This content was originally published here by the RightNow Media (RNM).

HAPPY MONDAY!

We wanted to start the week with a fun reminder of the importance of teamwork. Watch as this group slowly delegates their fishing to the guide. Excuses, lack of knowledge, and a lack of purpose keep these fishermen from fishing themselves.

Told in the manner of a bedtime story, this comical parable illustrates the problems of a guide leading a reluctant fishing group. If everyone did their part, imagine the “fish” that could be caught.

Hope it’s cheerful start to your week 🙂

We continue to count down the Top 100 Books for Faith Driven Entrepreneurs with…

Giftology

by John Ruhlin

Radical generosity is the against-the-grain secret weapon of real influencers, and it will allow you to boost referrals, retention rates, and ROI like few other strategies.

But be warned, gifts with strings attached backfire. There is a right, and wrong, way to give. Through poignant personal stories and data-backed evidence, Ruhlin breaks down how anyone from mail clerk to managing director can master the magic of Giftology; with these and more:

• Mastering reciprocity, the hidden bottom line booster Laser-targeting whom to give a gift and when to use thrift Uncovering your client s inner circle and becoming part of it

• Give wholeheartedly to Giftology and reap the rewards of an expanding business and fruitful relationships, professional and personal alike.

Click here to listen to our podcast episode with John!

Click on the book cover to check out the Reviews and Purchase at Amazon

— by LifeWay

LifeWay Christian Resources has launched FaithWorks—a faith-based coworking and shared office space that provides workspaces and services for Christian entrepreneurs, freelancers, startups and small businesses.

“We’re looking to attract individuals or small business owners who share LifeWay’s values,” said Amy Thompson, LifeWay’s director of corporate affairs.

The idea of hosting a coworking space came from LifeWay President and CEO Thom S. Rainer.

“As more people work for themselves rather than employers, many need a place to work beyond the traditional office lease and structure,” said Rainer. “When we completed our new facility, I saw a perfect opportunity for LifeWay to move into the coworking world with a first-class facility and a faith-based environment.”

When LifeWay moved from their former downtown campus to their current Capitol View location in November 2017, their square footage went from 1.3 million to 277,000.

Around the time the move was planned in 2015, LifeWay began implementing their Work From Anywhere (WFA) strategy, which allows headquarters employees to work remotely from any location to more effectively balance work with life.

“We built a facility with space for the 1,100 people we would be moving,” Thompson explained. “Over the two years leading up to the move, our WFA strategy was implemented—and was successful.

“By the time we moved, we had space for all of our employees, but we don’t have everyone here at once. That means we have some extra square footage to share with local professionals who want to work in a Christian environment.”

Competitively priced with similar service providers, FaithWorks offers the following with each membership level:

• Free WiFi

• Access to the LifeWay Café

• On-site fitness center membership

• Conference rooms

A variety of workspace choices are available, from open seating to dedicated desks and private offices.

FaithWorks members will also enjoy community-focused perks, such as invitations to attend LifeWay employee chapels—which often feature renowned Bible teachers and Christian artists, and opportunities to participate in other employee events—like local service projects and on-campus Bible studies.

There is also an option for members to add onsite parking to their membership.

Thompson says FaithWorks is not only good for LifeWay and for local professionals looking for a workspace in a Christian environment—but it also contributes to the Capitol View community at large.

LifeWay’s location in Capitol View offers FaithWorks members convenient access to restaurants and retail shops in a walkable neighborhood. The office building’s proximity to Interstate 65/40 provides easy access to the rest of metro area.

“Coworking spaces in Nashville are very popular right now,” she said. “Having one in this growing area is great for the new and soon-to-come businesses. It’s a way for LifeWay to be a good neighbor by bringing potential new customers to the restaurants and shops and being a positive presence in Capitol View.”

The first step in securing a FaithWorks membership is booking a tour. The general public is also invited to an open house on Tuesday, Sept. 18, from 6 to 8 p.m. For more information, visit FaithWorks.com.

——

[Special thanks to LifeWay for the cover photo]

This article was originally presented at the Christian Economic Forum.
CEF is a platform that provides a relational learning environment where leaders and experts from around the world gather to discuss and address some of the world’s greatest challenges and most pressing needs. Learn more about them here.

— by Jake Thomsen

Few organizations achieve goals in the face of uncertainty like the US military. There are many reasons for this, but one input often credited with enabling the necessary, singular focus during military operations is the “commander’s intent.” The Joint Chiefs describes a commander’s intent as “a clear and concise expression of the purpose of the operation and the military end state.” It is the guiding principle of what success looks like. In the face of diverse and evolving situations, a commander’s intent equips leaders and troops at all levels to improvise, adapt, and act because they know how the story needs to end. It’s why D-Day worked despite a series of mistaken air drops and other miscalculations. Allied troops, many off-target and overwhelmed by the Nazi resistance, followed the commander’s intent to form into groups and take bridges and key terrain. Armed with a vision of the end goal, they prevailed.

When faith-driven leaders lack a commander’s intent for running their businesses, they lack conviction and practical guidance for joining God’s work in the world. I see this almost daily in my work with entrepreneurs. Driven, faithful leaders know that their work matters to God, but many don’t have a vision for why or how it matters in the big picture. Without such a vision, they struggle to improvise and act because they don’t know what they’re supposed to make of their day-to-day leadership.

To discern our Commander’s intent, I believe we must look to what success ultimately looks like in God’s grand narrative. The story of the world is one of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. God created a good world that pleased Him, but that world was broken through sin. Jesus came to pay the cost so that His image-bearers could reconcile with their Creator, and then join His work to set things right.

Eventually, God will bring this work to fruition when, as described in Revelation 21, heaven will come to earth, we will be resurrected, and we will live, work, and worship on the new earth. At that time of ultimate success, God proclaims what may be His people’s most appropriate Commander’s intent: Behold, I am making all things new. A world made new is the end state God is working toward, the culmination of the work He has been up to since the Fall. It’s therefore what His people—His Body accomplishing His work in the world—are called to, first through Israel and now through the Church.

What does it look like for God’s people to join in this Commander’s intent of setting things right, to reflect the way the world should be and one day will be? I build on other well-articulated taxonomies to propose a simple framework that starts local and radiates globally: 1) the individual, 2) the community, and 3) the broader world. Each of these areas is fundamental to God’s creation, the renewal of each is core to God’s work today, and each is deeply impacted by the influence of business.

Personal Renewal

Setting the world right must include individual salvation. Human beings are the pinnacle of the creation narrative, made in God’s image to do His work in the world. Personal salvation through Christ reconciles us to the Father so the Spirit can make us new—that is, like Christ, the only example of a perfect human being we have. Business provides a platform that provides consistent, deep relationships—with teams, customers, vendors, and other stakeholders—to share the hope we have, witness to our own journey of knowing Jesus, and make disciples. The business community gets this. In past generations, our overly narrow focus was often to “make money to give to the church, which saves souls.” More recently we’ve captured a vision for becoming sanctified and sharing our faith through the situations and relationships at work. This is a good focus (though it’s not the whole story).

To be made new as a person is to know God and increasingly become like Christ. We won’t fully be like Christ until God completes that work at our resurrection. But we worship God as we know Him and become like Him in the meantime, and help others to do the same through our business platform.

Human Flourishing

Making things new must touch every aspect of what it means to be human—relationships, families, communities, businesses, and cultures. Andy Crouch, writing in Strong and Weak, points out that human flourishing is being fully alive, which only happens in communities. Whether relieving physical suffering, cultivating fair systems of justice, or providing meaningful work, God calls His people to address the needs of others. For an archetype of flourishing, we can point to God’s nature in the Trinity. Within the Trinity the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love, serve, and meet the needs of each other in the only perfect example of community we have. There is no pain, no loneliness, no lacking. Human flourishing results when we replicate this posture as we engage others.

We’ve all experienced how business can lead to flourishing. To highlight a few influential forces, there are redemptive products and services, such as drugs that replace addictive opioids with equivalent pain relief, wardrobe apps that reduce overconsumption, and ride-hailing companies that provide safe and transparent rides to users. Then there is an impact on workers when leaders provide meaningful work, offer generous benefits, and set cultures that provide a sense of purpose that overflows into the home. Once such redemptive elements are set, the attributes of growth, scalability, and innovation that are inherent in business imbue it with the unique ability to scale impact by the profit motive. As the most successful companies grow, they become ambassadors of their values and eventually exert cultural influence. Facebook, Google, and Netflix, for instance, have reshaped how we think about such core facets of the human experience as community, knowledge, and leisure. Almost any element of a business can help make people and communities new, as we steward our businesses toward our Commander’s intent.

Communities are made new as they increasingly reflect the self-giving love of the Trinity. We will attain full human flourishing only in the redeemed city of the new Jerusalem, on the other side of Revelation 21. But as we seek it here and now through our businesses, we worship God by joining in His work.

A Redeemed World

In Business for the Glory of God, Wayne Grudem offers a helpful framework for this third category of renewing the broader world. Grudem cites the command in Ephesians 5 to “imitate God in everything you do.” According to this and other Scriptures, we honor God when we reflect His nature back to Him. This is affirmed in Scripture time and again. For instance, we’re told to be holy because God is holy (1 Peter 1), and to be merciful because God is merciful (Luke 6). There’s something intrinsically worshipful in shaping the world around us to represent and embody God’s character. Beautiful art is beautiful because it reflects the Creator, whether or not someone is enjoying it. Creation care is important not only because it promotes human flourishing, but also because creation reveals God’s eternal power and divine nature (Romans 1). Jesus proclaims that only God is good (Mark 10), and so God seems to affirm His own character in the handiwork of His creation at the close of each day in Genesis 1. The Garden was good because it reflected the nature of God, and the new earth will be good again for the same reason.

Similarly, companies can shape the spheres within and around them to uniquely reflect God in a fallen world. Opportunities here are as diverse as the elements of a business: the justice of a fair salary structure, the beauty of a clean and intuitive website, the truthfulness of an ad campaign, the excellence of a quality camping hammock, the rest of a corporate culture that expects a full day off each week, the knowledge contributed to the public domain, and the faithfulness in rightly dealing with suppliers. Since these all reflect God’s attributes in the world, they are worship, even if they don’t directly promote human flourishing (though the three categories are deeply intertwined, so clear delineations can be misleading). Such truth may be especially encouraging to individual contributors, as our Commander’s intent isn’t only for leaders. Those who interact with few people so can’t share their hope with others, or who don’t make business decisions that impact flourishing, can still reflect God’s character in their work. Even if my job has me glued to building financial models every hour of every day, I can display God in the creativity (Genesis 1 —2), orderliness (1 Corinthians 14), and excellence I build into those models. This is true even if my leveraged buyout model doesn’t hold altar calls or dig wells in developing countries.

A renewed world increasingly reflects God’s eternal attributes. Creation will continue to groan until God redeems it with the new earth. In the meantime, we reflect the world as it should be and one day will be, through the influence that our businesses wield. And as we do, we worship God.

In a fundamental way, then, to make people, communities, and the world new is to cultivate God’s character in each of them. This is at the heart of being image-bearers—image-bearing isn’t just a human characteristic, it’s a human role. For the original ancient Near Eastern readers of Genesis, the concept would bring to mind armies from other lands, “image- bearers” who carried large flags portraying their conquering king, foreshadowing the coming reign. We similarly bear God’s image as we shape the world around us, and thereby proclaim to all, “the King is coming, and this is what He’s like.” Our Commander’s intent gives an actionable charge to make things new by reflecting God in the world.

Implications for the Ecosystem

My hope is that our Commander’s intent might offer a fresh lens to see our work, one that is both actionable and motivating. Beyond this, I hope it might impact how we consider the faith-driven business movement in general: Since approaches to pursuing the renewal of all things are profoundly diverse and multifaceted, we should be an ecosystem deeply characterized by understanding and grace.

In these still early years, it’s common to hear claims that businesses building life-giving internal cultures, and meeting physical needs don’t “count” if they don’t preach the gospel as their driving motivation. (This view treats the Great Commission as the Commander’s intent, rather than as a cornerstone of it.) Or we may accept flourishing as a legitimate goal, but we write off businesses doing traditional work with a focus on reflecting God’s character in the world, perhaps as too return-driven. Or we may say an investment seeking concessionary returns to share the gospel in a closed market isn’t a good witness to the world, since sub- market returns are perceived as lacking excellence. But if our goal is to renew individuals, communities, and the world, then we should show understanding and grace, and even celebrate, when God uses co-laborers for different parts of the mission. We are indeed one body with many parts. As Tim Keller articulates in such tensions, our work as individuals and as a community is never “either-or,” but rather “both-and.” Therefore we spur each other on to discern and pursue our respective callings, step into our unique roles with excellence, and (most importantly) abide in Christ. For though it is our privilege to join in this work, the fruit of our efforts will only come by the Spirit Himself.

Our Commander’s intent is a rallying cry for us individually and as a community. We know how the story ends, so we discern the work before us with wisdom and confidence. As Jesus declared, the Kingdom of heaven is upon us. It will soon be fully here, and in the meantime we steward our lives and businesses to lean into that reality as our great worship. For behold, He is making all things new.

“The parts of the body will not take sides. All of them will take care of one another. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part shares in its joy. You are the body of Christ. Each one of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:25–27, NIRV)

This article was originally posted on FORBES. Big thanks to them!

— by Jerry Bowyer

Author’s Note: This is the second in a series about my speech to the annual Christian Economic Forum in Jackson Hole Wyoming, a gathering of entrepreneurs, economists, philanthropists and non-profit leaders from around the globe who gather to challenge the dominance of a secular outlook in other business forums such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, TED Talks, the Aspen conference and the annual Fed conference also held in Jackson Hole. One of the key themes from my speech is the lack of support, and too often outright suspicion, for Christian entrepreneurs, from religious leaders.

“In my world, [almost] nobody thinks like me. I think that’s true of a lot of you, too. You know, I was a radio host for ten years — I actually did financial work and did radio at the same time — but I was a daily host for ten years and I met all sorts of people. When you go on the radio, the first people who call are almost always the fools of the community; the mockers, the scoffers, the gotcha-guys, the gotcha-mamas, the people who want to trip you up, the people who are angry, the people who have some really weird cause – whatever it is – that they’re going to push. And they just fill the airwaves with toxicity and I found it debilitating emotionally.

But there was this tiny group of people, maybe 5% of my listeners or 5% of my callers, and after the fools quieted down a little bit I started to hear from them. It’s almost always the same story: If it’s ‘he’, he’s forty or older and runs a business, or he has management responsibility, and he’s a decision-maker. If it’s ‘she’, almost always she’s a retired school teacher or a retired librarian, a pastor’s wife sometimes, occasionally a physician who is intellectually and spiritually thirsty, because they’re the only one in their world who has a pile of books this high and who reads them and who talks about ideas. For the business decision-maker (he could be for-profit or not-profit), he or sometimes she – they’re the decision maker, they stand alone in some sense, they’re the entrepreneurs.

So what happened is these entrepreneurial types – some in business, some in nonprofit – started to gravitate towards what I was doing, and what I noticed about them was that they were lonely. Not lonely in that they didn’t have friends; they had more friends, in many cases, than they wanted. I mean, people of influence have a lot of people who want to be their friends. I’m not trying to be arrogant about that, it’s just a matter – if you run, say, a Fortune 500 or a Fortune 5000 company, people want to be your friends. If you’re the pastor, people want to be your friends. If you’re on TV or radio or if you’re an author and famous in some way… But it’s not quite the same; a friendship involves something in which we are to some degree equals, which means that there’s something you have to be a little better at than I am; you have to bring something to the table and I have to bring something to the table for us to actually be friends. There has to be some reciprocity, there has to be some parody for friendship. There has to be some joint intellectual interest. So, as I look back over my life in the past twenty years, doing a lot of radio and television and speeches, what I’m interested in is and what I want is that 5%. I’ll wade through the 95% if there’s a good chance [to find] the people who are actually trying to make decisions to be wise, and to solve problems, not to raise themselves up…

At that moment in history along comes Crown – a ministry, not a huge ministry, and not super well-funded, [but] they say, “Alright, we’re just going to gather some Davids together.” I see Goliath tottering over there and I see some Davids and I say, “I know where I want to be. I want to be with the Davids.” You’re the Davids. Entrepreneurial Christians — power that comes from the bottom up, rather from the top down — through love and service is what defeats Davos Man and what revitalizes the economies of the world. That was a long answer to your short question. That’s why I’m here and I think that’s why some of you are here, too: Because you’re lonely for people who can talk to you and who you can talk to, and who will actually understand what you’re saying. And they’ll say something back to you and you’ll understand what they’re saying. And you’ll teach them something and they’ll teach you something – you don’t get enough of that. I’m not going to put words in your mouth, I’m just going to ask: Raise your hand if you don’t get enough of that in your life… Okay. Well, thank you to Chuck Bentley and thank you to the board of directors of Crown, thank you to those who are present and those who aren’t, and to the sponsors of this event and to you, for actually giving us that thing that we want the rest of the year; where we actually can talk to people with whom there’s genuine leadership/spiritual/intellectual compatibility. There’s a click, a lock, where something happens that’s important.”

——

[Special thanks to Sasha Freemind on Unsplash for the cover photo.]

At the end of every podcast, we like to ask our guests to share what God has been teaching them in this season of life. This week’s guest is Jay Stringer, a licensed mental health counselor, ordained minister, and nationally requested speaker on the subject of unwanted sexual behavior.

Romans 2:4

Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

Two things come to mind. The first is that, you know, Romans 2:4 is that do you not know that is the kindness of God that leads to change. And so, I mean, just as I look at a lot of things in my life that need to change, one of the ways that I normally default to is just kind of contempt. Right. 

I hate myself. And that’s why I go for a longer run. I hate that I have historically had sexual brokenness. So I’m just going to kind of hate myself and will myself to change. And it just doesn’t work. And I think part of what that passage is inviting me to do is to embrace the beatitudes, like blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 

So I think that that’s part of what I’m experiencing in the season is just the kindness of God that’s really willing me toward a very different type of change than I would have originally wanted early in my adult life. And so I think that’s a lot of what I’ve been thinking about.

Then, one of the things that I heard a famous apologist say recently is that we need “more than Jesus.” But how many sermons do we hear, how many songs do we sing that actually say the exact opposite of that? And what he says is that there are 59 “one another” statements in the New Testament. So it’s love one another, care for one another, share your burdens with one another, don’t pass judgment on one another. And so I’ve been really struck by that, especially as entrepreneurs, how much we try to do on our own in this kind of counterintuitive approach of what does it mean to have “one another’s” in our life as we journey through difficult moments in our marriages or in our businesses. And I think also the successes. 

One of the things that I often hear from executives who are clients of mine is that they don’t really even have many people to share some of the highlights of their life with. So they made X amount of money and most of their friends are completely jealous of them. Right. So I think it’s just that in our brokenness and in our celebration, we need one another. So I think those would be the two things, the kindness of God and just the sweetness of what it means to have one another in our lives.