Your Business IS Your Ministry

My house backed up to a small Baptist church. They were planning to do new construction and wanted to get my permission. The pastor contacted me, and I invited him over. 

It didn't take long for him to discover I was a born-again Christian. And it didn't take me long to find out he was a former marketing and advertising professional. I wanted to know his story, and he wanted to know mine.

After dedicating my life to Christ, I was very excited. It was an awakening for me. I was so thankful to be forgiven, to have this burden of sin and guilt lifted from me and to experience the presence of God. I started to read the Bible and understand it in a way that had not happened in the past. The Bible made sense and was seemingly easy to apply to my life. I began to see the world differently. People's behaviors, my behaviors of the past, became explainable. This new view of the world, this biblical worldview, helped me see what was previously unseen.

The more excited I got about Jesus and the Bible, the more I wanted to talk about it. I couldn't wait to get to Bible studies with others. It didn't matter if the studies were led by pastors, who I saw as religious professionals, or by people like me, the religious zealot. All that mattered was I was reading the Bible, hearing God speak through this book, and learning from his message. I was learning about God, myself, and our new relationship.

The deeper I got into the faith community, the closer I started to get to the church. The closer I got to the church, the more the idea of a religious professional was presented to me. I saw the life pastors lived. Their responsibilities as leaders, teachers, and counselors. My new interest in God and the Bible started to make the thought of becoming a full-time pastor a possibility. 

This thought was reinforced by the success I saw in starting a Bible study at my office. It began with four of us who were all early in our relationship with Jesus and grew to over thirty attendees seeking to know more about God and the Bible. And all this happened within a year. I could not believe what God was doing with me. Because of this success, my identity in the community began to change. I was no longer identified as an angel investor. I was now a Christian angel investor. 

I began to ask myself, "Is God calling me to be a pastor and leave my life-long career as a businessman?"

In talking to this marketing and advertising executive turned Baptist pastor, I discovered he had much of the same experience. The difference between my story and his story was this. He didn't have the pervasive personal brand in his community that I had. He was looking for a place to establish himself, a place, a community, that would give him credibility. He was as excited as I was after coming to Jesus. So excited, in fact, he chose to leave his occupation and become a pastor. 

He quit his job. Spent his savings on going to seminary. Received his proper educational credentials. Joined the Baptist church hierarchy. Became a Baptist pastor. The transition was complete. 

He was unique in his new profession because he understood the business, and he used this understanding to relate to business people. He talked in their language as well as the language of the Baptist church. He acted as a bridge between the two. He was so dynamic, I am sure many business people came to know Jesus as Lord and Savior through his leadership. 

But I also sensed he was a bit frustrated. 

Being a pastor, the people in his assigned congregation expected him to talk like a pastor. They felt comfortable when he used the language of the church. They felt uncomfortable when he used the language of business. I'm sure this was because the church's market is the family not business. It is easier for a pastor to relate to families than it is to relate to business. After all, the church people have families. They never ran a business. 

His frustration made it clear to me that leaving my business and becoming a religious professional would not work for me. I loved what I did and the entrepreneurs I served, along with all the people in my network. We enjoyed each other and served each other well. 

So here I was with a foot in each bucket. 

My livelihood was business. My new and expanding interest was God and the Bible. If I stepped back for a moment, I would have seen what God was doing. He was feeding my interest in him and the Bible. He was feeding this interest with a steady stream of people from my business network. I was exactly where he wanted me.

But it was confusing. And it was confusing to me and to others in my network for good reason. It did not fit into our culture. Our culture separates "church and state." If you talk business, you are a business person. If you talk about Jesus and the Bible, you are a pastor. But I was mixing the two, and both were working. My business was expanding, and the people coming to learn the Bible from me were also expanding. I had a business and a ministry.

I finally came to understand. My business was the foundation for my ministry of teaching the Bible. My business was my credibility to the people in my network. My ministry gave these people a trusted source to go to when seeking God and spiritual interests.

In the midst of business meetings, my faith would easily flow into the conversation. After all, my faith in Jesus and my biblical worldview explained why and how things worked in business. Some people were clearly uncomfortable when I brought God and the Bible into a conversation, but others were interested. 

I would invite the interested businessperson to my Bible study. 

The Bible study was unique. It was businesspeople reading and discussing the Bible in business conference rooms. And when business people talk about anything, they use business terms. At the end of his first Bible study with us, one of the attendees said, "I really enjoyed this. It was software people talking about the Bible using software examples. I felt right at home."

I've been using my business as a foundation for my ministry for thirty years. Trusting God and staying right where I am changed my life and the lives of those around me. My responsibility over all these years was to remain obedient to God. He did the rest.

"Each person should remain in the situation they were in when God called them." 1 Cor 7:20