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The Marketplace Magazine January/February 2023
Business as ministry
Entrepreneurs can help people grow closer to God by how they run their firms
Christian entrepreneurs should consider their work to be ministry, JoAnn Flett says.
Businesspeople have the privilege and responsibility of embodying godly attributes of justice, kindness and humility to everyone they meet, she explained in a speech at MEDA’s annual convention.
JoAnn Flett studies the concept of Shalom
Picture by PhotoOle
Ministry is best defined as “anything that I do that draws people into a relationship with God,” said Flett, the executive director of Seattle Pacific University’s Centre for Faithful Business.
She asked people to consider themselves to be priests in the marketplace, citing the New Testament book of 1 Peter, chapter 2 verse 9: “But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work.”
Priests are chosen to be holy people, chosen to be God’s special possession and to declare God’s praises.
Christian entrepreneurs are priests in the marketplace because they’ve chosen the high calling of mediating God’s presence, she said. “They are his special possession.”
“Friends, there is no secularsacred divide as we go out into the world, because of who we are,” she said.
Flett has spent most of her professional life trying to close the secular-sacred gap.
“When you walk into certain boardrooms, there’s a suspicion about this idea that you’re a Christian… And when you walk into the church, there are suspicions about who you are, because you’re involved in the enterprise of business.”
“There is no sacred-secular divide, and yet we are still trying to live beyond that.”
MEDA supporters, on the other hand, know that business is a high and holy calling, she said, celebrating the fact that MEDA “has known this for many, many decades.”
“The work you do in business represents who God is in the world, and you are taking that ministry up, you are living into that place, you are building relationships.”
During her years as a seminary student and office worker, Flett thought a lot about who is doing ministry and what that means.
She came to realize the importance of modelling God’s love in the workplace. That led her to believe that any interaction with others in her workplace that drew them closer to God was an act of ministry.
God’s presence is relational, so Christians in the marketplace can mediate God’s presence, she said. Business is also inherently relational. “The co-worker who joins you, who supports you, who prays for you, who takes your hand when you’re having a bad day, who helps you, and for whom you help, for whom you pray, that’s a really powerful testimony about how relational business is, and how relational Christian business ought to be. A recent study suggested that people who have a friend where they work are much less likely to quit their jobs, she said. “Think about that.” Flett is intrigued by the Hebrew concept of Shalom. Shalom is a state of flourishing in all dimensions of one’s existence. That includes one’s relationship with God, fellow humans, nature and oneself.
“We as priests in the marketplace, are to work for Shalom,” she said. “We are to work in the economic system, in the social system, in the political system — Shalom looks like a structural change for the new thing that God is doing in the world. He is at work in our world to transform our world, and he is inviting us to step there.”
There is not one square inch in our human domain over which the sovereign Lord Christ does not cry “mine, and that includes the medium of business,” she said.
Priests in the marketplace are to embody justice, kindness and humility, she said, quoting from the Old Testament book of Micah chapter 6, verse 8.
“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with your God.”
Priests in the marketplace embody these traits to their employees, their co-workers, their suppliers, their customers, and everyone they interact with, she said. “This is the high calling of God.”
A friend who teaches in Europe told her that to be humble means to live in truth. "Humility isn't just taking the posture of the servant, it is being the servant, and living into that truth of service to others.”
Amy Sherman, a colleague at the centre where Flett works, has coined the term “businesstry,” bringing business and ministry together.
That means businesspeople and businesses mediate the presence of God. Business also can mediate the presence of God for Shalom in society, Flett said.
That requires orienting a business towards God, promoting rightness of relations with God, as well as self, others and creation, she said.
A 2013 study by Michael Porter underlines the importance of people of faith in business leading efforts for justice, she said. At the time, governments had revenues of $3.1 trillion, non-profits had revenue of $1.2 trillion. Both were dwarfed by the $20.1 trillion of corporate revenues.
“When we are thinking about talking about businesstry, we are thinking about going into the sector that has the most amount of revenue and orienting it towards good.”
B corporations — a private certification of for-profit companies of their social and environmental performance — are using business as a force for good, she said. When the founders of that movement said good, they introduced a moral category.
“They are morally introducing concepts that we can take up and use.” .
