Episode 222 - What To Do With This Wild and Precious Life with Dave Evans
We talk with former Electronic Arts co-founder and VP Dave Evans. Dave is now the co-founder of Stanford University’s Life Design Lab. He is also the author of the New York Times #1 Bestseller “Designing Your Life,” about how design-thinking enables us to take up our role as co-creators with God. Design-thinking is now globally recognized as a powerful tool for innovation. And it’s especially helpful for solving “wicked problems,” the kind of problems that don’t readily lend themselves to easy answers with questions or spreadsheets. But how can Christ-centered innovators and entrepreneurs think about designing their lives and endeavors while following the will of God? In this episode, Dave tackles sovereignty and free will, the scandal of particularity, and how the word evangelism was first introduced in a business context.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Rusty Rueff: Hey, everyone, this is going to be a fun episode today. Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Dave Evans is the co-founder of Stanford University's Life Design Lab with Bill Burnett they're addressing the question, What do I do with my one wild and precious life? It turns out everyone, not just college students, want a more thriving life. So with Bill, Dave coauthored and published The New York Times number one bestseller, Designing Your Life and Designing Your Work Life. As a result, Dave has worked with hundreds of thousands of people and workers worldwide to build their way forward and design a more thriving life and career. The Life Design Lab teaches us how to design your life and how to design your work. The goal is to use the innovative technologies and the creative point of view of design to enable people to navigate how to go about engaging their future at and after college. Addressing the wicked problem. A design technical term of figuring out what to be when people grow up by providing a framework and a process to work it through innovatively, that's what they do. And entrepreneur at heart. Dave helped start a couple of companies before landing a Stanford. Most notably, he was where I once was at Electronic Arts, where he also served as the vice president of Talent. We're excited to talk with Dave today on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Let's listen in.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Today, as always, is a special it's an extra special one. This is one I've been looking forward to for a long, long time, since the very beginning of the podcast, when I was still just an idea. I went to my friend Dave Evans and said Dave, I'd love to have you on. And he was very nice at the time and said that he would do that. And we have now work schedules through COVID and a whole bunch of life changes to make it happen. And today I get Dave all to myself. I miss my partners. William, who is battling sickness at his house, awesome wife Deb has COVID and then Rusty is on the road again. So you just got me. But I've got Dave to myself. And when Dave and I got together, I guess maybe three or four weeks ago down in Santa Cruz, I live in Los Gatos, California. He lives in Santa Cruz. So he's just over what we call the Hill. We talked for a long time and gosh, I wish that I had hit record on that. And it was about two and a half hour extended conversation, which was awesome. And we talked about everything under the sun and I feel like we're cheating you a little bit because we're only going to be able to do so much in 40 or 45 minutes. But we're glad you're here. And Dave, it's awesome to have you on the program. Thank you for joining.
Dave Evans: Always good to be with you, Henry.
Henry Kaestner: So Dave is awesome for many, many reasons and you probably already know because you've listened to the intro about what he does with Stanford, the most popular course out there designing your life. You probably know that he was the engineering leader, led a team of engineers that designed the mouse, and he's done lots of really, really cool things in between. What I want to do is I want to spend not as much time on his background, which is awesome. And if we had this was a three hour one, we got really into it. But I want to get right into the book, Designing Your Life and this process and this concept that Dave has talked about a lot, and he does talk about a lot within a Christian context, actually, as it turns out. But this is a time for us to hear about it in a way that will help us. Hopefully, as Faith driven entrepreneurs think about how to design our life, design our company leader, our company, our employees. And as we reach out to our partners, vendors, customers, employees, as we look to design something that is redemptive and as a product or service that really matters in the world, I think that Dave has I know that Dave has a framework that we can think about, and it's, of course, in his book, and if you do nothing else, get it. It's great, huge bestseller. But Dave, give us an overview. Talk to us about, you know, this is a universe that you actually know pretty well because you've been an advisor and in leadership at Praxis for a long time. So, you know, this audience bring us together, give us a framework intro us to the world of designing your life through the lens of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur, please.
Dave Evans: Well, the legacy story, you know, the origin story is this begins when I'm 19-20 years old sophomore at Stanford in 1973, 72 or something like that. And, you know, finally conclude.
Henry Kaestner: By the way audience. This is an audio podcast. We have it on video right now. And if you were to see Dave, you'd say there's zero chance he's 69 zero, maybe he's 54. He may be a peer of mine, but let's just go with what he's just said. What was will give him the benefit of doubt that he was indeed at Stanford in 72.
Dave Evans: You know, I spent my obligatory night in jail demonstrating against the Vietnam War. I mean, you know, I'm a boomer through and through, dude. The so the point being, I find beside I don't want to go into full time ministry. I don't get paid to be, you know, loving Jesus and to love Jesus for free and joining the marketplace like 90% of the rest of the people that got made. And let's go do that thing and then, hey, you know, your life matters. They told you that your life matters. You know that because you know God sent his son. So your life matters. And then it was I was about to like almost everybody else in the history of humankind, spend most of my awaking energies in this thing called the workplace or my primary role in the world. So if that's the biggest expression of humanity available and humans really matter to God, then clearly that matters to God. So what's this work and faith thing all about? And I started interviewing, you know, the older men and women, the lay people in the important churches in the Bay Area. And what does it mean to integrate your faith in your work? What does God think about State Farm Insurance? Harry You know, and I get frankly, horrible, horrible, horrible answers, you know, which clearly demonstrate a bunch of really well-meaning, thoughtful, caring Christian people are clueless about how to close the sacred secular gap. And I'm furious. I'm difficult now. I was insufferable in my twenties. And off we go. On the journey to kind of go. For some reason, the grown ups are holding out on me. Either Christianity has a lot to say about this, which is got to or it's incompetent and I'm out of here. I don't know why they're withholding, but for some reason, the grown ups refuse to tell us whether this thing really works. And out of that came you know, it's now a 45, 50 years old effort in understanding what we now call the faith and work movement. And it was out of that work that I got invited to teach a class at Cal 22 years ago and then now 15 years ago. So I took the Christian doctrine of vocational discernment and found a way to sneak it into the econometrics department at Cal. That's kind of a long story I will skip and then my buddy Bill Burnett, who's a very loving, caring atheist and he is still a living atheist takes on running the design program at Stanford, which is a less horrible drive from where I lived at the time. And I knew the design goes to the lunatic fringe. So I said, Hey, I'm doing this thing at Cal. What do you think? Oh, great. Let's go meet the.
Henry Kaestner: Wait Dave, the design guys from the lunatic fringe.
Dave Evans: Well, at Stanford, the design program. So, you know, design thinking, which is the modern rebranding of human centered design, which is the specific innovation methodology taught in the design program at Stanford, conceived in 1963, David Kelley, the founder of IDEO, world renowned designer, the head of the design program at Stanford, is the third generation guru of design at Stanford. He stands on the shoulders of Bob McKim, who really grew the program and developed, and he's the mentor to both David Kelly and to my partner and boss Bill Burnett. And Bob took it over from John Arnold, who came to Stanford in the sixties out of MIT, that wouldn't let him do this design thing because it's silly and it's just arts and crafts and we're engineers and where's the math? And so Stanford let him do it. And that's how this thing got going. So they've been the lunatic fringe all along. And so the integration of psychology, art and engineering in the human centered design innovation methodology we've been teaching for a long, long time. You know, there's a kind of a crazy guys and, you know, they barely, barely got permission to stay around. It's become hot and cool in the last 15 years, but before that, the first 40 years, like what are those guys doing, you know, I mean, there's a strong cadre of members of the faculty Senate working vociferously to kick us off campus for the last 45 years. So, you know, well, it got cool recently. You know, it's been the lunatic fringe for a long time, but they're pretty open minded. And I said, Well, hey, I'm doing this thing about frankly, trying to re game adult formation in the university, which we don't do anymore, you know, because we're post enlightenment people and maybe we could sneak it in through this design thing and this gets to where which has got to do faith driven entrepreneurs so designing your life. So Bill says on Wednesday in the summer of 2007 great idea I got to go we'll prototype it this summer will launch in the fall. Take all that crap you're doing, reframe with your design thinking. Give me a proposal. So that weekend I took 45 years of work on Christian discernment in vocation, converted it into design language in about 10 hours, and dropped on his desk on Monday. And that's what designing your life is. So my friend Tod Bolsinger, the EVP down at Fuller Seminary, a good friend of yours as well, I believe would say, gosh, Dave clearly the reason we get along is you do understand, of course, that practical theology, which is the formal name of a particular theological point of view and design thinking, are really exactly the same thing, just using different words that kind of go, That's great, Tod I'm glad to know. And I can give you a sort of theological reason why design thinking really works, because all truth is true. And so that platform is a place to put this idea of how to design of your life on works just fine.
Henry Kaestner: So you take 45 to 50 years of thinking in Christian thinking. I want to talk a little bit more about that, about how you see the overlap. You slapped that down on the desk of a guy who's an avowed atheist, super smart person, very, very thoughtful about this space in the intersection of these different practices that really matter. And you said it again. So psychology, it's engineering. And there is a third one. You put character formation, maybe.
Dave Evans: Art,
Henry Kaestner: So art, so you put them all together. What was the reaction as he looked at this and sees, you know, some you know, 40 or 50 years of secular academy and then 45 to 50 years of Christian thought, how do you process it and assimilated?
Dave Evans: There's a white paper called The Christian Companion to Designing Your Life, which I think you've seen as, you know, a 14 pages FAQ, frankly, for most of the evangelical Christian is going to go way, way, way about. I don't design my life, God designs. Well, I'm just supposed to hear about it, right? I mean, this is a bad idea. So those kind of questions, I addressed in some detail. But when I flopped, the first of all, Bill and I had known each other for off and on, 15, 20 years. We were close acquaintances, not intimate friends. We had worked together in the business world a handful of times. We had a bunch of friends in common. So first of all, Bill trusted me. He knew that I was a good guy. He also knew that I was a religious fanatic, but was able to, you know, comport myself appropriately in public. He'd see me not embarrass him in front of clients before. And so when I described where this came from, you know, I would use the language, you know, of course, you know, you have to understand that Jesus is the second atom and the whole point of the invitation, the new covenant is to become fully human. And you're an advocate of human centered design. So frankly, as long as you get the human part right, you can't go wrong. And I know exactly how to, you know, preach the gospel at all times, use words only when necessary, so we can frame this thing in completely human language that's utterly inclusive. He goes great, just do that. We're good to go. And I knew design thinking quite well, having been around it for 30 years. So, you know, getting that language right was easy. Knowing how not to be a jerk by over proselytizing when you're not supposed to be was easy. I've been doing that for a long time. So, you know, it's not hard to be a public Christian. You just have to obey one simple rule don't be a jerk.
Henry Kaestner: So that's very interesting to me. Okay. So a complete overlap with some of the issues that our audience listens to. How do I attract and retain great talent? So you started doing that EA being the vice president of talent, you've seen that play out, talked to us about how we as ..., sorry before we talk more about the journaling in the framework and in some of the framework for actually entrepreneur. And so maybe we're doing it backwards, but let's stick on this right now. How do you instill that into your culture? How do you use what you've learned to attract and retain key talent?
Dave Evans: Okay. So I'm going to zoom back on your clicker to theologically to frame this, which is going to take me to one of my favorite topics. I'm not sure this even came up on that long walk, which is the scandal of particularity that we discussed. The scandal in particular?
Henry Kaestner: No, no, we did not. I'm looking forward to bringing it.
Dave Evans: Ok so the scandal of particularity as a concept in philosophy, which is essentially around how scandalous it is. You know, that the universal is represented in the particular of the divine, is represented in the profane and the most where the concept of a scandal particularity actually comes from specifically as Christianity. Because, you know, the religions all get together in the great big existential bar, you know, and they walk up to Christianity and they go, Dude, where do you get off? Really? The fullness of God is pleased to dwell in one mortal person and space and time, if you I mean, come on, give me a break. So, I mean, the concept of you know, of the Messiah, the way we [...] the 200% person, 100% person, 100% God, yeah, yeah, whatever. That's scandalous. But that's a big idea around the scale of particularity. So, you know, the body of Christ is still up and running. It's just now distributed across a large number of people. The incarnationationality of the Spirit of God is still with us, and each of us gets to participate in instantiating the ongoing revelation of the glory of God, this thing called the Kingdom. And then we have these and it's called companies. And in capitalism we only have two outcomes goods and services when you think about it. So I'm going to make a good thing or I'm going to serve you. Oh, wow. I mean, I will argue 90% of the good done in the world is done by for profit organizations in the capitalistic economy. And that's a pretty controversial thing to say, but I think it's a makeable argument. And so what we're doing as entrepreneurs is this one little thing we're doing. And if we select it carefully, you know, it is an instantiation of God's dream for flourishing, whether it's just sustaining something the way it needs to be, we're picking up the trash again or we're, you know, my guys up the street here, you know, [...] are going to create electronic based, you know, commuter vehicles and change transportation forever. So however, you're on the ragged edge of cool or you're just, you know, picking up the trash dude because, you know, it's a drag if you don't. So in that little tiny box of your company's definition, you know, your value prop in your product description or your service is an instantiation of putting, you know, skin on what it looks like in the glory of God is revealed. And so that's what we're doing all the time. And so if you want to I didn't get your question. How do you retain talent? What do you just need to talk about theology now? How you retain talent is I mean, 47 million people and counting in the great quit. What's that about? We argue that that's overwhelmingly an existential threat.
Henry Kaestner: What did you say?
Dave Evans: The great resignation, right? Yeah. As of last week is up to 47 million quitters. Wow. In the last six months. And we're not done now. There's four or five different archetypal stories in there. They're not all the same, but a really big version is, you know, take this effing job and shove it because I've had it being treated like a number and I can't connect the dots. I can't find any meaning here. And life's too short. I'm out of here.
Henry Kaestner: So designing your life, I think, of course. And most of the people on this podcast think that we're designed by God to work is a guy who works 6-7 days his work, continues his day. Where do you think the great resignation ends? Is it six months? Is the years it two years where everybody kind of looks at it and just like, oh my goodness I thought, this can be awesome, but I'm incredibly bored and there's a massive re entrance into the job market.
Dave Evans: Yeah. I mean, some people are retiring early and just given up simply to go and try the gig thing, but a whole lot of people are getting it. Look, I'm going to craft my lifestyle. Works are going to never be the same again. A lot of people are reevaluating. Is it worth it? You know, maybe I'll take less work and see my kids once every 100 days. And I think we're going to see the big quit shrink down. I think between gig work, contract work, remote work, we're going to see turnover stay high. We're a long way from this being over and the pandemic. People ask what changed in the pandemic? And my answer that is nothing. But what happened is the pandemic catalyzed our impatience with an old problem, with a very old problem. The Gallup data on engagement in the workplace. 22 years old, two thirds of American workers have been disengaged at work for over 22 years as long as they've been measuring, which means that was going on long before they even started looking. Yeah.
Henry Kaestner: Okay. So that makes this question then even more important, how do you attract and retain employees with this whole concept that, as you say, that wasn't changed because of pandemic, but at least accelerated? What does it look like to be able to help our employees, our team members, take a role in designing their life, understand how they're created imago Dei? But what do we do as employers?
Dave Evans: Well, couple of things there are one is employers. I think, first of all, that's back to the scale, particularly. You got to figure out the best but truest, noblest, but makeable argument for why are you doing what the heck you're doing? Why does it deserved to matter? And you may frame that in deeply Christian language of all kinds of, you know, Bible words and that kind of stuff. But you got to come up with the stand for as version of the average person understands.
Henry Kaestner: Does that get back to the scandal particularity by saying, ultimately, our company only does a small thing, but our job is to take what that small thing is and show how it really matters in the grand scheme of things.
Dave Evans: Yeah. I mean, you know, the creation is this massively multifaceted diamond of wonderfulness and you get to camp out on one little teeny tiny facet on one of the bevels. And there's, you know, a couple of the colors of what God really looks like shines through that little facet. And your job is to is to buff that puppy up and give it a shot. People go, Wow, that's really cool over there. What are you doing? I mean, you know, the Praxis guys and the Praxis guys who believe in redemptive entrepreneurship, you know, because I've worked with them for a long time. They got started for you did. And they're not that picky about exactly what you're doing, as long as it's redemptive. So that varies all the way from, you know, the guys. And I think it's Kansas City doing a whole different kind of a car wash that's pretty redemptive up to, you know, cross-training young women rescued out of sex slavery in the Philippines to reenter the workforce and become self-supporting. Okay, I got that part that makes sense and a lot of stuff in between. So you got to figure out as a company what you're doing and what is this fundamental value in the human story. And then you got to invite people into that and you got to take responsibility for helping them experience how the expenditure of their human energy and what we're doing here contributes to and is part of what the meaning making of what we're doing as an enterprise deserves to be in the world. And this is where one of the challenges is, because right now a whole lot of people want work to be everything. They want everybody to be work with them is what the founder to be a person, every single value of waste and every single behavior they totally endorse. And that's nonsense because that's asking for the scandal of universality. I want you to be perfect. No, you're not going be perfect. But here's what I can do for you as an employer. This is you know, I remember years ago in a working in telecom company, talking to the CEO was a real hard guy and he kind of goes, look, we're not curing cancer, okay? But, you know, we're trying to answer the phone and somebody's got to do it. So do you want help me answer the phone? Are you in or not? What's the deal? And so I understand what you're doing and then make the best of it. You can facilitate that conversation. So if anyone is, for God's sake, at least allow the participation and engagement contribution your company can make to your employees and your employees, commit to your users to be visible and accessible. And then thing two is, I will argue it's time to start managing people life wide, not just role wide. So there's a chapter in the rereleased second book on Work talks about the human in the room, the ratio during the workday. How much do I feel like I'm just my role? Am I really talking to Henry Kaestner? or am I talking to the founder of the FDE podcast guy. You know, so you're both those people now. It used to be you are mostly the podcast guy currently played by a guy named Henry. Like whatever he's about, I don't know. And now that we've been, you know, speaking from our homes and people are, you know, folding laundry or nursing your child during staff meeting on Zoom. You know, I'm a little more my person than I used to be. So the personhood to role ratio has moved toward personhood. That is, move people toward existential empowerment. And guess what? Empowerment is a one way street. There's no going back. So people like being themselves more. So companies can do a better job of facilitating people having tools. So like we did this, you know, work for you life, you compass exercise. What do you want to see planning? You can as an employer give people tools to get better at being themselves but best facilitate the conversation that manager. So I would encourage you to have your employees read their own manifestos, discuss it with one another, come up with what questions that poses from them to you. Answer their questions, but do not read their essays so they're essays or none of your darn business. That's their personal lives. But as a boss, you can facilitate the conversation and you can help people do a better job of living coherently.
Henry Kaestner: Okay, so that's fascinating. So at the beginning you're talking about the mission. And the mission is what are you looking at to solve this scandal particularity and does it really matter or not? And then now you're bringing in now the person. Okay. Why are you important? And so I think you just said for the person to write their own personal not the company's manifesto, but their personal manifesto, correct?
Dave Evans: Yes.
Henry Kaestner: Okay. Tell me if I'm wrong, if I'm reading into things or if I'm putting words in your mouth. But it sounds like in an environment where somebody brings their whole self to work, now all of a sudden there's an opportunity for us to be thoughtful about acknowledging people's faith walks.
Dave Evans: Yes.
Henry Kaestner: In the work environment as well, if they're going to go ahead and write a personal life.
Dave Evans: Yeah, absolutely.
Henry Kaestner: So I think that that's a really interesting trend.
Dave Evans: Yeah, I get very, very mixed group of people who are radically different worldviews together to collaborate all the time. And if you set the rubric up, well, I set the container up. Well, that holds us to go. Look, we're all working together. We're in this company, and all of us care about life. All of us want it to be meaningful. All of us want to be authentic. All of us want to be coherent. All of us want to be honest. All of us want to grow by getting everybody to sign up to a list like that. Not hard at all.
Henry Kaestner: Okay. Tell me if I'm being naive in this. Tell me if I'm being naive in this. But that makes me extraordinarily hopeful for the gospel. And here's why. I mean, that if now each employee is not just a unit of production to help answer the phone or whatever the case is, and therefore I can't bring in myself. But now, because of this kind of acceleration of these trends you've seen and people, they're bringing their personal story and they're able to talk about the things that really matter to them. And you can have somebody who says, My Hindu faith is really important to me. My Jewish faith is really important to me. My Christian faith is really important to me that that is a great thing for the gospel because truth stands out in the marketplace of ideas for somebody says tell me more about your Hindu faith, the Hindu says tell me more about your Christian faith. Right. Is that am I just being just optimistic or.
Dave Evans: No, you're dead on. I mean, some million years ago, again, Ron Ritchie, who's an associate pastor at Peninsula Bible Church back in the seventies and he's no longer with us. Big, hairy headed guy who looks like Jerry Garcia on a bad day. And he's kind of a wild man, teacher, preacher. And I remember him talking one day about reframing evangelism. It kind of goes, you know, people keep saying, hey, Ron, what are you doing? I go, I'm a pastor and I like them. It's because mostly people run away, you know. And so I was reading, you know, first Peter and be prepared at all times to give a testimony of the hope, the lives within you. Right. So that verse is often used as I get ready to evangelize. And he said, I thought about it. So that phrase being prepared at all times to give a testimony, what is testimony. Well, you know, you ask a lawyer and, you know, you walk into a courtroom and you sit in back in the seats. And after a while you decide there's something important to say and you raise your hand, go, excuse me, I have something to say. And the judge. So shut the heck up and sit down. You know, we want to hear from you. We'll call on your testimony is a specific response from an authoritative inquirer identified toward you because you have been identified as interesting on a topic of concern. So a testimony is a requested response on a topic of interest. So that's what a testimony is. And you're supposed to be ready to give a testimony of the hope that lies within you. So he says, Oh, I guess what that means is Christians should be ready to have the following question. Hit them at any time. Hey, Henry, I've noticed you're, like, weirdly hopeful. What's up with that dude? Tell me more about that. So. And he says, by the way, if you ever get that question, very often you're not much of a Christian. So evangelism starts with, hey, I noticed you're like, hopefully alive or sort of like you're a little on the weirdly wonderful side. Could you tell me more about that? Do you know anything about what I'm talking about if you're not getting that question in the wrong place?
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, that's really good.
Dave Evans: So in the workplace, in the workplace, you know, we have the opportunity to still be your, you know, sort of small C Christian, small C member of the Catholic, you know, universal member of the Body of Christ, living out loud in a non jerk, non proselytizing way, you know. So he goes, Hey, Dave, how's it going? It's going great, you know, it's just really going great. Well, I. Look, I think you're actually telling me the truth. It does look like it is going great. Why is it going great? Well, you know, this morning I got to talk to this guy Henry who talks faster than me, and I love that part. And we talked on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur. You know, we're talking to a bunch of entrepreneurs who are trying to live out what they believe into what they do. You know, and I'm all about coherency. So hanging out with people who care about coherency, that just totally makes my day. Now, I'm not. I didn't sell anything. I'm not judging anybody. I'm not going are you coherent because, you know, Jesus can help you get there. You know, I mean, grew up in the seventies when literally evangelism training was stuff like. So when people drop a rock on their foot and they go, God damn it. Then you go, Oh, I notice you're thinking about God. I didn't realize you were interested in eternal things. Shall we talk some more? Those are the techniques we were given brilliant techniques, as opposed to just, you know, if you respectfully live out loud in a way that invites an authentic question, like, wow, you're more hopeful than the average bear. What is up with you anyway? Then you're probably on the right track.
Henry Kaestner: And so this trend towards bring your whole self allows you to be more hopeful and help people understand more about what makes you tick and sad. And so that's a good thing. So we're going to celebrate that. By the way, I may or may not have told you or the audience this before, but when we were raising money for someone's fund three or four years ago, I would go around the country and talk to people about faith and the intersection of investing, etc. And I'd ask this question. I say, Where do you think is the Center for the Faith and Work Movement in the United States? In If I was in Atlanta, they'd say Dallas. If I was in Dallas, well, they'd say Dallas because it's all about Dallas, right? But I say no. I would submit to you that the Center for the Faith and Work Movement in the United States is actually Northern California. It's in Silicon Valley, where there are new or resurgent faith driven employee resource groups at Apple, at Google, at Facebook. They're doing praise and worship now in the lunchroom at Dropbox. And I think that there is this in Silicon Valley, does many things well and some things pretty poorly.
Dave Evans: Intensly missionally minded.
Henry Kaestner: But it is and I think that there's something about this bringing your whole self to work that employers out here started to understand because they realize from a pragmatic perspective, if somebody can bring their whole selves to work their whole personhood, then they get to stick around longer. And that was born out of necessity, right? Because all the good engineers would hop around.
Dave Evans: I mean, I in fact, I haven't told this story a lot. I just did a podcast with Guy Kawasaki and we got into old, old.
Henry Kaestner: All of you come down and you take a major step down.
Dave Evans: And we got into the conversation. I was on the first corporate culture committee at Apple in 1979 with Steve Jobs and Ann Bowers. And I don't know for a fact, but I think the first time I went to the first one of those meetings is the first time that the word evangelism got introduced into a business context, which is because the first year I was at Apple, the company grew from 800 to 5000 people and we were public. So it was kind of a busy year and Steve was terrified that we would wake up and just have turned into Hewlett-Packard or National Semiconductor overnight, because literally the them, the people who just arrived on the Jitney busses from the hiring program, you know, outnumbered us, the people who got it by about 10 to 1. I mean, literally busloads of people arriving daily. I have no idea what they're doing. And after six weeks, I'm one of the old guys, you know. And so I got dragged along to this meeting I didn't belong at. And they're talking about how do we make this work? How do we help people get it? What Apple really is not what Apple isn't. And they're really terrified that what you lose it, you never get it back.
Henry Kaestner: Hmm. How they bring you into the culture conversation. By the way, did they know you are a Christian?
Dave Evans: Oh, well, find you're about to find out. Oh, so they're talking about, you know, training and posters and maybe a museum and and a diorama and this kind of stuff, I'm sorry, but this isn't going to work. You're all talking about a program and it's not a program, it's evangelism. And the room goes death quiet, and [...] he goes: what the f are you talking about? And then my boss leans forward him and he goes, Hey, Steve, he talks like this all the time. It's it's, you know, it's really going to be either interesting or we'll just fire his ass. So let's see. You know, she goes, okay, go ahead. You know, and my boss says, you guys, you got a minute? You know, so literally I am six weeks in and I got nothing to lose. And I kind of go, here's the deal. Evangelism, this is a disease model. You don't get taught this. You don't get shot. You catch it from somebody who's got it. The old culture is an embodied reality in a person in the community. So the those of us who get it are the community of the real Apple people. We have the disease. It's an infectious model. You get it from somebody who's got it. You can't just transmit it through some third party vehicle. So it's all about the relationship and it's all about the conversation. So that's what evangelism is. You got to get the people who get it to give it away and think that it's both, you know? And then later on, Guy Kawasaki got to be the first guy to put the word evangelism on his business card. And, you know, so it's still true. So corporate culture, you know, look, if you as a Faith Driven Entrepreneur, you if you got a very, you know, straightforward business plan and you've got a very mixed population of employees, you're not checking people's Statement of faith at the door. You don't need to proselytize the gospel. You need to give evidence to the instantiation of the good news. This within the story you're already telling. And let us speak for itself.
Henry Kaestner: Okay. That's a new word for me. You mentioned a couple of times that I'm feeling so dumb to actually have to repeat it. It's not substantiation, it's instantiation, instantiation.
Dave Evans: So an instance. So, you know, if the early games at EA did in fact respect the intelligence of the user. In fact, they are on my favorite Amazon review of the book when I first came out was somebody wrote finally a self-help book where the writers respect the autonomy of the reader. And we went, Oh, thank God, because that's exactly what. And so there's an instance of somebody offering a self-help tool that has an anthropology that respects the agency. And frankly, for me, the imago dei lurking in my reader. And so I'm trying to have an instance in the world in 3D in real time that demonstrates I respect your autonomy. And the reason I respect your autonomy is because God gave it to you. So God is in favor of the freewill thing and God thinks you get to be in charge your life. Maybe I should agree with that. So that's an instantiation. So a product or a service is an instance of something, and hopefully it's an instance of the gospel. Even if that gospel uses different language than, you know, you hear on Sunday morning, we're makers, we make stuff and what you make is an instantiation.
Henry Kaestner: Okay, so you spent a lot of time around Faith driven entrepreneurs, more than just about any other guest we've ever had on the show. Can you talk about the traps you find Christian entrepreneurs fallen into? And I might say something. It's going to be a little bit controversial maybe and maybe you'll agree with this or just will stir this up a little bit. I have said in the past that I think that the majority of Christian entrepreneurs are not as good as their secular counterparts because they haven't been able to reconcile their different ambitions. They think their faith thing means that, you know, I'm doing whatever I'm doing for work. And but the real ministry happens when I leave work at 5:00 to go volunteer at Young Life or whatever the case is. But that there's a minority of Christian entrepreneurs that really get it. And they have this nuclear source of energy that allows them to be much better than their secular counterparts. Talk, if you will. You can agree or disagree with that. That doesn't matter. But talk about the mistakes you see Faith driven entrepreneurs making so that our audience can be conscious and look out for them.
Dave Evans: Sure. Well, the first is the one you already pointed out, which is they're still stuck in the sacred secular gap. You know, at some level they're trying to do, you know, a wood hand stubble thing that's going to burn as Christianly as they can. But it doesn't really matter. You know, I've often said most Western evangelical Christians are much more devotees of Plato and Aristotle than they are of Jesus or Moses. They just don't realize it because they're stuck in Greek dualism, where spirituality, materiality is fundamentally different and a spirituality is better and it's ethereal and it's on the other plane, and this world doesn't really matter. And that came to us out of the West. That's the Western Church's problem. The Eastern Church has never had this problem. You know, I'm not a dualist, a unitivist. Right. I believe in the God of creation. You know, this is a good thing. So thing one is, you know, we got that problem. So you're still stuck in the sacred secular gap and savior deprecating the work you're doing. And everybody knows it because it's my daughter. Lisa, you know, now works for Fuller Seminary, was a youth pastor for years and is studying parenting. And guess what? In terms of values, information, your kids don't get what you say. They don't even get what you do. They get who you are. So who you are existentially at your core as a person, value wise, is exactly what your kids will learn. You know, keep saying stuff, keep doing stuff. But if you're doing stuff and saying stuff, that's not the real you, they're not going to be fooled.
Henry Kaestner: It's like the Maya Angelou. It's not what you did or what you say. It's how you made people feel.
Dave Evans: And how you make it feel. By the way, it comes right out of who you are.
Henry Kaestner: Of course. Of course.
Dave Evans: So that's what entrepreneurial leaders are projecting their soul into their institutions. Psychology now knows this called mood contagion. We don't just pick up on each other's feelings. We project them into each other's psyches. So the first and foremost moral obligation of any organizational leader is to bring a healthy, cheerful person to work. Full stop
Henry Kaestner: Ok more mistakes that a Faith Driven Entrepreneur makes. So it's really helpful first one thing.
Dave Evans: The second one kind of classic, you're still stuck in the sacred secular gap. You're not living in the unit of reality. You don't respect the incredible privilege of demonstrating a little tiny chunk of the facet of, you know, the scandal of particularity where you're beaming, full, unmitigated frequency of the reality of God's glory through the way you're now doing car washes in Kansas City. Yeah, that's thing one and thing two, which is actually just another inversion of the same problem is, you know, you feel morally obligated to do traditional, either evangelistic or. discipleship ministry on your employees and customers because that's what a good Christian would do. And nobody went to work for you to be, you know, converted and nobody went to work for you to be spiritually formed, then went to work for you to learn how to develop their career as a product manager, getting this thing out the door and I'll let you know if I want you to be my mentor. So part of it is you're in a role and most people are, you know, overstating their role and trying to take on a position because they think they have a moral obligation to act like somebody that you didn't choose for them to be. So you either downsize the glory of the company, you upsize yourself in the eyes of your employees. You're either one of those mistakes ends up, you know, jerk. And that's a big contributor to why the two. You know, unprompted, branding attributes of Christianity in this country are judgmentalism, a narrow mindedness, go ask to Barna Research, you know, what does it mean to be a Christian in the United States and when you're a narrow minded, judgmental person? So we worked really hard to earn that brand.
Henry Kaestner: And that, so Christians there, just for our listeners, of course, when you're talking about the passage from First Peter, it's all if you're ready to share the reason for the hope you have with gentleness and respect. And we've got to make sure we get that gentleness and respect part.
Dave Evans: I mean, right now, the fruits of the spirit is, you know, it's a tough list to contend with. So those are things one and two, that they get in trouble on. The other thing I think they get in trouble on, well, the one that we don't talk anywhere near enough about is dealing with risk and failure. You know, there's a really tough question. I've got a slide on this. I present does God call us to failure?
Henry Kaestner: Does he?
Dave Evans: When something doesn't work, when the company goes down, you know, if something doesn't work, what's the first question you ask? And 90% of the time when I ask that question. So, you know, when someone goes badly, what's first thing you ask yourself.
Henry Kaestner: What did I do wrong?
Dave Evans: Right now, questions have belief system. So when you decide to empower a question, particularly a question that either guides or judges your life and what did I do wrong, judge in my life? So I've just given that question a huge amount of power. You better double check the belief system of your question because you want to make sure you believe it to believe? And by the way, the Christian answer to what did I do wrong is I clearly misperceived God's will because it would never be God's will for me to fail. Yeah. Why would God waste my life calling me into something that we all know is going to fail if I think God has foreknowledge of all things. So now we're really into what are we really believe to be the nature of the will of God, in the nature of free will, in the nature of agency and the nature of life. But at the end of the day, a better question, by the way, is not what did I do wrong or what mistake was simply what happened? We start with the objective question just what happened and maybe there's a lesson there and maybe, maybe, you know, the 14,000 things over which I had no control whatsoever conspired in such a way. So it was a great idea, but it didn't work, you know? So ask if you're a venture capitalist, for God's sake, Henry, how many sales like, oh, shoot, it didn't work out what they do wrong. Nothing. They did it, all right? It just didn't work. Happens.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. It's actually really interesting because, yes, as a venture capitalist, you have a great lens into failures and you realize that more often than not. Now, of all the different things that happened to your point, lots of times the leader plays an active role in that. So it's not he's not just 1 to 7 a half billion. He has a really or she has a really big role.
Dave Evans: Have a ton of agency.
Henry Kaestner: Yep. And yet there are a ton of externalities as well. But talk to me in the role of God, something that you alluded before that you have this FAQs, people say wait to say in designing your life, but doesn't God have a design for your life? And you've mentioned a couple of times now that God has given us free will and agency, and yet he's still sovereign. Maybe you just talk about, well, what's the answer on that FAQ, as you balance the sovereignty of God.
Dave Evans: Okay, so the sovereignty, freedom, that's a tough one and it comes up all the time. So it was it was a really good question. And sovereign capital, clearly, you're interested in sovereignty. So first of all, this brings up the question of so what's this free will thing about? And I think what does owning your life is about is the co-creation of our lives that we get to be collaborators alongside with but under God. So we're neither puppets nor totally free agents. You know, there's an old line that says so many Christians are practicing atheists. I actually think a more accurate statement is too many Christians are practicing deists and a deist, you know, is the has the alarm clock God or, you know, God. Yes, it was God and God is the creator. But he wound up reality like all alarm clock. And he put, you know, evolution and physics and all that stuff in place and it's just unwinding, you know? So we actually live in a mechanistic universe, but it's of God's design. That's a deistt. And too many people act like that [....] things are going, you know, the gods on the outside and I got us to resolve it my problem, as opposed to there's this incredible dynamic of the participating immanent God, you know. John 5:19 I do only what the father shows me. So you know, Jesus, the least creative man who ever lived, my mentor says, because all he did every day was the same darn thing. Follow, follow, follow, follow. So we're in this dynamic relationship of co participation with the reality of God and then the sovereignty freedom thing, the way I hope that first of all, I think to myself, okay, so the. I got two really, really big ideas here free will and sovereignty. First of all, I kind of think I sort of have a feeling that the free will thing makes sense to me. I think I have some free will and I think I kind of get it. And that makes sense because if I'm going to be held responsible for how I exercise my agency, that ought to be within my capacity to perceive it. That would seem fair for God to make me capable handling that which I'm responsible for. Otherwise, it's just a setup. Well, the sovereignty thing, I don't actually have that. I have domain sovereignty. You know, we're contrarians, right? You know, but I don't have the kind of sovereignty God does. So that's actually over my pay grade. So that one might kind of blow my brains out a little bit. And I see a lot of people trying to come up with a human description of God that works for them because they just don't like the paradoxes. So the way I hold that, by the way, is that all creation is within God. I mean, you know, creations out on the side and gods another being, God isn't a being. God is the ground of all being. So everything is within God. God is holding all things together at all times in ways that are beyond my comprehension, but not beyond my experience. And it turns out God believes that free will in us consciousness bearing animals called humans is a worthwhile instantiation of the image of God. And so for that to work, you know, he has to practice kenosis pulled himself back, if you will, a little bit to allow the room of our agency made from his to operate. So sovereignty surrounds and withholds that freedom. And anything that can happen within that was also the problem of evil, you know, is within the sovereignty of God. So sovereignty isn't fate, it isn't destiny, it isn't spiritual materialism. It is the way things are. And so when things fail, the real will of God is not outcomes it's witnessing, right? So God does not promise to solve our problem. God promises to be with us. This is highlighted for me many years ago on Good Friday when somebody started to share the difference between you get to decide which Jesus you're willing to commit to. Do you want the one from the prisoner on the left or the prisoner on the right? Because the two prisoners next to Jesus as two very different questions that identify the two most popular versions of Jesus on the planet. One guy says, Look, if you're Jesus, get us the heck out of here. Fix it. So do you want Jesus who fixes your life? And if he doesn't fix your life, like, why would you hang with him? Get out of here. We're done. The other guy says, look, just remember. I mean, he doesn't even have to be with Jesus. He just says, you know, wherever it is you're going. If you remember me, that would be lovely. And then Jesus says to him, Guess what? You're going to be there at the end of the day you get to be with me in a place called Paradise. So do you want the Jesus who fixes or do you want the Jesus who is with? And they're pretty different. But you might go through some failures like Jesus who stands of the wall of Jerusalem at the beginning of the Passion Week and weeps and says, Oh, Jerusalem had only you known of the time of your visitation? He was a prophetic voice trying to encourage the Jews to remember, Wait a minute. You're not the exclusive recipients of God's love. You're the exclusive purveyors of it to everyone. Let me help you reframe Judaism. And they didn't get it. I'm pretty sure Jesus would have been totally okay with people actually understanding him. Otherwise, why is he crying? He's not saying they're going ha ha ha, man, watch what I'm going to show you on Sunday. That's not the story. The story is, damn it. I really tried to get this across and they haven't heard. It's breaking my heart.
Henry Kaestner: Okay, so Dave we're coming to the end of the program. You're a remarkable, in my experience, a very, very, very hopeful person. And your energy for others, your energy for God is just an inspiration. I love it. I love being around you. Everybody loves being around you. Where does that hope come from?
Dave Evans: Oh, man.
Henry Kaestner: What are you hopeful about?
Dave Evans: You know, we see through the glass darkly, but later face to face again, I came so you might have life and have it more abundantly. You know, Joseph Campbell, the philosopher, he said, you know, people talk about what what's really is about meaning, you know, Viktor Frankl and it's about, you know, your mother, if you're Freud or, you know, he finally said that. I think it's this aliveness thing. I think it's just about we want to be alive. And I think that's a Christian thing to say. You know, gloria dei, you've given some of the glory of God as a personal love person fully alive, you know, Arrhenius. So this aliveness thing is really, really, really attractive, and I've just been kind of running toward it for a long time.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. Does being acquainted with death make you more alive?
Dave Evans: Oh, man. Yeah. So for those who don't know, what Henry is referring to is a year and a half ago, my beloved wife, Claudia, died of cancer. So 2020 was an interesting year. February 25. My second book comes out one week to the day. Later, March 2nd, my wife gets the terminal cancer diagnosis one week to the day later, after that COVID shelter in place starts. Interesting year. So March 2nd, 2020. Claudia's got a death sentence. Her prognosis was six to 24 months, depending which day you ask them. She got nine. She died on December 4th of 2020. So we had a good nine months. She died really well. And then I, you know, just dove into the deep end of grief for the next year. So, you know, there's got to be a lesson in here somewhere. I'm going to find it. And I am so grateful for the gifts of that grief processing. Death is part of the human story. We're all going to go through it. And if you have the privilege of being intimately beloved and in love with any other human being with whom you have gotten, you know, deeply connected and then have the privilege of experiencing what happens when that person gets ripped out of your soul and what God can show you about the nature of being a human being, the nature of reality, the nature of eternity. All three as I told you on the walk of my anthropology, cosmology and theology, what does it mean to be a person? What's the nature of the universe and who's God? All three of those are in a way, different place than they were two years ago. So I'm learning an awful lot about that. But again, I'm 60 and I get 11 grandkids and had breakfast just the other day with a guy named Mark who is 67 and retired a couple of years ago. Very, very successful, strong believing architect, built lots of stuff. He's a builder, you know, and now he's quieted all the way down and he's just he says, I'm just being I'm just shown up. And he said, you'd be surprised how many invitations just showing up gets. So I'm currently contemplating that. So the big lesson is we really are eternal beings and this is a form in this mortal world and, you know, show up, but don't hold it too tightly.
Henry Kaestner: Awesome. Okay, last question we get we ask this to all of our guests, what are you hearing from God through his word?
Dave Evans: Be still and know that I'm God. That's really, really coming through.
Henry Kaestner: That's awesome. Okay, may that be the same for me, for our audience. And trusting in this God, I'm grateful for the opportunity to go beyond just talking about designing your life and just about faith driven entrepreneurship into some of these more existential things about the nature of God, as you said, the nature, theology, cosmology, all that together. You've been very generous with your time. I'm grateful for our friendship and our partnership in the Gospel.
Dave Evans: I have a parting encouragement the Faith driven entrepreneurs are anything, you know, they're really trying to show off and they're really trying to get right. And we believe in growth as Christians. We're going to get better. If you're going get better, you will worse. And one of my single favorite things that Jesus ever said was each day has enough trouble of its own. So I would argue one of the single most important discernment practices to become mature in is to when something comes to mind, quickly, quickly be able to discern, is this today's trouble? Because if you're smart, you are able to see far enough down the road to begin to animate anxiety about things over which you can't really be an efficacious contributor to you. That's called worry, that's called a sin. So knowing when no, that's legitimate planning. I'm doing something looking forward this worthwhile. No, I'm just busying myself with worry and pretending it's responsibility. So getting to the place where you are at peace with, you know, well, cross that bridge when I come to it, even though I can see it coming, I'm not thinking about it yet. So knowing when to be looking down the road and when to just trust and focus on keeping your left foot in your right foot going in sequence, that's really worthwhile. And most of you are being way too hard on yourself.