What Is Good Work?

A couple of weeks ago, former President Bill Clinton made headlines for part of an interview that he gave on CNN with fill-in host Harvey Weinstein.  Most of the attention has been given to Clinton's use of the word "sterling" to describe Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's business career at Bain Capital.  It was seen as a not-so-subtle rebuff of those around the incumbent president who have been critical of Romney's business practices.

While there are interesting political dynamics to the interview, and its aftermath the past three weeks, I was more intrigued by another phrase that Clinton used to describe Romney's business career: "good work."



I have no interest, religiously speaking, to debate whether Clinton's description of Romney's business practices at Bain is completely accurate -- though I think it's a generally fair assessment that the company was more interested in trying to find ways to reinvigorate struggling companies rather than gutting them for easy profits.  Instead, I am more intrigued by Clinton's subtle poke on a cherished American value: good work is measured by success.

At the end of the day, we Americans tend to praise success and criticize failure.  We buy self-help books and attend leadership strategy workshops offered by championship-winning coaches and Fortune 500 CEOs.  If their actions led to financial success or athletic victories, we believe that they have good work habits and lessons to share with us.  Conversely, if the business failed or the team had a losing record, we believe that there are negative work habits that we can learn to avoid.  This approach is easy to spot, especially if you read local sports columnists -- when the team is winning, it's doing the right things; when it's losing, everybody is doing the wrong things.

This is not to say that we cannot learn from success and failure; we certainly can and ought to do so.  However, it is foolish to believe that good work can only be measured by success.  There are people who have done good work in losing and failing efforts; conversely, though less often, there are people who have done bad work and still found tremendous success.  Other circumstances affect success beyond our own efforts.

In some ways, this lesson lies at the heart of the tired adage: "It doesn't matter whether you win or lose; it's how you play the game."  Most people cringe at this in our results-oriented culture.  But Clinton's assessment of Bain's record, where some companies were saved by Bain's financial restructuring and others were not, is helpful for all of those who have ever tried to make something better.  He said: "And when you try, like anything else you try, you don't always succeed... I don't think we should get in the position where we say this is bad work.  This is good work."

This is a lesson that I wish more congregations could take to heart when they try to take on big challenges.  Too often, a congregation admits that they face a challenge -- probably dragged to that admission kicking and screaming after many years of determined ignorance -- and then they come up with one way to address it.  Then they make the following bad judgment: if our solution works, we have done good work; if it does not work, we have done bad work.

Usually this attitude rears its head after the fact, when the same challenge rears its head again or another arises.  If past efforts were successful, then certain leaders will say, "this is what we've done in the past, and it worked -- so let's do it again now."  If past efforts were unsuccessful, then certain leaders will say, "we tried this, and it didn't work, so it won't work now."  Further, if past efforts were unsuccessful, some people are less willing to try to do anything at all, having been demoralized at doing 'bad work.'

If we attempt to engage the congregation in evangelism by working hard to improve our hospitality to visitors -- updating signs so people can find their way around the building, improving the website with current information, training members of the congregation how best to greet visitors without scaring them, intentionally inviting our neighbors to church activities, posting church services on Facebook -- we may have done good work even if we don't get 10 new members in the first 3 months.  If we attempt to improve our spiritual development activities for children -- training teachers so they feel confident using the expensive curriculum we bought, starting or changing a teenage youth group, building inter-generational relationships between seniors and kids, hiring a youth minister or youth leader -- we may do wonderful things that will offer a lifetime of blessings for the children we are already serving even if we don't suddenly have 3 new families join the church.

Sometimes we are impatient, forgetting that some seeds take a while to grow and bloom.  We want overnight results, overnight improvement.  Does a stewardship program fails if it does not dramatically improve last year's giving?  Probably not (unless it is a program that insults people or tries to encourage giving through guilt).  We learn over a lifetime how to be generous: one stewardship campaign -- no matter how brilliant -- is only a small piece of that lifetime of lessons.  Stewardship campaigns succeed over generations, not over a 12-month period.

I wonder if we might remember the case of Jesus healing ten lepers by telling them to go show themselves to the priests.  Walking along, they discovered that their skin was healed, but only one -- a Samaritan -- returns to thank Jesus.  Jesus seems bothered by this: ten were healed, but only one came back to say, 'thank you.'  10% hardly seems like a worthwhile success rate.

More than this, I can imagine a 'board meeting' later that month with Jesus and the twelve disciples.  "Jesus," Peter might begin, "let's talk about your healing ministry.  We really want to get the most bang for our buck.  And there's only so many hours in the day.  So I'm not sure we should continue healing lepers -- 1 in 10 is not a very good success rate."

Jesus would probably sit back and listen to what the other disciples would have to say.  Many would probably agree with Peter.  Some would try to imagine how the lepers' mothers feel.  Judas, the keeper of the group's money, would probably ask why they were spending so much energy and money on lepers -- they aren't likely to contribute much money to the ministry in the future.  One would probably add that feeding 5000 people seemed to be more effective at spreading Jesus' message than healing one person at a time.

Eventually, the conversation would wander back to the initial question -- is 10% a success or a failure?  At this point, I imagine that Jesus would probably say, "your math is wrong.  All 10 lepers were healed. But only one immediately realized it and accepted their healing."

Most Christians believe that Jesus always did 'good work.'  But even he faced less than stellar results, at least in the short-term.  If his career activities were measured the way we measure our own efforts, we would likely believe that Jesus was a failure.  After all, with the greatest message of love and hope the world has ever known, the Son of God was only able to convince about 120 people (according to the opening of Acts) to follow him during his lifetime.  Only 120 out of thousands upon thousands who heard his teaching and saw his miracles believed.

Clinton's assessment is even more telling when applied to Jesus' conversion rate.  "And when you try, like anything else you try, you don't always succeed... I don't think we should get in the position where we say this is bad work.  This is good work."  Perhaps that is a much better standard for American churches to follow than our cultural "winners and losers" zero-sum game.  After all, if such an approach was good enough for Jesus, maybe it's not such a bad approach for you and me.