Biblical Business Radical: Taking on Debt

Corporate debt is on the rise: near the end of 2019 it was a record, nearly $10 trillion and 45+% of the US economy. Also recently it was reported that only Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson enjoy the highest bond rating. All others are lower than prime; they may be high grade or upper medium grade.

Many of us have heard that business is best built on OPM: Other People’s Money. We might know that some financial metrics of success reward liabilities like debt, such as Economic Value Added.

Debt takes lots of forms. Mostly, we think of debt in terms of loans and bonds. But debt is really any liability, right? Prepaid receivables—like gift cards for the retail sector, or down payments on product/service/construction projects—and all accounts payable can also be included. The latter category is debt because we haven’t paid for the materials, service, labor that we’ve received and used.

If you include investors as a debt obligation, because they do want to be ‘repaid’ on their investment—those investments are not grants or donations—then corporate debt is way beyond any national economy. Investors might recover their money when they sell the shares and so it’s not strictly a debt—but bonds can also be resold with the bond investor recovering their money as well and those are considered debts.

We know that it’s difficult to fund any business expansion without debt. And it’s difficult to get through any downturn without lines of credit also.

(C) Financial Times, 3/24/18

Why talk about business debt for a faith-based, faith-led business? Every business does it. There’s not any scriptures admonishing against the practice for businesses or business owners specifically in the context of their business. There are guiding scriptures for individuals on borrowing. Because a lot of Christian financial advisors highly recommend avoiding debt and say that debt isn’t for the faithful, it’s worth discussing here. For example, many Christian financial experts cite Proverbs 22.7 which warns that borrowers are slaves to lenders. And you’ve surely heard the adage “neither a borrower nor a lender be.” But there’s not many verses dealing with debt with regard to corporations (or nations—see the introductory posts.) So why talk about it?

A lot of Christian business books avoid the topic. Those that do admit there isn’t much and acknowledge that some debt is going to exist in the modern business. One advisor—former CFO for a large logistics company that would have to finance their fleet and distribution center construction—says that businesses should borrow as little as possible and pay it off as quickly as possible. The additional advice suggested that our businesses should progress so that personal guarantees are no longer needed.

I don’t think the Bible prohibits borrowing, even on the individual basis. In fact, it sets guidelines for how to borrow:

• Repay it fully (Psalm 37.21)
• If the borrowed thing is damaged or destroyed, pay fully for it (Exodus 22.14)
• Loans should be interest-free for ‘Israelites’ but not interest-free for ‘foreigners’ (Deuteronomy 23.20; Nehemiah 5.11) and loans are forgiven in the Sabbath year for ‘Israelites’ (Deuteronomy 15.1)
• Lenders shouldn’t be allowed into the property to recover collateral (Deuteronomy 24.10)

Even Christ suggested that loans were inevitable and customary: “Don’t fail to give to those who ask and don’t turn away those who want to borrow” (Matthew 5.42)—echoing Deuteronomy 15.9 regarding the sinfulness of refusing to loan to people because it’s close to the next Sabbath year. He told parables in which friends borrowed loaves of bread to entertain guests, and servants borrowed from masters. It clearly seems that it’s not a sin that a person or, maybe by extension, a business owner and business have to borrow. 

But wouldn’t you love to have a faith-based, faith-led banker or bond holder not charge interest? Forgive your debt in a Sabbath year? How much could you live with writing off any loans you’ve provided to start-up companies, including your own, every seven years? Should a business ask for interest-free loans and ask for debt forgiveness every seven years?

If anything seems to be biblical, it’s that we should repay our debts fully. It also seems that maybe bankruptcy isn’t an option that allows us to renege on some portion of our debts. Collateral should be readily surrendered if we default on a loan. Therefore, the advice to borrow as little as possible is sound. 

You might also say that we need to offer terms to customers who ask. We might need to offer loans to employees who need them. 

Biblical Business Radical: Roll the Dice Redux

In a couple of dialogues with friends who deal with hiring and assessments, they advised that assessments aren’t perfect but extremely helpful...especially, they say you need assessments if you go with my recommendation of biblical hiring by praying and rolling the dice. If your faith is little, assessments are necessary.

Here’s my abstract to the my clarifications: I think pre-employment assessments are most beneficial in helping the hiring manager know how far they need to adapt their own style in order to engage, empower, coach, lead the new employee. If that’s the greatest criteria for a successful hire, it may be needed to be done pre-employment or let God guide through lots/dice and then do the assessment and ask for God to stretch the manager. If God is ‘for’ the company—and we’re truly seeking His guidance in our prayer and not just His stamp of validation on our plans—He won’t want it to fail and so the lots/dice will reveal the candidate who will be successful under that manager.

Let me say, that these are serious explorations of the topic and not just a poke to spur discussion, such as playing devil’s advocate to determine if people really believe what they sell or teach.

Interestingly, later in the scriptural record the apostles didn’t use lots/dice to chose the seven to serve the Hellenistic widows—just prayer after determining some qualifications (wisdom, full of spirit/Spirit—and I write it that way because Stephen is described as full of the Holy Spirit and the others aren’t; the notation is either redundant or there’s a distinction similar to Paul being compelled by the spirit/Spirit to go to Jerusalem but warned by the Holy Spirit of what will happen if he goes). Thus, the hiring process wasn’t consistent—or consistently recorded—in the early church organization. 

One of the key uses of a pre-employment assessment is to ascertain how well the candidates fit a profile of a successful employee in that position. If you had to do an assessment to hire an apostle, what would be the perfect profile? It’s interesting that Christ—perfect in doing all assessments—doesn’t choose a single type to be an apostle, a role in the church different apparently from shepherd, teacher, evangelist, and prophet (though the group of apostles seem to perform each of those at times) according to the epistles. We have the Thunder-ous James and John (sons of thunder). We have stubborn, impulsive, self-assured, insightful, sometimes angry Peter, labeled by Christ as a ‘son of Jonah/John’—a prophet who also exhibited these characteristics. We have a zealot, a tax collector (don’t know if they had a personality type as our accountants today or our modern-day scam artists), someone who comes from dual cultures (Bartholomew—son of Ptolemy, a Greek, the son a Jew through his mother), and so on. We know they had different vocational backgrounds so it’s not experience that was important. 

In fact, the first disciples thought they were signing up to follow a rabbi in order to be a rabbi just like this Y’shua of Nazareth. Some commentators have pointed out that if the disciples were doing other jobs, they failed at being good enough to be a rabbi—to be good enough to follow in Christ’s footsteps—according to the world’s criteria; they were essentially school drop-outs because school was designed to create rabbis. You might say that Christ is revolting against the human perspective and policies designed to create successful religious leaders; He might be saying, “I take the drop-outs, the ones that fail the assessments, and turn them into successes.” (Was Christ Himself a school drop-out, never a rabbi’s disciple, because we believe He worked as a teknon?) We don’t have any indication that the apostles had similar personalities, behaviors, aptitudes, world views, etc. You have to admit as organizational leaders they were highly successful.

As to the right kind of person in the right seat, look at Acts 9:28-31. Paul comes back to Jerusalem after his conversion, learning and early preaching in Damascus and Arabia. There are problems. The apostles suggest he leave for home, Tarsus, and they help him go. “Then the churches...enjoyed peace, edification and added to their numbers.” (Paraphrase) Indications are that Paul’s presence hindered the churches from having peace, and so on. From this, Paul was clearly ministering to the wrong people though he had the right skills. He was selected correctly to be a preacher/teacher, apostle, evangelist—like Peter. Somehow the choice of being in Jerusalem, the headquarters, was incorrect. He needed to be establishing new branch offices and helping them grow. What assessment would have figured this out?

Additionally, the disciple among the twelve allowed to handle the money and secure it was not Matthew, the tax collector—the guy with the most experience handling and securing money. That job was Judas’. Thus, experience was not a criteria for their specific roles.

I agree if assessments are done before hiring then yellow and red flags can appear. And if they’re not heeded, it can be a bad hire—or poorly managed/led employee. We do spend a lot of money when hiring isn’t done well. But what is the right profile could be asked again? Assessments are objective—they seem to meet the accuracy and reliability criteria (each measures what they purport to measure, and the same results appear when the same person takes them—i.e. I don’t get a “musician” designation one time and a “carpenter” designation the next time I take it unless something has dramatically changed in my life).

But the main objection to the reason for doing pre-employment assessments is to find a person with the right fit. And I don’t think that can be done. 1) We override the assessments because we really want to hire the likable person. And likability can mean they fit in—people we trust because they deem important the same trust dynamics I think are important e.g. dependability—and they get along with the leadership style, my leadership style for example. And that’s almost always the person who will not compete with me as a leader. Hypothetical: I’m trying to hire a successor. If I’ve been a successful leader for a team that makes me successful, I would want to hire someone like me. But that person wouldn’t work for me; I wouldn’t work for me. That’s not going to be a successful hire. So here’s the dilemma, right? (Perhaps Paul too couldn’t be in the same place as Peter because their preaching/teaching, evangelism, apostleship overlapped too much.)

2) Different kinds of people have been successful in the same job roles, because they’ve performed the job in their own way. We don’t have rigorous validation that certain types or aspects of profiles are going to be successful in particular roles. We often think extroverts need to lead companies but there seems to be plenty of evidence that introverts do just as well if not better. I had a review of purchasing roles in one of the companies I helped lead. I defined some criteria. After taking the assessments, two people who were both good at the jobs in different ways overlapped with some of my criteria but not completely. And they differed in which criteria they met. If I were to hire a third person, would I keep looking for the perfect fit to what I think makes a successful purchasing agent or hire a person who, like the current two, at least fits half/two-thirds of the criteria?

Assessments are low cost, relative to the cost of hiring mistakes, but they don’t prevent hiring mistakes. If I hire a person who fits in and gets along with the leadership style, it’s not a mistake but they may not have the best choice—of course, I’ll never know anything about a choice not taken. I agree that assessments will help me lead the team better—to engage them more, to better coach them, and so on. If this is true, then the only reason for doing pre-employment assessments is to gage whether the hiring manager (e.g. me) can engage with them, coach them by adapting my ‘style’ to what they need. If their type is too much of a stretch for me to adapt, then it’s going to be a bad hire. Christ was perfect and unlimited in adapting. Me, us—not so capable. So then, what’s wrong with letting God guide the hiring choice through casting lots, rolling dice? He would be the best to help us know which candidate I can coach. We only have to have faith, trust in Him. Or is there something in addition to Him that we need? The right answer, and difficult answer to live with, is there is nothing else that we need besides Him to guide us.

Biblical Business Radical: Abolish the Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisals are a double-sin we need to confess and be forgiven for. I’ve written about this in other places. Performance appraisals are rife with biases, prejudices and other problems—such as immediacy (i.e. I often rate you on what you’ve done and how you’ve done it in the immediate timeframe of my memory—maybe 3 months if you’re lucky). Basically, 90% of your performance appraisal has nothing to do with your performance; 90% is determined by policies, preferences and perspectives.

Policy example: I can only rate 10% Above Average and I have to rate 10% Below Average. If you fall in the 11th percentile at the top—even though your performance is greater than a lot of other people in the company but 11th in my department—I have to rate you Average. The rating has nothing to do with your actual performance.

Preference example: I will only rate you an 8 out of 10 because I don’t believe anyone is a 9 or 10. You need something to shoot for. You may have gotten the Nobel Prize in sales, operations, customer service, whatever, but my preference is to max out ratings at an 8. So this rating has nothing to do with your performance.

Perspective example: you may have made 4 huge mistakes this year but I’ve always viewed you as a star so I’m going to rate you highly...or you may have made 4 huge mistakes this year but I’ve always viewed you as dud and so I’m going to rate you on the low-end of the scale. Sorry, your actual performance has nothing to do with the rating I give you.

In 4 places in Proverbs, Deuteronomy 25, Micah 6 (maybe another place or two or three like Leviticus), God says He hates/abhors/detests dishonest and inaccurate scales. What’s a performance appraisal but a scale to weigh and compare your performance to a standard? If 90% of it is not based on your actual performance, it’s not accurate at best and dishonest at worst. This is our first sin.

Since performance appraisals are mandated to fulfill other purposes, besides feedback—like development plans, coaching, etc.—and are tied to wages through merit increases and promotion opportunities, we fall into the trap of the second sin. In James 5, it says if we cheat workers of wages, there’s a special place in Hell for us (my paraphrase). It’s cheating because we’re using the dishonest, inaccurate appraisal instrument to determine how much your pay should increase and whether you get a raise through a promotion. Even if you get a large raise or get the promotion, you may have unfairly gotten it and deprived someone else of getting an adequate, fairly based increase or promotion...all because it’s based on badly done, subjective performance appraisals.

The solution: frequent (daily, weekly), specific feedback on actual performance and solicitation of their need for your help (“How can I help you more or hinder you less?”) and helping them remove obstacles to making progress. Also, when it’s time for merit increases, there are other criteria like positional (not individual) contribution to organizational success (and be careful how this is structured as well). Promotions can be similarly based on the same courageous, faithful practice as hiring: identifying who meets the (base) qualifications, prayer, rolling dice (i.e. casting lots).

Note: if this application of scripture seems strange to you, check out the framework to this exploration in the first and second articles in this series.

Biblical Business Radical: Roll the Dice When Hiring

Almost immediately at its founding, the early church had lost two key executives: its founder and leader; and its CFO or controller, depending on how much influence over the money Judas Iscariot had. A couple of executives stepped up to be co-CEOs of the fledgling business—Peter, an older experienced hand, and John, a younger man connected to the moneyed or powerful families. Later the founder’s brother, James, became a key spokesman. Still, they needed a new money handler.

In business, we’d put out an ad for a person with years of experience. We’d interview the candidates several times, eat with them. We’d also assess them for personality type (MBTI e.g.), behavior, strengths/talent themes, thinking styles, internal/external world views, motivations, and ‘who knows what else’. We’d pack them off with forms, computer-based, cloud-based instruments with the promises from the consultants that these assessments are validated for what they’re assessing (i.e. a personality assessment is measuring personality). We’d also be reassured that the assessments are reliable (i.e. two people with similar personalities would score similarly).

And yet, we’d be guessing if the results are really the results we want in the person we’re hiring. We might have an idea of the ideal candidate. Often that person is like the successful person that was in the job. In the case of replacing Judas, we might want to look for someone more loyal—that is, we’d be looking for someone opposite of a failed predecessor. However, we really don’t know what type of person succeeds in our organization. Sometimes we try to test for cultural fit. And yet we still make poor hiring decisions. All this because we don’t validate our own hiring processes to know what works to recruit and sign candidates that will succeed in our businesses. We tweak some things and catch the next faddish wave of ‘new and improved’ assessments.

Most often our hiring decisions, after all of the above, comes down to one thing: likability and its cousin ‘getting along’. And that’s often determined in the first 30 seconds, maybe the first few minutes. As bosses, we often hire and retain people who can survive with our leadership—aka decision-making and communication—styles. We like those who will let us lead the way we want to lead. All others are fired or leave on their own. This is a criterion that’s hard to assess and rarely done.

In larger enterprises, the CEO has a median tenure of five years. In half of our businesses, every five years the whole leadership tenor changes and the executive staffs have to adjust or leave, and their lieutenants also have to adapt or leave...and so on. That’s a lot of management turnover. If you try to validate the assessments for hiring effectiveness, when you would want to know if your candidates are successful? After one year, they may not know enough, managed enough, led enough to show what they can do or their capabilities. After two years, their cultural fit (or lack of it) starts to appear. At three years, the effects of any policy or procedural or strategic changes they made in years one or two may start to appear. After four years, those changes may show their robustness for regulatory and market changes. Besides if they aren’t robust, market and regulatory changes, such as new competitors and new market segments and new laws, will suggest new strategies, policies and procedures; thus, the new-hire’s changes will have changed anyway in those four years at least twice. If the person hasn’t been fired in five years, I suppose we could say they were ‘successful’. But we really don’t know if they were as effective as we really needed.

So how did the early church hire their new CFO/controller? They set a single criterion: the candidate had to have been with them the whole three years—someone from within the company. Two people met this qualification.

They prayed, and then they cast lots—rolled the dice, drew straws, spun a wheel. And two thousand years later, we’re pretty sure Matthias was pretty successful in his new role. At least, we don’t have any indication that he got fired.

Maybe we need to do the same. I admit this advice would be hard to swallow. But isn’t it a little like what we do when we poll the interviewing team and hiring manager? We’re just getting their subjective perspective on the candidates’ likability and ability to get along. Rolling the dice also eliminates any biases for or against any of the candidates that are qualified. What do you think?

After you’ve rolled the dice and hired the person, then do the assessments so you understand your new team member a little better—how they think, what makes them tick, what perspectives they bring to your team, etc.

Biblical Business Radical: Blessed Decision-Making

We don’t often think of Abraham as a business leader, or commander of an army. In Genesis 13, Abraham is returning to Canaan from Egypt, where he’d gone earlier when a famine hit Canaan. His flocks had grown. He employed a lot of herdsmen. Also, his nephew’s, Lot’s, herds had grown. Lot was part of the family business. Conflicts erupted. Recognizing that it was not good for his enterprise to have internal fighting, Abraham decided it would be good to divide the organization into two separate companies. Instead of resources and markets being shared, they would target different areas.

Did Abraham decide which would go where? He deferred to his nephew. “If you go left, I’ll go right. If you go right, I’ll go left.”  Lot went east to the valley of the river Jordan, which is described as being very fertile and having some ‘cities of the plains’ like Zoar, Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot settles near Sodom, and later seems to have moved into the city. He’s taken captive when several city-state kings overwhelm the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim and Bela/Zoar and plunder the cities. Abraham raises an army and rescues Lot rather than pay any ransom. Abraham also rescues all the women, goods, livestock and all the other captives from the one king that was holding Lot. Most of you will know the rest of the story, understanding that Sodom’s and Gomorrah’s residents were so wicked—not even 10 righteous men were found—that some years later those two cities were destroyed by God. In hindsight, maybe Lot should’ve gone left instead of right...

We often talk about 4 levels of decision-making: Tell, Sell, Consult and Join.

Certainly, in an emergency, disaster or similar situation that requires quick action, leaders should tell their teams what to do; there’s no time for discussion. Poor leaders use this method most of the time, however, demoralizing and not allowing for any empowerment or ownership of the decisions.

Leaders still make the decision in the less urgent situations and sell the teams on how good and wise the leader’s decision is. You’re doing this when you ask for questions about a decision you just announced. You overcome their objections to ‘make the sale’.

Teams have more ownership of the decision when you consult with them. You still retain the decision-making responsibility and in these situations you’re seeking their input. You want to know what they know, see what they see, hear what they hear. You want their perspective and to know what they would do if they had to make the decision.

The highest level of ownership (buy-in) and empowerment occurs by joining them in making the decision. Each team/staff member has an equal vote, including you. It’s tricky in that you don’t want to unduly influence the team and end up with groupthink.

Abraham went to an even higher level and delegated the decision to his nephew and committed to living with the decision. He didn’t renege when Lot went east, as I’ve seen with some leaders. “Oh, I don’t know if you want to do that, Lot. Those cities don’t have a good reputation. There could be some fighting. How about going west instead?” Abraham could have said as a way to exert his own decision-making power.

Similarly, if you want your staff to be really empowered, as one CEO shared with me, stay out of the meetings. Let your staff make the decisions. Delegate authority to them. You might say you trust them, but withhold any power from them. Commit to supporting their decision. And then helping them when they need it—instead of behaving as if you really want to say, “I told you so. I would’ve done it differently. We would have had better success if you’d listened to me.” Leadership gurus often tell us that we need to learn from our mistakes—“fail fast, fail often” is one mantra—but we rarely let our staffs have that opportunity to learn. Take a lesson from Abraham. Be courageous. Delegate decision-making power and be a blessing to all.

Biblical Business Radical: Introduction, part 2

In the previous post, we laid the foundation for how we’re going to interpret and apply some scriptural dictates that may challenge how we operate our businesses:

• Corporate systems in alignment with peace, holiness, justice, love
• Scriptural commands that are communal or national
• Changing our systems as the way to promote our faith

To this I add a few more introductory thoughts. 

• Paradigm of success
• Emphasis on how we conduct business

We need to change our paradigm of success and God’s favor. Too often we correlate God’s favor on what we’re doing with our success (especially wealth):  if we’re making lots of money, God must like what we’re doing; if we’re not, then God is displeased with what we’re doing. Also, we have the word in Jeremiah (though often pulled out of context) that God has plans for us to prosper, even in exile. We also know that only good fruit (profits?) comes from good trees while bad trees produce bad fruit (Matthew 7.17) To counter this argument may take more space than I’m allowing here. If you were a first-century career counselor, you might question if the apostle Paul was in the right vocation, because he was often jailed, stoned, shipwrecked, forcibly expelled from cities. You might also confuse God’s favor with the most powerful nations in biblical times—Assyria, Babylon, Rome—and think that Israel, one of the weakest, most overrun nations in the world couldn’t possibly be worshipping the right god or be really chosen as God’s people. Therefore, wealth, growth and other metrics of success are not the right criteria. God doesn’t look at the external factors of who He favors but looks at the character of His people (1 Samuel 16.7). In addition, there’s this ‘accurate’ portrayal of our circumstances of continuing success or failure: some people are just surrounded by difficulties for their whole life (Job 3.23; note Job 42.7 and God’s acclaim of Job accurately talking about God), and they’re not necessarily the wicked—while lots of other scriptures declaim the prosperity of the wicked. Christ’s praise was given to those who took care of the least, last and lost (Matthew 25) and those who used their talents, not necessarily that they added to the wealth (note that the servant who fell out of favor didn’t use the resources given to him by the master). Good fruit is not an easy life; good fruit is leading other people into a more righteous walk.

In the gospels, John the Baptist and Christ confronted tax collectors and soldiers. They were not asked to change their vocations but to change the way they behaved in their vocation (Luke 3.12; 19.2). Similarly, Christ’s problem with the money changers in the Temple was not the practice of selling sacrificial animals to the pilgrims in Jerusalem for the feasts, but that they were cheating those who needed to buy the animals. Nor did He challenge giving taxes when lawful or legal, we presume (Matthew 22.21) and later in the epistles we have the apostles encouraging submission to the rule of law (“Even completely stopping at stop signs, my Lord?”). On the other hand, Christ and many prophets (Malachi for example) challenged the religious leaders in how they lived in accordance with the scriptures. One couldn’t rely on his/her education, expertise, experience and be safe from the judgment of God; one couldn’t go through the rituals and be safe. One’s heart of seeking the kingdom and being pure (i.e. uncorrupted by the world) was what God would weigh—the pure religion mentioned in Micah and James and the previous post. 

As a Christian running a business, I can’t rely on the company’s success as evidence that I’m doing everything in accordance with the scriptures. To be righteous, I don’t need to get out of the corrupt world of business but I do need to change how I lead and manage my business. This then is the challenge of being a biblical business radical: am I willing, courageous to change how my company operates when our policies and practices match what the world does but doesn’t meet the higher expectations of God as revealed in His scriptures?

A quick note for those who don’t own their businesses but are still interested in these topics because they are the general manager, a director, vice-president, CEO of a company owned publicly or by another firm: some of the principles still apply and where you do have influence I would encourage you to do so. You may not be able to change corporate policy. You may, however, be able to change site policies or certain procedures. You certainly can espouse and promote changes. Indeed, I’ve generated change from lower tiers of early in my career by operating my departments with some biblical models and those departments’ successes created interest in the business practices and then were adopted company-wide. Where there was a conflict with biblical principles and company policy, I either refused, modified its execution or left the company after a period. I was not perfect in this. I was not a perfect, spiritual leader either throughout my career nor now. I am a learning, growing leader. Into this learning and growing journey I invite you.

Biblical Business Radical: Introduction, part 1

The radical, highly sensitive to integrity issues part of me is screaming for more depth.

Businesses owned by a Christian, or a group of Christians, or proclaim to operate under a set of Christian values are lauded by the ‘in’ group: Chik-Fil-A, Hobby Lobby, Wegman’s, etc. There are many others quietly operating as faithfully as they can. Not all prosper as greatly as these large corporations. Often books, articles, blogs, podcasts, etc. focus on their principles. They do have some distinction from other non-faith-based operating principles that most companies operate from. However, many ‘secular’ organizations have recognized the benefits of implementing good business practices that these more publicized faith-based organizations practice:

• Making products/provide services that make the world better; 
• Being environmentally conscious, sustainable, good stewards of the environment; 
• Using profits to fund worthwhile causes;
• Treating employees like family with generous benefits and retention practices
• Creating jobs for the marginalized (i.e. the formerly incarcerated) and impoverished areas worldwide

Additionally, they are touted for standing firm in the face of cultural adversity (i.e. maintaining the Sabbath), overtly stating their service to God and inviting others to join them in their faith walk.

I have found several principles in scripture that would challenge our current, predominant business practices—even in Christian businesses. These are practices like performance appraisals, use of debt, marketing forecasts, disciplinary practices, measuring organizational success, and many more. Some are more subtle like scriptural support for ‘right person in the right seat’ as Collins writes in Good to Great (check out Acts 9.28-31). Or we might be viewing our colleagues with the wrong lens like women as helpmate (laundress, coffee maker, etc.) instead of Helper as God calls Himself when He protects and guides Israel. We business leaders tend to frame everything in terms of profit, shareholders, growth instead of peace (shalom), holiness, justice, love. Then there are practices that seem wholly ignored in the scripture like letting others glean the ‘margins’ of your revenue-producing efforts and letting your revenue-producing efforts go fallow (i.e. idle) in a Sabbath year.

• Corporate systems in alignment with peace, holiness, justice, love
• Scriptural commands that are communal or national
• Changing our systems as the way to promote our faith

Here’s the framework for how we’re going to explore these issues. Overarching is God’s shalom, call it peace, harmony and its impact not only on our souls but also on our communities, our organizations and the world. God says the right religion is ‘to do what is right, love mercy and walk humbly with your God’ (Micah 6.8) and ‘taking care of widows and orphans in their distress and not letting the world corrupt you’ (James 1.27).

Those commands are given to us as groups, as nations, not just as individuals. There are scriptural dictates related to our practices as individuals and we’ll pay attention to them when they apply to our leadership of our organizations. There are also edicts given to the nations that may apply to our corporations more directly.

Churches and Christian businesses tend to focus on changing others’ level of faithfulness (i.e. awareness of spiritual need, conversion, discipleship) and expect then that those individuals collectively will change how society and our corporations operate. Too often we ignore that our witness is confounded by our policies, practices and behaviors. Many people say they like Christ but hate Christians; that means we’re not consistently operating (behaving) the way He would. Christian companies may proclaim their desire to honor Christ and then cheat on their taxes, discriminate in their employment practices, cheat workers of wages (see James 5) in their firms and compel their customers and suppliers to follow suit through negotiation of prices and terms, follow suit with market-based or world-class best practices without questioning the values on which those practices are based. I challenging us to first change our systems—policies, procedures, practices—to augment our personal and corporate witness rather than waiting or procrastinating for the reverse to happen. Instead of business being the platform for expressing our faith, how about having our faith changing the platform? None of this is to diminish the personal call for being a witness, an ambassador of Christ wherever we go and to everyone with whom we travel on a daily basis.

We are salt and light. The world into which we’re called is also our corporations and their communities and networks. What if our corporations could become saltier and brighter by how we operate daring to take to heart the radical business call of scripture?