Understanding Calling and Being Obedient Leads to Shalom - Even as an Entrepreneur

— by Michael Norman

Normal Beginnings

My parents’ best friends are loud, joke-telling, game-playing people; my parents are the opposite. We were the “normal Normans” growing up. If you have seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, my parents were the non-Greek parents. My dad worked hard in our family’s small business – my mom took care of three kids in a relatively small, sleepy central Texas town where not much happened. Very normal. I confessed Jesus as savior at a young age, went to church, and all in all had a nice upbringing. I excelled in school and athletics and was able to attend university at a small liberal arts college in Texas. It was great.  

Abnormal Beginnings

I can reflect now that God took me specifically to that school to launch my “abnormal” journey. My family came from humble origins and had no experience internationally, yet I was drawn to studying international relations and business. I met my wife early in my college experience and we dated and married before we finished our education. We were young. Her family was like the Greek family in the movie. They were fun and she was beautiful, had lived abroad and could speak French! Wow! Encouraged by my relationship with her, I studied abroad and my passion for God’s world and his people was ignited. But I didn’t have a view for how this growing passion could flow forth in my life, so I took a “safe” path and went to law school.

We moved cities and I started school. My wife was working in an industry she loved (study abroad) when the opportunity to start a company presented itself in the same industry. We were young and we jumped at the chance. We lived on student loans and small paychecks and life was good. I started practicing law as both my wife’s business and our passion for the nations grew as we got to interact with wonderful people around the world through her business.

Abnormal at Full Speed Ahead and Calling Whispered

I began practicing law in a corporate practice with some great lawyers. I learned how business works, how decisions are made in the corporate setting and participated in some exciting ventures. My wife’s company grew. We started having kids – we ultimately had five – and life felt full. It was “up and to the right” for us. My wife’s situation allowed us to do really gratifying things like travel with our kids for extended stretches. I left my corporate legal job and began being more entrepreneurial myself. I was working mostly on my own and we had flexibility. Our lives seemed charmed to the onlooker.

As you may have noted, until now I have not said much about my faith. “Up and to the right” can make it hard to see your need for dependence on Christ. I had a real faith, but it was confined to a traditional way of thinking about faith, family and work. Thankfully during this time, one of my good friends became involved in the “business as mission” movement. This was early in the 2000s when the BAM movement was originating. He asked me questions like, “how does your faith intersect with your work?” and “how does your faith show itself beyond Sunday activities?” God used these thoughts to grab my heart. I felt alignment in my spirit for the first time; a real calling to align my faith and my daily life in Kingdom of God expanding activities. By early 2008, I convinced my wife that I should leave my legal practice and start a company with a friend. We had some money saved and an idea that we believed could have global ramifications that we could use for God’s Kingdom and Glory. It was exciting. How could we fail?

Crash and Burn but Calling Obeyed

The financial crisis hit and our fledgling business never got off the ground. Then my wife left her day-to-day job in her company, and our income changed dramatically. Then we experienced deep tragedy in our family. Up and to the right was over. We then knew at a deeply visceral level how badly things could go. It was a painful and difficult time. Deep inside though, my business partner and I knew that we weren’t supposed to go back to “normal.” We knew we had a defined calling, so in mid-January 2009, he and I got on our knees in our little office and prayed for God to do something with our business for his Glory – we knew we were called, but didn’t have a clue which way to go.

Shalom

Doors began opening and people pulled us in some very unexpected directions. A new company was borne from that moment. It was a huge dream: we were going to develop a diagnostic test to solve one of the biggest unmet needs in global health. We saw firsthand what God’s favor meant as real miracles happened – my faith “box” was being enlarged almost daily. New colleagues encouraged us with how God had called them into a faith/business journey as well.

But it was also hard. We lived without salaries for several years and used up our savings. We learned and grew, but it was difficult for our spouses. (As an aside, my view is that my wife has a far more difficult calling than I do, as she gets to feel the pain, but often is not a part of the cool moments that happen along the way. She is a praying saint who is a rock for me.) We worked diligently and were successful at slowly raising the money needed to develop the product from a globally prominent group of investors and global health stakeholders. We were at the forefront of the global Christian impact movement and making good progress on our product. We were living out real answers to questions that my friend had asked me ten years before. It was so “abnormal” that my kids struggled (and still do) to say what their dad did for a job, but we felt that we were being obedient.

Then our clinical trial failed. Our stakeholders and investors said they wouldn’t fund any more work on our technology. We had to lay off our staff. Seven years in, it was over. I had lost our investors’ money – some of whom are reading this (and are still my friends) – and we didn’t solve the big health problem.

But shalom was not lost in this process. We had pain and sadness, but over the previous ten years, God taught me how to live shalom. It is not rooted in my performance or the financial success of my business, but in the obedience to God’s call on my life. That is the source of shalom. I sought to manage the business in a way that lived out God’s grip on my life. Though my investors did not like losing their money, they did not come to me with the question of “how did this happen?” or “what went wrong?” We had communicated well and been transparent. Life science innovation is risky. We were doing something that could fail, and it did; but we worked in a way that was still glorifying to God and we continued to press on from there.  

Some who backed us in our former company introduced us to our current company. I believe we are living out our calling through this new endeavor. I also believe we will succeed financially and that the learning we gained in the previous company has increased that chance. No matter what happens, I will strive to continue living shalom, because it is not dependent upon my financial success or how well I manage a company or whatever else may happen in my life, but rather on my daily obedience to God’s calling.

This is one of the 2020 CEF Whitepapers. For more information on the Christian Economic Forum, please visit their website here.

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[ Photo by Анна Хазова on Unsplash ]