kind of scripture advice and the others got advice but
also work advice. We pray with each other.
We have a WhatsApp group this awesome and it's busier than
than the group we we as always messages going on in and out of
WhatsApp. It may well be.
You know, I've got a big presentation coming up.
Can you just, you know, pray for me or I've got a, you know, do I
go for this job application or do I know, what do you think?
And it's a very active, very supportive group.
So and we even have a creed we didn't make it up.
It's it's from the Bible and but I do call it the stewards creed
and I'm going to, it'll be on the the chart there.
It's fantastic, and I made everyone to learn it by heart,
but I can't remember it now, so I'm going to have to read it.
It said, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of
1 body you were called to peace and be thankful.
Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach
and admonish one another with all wisdom, do psalms, hymns,
and songs from the Spirit singing to God with gratitude in
your heart. And whatever you do, whether in
Word or deed, do it all. In the name of the Lord Jesus
giving thanks to God the Father through Him.
Amen. Hallelujah.
Yes, So, so anyhow, no. But it's an awesome creed.
And yeah, says pretty much everything really that that we
want as Christians. So however it gets bigger, it
gets bigger because prompted by prayer, and through discussions
and prayer with Mark and his team, we want to make BC
Business Club bigger. So I'm introducing you today to
BC Excel. So extra large, business club.
Extra large. So what we want to do is we want
to create more business clubs. Yeah, we've got one.
We want a lot more. We God's telling us, come on,
this is an awesome group you've got, but we just need to get it
out there. We need more people representing
the Kingdom in the workplace. Yeah.
So we we've got this wonderful I have a land yard.
You can see the land yard, there'll be members of business
club with lanyards. Not as nice as this because you
know mine has to be the nicest. Now there's people, they're
going to be in the atrium and they'll answer any questions you
have about business club, the connect group.
But we're also going to be doing a quarterly get together where
we will have breakfast and the first one is on the 4th of
November at 8:00 AM and it's going to be absolutely.
Also we've got a fantastic speaker coming along one of our
own and she's going to be talking about the challenges and
how she's met those challenges in the workplace.
We're going to have time of prayer networking, it's going to
be fantastic and we'll be doing these every quarter.
So the message here is we're going to be doing, we're asking
you to consider joining a business club, a connect Group
One hour on a Monday, 8 till 9:00 and it is one hour.
Yeah. And and then come along to one
of our quarterly meetings. So and I want to finish with a
court of prayer and I've got a big writing here.
Pink, can I call the band up, please?
So I promised I'd get back to you about that conference.
I mentioned that the conference I was an impostor at and then
Bill spoke at that conference. My friend Bill and I want to
tell you what he talked about briefly and then we're going to
end with a prayer that you that I'd love you to pray.
So what I do, I'm a brand strategist, nobody knows what I
do, me particularly, but apparently one person does.
Thanks Sally. No, but what I do is I help
companies to to basically better define what makes them who they
are and then to be able to communicate that to their team
and to their customers and their audiences.
And what that delivers is growth.
It delivers a much more effective and efficient way of
using resources. And I've been doing this since
that breakfast meeting with Tim for 15 years or so and I've been
all over the world and I work for IT companies, AI companies,
software businesses. But more importantly, I also
work for mission based businesses and faith-based
organizations and it's about using the resources that God's
given us as efficiently and as effectively as possible.
I'm out. I'm a big believer in what I do
and about five years ago I thought, you know, I should
write a book about this. Then I can get that.
I can get what I what I think is important, what I think God's
telling me to do into the hands of many.
I soon learned it's quite difficult writing books.
And so I didn't. And there I was at this
conference and and Bill was speaking and he I was.
I'm unique to quite a lot of his material, but don't let him know
that. But the point here is that he
was saying we need to spend time listening.
So I said, I'm going to say a prayer, and if you want to say
it after me, then please do. This was built at the conference
in Philadelphia. So the prayer was simply this,
God, what is it you want to tell me?
And as soon as those words came out of my mouth, 3 words came
right back into my head. Feed my sheep.
Boom. I'm not a feed my sheep kind of
God. That's not a language I use.
This was from God. And what God was telling me was
Bruce writing the book. OK, and it is difficult buying a
book, but when it's not your book, it's God's book.
When you're stewarding for God, he's graciously.
He graciously allowed me to ghost.
Write his book if you like. Yes, it's tough.
Yes, there are challenges, but the pressure had gone because I
was being obedient. I was being obedient.
Steward to God's provision. And as Mark incorrectly said at
the beginning of this talk, it's not a bestselling book.
It's an awardwinning book. And oh, thank you very much.
Joking apart, what it did it it it it did transform my business
because God's in the business of transformation.
So I'm going to, as the band, start to play meditative, quiet
music. I'm I'm, I'm guessing there.
I'm guessing I'm going to say that, say that prayer again, and
if you feel moved to to say it, fantastic.
You don't have to come up the front.
You don't have to do anything but just allow yourself to be
open to what God wants to tell you.
Because he does obviously want to talk to us.
He wants to be with us. So God, what is it you want to
tell me?