It’s common to think of corporate values as a concept that has always been around, but Lake Lambert, President of Hanover College in Indiana, is here to educate us and show that this isn’t actually the case. Lake is the author of Spirituality, Inc—a book that examines the history of religion in the American workplace—and he joins Henry, William, and Rusty to share what he’s learned about workplace spirituality from the past and what we might expect for the future.
In this episode, you’ll hear from a professional academic. Lake Lambert is clearly an expert on the subject of corporate spirituality and the different forms it has taken over the years. In this episode, you’ll hear him talk about the influence of religion on work, the value of meaning making and creativity in the workplace, chaplaincy, and the theological movements that have shaped the history of the faith and work conversation.
As always, we’re looking for the voices that speak to faith driven entrepreneurs—people who intertwine their faith and work in a way that unmistakably reflects the God who made them—and we’re so grateful that Lake joined the show to contribute to this conversation. We hope this episode encourages you on your entrepreneurial journey!
Useful Links:
Spirituality, Inc
Lake Lambert’s Hanover Inaugural Address: Education for a “Tough Mind and Tender Heart”
Hanover College
Mover of Men and Mountains
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
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Rusty [00:02:42] So, like, it’s awesome to have you with us today. You know, Spirituality Inc. The book you wrote a few years ago that I’ve had a chance to go through in depth and market all up and lots and lots of great lessons in here. And give us a little background on why you wrote Spirituality Inc. And in particular, you really strike at the heart and the core of the importance of values in business. But you also take a very historical look at how we got to corporate values. I mean, I just always assumed before I even read the book that corporate values have been around forever. But that’s not necessarily true. And you do a fantastic job of chronicling that forest. So tell us about Spirituality Inc. And get us going when it comes to how important our values in the business and marketplace.
Lake [00:03:27] Great. Thanks for having me. Well, I was interested in this idea of Christian vocation, which is an idea really deeply rooted in the Protestant Reformation and was a foundational teaching of the Protestant reformers. And so I explored that. But what I began to realize when I started talking to folks in my church or if I would go out to dinner parties or things like that, and people would say, well, what do you do and what’s your area of interest? And I would try to describe it. And then they would all of a sudden turn the conversation on me. And it was it was really interesting. They would be telling me about some book that they had read or this thing that was going on at their work. And they wanted to talk to me about it. And one of the things that I realized was that as an academic, I was very comfortable in this world of historical ideas. But I really hadn’t been paying a whole lot of attention what was going on today and how people are trying to live out their vocation, live out their Christian life in the marketplace. And that’s what then led me into this book project, is that I wanted to understand what was going on in the lives of real people of faith today and how they were living out in the sense of calling.
Henry [00:04:39] Hey, Lake, this is Henry. In your book. One of the things I love is really the story of how he got here. So you spent a lot of time looking at the evolving to work, the evolution of work from the medieval ages, industrial revolution and today. Give us kind of a flyover, if you will, of how we seen our view of work evolve.
Lake [00:04:57] Sure. I think it will go back to the beginning of time. But I mentioned the process of reformation. So this is medieval Europe. Life is agrarian. But then there’s also a system of guilds around which a lot of the manufacturing related work of the day is done. Those guilds have religious meaning to them. They have patron saints to them. They’re formed because all of life in that medieval period has some type of religious veneer to it. So there’s part of that. And then the Protestant Reformation comes along and blows up all the ways of people thinking about what’s sacred, what’s profane, what’s holy, what secular, and says, hey, all of the world is holy because God made it that way.
Lake [00:05:47] And so when you work in that world, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a priest or a monk or a nine being you’re engaging in Holy Work because you’re engaging in this world that God has made.
[00:05:59] And you can be part of God’s creative and redeeming work in the world, even as a shoemaker or as a carpenter or as a farmer. And that begins to grow and spread as a theological idea. But it still takes a while and it’s never fully embedded. There’s always a sense that the clergy have a little bit of a monopoly on this idea of vocation. And that’s true even in among Protestant traditions. And. So there’s always moments in which this idea of vocation and calling begins to sink in to the larger faithful. But this idea that if you’re really called and that must mean that you’re called to be a pastor or if you’re really called and it must mean your call to be a missionary, to go overseas and evangelize the unbelievers, that idea stays and it continues.
[00:06:51] And in many ways, it still exists today. But work evolves and so it’s present. But what really comes into play, I think, next is the move to when work changes in the assembly line and modern manufacturing, where a lot of what was left of creativity in work is stripped away. And we try to routinized work and we try to make people into more like machines so that then they can do routinized work. And it brings tremendous wealth and prosperity to the areas that benefit from it. But it also leads to incredible, I guess, lack of meaning in work, too, that people sacrifice a lifestyle for a system of meaning that begins to swing around.
[00:07:39] And as I mentioned, with the rise of knowledge work, then we see an increasing focus on creativity again in the workplace. And I think that wherever we talk about creativity at work, there’s an opening to talk about faith and spirituality at work, because when we engage in creative acts, we are living out our our calling as being created in the image of God. We’re engaged as co-creators with God in the world. And so there’s an opportunity again. And I think that’s what we’re really seeing growing in so much of the new economy in this world, as well as in a service economy where the importance of face to face interactions is so much more important than just turning a cog on an assembly line.
Henry [00:08:25] So tell us more about that. We’re all familiar with the industrial revolution. Lean into that. But what does it mean when we saw a lot of the work production be this kind of cog in a wheel type of approach? And then is there anything, if you would, talk about what you saw in the industrial revolution and maybe how that dehumanized things, but also maybe even Bridgette’s today? Is there anything about artificial intelligence you see that gives you pause and caution as we kind of head into the next century?
Lake [00:08:55] I think there are a lot of things happening in the industrial revolution, but certainly a key development was the assembly line. And I talk about that in my book, some because I think it was so important in finally removing what was maybe the last bit of creativity that was left in industrial work. And when it does that, I think it creates a crisis of meaning as well as beyond that, just a real crisis. And you read reports about people who went to work for Henry Ford and they were drawn to work for Henry Ford because the pay was so good and they would line up because he was paying better than any other industrial manufacturer of the time. But then many would wash out. They would not be able to handle the pace. Their nerves wouldn’t hold up. They couldn’t handle it. And it was so important that even Charlie Chaplin at the time made this comedy movie. It was a silent movie called Modern Times, where he showed how the assembly line was doing these things to people. And he did it in a in a comedic way. But it showed a central truth that something was going on there. And so I don’t mean to say that the assembly line didn’t have any good. Like I said, it produced tremendous wealth and opportunity for a lot of people, but it was dehumanizing. And I think that many folks began to look at that and people began to steady then. Well, how is it that humans become more productive? And then there were a whole different set of studies going on and assembly lines that created what became a lot of modern human resources with the Mayo studies, the Hawthorne experiments as they were known. Where were workers were gathered together and consulted about what the best way to organize work would be. And simply by the consultation alone, work productivity increased compared to those who weren’t consulted. And it didn’t matter whether they changed any the procedures or not. It was simply being engaged in the conversation, being gaged in a community of work that then led to increased productivity results. And that was the striking result that no one predicted when that was going on. When we look around today, I think that it’s it’s pretty easy to see a variety of forms of dehumanizing work. And we could do that across the board, whether it’s in manufacturing or otherwise. I don’t know if it can be as easily located perhaps as it was with some of the forms of industrialization. But that is one of the concerns with robotics and artificial intelligence, is that will. The last bit of create. Givati be sucked out of work by machines. I’m doubtful, and at least the things that I read about artificial intelligence, I still think that the spark of human creativity is too powerful to be able to snuff out even by the most advanced machines.
William [00:11:43] That’s interesting. And as you think through that, switching topics slightly, we talk a little bit about chaplaincy here and how chaplaincy just seems to be an incredible way to minister, to the spiritual needs of employees and coworkers and all of those things. We usually talk about it from the lens of how even most professional sports teams and college universities and all of these people have seen this right, that there is a spiritual component to life and work and to going through your day in your book, you trace a little bit back to R.G. Letourneau and some of the work he did. I am just a huge, huge fan of his as well, a mover of men and mountains. If you’re an entrepreneur out there and want a great biography to read, it is absolutely incredible to watch him build his world. At one point, I think the style was in World War 2. His machines move 60 percent of the earth. That happened in World War 2, just an inventor extraordinaire, but also really thought through faith and work deeply. And he talks really openly about going through those struggles. But you traced some of chaplaincy back to him. I’d love for you to dove a little bit deeper on the history of workplace chaplaincy and how it’s come to be.
Lake [00:12:52] Yeah, I think a lot of the history of chaplaincy is I trace it in two strands. On the one hand, there was a desire by business leaders to provide chaplains when they set up operations in places where the employees wouldn’t have access to a faith community or a religious leader in that community. And so I think that say when Chernow’s building the Hoover Dam, that’s a great example of this isolated location where we need to make sure that the religious life and the faith life of our employees is match. And so we need to make sure that we have chaplains. Then there’s another strand where existing religious communities, churches, national denominations see industrialization and industrial centers as missioner opportunities. And so instead of sending missionaries overseas, we’re going to send them in to these missionary fields. But the big difference is who does the chaplain work for? And in many ways, the worker is served by both models.
[00:13:56] But what’s really interesting is how businesses are willing to take chaplains on as part of their responsibility and their expense, as opposed to saying, oh, no, someone else should do it, or that’s just an employees decision whether or not they want to do that in their off time. And that becomes a really interesting development in the early 20th century and then continues through today. And I think it’s progressed quite a bit so that now we even see companies hiring chaplains, of course. And there’s some great examples. Tyson Foods, I think is one of the great ones. But then now we see these companies arising that allow other companies to outsource chaplaincy services. So, for example, rather than the company hiring, a chaplain themselves are able to engage the service of corporate chaplains of America to bring in a chaplain. And then that also gives them access to a variety of other resources for employees who may want a different kind of faith leader. So then they’re able to access the network that this larger company affords them.
Henry [00:15:00] One of the things I love about historians is their ability to see trends that have happened over hundreds and hundreds of years and those trends and seen how things develop. It gives them some sort of a sense about where things might be headed. And maybe I’m putting you on the spot a little bit with that type of a statement or assumption. But as you had studied different trends up through to today, where do you see faith in work move and maybe what were some of your hopes for the faith and work movement over the next 30, 40, 50 years?
Lake [00:15:35] I think one of the things that we’re going to see is that the workplace is going to be it’s a great place for interfaith encounter. And I think we already are. And as more and more folks find community at work and as our workplaces become more diverse in their faith expressions, there’s going to be a lot more conversation and engagement with and between people of different religious faiths at work.
[00:16:04] And I think it’s going to be a really interesting experiment to see how that works and how then people bring together these different faith traditions, some of which are evangelical. And so they’re charged with sharing the good news of that tradition with others. And I think that’s going to be one of the great questions that we encounter going forward.
[00:16:26] I would say that I’m very hope. Full still that as churches began to rethink what the reality of the 21st century is, is that they will pick up and be more responsive to the needs of Christians in the workplace, and that will see a lot more outreach and efforts to equip and prepare them for their ministry in daily life. I’m very hopeful that church related colleges and Christian colleges will do the same. I think that that’s one of our responsibilities as well, is to begin talking about that with students, even when they are preparing for profession and to begin to equip them for that reality when they go out to the world work.
Henry [00:17:04] Lots of us have heroes, and whether it’s a baseball hero or a political hero or a war hero or something like that. In your research for the book, as you came to understand the lives of men and women that had been involved in the faith and work movement. Was there one or maybe a couple of folks that you said while they were really amazing? Those are people who are heroes. John Piper’s got that sermon series or biographical series, men of whom the world was not worthy. Do you get a sense for that for men and women in the faith and work movement?
Lake [00:17:37] Yeah, I can tell you about two. One that’s in the book and one that’s not that always stand out to me. The one that’s not is one of the first people that I came into contact and ever met who talked about these kinds of things. And his name was Bill Deal. Bill was the vise president for sales at Bethlehem Steel. So you can tell hold this goes back. But there was a guy who fought in World War Two, came back and like the others in the Greatest Generation, went back and built America and he made it with steel. But he also was very interested in living out his faith at work. And he wasn’t content just in figuring that out himself. He started writing about it and he started publishing books about it even in the 60s.
[00:18:20] He was writing about Christian faith in real life and get a great book called Thank God It’s Monday. And so these little books that he intended for people like him because he said no one’s talking to people like me. And so he was doing a lot of what you guys are doing, but just in a different era and living out that life in a pretty rough and tough world of the steel industry in the mid 20th century. And he was trying to be a faithful Christian and living in that.
[00:18:50] And that was really influential on me in thinking about what I can do as a leader and also as a scholar and trying to tell the story because he was trying to do it as a lay theologian because he just didn’t think that anyone else was at the time. The other one that is in the book and probably you I’ve talked a lot about it, is that I’m a huge fan of True Cathy. I think True Cathy is one of the great Christian leaders of our time and has done great things. I think that his leadership of Chick-Fil-A has been really impressive and what his family has done. I think there’s some great questions that we can ask about Cathy’s leadership. And I think those are important to ask about whether or not he’s the environmental leader that we would want him to be or whether he is the inclusive leader that we would want him to be. But in terms of living out his faith and being out of Parcells values onto his children that have continued to live out his faith. I think that that’s a great lesson. There’s a great lesson there.
Rusty [00:19:48] Like I’m a twisties back to values one more time and try to bring this home for the entrepreneurs that are listening. Give an entrepreneur some insights on the importance of stated values. But even more so, the importance of living and walking the talk when it comes to those stated values and the dangers of not doing that as it relates to your ability to attract and retain both your customers and your talent. Your thoughts on that?
Lake [00:20:19] I think it’s really complex on several levels. And let me just start with saying that I think that we understand values from companies that still have very close ties to their founders and their founders vision. And so those are ones that we really get and that resonate. And some of those continue to live beyond the life of the founder. But that ability to go into the second, the third, the fourth generation, and I’ll say that I think this is even the bigger question for entrepreneurs is the ability for your values to continue once you’ve gone public. So in other words, it’s not just you and your vision and your values for what you want that company to look like. But now you have a whole host of shareholders to answer to who are also owners and part of this, then I think that’s one of the great questions that has to get wrestled with.
[00:21:12] Because does my mutual fund manager really care what bowings values are or because they know my mutual fund manager? I’m pretty convinced. Doesn’t care what I think that my mutual fund. Manager knows is that Boeing has to produce a certain amount of return or I’m going to be concerned that my mutual fund isn’t producing a certain amount of return. So I think that that’s one of the key questions is how do values survive in the public marketplace of stockholders and mutual funds and pension funds and those kinds of things. On the customer side, though, these values become very important. On the employee side, they’re very important and they attract human capital to organizations. They have that potential, too. They have the ability to attract and retain customers to them.
[00:22:09] But then you have very high expectations for what you have to deliver, both on the employee side, but then also on the customer side. So people are going to scrutinize Boeing like nobody’s business right now with the super-max and whether or not not only do they follow the law and the regulations, but that they follow their own values.
[00:22:32] And we live in an age that’s hungry. Sadly, for oftentimes people are looking for hypocrisy. They relish it. And it’s the cynicism of our age that we like to know that someone who holds themself up is just as fallible as the rest of us.
[00:22:51] And that’s a larger cultural issue that I think it’s that our culture and its kind of acidic in the way that it acts. But it’s a serious reality that the business managers and entrepreneurs have to address.
William [00:23:02] No, that’s totally true. And as we did come to the wrap up, we always like to ask and give you a chance to share with our audience because we know exhortation and encouragement is just such a way that God works. Maybe a place in scripture that God is working on you these days. Could be this morning, could be over the last few weeks or months, but someplace that maybe is coming alive in a different way than it has in the past, or maybe just something totally off the wall that he’s shown you that maybe you didn’t know before. Let me just share where God’s taken you and what part of the journey he had you on today.
Lake [00:23:33] I’ve become really interested in Demetrius, the silversmith in Acts 19. It’s probably not the most well-known story in the scriptures, but Ax 19. It tells the story about when Paul goes and begins preaching the gospel and emphasis that Demetrius, the silversmith, realizes what’s going on in the way that most of the other citizens of emphasis don’t. In part because Demetrius his vocation, his work is that he makes idols for a living. And so he organizes all of the other idol makers in town to riot. And so for me, it’s something to always think about is what does it mean to have Idol making is your vocation and what are the idols that we make as part of our own work? And how does the gospel challenge and tear them down? And so I’m always looking at Demetris. And so the one hand, it’s easy to dismiss him as, oh, well, he makes idols.
[00:24:31] But for me, it’s the holding up of a mirror of sorts where I get to think about, yeah, I think this is important. I think I’m really important because I do this. But how do I know that this is truly serving God and not just an idol that I’ve made for myself?
William [00:24:46] That’s a great question to ask yourself every day. Thank you for sharing that.
Rusty [00:24:50] Lake, it’s been great to have you. Thank you so much for carving out the time to spend with us and with our listeners. I know this is gonna be very encouraging and I’ll come back in reference and give the plug again. Is Spirituality Inc. That’s not why Blake didn’t ask to be on the podcast. We asked him, but I can’t help the plug that book because it’s just such a great historical look at where we’ve come from with faith and work and where we can go. So thank you. And we appreciate it. And we’ll hope to have you back someday soon.
Lake [00:25:18] Thanks. I appreciate it. It’s been a pleasure.
Henry [00:25:20] There’s an expression called standing on the shoulders of before we do what we do. And I think that a lot of times we are tempted to just think about the true Kathie’s and the Bill Pilar’s of the world. But they had heroes, too, and they look back to a generation before them. There had been intentional about faith in work. And one of the things I love is talking about this guy from Bethlehem Steel. And thank God it’s Monday and what an inspiration that is. And I just I love the history of this. This concept of exercising faith in the workplace isn’t new. It’s important. It’s stood the test of time is something for us to study. It’s something for us to be encouraged by. We should be seeking out our heroes. I know all about Michael Jordan’s career, but you know what? Today’s the first time I heard about this guy from Bethlehem Steel.
William [00:26:11] I think C.S. Lewis talks about a chronological snobbery, one of his famous quotes and so easy, especially in twenty nineteen, sit and think, you know, we are the first ones to ever ponder this. We have thought of this brilliant idea. It turns out Econolodge.
Henry [00:26:27] Well, what chronological snobbery? Oh, yeah. I’m a chronological snob.
Rusty [00:26:33] Well, that’s like the graveyards are full of lots of indispensable people, too. I think there’s a cautionary tale in here that we ought to all listen to as well, because as we look backwards, we should be able to learn four forwards. And I found it telling when he was talking about how the assembly line. And Henry, you started to get at this a little bit about where does A.I. go. But what he said about the assembly line and that lack of creativity caused a crisis of meaning in people. And, you know, I never really quite thought about it that way, but I’ve seen that I’ve seen that in people who really only have a job to sit there and throw out X lines of code every day and then to compile them and then tomorrow come back and do that again against a product that they don’t have a lot of input into, but they’re given the specs and, you know, sort of feels like a modern day assembly line. And that same crisis of meaning is residing there as well. And as leaders, as entrepreneurs, founders, leaders of companies, we have to be attuned to that. And so I thought that was really good and something I’m going to take away from going forward.
Henry [00:27:46] You know, this will be a subject, I think, for another podcast. When you talk about the future of work, I wonder if artificial intelligence and data science and where things are going with technological development, whether self-driving cars or fill in the blanks. I almost wonder if that actually is a good thing. And it is, guys. CONAN coming about on earth as it is in heaven, the jobs that seem to be replaced. This is not a comprehensive, definitive statement, but many of the jobs are being replaced or those that are menial and or repetitive, which makes me think back to the folks that did the loom back in the Luddite revolution. Right. Some amount of the people whose jobs were replaced when the mechanized loom came and went on to more creative work. Although there is a lot of pushback against it at the time. I wonder if some of the different aspects of mechanization in robotics and artificial intelligence might replace the work that has otherwise been done that’s menial with some very real short term expenses. And yet I wonder if that frees up humans to do the work that they were only uniquely created to do, which is more creative? Well, we have more jobs that we think are creative in 30 years because of this revolution or less if indeed creativity is a measure of one’s work satisfaction.
Rusty [00:29:01] Look, we’re to be hopeful and I tend to be very optimistic when it comes to all of that. I just I’ve seen so many jobs that have been created even over the last 25, 30 years, since the beginning of the Internet that we couldn’t have imagined kind of dreamed about. Not even your best science fiction writers would have been able to pen those out. But I also do think that, you know, it’s important because we have to keep human beings not only engaged and like references to but also consulted. Right. So wherever the work goes, if we keep human beings engaged and consulted about that work, they will want to be productive. And because they will want to be productive, that will open up their creativity in order for them to do, as you said, you know, be uniquely qualified for work that a machine doesn’t do. But we should be ready for it. I mean, the work is repetitive and rules based as a pretty good chance that the machine is going to do it. The argument recently with someone who is an attorney that, you know, we were going back and forth and it said, what isn’t the law? You know, basically rule based and repetitive. And if the machine has the ability to pull in every case. Right. To find precedent and pull it all in in a nanosecond. Could the machine not argue a law case? And of course, you said no. But who’s to say? But I think we’re supposed to remain hopeful and optimistic and look for those new opportunities.
Henry [00:30:28] Well, yes. And as Christ farmers who are entrepreneurs, maybe this conversation helps us to think a little bit more differently about how we might be called to unleash workers productivity and creativity. Was that look like are we running a business where there’s some amount of menial tasks? What does it look like for us to bring together the people that are involved in that and get their partnership in understanding how they might find more creativity in their work? What might it look like for an entrepreneur who sees something that should be redeemed and maybe there’s an opportunity to automate some of the things that are otherwise menial? Maybe that’s where our creative expression lies. But I’m grateful for the conversation we have with Lake.
