1/24/23 - PowerPod: Are you a Monday Morning Atheist?

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the iWork4Him I'm Michael Miracle producer for iWork4Him, the voice of the faith and work movement. We are on mission to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. Each quick listening PowerPod is designed with you in mind and jam packed with Kingdom resources to help you connect your faith and work. How will this impact your work? Let's find out right now.

Jim: For years, those of us in our workplaces have rejoiced and celebrated the phrase, thank God it's Friday or TGIF. I've lived this myself for years, but what if we looked at it from God's perspective, would he be saying the same thing? I don't think so.

I think maybe God would be saying TGIM. Thank God it's Monday. If our workplaces are our mission field, the TGIM is more appropriate than dreading every day of work and singing the praises of TGIF. Join us today for an update on the story and behind the story of [00:01:00] Worklife and the No Moan Monday, and especially how we can all avoid being Monday morning atheists. Doug Spada with Worklife, welcome back to iWork4Him.

Doug Spada: As Martha was saying, we spent a couple years trying to figure out how do we actually make this fun you know, versus just work being a drag, or even going through a discipleship, this or that, or whatever. So we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how can people engage work, engage this process.

You know, the simple way we talk about is, hey, can you just trust God with six Mondays? And so it's really a six Monday process that people kinda walk through. Like I said, you're taking little fun assessments, you're getting, you know, text alerts on Mondays, you know, helping you sort of keep God top of mind.

It's giving you different things to do. You watch little video clips, things like that. So yeah, we've just, we spent a lot of time trying to, you know, also [00:02:00] not make it super intellectual. You know, it's not just about kind of absorbing more knowledge. We want to go actually try to practice it.

Jim: No Moan Mondays, what is that all about? .

Doug Spada: Yeah. Well you know, we started to think about how do we, how do we hold ourselves accountable, right? And so, you know, nobody likes that word accountability. Like, Hey Jim, let's just kind of be accountable, you know.

So, I just through some kind of really weird, again, back to fun and engaging, you know, this concept of having a Monday Moan Meter came up. And so inside each week you measure your Monday moan time and with this sort of this Monday meter and you just kind of write down like, Hey, was it two hours or three hours? Because, you know long time ago, Jim, someone sent me an email and said, Hey, how's your Smonday? And I said, Smonday? It's S M O N D A Y. and I was like Smonday... and [00:03:00] here's the definition of Smonday: It's that time on Sunday when Sunday stops feeling like Sunday and the dread of Monday kicks in. And we all know what that feels like, right?

Jim: It's right after dinnertime on Sunday.

Martha: Well, for everybody it might be different. I had somebody just last week say to me is it after two o'clock on Sunday? Oh yeah. My husband's gone into a different mode because... Smonday, it apparently now has a name. I did not know that. I'm gonna have to tell her a word for it. That's Smonday.

Doug Spada: Yeah. And, and so anyway, this Monday moan meter is kind of embedded in each week of the experience of this Monday experience. And really, you know, the way I like to think about it guys, is you know, part of this is creating this, what I call a no moan Monday zone. You can say that real fast, right? No moan Monday zone - around our lives and around our thinking so that we can kind of glorify God in our walk.

And why Monday, right? We're picking on Monday. It's because research shows, and I think we don't even need research for all of us to know that even with [00:04:00] the best of thinking and the best of understanding God's theology about work and why he created work, Mondays are just difficult. And so what happens is - we have found that if we can help people on this one, pivotal day, as we've talked in past shows how this transition from sort of Sunday to Monday because we, and you know, just in our religious mindset kind of think that, hey, Sunday's kind of this day that it all happens, we can kind of handle this transition and make Monday what God intended it to be. Then it'll roll over you know, and kind of affect the whole rest of the week.

Jim: Doug, I'm amazed at the conversations we have with people all over the country. They think legally they can't bring their faith into their workplace. And so they shut it off because they think, well, it's illegal. It's illegal for me to bring my faith to work. How does engaging with Worklife online, by signing up to do the Monday switch, how will that help people move away from being a Monday Morning [00:05:00] Atheist?

Doug Spada: Yeah, well, first of all, it's gonna set the backdrop biblically for you understanding what work is about. Cuz Jim, one of the real critical things is most people think of work as a four letter curse. Okay. And so people's hate of Monday a lot of times has nothing to do with that day. It has to do with this what they think is a four letter curse word work. And so if we, if we kind of go all the way back to Genesis, and this is just kind of, this is, these are the kind of things you're gonna learn and just kind of, you know, some of 'em are just real, you know, they're, they're true.

They've always been there. But we've been kind of blinded to it. But if you go all the way back to the creation story and you think about this, these incredible construction projects that God was involved in, right? Creation and you know, it says way back in Genesis that God is a worker.

Even Jesus said this in I think it was John 5: 17. He says, my father is working [00:06:00] until now and I am working. So God is a worker. He went through creation and so after God created, you know, after the six days of creation, which was just obviously miraculous. God looked back and he had another word for work.

It was another four letter word. Do you remember what it was, Jim, that he said? It is what? Good, good. That's right. So we have this tension between what we feel is this four letter curse word and what God thinks about work, this other word. Good. And the tension between those is what causes us to sort of not understand this.

Now, one more thing. So it also says in Genesis, okay, we've already set the stage that God is a worker and he's still at work in our lives in creation, but he's a worker. But it says in Genesis that we are created in whose image? In God's image, right?

So we're created in God's image. He is a worker. So listen folks. This is a [00:07:00] mindblower. We are never more like our heavenly Father and Jesus then when we are working.

Monday Morning Atheist sort of lays out the challenge, sort of like what we were just talking about. And you know, some people use Monday Morning Atheist as a it's got five different little sections so you can kinda, you know, and these are are fun little square books like you, like you've mentioned, Martha. Just very easy to engage.

So Monday Morning Atheist sort of lays out the challenge. The Monday switch, that experience, that six Monday experience, that helps you walk out of it. That actually is a very engaging, okay, now what am I gonna do about this, right? And so that can be done as you just mentioned, in small groups. You can grab a friend or two or a coworker and actually go through it at work or churches or organizations. We love to sort of partner with networks and organizations, and you all know with even other ministries that actually need some creativity and some[00:08:00] momentum in this area.

Jim: Doug Spada, Let's talk about this church rollout program. You've got this whole idea behind you. You bring Worklife and this Monday Morning Atheist idea, you bring it into churches. How do you do a church rollout of the Worklife program?

Doug Spada: Yeah, Jim, that's, that's actually where I started trying to, you know, in my own church many, many, many years ago. A guy in California, I was wrestling. I saw God doing miracles out in the marketplace. I saw him acting. But then, I mean, we, and we were a very healthy church in a lot of different ways, but we were basically attractional, we were trying to grow the church primarily on Sunday. And so what I tell pastors all over the world is, we really have to be focusing on growing the church on Monday, right?

And you know, someone asked me a question that really challenged me, and I asked pastors this same question: what if God cares as much or more about Monday than[00:09:00] Sunday?

Jim: Ooh , and you asked pastors that question?

Doug Spada: I do. And I, sometimes I get stoned, but , but here's the thing. Most of the people are engaging the marketplace, their spheres of influence on Monday, right? So Sunday's like a launching point, except we lose track of people. Most people, just from our research and surveys, do not understand they're called. So what happens, just like in my own life, walls of isolation, discouragement and disillusionment, because people don't understand their purpose. And the truth is they're literal ministry extensions of the church. So it's an amazing church growth strategy, but it actually grows the kingdom.

Jim: You just recently rolled this out in, I think you said Virginia.

Doug Spada: Yes, it was a fellowship community church in Roanoke, Virginia, or close to Roanoke there.

Jim: Okay. So how did that go? I mean, I wanna hear about the experience. You know what, I don't wanna take your word for it. Pastor Bill Fuller, how did [00:10:00] that go? How did you, I mean, how'd you get introduced to Doug Speda and Worklife?

Bill Fuller: I met Doug 20 years ago at the Cove, Billy Graham's Cove training center. And we sort of connected then and we kinda lost touch with each other.

And then 20 years later, I still had his cell phone number and I called and caught him in an airport and begged him to come to my church and help us launch something.

Jim: So what did that look like?

Bill Fuller: Well, we, we did a four week sermon series based on his book Monday Morning Atheist. We built the largest..

Jim: Oh wait, okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You gotta go slow, Bill. Slow down. I'm excited. You did a four week series on Monday morning atheist.

Bill Fuller: We did. We did. Yep. I've been trying for four years to persuade my staff to let us do something like this. And finally that was the time and they said, yeah, let's do this thing. We really had the biggest attendance we've ever had in our first Sunday of the year. So we did it the very first Sunday of January of this year, and [00:11:00] Doug came and kicked it off for us.

Jim: Talk to me about the engagement factor. You were rolling this out. What did you expect? How did you expect people to engage with you?

Bill Fuller: That's a great question. You know, I knew Doug, so I knew that when he came that there was gonna be an anointing from God that came with him. And I knew Doug would bring a different perspective. But my dream was this: I was hoping to see our marketplace ministers activated and empowered to see their work as an act of worship and to see their workplaces as their mission field.

I really wanted them to have this first time experience of God's delight over their work, cuz I think most Christians in the workplace don't have that since they feel like they're second class Christians. And so that's kind of what I was hoping for and I was hoping for the beginning of the end of that clergy -laity distortion in the church.

When Doug came and spoke, he shattered the lie, the sacred -secular [00:12:00] divide. He really shattered that thing. And so many people in the church, in the workplace rose up. You know, my church loves to do an occasional altar call and the third Sunday we said, folks, if you're here and you wanna bring an end to this, this clergy -laity lie and you really wanna step into the ministry God's given you, you just stand up.

And we had a hundred percent of our people stand up. Which was astounding. Which really, truly was an amazing thing. We had people writing comments. We had, I remember this one guy wrote in, he says, he said, this was the most practical, helpful sermon I've ever heard at this church. And that was the Sunday Doug spoke.

Jim: How cool is that? I love that. Okay, so we're now three months down the road since the series, well, two months since the series ended. How has this permanently - bringing Worklife and Doug Spada and the whole idea of being a Monday Morning Atheist and ending the sacred secular -divide and ending the the pastor- laity dichotomy - how has that permanently changed your church? [00:13:00]

Bill Fuller: Oh, wow. Well, that's a good question. Let me give you one quick testimony. I've got a gal who works in a financial aid office at a university here in town, and she wrote us this lengthy email, which I'll shorten. She says I like what I do, but my boss is trying at times.

She said, I used to complain about my job and I wondered if God had me there or why he had me there. She began to pray and say, God, am I destined to be somewhere else? And then she said we hit the Monday Morning Atheist series. And her boss's mother became very, very ill and she died.

And through all of that, she kept supporting her boss and kept writing her notes of encouragement, scriptural notes of encouragement. And then shortly after that, her father became very ill, her boss's father. And shortly after that, her boss's father passed. Now here, here's the great thing.

The week she came back to work, her boss gave her a thank you card, and the card said this: thanks for all your kind words and faithful expressions. When my parents were sick, I especially loved your [00:14:00] religious thoughts, words, and prayers. You are a good ambassador for God. And this gal, she says, when I read that, tears came to my eyes and I felt such a sense of satisfaction that God used me in my workplace of all places. I feel like that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg of what I'm hearing that they're saying, wow, God's using me in my workplace. Who would've guessed?

Jim: Pastor Bill Fuller with Fellowship Community Church, talk to me. Would you recommend that other churches do exactly what you guys did?

Bill Fuller: Absolutely. I mean don't do it if you don't wanna rock the boat. But if you wanna rock the boat and you wanna waken your people up, I call 'em the sleeping giant of the church, which is Christians in the workplace. If you wanna wake them up and, and turn your community inside out, then yeah. Invite Doug to come and help you launch that four or five week series. You will never regret it.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately [00:15:00] iWork4Him!

Outro: Thank you for listening to the iWork4Him PowerPod with your hosts Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Want more? Hear the full broadcast at iWork4Him. com . Stay connected and receive power packed content when you sign up for our blog at iWork4Him.com, or follow us on social media @ iWork4Him . And finally, if today's message inspired you, please subscribe, rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform.

Your review helps launch more workplace missionaries across the nation! That's at iWork4Him and online, iWork4Him.com.