I’m doing some reorganizing in my home office and I found a stack of Fast Company magazines. I started looking through them and and discovered that I read only the first half of the May 2005 issue. Toward the end of the issue is an article called God and Mammon at Harvard and discusses how the Divinity School is producing some top level business leaders.
What struck me was the story of Tom Chappell, CEO of Tom’s of Maine, and his soulful path:
[Chappell] had come to the divinity school at age 43, after an aggressive
growth period in his company that had left him emotionally and
spiritually drained. The business was thriving, but he was finding more
emptiness than fulfillment in success, he says. Many entrepreneurs
would argue that when you reach that point, it’s time to flip the
business, buy a sailboat, and travel the world. But Chappell was
haunted by a comment from his pastor’s wife: "What makes you think
Tom’s of Maine isn’t your ministry?" she asked.
We can read ministry in any number of ways (personally, I don’t think the ministry has to be religious), but I think Chappell was being challenged to reconsider and transform himself and his purpose. He was being asked to think about his Soulful Work. I thought about that line a lot today. Some interesting and perplexing issues surfaced at work today that might have caused me to feel discontented and disillusioned with my job role. And yet, I was equally haunted by the notion that my work in my current organization is my own ministry. I believe that my Soulful Work is to encourage a joy-full work attitude, cultivate a positive organizational culture, inspire new leadership qualities in my colleagues, and strengthen the organization so that it can achieve its core mission.
Do you have a ministry?
Chris: As usual, you're right on. We all know that our actions do speak louder than our words, and our BEING actually has a bigger effect than our DOING.
We, each of us, brings to any conversation our own context regarding the words we use. We can hear "MINISTRY" as it relates to some religious context we might have some experience with and that term can carry baggage with it which doesn't allow us to get beyond our own viewpoint. Or we can recognize the 2 D's that come up for us (Defensiveness and Debating) and replace them with the 2 L's (Listening and Learning) which is exactly what happens with most of what I read from you, Chris. I LEARN SO MUCH when I suspend my previous experience and look at things from a new perspective.
Thank you, once again, for being in my soul space - and for sharing your BEING and your ministry. I'm grateful that we're in this together!!
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