Redeeming Business

You will spend approximately 83,000 hours of your life at work. For most of us, that’s more time than almost anything else we do. As believers, the question we face is: What place does God have during those work hours? Is He welcome there, or is the office door closed to Him?

That question has shaped my life in the workforce for 35 years: 15 in the corporate world, 20 as a business owner, and now four years focused on a mission to equip Christian CEOs and business owners to build great businesses for a greater purpose. For most of that time, my faith was more of a personal and private endeavor. Looking back, I can see how much I missed by not integrating my faith more into my work.

On Sundays, we hear the sermons and admonitions to be generous, make disciples, and love others. But beyond our immediate families, how do we live out our Christian faith in a way that honors God in all areas of life? We wouldn’t say God has no place in the work space, would we? Yet, we tend to live compartmentalized lives that effectively do just that.

Purpose and Profit

Based on a six-year study comparing 18 iconic companies, Jim Collins’ Built to Last explores how visionary companies sustain long-term success. In the book, Collins identifies one key finding from the study.

Contrary to business school doctrine, we did not find “maximizing shareholder wealth” or “profit maximization” as the dominant driving force or primary objective through the history of most of the visionary companies.

He goes on to write:

We’re not saying that the visionary companies have been uninterested in profitability or long-term shareholder wealth (notice that we say that they are “more than” economic entities, not “other than”). Yes, they pursue profits. And, yes, they pursue broader, more meaningful ideals. Profit maximization does not rule, but the visionary companies pursue their aims profitably. They do both.

Profitability is a necessary condition for existence and a means to more important ends, but it is not the end in itself for many of the visionary companies. Profit is like oxygen, food, water, and blood for the body; they are not the point of life, but without them, there is no life.

There has been some understanding of the need to marry purpose and profit in business, but knowing how to put that into practice isn’t always clear. Many Christian business owners aren’t sure how to integrate their faith into the purpose that drives their business.

Integrating Faith and Work

Faith and work integration is not optional. It is the recovery of God’s original design for work and has eternal significance for each of us.

Running a business is demanding work. I know this firsthand. You’re responsible for getting the work done, managing your team effectively, satisfying your customers, and meeting the demands of your employees, vendors, and suppliers, all while turning a profit. Most days, you feel stretched thin with little margin left for anything else.

Living a balanced life, with all its demands, means following God’s guidelines for managing those things, including work. God’s first command in the Garden of Eden was to cultivate and tend the garden (Genesis 2:15). Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

The inherent value of work is not all we provide as business leaders. God’s design is for business leaders to use their businesses as assets for His kingdom. God owns it all, and we are stewards of it. An integrated life seeks to honor God in all areas of life, meaning what we do, how we do it, and who we are becoming in the process is important to God. 

Three Models Worth Understanding

When people think about business as it relates to ministry, it helps to distinguish between three models:

• Business for Ministry: This model channels profits from commercial ventures to fund external ministry endeavors. 
• Business as Mission: This model positions business itself as a platform for sponsoring or enabling evangelism and service, often in restricted regions.  
• Business as a Ministry (BaaM): The model calls leaders to view their companies and their role as entrusted “kingdoms” for which they are fully accountable to God and integrated contexts of mission.

When people first encounter the phrase “business as a ministry,” it can seem exciting, daunting, or even confusing. As I have moved further in my understanding of what Business as a Ministry means and learned frameworks, tools, and practices that show how faith and work inform our business decisions, I have found this very refreshing.

Integrating faith and work should not be seen as a threat or weakness in a business leader. When done well, it is a real opportunity to strengthen and develop your people and improve employee engagement. That blesses others and makes a significant impact for God’s kingdom.

Worldview Matters

Theology was once considered the queen of the sciences. After all, from a Christian worldview, Jesus is the King. However, since the Enlightenment, the biblical worldview has gradually been displaced as the North Star guiding our understanding of the world and the greater questions of life.

When a worldview excludes God in certain areas (such as work), it leads people to adopt a different set of commitments that, over time, hollows out the purpose and meaning that sustain individuals and organizations.

We’re now seeing why worldview matters and how it informs our understanding of all areas of life, including business and economics. In reality, a biblical worldview assumes that Christ reigns as King over every area of life. Or, as Abraham Kuyper once said:

There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, “Mine!”

In his final book, The Divine Conspiracy Continued, theologian Dallas Willard writes that we need to be “much better at casting a vision of God’s kingdom life, which may first require a long, steady journey down the path of personal and institutional transformation toward Christlikeness.”

What does that long, steady journey look like? Willard goes on to write:

Surely the best course is to take up one’s own business vocation as a divine appointment from God through intelligent discipleship to Jesus Christ. This provides a time-tested and experiential foundation for professional life that yields the nobility seen by Ruskin, Brandeis, and many others.

We must come to the point where all Christian businesspeople understand the opportunity and necessity of embodying the life of Christ in their cubicle, at their desk, in their boardroom, at their counter, and on their shift.

Equipping the Saints

As church leaders, we have a responsibility to “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:12). Let’s take stock of how we are preparing our people to live out their faith Monday through Saturday as we fulfill God’s desire for work, maturing in our faith, and ultimately for each person to be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:28) in that work which He has prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:8-10). 

God cares about our work: what we do, how we do it, and who we are becoming in the process.

I encourage you to reflect on how you can integrate your faith into all areas of your life, and help the people in your church do the same. While our faith is deeply personal, it is not meant to stay private. It must be lived out publicly, where we demonstrate love for God and love for others.

As you approach this year, what will be different? How are you preparing your people to carry their faith into their workplaces? Can we say together that we are equipping our churches to redeem business for the good of others and God’s glory?