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The SkyePod - Jordan Raynor
00:27:27
Jordan Raynor joins Skye to talk about Christians throughout history who demonstrate how faith and work go together, from TV star Fred Rogers to the inventor of the Lego brick to a civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer. What can these people teach us...
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- [00:00]
A
Freakishly. He weighed in at 143 pounds. I still don't believe it. I can't wait to ask him about it on the new Earth.
- [00:22]
B
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Sky Pod, brought to you by Holy Post Media. I'm Sky Jutani. Joining me for this conversation today is my friend Jordan Raynor.
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A
Up, Scott.
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B
Hi, Jordan.
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A
Hey.
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B
You are the author of a number of books. Remind me of your previous ones. Oh, man, there's been a number.
- [00:37]
A
Let's see. Everything. Everything I write is helping Christians connect the gospel to the work beyond their evangelism. So sacredness, secular work, redeeming your time, called to create master of one. And then this new one five Mere Christians and a bunch of kids books running around the world.
- [00:51]
B
Yeah, we're going to get into the new one five Mere Christians. But this is kind of how you and I first connected was around this topic of faith and work. Before we get into talking about this book and the characters you've highlighted, let's talk a little bit about the faith and work space.
- [01:03]
A
Oh, Paul, can we? Yeah.
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B
Which we've talked about numerous times. I've been on show with you before and whatever, but like, first of all, before you got into this space, you have a background in the marketplace with entrepreneurial projects, things like that. But before you entered the faith and work conversation, what was your perception of the faith and work conversation?
- [01:25]
A
Yeah, it's a great question. My perception of faith and work and what it meant to integrate faith and work was exclusively evangelism, ethics and excellence. Right. So when I thought about, as a tech entrepreneur, how my apprenticeship to Jesus was shaping my work, that was it. And I had this very big aha moment. I was in the process of exiting my second company. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next professionally. And what I wanted to do is start a third business. But I didn't feel a whole lot of permission to do that because I would go to church on Sundays and hear explicitly some Sundays and a lot of other Sundays, implicitly that if I really wanted to be on the varsity team at the Kingdom of God, I would abandon my quote unquote, secular work as an entrepreneur and go plant a church. And so for a hot minute there, my wife and I were praying about those two paths. Path A started another business. Path B started church. And one Sunday, uh, I had this godly mentor pull me aside, and he had heard that I was talking to the North American Mission board about planet church in D.C. and he goes, hey, I heard you're thinking about doing this, and I'm thinking, this guy's gonna pat me on the back or write me my first check. And he just looks me dead in the eyes. He goes, yeah, I gotta be honest, that sounds pretty dumb for. For you specifically. I was like, oh, man, tell me more, Rick. He's like, dude, you're a talented entrepreneur. You served your team and your customers and your investors with excellence. Why do you think you have to plant a church to do ministry? Don't you get that your work is ministry? And then I kicked in. Oh, yeah, I faith to work stuff. I say, yeah, yeah, my job is my mission field, right? I go to work so I can share the gospel with the lost souls on my team or maybe make a lot of money to write a big check to the missionary pictured on my refrigerator. And he's like, sure, but my word is so much more than that. God cares about the work itself and not just what the work enables. And I didn't have a category for that, right? So he encouraged me. He's like, hey, with this conversation background of your mind, go read Genesis 1 and 2. And I'm thinking, I've been in church my whole life. I've read Genesis 1 and 2500 times. What am I going to see? That's new? But dude, what I saw changed my life forever. I saw that before. God tells us that he is holy. He tells us that he's a God who works. It's literally the only thing we know about the image of God up until verse 26 when we get the first commission to create culture and extend God's image throughout the cosmos. And so, long story short, I didn't go plan a church. I went and ran another tech startup. But since then, man, I've been on this quest to understand what God's word has to say about our work beyond our evangelism, beyond the instrumental value of leveraging our work to some spiritual end. How does it have intrinsic value to God? But also, how do we not make it into an idolatrous thing? Because that's the other side. That's the other ditch that this faith and workspace gets into. So really, really long winded answer to your question.
- [04:16]
B
Well, one of the things that I always enjoyed is that you came to the faith and work convers from the work side, from the marketplace side. I came to the faith and work conversation from the ministry side because I was a pastor. And yet you and I found commonalities in our outlook messaging theology and have had numerous great encounters around talking to this to different groups of folks, ministry leaders, business leaders, others. And it's a really important conversation. And as you put it, there's pitfalls on all sides because it can become instrumental, it can become idolatrous. There's lots of things that need to be shifted. I wrote my book futureville largely about this dynamic, but it's an ongoing and it's bigger than just faith and work. That's a relevant outflow of this. But it's how does God view the world?
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A
Yes.
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B
How do we view ourselves? What is really the mission of the gospel? What is the vocation of the church in the world today? What is the, what is our eschatology.
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A
Our view of the future?
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B
You've written a beautiful children's book about that which is so important. And it's remarkable how often whether we're talking about faith and politics these days, Christian nationalism, all the other weirdness that's going on, until you get these basic theological views correct. Why did God create the world? What is our role in the world? Why is he redeeming the world? Where is it all headed? Everything else gets off track.
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A
Dude, this is why I love futureville so much. Much. Listen, with is the most life changing sky Jitani book for me personally, but Future Ville, in my opinion, is the most important to all these other theological concepts, whether it's work or race or politics, whatever. Because if this earth is indeed our temporary home and the present heaven is our permanent home, then matter doesn't matter to God. And so the only thing that matters, as this argument goes, is saving souls and getting us all on the life rafts and getting us the heck out of here. Because the Titanic sinking. And if that's true, then less than 1% of my waking hours matters to God, right? Because let's face it, like when I'm still engaged in this tech startup I ran most recently, I'm executive chairman, I spend less than 1%, let's be honest, less than 0.1% of my time in that business walking my team members through the Romans road. But if, as you point out in the biblical text that you're expounding upon a futureville and that I'm talking about in some of my books, if this earth will one day be our perfect and permanent home, if God's plan all along was not to oblige, obliterate creation, but redeem it, right, then matter has to matter deeply to God. Because Jesus precious blood paid to redeem, yes, my soul and the quote unquote spiritual realm, but also material creation and if that's true, then a hundred percent of my time must matter to God. The super spiritual work of evangelism and prayer, but also the material work of typing on aluminum MacBooks and making a great meal and planting a good garden and everything, because everything is now under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
- [07:23]
B
I mean, it's a beautiful vision and it makes everything count. But earlier you were saying that too often we view our work, or business in particular, as instrumental. Right. We're just. We do this thing to get something else out of it that then we can give to ministry. And one of the things that just bugs me to death is so much of American evangelicalism. Forget just business, but American evangelicalism is profoundly instrumental.
- [07:48]
A
Yes.
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B
Right. I was not intentionally but unintentionally taught as a pastor to view the people in my church instrumentally.
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A
How so? Give me an example.
- [07:58]
B
Well, who here is useful for the advancement of the mission of the gospel? A Jordan Raynor in my church. Well, he's got money because he's an entrepreneur. I can use that money this way or this person's retired, they have time. I'm going to use them instrumentally. And it all becomes people are tools. People are tools. And it's partly because I, as a pastor, was taught to view myself that way. I'm an instrument of God's work in the world because we believe God views us instrumentally, therefore we view others instrumentally. And then we look out in the broader world and we go, all right, well, who would be a really valuable convert? Let's get Kanye West. That would be a great instrumental. Is Bieber still interested in Jesus and homeless people? I guess we're supposed to care for them, but if they come to Christ, that's not really helping our cause because they don't have that much influence. Influence in the world. Then you bring that to politics. You know, it'd be great having an evangelical Christian in the White House. That would be really instrumental. And then it gets all warped and weird where we start judging and gauging everyone's value based on their usefulness to the kingdom of God. And I've written about this in other places, but that is a profoundly pagan understanding.
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A
Amen.
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B
Not just of people, but of God and of the world. And yet it's almost undebated within American evangelicalism that. That is, of course, how you. I remember being an undergraduate in. In college, part of a campus ministry where we were told at the beginning of the school year, like, we need to go after the athletes on campus.
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A
Wow.
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B
Right? The superstar well known athletes on campus. Because if they come to a Bible study, if they get involved in our ministry, and then it was okay, if you can't get the athletes, let's get the really visible professors. Yeah. Because they're the real influential people on campus. You know who the only person I saw come to Faith that year was?
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A
Who?
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B
The 50 something year old townie woman who cleaned the bathrooms in the dorm.
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A
Yes.
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B
And it's like that's the kingdom of God.
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A
Yes. Right.
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B
Where the first will be last. The last will be first.
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A
Yes.
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B
And so we just, it's so ingrained in our American way of thinking, in our evangelical way of thinking in America, that it's all about impact, it's all about influence, it's all about instrumentality. And that is just antithetical to the way of God.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And the way Jesus operated.
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A
I've been, I've been looking for an excuse to tell this story, just to pile on, on the faith of workspace for the last 50 years. I think this is it. So I'm sitting on a panel one weekend, it was a Saturday at this church and I was, I, I gave this keynote about faith of work and then they brought up a panel and it was three white CEOs, not diverse at all. This was not a business event. It was meant to be broad. Faith and work. Whatever your job is, we're going to help you unpack what the gospel means for it. And the answers were not wrong. They weren't bad. They were just very thin. Right. So one guy's like, yeah, faith and work integration for me looks like not swearing in front of my team and ordering a Diet Coke instead of a beer. When I'm with my team, I'm like, great, they're wonderful for you. Literally the next week I'm with my kids serving in the food pantry that we serve in every month in our local church. And Ms. Josephina shows up. And I built a relationship with Ms. Josephina, one of our customers over the years. And she comes out to me and she gives me a big hug. Ms. Josephine is probably, I don't know, 65 year old Cuban American woman. And she gives me a hug. She's like, Mr. Jordan, I got a job. I was like, oh my gosh, congratulations. She's like, yeah, you know, I don't have a car, so I had to walk. But I walked down the street and I found this warehouse around the corner and they hired me. And I said, how's that going? She's like, well, you know, I hate to Say this, but I think my employer is pretty ageist towards me and other people in the warehouse. My boss screams at me and other members of our team and it's just really, really rough in the, in the way that she treats us with her words. But Mr. Jordan, I feel like I get paid 50 bucks an hour. I was like, tell me more. She goes, yeah. I was like. She's like, yeah, I'll tell you why, Jordan. She's like, because the other day when my boss was screaming at one of my other team members, I was able up for her and I politely and respectfully asked for my boss to spend some time with me and explain how that made me feel. Watch. And how make might make this other person feel. And oh, Mr. Jordan, I'm also able to pray for my fellow team members and I'm leading a Bible study through your devotional book right now. Oh, man. I just, I mean they're, they're only paying me 12 bucks an hour, but I feel like I get paid 50 bucks an hour. I'm like, that's who we need to be listening to. These are the people who we need to be learning from of what it looks like to look like Jesus. She taught me more about faith and work integration than most people I've studied over the last few years.
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B
Well, that's a good transition into the new book. So the first in a series, hopefully of books, mere Christians, binge worthy biographies that show you how to glorify God in your work. Maybe Ms. Josephina would be a. She'd be a terrific future example. So this volume, anyway, you've profiled these five people. Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers neighborhood. We're going to get into that in a minute. Fannie Lou Hamer.
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A
Yeah.
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B
I find her absolutely amazing.
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A
You're one of the few non black people who knows this story, by the way.
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B
Well, I'm proud to say I am. Okay. Old Kirk Christiansen, the guy who created Legos.
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A
No big deal.
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B
No big deal. I mean, I can't tell you how much of my life has been.
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A
I'm aware. I knew you were gonna like this.
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B
Oh, love it. Hannah Moore, C.S. lewis.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Needs no introduction. I wanted to start with Fred Rogers though, and talk about this because. All right. I don't know if you've been. If you've seen the news in the last 24 hours. This will give away when we're recording this. A story broke yesterday, I think on Politico where there was a leak of private text messages. You've not seen this?
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A
I've not seen this.
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B
Private text messages from, I don't know, dozens of young Republicans. So these are. These are folks who run Young Republican chapters, different colleges, universities. Some of them are elected officials.
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A
I can't imagine what these texts look.
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B
And it is awful. Like, it is the worst stereotypes of the manosphere you can imagine. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, coarse joking. I mean, it is like you throw up a little bit in your mouth when you read this stuff. It is that horrible. But what, what it made me think about is there is this stereotype of. Of what masculinity should look like in our culture. And it's kind of this, I'm going to treat women like garbage. I'm going to be an insensitive sob. I'm going to just railroad over anybody. And any sensitivity I can possibly encounter. Nothing's off limits. Humor at the expense of others like it. It's this gross stereotype of what it means to be a man, to just not care about anyone or anything. Right. In contrast to that is Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers neighborhood. I mean, a completely different vision of what a man can be. What drew you to Fred Rogers? And what do you think Fred Rogers example of masculinity has for our culture right now? I'm not saying everyone needs to be Fred Rogers, but he had qualities that are not celebrated today.
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A
No, not at all. And it's why it's so easy to make fun of him in our current cultural context. I mean, I think we got to ask the question, what is true biblical godly manhood look like and Jesus?
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B
I. I would argue true humanness looks like Jesus.
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A
Yes.
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B
Not just male humanness. Right. But I have never understood this, I'm using air quotes, biblical masculinity thing because I'm like, well, let's talk about David. Great. Okay. He's a warrior.
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A
But he's also dancing naked.
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B
He's also dancing naked. He's also a poet.
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A
That's right.
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B
He had all of his. He's a complicated person. So you could take him and then what about, what do you do with Naaman? Or who's got a whole other thing. Or Nehemiah. Yes. Who was a eunuch.
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A
Yes. Right.
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B
Or the Ethiopian eunuch that Stephen encounters. So which person represents masculinity in the Bible when there's clearly a lot of different men in the Bible.
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A
Right.
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B
And same thing goes for women, obviously. There are very entrepreneurial women like Lydia, and there's very motherly women like Hannah or whatever. So I don't get where these gender stereotypes come from that. This is biblical, masculine.
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A
I don't either. What I do know, scripture is pretty clear that God's goal for us is to become like Christ, male or female.
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B
Right.
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A
We are to conform to the image of Christ. So what drew me to Fred Rogers? I have never met or read about anybody who looked more like Jesus, from what I understand of Jesus, than Fred Rogers. Right. This guy was gentle and kind. He operated at the pace of Jesus. This guy accomplished more than most of us will ever dream and yet spent more, more time with his heavenly father than most of us would ever dare. And somehow found time to show radical compassion even after work hours. I'll give you just one short story, one of my favorites for the book. So in the 1980s when Fred was at the absolute height of his fame, 10% of American kids were watching Neighborhood every day. That's a bonkers stat. He'd be number one on Netflix every single day. Right?
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B
Well, it wasn't the, the, the stratification of media that we have today. Correct.
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A
Yeah. So he's dominating, he's incredibly famous. And one of those super. This five year old kid named Beth Usher who had this rare brain disease, this 1 in 10 million brain disease that caused her to have a hundred seizures every single day until Mr. Rogers neighborhood came on. So her mom would intentionally plan her day around. Okay, I know I've got 30 minutes to get whatever it is I need to get done. I'm going to place Beth in front of the TV and she's going to be fine. And sure enough, predictably, the show would deliver this miraculous reprieve from her suffering. So one day, Dr. Ben Carson, another famous name, tells Kathy Usher that he's going to have to perform brain surgery on her daughter Beth. And so Kathy calls Fred's office, says, hey, it would be amazing if Fred could send a signed photo of himself so Beth could take it with her in her surgery. And so Fred's secretary comes up to him and makes this request and he laughs. He's like, oh no, we got, we got to do better than that. And so the secretary calls Kathy back, he's like, hey, will you be home at 7 o' clock tonight Forever? Would like to call and speak with Beth. And right on time he does. After a crazy long day at the office, and for nearly an hour, five year old Beth Usher sat there in her family's kitchen with the phone and talked to Mr. Rogers about everything from her fear of dying to her longing for friends. All the while in the other room, her parents are listening to this as tears are streaming down their faces.
- [18:44]
B
And I'm assuming she's having no seizures.
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A
No seizures during this phone call, I guess. And so she goes into surgery. Fred calls back to check on this kid and see how she's doing. And Kathy had explained that Beth had got the surgery had gone fine, but Beth had slipped into a coma. And a worried Fred called every single day after work for two weeks. Finally hangs up the phone. Best still in a comedy, looks at his wife. He says, I gotta get on a plane. Calls Ben Carson. He's like, I'm coming to Baltimore. One rule, no press shows up in Baltimore the next day. Puts on a private puppet show for Beth as she's in this coma. He prays for leaves the puppets behind for her to awaken. To which miraculously, she does just a few weeks later. And I'm reading this story for the first time. I was reading at a Starbucks and tears are absolutely pouring down my face. Is I'm like, who in the world does this? Who can be this successful by the world standards and this successful by God's standards at the same time and show this radical compassion? I think the answer is somebody who is so filled up with the love of God that he didn't need to anything from anybody. One of his co workers was talking about masculinity. They were asking about man. Fred was so effeminate, like, whatever. And he goes, his coworker said, listen, I met some of the most powerful people on the planet by the world standard. Some of the strongest people by the world standards. But Fred was the most powerful human being I ever met. And his power was derived from a very unique place. He said, quote, fred didn't need anything from you or from me. End quote. Why? Because he was filled up with the love of God. And so man, that's what power, love looks like. That's what masculinity just being fully human in the image of Christ looks like. It's one example that we see in Fred story.
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B
There's a well worn, but I think accurate cultural trope about the insecure man is the one who needs the big car. All the external symbols of power and strength. And because they're compensating for an insecure ego or whatever it might be. When I look at Fred Rogers and that's a beautiful story. You shared it based on the stereotypes. Nobody would look at Fred Rogers and go, that's a powerful man. Right? But his power was a gentle power. Yes, but you're right, he had this steel in him that was rooted in a security of knowing who he is and not needing the world's affirmation or support. I mean, I'm sure he had on some level, but I mean, that's a vision of strength. The ability to be compassionate and gentle and caring. Quiet, slow. We just don't celebrate that as strength anymore.
- [21:35]
A
No. There's a story that actually didn't make the book. We had to cut. So many great stories from Fred's life. So his grandson was over watching tv. One Saturday morning, Fred walks into the room and his five year old grandson is watching some really violent cartoon. Right. Where people are killing each other with machines.
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B
Tom and Jerry or something.
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A
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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B
Right.
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A
And so he sits down and Fred's like, I gotta be honest, even as an adult, this is really scary to me. And the grandson's like, yeah, yeah, but those are the bad guys. So it's like totally cool. And Fred's like, hey, there's a, there's a different way, a non violent way to deal with the bad guys. And it bothered him so much because his grandson, like, it did not compute for his grandson. He's like, no, I don't get it. I'm gonna keep watching them kill each other with machine guns. Later that night, Fred's trying to go to sleep and he can't do it. So he stays up and he writes a PSA for kids about violent cartoons. He said, you want to be strong, right? You want to be powerful. Be the one who has the power to turn the TV off right when these cartoons are out there. Right. He had such a radically different view of masculinity and power and how to use power, not to exploit, not to oppress, but to bless. Other image bears.
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B
Oh, gosh, there's so much with, like, with. I have a 20 year old son and I mean, he's wonderful, but I, I sometimes get a glimpse of the world through his eyes.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Like from that age group. And when you see what messages young men are bumping into and social media, YouTube, the manosphere, the stuff, it's just, it's so disheartening to see that the kind of strength and masculinity and power that Fred had is nowhere on the radar for this generation because it's all the chest thumping, exploitation, it's the Andrew Tate kind of awfulness. And it seems like such an opportunity for the church, for the Christian community to represent a different form of strength.
- [23:38]
A
Yeah.
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B
And yet it's even taking over in the Christian world. This, this other way of, of owning the libs sticking it to you. It's so nauseating.
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A
And.
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B
And yet I don't know if we were to present whether it's your chapter in this book or just.
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A
There.
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B
Was that documentary. Not documentary. The film that Tom Hanks did.
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A
Yeah.
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B
A couple years ago about. For Red. Like to show those stories or images of Fred Rogers to this generation. How do you think they would react? Do you think there's a hunger for that still? Or would they be like, ah, what a joke?
- [24:12]
A
I think there will always be a latent hunger for goodness and goodness in the way of Jesus. Right. I think it's a tougher sell in our modern context. Right. Which is why I like to point out, like, hey, lead with where we can find common ground in Fred Rogers story. This guy. You want to talk about successful content creators. This guy was dominant. Dominant. He's still dominating kids TV today with his production company. Producing Daniel Tiger. I mean, you want to talk about somebody who created for the long haul and had a massive impact. He's it. He was an incredibly disciplined person. I think we can find some common ground on that. Every single day of his adult life. Freakishly. He weighed in at 143 pounds. I still don't believe it. I can't wait to ask him about it on the New Earth. Right. But there are some things like, yeah, that's interesting. I'm interested in that. Right. But I think overall, as a whole, the package of Fred Rogers probably isn't that winsome and attractive to most people today. There's other stories in here that are right. You talk about an Olay, Kirk Christensen, the founder of Lego. That's exciting. You talk about a CS Lewis who fought in World War I and pursued toxic masculinity for all of his 20s, having an affair with his dead best friend's mom. Right. Like, okay, like, I can learn something from that guy. Right. But Fred's a little less relatable.
- [25:28]
B
Yeah. And we didn't mention he was also an ordained minister and viewed his television audience as his congregation of these kids. So he had a very theologically attuned vision of his life and vocation.
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A
All right.
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B
It seems like a natural transition to go from Fred Rogers and children's television to Legos.
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A
Yeah, let's do it.
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B
This is a character I didn't know.
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A
Yeah. Most people don't much about.
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B
So explain your introduction to Christensen.
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A
Yeah, so I had the idea for five Beer Christians rolling around in my head. I had bought a biography, the first big biography on the LEGO Corporation. This book called the Lego story and I'm reading it at some crappier bar in D.C. before I go to see Keith and Kristen Getty in concert on my quarterly retreat. I'm sitting at the bar and 10 pages in, I'm like, oh my gosh, this guy was joke. This guy watched the Lego factory burn to the ground three times in 20 years. Nazi soldiers invaded.
- [26:35]
B
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