Shrinking the Camel
When I first started the Shrinking the Camel Blog, I joked with a friend that I was creating a new market niche that didn’t quite exist yet. Although my friend smiled and nodded encouragingly, now I am fairly certain that what he was actually thinking was more like, “Good luck, Sucker.”
What I had meant at the time was that I was frustrated by the lack of compelling content I saw on internet sites around the idea of integrating faith, spirituality, work and career. Some I found to be mainly interested in using the workplace as a stomping grounds for evangelism (ready, set, convert!). But I am not interested in targeting my employees and co-workers for conversion, so this did not appeal to me very much. I would much rather have genuine relationships with people at work, respecting their existing faith wherever they are on their spiritual journey. If we do end up having faith conversations, it happens naturally, out of mutual respect, trust and genuine influence.
Other work-faith sites were offering inspirational bible study applications to address token workplace issues, such as dealing with annoying employees or handling straightforward ethical questions (Golly, What if my Sales Manager asks me to fudge the numbers on my expense report?). These generally came off as a bit too simplistic for me. I highly doubt that all of the complex issues I face in management and leadership can be boiled down to a few Sunday School adages from scripture. To make matters worse, I noticed that many of the well-intentioned authors of these work-faith articles had little to zilcho experience in corporate management. This, to me, came off a little bit like asking for sex therapy from a celibate priest. Not that we shouldn’t apply scripture to encourage and direct the decisions in our lives, but I sometimes fear that the overzealousness for bible-quoting misses the nuances and complexities of the deeper, real-life complications that must be teased out in the process.
What I couldn’t find, it seemed, was anyone talking from a smart, spiritual perspective on the very things that I was struggling with at work, like:
- The angst of searching for a spiritual purpose in my career
- Ideas on how to positively channel my drive and ambition
- Managing the constant pressure and insecurities of delivering on corporate performance expectations
- Balancing my desire to make money with spiritual priorities
- Dealing with peer competition and skanky corporate politics
- Working through periods of stress and burnout
- Allowing an honest faith struggle where it’s okay to ask challenging questions now and then.
These were more reflective of the messy truth that I was living through every day as an executive in the corporate workforce. But the answers to these questions are not always accessible, immediate or apparent. Because, as you are well aware, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ does not guarantee that our situations are all zipped up tight. Just like a favorite worn-out sweater, my work-life experiences are graced with plenty of tattered frays and loose ends. In a nutshell, my life as a Christian executive can not be distilled into five-bullet-points and a bible verse.
So I was interested in creating a forum here at Shrinking the Camel where smart, ambitious and career-minded individuals could find a place to enjoy authentic, relevant and challenging commentary on the joys and challenges of integrating business and career life with spiritual life. Oh, and the writing had to be really good, too. With a healthy dose of pithy humor. Plus a little snarky cynicism peppered in there to keep everyone honest. But it also it has to be inspirational. And provocative at the same time. What I definitely didn’t want to do was to create another generic I-Have-All-The-Answers-For-You “Faith in the Workplace” site.
So I started posting stories and articles. Soon, a cadre of regular readers started showing up. Not much later, I got picked up by a couple of online magazines. I even got an article published in a prominent business magazine. It was all good. And at that point you would think the correspondents from CNBC would have started beating a path to my door. Jeez Louise, where are the press when you really want them to show up?
Then a year went by. And thankfully, I did start finding more of the type of discussion that I was searching for in these online magazines and through other Bloggers (more on that in an upcoming post!). But, really, where was I going with all of this? What’s the point?
So this past summer I climbed the tallest tree that I could find to get a look beyond the forest at the vast horizon of possibilities ahead of me, to see what could be next for Shrinking the Camel.
I didn’t see much.
I prayed for God to give me some direction and guidance. I still did not get an answer.
I often interpret those divine silences as if God is standing there with his arms crossed, gazing intently at something else going on in the universe, and without turning to look at me, he says, “It’s none of your damn business! I’ll tell you what to do when I’m good and ready.” Which is totally okay with me, him being God, and all. I waited patiently.
In the meantime, the feeling I was left with was that business and spirituality don’t really go together. Let me rephrase that. What I mean is, it is not really marketable. This “Faith in the Workplace” business is a niche that, by all accounts, has not really caught on with the greater public marketplace. Sure, maybe it’s of interest to a few fired-up Christians, those who want to preach to the choir of other fired-up Christians, but the rest of the regular mainstream business people – the ones who really need to hear and apply this stuff the most – seem to care more about the latest business news updates, or advancing their careers, or investment advice, or leadership strategies at work. No one seems to be overly concerned about linking any of that to their spiritual lives. Well, not enough to go and start up a Google search on the subject, anyway. Heck, they probably don’t even want to acknowledge that they even have spiritual lives.
Then how am I to reach this crowd? How am I to fulfill my little mission? I am afraid that this micro-niche of business and spirituality is so tiny in the scheme of things, it barely exists. Am I missing something?
* * * * * *
God finally got back to me. The first thing he let me know was that I was acting like a snobbish, self-centered, small-minded Blogger who was whining far too much about not getting enough traffic to his site.
“Look around you!” He said. “Look at all the wonderful people, the rich and varied online resources that are providing the world with encouragement, advice and ideas for bringing their spiritual life into work. They are everywhere!”
Yes, I suppose he is right about that. Then he told me to get up off my sorry ass and keep blogging, and stop worrying so much about what’s next.
“Keep writing!” He said. “Blog even more! And btw, I love, love, love your work!”
“All right, all right.” I replied, a little reluctantly, because I am the type of competitive person who needs to see the prize that I am running after. Then God gave me some very specific tips on how to Blog more effectively. Well, it actually came from a Twitter feed, but the timing of it all convinced me that it was really God’s leading.
I am ever so grateful to all of those who have been faithful visitors and commenters. You truly have become like newfound friends. I will continue to post more stuff, probably with a greater emphasis on faith in the workplace, or business spirituality, or whatever is the most marketable buzzword for it at the moment. I hope you will continue to visit, and who knows? Maybe my audience will grow to become a greater and more diverse readership. Perhaps, I daresay, even growing enough to create a…a…a platform! And maybe, hopefully, together, we can slog forward with our respective blogs and make some small dent in the massive media machine by introducing a spiritual perspective to the topics of business, money, management and career. And that will greatly please the Lord and inspire everyone to live better lives.
I’m looking forward to seeing what God will do this next year, with all of us.
P.S. I would appreciate anyone’s advice on how to reach 1,000 views per day.
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