Who are our Heroes?

by Henry Kaestner

In my experience we often look in life to the wrong type of hero.  As we get older, we know enough to know that the rock star or the comedian or the basketball MVP isn’t the type of hero that we should be modelling our life after (though sometimes they are….ok I’m a Warriors fan and love the influence that Steph Curry has on my boys), but too often times I think we find ourselves lifting up the wrong type of hero in the faith and business world.

I’ve been to a fair number of gatherings where very successful businessmen who go to church are lifted up as role models for others to emulate within the larger Christian community because they’re recognized by the world as being successful in business.  And yet, I’ve known several of these people who have been chosen to talk at faith and work events who’ve shared with me that they’ve never actually talked about their faith in the workplace. I’ve been told by some that they believe that what happens in their private Spiritual lives, are just that….private.   We aren’t to judge….I need to be very careful here. But I do think that it’s hard to have an encounter with the real, living God that gave us the gift of life now and for evermore and not share that good news with others we’ve been in relationship with for months and years….even (maybe especially?) those we work with.

To be clear, we’re to share our faith with gentleness and respect, but how can we expect people to follow us when they don’t know what our motivation is, what our personal story is, particularly the most important part?  How can we love people really well in the office if we can’t ask if we can pray with them when they are going through hard times?

We’ve all come across people in the workplace that are excellent at their job, and love the Lord in a way that’s winsome.  They may not be the Unicorn CEOs, they may not be the ones with the huge sales achievements, or the ones with the obvious trappings of success, but they are heroes nonetheless.  Maybe they are our Controller, maybe they are a VP of Marketing, maybe they are our office cleaner, maybe they are our CEO. Look for those who do their jobs with excellence and clearly know and love the Lord.  Let’s lift these men and women up. These are our heroes.

This short, 75 second video hopefully gets at that concept a bit.  Special thanks to the great folks at Gospel Patrons for the great work that they do in advancing the Biblical Message of Generosity and for having produced this.

Photo by Joey Nicotra on Unsplash