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God at Work: From NASA to Ministry to Business

Blog / Produced by The High Calling
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Randy Kirkland met Jesus at NASA in the 1970s. He was a college pre-med student, just a freshman, studying the effects of lunar soil on plant tissue culture. A strange thing happened when Randy surrendered his life to Christ, though. He changed his career from science to seminary and counseling. Unfortunately, this meant that Randy couldn’t find a job. “Churches were not really looking for counselors to be on staff,” he told The High Calling. “People viewed counseling as a ministry that wasn’t a paid position.”

Unable to provide for himself and his wife, Randy joined his father-in-law’s family business in St. Louis. Eventually, he left his father-in-law’s business and is today the president of a company in St. Louis.

Steve: I understand that you read Howard Butt’s, The Velvet Covered Brick. What inspired you about Howard’s book?

Randy: I came across a book called The Velvet Covered Brick and discovered a lot of similarities between what Howard experienced and what I was working through in my father-in-law’s business. I was working with my brother-in-law and trying to deal with issues about who was ultimately going to run the business. I remember being very much influenced by Howard’s book, which inspired me to want to honor the Lord in all that I was doing, including my father-in-law’s business. Ultimately, my brother-in-law ended up running the company. However, I was engaged in teaching and ministry activities on the side, and that’s really where I found a great deal of gratification. Through a series of events since the early 80s to today, I now find myself the president of a company.

Steve: You mentioned to me of your having a reformed view of work. What does that mean?

Randy: I’m very much in the ministry even though I’m not a vocational pastor. The key for me is a reformed view of work. I say that because for a long time I operated under a viewpoint that a person in full time ministry operates in a different world in terms of their value to God. However, I came across a book by Doug Sherman called Your Work Matters to God. I also heard Doug speak at a conference. Doug talks about a reformed view of work, that all work is honorable to God, that all work matters to God. More importantly, all work is significant in God’s eyes because he created us to work. That became a very freeing thought to me. It suddenly imbued my work with a sense of significance that I’m not sure I had before. I had gone to seminary pursuing what I thought was the Lord’s direction in my life. And it probably was at the time. However, when I began to think through the issues presented by Doug Sherman, it led to integration in my life. I realized that God had knit all of my circumstances together and brought me to that point in my life so that I could serve him in whatever place he chose to place me.

Steve: How do you integrate your faith in your work?

Randy: Before this interview, I asked myself, ‘How have I’ve been able to live my faith within my company?’ I’m in an executive capacity at my company, so I’m in a position of establishing policy and direction. When it comes to compliance issues, regulatory issues, tax issues, or accounting issues, it’s not uncommon to feel conflicted and think, we can go down that avenue, and it might be defensible. Yet, I have to look myself in the mirror every morning and understand that I am accountable to God for what I do in this business. So, I try to make decisions that are consistent with my faith and consistent with the Scriptures. After that, I let the chips fall where they may. God has honored that. I don’t want to be a person who is one thing in public and another person in the privacy of my office. I want to be consistent at home and the office and at church. And if I can do that, then I will be thankful to God for enabling me to live that kind of a life.

Steve: Tell me more about how integrating your faith at work translates into the lives of your employees?

Randy: I enjoy applying Biblical principles in day-to-day business relationships. Sometimes I use Biblical principles and people don’t even know they are Biblical principles. As an example, it’s not uncommon for conflict to occur between employees. Emails start circulating and being forwarded to different parties. However, there’s never a direct conversation between the two parties in conflict. So, I go back to Matthew 18 and say, ‘Why don’t we make it a practice to go directly to a person and talk to them instead of talking about them?’ My colleagues may say, ‘Yeah, I like that.’ I’ll then tell them that I didn’t just make it up. God has given us a blueprint.

So even though people don’t necessarily know where these principles come from, or may not always acknowledge them, they work because God has knit the fabric of our lives by his principles. He honors communicating when it’s full of truth and full of grace and when it’s direct instead of indirect. We can live and show people Biblical principles in our everyday workplace and help them to see the benefits of those principles.

Steve: What wisdom do you use in practicing God’s principles in your everyday work life?

Randy: I never want to turn the gospel into moralism, where I’m just trying to make people become better behaving people. I grew up with that in the South and moralism can be very deceiving. So I’m very sensitive to the dangers of moralism. In the business world, there are benefits of applying operational principles based on scriptures and putting them into practice. Then if the opportunity avails itself, I may have the opportunity to explain why it works and where it came from.

Steve: Are there other ways you live out your faith in the workplace?

Randy: By God’s grace, I try very much to manage, lead, guide, direct, and work alongside people in a very collegial fashion, hopefully by setting an example. I spend probably as much time outside of my office as I do in my office. I’ll go out into the office space and talk to the employees. I may ask them how their families and their children are doing. In fact, a big part of our company is focused on the family. We may have a picnic for the family, or we may have a 5K walk or run for the family and they bring their kids. We have breakfast with Santa. We have bowling parties that are family friendly so that little ones can get out there and roll the ball around and have a good time. These are good opportunities to get to know the employees and their families. I also try to be consistent by attending company events. There’s a value to being consistent with being there with the families.

Steve: What else comes to mind?

Randy: Sometimes I go to see people when they’ve had newborns. It’s amazing how people remember that eight or nine years later. They’ll say, ‘You were the first non-family member to visit us in the hospital and congratulate us on our newborn child.’ A guy in our office comes to mind who talks about me coming to visit to this day. It seemed like a very trivial thing to me, but it apparently made a very positive impression on this man and his wife. Then there are those times outside the office environment that become critical junctures in life. I remember when an employee experienced the tragic death of her husband. I drove to her home that night and prayed with her. I gave her a Bible. I don’t think she had a Bible. I was able to come along side of her at a very fragile time in her life.

Steve: What excites you about coming to work every morning?

Randy: What excites me about coming to work is the same as what excites me about what I do when I’m not at work: I want to be found faithful. That’s it. It’s what I really find myself thinking about a lot, regardless of whether I’m at work or not. I want to be found faithful.

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God at Work

Where is God? Does he inhabit only the sanctuaries and monasteries and seminaries of the earth? Or, is God with you in your cubicle, your classroom, your kitchen, your conference call? What about the carpool lane? And if God is there with you, what does that mean? Join us for this series, God at Work, where we explore what it means that God is not only at work in you, but also, quite literally, with you. It may be difficult to see the Kingdom of God through the deadlines and reports and meetings and evaluations and budgets, but be encouraged: he is there. Together, let’s find him in the ordinary places you work, and let’s consider how his presence makes a difference for good.

Featured image by Marty Hadding. Used with Permission. Source via Flickr.

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