Soli Deo Gloria

This page isn't here to sell you anything. There's no offer in it. It's here because if you're going to hand me the keys to a property and trust me with what's inside it, you ought to know what I answer to.

I'm Zak. I empty houses, gardens, garages and building sites across Durham and the North East. It's heavy work and most days it's filthy, and I love it. But the reason I do it the way I do has very little to do with waste.

I believe in the only true and living God. Not a vague good feeling about the universe, not a lucky charm for when work is thin. The God who made everything, who is holy, and who I will one day stand in front of and give an account to for how I spent my days. Including the ordinary ones. Including the ones spent carrying a wardrobe down a staircase in the rain.

Soli Deo Gloria is Latin. It means glory to God alone. Bach signed it at the bottom of his manuscripts. I'm not writing music — I'm hauling rubble in a Transit — but the idea is the same. The work isn't the point. Who it's for is the point.

Why it changes the job

If you work for a review score, you behave well when you're being watched. If you work for God, there's no such thing as not being watched, and that turns out to be a mercy rather than a threat. It means the quote I give you is the price you pay. It means your waste goes exactly where I say it goes, with the paperwork to prove it. It means when I'm on my own in an empty house with nobody checking, I do the job properly anyway.

It also means telling you the truth when the truth costs me the work. If a skip is cheaper for what you've got, I'll say so. If you don't need me, I'll say that too. I'd rather lose a job than win one by letting you believe something that isn't so.

The example I'm working to

Jesus didn't float above the mess of the world. He worked with His hands. He got tired and hungry. He slept through a storm in the back of a boat because He was exhausted. People lied about Him, laughed at Him, walked away from Him, and one of His closest friends sold Him for silver.

And when they finally nailed Him to a cross, He didn't retaliate. He made no threats. Through the whole of it — more suffering than I will ever come near — He never sinned once.

That's the standard I'm working to. So when a job runs three hours over, when the access is far worse than I was told, when the tip charges me more than I quoted and the day ends up costing me money, when somebody is rude to me on their own doorstep — none of that is a licence to be short with people, or to do half a job, or to quietly take it out on the next customer.

Christ had every reason to and didn't. I've got a sore back and a long day. It isn't the same thing.

The honest bit

I should say plainly that I don't manage any of this well. I fall short every single day. I lose my temper, I get proud, I cut corners in my heart before I ever cut them in my work. If this page were a claim that I'm a good man, it would be the first lie on it.

The point is that God provides for me and loves me anyway. Not because I earned it — I couldn't, and I've stopped pretending otherwise — but because that is what He is like. Everything I have came from Him, this business included, back when there was no reason to think it would work. So the least I can do is run it in a way that brings Him glory.

You don't have to believe any of this to hire me. Plenty of my customers don't, and it makes no difference to the price, the job, or how I treat you. But you asked what you're getting, and this is the honest answer underneath all of it.