— by Chloe Steinke & Brett Johnson

I’ve been a stay-at-home mother for 17-years. I am originally from South Africa but in 2002 married my husband, Tim, and moved to the USA. We have four children. My plate is full. 

Two weeks into COVID-19, when other people were losing jobs and schools were shutting their doors to complete the school year online, God spoke to me about returning to the marketplace. My husband works at a large accounting firm and supporting him and the household seemed enough of a stretch, but when I received an invitation to join the “rēStart Class” run by The Institute for Innovation, Integration & Impact, I knew I had to do it.

After the first session, I encouraged my husband to carve out time in his busy day to participate. 

It was a powerful experience to do it together as a married couple. Tim was placed in a cohort with other businessmen where they had a lot in common. I was placed in a cohort with three pioneering, visionary women. Both of us found our cohorts strategically life-giving. We met together as a class three times a week for six weeks.  We covered key topics that included the completion of a detailed kingdom business assessment, crafting and articulating our business purpose statement, and reinforcing key foundational principles that position our businesses for the challenging yet hopeful future. 

Here are some of the stories of the colleagues we teamed with during rēStart Class:

Dirk is a serial entrepreneur with his fingers in 12 enterprises. He says: “On the first day of rēStart I had input from a lot of people and it has left me humbled and extremely excited for the future. I can feel how God is working very specifically in my life. I am trying to spend as much intimate time with Him as possible. The current risk is that the whole of rēStart was “the art of rest” and, with the lockdown starting to finish, it would seem that the treadmill is speeding up again. So, I am journaling as much as possible, I am writing down everything that I learn, everything that I hear the Holy Spirit saying, everything that came to me during the rēStart classes. Things have already started to move and to shift in my life. I am no longer fearful of the future. I have an incredible hope. I am feeling incredibly blessed. And, I am so excited for the future and post-lockdown coronavirus economy.”

Joe took an early retirement and he and Denise are starting new enterprises in the San Francisco Bay Area. He says: “Partnering with your spouse is beautiful and challenging at the same time. We’re putting together a business based on the foundations that Lyn and Brett have put together, which are really good foundations, but we’re having to build and stand up on our own two feet.”

Andrew Chung is a Harvard and Stanford graduate who has worked in Silicon

Valley startups and more established companies, like Microsoft. Right now, he isdoing a new startup in New York City. He says: “The rēp rēStart class has been a wonderful bite-sized dose of Brett and rēp in my daily walk in the midst of living in business. Being right there in the middle of the workday brings a great reminder (and a bridge to a different Kingdom) directly into the midst of my life. This feels like the future of the Church. Very wonderful to do in-depth integration into [the] workday versus on Sunday: this makes the integration very real and very tangible… wonderful, swift, prophetic and testimony sessions during the breakouts… wonderful to reconnect with the rēp Community.”

Debbie Jordan is CEO of a Southern-California-based company in the construction industry. She says: “The class is awesome. [rēStart class] is forcing me to really look hard at the principles that I’ve been learning about for the past couple of years. [It’s] a place where it’s all starting to align, taking me literally from the desert into the Promised Land in such a short period of time. Now, it just seems like it’s the only way to make things happen. I am hearing from God differently.”

Tim Steinke is a director in a large accounting firm. He says: “What really struck me was the caliber of people who were running their own businesses, people at the C-suite level, who had a desire to be with others, and inviting God to redirect them in whatever way He pleased. I loved the Zoom breakouts. No matter who I was thrown into a group with, three or four people, we always seemed to be able to connect very well. The prayer cohort that I was assigned to, from the first moment that the three of us spoke with each other, we all acknowledged that it felt like we’d known each other forever, we felt a high degree of trust and wanting to help each other. I just realized that I needed something like this to break into my life and to get my attention. Even though I’ve always spoken about integrating business with the Gospel and equipping people, I never saw it so practically done.”

In my own life, rēStart has acted like the “defibrillator” that has jumpstarted my upcoming return to the marketplace. It has played a significant role in activating how I collaborate with God and move forward in faith with a viable business integrated with kingdom principles. I feel envisioned, equipped, and encouraged.

The next rēStart class starts next Tuesday, August 11. For more information, please visit https://www.brettjohnson.biz/restart. 

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[ Photo by Morning Brew on Unsplash ]