Why We Need Christians In Business

Tuesday, 23 February 2010 09:59

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 Before I get too far along in my presentation, I want to say the one problem we do not have is that there are too few Christians in business. It’s not that we can’t always use more Christians in business; of course we pray that the numerical presence of Christians increase in every area or realm of life. The point is, however, that almost everywhere you turn these days you find businessmen who make a confession of faith in Christ.

 There are thousands of businessmen across the country that are ready and willing to tell you about their “personal relationship with Jesus,” and indeed, they attend their local church faithfully and even invite non-Christian friends to lunches sponsored by various versions of Christian Businessman Associations. In fact, many Christian business conferences are packed with people who profess faith in Christ—and I think for the most part charity requires that we accept their confession as authentic. These are all good things because we rejoice in all the personal relationships with Christ; we thank God for faithful church attenders; and we all appreciate Christian fellowship and lunches. But as much as we are thankful for these things, they don’t even scratch the surface when it comes to truly fulfilling the vocational call and Biblical mandate God has set before us. Indeed, many of these things, while good and proper within the right context, serve all-too-often to trivialize Christianity and downplay, and at times even seems ashamed of, the world-conquering power of the gospel.

 So while we don’t have too few Christians in business, we have far too few Christians who think and act like the world-conquering Christians you would think you’d naturally find in this arena. By that I mean that to be in business a person has to have a zest for competition and a willingness to take on risk with all the hazards and rewards that come with. Businessmen are naturally success oriented and bring a "can do" winning attitude to the equation. Many, if not most, of the highly successful businessmen are men that have tried and failed and tried again, with success achieved the second, third or even fourth time around. Problems are to be expected, even welcomed as opportunities to utilize skills and abilities in new and unique ways. Businessmen must be by definition "problem conquerors" by which they extend the dominion and success of their company.

 However, when it comes to these same Christian businessmen who are aggressive and proactive (dare we say "masculine"?) in every other normal business situation—men who are dominion thinkers and doers as they face the rigors of competition and go forward with a focused and intense vision for the future—when it comes to being self-consciously "Christian" to the extent that they know that Christian businessmen should have different principles and a different agenda then their non-Christian colleagues, they become soft, fuzzy-thinking sentimentalists who are anything but world-conquering in their lives. Let's be brutally frank, here: Their concept of the Christian Faith in action, or inaction as it is, is unquestionably feminine! Rather than being "conquerors for Christ," they become "nurturers and nurses for Jesus." Now, nurturers and nurses are important and useful in the right setting, but except in rare cases the gift of nurturing is not one that comes to mind when you think of a businessman, nor is it one seen in scripture!

 Every parable of Christ's that includes a businessman as relating to the kingdom of heaven actually projects a far different image. Christ always describes a righteous businessman as one of faith, high expectations and  a "use it or lose it" approach to life. There is much mercy shown by the businessman, but that differs dramatically from nurturing. For instance, in Matthew chapter 20 we have the account of the landowner who hires workers in the morning, mid morning, noon, afternoon and almost at the end of the day. The landowner strikes agreements with the workers and lives up to his contract but they moan and complain. However the landowner doesn't employ a psychologist to deal with them, nor does he pamper and "nurture" them. No, he looks them in the eye and proclaims:

 Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good? So the last will be first, and the first last.

 Remember, this is preceded by Christ's declaration that "The kingdom of heaven is like . . ."

 How about this parable of the business-landowner in Matthew 25 where again "The kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country." You know the story. The businessman is said to have "called his own servants and delivered his goods to them." He proceeds to give one five talents, another one is given two and finally another is given one, interestingly enough "to each according to his own ability." (Boy, talk about a blow to self-esteem if you're given two or one! Talk about a 'politically incorrect' approach to business where everyone is supposed to be seen as equal in every area.)

 What takes place when the landowner returns? He immediately calls for an accounting and a report on the return they have received. Two have taken risks and they're rewarded appropriately, but the third was a cowardly man, averse to any kind of risk and apparently not properly "inspired" enough to go out and earn even simple interest on the capital placed at his disposal. He is quoted as whimpering, " And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground."

 The businessman or the landowner who was expecting a return on his capital, turned to him and in a very dominion oriented, non-nurturing moment, called this steward a "wicked and lazy" man and took what little he had and gave it to the one with the most. This man expected results and expected to enlarge his borders and his influence. He was not a nurse maid, nor did he see his ministry as "touchy-feely." Again, let me point out in the strongest terms, Jesus says that this man and his actions represent the kingdom of heaven.

 This does not mean that I'm advocating a merciless approach to business, but rather that a businessman should recognize his strengths, his gifts and his vocational calling and seek to utilize all these things to extend his influence for God's kingdom and glory. The businessman, if he's truly thinking as a kingdom man, and this is crucial, will use his influence and his resources for Biblical charity, for godly mercy and for the health, education and welfare of his community, but this flows from and is the direct result of a right understanding of his vocational calling, not despite his work. For all these reasons, business is inherently masculine in its demands.

 Let me give you some examples of how watered down current evangelical Christian expectations and goals are these days. One national Christian business organization continues to expand and start new chapters, and they’re happy for you to start a new one in your community. If you are planning on doing so, they want you to be aware of what is expected so these seven points, requirements for local chapters and members, are listed on their web-site. I'll use this as a basic outline for what I'm trying to get across. They expect:

1. Weekly meetings (approximately one hour in length), include food, inspiration and fellowship.
2. Monthly evening meetings (approximately two and a half hours in length), include food*, inspiration and fellowship.
3. Mayor's Prayer breakfast held annually.
4. Lay witness Crusades / Soul Winning Seminars.
5. Prison and Jail Ministries.
6. Bible Placement in Churches, and En Masse to individuals.
7. Building Christian Family Broadcasting Entities.

 This is an insightful list because it spells out exactly what I mean. First, they are meeting weekly and monthly for inspiration, food and fellowship, and while there's nothing wrong with this, if you took out the word "Christian" I don't think anyone would attend because while they may be fun, they're marginally productive at best and downright worthless at worst.

 In almost all other meetings that business people take time to put into their schedule there is a result that is either directly promised or implied. I carefully choose the meetings I attend because my time is valuable and if I'm spending my time on a meeting or conference I want to receive something of value for my company. For instance, I pay to participate in a monthly Tech group, which is a group of business owners or CEOs who spend time hearing and solving specific problems. The speakers we hear address subjects that are crucial to my business's continued success. In fact, each month we even rate the speakers in terms of practical usefulness and if they're worthy, we invite them back, but if they fall short of addressing issues where "the rubber meets the road" so to speak, they do not return.

 I don't remember the last time our Tech group paid for an "inspirational" speaker. I don't need to be inspired each week, or even each month. I'm inspired daily by my need to meet my family's financial requirements, by the need to provide long term employment for my many employees, by the challenge of becoming more profitable so I can invest back into my business and increase my giving into the Kingdom of God. Further, I'm inspired by God's law that says if I don't work I don't eat, and also by His promise that if I do my job well I may stand before kings and princes. I'm inspired by so many things that to add one more "inspirational" message is beyond overkill!

 I'm pointing this out because my Tech group isn't "Christian" and yet it's by far more profitable to me and my company than the local "Christian" business association. Why am I getting more benefit from non-Christian groups than Christian ones? It's because the non-Christian group focuses in on helping me be a better business, or the aggressive masculine proactive aspects of excellence and winning (not a bad word, fellas), while the Christian one focuses in on feminine nurturing activities. Christian business organizations should major on building strong, productive, excellent businesses as a ministry in itself, not as simply a means to make us feel warm fuzzies so that we'll be sufficiently moved or guilt ridden to finance ministry.

 Second, this organization, like numerous other Christian business groups, wants to sponsor mayoral prayer breakfasts and soul-winning crusades. But why? How does underwriting a prayer breakfast, which usually centers in on more food, fellowship and inspiring speeches (and usually very little prayer, by the way), fit into the vocational calling of the businessman? I've never seen one that is used to raise money to promote explicitly or even implicitly Christian business political concerns such as eliminating ungodly planning commissions and zoning laws, repealing city property taxes, or a host of other important issues.

 Sadly, many times the mayor or other civic leaders given a place of honor are warring against the Christian faith, Christian people and Biblical truth. Why would I pray blessings upon them? Why would I put together and attend an event that by its very nature lends legitimacy and support to so much anti-Christian action? If the mayor wants to attend a prayer breakfast, sponsor a solemn feast at your church on a Sunday morning and have him stand and read God's law out loud to all the congregation!

 As long as I'm on the subject I might also add that I guarantee you'll never see a prayer breakfast where an imprecatory prayer against a wicked leader is the centerpiece of the action!

 Further, instead of sponsoring "soul winning" seminars and evangelistic crusades, why wouldn't a Christian business group play to it's strength: business excellence and success. Again, if we strive for excellence in business the Bible tells us we'll be incredible witnesses for the kingdom as we stand before the very highest leaders of the land. The best architect, not the best evangelist, will get to design the most important buildings in our community. The best orthopedic surgeon, not the best evangelist, will be selected to perform arthroscopic surgery on the top athletes in the nation. The most reliable trucking company, not the most effective evangelist, will earn the right to transport the King Tut exhibit from museum to museum.

 The last thing we need right now in business is more emphasis upon the current evangelical understanding of "soul-winning." What we do desperately need is an emphasis upon producing Christian businessmen who are the most skillful and knowledgeable people in their profession who have earned the right to be heard, and indeed, even warmly and eagerly are invited to share the foundation for their success with those whom they have benefited with their work.

 But let's be clear about something. Not everyone in the body of Christ is even called to be an evangelist. Realistically, if you look at the dispositions of most successful businessmen, I doubt that you'd ever pick many of them out to engage in any long-term evangelistic work. Just like in any other activity, the best way to accomplish a task is with a division of labor based upon strengths and gifts. Most of the time the gifts and skills which make a businessman successful are the same ones that make him unsuccessful in evangelism! We don't expect a missionary to the African bush people to be gifted in cost accounting, so why do we expect a successful accountant to be gifted as an evangelist? Can anyone say, "Division of Labor!"

 Division of labor is an explicitly Christian concept. There are many gifts but one Lord. Many individual members but one body. Have we completely forgotten the old Christian teaching called the Harmony of Interests in which all the various skills and spheres of life converged to the glory of God and good of His people?

 We can say the same thing concerning prison and jail ministries. I would submit that rather than engaging in a ministry that spends all of it's time and effort working with those in prison or jail, a ministry that requires a completely different set of skills and a different mindset to match, a Christian businessman is more effective creating and sustaining jobs for those who come out and want to work. Once more I must state that while a ministry to those in prison is important— and perhaps you can direct profits from your business into proven success stories like Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship or Forgotten Man ministries—your primary ministry, what you specialize in as a Christian, is your business!

 It is only when a businessman downplays and even disconnects the importance of his work from the overall body of Christ do we find that we no longer view what we do as "Christian ministry." However when you create and run a successful business you have the resources needed to minister in a very real and life-changing way to those coming out of prison or jail. We need people on the inside and on the outside, and both are "ministry" in God's sight.

 When the apostle Paul told the thief to no longer steal, but to work with his hands, he was outlining a very important ministry: work. Why not create an apprentice program where hands are redirected from theft to productive purposes? In your business you can teach the thief a skill and put him to work so he can support his wife and kids, and in some cases the church no longer must expend incredible amounts of precious resources on his and his families problems.

 This requires a paradigm shift in "Christian business" mentality. It requires a move from "nurturing" to vision casting and dominion. It requires a shift from a "Bible study" mentality to "Biblical action." It's a future-oriented mindset that businessmen are uniquely positioned to adopt while at the same time becoming cultural leaders and builders of men and community.

 The same holds true for purchasing and distributing Bibles. Is spending money on Bible distribution to churches really such a great stewardship undertaking? And how many more Bibles does the average person need? Each year the Bible is the best seller and they're everywhere! Even the poorest of the poor have three or four Bibles laying around the house never being read. The problem isn't a lack of Bibles, it's the unwillingness to read and act upon God's word that is the issue.

 [By the way, the Gideons are a great group that does a fantastic job of placing Bibles where they're needed, at places that are centers of crises. Why not determine to become better at what you do, so you can earn more money than what you now do, so you can give more to the Gideons than what you now do?]

 Better yet, why not concentrate on expanding your business and your profitability so that you can underwrite Christian schools that will teach children from the earliest ages to read from the Bible, to understand what they read and teach them how to apply what they read to their lives every day?

 Finally, as relating to this particular list, I can see the value of building Christian family television or broadcasting stations because there's a demand for high quality family television. But this should be a business undertaking of its own, with the expectation that it will be profitable. Why do we have terrible Christian T.V.? Because it's being subsidized by fuzzy-minded Christian businessmen! Only Christians would underwrite mediocrity (or worse) and call it "ministry." The same businessman who fearlessly competes in the marketplace and knows he must produce something of value or he'll go out of business, thinks nothing of giving his hard earned profits to a "Christian" T.V. or radio station that airs material he wouldn't be caught dead watching or listening to. Pat Robertson made the Family Channel profitable because it offered views quality shows (even if they were reruns) and those viewers were prized by advertisers who paid the bills. May God raise up new businessmen who will exceed Robertson in both T.V. success and theological soundness!

 At the beginning I mentioned that we have lots of Christians in business but few who think and act like Christians. Let me give you two last examples of what I mean.

 First, in the last election at least two states had school vouchers on the ballot; Michigan and California. Basically the argument was for freedom of school choice, or more properly, freedom to pick the government public school of your choice. In Michigan we had a famous and devout Christian businessman backing vouchers and championed the cause of parents to make the choice among government public schools. This man and his family, along with many, many other devout Christian backers, poured multiple millions of dollars into campaigning for this to pass.

 Let's establish two things here: there's no doubt in my mind that this man is both a Christian and extremely sincere about his faith. But his thinking in this particular matter is unchristian and possibly counterproductive to his faith.

 There is no way any Christian should campaign for any type of support for government public schools. The government schools are a rival religious center that wars against the Christian faith in every area of thought. It is intensely evangelistic as it demands complete allegiance to its statements of faith (evolution; humanistic psychology; revised history; etc). Christians should work constantly to overthrow this evil and create explicitly Christian institutions. To simply argue for and finance the political campaign for freedom of choice among the same government schools is a horrible waste of desperately needed resources.

 The same happened out in California. I'm not sure if that effort was led by a Christian or not, but a "conservative" businessman gave over $60 million dollars to the political cause. Altogether somewhere around $120 million dollars in California were spent in trying to convince people to allow free choice of which government school your child went to.

 A truly Christian action would have been to take all the money spent on this political and worthless cause and invest it in the building of new Christian schools or expanding existing ones and creating endowments for student scholarships so that needy parents could exercise that "choice" these businesspeople so desperately desire.

 It's easy to say that $200 million isn't going to build lots of schools (perhaps 50 or so?) but 20 strategically placed Christian schools in Michigan and another 30 in California would, in this time of educational collapse, stand out like a rose in the middle of milkweeds. Even given the small start 15,000 students per year (at 300 per school) is nothing to sneeze at. And remember, that's just one year's giving! What is going to be spent two and four years from now on these elections? How many Christian schools could Christian businesses build? It's inconceivable how productive this would be.

 Finally, let me use one more example of why we don't need more Christians, but rather Christians who think and act like Christians to step forward. One of the greatest businessmen of all time was a dedicated Christian who put his money where his heart was—unfortunately, his heart directed him to invest unwisely!

 John D. Rockefeller "was a lifelong devout Baptist who enjoyed attending church and teaching Sunday school. He never paid any attention to theology, however, and seems to have had no interest in Christian doctrine as opposed to Christian behavior."[1] Because of his emphasis upon "heart religion" he ended up giving millions upon millions of dollars—at the time he gave away more than any other man had even earned—to what amounted to non-Christian and in some cases even anti-Christian causes and institutions. As Phillip E. Johnson writes in Touchstone Magazine, "Rockefeller ended up financing the destruction of his own faith."[2]

 Two of his recipients are worth noting. First, Rockefeller donated the money to create a great Baptist university in Chicago, but "he selected a liberal biblical scholar William Rainey Harper to direct the project. Harper used the money to recruit academic superstars like John Dewey," (and of course we all know that Dewey hated Christianity and the very educational system it had created and maintained) "and such choices guaranteed that the University of Chicago would be effectively agnostic before it admitted its first student, regardless of how many trustees were Baptists."

 As Johnson further writes, "Nobody seems to have told Rockefeller that a Christian university needs to stand for something more specific than a general endorsement of good deeds." So we have one of the greatest businessmen in history who loves church and teaching Sunday school and loves to give money away, but his thinking is incredibly destructive. Let me repeat right here: We do not need more Christian businessmen, we need more Christian businessmen who think and act like Christians!

 The second item relating to Rockefeller is his underwriting of Carl Jung's psychological "research," if what he did can be dignified by referring to occultic practices as research. Rockefeller wanted people to always feel good, so this was a natural cause for him to underwrite when his daughter sought out the famous psychologist because of her own mental problems. For Jung, "Intuition and feeling, not rational thought, became the basis of decision making. If a story helped bring someone closer to an emotional experience of transcendence or of the god within"[3] he felt justified in using it. Truth was of no matter. To the emerging evangelical mind, which was at this time more openly diverging from the historically Christian mind, this sounded like "the right stuff."

 Of course Jung hated Christianity, which stood for truth, and ranted against it his entire life, at one point preaching his famous "Sermons to the dead" in which he warned recently departed spirits that they needed to reject Christianity and embrace an occultic supernaturalism if they were to ever find any peace and happiness in the afterlife.

 Without Rockefeller's financial help, Jung would never have been as influential as he became. In fact, we know now that Jung's "inner fatherland" and his infatuation on "the blood and the land" was an incredibly effective foundation used by Hitler in his rise to power.

 Do we need more Christians in business if they're going to think and act like Rockefeller? Probably not. What we do need is for all those Rockefeller wannabe's to put on the mind of Christ and think and act like a Christian. If that took place, overnight we would have an incredible, unstoppable Christian army in place and in action. Without adding one more soldier we would have world-conquering faith and provisions at our disposal.

 We are Christian businessmen. That is what God gifted us for and called us to. We shouldn’t have a problem with that and try to become that which we are not. You're probably not an evangelist. Good. You're probably not a pastor or maybe not even a teacher. That's fine. You are in business and God has gifted you to succeed in this vital area of ministry, but it's not so you can become so successful that you escape it and move on to more important things. There is no more important ministry than what you do in business. You feed your family, tithe to the church, keep other people employed, produce goods or services that serve others and you should do it so well that you stand in front of kings and princes of the land, or in front of the most influential people in your area or community. This is what we need! Self-conscious, content-and-confident-in-their-calling businesspeople.

 May God keep you and bless you and may you not succumb to guilt manipulation and wrong thinking about the value and importance of what you do. Thank you.