Faith in the Workplace

Bonnie Pruett Wurzbacher may have come from a family of ministers but she studied teaching in college and found her calling in business. Rising to senior vice president at Coca-Cola she also found precious few peers or role models among women, much less among Christian women. Out of necessity, most of her mentors would turn out to be Christian men. From the often pioneering and sometimes bruised leading edge of a Christian woman in a high corporate seat, Bonnie Wurzbacher weighs in now on the importance of women leaders in business and church.

Bonnie, how do you define a professional calling, and when did you know you had one?

Growing up, I thought a calling meant full-time Christian service. I've since learned that any vocation can glorify God and that a calling is the intersection of your strengths and interests coupled with where God wants or needs you most—a place that may change over the course of your life.

Sounds like there's a story behind that last part …

Not really. Dr. Litfin, the president of Wheaton College, posed some interesting questions to me recently that helped me reflect on the idea that a calling may be about more than just a person's strengths and weaknesses. For example, Moses didn't want to do what God called him to do because he didn't have speaking talent. Neither did Jonah. So while an element of your calling relates to your natural gifts and passions, there is also the component of where God most needs you at the time.

When did you know your calling?

As I realized I was good at business and drawn to it, I began to realize it was a calling. It took several more years to figure out how to serve God in it—how to glorify Him in it. Where once I thought a job should be "meaningful," now I realize the worker brings meaning to the job.

Was there a moment or point when business acquired sacred meaning for you?

Not one particular moment, no. It was a series of things, from sermons on the theology of work to business experience over the years. Success in business usually starts out with performance. Then it expands to include managing relationships and, critically, the ability to lead others. I learned through difficult times and through interactions with other Christian business leaders. And in the process I developed a Christian worldview that included my professional life and my personal life. After all, work is where most of us spend most of our time.

As a woman and a high-placed exec at one of the globe's largest companies, did you wake up one morning and say to yourself: I have no role models, I'm on uncharted ground?

[Laughs] I don't know that I ever did that. But I'll say there have been fewer and fewer women in leadership roles or even as peers as I've advanced. The world of Christian women in those roles is even smaller—which I suppose isn't all that surprising.

I'm very passionate about two things in my professional life. First is the critical role and responsibility of business, how it advances the economic well-being of people around the world. How it allows every other institution to exist, including churches, schools, hospitals and every not-for-profit organization by creating jobs, salaries, and taxes. It gives Christians an incredible place to honor God. When a business fails you see the impact on everything else and vice versa.

My second passion is helping others, especially women, identify and use their gifts and talents in significant ways. Women are fully half of the professional workforce in Fortune 500 companies. Yet those percentages reflect in few leadership roles—not just in corporate America but in churches, in politics, and in many other fields, we are not fully benefiting from the talents of women. If 50 percent of the professional workforce is women, why aren't 50 percent of the leaders women? That has a multi-faceted answer; but in large part it is a talent development failure. I believe this failure is evident in many churches as well.

The theologian N.T. Wright says the Bible's account of Mary and Martha is not about "active" and "contemplative" styles of spirituality but the boundary-breaking call of Jesus. The real problem was not Mary's absence in the kitchen; it was her behaving as a man—the public rooms were where men met. To sit at the feet of Jesus there was a decidedly male role.

I have a wonderful book on this subject, Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender, by a man named John G. Stackhouse.Very often in Christian circles when this topic comes up, the stance is either extremely conservative or extremely liberal. But those are not the only choices. I would call myself a Christian feminist, if what it means is that women are equal in every way to men; not the same in every way, but equal in every way.

The book points out that Jesus befriended and taught women in scandal to the patriarchal culture of the time. In Acts 2 the Holy Spirit was poured on both men and women. In Galatians 3, the church eliminates distinctions between Christian of any kind. In Romans and Corinthians and Ephesians, there is no distinguishing between spiritual gifts given to men and women. Paul writes of women in the early church in a wide range of roles as deacons, apostles, benefactors and teachers.