Creating a Gospel-Centric Culture at Work

⁵¹ “Have you understood all these things?” They said to him, “Yes.” ⁵² And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” (Matthew 13:51-52 ESV)

Jesus just told all these parables, and asks his disciples, “do you understand?” This is what he is saying about culture and what the disciples were doing with the culture around them as they became Christ followers—they were creating new culture.

Three things on creating a gospel-centric culture at work:

First, you need to create a strong culture of faith around you. When you create a strong culture of faith in your workplace, you are going to attract people around you who want to know more.

I know you’re thinking, well my workplace has a toxic culture, people hate being there, I rarely like being there. I’m going to tell you that you can’t change that culture, but what you can do is make more culture and then keep making that culture you want your work place to be and it’ll replace the toxic culture. The way you do this is to create good news atmosphere around you, in our case, we have Jesus and what Jesus is doing for us every single day.

A strong gospel-centric culture is based on values, not rules. People stink at rules. We can’t keep them, and we do more to break them than anything else. If you don’t believe me just look at the ten commandments or the 613 laws that were given in the Old Testament that would have made Israel a Utopian society.

If rules control your life and your modis operandi, you will not be able to be a faithful witness. However, if you operate out of your values, make decisions, have interactions based on your values, then people are going to start asking why and you’ve started to create a culture of faith—your faith. This is why Jesus taught in parables. He did so, so that he could teach values.

Love on people by teaching “why.” That means share why you have the values you have and why you do the things you do… that’s strategy, that’s how you grow people. If you grow the people around you, you will create loyalty and relationships that become active and organic.

Stay tuned for the next article on Calling.