Circle 31 Podcast

Note: Please note that the text below is an uncorrected transcript of the audio captured for this podcast. We pray the Lord uses these words to bless you as you seek Him!

Ellen Adkins: Hi, friends. Welcome to the Circle 31 Podcast. I am your host, Ellen Adkins, and I am here with my lovely cohost, Melissa Taylor.

Melissa Taylor: Hi, Ellen.

Ellen Adkins: It's so fun to have you be my cohost for this I don't know.

We're calling them seasons, these next few episodes of the Circle 31 Podcast. Excited. And y'all, I am so thrilled to be joined by two very special guests, Jordan Raynor and Kaleigh Cox, authors of our August Circle 31 pick, Five Mere Christians, binge worthy biographies that show you how to glorify God in your work. Guys, welcome.

Jordan Raynor: Thanks for having us.

Super pumped. So glad to have you both here.

Kaleigh Cox: We are so glad to be here. Thank you.

Ellen Adkins: Yes.

All right. All right. So, we're gonna dive into a great conversation today. But before we do, I wanna pause and ask a little question to break the ice. Okay?

This book is all about faith and work. So, I wanna know, when you think back on all of the jobs that you've had from your life, like, go back even to, like, your 10 years old mowing yards. Okay? What is the weirdest job that you all have had?

Kaleigh Cox: You want me to go first?

When I was in college, I, for one semester, drove around to different day cares to teach PE as an elective for preschoolers for, like, two-year-olds and three-year-olds. And for two-year-olds? Yeah. Okay. All right.

And if you know me, you would also think, who hired you for that? Because I know the rules to absolutely zero sports. I was not an athlete and wasn't, like, an early childhood education major or anything, but I would show up with, like, my little soccer net and all these balls. And, yeah, we would do drills, I guess, is what they call them. Yeah.

In sports. Doing drills. Sports ball drills. Two-year-olds. Drills.

Ellen Adkins: Yeah. Love that, Kaylee. Oh, my goodness. I wanna hear your answer to this, Ellen. Okay.

So, when I was in seminary, I worked on a farm Oh, yeah. For about three years, and I was a farmer. So, I did everything. It was a market garden. So, everything from planting seeds all the way up to harvesting and driving to restaurants to drop them off, going to farmers markets, and I loved it.

It was objectively kind of a weird job to hold, but it was my favorite job.

Melissa Taylor: Knowing you though, I that does not surprise me. It was so fun. I dig it. I was so tan.

Okay. I couldn't really think of a weird job, but I was a waitress in high school, and I worked at this place this chicken place called Poe Folks. Oh, of course. That's kind of the weird part. Yeah.

Yes. And when you had to go up to the table and go, howdy. Welcome to Poe Folks. May I make your order?

Jordan Raynor: It's good.

So yeah. That's all I could think of. Gosh. The weirdest one. I played piano in this wine bar in Tallahassee when I was at Florida State.

Ellen Adkins: Oh, wow.

Jordan Raynor: But the band I was in, we were all white, and we only played on urban night. So, everyone there was black, and were these, like, white kids up on-stage playing Alicia Keys? It was a very odd dynamic. That is an odd dynamic.

I think it was fun. It was a good time. They kept asking us to come back, so it was it was great.

Melissa Taylor: Wow. Look at you, another talent we didn't know about.

Ellen Adkins: Look at us. We all have a broad variety of work history under our belt. So, in this book, Five Mere Christians, we are talking about five different people who have glorified God in their work. So, I just wanna know where did the idea of Five Mere Christians come from, and why biography? But specifically, these aren't just any biographies.

These are binge worthy biographies.

Jordan Raynor: Okay. What are they? You guys have read the book. They are Yes.

Melissa Taylor: You're not gonna wanna put the book down. Yeah.

Jordan Raynor: Let's go. That was the goal. Yeah.

Listen. So, in all the books that I write, I think this is number eight. I write for the mere Christian. And then other than being a blatant steal of CS Lewis, that is my term to describe believers who are not pastors or donor supported missionaries, but who work as entrepreneurs or waitresses or Uber drivers or stay at home parents, whatever it is. And these believers, if you're listening to this podcast, I guarantee that you deeply wanna glorify God in everything that you do, including your work, but you don't know what that looks like practically.

Right? And there's two ways I could show you what that looks like practically. Number one, I could tell you through theological exposition how to glorify God in your work, or I could show you through stories. And I think the latter is way more valuable Right. Way more powerful.

Tim Keller once said, quote, you never learn anything spiritually valuable by being told. You have to be shown. Mhmm. End quote. And that's what biographies do.

Right? They show us what abstract principles look like in three-dimensional animated models. And so that's why I wanted to write a collection of biographies. But as soon as I say that word biographies, half of our audience is about to stop listening to the show because they hate biographies. Right?

Because most biographies are terrible. They're way too long. They're way too boring. They're way too disconnected from the life of the modern reader.

Melissa Taylor: And you had to read it in school.

Jordan Raynor: Had to read it. It was an assignment. Right? It feels like school. I wanted to write the kind of biographies I want to read.

Biographies that are first and foremost mercifully short. Each of these five stories can be read in less than an hour. Number two, I wanted them to be extremely entertaining. I kept telling Kaleigh, my co-writer, who's really responsible for the binge worthy aspect of this. Mhmm.

I want this to be beach read crushable. Right? Only tell the stories that you have to interrupt whatever your spouse is reading at the beach to tell them these stories. Yeah. And then third and finally, I wanted biographies that were profoundly helpful to the reader.

Because most biographies make the person being biographed to be the hero. These intentionally do not. We're treating Fred Rogers and the founder of Lego and C.S. Lewis and Hannah Moore and Fannie Lou Hamer as guides showing you how to practically glorify God in your paid or unpaid work today. So that's the heart behind this book, Ellen.

Ellen Adkins: I love it.

That's it. You said something very interesting. You said paid or unpaid work. I think that brings up a question. Can you just kinda help us understand what is work?

Did God make work to be good? Is it a curse? Is work only something you do if you're getting paid for it? Help us help us understand what you mean by work.

Jordan Raynor: Why don't you define workforce, Kaylee, and then maybe I can give, like, a two minute, is work good?

Ellen Adkins: Yeah. Yes. Good luck answering that in two minutes. Yeah. Exactly.

Kaleigh Cox: Let's do it. Yeah. So, first, let's just define work. Yes. Most obviously, we're referring to the work you get paid to do, but we are speaking about work much more broadly than that because God defines work much more broadly than that.

In fact, in Exodus twenty ten, he says that even animals work. And so, our definition for work is to expend energy in an effort to achieve a desired result, or you can just define it by what it's not. It's anything that's not leisure or rest. Yeah. So, yes, that includes what you do for pay as an analyst or a librarian, but it also includes folding a load of laundry or cooking a meal or studying for an exam.

All of those things are work, and all of those things can be done to the glory of God. Mhmm.

Jordan Raynor: And I grew up in a church tradition. I'm sure a lot of our listeners will resonate with this, Ellen and Melissa, where I believed that work was the curse of sin, and that's not what we see in scripture. Yeah.

In Genesis one, in the beginning, before God tells us that he is holy or loving or omnipotent, the first thing he wants us to know about him is that he is a God who creates. He's a God who works. And up until Genesis one twenty-six, where the Godhead says, see, let us make mankind in our image. The only thing we know about the image of God Yeah. Is that he works.

And he created us to create and work in his image long before the great commission. The first commission is to fill the earth and subdue it. Wayne Grudem explains Genesis one twenty-six to 28 this way, to make the world more useful for other human beings' benefit and enjoyment. And isn't that what we're all doing Yeah. Monday through Friday?

Right. In Genesis three, sin enters the world. Work is now cursed, is now painful. Thorns and thistles fight back against us. But even after the fall, God continues to reiterate the first commission in the context of blessing.

And if you're ever tempted to think that the great commission has somehow canceled out the first commission, look to the life of Jesus Christ. Mhmm. Because for 80% of his adult life, he was not preaching sermons. He was swinging a hammer as a carpenter, and God, in his sovereignty, could have chosen for Jesus to grow up in anybody's home and learn any trade. Right.

He could have grown up at the home of a priest like John the Baptist, where he'd spend Monday through Friday, if you will, praying prayers. He could have grown up at the home of a Pharisee like Paul, where he would spend all day, every day studying Torah. But instead, God the father chose for his son to grow up in the home of a small business owner named Joseph, where he would spend all day, every day reflecting the creative working character of his heavenly father. That gives great dignity to our work today. Yes.

Melissa Taylor: It does. Yes. It does. Okay. In this book, there are five people that you chose to highlight.

How did you choose these five people?

Jordan Raynor: It was a lengthy process, Melissa. How long do you have? All right. So, number one, we had to be confident that they were, that they were serious followers of Jesus Christ.

Right? Committed Okay. To the end. Right? Number two, they had to be dead.

That was that was pretty important to me because I wanna know that they finished well. Right? Number three, they had to be mere Christians and not religious professionals. There are plenty of great biographies on George Whitfield and, great missionaries, Amy Carmichael, whatever. We wanted to tell the untold stories of people who glorify God without a pulpit.

Mhmm. Number four, the stories had to be binge worthy. They had to be made for TV and all five of these stories are. And then I would say number five, they had to point to clear practical takeaways Mhmm. Of how the modern reader can glorify God in his or her own work whenever that work is Yes.

In our modern context.

Melissa Taylor: Yeah. You know, I think so many people do get hung up on thinking you have to be in a certain line of work or volunteer or missionary to for God to really be able to use you. They look for that. Like, what can I do?

What can I do? And that's what this book does so well is to show you don't have to look for that. You are who you are to be, and you can use that. So, what would you say? Think about that person who is, like, maybe they don't have a job that pays them or maybe they're not employed somewhere.

Maybe they don't know how their work can be used to God. You kinda talked about it a minute ago, but if you were looking them in the eye right now, what would you say to them about how God can use them?

Kaleigh Cox: Your answer. Yeah. I would say that I would encourage you to think about what it looks like to do your work with God and not just for God.

I'm borrowing some language there, I think, from our friends, Guy Jatani, but that was a big part of my twenties. I I've been a serious believer since I was five, and I thought that surely, God would want me on, you know, on the front lines of the mission field or in a nonprofit. And throughout my twenties, he every time I tried to pursue something like that, he closed the door, and at the same time was wildly blessing my business as a freelance marketing copywriter. And I wrestled with that in my twenties for a while thinking, why am I on the JV team? Like, what did I do wrong that I'm not good enough to have one of these full-time ministry jobs?

And through wrestling with that is actually when I found Jordan's books. And when I came to understand that there is a first commission, not just a great commission, that we're called to fill the earth and subdue it, then I could start waking up in the morning in my marketing job for a SaaS company and think and pray, God, what does it look like to do this with you today? What does it look like to restore order here? What does it look like to be radically present with the person in front of me and to listen well and to love them well? What does it look like to do the ministry of excellence in this role?

And when I started to do my work with God, that freed me from this idea that there was such thing as a JV Christian. I understood that all of us can glorify God in our work, and we get I'm so excited that we get to share other stories of men and women who did that in the book because it's a big part of my story.

Melissa Taylor: That's beautiful.

Jordan Raynor: I'm glad you pointed to the with God component because that's what makes work sacred. Yeah.

We throw around these terms that we don't define. The word secular literally means without God. Right? But we believers believe that the Holy Spirit is literally with us wherever we go. The only thing you need to do to make a secular school, a secular neighborhood, a secular workplace sacred is walk through the front door or log onto Zoom.

That's true. And so long as you are doing that work with the king of kings, whatever that work is kingdom work. And these five stories help show us, that an animated three-dimensional case study.

Melissa Taylor: Wow.

Ellen Adkins: Wow.

Melissa Taylor: You guys okay. I'm gonna listen to this podcast over and over and over again to hear both of you say that. I mean, wow. I mean, that's, like, freeing. It's, like, it makes me so grateful, because I see I see mostly women because that's who I'm with most of them, but struggle with that all the time.

Jordan Raynor: Yeah. Feeling like I should be doing more for God. Before God. Here's everything we gotta remember. God.

Yeah. And now I've gotta credit Sky again. Gosh, his book with changed my life. God does not need you. He doesn't need you.

He wants you. Right? I don't if I die tomorrow and God wants volume two of Five Mere Christians to be published, he will accomplish that without me. I am not special, neither are you, and that is free.

Melissa Taylor: Yes.

Jordan Raynor: Knowing that God's purposes will not be thwarted. His purposes will always prevail. I am free to joyfully and enthusiastically lean into whatever work God has placed in my hands today with him knowing that that's what defines the sacredness of the work.

Melissa Taylor: Yes. Yes.

Ellen Adkins: Wow. That is so good. I love too what you said, when you were talking about the different ways that you identified who you wanted to write about. Yeah. Your final point was that there had to be a practical takeaway, from their life.

And at the end of each part of your book, you give practical ways that we can implement glorifying God, not just at our nine to five, if that's what your life looks like, but throughout all of our life. I'd be curious, is there any one practice that each of you implement? And that can be a big thing, or I'm just thinking about my own life, something that I've been implementing more. Really, ever since we read Relax by Megan Faith Marshman, she talks a lot about prayer triggers and implementing prayer triggers into your more mundane moments. And so, I've started I have a dog.

And if you guys have ever raised a puppy from, you know, eight weeks old, you know that is truly work.

Jordan Raynor: It is Talk about sanctification, am I right?

Ellen Adkins: Yes. Wow. Sweet clover.

Sweet clover. We don't Shout the clover. Yeah. We'll put a picture in the show notes. But as I take her on a walk every single day, 06:30AM.

And I usually just use that time to put my headphones in and kinda zone out. But I've been thinking more and more about just this idea of how many I'm taking care of God's creation in in that moment of work. And so, I've been leaving my headphones at home and just going on a walk with my dog and just spending time listening to the birds around me and, you know, the squirrels running around the street and actually spending time to reflect on god's creation and then his invitation to me to then enter into and work in that creation. And what better way to start up my day than that reminder of, like, man, we are called to work and to cultivate, and I'm able to do that in a really small way when I'm taking care of this tiny, sweet, little animal.

Melissa Taylor: What a gift to clover too.

Ellen Adkins: What a gift to clover. Yes. It's good. Yeah. So, do you guys have any takeaways that you have implemented into your own lives?

Jordan: It's interesting that you mentioned prayer triggers because that's one of mine. One of the practical things I've done after writing Fred Rogers' biography, I hung a sign in my office. It's a replica of a sign that hung in Fred's office for thirty years when he was making Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. It's a Hebrew rendering of Song of Solomon two sixteen, which says, my beloved is mine and I am his. And I look at this, every twenty minutes or so, my eye doctor is very pleased with me.

I look away from my laptop, 20 feet away for twenty seconds, I stare at the sign to remind myself of the perfect unconditional love I have from God through Jesus Christ regardless of how much I'm crushing it at my laptop that day. Regardless of how productive I am. And Fred did this frequently, and I think it was the key. His taking the time to experience God's love, his living at a pace that allowed him to experience God's love is what empowered him to extend God's love in such radical ways Mhmm. To those that he lived and worked with.

We tell dozens of stories to this end in the book. I think about this one-time Fred was writing a script for a neighborhood in his New York City apartment, and he looks out the window, and he sees a guy get mugged right there on the street. And Fred drops his pen, realizes, man, at this moment, that the work I'm called to is loving this man, walks across the street to the victim, hands him a $100 bill and says, I just want you to know that God loves you. Uh-huh. Gives him a $100 bill and walks away.

Or the time we were talking about this at dinner last night, the time that, Fred took time to engage this autistic child who had never spoken a word in his life. And as he pulls out his puppets from neighborhood, this kid starts speaking in full blown sentences. Right? So much that the dad has to give the camera to somebody else to film it because the dad is bawling his eyes out. Right?

But as I read these stories, it feels so impossible. I'm like, man, who in the world lives their life like this? Who is the capacity to love this well, much less one of the most famous people in America at the time? And the answer was somebody who was so filled up with a sense of the love of God that he couldn't help but pour it out. He had to pour it out on other people.

And so again, practically for me, that looks like staring at that sign in my office every twenty minutes. And also budgeting plenty of margin in my calendar. That's one thing that changed or took to a different level after I wrote Fred's biography of just making sure that, man, if I think it's gonna take thirty minutes to get somewhere, I'm gonna budget sixty minutes to get that drive. Right? If I think it's gonna take forty-five minutes to check email, I'm gonna budget ninety minutes.

Why? Because I can't predict when a need from a fellow image bearer is gonna come across my radar, whether that's my kids or my neighbors or my coworkers, whatever. And I wanna have the space to be able to see the need Yeah. Meet the need and love that person well as I'm going about the work.

Ellen Adkins: And what a counter cultural idea of actually budgeting margin with your time.

Because we just live in a culture in which we want to all demise every minute of the day. So, I think that's wow. That's really neat. Kaleigh, what about you?

Kaleigh Cox: Actually, mine sort of ties into budgeting more margin, as well.

We one of the stories we tell is of the LEGO founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen.

Melissa Taylor: It's Ole. Not Ole. Not Ole. Like, we got It's gonna be a shift to my l d. You can call him Ole Kirk and Ole Kirk Christiansen.

Kaleigh Cox: Join the club. Jordan had to correct me on that too. We tell this just small story in the book about a time his son, Godfred, had just joined the company. And they weren't even into plastics yet.

They made wooden toys. And he comes to his dad and is all excited. He has saved the company time and money because he just sent out a shipment of toy ducks with only two coats of varnish instead of the usual three. And his dad makes him go out, round up the entire shipment of ducks, bring them back, and do the job right. Yeah.

And it sticks with me because for one thing, I feel for God, Fred, because I am someone who probably errs on the side of efficiency over excellence if I don't check myself. But Ole Kirk did that because he knew that excellent work was a ministry. It was a way to glorify God, a way to minister to the customers, and he had to do the job right. And so practically, what I'm doing in my own work to try to model that or mimic that is if I have something due on Friday, my deadline internally is Tuesday or Wednesday. And then I try to get it completely done by Tuesday or Wednesday so that then I'm forced I force myself to sleep on it, walk away, come back, and review it one more time.

And I always find more things to change when I do that. And it's a ministry of excellence. It's a ministry to my coworkers who are going to have a more excellent product to review. It saves them time and energy. It's also obviously a minister to the reader or the customer, the end user of whatever it is I'm working on.

We shared this quote in the book that I think sums this up much more succinctly than I just did, but I loved it and wanted to share it. It's from Dorothy Sayers, and she said, quote, no crooked table legs or ill-fitting drawers ever, I dare swear, came out of the carpenter's shop at Nazareth. Work must be good work before it can call itself God's work. The only Christian work is good work well done.

Ellen Adkins: Wow.

That's great. I think that's a perfect place to land the plane on this podcast. Guys, thank you both so much for joining us. I'm really excited. Over the next few weeks, Melissa and I are actually gonna be talking to some of the, quote, Mere Christians in our own lives Right.

Who might have a story that resonate with you guys. We'll be talking with my friend Brooke, who's a stay-at-home mom, and Denise. Yeah. Your friend Denise who's retired and several more of our friends are gonna be on the podcast, so you're not gonna wanna miss it. So, we cannot wait, for what this month has in stores.

Join us as we read Five Mere Christians. You can get your copy at p31bookstore.org. Yes. Bye, everybody.