Emphasize Excellence - Integrate Christian Faith in Business #5

by Dave Kahle

           Shortly after I became a Christian, I interviewed for my first professional job.  The manager to whom I would later report mentioned that the territory was open because the previous salesperson had falsified call reports and been fired for a lack of honesty.  I jumped in, declaring my newly found faith and its emphasis on integrity, assuring him that he would have nothing to worry about with me.

            Later, in de-briefing the interview with the recruiter with whom I was working, the recruiter shared that my interviewer had seen my declaration of Christianity as a negative and was afraid that I would use my position to proselytize my customers. It was my first experience with the conflict between the world’s expectations and my faith. 

            I didn’t know what else to do, so I prayed and asked God for direction. And, in a flash I received – nothing.  God was not going to bail me out with a simple and direct strategy.  Rather, he was expecting me to dig deeper for the answer. 

            My initial thought was “This is going to be tricky.”  Finding your way in a world which emphasizes results, worldly accomplishment, money and success while coming from a perspective that puts God’s Kingdom at the zenith – that’s tricky.

            And, while I certainly haven’t gotten it all figured out, I’ve spent 35 years working on it, and have acquired some insights.

Scattered, Depressed, Discouraged, Confused?

You may be under spiritual attack. Find out and acquire the solution.

You’re invited to participate in an extended on-line conversation on the impact of spiritual warfare on Christian businesses and Christian businesspeople.

           I’m assuming, of course, that you have matured enough in your spiritual walk to even consider the question.  The vast majority of Christian business people have never considered the question because they have not yet made the paradigm shift to go from compartmentalized thinking – “My Christian faith is about going to church on Sundays and my life Monday – Friday life has nothing to do with it”– to understanding that your career and your business belongs to God, that he provided them to you and that he should be the general partner of your business and the immediate supervisor of your career.

            If you haven’t yet made that paradigm shift, then the question is irrelevant to you.  If, however, you are a Christian, active in the marketplace at a professional level – salesperson, manager, executive, professional — and you understand that your job/business/career is your ministry or, that you should at least be trying to integrate your Christian faith with your day-to-day work, then you are searching for ways in which to do that.

            Once you’ve made that big shift in your paradigms and come to understand that your business or career is not yours, but rather belong to God, you are faced with an immediate problem: “ How do you focus on living out your Christian faith when the world (and your employer and customers) demand results?”

This is the fifth of a series of posts I’ve done, each proposing a principle, practice or tactic to answer the question.

            In the first of these posts, I identified the essential first step...CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE. 

Here’s a very commonly held, and incredibly bad Idea:

Real ministry is only done under the auspices of established religion.

This message—that real  ministry is only done under the auspices of established religion- is implicit on so many levels that it is almost impossible to be a churchgoer and not absorb this idea. Church buildings are often referred to as “God’s house;” pastors are often imbued with some special authority, and giving to the local church is held up as a prerequisite for the Christian life. All these together combine to send the message that “real ministry” is only done under the auspices of the established institution.

The problem with it is twofold: first, it is not biblical, and second, the impact of believing it is devastating.