News reports in recent years have been filled with images of university students (and outside agitators) shouting down conservative speakers and ransacking campus buildings. Creating “safe spaces” where students don’t have to hear ideas with which they take exception.
All in the quest to silence what “the powers-that-be” consider offensive speech. Hmm… Which powers?
Maybe that’s why this news item caught my eye. About one university that recently created a different brand of Safe Space for students and local business professionals.
Hoping it will spread from the university to the marketplace.
On November 9, 2018. Taylor University hosted the Transformation: Truth at Work Conference as a satellite location. This collaboration seems like a marriage made in Heaven.
Taylor University, a Christian liberal arts University, was established in 1846. It has been ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the #1 regional midwest college in 2019. A top 3 winner for the last 22 years. https://www.taylor.edu/
Ray Hilbert, Taylor alumnus (’08), helped found Truth at Work — asserting it is one of America’s leading and fastest growing marketplace ministries. Their Christ-centered cause certainly resonates with this blog’s author:
One of the most important and untapped mission fields is the marketplace. Most people spend more than half their waking hours at work, commuting to and from work or with co-workers or other professionals. They typically spend more time at work or work-related functions than they do with their families, sleeping, or any other activity.
Personal and spiritual needs end up taking a back seat to meetings, deadlines, and work agendas. Many find they cannot attend church regularly and have no spiritual foundation on which to base life’s decisions or face life issues at work or at home.
The cause of Truth at Work is to reach out to minister and provide support where people are spending the majority of their lives…at work!
Truth at Work invests significant resources in equipping Christian business owners and leaders in earning the right to share their faith in the context of marketplace relationships through modeling Christ-like Servant Leadership. Employees who work for organizations they consider to be spiritual are less fearful, less likely to compromise their values, and more able to invest themselves iinto their work.
https://truthatwork.org/about-us/#our-cause
Can I get an Amen? 🙂
The conference showcased industry leaders like David Green (founder of Hobby Lobby), Kevin Serbo (actor in movies like Soul Surfer and God’s Not Dead), and Super Bowl winner and Movement Mortgage CEO, Casey Crawford.
Crawford disclosed his own powerful journey of transformational leadership:
“There was a point in time where you could’ve asked me, ‘what do you trust in?’ and I would say, ‘I trust in Jesus. But the fact was . . . I trusted my attributes. And the process of transformation for me has looked like God stripping away some of those things I had put my trust in . . . so His power could be expressed in and through me.”
Imagine our workplaces filled with the presence of Jesus Christ.
Could there be any Safer Space?
Please post your comments below.
Diana Furr, a.k.a. Abba’s Girl
This blog may have raised questions for you. If you’d like to connect, engage, or get further help from me, you can… EMAIL me at [email protected]; CALL me at 863-446-1660; or request a complimentary initial CONSULT with me at https://calendly.com/diana-furr.