Ordained for business? My old friend, Harry Martens, told me he was never ordained, but he had hands laid on him many times. Some of us feel this way in the rough and tumble business world. Seriously, is business really a calling? Does God actually summon certain persons into business? Does he recruit believers for kingdom work in business? Or do we simply stumble into business without any sense of divine unction? My point is this: We are all commissioned for a lifetime of Christian service, and business is a great place to live out the loving and serving presence of Jesus. Why do we only ordain and commission pastors and other congregational leaders? Shouldn’t businesspersons be set apart and dedicated for Christian service and witness in the marketplace? I wonder what would happen to us, as businesspersons, if our congregations had commissioning services for us. Our brothers and sisters would lay hands on us, pray over us and send us forth as their ambassadors to the business world. I suspect our businesses would take on a more hallowed dimension. We’d feel a sense of mission in business. We’d function as representatives of Christ’s church. We’d acknowledge his lordship in our businesses. Our corporate policies would be influenced by the gospel. And we’d feel more accountable to our sending bodies, our congregations, where we ought to be giving and receiving counsel. If you and I can’t feel ordained for business, maybe we ought to look for other work. — John H. Rudy, reprinted from his Marketplace column from May/June 1990
What work should we do? What wisdom does the Bible offer for how to choose our work? Timothy Keller, in his new book, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, has three suggestions. • “If we have the luxury of options, we would want to choose work that we can do well. It should fit our gifts and our capacities. To take up work that we can do well is like cultivating our selves as gardens filled with hidden potential; it is to make the greatest room for the ministry of competence.” • “Because the main purpose of work is to serve the world, we would want to choose work that benefits others. We have to ask whether our work or organization or industry makes people better or appeals to the worst aspects of their characters.” • “If possible, we do not simply wish to benefit our family, benefit the human community, and benefit ourselves — we also want to benefit our field of work itself ... [and] increase the human race’s capacity to cultivate the created world.”
The Marketplace March April 2013
Multipliers, bad and good You’re driving down the highway on your way to work. Someone cuts in front of you into your lane, which makes you mad. To get away from this lane jockey, you cut into someone else’s lane. Naturally, you make that person mad. Thinking you’re a real jerk, he swerves into the next lane. Pretty soon there are countless people coming into work, every one of them ready to start their day angry and upset. Some will take their frustration out on the product or the customer. Others may bark orders at their secretaries and staff. The multiplier effect has begun and just keeps on going. If you can help someone get off to a good start, however, maybe catch him or her doing something right, it will create a positive effect that can also multiply. Many small, simple but positive things managers, supervisors and associates do generate momentum that eventually can lead to great things. If you’re not too big for small things, you won’t then be too small for the big things that might happen as a result. — Retired Toro CEO Ken Melrose in Making The Grass Greener on Your Side 4
