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The Christian & the Business World #1: My Qualifications for the Series

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Before I start a series on Christians and the business world, I think it’s fair to let you know what my qualifications to speak on this topic are:

Zero.

Well, that’s not exactly true. What I mean is that I don’t have any unusual background that would make me an authority on the subject. That said, I’ve worked in numerous industries and ministries over the years. My list of past work experience paints me as a jack-of-all-trades, but unlike the typical jack, I have a strong tendency to become expert in what I do. Such is my personality that I can’t stand not mastering what I attempt. What this has given me is a strong eye and a discerning mind; I see what other people don’t. That has served me well over the years, but has also been a source of friction from people who don’t understand.

Over the years, I have worked for large companies like Apple Computer, small start-ups like Synchrony Communications, and contracted work within NASA, Procter & Gamble, and others. I’ve worked in every level of Christian camping ministry, from lowly counselor up to camp manager. I’ve worked in Training, Sales, Marketing, IT, the housing industry, the Christian bookstore industry, and more. I’ve seen a lot of sides of a lot of disparate organizations. If I’d been smart (and this will be the topic of one post, certainly), I would’ve been the proud owner of three or more large Rolodexes filled with a wide assortment of business contacts from all my many wanderings. Notice the “would’ve been”—very important here.

Anyway, after a number of roles that called on my writing skills, I took the plunge and went into business for myself as a freelance writer. I write everything from tech manuals to marketing copy to fiction. Again with the Jack-of-all-trades thing, even within the writing biz.

It’s my hope that this series will utilize my skills as a “j-o-a-t” to their best advantage. But most of all, I hope you all are blessed by what I have to say, even if that blessing seems discouraging at first. I’ll be the first to admit that I think that the current state of business today is at complete odds with most of the Gospel, no matter what the Christian captains of industry say. Still, the intersection of godliness and good business may be small, but it is there. Staying within that overlap in the Venn diagram is far more difficult than Christians understand, but I hope we can figure it out together and see how we Christians can weather future storms in the economy and in work, bring our salt and light to the world of business.

Next post in the series: The Christian & the Business World #2: Economic Systems

Upcoming Series: The Christian & the Business World

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Want to give you all a heads up that as soon as my writing backlog eases in the next couple days, I will be starting a series looking at the business world and Christianity. Given that I’ve written much in the last couple years on the issue, I hope to explore some ideas more thoroughly in a specific business context.

Tim Challies suggested this and I want to thank him for prodding me. He wrote an excellent piece on Greg Stielstra’s pyromarketing techniques and I started to write an epic post addressing this from another angle, but it got lost in the pile. I’m planning on dusting that off and trimming it down. Plus, I want to look at the issue of why attending a Bible study at work is easy, but living out a Christian worldview in business is astonishingly difficult. There are a few more surprises, so I’m envisioning about a half dozen posts on this topic.

If you have any kind of horror stories about the intersection of business and the cross, drop me a line via my profile or leave a comment on this post. If you have questions or would like to see a particular topic in this area addressed, let me know.

Hang in there readers! I promise to be back soon enough with truly great stuff.

Next series post: The Christian & the Business World #1: My Qualifications for the Series

31 Days of Prayer for One Thing

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Back on the first of this month, I said I’d be praying for the Body of Christ in one area: unity. Today ends my last day of praying for this daily. I’m sure it will continue to be a concern I raise periodically, but I’m moving on and letting this lie fallow for a bit.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve written numerous times on the issue of disunity within the Body of Christ. Sadly, I think we are becoming more disconnected rather than less. TeamworkAnd before anyone claims that I’m just another of those mamby-pamby ecumenists, I just want to say that I’m a firm believer in solid doctrine and disciplining those who pursue “another gospel.”

That said, much of the Christian discourse I’ve seen lately on the Web isn’t Christian and it isn’t discourse. It’s more of an attempt by some of us to be right all the time, even if we have to savage others to do it. What I don’t see much of is an attempt to restore the wayward. Branding someone with a noxious tag is easy; restoring them to a place of wholeness and firmness in Christ is vastly harder.

It’s the nature of the Internet to be impersonal. I can think of no better place for someone to be an anonymous voice crying in the wilderness. But faceless prophesying isn’t the model that the Bible upholds for us; people faced their accusers and were restored to them in person. That’s a gutsier model than the one we uphold out in the frigid fringes of the Internet, a place where—as the old New Yorker cartoon goes—no one knows you’re a dog.

I started this month with a thirty-year old song (based on Psalm 133) by Rick Ridings that I used to sing as a much younger man. Here are the words again:

Father, make us one,
Father, make us one,
That the world may know
Thou hast sent the Son,
Father, make us one.

Behold how pleasant and how good it is
For brethren to dwell in unity,
For there the Lord commands the blessing,
Life forevermore.

Life forevermore. The world is dying to have what we Christians so easily take for granted, yet how poorly we model the unity that makes it possible for the world to believe. Instead of the open hand of God, we’ve become hidden snipers. I’m not saying we should abandon good doctrine, but neither should we so patently ignore the log in our own eye. All too often, the speck in our brother’s eye is made out to be an oak, while our own sequoia goes left unattended.

I think we can still point out error and retain unity. But the condition for this is to correct with a greater acknowledgment of our own failings and with a greater heart toward restoring the wayward. If we bludgeon them to death first, our path to restoring them is made that much more difficult.

Father, make us one.