Imperishable Inheritance

New poli­cies are com­ing out (and plenty of e-mails my way at work) about reli­gious “tol­er­ance.” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen­eral John P. Jumper releases a Air Force wide mem­o­ran­dum enti­tled “Chief Sight’s Pic­ture.” One of the more recent arti­cles, Gen­eral Jumper com­ments on the new Air Force policy.

“At our Air Force Acad­emy, we have expe­ri­enced issues with expres­sions of reli­gious beliefs and with per­cep­tions that one set of beliefs is favored over oth­ers. Remem­ber Ser­vice Before Self. Reli­gion is intensely per­sonal and dis­agree­ments can detract from the team­work nec­es­sary for Air Force units. In par­tic­u­lar, shar­ing per­sonal beliefs in a pro­fes­sional set­ting, one where lead­ers are per­form­ing their duties in a chain of com­mand or in a superior-subordinate rela­tion­ship, can eas­ily become improper influ­ence about per­sonal mat­ters. Fur­ther­more, it can be resented. A friend of mine recently expressed it this way: ‘The core task of every leader in the pro­fes­sion of arms is unit­ing his or her peo­ple into a strong team, with lev­els of trust and com­mit­ment so high the unit keeps work­ing well even under extreme pres­sure. Every­one in a unit con­tributes to that task.’ Any­thing that detracts from that team­work ulti­mately detracts from the mission.”

Now granted, there are cer­tainly things in the Air Force or any other pro­fes­sional envi­ron­ment that have been deemed socially unac­cept­able. Wit­ness­ing at work is cer­tainly one of those things at Wright Pat­ter­son. I have though, and con­tinue to, share my faith at every oppor­tu­nity with all those I work with. Many are already “Chris­tians” (caught in nom­i­nal­ity), but I have had some good con­ver­sa­tions out­side of nom­i­nal­ity. The great­est bless­ing was shar­ing about my project this summer.

Is not the mantra “Ser­vice Before Self” only a mis­un­der­stand­ing of those who desire to share their faith? I know there are indi­vid­u­als that want to share their faith just so they can boast in it (Gal 6:12), but the premise of Chris­t­ian evan­ge­lism is that we reach out to oth­ers for oth­ers. It is indeed the truest under­stand­ing of “Ser­vice Before Self” pos­si­ble (Matt 10:27, 38). The ques­tion then becomes, how do we effec­tively share at work? Should our evan­ge­lis­tic goals change in those we approach at work? I can always acronymize the gospel (a lit­tle AF con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion for you there).