The Evangelist

When I moved to Washington for my career," Angie Tracey says, "I became a Baptist, mainly because I was seeking more education on the Bible itself. That was where the Lord led me, to really get that foundation in his word. . . . There are so many misconceptions. People nowadays have a tendency to write God's word by their own standards instead of reading and studying and learning what God's plan is for us. They're not just restrictions. . . . It's really a guideline for how to live a healthy, joyous, happy, fruitful life. It's God's secret to success. It's just a pleasure to know what he's all about and grow closer to him."

That passionate belief in the power of God has inspired Tracey to become one of the leaders of the movement for ministry in the federal workplace. As the founder of the first Christian federal employee association, the Christian Fellowship Group at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she has become an outspoken advocate for the powerful role that prayer and religious fellowship can play in making employees happier, more effective and more fulfilled.

"When I moved to CDC, I recognized that our agency is embroiled on a daily basis in dealing with life-threatening diseases, dealing with biological and chemical agents, and prevention," she says. "Some of our folks are put in harm's way when they travel abroad. I thought if any agency needs to have the blessings of God, it's ours."

Tracey says she prayed for years for God to send a leader to CDC who could help her organize a small gathering of her Christian co-workers. Because she doesn't have a seminary education, she didn't feel qualified to lead her fellow employees in Bible study. But while praying in a women's ministry at her church, Tracey heard the minister tell the assembled worshippers, "If you wait until you feel you're a biblical scholar to do something for the Lord, you will never do something for the Lord."

"I cannot even describe to you what happened inside me," Tracey says. "I just felt this sense of euphoria, and I felt God just whisper to my heart, 'I've been trying to tell you I want you to do this.' "

She discovered, however, that there was a complex application process at CDC. She would have to seek approval from a superior she thought would not be receptive, and the committee that approves applications met infrequently. But Tracey persevered. She sees God's hand in the surprising ease with which the group came to be: The center's deputy director whose reaction Tracey had feared ended up saying the group was the best idea Tracey had ever had. An emergency brought the approval committee together just after she turned in her application.

Six days after the Christian Fellowship Group was chartered in September 2001, planes hit the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington and crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pa. Tracey says the sense of urgency she felt after years of prayer must have come because her office and her colleagues would have a pressing need for prayers and Christian fellowship in the aftermath of the attacks.

"CDC deployed over 150 employees to New York to deal with the aftermath of that. They didn't know what they were entering into. As everyone was throughout the country, people were searching for God and meaning, and clinging to each other. We just feel that God was right on time in our workplace," Tracey remembers.

Two hundred and thirty people came to her first event. Almost every CDC campus has a Bible study now, and the largest events draw 400 employees, according to Tracey. Every step of the way, she says, God has helped provide for the group's needs, bringing in a CDC employee who also happens to be a music minister to help conduct meetings, drawing together a Web designer, a code writer and a graphic designer to put together a site for the CDC intranet, and even providing an offer of pro bono legal help when it appeared the group's charter might be challenged.

"I think that God has really protected us," Tracey says. "He's using [the group] to show people that there's a different way to work, to love each other, to work with each other."

Every Monday, members operate a prayer phone line during their lunch hours. They serve on CDC diversity committees. Tracey says the group has even helped resolve disputes between employers and employees. She cites one example when a CDC employee threatened to sue a supervisor for racial discrimination and came to Tracey for help. "We read in the Scriptures about respecting authority. And I said that what's in my heart is there may be a point of confusion between you and your supervisor. . . . Pray that her heart may be open to you, and that God may reveal to you any wrongdoing," Tracey says.

"God guided them to a meeting of minds and now they're friends, they go to lunch every week. They have a wonderful fellowship now, and we prevented what was going to be a taxing and draining situation for the supervisor and the employee, and we saved the agency money. It's not a matter of this nice little thing that we can do to support our employees. It's how can we shift our ideas to conduct business differently."

She's taken that message on the road, speaking at a seminar sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and working with her counterparts in workplace ministries at Coca-Cola and in the Canadian government.

But the vision of a different workplace, shaped by God's instructions, inspires Tracey every day in her own work as well-she is now CDC's coordinator for faith intiatives and programs. "In my faith, it teaches me to care about people, to love each other, to provide for each other and to need each other," she says. "I do my work as excellence unto the Lord. It's to the benefit of my workplace to have that."