6/13/22 - You Belong: D. Michelle Thompson, YOU BELONG Podcast & Courageous Love at Work

Intro: As a Christian working woman, you have many roles from your responsibility with family and friends to community and work. How do you connect all that you do with all that you are, and still have your faith shine through? It's a challenge, but you are up to it. The, sheWorks4Him, podcast it at the gathering place to empower Christian working women, to live out their calling at work.

By connecting them to God resources and each other through powerful faith stories from other working sisters in Christ. Welcome to sheWorks4Him.

Martha: You've tuned into, sheWorks4Him, where we connect Christian, working women to God resources and one another. And before I go any further, I just wanna remind people, we've talked a little bit about the boldly conference that's coming up this October.

Remember boldly conference.com is a website you can go to, to learn. Register for that event get involved with other Christian working women connecting their faith and their work. We always want to tell you about the resources that we learn about and drive people towards that because together you never know what event, what book, what podcast, what other resource might be the one that you really needed to hear at any given time or that God had a message for you. So the boldly conference is just one of those resources. And I think today we're gonna end up with a whole lot more resources in the show notes. So remember you can stay connected to us at, sheWorks4Him.com today.

Your co-hosts are Martha Brangenberg and Catherine Gates. Catherine, take it away.

Catherine: Thanks, Martha. And that is boldly conference.com, by the way, if you wanna learn more. So how do you create a culture that is truly diverse and inclusive? One in which people treat one another as equally valuable? How do we ensure that every team member has the opportunity to contribute her best efforts?

To grow and advance? These are questions business leaders have to wrestle with every day, but it's not just up to those who are at the executive level of the organization, creating a truly inclusive and equitable workplace culture in which everyone has a sense of belonging is up to every one of us and Christians should be leading the way.z They should be the shining example.

This is a topic that is near and dear to the heart of D Michelle Thompson. D Michelle has worked for many years for top advertising agencies and consumer package, good companies, negotiating budgets of hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars. It was her work, facilitating sales and marketing training for middle Eastern executives in Dubai that made her realize everyone has their own belong story.

Since that time, D Michelle launched the You Belong podcast and Courageous Love at Work conversations that are designed to equip the work world for racial equity and create cultures in which everyone knows they belong. D Michelle, welcome to sheWorks4Him.

D. Michelle Thompson: Oh, thank you for that introduction. And thank you guys for having me. I'm so excited to be here and just share with you what the Lord has placed in my heart to your audience.

Catherine: I'm really excited for them to hear your heart for this topic, D Michelle. But before we go into that and, and also how you live out your faith at work, can you share with our listeners, how did you become a Jesus follower?

D. Michelle Thompson: Oh, wow. That's a very, very long story, but Short answer is my father was the pastor . And so I really didn't have a choice in the matter and what, which was great about my father. He did give me a choice while I was raised in a Christian household. And my parents met at a Bible college in Nashville, Tennessee.

When I arrived at the age around 11 and 12, my dad asked me and he did the same thing with my older brother to explore other faiths and other religions. And he would even take us to some services. And then at the end of our experience of exploring for summer, he asked us, what do you believe? What do you choose?

And outta everything I explored, I still chose Jesus. I was baptized at an early age at the age of six. And it's funny. It's all around my earthly dad led me to my spiritual father because when I was 21, my father died and before he died, I became what many be call a born again, believer. And that's when I really wanted to live this out every day of my life.

And I remember going to my dad's hospital bed before a few months before he died. And I said, dad, I'm saved, I'm saved. And he said, I always knew you would be . And I thought that was so great because here it was, my words have been confessing. I was a Christian all along, but he still knew that heart commitment of salvation wasn't there.

And so I'm just glad I got to do that before he passed on. I hate to do my Darth Vader voice, but I remember the Lord speaking to me in that hospital and said, I'm your father. Cause as I was saying goodbye to my father, the Lord told me, I'm your father. I've always been there and I'll always be there for you. So that's my salvation story.

Catherine: Wow. Wow. That is so powerful. And what a gift your dad gave you to like explore and, and, and probably it gives you some level of empathy and understanding for people of other religions and other spiritual backgrounds.

D. Michelle Thompson: Yes, absolutely.

Catherine: That's amazing. And, and I so, so what about your work? What did it take for you to realize that your work mattered to God and, and even to, and, and have you surrendered your work to God?

D. Michelle Thompson: Yes. That happened later on in my twenties. I hate to say all my stories are plagued around death, but I believe that's when God gets our attention is when we lose loved ones.

So my very first prayer partner was in Chicago when I was working for a large ad agency and I felt a calling on my life to do, I didn't know the word with marketplace ministry. I just knew the Lord told me to start a prayer group at my job. And 9/11 happened and one of my best friends had passed away.

And I felt like I said, what else do you need to happen? And I wrote a letter to the CEO and said, I believe I'm supposed to have a boardroom for prayer. . Wow. And he believed me too. and. I held my first prayer session at an ad agency boardroom. And the first week only the people who reported to me showed up and I was like, oh my God, they feel they have to come.

But I remember that day, if I left the boardroom. All these people whispered in my ear. Could you pray for me? And it opened up like wildfire. And the next week we lost one of our big accounts and everyone was in danger of losing their job. And that boardroom was filled the next week for prayer, but that's when God began to activate my faith at work in a more overt way and not just quietly.

Martha: You know, it's amazing how God has created that in us, that desire to draw near to him, especially in times of crisis. And just think if you had not started that the week before, you know, people would not know where to go. I mean, though you, that God opened the door wide for that border boardroom to be filled.

What a great encouragement to all of us to, to take that step of faith. I mean, that seemed very bold to send that letter, but look what, what God did through that. So when you think of your community, whether that is your neighbors, your coworkers, whatever that is, When you see whatever that biggest problem is, and you know that Jesus can bring healing to it. As you live out your faith in your work, what is, what does that look like? What is that biggest problem that, you know, Jesus can bring the healing for?

D. Michelle Thompson: Man. There's so many problems these days that I can look at and see, but the greatest for me right now, Really around this aspect of racial reconciliation.

And a lot of people say you can't even reconcile until first is repentance. So I really see, especially how God just used me throughout my career, where I'm often the only woman or the only person of color or both in the room. And I can't keep saying that's just the favor of the Lord. No, this is the position and a placement divinely orchestrated because he knew I could create these safe places to have real conversation with people who normally wouldn't have felt safe enough to bring it up to me. And so as I watch God do it over and over again, I finally have stopped running from it and embraced that. And I do that through the courageous love at work platform, as well as just everyday conversations with my colleagues.

Martha: And I do wanna hear more about what that means the Courageous Love at Work conversations, but just real quickly. What do you believe? How do you see your spiritual gifts being played out in what you're doing in your work?

D. Michelle Thompson: Wow. It's so amazing. When I was 22, I read a book by Laura Beth Jones. You may have heard of it called how to develop, you know, a mission statement for work and life.

And at the end of reading that book here it is, I'm 22, 23 working in advertising. And my mission statement said to heal the broken hearted through writing, teaching and speaking. And I though - God, what in the world? So wow. Being this risk taker, faith Walker, I quit my job and went on vacation to The Bahamas with my mentor from college and thank God for mentors.

And she said what are you gonna do now? And I'm like, oh, I still have to pay bills. Like, you know, and somehow you get this - you're like, oh, I got this calling. And let me go follow. And you're like, oh, I still have bills. And so I went on and received that promotion when I came back from vacation, and got a job again.

But over time, the Lord just had me writing in journals. And so through my books, I lived that out and what he evolved me is that healing the broken hearted does not always look like what we think. We think it's gonna be someone crying, but for me it could be a successful businessman who's empty. He has no family to go home to.

Or like this week I was in a training, and I saw this person hurting and looking around the room and finding their worth in their job that that's some brokenness too. Yeah. When people are finding their worth in a title or, or calling people on the bottom because they arrive to this quote unquote top level, they're they, they need healing too.

And so, I I thank God for widening my lens of what healing the broken hearted look like. It won't always be someone on the street. It won't always be an orphan. It won't always be someone who needs healing physically. There are many emotional wounds, especially in the marketplace that need to be healed.

Catherine: For sure. There are a lot of brokenhearted people in the marketplace that you would never even guess, right? What a beautiful, beautiful calling. And it doesn't have to have at the title to match. We can do those things right withou the title. Well D Michelle, this is great. We're gonna take a quick break. You're listening to, sheWorks4Him with your host, Martha Brangenberg and Catherine Gates. And we will be right back to hear more from D Michelle Thompson.

Break: Did you know that God has a calling on your life? It's true. He's called you to bring Jesus to the world. For some that may look like a pulpit or a foreign mission field, but for most of us, it looks like a construction site, a cubicle, a hospital, or a classroom, wherever it is that you work, live volunteer and invest.

That is your mission field. To learn more about integrating your faith into your work in retirement. Check out our books: iWork4Him. sheWorks4Him and iRetire4Him by going to iWork4Him.com/bookstore.

Catherine: Welcome back to sheWorks4Him. We're talking to D Michelle Thompson about really healing the brokenhearted, even when that's not necessarily your job title, like we can find brokenhearted people everywhere. And certainly there's no shortage of them, unfortunately, in our workplaces. So D Michelle, what inspired you? You started the, the You Belong podcast and these courageous love work conversations. What inspired you to, to invest that time and get those, those things started? What did that journey look like?

D. Michelle Thompson: Yeah. For the You Belong podcast, that was something that it just felt like it had to happen. There has been. I wanna say again, I hate to use the word, keep repeating calling, but just a whisper behind my ear about You Belong from the Lord for at least eight years now. And so I've been working on a book called You Belong for on and off three to five years, and it's a devotional.

And as I began to write it, I love how God does he began to release You Belong. It's not just for the marketplace. It's for specifically women. There's also one specifically for people of color. And so he just started showing me the whole series about everyone is going through this issue of trying to figure out how they belong.

But we have to transcend what culture says about what belong means and belong to him first, because heaven is our home, right? Ooh. And that's where we should be focused on is the kingdom and belonging to Jesus Christ. And so he's just bubbled that up into me. So I'm like, I can't wait for all these books.

Let me just start the podcast now. And I wanted to have a collection of stories because everyone has a belong story is what I realized everybody has that moment where they figured out I don't belong to this job, or I don't belong just to my spouse. I, I belong to God. And so I wanted to get those stories and that would inspire me to keep writing.

So I started interviewing CEOs first, mostly C-suite leaders. And getting their stories because I felt like that encouraged that middle level manager, someone else out there to know everybody goes through of a long struggle or identity as I call it Christ us instead of identity, crisis . And so just trying to figure that out.

And so it has been a great journey. I've been able to meet and share with a lot of people. And again, as God often does, He says don't just interview the C-suite interview, anyone who is doing something that would challenge people to rethink how they view what it means to belong. And I've started doing that.

So it's been a great journey and it's year two, I've taken a break now, since I've relocated from Ohio to North Carolina. And, but it's been a great journey and I look forward to publishing the book this fall, if the Lord says the same.

Catherine: Oh, praise God. Yeah.

Martha: That is so exciting. And, you know, knowing that there are other voices with that, you're sharing a story of what God's done, what in someone's life and you can't refute that story and how that can help us all to know how to belong.

So, Michelle, you also had this Courageous Love at Work conversations. Tell me about that. And what is the goal of those?

D. Michelle Thompson: Yeah, Courageous Love at Work. This is a fun story. This not fun. It was funny how it came to me, but it was birthed after George Floyd was murdered. Mm. And I had this huge burden, like, Ugh, this is hurtful.

It was kind of the, I don't know why it was his murder. Cuz there had been a lot of things happening in the community of African Americans that I've seen and witnessed or, you know, just watched on the news. But this one. Maybe cuz it was the pandemic. It was just something different. Mm-hmm . And I went into one of my usual board meetings that's 99.9% white men.

And it was like a day or two after George Floyd was murdered and everybody said, how was your week? And they just chit-chatted. And it was like nothing in the world had happened and a tear just kinda got like, I can't sit here and be silent anymore. I can't sit here and act like - and these are Christian business leaders.

I can't sit here and say the week was okay. It's not okay. It's very wrong. And here we are Christian leaders and we're not talking about. And I'm, I'm grateful for the ministry that I'm a part of and serve because they were able to say what's wrong. They were able to listen. And then they invited me, what do you want us to do?

And so there was birth was Courageous Love at Work. And so I began to start what we call a conversation where I did an outline and partnered white male Christian leaders with African American male leaders on an eight week journey where the dominant culture, male, white men could do nothing, but listen to the viewpoint of the other culture for eight weeks. And they went on this journey together and it was just great and built relationships. But out of that, I started doing a monthly live chat where I bring in guest speakers of all different nationalities to come in and challenge the group to think a different way about what Courageous Love at Work looks like.

And I'm very grateful for the guests. We have the love and unity project in Cincinnati because they challenged us not just - cuz I think sometimes we think love is just, let's just hug people and move on. But they challenge us to think about the empathy piece and to really think about what would we do to really have the kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven and reset balance to think about racial equity, to think about diversity in a way that people all have the same power.

Everyone has the same equality. It, it just amazed me that a lot of times, as believers, we graze over diversity issues with the fact, oh, I love them. Oh, I, but I love this group or that group, but we don't really take time to really get to know each other struggles and journey and really walk in each other's shoes and really say, wow, is that what it's like?

What could I do to make that, like that for me, or to really walk with you in that? And it, it challenged myself. it challenged myself after that, it challenged me on a lot of levels.

Catherine: I was part of that conversation and, oh my gosh, it was powerful. I gained so many insights from that conversation. That really rocked me, but in a good way, you know, even thinking like, you know, We're not white.

Right? We, we have ethnicity as well. And that it was just, you know, I know there's the, it's hard with not the, not having the context, but it was so, so good to recognize. Like there are a lot of different shades of black people, right? They're not all the same. We're not all the same color. Everybody's got a different skin tone and, and we need to honor our ethnic backgrounds.

And then to your point, really, really get to know one another. It, it was so powerful to be part of that conversation.

Martha: So I really want, let, just ask if the listeners are curious about those courageous, well, the, the yes. Thing you're doing monthly, is that something that we can participate in online?

D. Michelle Thompson: Absolutely. Yep.

Martha: How do we find that?

D. Michelle Thompson: Thecourageouslove.com, go to that website and you can sign up there for it. That it it's been great for me as a leader, cuz again, as Catherine described, I'm not an expert in this stuff. I just have a heart for it and I wanna see things, you know, change in our society. And so if I can be an advocate or conduit for that, I wanna do that.

Martha: Yeah. We'll make sure that that's in the show notes so people can connect with you and maybe participate in the next.

Catherine: Absolutely. And, and I also wanna let listeners know that D Michelle will be on a panel talking about belonging at the boldly conference, which is Friday, October 21st, live in Dallas and live streamed all over the country.

You can find out more if you wanna join us at boldlyconference.com. So D Michelle, I'd love to end this segment with just where can you share, where do you go for encouragement to live out your faith at work?

D. Michelle Thompson: Wow. So many different places - at work on purpose is a ministry that I've been a part of and served for years out of Cincinnati, Ohio, and love that ministry there to really encourage. I'm looking forward to a conference I'm coming, going to in a few weeks for more encouragement that, but in addition to that during the pandemic, I started an accountability group and you, you guys have those sayings. So I meet with a group of women every day, Monday through Friday at 7:00 AM for a quick inspirational nugget in prayer time, before we go to work.

Catherine: That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Well, we are gonna take a short break. You're listening to sheWorks4Him, with your host, Martha Brangenberg and Catherine Gates. And we are talking with our guest D Michelle Thompson. We'll be back in just a few minutes.

Break: Hey listeners. One of the huge projects Martha and I have been working on for years is making it easy for every workplace believer to find all the voices speaking, encouragement, and equipping into the faith and work movement, presenting the awaken podcast network. online at Awaken Podcast Network.com.com with over 130 different podcast. Voices speaking truth into you. The workplace believer, including over 30 podcasts, dedicated to Christian working women. Go online to awaken podcast network.com that's AwakenPodcastNetwork.com.

Catherine: Welcome back to sheWorks4Him where we're talking to D Michelle Thompson about Courageous Love at Work and really, really creating environments and cultures and places where people feel a sense of belonging.

Martha: You know, D Michelle, this is kind of a fun thing to find out about you because it, hopefully we are all listening to Jesus, but who is somebody here on earth right now that you listen to the most, that has an influence in your life?

D. Michelle Thompson: I don't know if she'll believe it or not, but my mother Mary Anne Thompson. She is one of the great thought leaders that only me and my brother have had a chance to really hear over the years. She's a person who doesn't speak a lot publicly, but privately just has such great wisdom and encouragement and such a real walk with the Lord. My brother always says, if there's one person getting into heaven, it's mom . And so she is someone that over the years, even when I'm not with her, I can hear holy fear, but I can hear what she would say about a situation. And so I really do listen to her whether she believes that or not, and really take to heart the different guidance and wisdom she's given and continues to give.

Catherine: Well, you're gonna have to share this podcast with her. So she knows that and knows that now it's public, right? The whole world knows.

D. Michelle Thompson: Right, right.

Martha: Talk about accountability, right?

Catherine: Right.

D. Michelle Thompson: That's right. Exactly.

Catherine: And I just wanna remind our listeners too, that you can hear more from D Michelle at the boldly conference, a faith and work conference by women for women on Friday, October 21st, you can get your tickets or learn more at boldlyconference.com.

And D Michelle, this time has gone so fast and, and it it's been so good. Thank you so much for, for all the insights and wisdom that you're sharing. I'd love for you to have an opportunity to just share one last piece of encouragement. What is the most important piece of encouragement based on, you know, this, this topic of conversation that you would love to leave our listeners with today?

D. Michelle Thompson: Yeah, my mission scripture, which is John 17:21. I leave that with everywhere I go, that I pray, you know, when Jesus prayed for disciples and all future believers: I pray that you all be one just as you and I are one. So I encourage the listener and for all of us to focus on being one with him first and then with one another.

Catherine: Amen. Amen. That is a, that is a favorite one of mine as well. D Michelle, thank you so much. This has been a rich conversation and I really do pray that it equips a lot of people to think differently about their part in helping others belong and really feel valued and included. Thank you so much.

D. Michelle Thompson: Thank you both.

Catherine: You've been listening to, sheWorks4Him with your host, Martha Brangenberg and Catherine Gates. We're Christian working women, helping other Christian working. To live out their calling at work as sheWorks4Him!

Outro: As Christian women. We have many roles from daughter, sister, friend, wife, and mother to analyst, accountant, executive or educator. Is it possible to balance our roles at work and home in a way that honors God? The answer is yes. And our new book, sheWorks4Him will help show you how written to celebrate, encourage and equip women in the workforce. sheWorks4Him, discusses the diverse experiences of today's Christian working woman. Pick up a copy by going to iWork4him.com/bookstore.

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See the show notes at sheworksforhim.com that's she works the number four, him.com. This podcast was created to empower you to live out your calling at works. So the world knows sheWorks4Him.