Faith in the Workplace

Jack Wisdom's life is not a neat fit. He's a name partner in a leading Texas firm, but he lives in a blue-collar neighborhood. He's got a couple of advanced degrees, but he spends a lot of his free time with high school kids. He's a legal expert, but he's big on grace. So you have to look closer. After graduating near the top of his class at Trinity University, Jack spent two years on the Dallas police force: writing tickets, busting into drug houses, reading theology on his own time. From Dallas, he went to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the Boston area. Declining an offer to stay and teach Greek, he and his wife, Diana, joined the Young Life staff and moved to Clear Lake, south of Houston, where no clubs existed. Five years and many new Young Life groups later, he went to law school.

Martin, Disiere, Jefferson & Wisdom, L.L.P. tell one side of Jack's story on their website. Since 2003, Texas Monthly has honored him annually as a "Super Lawyer." Since 2004, H Magazine has named him one of the city's top lawyers. Back in his neighborhood, his career is suspect. One Young Life kid who'd seen how high-level attorneys live observed that Jack couldn't be a very good one.

In a career notorious for high thread counts and bone-dry personal lives, Jack and Diana are unselfconscious nonconformists. Maybe not coincidentally, they have great senses of humor. And it's worth asking Jack how he works this out in his own head.

For two years between college and seminary, you were a cop in Dallas. How did that get in your career plan?

The official story is that I wanted some real-world experience before law school. The real story is that I was a long-haired rabble rouser with a general disdain for traditional authority figures. As a practical joke, my girlfriend (now my wife) and my best friend applied in my name to the Dallas Police Department. The DPD, which apparently had a great sense of humor, invited me to interview and take a few tests. I had nothing better to do, and a few months later, I was in the Dallas Police Academy.

How did police work affect you?

No short answer. I learned about sin—mine and everybody else's—heartbreaking examples of domestic violence, gratuitous meanness, racism, duplicity, injustice, and indifference. I learned about redemption. Jesus came into this mess and died for sinners. I saw His power and love in people clinging to faith and living in dignity in the midst of the chaos.

Then seminary?

I did not go to seminary to acquire professional credentials or to prepare for a job in ministry. I went because I wanted to study the Bible, church history—because I wanted to sort out or begin to sort out some vexing theological issues and because I wanted to process my experiences as a police officer.

Then what?

Then after I finished seminary, Diana and I decided to go on Young Life staff. We had served in that mission as volunteers for several years, and we were eager to hang out with unchurched high school kids for Christ's sake on a full-time basis. So we did. And during our time on staff, we learned a lot of things.

For instance?

One thing we learned is that we liked being amateurs more than we liked being professionals. We left staff in 1988, but we still are immersed in that ministry, not because it is our job, but because the love of Christ compels us.

So you went into "full-time Christian work" and then left it?

Every Christian is called to and gifted for service, or ministry. In the church, there should be no status distinctions between the professionals and the amateurs. Our service must be based on our gifts and our love, not on our credentials and titles. I understand and appreciate the fact that some are called to make a living in church and parachurch ministries, but those brothers and sisters must avoid the temptation to reduce their calling to a job/career, just as the rest of us must avoid the temptation to reduce our calling to a hobby. John Piper nails these temptations in his book Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. The point is that all of us are called to cruciformity, to radical service.

Some people call aspects of your life radical—unusual, at least. Your house, car, clothes, and where your kids attended school all fall far below what you could have.

Last year, one of my Young Life guys, a recent high school graduate who spent a lot of time at my house, told me that I must not be a very good lawyer. He had seen where the good lawyers live, what they drive, what they wear, how they roll. At first, I was a bit defensive. I like my house in the bubba burbs. My truck is cool, and I have XM radio, but I got his point. We live below our means. We made a decision to live that way, years ago, when I was a first-year lawyer at a big firm. As our income grew, we stayed the course because we believe that Jesus knows best. He is competent to give investment advice about the relative merits of treasuring up treasures on earth and treasuring up treasures in heaven, about the fact that our hearts follow our treasure, about the impossibility of serving God and Mammon.