Show Notes
In this episode of Nuance, Case sits down with Missy Wallace and Lauren Gill, authors of Faith & Work: Galvanizing Your Church for Everyday Impact. They share personal stories from their careers and explore how faith can guide work in ways that restore, heal, and bring hope to communities.
Missy and Lauren dive into the Heart–Community–World framework, offering practical ways for individuals and churches to align faith with professional life. From small daily actions to larger initiatives, they show how integrating faith and work can create meaningful, tangible impact in the world.
Whether you’re a professional, church leader, or anyone seeking purpose in your career, this conversation will inspire you to see your work as more than a job — as a chance to heal, restore, and make a difference every day.
Episode Resources:
Faith & Work: Galvanizing Your Church for Everyday Impact – https://www.globalfaithandwork.com/galvanizeyourchurch
https://www.globalfaithandwork.com/
https://www.90seventeen.com/
The Gotham Fellowship: www.fpco.org/gothamfellowship
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website: https://wecolabor.com/
Get to know Case: https://wecolabor.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
The rhythm of a city isn’t just in its traffic or train lines. It’s in the hands that build, the minds that plan, the hearts that serve. From morning commutes to late night shifts, the public square hums with the quiet poetry of work. Some visible, most not. Yet in that hum is a question echoing back to the church. Does any of this matter to God? Christian faith isn’t just about Sunday morning behavior. It’s about bringing light into everyday places, including board meetings, budget spreadsheets, neighborhood zoning meetings, and construction sites. If we really believe God cares about the whole world, then he certainly cares about what we do in it. So let’s talk about how churches can actually help their people show up differently in the public square and at work, not just as individuals, but as a force for good. Whether you’re in a boardroom, a classroom, a kitchen or a job site, work shapes our lives in profound ways. But what if the church had more to say about your nine to five than just asking you to volunteer? Well, our guests today, Missy Wallace and Lauren Gill, longtime friends and mentors truly in faith and work, have just released a new book, Faith & Work: Galvanizing Your Church for Everyday Impact. And so, Missy, Lauren, welcome. I really appreciate you being here.
Lauren Gill
Thank you for having us.
Missy Wallace
Good to see you. Yeah, it’s good to be with you.
Case Thorp
Yeah, it’s good to be with you. In fact, there’s a conference next week with Faith and Work National Leaders, and I know I’ll get to see you there, Lauren. Missy, sorry you can’t be with us, but off on a family trip, for sure. So Missy, I mean, I know Lauren, you’re coming to us from New York City. Missy, are you in Nashville?
Missy Wallace
I’m in Nashville today, yes.
Case Thorp
Okay, okay. Well, thank you, friends, viewers and listeners for joining us. Welcome to Nuance, where we seek to be faithful in the public square. I’m Case Thorp. I want to encourage you to like, subscribe and share. All right, Missy and Lauren, I’ve got to brag on you a little bit and share a bit more about who you are. So Missy Wallace is a seasoned strategist and executive coach who helps corporate and nonprofit teams align their decisions with spiritual discernment. After more than 30 years in consulting, education and leadership, including roles at Boston Consulting Group, Time Warner, and Bank of America all around the world, most applicable in today’s discussion is her time at Tim Keller’s Redeemer City to City. She now focuses on guiding leaders through meaningful faith-rooted strategy. She founded the Nashville Institute for Faith and Work, that’s where I got to know her first, and has written for the Gospel Coalition and Eventide. Missy holds degrees from Vanderbilt and Northwestern Kellogg School, is married to Paul and loves hiking. Recently completing a 500 mile pilgrimage on the El Camino de Santiago. Okay, Missy, that could be a whole episode. I think you know I’m taking a group of guys in October.
Missy Wallace
Well, I have a lot to say about it, so give me a call.
Case Thorp
Okay, well, give me a sentence or two on your experience.
Missy Wallace
Profound encounters with the Lord that really helped me remember the existential experience of His presence and love for me, not just a cognitive experience. Drop all media, stay off all media, be present.
Case Thorp
Okay. Well, I can’t wait to get there. We’re only doing 100 kilometers, which is 70 miles, so we’re doing the pansy version, but I’m really impressed with your 500.
Missy Wallace
It was amazing. Thank you.
Case Thorp
Well, Lauren Gill is Senior Director of the Global Faith and Work Initiative at Redeemer City to City. In this role, she collaborates with pastors, church planters, ministry leaders worldwide to equip laypeople to address brokenness across various industries and professions. Lauren co-authored and served as the General Editor for the Missional Disciple Pursuing Mercy and Justice at Work. Her diverse background includes experiences as an actress, a producer, a licensed mental health counselor in New York state, focusing on vocational issues. She holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology from Columbia University and a BFA in drama and journalism from NYU. She resides in New York city with her husband, Suneel, and their two children. Lauren, an actress, you know, that is new news to me. Did you come to New York to pursue that?
Lauren Gill
I did. You didn’t know that? Yes, I came to New York to pursue acting to attend NYU, which is actually how I got involved in the faith and workspace because I attended a talk Tim Keller gave to actors. And so that’s kind of what brought me into the space when I first moved here. But yes, I do some acting and producing on the side in addition to working at City to City.
Missy Wallace
Case, watch your TV shows. Like, she makes cameos in shows that you probably watch. Keep your eyes open.
Case Thorp
So tell me one of them.
Lauren Gill
So I did a small part on American Horror Story last year. If you blink, you’ll miss me. The year before I did a small part on FBI. but I really, I enjoy the producing and being in things that I get to produce more because as a Christian, I like to have some sense of the story being redemptive and moving towards healing brokenness. But it’s those opportunities, you know, it’s a lot more work than just popping into something every now and then.
Case Thorp
That’s really cool. You know, you never know people’s backstories. Well, friends, like I mentioned, they are here to talk about their recently released and jointly authored book, Faith & Work: Galvanizing Your Church for Everyday Impact. And let me encourage you to go pick up a copy. You can order it online on Amazon. We’re going to give you the website at the end of this episode. But I mean, Missy, Lauren, congrats. This is very well done. What I love about it are the charts and not worksheets per se, but the how to’s. So many faith and work books are about the theology and the need, but wow, this is nuts and bolts that has long been needed. Really appreciate that. So, you know, tell me about writing a book together, expectations, frustration, surprises. What’s it been like?
Missy Wallace
So I think we got to the end and we can probably say we loved writing a book together and that writing a book was much harder than we thought it would be. But I think, you know, writing a book together is even harder than writing a book alone because every single small decision from conceptual things in the book to order of the book to font to cover color, to title, to changes, to do we agree on changes needs to be mediated between two people. And I think that we had a great relationship going into the book. We had worked directly together for three years. We’d worked indirectly together for another kind of three to five, kind of in peer organizations as colleagues. And we had a great relationship going into the book. And I think that made all the difference because we did have points of times we had to submit to each other. We had mutual frustrations. And I think at the end of the day, well, first of all, Lauren submitted more than Missy did, so kudos to Lauren. But we disagree and someone has to like, we got to find a way through the disagreement. And our disagreements were small. But I will say, I feel, our editor told us something at the end of the process, and our editor was an amazing woman that lives in the UK. And she told us that watching our process of working through conflict together was an embodiment of what the book was about that increased her love for Christ. And so for me, that’s an ultimate statement about what collaborating was, because it was hard and our strengths are different. And so it was hard and it was good.
Case Thorp
Wow, okay, so tell me, what did Lauren bring to the table, Missy, that maybe you didn’t have or you needed?
Missy Wallace
Yes, so she brought a lot to the table. So first of all, our careers are so different, right? Mine kind of came through the business world and the education world and hers came through arts and counseling. So that was just an incredible marriage for us to have had these dual careers. And then she’s more decisive than I am, which is incredibly helpful. And she is really a driver of a process and a driver of deadlines. But in a way that’s like loving and joy-filled. And I feel that that really enhanced the book and then just the whole process. But then she was really the owner of several of the case studies and of the Hart Community World section. And I think those are both critical to the book being meaningful. So that’s just off the top of my head. The list is a thousand more things. Those are off the top of my head.
Case Thorp
Alright. Lauren, what did Missy bring that you needed?
Lauren Gill
I mean, the book wouldn’t exist without Missy. Missy is someone who can take a lot of information and ideas and make them into something cohesive. And so I think you see like the faith in work amidst brokenness two by two in the book where she talks about like the quadrants of personal and systemic brokenness. And that is something that, you know, she’s able to take all of these ideas and condense it into something that’s digestible. And when we teach that quadrant to people, it’s like a light bulb goes off for them. And similarly, I think we had worked together for years with all of these different pastors and ministry leaders in like 42, 43 countries. And at some point while we were working with them, Missy was like, I think we really need a map that shows them how to get from assessment to piloting something to then thinking about what works and you know, there’s like a feedback loop and she drew out the map and we worked together to iterate it and get feedback from people and build the tools that go along the steps. But I think that was, you know, she’s able to hear all of these different facets from all of these different people and then say that all fits together like this. And that’s what makes her such a great consultant, I think. Yeah, I think our gifts were just really complimentary. I think she’s really good at those structural pieces in the book. And because of my arts background, I think I was able to sort of say like, what’s the narrative that tells this story?
Missy Wallace
And I will say, what’s so interesting on the backside of finishing it, sometimes people will say to me, gosh, did you write that concept or did Lauren or did you write that sentence or did Lauren? And I truly can say, except for a couple of pages, I truly can say, you know what, I actually am not sure. Like we are both so in and out of the document that at the end of the day, almost every word is our words. You know, there’s not like a Lauren section and a Missy section. Truly was a collaborative work.
Case Thorp
Well, it’s an excellent text. Friends, there’s a thing called the Gotham Fellowship that unites the three of us. We have long taught this curriculum in the life of the church, and I’m recruiting actively for my next seminar that starts in September. But yes, the two by two on brokenness was something I thought, I’m going to put that in my Gotham this next year because it really is, I think, a helpful tool. Well, let’s back things up a little bit, but long before this book came about, long before y’all were leading in this space, why faith and work? What attracted each of you to this particular form of discipleship and this particular approach to your faith?
Lauren Gill
Well, as I mentioned, when I moved to New York, I was an actor and I went and I heard Tim give a talk to actors and then having come from Kentucky, I think all of the pastors were well-intentioned in my small rural community. But the unconscious message was in order to serve the Lord through your work, you have to do ministry work. You have to be a pastor. You have to be a missionary. You have to be a youth leader, something like that. And I just intrinsically had always wanted to be an artist. And so I knew that God hadn’t put that in me for no reason. So after hearing Tim speak, I actually joined the New York City Gotham Fellowship. And that began my faith and work journey. And I just felt like after that, I really had that inherent understanding of how the gospel changes my motivation for work, my relationships at and through work and the way I view my industry and what God is using it to do in the world. And so that’s how I really came into the space. And then I started working for the Center for Faith and Work at Redeemer before eventually moving over to City to City and working with Missy with global pastors and ministry leaders on how to bring this to their churches.
Case Thorp
That’s great. What about you, Missy?
Missy Wallace
Sure. So my journey into faith and work was rather circuitous. Although I had become a Christian in my adolescence, like in my own belief system, when I went to college, I really had a hard time understanding how to do what’s expected of you kind of, you know, if you’re good at economics, you become a banker and if you’re good at banking, and I just kind of got on that track and I really didn’t follow my faith there for a while. It was very much in the background. And so I had no understanding that I should even be thinking about faith and work because I wasn’t even thinking about faith. I was just thinking about work. And so I got on this path of work, work, work, work, work and went to business school and started working consulting and got transferred abroad and then got transferred back to New York. And when I was in New York, I had my first child. And when I had my first child, she’s now 27 now, I was like, okay, wait a minute. I need to get back to faith. And so I started, I’m going to Bible study again, joined a church, got back into church, but it was a journey of, my second child was born with a birth defect and that really brought me back to faith. He was in the hospital, 90 day, 89, 90 days off and on his first year. I was like, okay. And so was increasingly, God was pulling me in, pulling me in, pulling me in. And when we moved to Nashville a few years later, which is where I had gone to college and my husband had grown up. When we moved back to Nashville, I started doing some consulting projects, which led me to interact with a group that was starting a new school. And I did a consulting project for them. And then they said, do you want to help us start this school? And I was like, that’d be amazing. And I actually made that very, very quick decision to get off the corporate track onto the nonprofit track, unbeknownst to me due to bad faith and work theology. Because in my mind, I had been cultivated over the years that, you know, working for a church, that’s for like the super Christians. Well, I’ll never be that. Being a missionary, I’ll never be that. But doing nonprofit work, that’s better for the world than you just doing that old greedy for-profit work. And so I was like, great, I’m going to do something better for the world. And I love that I did that, that worked. I ended up working at that school over a decade. However, in the middle of that, my oldest daughter, who was eight at the time, was stricken with a very weird and rare illness that took us to three hospital systems to get her diagnosed. But the short version is that she was diagnosed very dire and sent to hospice. And we had very poor outcomes offered to us. And boy, that’s a new level of surrender. I got to surrender my daughter and the outcome was very good for us. And then I had to really, but it was a very, she’s thriving. She’s great. She’s 25 and thriving.
Case Thorp
Praise the Lord.
Missy Wallce
And yes, thank you. And during that time, it was a very long recovery. And I read, I think almost every Tim Keller book written during that time. And I was just really fresh to, okay, there’s…something more going on, like a new layer of surrender. And so I started into seminary at night, went back to the school, but started working to seminary at night. And in seminary, I really had my faith and work theology developed. And by the way, I didn’t finish at seminary. I didn’t even almost finish at seminary. I took like four classes. I really had my, and not Greek or Hebrew, but I really had my faith and work theology much more fully developed which led to me writing the business plan for the Nashville Institute for Faith and Work actually in seminary for a class. I thought it was a project. And then I came to New York for some training, which is I think where I originally met both of you. And so, and now here we are, you know, what is it? 10 or 12 years later. So it began.
Case Thorp
Okay, that’s neat. Did we meet at the Gotham training held at Princeton?
Missy Wallace
I think so. can’t remember which year you went, but we met around that time.
Case Thorp
Wow, my goodness. I’m so grateful for your daughter’s health and wellness. You know, it just dawns on me. We don’t know each other’s stories. We’ve done such great engagement on ministry, execution, and theology. I’m just grateful to know more about y’all. So Missy, you mentioned that faith and work miss that a lot of Christians have in terms of, the professional Christians and the pastors versus the supposed greedy work in the marketplace. What are some other faith and work misses do people live and operate with? Because we need your work, but before we realize how much we need it, we’ve got to recognize where a lot of people in the church just don’t see this integration. So what are some other things you hear people say that just need some correction and revitalization?
Missy Wallace
That’s so great. I mean, I think that there’s so many that I’m going to try to kind of categorize them. And I think there’s misses in the inward journey, kind of like our relationship with God and with work. And then there’s misses kind of on the outward journey, like how does our work go out into the world? And I think some of the key misses on the inward journey are around people not even understanding that we were created to work. I mean, that seems so fundamental to the three of us since we’re in this ecosystem and talk about this all the time, but I’m repeatedly running into people who still have the Western mindset of I’m working to survive or I’m just working to finish working so I can have more leisure or golf or do whatever, score up more money. And this whole concept of we are created to work and work out of the image of God within us seems to be flubbed up a bit of places a lot due to kind of our Western narratives around work. I think another, you kind of had asked me earlier about purpose and calling. And I think that another, you know, when you start to think about work as an outward expression, a lot of people put so much pressure if they are thinking about work as a response to, you know, their Lord and savior. A lot of people start to think, okay, well then I have to get it perfect. Well then I have to figure out my call. What is my call? And I think it’s helpful to be reminded that our call is to Jesus Christ and that is our primary call. And out of that, everything else flows and it can ebb and flow over different seasons. So I’ve been a banker, I’ve been a consultant, I’ve been a mother, I’ve been a volunteer worker, I’ve been a ministry leader. So these things can ebb and flow and I particularly see with young people like this incredible, I need to work in my passion, I need to work in my passion and that passion can evolve. And then of course, there’s just the great divide, the, okay, when I go to work, I’m at work. Like I can’t be a Christian at work. You know, just that we’ve flubbed that up and the churches are teaching that. And so people don’t know how to…what Lauren was talking about at beginning of this podcast, I want to be part of films that are bringing healing into the world. Well, you can bring healing into the world through banking. You can bring healing into the world through an advertising agency. And an imagination for what it could be is another flip-up part of the outward journey.
Case Thorp
The art. Lauren, do you have any insights on that one?
Lauren Gill
Yeah, just agree with what Missy says. I think that inward journey is really the piece that a lot of people miss. And just thinking through, they focus so much on what does God call me to do in an epic sense instead of saying what is the thing that he has put in front of me today that I have to accomplish. Calling is about today, right? And yes, of course, we’re called to certain careers, but we don’t always know what that will look like. I’ve, you know, lived in New York city, 23 years. I’ve worked in like six different industries since I’ve worked here, and never when I moved here to study acting, did I ever think I would be working with international pastors and ministry leaders talking to them about what to put into their churches. So, you know, God’s going to do what he’s, what he’s going to do with your life, but you have to be faithful to the thing that he’s given you to do today.
Case Thorp
Mm-hmm. This book, as I mentioned, is a great nuts and bolts, a how-to. Before we began recording our podcast, friends, we were discussing Missy and Lauren’s work with those global pastors, and also how fun that your book is being read in countries all over the world. That’s really special. Tell us about that conference, but more specifically, when you have your book with them and you’re teaching them the how-to’s, what are you emphasizing? And answer that in light of our listeners thinking, okay, what could I do at my church or go back and tell my pastor?
Lauren Gill
I think the thing that we have found that holds up across context really well is actually the same framework that Gotham uses, and it’s the heart community world framework. The heart piece being about that personal relationship with Jesus. How does my personal sin and brokenness show up at work? What is my motivation for work? And is that about me or is that about God? Am I being repentant of when I see my brokenness come up at work? Am I relying on God for wisdom and prayer? And then we move to the community piece, which is about how does the gospel change the way I intersect with my customers, my coworkers, my clients, my colleagues, even my competitors that should look different if I’m a Christian than if I’m not a Christian, ideally, right? And then the world piece, is what is God using my industry and my city to do that’s unique from others, right? He’s using finance to do something different than transportation, than technology, than art, than housing, than education. Those are communicating different things about his glory. And so I think what Missy and I have found is that framework, those questions around those three key areas holds up really across everywhere we work, it plays out differently, right? The areas of idolatry and personal brokenness are different in Singapore versus Accra versus Mumbai versus Buenos Aires, right? So they play out differently, but the frameworks are often more consistent than what I think a lot of people would suspect.
Case Thorp
That’s great because the world component of that is what’s captured my imagination through this decade or more. And one of the approaches I often have with folks through the Collaborative to help them think, my industry is needed in God’s plan for the coming good. That big leap has not often been made of what does my work to my company, my industry then provide to a community to a greater context? And that helps, think, get beyond just the mere ethics part of faith and work. Yes, we should be Christian in our behavior and moral and our activities and choices. And there’s also a bigger work of God going on here. Missy, talk about those seminars and what gives you life in them and what do you try to emphasize?
Missy Wallace
Sure, so we very much collaboratively do it together. But I think a couple of other things besides what Lauren mentioned that are emphasized in the seminars are, first of all, a lot of people buy into the concepts of faith and work, but they aren’t sure about how to prioritize this and the many things that a particular church or ministry has to do. And so we really teach faith and work as a context rather than a program.
Case Thorp
Yeah, that’s tough.
Missy Wallace
And so, and it really helps like people go, okay. I mean, you haven’t met anyone in ministry anywhere that doesn’t want to impact people’s hearts and hopefully impact the cities and communities in which they live. And so you can help people reframe that work is the context in which their people are living and spending an enormous amount of time. And so how can you do any kind of ministry if you’re not addressing where they’re spending this enormous amount of time and where a lot of their joy and their hurt is happening to them? So that’s something we emphasize. And then we also try to make our seminars experiential in that the person is becoming a more integrated faith and work leader themselves as they are learning how to perhaps lead and implement faith and work initiatives. And so we do find, you know, a lot of people need a little bit of formation on their own work idolatry to be able to then help minister to others about theirs. So we tried to build, you know, spiritual renewal exercises so that the leaders are finding their relationship with God around work strengthened while learning about faith and work.
Case Thorp
So good. When the Collaborative was under the First Presbyterian Orlando umbrella, we, in the leadership of the Collaborative, were very mindful to ask that same question of ourselves, not to presume, churches have great workplaces that are well integrated and working with a good theology. And in that vein, we reached, we have a lot of parachurch ministry folks in Orlando with Cru being here and Wycliffe Bible translators, pioneers, Navigators and others. And so we had a number of seminars where we would go to those organizations and gather people and say, well, what are the idols in your nonprofit ministry environment? May we not assume that there’s not the work of the adversary here, but how do we think about that? Okay, so…that’s great. And I agree. The heart work is so essential. How about y’all? What are some of the practices that you practice in order to stay focused? Because you’re both still in ministry, you’re in fast paced results driven kind of work and that is our greater culture. So what do y’all do to nurture your heart?
Lauren Gill
I really just, and I thank the parachurch ministry Navigators for drilling this into me since you just mentioned them. When I was in college, I really feel like, just doing a quiet time as often as possible. I usually can get one in on weekdays, but not weekends these days because I have small children. But when they’re at school, I can get one in after I dropped them off. But, and sometimes, you know, it’s not ideal. Like I have 15 minutes in a coffee shop before I am going into a meeting or something, but to spend time in the word and then connecting my prayers to what is in reaction to the word. And before I did this podcast today, I was feeling, you know, I dropped my kids off at school. I came back. I have like all of these different things lined up. I got on at the wrong time because I had the time messed up for the podcast. But the verse that I read today was from 1 Corinthians 15, therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm, let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Let nothing move you. And I will carry that throughout today, you know, no matter what sort of inconveniences come up. And then tomorrow God will give me a new word to carry when I spend time with Him.
Missy Wallace
I love that. I would say I’ve, like Lauren, I like some quiet time each day. And I’ve really moved to a journaling method to try to take the scripture and ask God what he would like me to see and really expanding my kind of hearing muscles through a particular journaling technique.
Case Thorp
Wonderful.
Missy Wallace
But I also have a rhythm of receding for silence. And so I try to take a day of silence at least every quarter and I got off of that for a while. And now I’m getting back on that. And I have found that completely removing any sense of productivity from life for a day. And I mean like, if on my day of silence, I don’t go walking if it’s about getting my 10,000 steps. I only walk if it’s about prayer. And I’m like, okay, I have two verses I’m going to focus on all day if I get done with that. I’m not going to go knock off lamentations because I’ve been meaning to read that. So anything like with a productivity mindset, I eliminate from that day. And I found that I will flip back through my day of silence journals and I will find prayers that I prayed two years ago have all of sudden come to… I’ve just found it incredibly rich. And often I will hear a phrase or an edict or something I feel like God is saying to me that will buoy me for a long time. And that kind of relates to the pilgrimage I took, which I think what my pilgrimage helped me realize is…
Case Thorp
This is the El Camino de Santiago.
Missy Wallace
Yeah, the walking pilgrimage. This is not an episodic faith. With the Holy Spirit deposited within us, we have constancy of devotion available to us. And so right now I’m really trying to move towards constancy of devotion. Like Lauren said, that word traveled with her when she was frustrated about logging in at the wrong time. Like I’m working on every single moment of every single day down to what I put my hands on at the grocery store as one of my mentors taught me. Like, do I want, is this what I need in my grocery basket? So I’m really trying to move towards a practice of constancy, but it’s hard, it’s hard, I’m powerless on my own.
Case Thorp
Y’all are inspirations. You encourage me. Can you give us an example of someone that you’ve worked with or seen through your years of work who’ve really gotten it and done a healthy, laudable faith and work integration in their lives?
Missy Wallace
I mean, I think Lauren and I probably have a list of a hundred. And in fact, there’s like five videos of exemplars on the global faith and work pastors toolkit webpage. So, so many come to mind, but you know, I really, there was an example that the thing is, if you put one example, it’s going to be, you know, particular about that industry, but there’s examples in every industry. But there’s this one example in the criminal justice industry where someone that went through Gotham here in Nashville and his colleague really noticed that in the criminal justice system, a lot of people end up in their first bookings at the jail due to some kind of mental health break. Maybe it’s addiction, maybe it’s schizophrenia, maybe it’s trauma from domestic violence or something, but they don’t have a true like serial criminal behavior type or behavior pattern. And they found that once they’re booked and end up in the jail, they end up falling into a behavioral pattern of criminal acts because now they missed their parole by accident and now, and really they needed some mental health support. And so really based partially on their faith, they have done a redirect within the Nashville jail system where there are certain profiles of people who when they get arrested and get booked into the jail, actually end up not fully getting put into the jail, but get diverted into a behavioral care unit where they spend 10 to 20 days, I’m not exactly sure the number of days being paid for by the government. And by the way, it is cheaper than keeping them in jail, than what it would have cost per day to have them in jail, to receive some behavioral support, to try to work on addictive patterns, try to get their medications right if needed, and have a whole lot of group therapy and therapy, and then give them supports to go out into the world. This isn’t for everyone. This is for a certain type of person who ends up at the jail system that perhaps doesn’t have a criminal behavior pattern.
Case Thorp
And it’s not that justice is not executed. It’s just done in a way that’s more helpful and more reparative.
Missy Wallace
Yeah, it’s a restorative, it is a restorative way for someone who is not on a criminal intent path.
Case Thorp
That’s fantastic. Lauren, any examples in your world?
Lauren Gill
So many, I mean, one of the ones that I love the most is there was a woman named Regina Green and she was working in a large New York City financial institution and she was there for over a decade. And after being there for a long period of time, she was able to start an initiative where they took a lot of capital from the institution and gave it to small business owners of underrepresented populations, women entrepreneurs, black and brown entrepreneurs, people who didn’t typically have access to levels of capital from a place like that. And what I always loved about her story was that she talked about how it took her a decade there to sort of earn the relational capital, you know, to build this initiative and I really liked that because to me that’s like a long line of obedience in the same direction, right? A lot of people, think now, especially, you know, younger people, they see all the brokenness in the system and they want to go in and say, let’s fix it immediately. And you do have to earn the, you know, the relationships in order to do that a lot of times, I think. So I always loved her story.
Missy Wallace
So I’d love to just add one more thing because Lauren and I did give examples that are really noteworthy and kind of grandiose. It can at times start to feel like, I can’t do that from where I sit, but everybody can do a little bit from where they sit, especially when in prayer and joining what God might already be doing right around you. And so everyone has someone they’re working with that is experiencing some brokenness. Everyone can see, you know, a file system that’s not working well. And so I think prayer around where is brokenness around me that I can look towards and where is creational good that I can help move towards in any job is a way to be one of these restorative presences, even in the tiny things. Like making a staff meeting work in a more structured, healthy way. That’s a big win for a lot of teams. It doesn’t have to be, you know, reshape your industry.
Case Thorp
Yeah, yeah. Well, and that’s to the point of your book, you know, for everyday impact. Faith & Work: Galvanizing Your Church for Everyday Impact. Friends, let me encourage you to check this out. Go buy one for your pastor. Go buy one for your elders and leaders, and even to help educate yourself looking across these different sections in the Table of Contents. It’s fantastic. You start out with defining why does work matter, and then moving into defining destinations, becoming a faith and work integrated leader, a journey map, and then building leadership, understanding needs, implementing steps one, two, three, four. So great job, great job. You should be very proud and we hope and pray sales are big and the reach is far. Missy and Lauren, thank you so much for being here.
Case Thorp
Yeah, it’s great to be together and I’ll see you next week at City Gate. Missy, thank you.
Lauren Gill
Thank you for having us, we really appreciate it.
Missy Wallace
Thank you, Case. We love doing this with you. Thank you.
Case Thorp
Friends, if you want to learn more, you can go to globalfaithandwork.com to learn more about Lauren’s work. And then on that page, you will find another page that’s particular to the book. So globalfaithandwork.com/galvanizeyourchurch, and to learn more about Missy and her work, go to 90seventeen.com. That’s the number 90 and the word seventeen. Well, friends, thank you so much for joining us. Please like and share. really helps us to get the word out. Leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. You can go to our website, wecolabor.com for all sorts of content and drop us your email and I’ll send you in the postal mail, a 31 day faith and work prompt journal. You can find us across the social media platforms. Don’t forget our other podcast, Formed for Faithfulness, a weekly 10 minute devotional that drops every Monday for the working Christian that follows the liturgical calendar. I want to thank our sponsor for today, the V3 Family Foundation. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
