I’ve been reading Tommy Newberry’s book, 40 Days to a Joy-Filled Life: Living the 4:8 Principle with my wife.
It’s been good. And hard.
There are some pearls in there, for sure. But some of them come like a poke in the eye. Not enjoyable, but it gets your attention.
Last week I came to the chapter on joy at work. Poke.
The tension that I had been struggling with for years (joy at work) gave way to about a two-hour mental wrestling match.
I have a hard time doing something poorly when I know it could be done better. That belief has made work remarkably frustrating for me over the years.
I can see the inefficient process. I can see the problem it creates downstream. I can see the time we’re wasting or the opportunity we’re missing. Most often, I even know how we could fix it.
So I point it out. I make the recommendation. I explain why I think it matters.
And then nothing changes.
Eventually, I’m left doing something I know is inefficient or ineffective because the people with the authority to change it have chosen not to.
I want to pursue excellence in my work. I believe Christians should. Tommy said as much: God is worthy of our best, and Scripture repeatedly commends diligence, skill, wisdom, and good stewardship.
Okay. But yet, I can’t get past the question: Am I right to even think that joy at work is possible?
Add to that the fact that:
Paul would have been joyful at work.
Jesus would have been joyful at work.
Hence the wrestling match.
What does joy look like when we’re required to work within systems we know aren’t working? Are we supposed to change our attitudes, stop being frustrated, and cheerfully keep doing something the wrong way?
That feels negligent to me.
If excellence means more than simply working hard—if it means noticing problems, making things better, and stewarding resources wisely—shouldn’t excellence compel us to push for change?
And if nothing changes, what then?
Start with Something Scripture Holds Together
To start, I needed to remind myself of several biblical truths about work that have to remain together:
1. Work is good.
Work precedes the fall (Gen. 1:28; 2:15). Creating, cultivating, organizing, improving, solving, and producing are part of God’s design for human beings.
2. Work is now frustrated.
Genesis 3:17–19 introduces thorns into work. Ecclesiastes develops this relentlessly. Our work does not reliably produce what it ought to produce. Because of the fall, we should expect work to be simultaneously fruitful and frustrating. However, the frustration of work isn’t necessarily evidence that we’re in the wrong vocation. I have a ‘bonus’ section below if you want to explore this further.
3. Christians should work excellently.
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord” (Col. 3:23). Proverbs repeatedly commends skill, diligence, planning, foresight, and competence (Prov. 10:4; 21:5; 22:29). Tim Keller calls this the “ministry of competence”: one significant way Christians serve God through work is simply by doing work well.
4. Christians should work with a different heart.
Colossians 3:22–24 also means that my mindset toward work cannot ultimately depend upon whether my boss appreciates me, whether my organization functions properly, or whether I receive the results I deserve. My ultimate audience is Christ. This frees Christians from both overwork and underwork.
Notice that none of those truths says that Christians should become indifferent to bad work.
Quite the opposite.
Excellence Isn’t Merely Doing the Assigned Task Well
Colossians 3:23 is probably the first verse many of us think of when talking about Christian work. We shouldn’t need constant supervision or recognition to do good work. Ultimately, we’re working before God.
But I don’t think biblical excellence can be reduced to: Do whatever you’ve been assigned as well as possible.
Suppose I’m told to execute Process A.
I know Process A wastes money, frustrates customers, creates unnecessary work, and produces inferior results. I know Process B would materially improve all four. I’ve demonstrated that. But leadership continues to require Process A.
Colossians 3:23 cannot simply mean: “Execute Process A enthusiastically.” Because biblical excellence is larger than personal effort.
What was helpful to me was realizing that there are actually two dimensions of excellence:
Executional excellence: Am I doing what has been entrusted to me faithfully and skillfully?
Stewardship excellence: Am I helping what has been entrusted to me become what it ought to be?
That’s why the instinct to identify problems isn’t necessarily evidence of a bad attitude. Problem-solving can itself be an expression of stewardship.
Joseph doesn’t merely perform his assigned responsibilities. He sees what is coming and designs an entirely new administrative system (Gen. 41).
Daniel distinguishes himself because of his “excellent spirit” and faithful administration (Dan. 6:3–4).
Nehemiah sees organizational failure, grieves over it, investigates it, develops a plan, persuades leadership, mobilizes people, and fixes it.
Proverbs praises the person who sees what is coming and acts accordingly (Prov. 22:3).
My updated definition of excellence: Do everything within your legitimate responsibility and influence to bring about what is good, true, effective, faithful, and beneficial to those you serve.
This felt so much better than thinking, “just shut up and report for duty.”
We Can’t Be Faithful for Someone Else
My breakthrough? Realizing—and accepting—that my responsibility eventually ends and someone else’s begins.
I am responsible for my stewardship.
I am not responsible for theirs.
We may have the responsibility to recognize a problem.
We may have the responsibility to investigate it.
We may have the responsibility to recommend a solution.
We may have the responsibility to make the case clearly, respectfully, and persistently.
We may even know exactly what ought to happen next.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean we have the authority to make it happen.
I had to learn to accept the gap between the responsibility I carried and the authority I did not have.
That doesn’t make a bad decision good. It doesn’t mean an inefficient process suddenly becomes efficient. It doesn’t require me to pretend a problem doesn’t exist.
It simply means I have reached the boundary of my authority.
On the other side of that line is someone else’s responsibility before God.
I believe wisdom enables us to know when to start, stay, and stop. Here, I needed to recognize where my responsibility stopped.
Joy Doesn’t Require Me to Pretend Everything Is Fine
Paul wrote Philippians—a letter saturated with joy—from prison. He didn’t have to convince himself that imprisonment was good in order to rejoice in God. His circumstances could remain genuinely difficult while his joy came from somewhere deeper than his circumstances.
That distinction matters at work too.
Joy doesn’t mean: This is fine.
It doesn’t mean: I don’t care anymore.
It doesn’t mean: This is actually a good way to do this.
And it certainly doesn’t mean: Christians shouldn’t challenge dysfunction.
It means something closer to this: My joy does not require or depend on the organization to function the way I believe it should.
Biblical joy means I can:
- See clearly without becoming cynical.
- Speak honestly without becoming contentious.
- Pursue change without demanding it.
- Disagree with a decision and still faithfully carry it out when it isn’t sinful.
- Care deeply about excellence without making organizational excellence a prerequisite for my own peace.
Another big win for me was realizing the fact that acceptance does not mean approval. I just needed to recognize the limits of my stewardship.
When Excellence Becomes Control
Wanting what is best doesn’t mean that it has to be done my way. But somewhere along the way, “I want us to do this well” can subtly become, “I cannot be content unless they do it the way I believe it should be done.”
I don’t think the answer is to care less.
I believe the answer is to surrender more.
This is one way I check myself. Ask: Am I focused on finding a solution to the problem or having everyone adopt my idea?
What I try to carry into meetings now is the thought: I can make a recommendation without controlling whether someone follows it. And another: I can exercise excellent stewardship without assuming responsibility for decisions God has entrusted to someone else.
We don’t have to convince ourselves that the inefficient system is efficient.
We don’t have to pretend the ineffective strategy is effective.
We don’t have to stop making recommendations.
We don’t even have to stop being frustrated.
But we can surrender the belief that the organization must accept our solution before we can work faithfully and joyfully.
That’s where joy and excellence stop fighting against each other.
So What Do I Do When Nothing Changes?
This is where I’ve needed something more practical than “have a better attitude.”
What I am working through now is that when I encounter something at work that I believe needs to change, I step through this progression:
1. Make sure the problem really is a problem.
Before I become frustrated, I need to ask whether the issue is genuinely hurting the work or simply isn’t how I would do it.
Is it unethical? Ineffective? Wasteful? Harmful to people? Inconsistent with the organization’s mission? Or do I just prefer another approach?
2. Do the work necessary to understand it.
It’s easy to criticize from our particular vantage point. Leadership may know things I don’t know. I may know or see things that they can’t. There may also be financial, technological, political, personnel, or strategic constraints I cannot see.
Excellence means doing enough homework to understand the problem before prescribing the solution. This point keeps me from being “too quick to speak.”
3. Recommend the better way.
If something genuinely needs improvement and it falls within my area of responsibility or expertise, I should say so.
That isn’t complaining. Done properly, it’s stewardship.
Explain the problem. Demonstrate the consequences. Recommend a solution. Make the benefits clear.
And when appropriate, volunteer to help fix it.
4. Push appropriately.
Sometimes one conversation isn’t enough.
There is nothing inherently unspiritual about persistence (see the parable of the persistent woman in Luke 18:1-8). Important changes often require repeated—respectful—conversations, evidence, testing, coalition-building, and patience.
There is a difference between advocating for an idea and becoming consumed with getting it done. Going back to number 2, I have been in several uncomfortable situations because I couldn’t see any issue with doing something about the problem as quickly as possible, only to have someone point out something I had missed in my haste.
5. Recognize when the decision has been made.
Eventually, someone with authority may say no.
Sometimes they won’t even say no. They’ll simply choose not to act.
That’s when I have to ask myself: Have I faithfully done what was mine to do?
If the answer is yes, then something changes—not necessarily in the organization, but in what I’m responsible to carry.
The problem may still exist. But it is no longer mine to own.
6. Do what remains mine with excellence.
This is a hard step for me. If I ruminate on this point, it devolves into bitterness and frustration pretty quickly.
Unless I’m being asked to sin or violate my conscience, I may still have to work within the system I tried to change.
Again, I don’t think faithfulness requires me to call it good. But it does require me to decide what kind of worker I’m going to be within it.
At this point, I need to really be careful not to become cynical and give the organization exactly the amount of effort I think its decisions deserve.
I can continue doing my work “heartily, as for the Lord.” Not because the process deserves my best. But because God does.
7. Pay attention to what staying is doing to me.
Sometimes the issue isn’t whether I can remain in an organization. The question is whether I should.
I’ve faced this question several times in my career. Up to this point in my life, I’ve had about 27 different addresses. I’ve changed jobs because I believed I could no longer help the organization I was working for.
There is no biblical virtue in remaining indefinitely in a workplace simply because leaving could feel like you’re giving up.
I’ve had to wrestle through using my gifts fruitfully despite the dysfunction. Are there people I can serve, work worth doing, and opportunities to make a difference? Staying can teach us patience, humility, endurance, and trust.
To settle this, I ask what would happen to me if I stayed.
- Am I becoming wiser and more patient? Or increasingly cynical?
- Can I still respect the people I work with?
- Am I still doing meaningful work?
- Can I use the gifts God has given me?
- Is there reasonable hope that I can influence things for the better? Or am I spending most of my energy fighting an organization that has repeatedly demonstrated that it doesn’t want what I’m trying to give it?
Those aren’t questions to answer after one bad meeting or one rejected recommendation. Asking myself these questions normally came around 18-24 months.
But over time, patterns tell us something. Keep monitoring those patterns. There may come a point when leaving isn’t abandoning faithfulness, but is more an act of stewardship.
The Sequence: Joy + Excellence + Wisdom
Asking these questions helps me understand and accept how God might be using my environment to mature me and best support the organization.
Joy asks: What kind of person will I be while I work here?
Will my circumstances determine my spirit? Will frustration become resentment? Will disappointment become cynicism? Or can I remain grateful, hopeful, generous, and rooted in Christ even when work is frustrating?
Excellence asks: What kind of work will I do while I’m here?
Will I notice what could be better? Will I bring my skills, judgment, creativity, and experience to the work? Will I care enough to challenge mediocrity and help make things better?
Wisdom asks: What is actually mine to change?
Biblical wisdom doesn’t tell me to stop seeing what’s wrong. It teaches me to distinguish between what I can influence and what I cannot control. Adopt this thought: I can care deeply without allowing what I cannot control to control me.
Joy determines the spirit in which I work.
Excellence determines the quality and stewardship I bring to my work.
Wisdom teaches me where my responsibility ends.
Our pursuit of excellence means we should care about what is broken. Our pursuit of wisdom means recognizing what we actually have authority to repair. Our pursuit of faithfulness means doing what remains ours to do when others won’t repair it.
And our pursuit of joy means refusing to make either organizational excellence or organizational change a prerequisite for the condition of our souls.
Bonus: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
I don’t see a biblical doctrine requiring Christians to remain indefinitely in organizations where their gifts cannot be exercised effectively.
Paul sometimes endured difficult circumstances. He also sometimes left (Acts 13:46; 18:6).
There is a difference between perseverance and permanent resignation to dysfunction.
I think about staying or leaving based on these areas:
- Conscience: Am I being required to sin, deceive, mistreat people, or participate in something morally wrong? If so, the issue becomes much more urgent (Acts 5:29).
- Stewardship: Can I still use the gifts God has given me meaningfully here?
- Influence: Is there a reasonable possibility that I can improve the things that concern me?
- Fruit: Despite the dysfunction, is genuinely worthwhile work still being accomplished?
- Formation: What is remaining here doing to me? Is it producing patience, humility and endurance—or slowly making me cynical, angry and contemptuous?
- Calling/opportunity: Is there somewhere else where my experience, gifts, convictions and ability to solve problems could serve people substantially better?
- Season: Is this a difficulty God may be asking me to endure for a season, or has the season effectively ended?
Formation is one question that is especially important to me. Sometimes the argument for leaving isn’t merely, “They’re doing things badly,” but “Remaining here is increasingly requiring me to become someone I don’t want to become.”