In this job I am privileged to talk with people in all walks of life. As I have interviewed people - pastors, social influencers, marketplace leaders - for TogetherLA, I have met some of the most gracious, kind and wise people, and Mark Roberts is no exception. He is an author, theologian and pastor and has been at the helm of Fuller Seminary’s Max De Pree Center for Leadership as the Executive Director since 2017.
He grew up in the LA area and spent much of his career as a pastor in Southern California, first at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood and then at Irvine Presbyterian Church. He then followed God’s call to serve as Senior Director of Laity Lodge in Texas, which is a retreat center and renewal ministry, before coming to Pasadena.
TogetherLA: What brought you to Fuller and the De Pree Center?
Mark Roberts: I loved being a pastor and then God sort of surprised me along the way with a call to go to Laity Lodge in Texas, which is a retreat center and a renewal ministry, but with a very strong emphasis on what we would now call the ministry of all God's people. Faith and work integration was a big deal.
Through my experience in Texas, I really did grow a lot in my understanding in a deeper way that all of God's people, whatever they are doing, are called to serve God in every part of life. And I came to the conviction that we, and the Church, need to do a better job helping our folks understand that.
This thought [the integration of faith in all of life] would be a corrective to my freshman theology that said, if you serve God, you can't be a lawyer. Now the idea would be - sure you could serve God as a lawyer. The question is, what does that mean and how do you do that?
I had a great seven years in Texas. And then once again, God sort of surprised me by opening up the possibility of coming to Fuller. The De Pree Center has always been focused on leadership and my predecessor began raising up the whole issue of work and integrating faith and work.
TogetherLA: What has your focus been since you’ve been at the De Pree Center?
Mark Roberts: So in my first months here, I met with a bunch of business leaders basically saying, “Hey, we're from the De Pree Center at Fuller and we can help you.” Nobody was saying to me they needed help in their leadership. Everybody was saying to me, “What I really need is to finally know how my faith and my work connect.
And so in the providence of God, this stuff that I've been working on as a pastor and in Texas all of a sudden became central to my work. The work of the De Pree Center is largely about helping Christians, some of whom are working in churches but mostly folks working out there, discover what it means to do that work with God being present and for God's glory and purposes. And that really has been very central to my life the last five years.
TogetherLA: There seems to be more focus in the Church now on the integration of faith and work than in past years. Why has this not been taught throughout church history?
Mark Roberts: Well, that's a great question. A lot depends on where you've connected to the church historically. For example, in the black church, work has been more central for a longer period of time. I think in many ways the black church has a more holistic, basic approach to Christian life and community. Perhaps the needs were such that those needed to be addressed. Historically in the black church, many of the pastors were bivocational so they were bringing that perspective. And again, this is a generalization. But in many Anglo churches, especially ones that are middle and upper-middle class, there really has been this historic separation between sort of “spiritual” stuff and “worldly” stuff.
And, if you want to go all the way back where that comes from you can look to the Old Testament. The Hebrew world view is a very integrated one. The prophets talk about your prayer life and they talk about treating your workers justly. So there wasn't that distinction. But the Greek mindset tended to separate the spiritual from the physical.
Along the way, there have been Christian leaders and thinkers who've really pressed against that, Martin Luther being one of the strongest. Because Martin Luther would say that there are different ways to live out our calling. And if you're a baker, you can serve God by baking good bread. That's a way of loving your neighbor and that is part of your calling.
But still, for the most part, especially in the American church, there was a tendency to not think of ordinary work as somehow essential to faith. So growing up in the church, a faithful Christian would think, “Well, if I'm going to serve God, I need to be a pastor because I can't be a lawyer. Right?”
There have been some leaders in the Church and in the U.S., especially since the 50s, who have been chipping away at that. One of those was a man, Howard Butt, who is the founder of Laity Lodge, where I worked prior to the De Pree Center. And he, from the 50s, was working away on that. There were some people who were saying, “No, wait a minute. Discipleship is about all of life, right?” There were pockets of enthusiasm for that. And yet you wouldn't find it very wide spread.
Yet, in the last 15 years, or maybe even just the last 10 years, Christians are realizing that our faith is more than just our personal piety or our family lives. Now it is not uncommon for evangelical Christians to talk about justice. But growing up, you didn't hear that because it supposedly was more about social action than about evangelism. Now, there is a spirit of integration that is also wanting people to say, “Wait a minute. Why is my work not a part of my discipleship?” And so partly it's a move of the Spirit in the Church and that is very encouraging.
There is this sort of groundswell of awareness that says, on the one hand, my faith needs to be lived out in my work. But also, my work is the place where my faith gets shaped.
I would say that it is still not a dominant view in the church. There is still a tendency for many churches and Christians to separate faith and work. But more and more people are seeing that kind of integration, even as we're seeing that there needs to be the integration of evangelism with a commitment to God's justice in the world.
TogetherLA: What long-lasting fruit do you think this shift to understanding whole-life discipleship will produce?
Mark Roberts: So, those of us who are biblically oriented have begun to read scripture more attentively and we realize, “Oh, wait a minute. This is actually all over scripture.” This isn't just some trendy thing. God cares about your work and that is exciting! And 10 years from now, we aren’t going to forget that this is deeply embedded in scripture.
There are organizations like the Theology of Work project that have done a phenomenal job studying what scripture has to say about work and making that available and applicable to people's lives. So, again, there's a growth in understanding that this isn't some kind of cool thing that you can take or leave. Rather, this is really essential to who God has made us to be and what we are to be doing as a church right now.
TogetherLA: What is your hope for the De Pree Center and those you serve?
Mark Roberts: That is a great question. We have talked about our work in the De Pree Center in some different ways. We can talk about it in terms of faith-work integration. Our hope would be that we would be able to help God's people integrate their faith and work. You can talk about it in terms of whole-life discipleship or what it is to be a disciple of Jesus in all of life.
We want to be partners with churches and other organizations to help. If the people of God could really see that all of life belongs to God, and discipleship is about everything they do, that would be extraordinary. Right now we talk a lot in terms of the language of calling or callings. Our hope for you is that you respond faithfully to God's callings in all seasons of your life and leadership. The idea is that whoever you are, whether you're a mom or a dad or a school teacher or you own a giant corporation or whatever it is, that God has callings in your life.
The primary calling is, of course, to know Christ and to follow him. But then there are a variety of callings that you express in a variety of ways in different seasons of life. So what does it mean for you to respond to God's call right now in the places that God has you?
