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Doing Business God's Way
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Preface
This book is based upon a simple assumption: The way God runs His Creation qualifies Him as the most prominent and productive businessman of all. When Christian business professionals see this reality and begin to operate their businesses the way God does His, then it will radically change them, what we call Christianity, and the entire world in the process. This book establishes a Biblical foundation which can strengthen and uphold the free enterprise system, and help bring the kind of changes for which those, who long for freedom and true justice, are compelled to give their lives.
Today we face many crises. None of them is more basic than the answer to this question: How should mankind justly care for the Earth’s resources and distribute its wealth? If Christianity really is God’s message to the world, and the Bible is His “manufacturer’s handbook,” then scripture must address this most fundamental question of human concern. Has our Maker established laws governing our labor, our currencies, our productive justice, and other general laws related to what we commonly call “economics?” If so, how do they work? Does the Bible address those laws? What are the penalties for individuals, businesses, and nations breaking those laws? This became the basis of my original search and my subsequent teaching. The answers to these questions are in this book.
As might be expected, Jesus said it most clearly, “…for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” If you find my treasure, you find my heart. This is the most basic of all truths and the foundation of all studies of human nature. The study of hearts and treasures is all about economics and all about business. Christianity is, indeed, about the study of man at his most basic level and the God who made him so.
The world is rapidly changing right now, mostly for the worse, and mostly without Christians leading in the change. That will begin to alter. It must! Doing Business God’s Way is a shot fired across the bow of the Church designed to challenge and motivate her business professionals to help lead in that transformation. They, more than any other group of believers, will help redefine the way the earth does business in the coming years. I have seen this prophetically, and I know something else as well: Whoever produces both capital and human justice will lead in the 21st century. Enter, ALMIGHTY, HIS SONS, AND HIS DAUGHTERS. The Ultimate Manager and His kids are about to radically alter human history once again.
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Introduction
Economic Evangelism: Catching the Fish with Their Own Food
“And He said to them, ‘Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.’” Matt. 4:19
God’s plan to change the world is Himself. He has created the world, and He will change it primarily through His people, who are commonly called “the Church.” The word Church comes from the Greek word “ekklesia,” which literally means those elected and called out to rule. Those of you familiar with Greek history know about the role of ekklesia in Greek politics within the city-states. They were the rulers and the business managers of their culture. The Church is supposed to be an army of rulers, hence the Holy Spirit chose the word “ekklesia” to describe her. This is no small truth.
Rulership has always been connected with managerial responsibilities. How can a man rule in the ekklesia (church) of God if he isn’t a good ruler in his own home over his family? Before you establish the rules and a plan for how things are designed to operate most effectively and efficiently, you need rulership. Is God a ruler? Obviously! Does He have a plan by which men and nations operate most effectively and efficiently? Yes, yes, and yes! He has a plan called His “gospel;” a detailed blueprint of it called the “Bible;” a work force designed to implement His plan called His “Church;” and a C.E.O. called the Holy Spirit who is everywhere at once. What a potential operation! The major problem is the work force—the believers. They don’t understand the work project because they have focused on their retirement benefits in the future and in Heaven. Clearly they should focus on the work project God has given them to do on Earth.
Alas, God’s employees have been told by many of their leaders that what really counts is the retirement village in Heaven and not the passion and challenge of contributing to His enterprise here on Earth. Let me ask those of you who manage or hire people what you would think about the character and motivation of a prospective employee whose primary focus was on the benefits and retirement plans of your organization. Would you really want to hire such a self-oriented person? Can you now see why so much of Christendom is in such an apathetic mess? We’ve focused on the retirement plan and therefore attracted self-interested people. The go-getters in the world look down their noses at us. The corporations snatch up the very kind of people Christ says belong to His Kingdom enterprise, namely, “…and violent men take it (the Kingdom) by force.”
God not only has a business plan, but he has extended it out into the ages to come and preplanned each step before He created His worlds. His children shall be working with Him forever. He is not in a hurry because His primary product is the quality of life and maturity that His employees and co-workers are experiencing with Him as He is extending the influence of His business (Kingdom). This is a major principle and one that you and I, as apprentices, are expected to understand, practice, and master. God’s business plan is designed to produce proprietorship and maturity in His business partners. Any family, business, church, or nation building on this principle will be blessed by God and prosper since He is into blessing people who run their businesses the way He runs His. But we are getting ahead of ourselves, and right now we need to refocus on God’s overall business plan.
Jesus was amazed that His earthly family guardians, Mary and Joseph, were full of anxiety concerning His whereabouts. Parenthetically, how would you like to have been responsible for losing God? Talk about poor stewardship! In any event, His response to them when they found Him in the temple conversing with the leaders, was a classic: “Wist ye not that I must by about my Father’s business?” Frankly, Jesus, no! We didn’t know your Father had a business or that you could possibly frame your work in such a down-to-earth and possibly even carnal way so as to talk about God as a business person.
Is the “business orientation” talk of Jesus inconsistent with the rest of His message? Hardly. Consider this, please: There are more parables concerning the stewardship of material goods and personal talents in the New Testament than concern Heaven or any other single topic. God is not only materially oriented; He invented all matter and owns it all to boot. He has an earthly business franchise. He intends to return someday in person and then extend His employee/joint owners’ influence into the rulership and management of all that He has created. He has an evil unrelenting competitor named Satan whose rival operation has seized much of the Earth. Satan has been largely unchallenged by Almighty’s sons because they thought the retirement plan was the issue, not the earthly franchise. And to make it all the more practical, both Satan and God are competing for the market share of the people who make up Earth’s population. The undecided and the ignorant are evangelism’s goal. God created them and, as a loving Steward, wants them functioning as He intended.
So how should we go about “fishing” for them on God’s behalf? After all, Jesus said that He would make us “fishers of men.” What are the fish feeding on? They aren’t biting much on retirement plans, I’ll tell you that for sure. No, they’re feeding on the practical issues of life such as these:
How can I best provide for myself and my family?
How can I live in safety and protect myself, my family, and my property from violence, theft, confiscation, and social collapse?
How can I make and maintain real, meaningful relationships?
How can the system I live in provide security, justice and economic opportunity?
These are the kinds of questions people all over the Earth are asking and precisely the kinds of questions we Christians are not answering. We are refusing to look away from the future retirement plan of our gospel to be able to deal with these here-and-now questions. They seem too carnal and earthly. However, if we truly care for people (the fish), why do we insist that they eat what we want to feed them, instead of giving them the things for which they hunger? Christians are the only fishermen I know who demand that the fish change their feeding habits, come to the sporting goods store (our church), and voluntarily put the hooks in their own mouths! Here is my point. The nations are looking for people with a plan for how to live successfully here on this Earth. This issue is not on what should the unsaved be feeding, but rather, on what are the feeding.
The three most important issues in the U.S. 1992 Presidential election were these: economics, economics, and economics. Where people’s treasure is, there will their hearts be also. This preoccupation with the practical is not all bad since God and His gospel are immensely practical. What’s truly unfortunate are Christians who live in the real world, but refuse to deal with the real issues in it. This is tragic because it misrepresents God and because it allows the evil world system to exploit people and take away or prevent them from experiencing freedom, growth, and productivity. And it is likewise unacceptable because it shrouds the retirement plan in future promises, rather than in God’s demonstrated effectiveness in the here-and-now business of this life. If God’s gospel doesn’t work now, here on Earth, why should we expect unbelievers to trust in it for a future richness of life in Heaven?
But, God’s business plan will unfold as His people begin to see how serious He really is. He’s in the business of overcoming the competition, closing the deal on the uncommitted fish, and demonstrating the obvious superiority of His principles of life in the one realm which preoccupies the whole world: the just provision for our lives (economics).
I believe economic evangelism is the next major wave of the future for a number of reasons:
1) Economic issues are a universal bait of all people;
2) The gospel clearly explains how to follow the manufacturer’s (God’s)
purposes for people and His uses for the created order;
3) God’s laws of personal and corporate freedom, dignity, growth, and justice
operate perfectly in a self-rewarding and competitive environment, and lastly;
4) Christians have access to God’s wisdom to deal with all of the above, and
we are operating in a massive seller’s market of desperate human need.
What a dynamite situation! All we have to do now is better understand Father’s business plan and put it into operation in our own lives and places of responsibility.
Doing Business God’s Way is an introductory study to the master principles of management, growth, and productivity that God has revealed in His Word. May we see and practice these principles. The nations are waiting for us as they flounder in the grip of tyranny, confusion, and systems of economic mismanagement that can only fail and oppress them.
Our Journey Together—Progressive Truth Will Guide
This book is divided into two sections. Section One deals with the theological issues affecting the individual believer and his or her role in the marketplace, and Section Two takes those same issues and principles and shows how they, of necessity, must affect the political world in which we live. We move from the private to the public.
If truth doesn’t work at home it isn’t truth. If truth doesn’t work in the marketplace, it won’t work in Congress or the courts either because something is fundamentally wrong with it. Stated positively, if principles work at home and in the marketplace, they will work equally well in governing a nation with order, justice and productivity.
Section One attempts to explain how a clear understanding of God’s vision for His children and their work radically changes our personal lives and releases us into a whole new world of creativity and freedom.
Section Two assumes two things: 1) we’re losing our current freedom because we’re rejecting even the historic truths we did have, and; 2) you and I want to reverse this slide into chaos and economic bondage by practicing God’s truths in the marketplace and electing leaders who will do so in our public institutions. Both issues lie squarely at the feet of Christians. Indeed, believers are to be Almighty’s mouth, hands, and feet on this Earth, for they are stationed here to operate His earthly franchise.
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Back Cover
Doing Business God’s Way is a study of how God manages His resources so that we can begin to manage ours the same way. It is a book about applying God’s building principles to both ourselves and our culture.
Doing Business God’s Way provides an introduction to eleven master principles of management, growth, and productivity to help us see that Biblical Christianity truly brings life and increase to all that it touches.
Doing Business God’s Way addresses and answers these kinds
of questions:
1. Since the Church is God’s primary earthly resource center, what should it
be producing here on Earth?
2. Why did Jesus teach that the way to our hearts is through our treasure?
3. How can changing the way I take care of my own life help change the whole
world?
4. What is “economic evangelism,” and why is it going to change the Earth in
the next century?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dennis Peacocke is founder and president of Strategic Christian Services, Inc., a non-profit corporation that aids leaders in discovering how to apply Biblical truth to churches, business, and culture. He teaches widely in the Americas, Europe, and New Zealand. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, former research economist, and business owner, Dennis was ordained to the ministry in 1973. He resides in Santa Rosa, California with his wife and three children.