Pilgrim Work
How many of us began our adult work lives imagining a long career with one great organization, getting better and better in our specialty, rewarded with advancement and job satisfaction? I imagined becoming a professor with our New College Berkeley initiative and being happy and fulfilled there for the rest of my life as a professor of ethics, teaching my lecture hall and seminar room grad students. The idea of leaving Berkeley was unthinkable and never even crossed my mind. But that dream lasted just fourteen years!
Now at the other end of my career, it is almost shocking to me to look back and see the twists and turns, teaching for significant stretches not just grad students at New College Berkeley but undergrads in Chicago at North Park University, MBA students at St. Mary’s College, and seminary students at Gordon-Conwell in Boston. I also did two gigs as Interim Pastor of churches in Davis, California, and Wayland, Massachusetts. Lacing through it all has been a long tenure leading the International Jacques Ellul Society and working with non-profits like the Institute for Business, Technology, and Ethics and Workplace 313, among others. I bet most of you have similar stories of multiple employers and locations.
Whether this kind of workplace journey is welcome or not, something like this is becoming a common experience. The “gig economy” of “free agent” workers is mostly our reality. Freedom, maybe, but with plenty of uncertainty, insecurity, and risk. Added to this new fluidity is a radical rethinking and reshaping of the workplace itself—distance learning, home officing, online communications, virtual meetings, and artificial intelligence. And then the new factor of pandemic-imposed disruptions and threats. Fasten your seatbelts!
But maybe this “new normal” is not really so abnormal in the grand scheme of life and history! The New Testament insists that Christians are profoundly “pilgrims and strangers,” “aliens and exiles,” people on the move (I Peter 2:11; Hebrews 11:13). King David’s prayer made the same point to ancient Israel: “we are aliens and transients before you [God], as were all our ancestors” (I Chronicles 29:15). Our vast numbers of displaced people and migrants in today’s world certainly know this reality.
I would never say that we shouldn’t seek stability or longevity in our working careers but our reality looks like we will need to live and work with a pilgrim mindset, not always resisting change but embracing it as opportunity, learning to adapt and live with the flow. Of course, this will require flexibility, new skills, novel contexts, new colleagues, and new technologies.
Two factors can strengthen and guide our pilgrim work. First is a life-anchor in the God of the universe—not just intellectually knowing about God, but relationally knowing God in a living way. God will anchor our vocational mission (creating, sustaining, redeeming) and our core values (faith, hope, love)—our heart, mind, and soul. Second is community—true, durable, honest friendship with a small band of others that sticks with us throughout our journey. I can bear strong personal witness to the value of a pilgrim work-life while clinging (not perfectly but to the best of my ability) to God and my “posse.” Walking and working with God and with a community of people is where the wisdom, courage, and hope come from. That’s how we make progress, pilgrim!
—David W. Gill www.davidwgill.org