‘The five core practices of a Faith Positive lifestyle help us to focus on the positive and filter out the negative.’
Joey Faucette is on a mission to encourage and equip Christian business professionals to tap their faith to create a positive way of working in a negative world.
He and Mike Van Vranken, a longtime business executive, created Faith Positive Partners (getpositive.today) to provide resources for companies, corporations, churches and denominational groups to enable employees and members to develop more positive lifestyles. They are co-authors of Faith Positive in a Negative World.
Baptists Today editor John Pierce talked with Faucette, the former pastor of First Baptist Church of Danville, Va., about this mission. The following conversation is adapted from that interview.
BT: How big of a concern is negativity — and what are its seductive powers?
JF: Negativity is a concern for all of us. Since Adam and Eve’s garden experience with a lying serpent, we have struggled in a negative world.
Its seductive power lies in its pervasiveness. Coffee pot conversations and team meetings at work and even Baptist deacons’ meetings are experiences in which negativity takes expression and redefines our reality.
This pervasiveness has a death grip on today’s media. In our always-on, media-driven culture, we abdicate our editorial license to control what content we consume to those whose mantra is, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
They are in business to monetize negativity. We are complicit in their conspiracy by consuming their “news and entertainment” products with complete disregard to its effects on us mentally, socially, emotionally, physically and ethically.
Now I’m not a Luddite. I am tech savvy, more than most in my generation. However, when we erase our boundaries with technology and become blind consumers of nine-second sound bytes and videos, we fall prey to the wily ways of the seductive power of negativity.
The great irony is that we as Christians reflect rather than reform the negative world. The Faith Positive movement reverses the negative world’s power — restoring faith, joy and love.
BT: How did your current work develop, and who is your audience?
Joey Faucette
JF: In 2014 I celebrated 30 years as an ordained minister, 20 of which were invested in the local church as a full-time pastor. Prior to that I enjoyed a career in radio broadcasting both on the production and sales sides.
In 2004, God called me out of the local church and sent me on an undercover mission back into the business world. When the economy recessed in 2008, I realized that we were transitioning into a new business environment.
So I researched the habits of entrepreneurs who started businesses during the Great Depression, focusing on those that thrive today. I found some common patterns, and most of them had roots in scripture.
Intrigued, I discovered what we call the five core practices of a positive lifestyle and began writing and speaking about them. Soon after, Entrepreneur magazine and I partnered to do a book, Work Positive in a Negative World. I knew we were on to something significant when it hit number one on Amazon in three different business categories on three different occasions.
The book is largely narrative, i.e., strategies supported by stories. I adapted some of Jesus’ parables because of the commonality between the habits of these Great Depression gurus and Scripture. The book became a front-and-center expression of my covert mission.
As I spoke around the U.S. about how to work positive in a negative world, Christian business professionals would take me aside and ask about integrating faith into the five core practices. This happened so many times that I began to pay more and better attention to the Spirit’s leadership around this topic.
Then I received a coaching client who retired from a Fortune 35 financial services company. He sought me out to help him launch a writing/speaking ministry. As we worked together to achieve his goal, it became apparent to both of us we were to pursue a more faith-driven application of the five core practices. That’s when Faith Positive in a Negative World was born.
Like its predecessor in the Positive series, it hit number one on Amazon three days after it launched. The 7 Weeks to Faith Positive and Faith Positive Master Coaching programs were born shortly thereafter.
Now we resource churches that desire to disciple every member as a minister at work, specifically Christian business professionals who want to increase their faith with greater joy at work so they love God and others more.
BT: Vocational life is so different than in past decades. People are changing jobs and careers more often, working longer into life and re-equipping with changing technology. How do such dynamics challenge persons in the workplace?
JF: The days of working a lifetime for one company and retiring to a comfortable pension have gone the way of the Edsel, shag carpet and full-service gas stations. We are now, as Dan Pink describes us, a free-agent nation.
Living longer with better health, we pursue encore careers after three decades in one field. Corporations seek top talent daily. The taboo of frequent job changes listed on résumés is no longer relevant.
These dynamics carry one common theme: change. Change is the currency of doing business today.
You are your own corporation, responsible for your lifelong learning to keep skills current, your personal development to stay motivated, and your financial prowess to support yourself and your children who as youngsters want iPads and then return home after college because they can’t find a job.
This rapid pace of change is dizzying. Business professionals are searching frantically for effective strategies that work both at work and home. Christian business professionals are no different.
Because change confronts us with the unfamiliar, and we are more comfortable with the familiar, we label much of this change as negative.
“Things aren’t the way they used to be,” we say. The mantra of many churches today is, “We’ve never done it that way before.”
And it’s true. The challenge then becomes to engage one’s faith in a rapidly changing world so that work is joyful and love of God and others is primary.
The five core practices of a Faith Positive lifestyle are anchoring strategies that do just that.
BT: Can one be realistic about the many negative factors to be faced and still be positive each day?
JF: Yes. Unlike Hindus who deny the existence of evil and negativity in the world, we Christians find our faith rooted in a God who brings life out of death. The resurrection story that is at the heart of our belief system acknowledges that death is real, that the tomb is real, that pain and suffering are endemic to our journey from the cradle to the grave.
Our significant, transforming principle is that the negative world isn’t the final chapter. That the Kingdom of God, which is here but not all of it just yet, peeks through even the darkest of seasons.
The five core practices of a Faith Positive lifestyle help us to focus on the positive and filter out the negative, discover positive people with whom to journey, believe that life still emerges from death, act strategically with the Spirit’s coaching, and then to serve others in gratitude to God.
BT: What is a good conversation to have with oneself in the mirror each morning?
JF: First, realize that you currently are having conversations with yourself each morning. For some of us, those are patterned after morning TV shows. For others of us, they begin with scripture and asking God, “What do you have for me today?” or “What’s on your mind today that I need to know?”
Second, you have control over these conversations. You choose your thoughts, feelings, and the expression of those in words.
Third, pick a favorite scripture verse in which to root your day. Make it one that carries a promise of hope that’s deliverable to you today. Read it to yourself.
BT: What is a process one might use to — as you write in your book — “focus on the positive and filter out the negative”?
JF: My co-author, Mike Van Vranken, and I teach the Perceive (mental core practice)strategy of “Mow and Sow.”
First, mow the negative thoughts that assault and creep into your mind each morning. See them for what they are: thoughts capable of shaping your attitude that determine your actions.
Rather than resist them, acknowledge them as negative thoughts. Avoid dwelling on them. Just see them for what they are: negative thoughts to be mown like weeds from your mental landscape.
When you mow, you filter. You stop the negative thoughts from passing through your mind into the playground of your attitude and actions.
Negative thoughts do exist for all of us. The question is, “How do we deal with them?” You mow them down.
Second, sow. Once the weedy negative thoughts are mown, your positive thoughts have less competition for the nutrients of your success. Like sunlight, water and fertilizer, your attitude and actions nourish your positive thoughts.
Success begets success. As we discussed earlier, you sow scripture and other positive literature into your mind’s conversation to begin the day. We find music particularly helpful as well.
BT: Why is worry so powerful — and what can be done about it?
JF: Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), helped me understand worry, our imagination, and the way our minds work.
The mental ability to imagine positive outcomes is the same as the capacity to worry. Imagination and worry are opposite sides of the same mental coin.
So we have a choice: to imagine positive results or worry.
Paul puts it this way: “Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life” (Phil. 4:6-7, MSG).
Worry has a negative effect on our entire lives — professional and personal — because it occupies the space Christ is to have in our spirits.
Paul’s solution is one we coach around in our book and coaching programs: pray instead of worry. We walk you through how to do that effectively.
BT: What do you mean by “What you resist, persists?”
JF: My friend Bob Nicoll, in his book Remember the Ice, offers the most striking example of this truth.
Bob walked into a convenience store in Phoenix on a hot, August day. He noticed the clerk had a sign up that read, “Don’t forget the ice.”
“How are ice sales?” Bob said.
“Miserable,” the clerk replied. “You’d think with all of this heat, bags would be flying out of here.”
Bob offered to help the clerk sell more ice, and asked for a magic marker and piece of paper. He wrote, “Remember the Ice.”
Ice sales tripled. Why?
When we read, “Don’t forget the ice,” our minds look past “don’t” and read it as “Forget the ice.” In fact, any word of resistance like that — “can’t” or “won’t” — is ignored by our minds and we miss the intended meaning.
It’s a negative expression. What you resist, persists.
If I tell you, “Don’t think about a dancing elephant wearing a pink tutu” what flashes in your mind?
Similarly, when we tell ourselves, “I’m not going to think negative thoughts” or “I’m not going to smoke” or “I’m not going to sin,” we resist the change and focus on doing the familiar. Think of it as a negative reinforcement.
Substitute positive language for the change and watch the resistance disappear.
Embrace the emergence of a negative thought — “There it is. I’m doing it again!” Then replace the thought with a positive one. Replacement thoughts supplant resistance.
“Don’t forget the ice” becomes “Remember the ice” — and sales triple.
Jesus’ most striking example of this reality was when he reinterpreted so many pharisaical teachings with “You have heard it said … but I say to you.”
The “don’t” religion of [the pharisaical code] became “do.” That’s how a naked, adulterous woman lying in the street was forgiven and told to “Go.”
BT: Negativity in the workplace, you’ve noted, is often tied to competition based on the idea of scarcity. Isn’t it a dog-eat-dog world where only a few are winners?
JF: It sure seems like it. Or, as we like to say, “It’s a dog-eat-dog world and I must be wearing Milkbone underwear!”
When you don’t trust God, you buy the lie that it’s all up to you to provide — as if you can create out of nothing like God.
Our favorite commandment to break is the first one: “Have no other gods before me” — and our favorite god is ourselves.
Competition rooted in scarcity assumes there’s only so much to go around — a finite number of slices of apple pie. So you better get yours and someone else’s too so you don’t run out. In order for me to win, you have to lose.
Jesus teaches the better way of abundance. Like the Hebrews receiving manna and quail on time, Jesus reminds us that wildflowers and birds benefit from God’s provision and we matter more to God. There is an infinite number of apple pies!
Once an abundance mentality is adopted and God is trusted, we work together — collaborate — to create a win for everyone.
BT: Businesses and businesspersons can and do fail. Is there a positive way to handle failure?
JF: If anyone understands failure, it must be Christians — personally and professionally. Our redemption theology forms our business practices, right?
Maybe.
In Faith Positive, we teach that “failure is an experience, not a person.”
Too often, failure becomes personal. We see ourselves as failures rather than having an unsuccessful experience.
The exact opposite is true when you examine the track records of numerous business ventures.
Harland Sanders filed for bankruptcy at age 66, then went on the road in a station wagon to teach others how to fry chicken his way.
Jerry Seinfeld forgot all of his lines the first time he stood up to do his comedy routine and was actually fired from his first TV show.
Abraham Lincoln’s country store failed, and he lost more elections than he won on the way to becoming president.
Thomas Edison discovered thousands of ways for not making a light bulb before he found the one.
Craig Wayne Boyd played Nashville dives and honky tonks where no one came for 10 years and was about to quit and go back home. He won The Voice singing competition, and a lucrative contract recently.
You know the success of each of these persons. But did you know the failures?
The list goes on and on.
As Christians, our theology of hope informs our experiences of failure. We pray for a “do over” and persevere.
BT: The late Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity International and the Fuller Center for Housing, once told me of a homeowner saying of a well-known “Christian” businessman in town: “He prays on Sunday and then preys on the community the rest of the week.” It’s one thing to have a positive attitude, but what about connecting that perspective to behavior?
JF: One of the strategic strengths of the five core practices of a Faith Positive lifestyle is that it increases faith with greater joy at work so you love God and others more. You grow a consistency of godly purpose across all areas of your life: mentally, socially, emotionally, physically and ethically.
Hypocrisy, or inconsistency between a Christian business professional’s walk and talk, is one of the leading reasons non-churchgoers cite for not participating. They see no tangible benefit based on the evidence presented by churchgoers.
I had a business owner tell me once, “I no longer accept checks that have the sign of the fish symbol on them. They all bounce.”
The fourth core practice, “Achieve the Positive in Faith at Work,” focuses on action, specifically strategic activity that produces results. It’s rooted in Jesus’ statements like, “Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you’ll find. Knock and the door will open.”
Such actions are in response to God’s activity in your work while seeking the Spirit’s guidance with the mind of Christ. Paying attention to God is the first step in taking such actions. Aligning your intentions with God’s is next. The third step is acting under God’s leadership.
The praying/preying hypocrisy fails to connect a Sunday faith with Monday work. Jesus condemned the Pharisees for such behavior. There is a better way. The “Achieve” core practice is it.
BT: What is the role of gratitude in being faith positive?
JF: The fifth core practice, “Receive the Positive in Faith at Work,” focuses your work on the recognition that God gave you all you are and all you have — your talents and gifts, your material possessions, and your calling to a vocation.
Just as faith is our response to grace in Christ, so gratitude is our response to God’s generous provision.
It is out of gratitude that we say “thank you” to God and to everyone else from whose generosity we benefit.
We thank our customers and clients who keep the lights on and pay the mortgage. We thank our vendors and suppliers for getting us the products and services we require. We thank our supervisors for a job. We thank our shareholders for investing in our company — and the list goes.
Such gratitude takes on tangible expression in a multitude of ways. In our Faith Positive coaching programs, we help individuals, teams and companies to find ways of expressing gratitude through volunteering with a non-profit, joining a mission trip, sponsoring camps for inner city children, and so on.
The universal, biblical reality is that we reap what we sow. If we would fulfill our spiritual dream of increasing faith with greater joy at work so we love God and others more, we would serve others, especially the least of our brothers and sisters, in the name of Christ.
Gratitude is the fuel that drives our work in this way. BT
Faith Positive resources for churches and business professionals are available by visiting baptiststoday.org and clicking the Faith Positive link. Also check out our new Faith Positive blog to encourage laypersons.
by John Pierce
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