4 Resources To Help You Pastor Your Business People Better

• Blessed2Bless Bible study; a 10 lesson small group resource for you and your business people. I have had pastors tell me that they pillaged the materials for sermon notes, others use it as a Sunday school curriculum.
• Eden Inc; God’s Global Plan for Enterprise. A book I wrote in 2004. Ebook: Yours FREE here. Just use the offer code “pastor.” Also available on Amazon.com
• B2B Groups; a small group template (yours FREE). It can be an outreach to the community. You could adapt it for your needs.
• BResearch; As a Strategist for the Regent University Center for Entrepreneurship, I wrote a paper on the history of the Kingdom Business Movement and conducted a survey in 2014. The survey showed that most business people don’t feel adequately pastored or equipped for their vocational calling. See – article and survey results are here. This can help you understand the felt needs of your business people.
• Contact me for business how-to resources and business training solutions.

Pastoring Your Business People

Most of the marketplace believers in our churches don’t feel pastored, but we have an opportunity to change this. I am encouraged to hear more and more pastors talking about this subject.

In 2014 I conducted some original research into the kingdom business movement. View the results here. We had 259 respondents from 26 countries. 91 of the respondents self-identified as “champions” of the Kingdom Business Movement. As such, it is likely that they migrated to churches that were more business friendly than the average church. Here are some interesting findings:

• 42% said my pastor is “only slightly” or “not interested” in Kingdom Business. Where Kingdom Business is defined as “Any intentional or organized effort to advance the concept that business can and should extend the Kingdom of God.”
• Only 17% said they are equipped for their vocational calling in their church.
• Only 48% reported that their pastor preached at least once on the subject of work. However, It should be noted that prior to this survey the commonly quoted survey was 10% so this is an improvement.
• When asked what kinds of resources they would find most helpful: Business How to, and Kingdom Business Bible Studies topped the list.

Why you want Kingdom Business Champions in your Church

The respondents were asked to rate themselves on certain “practices” such as:

• Pray over business strategy and decisions
• Pray with employees and other managers
• Try to discern God’s will for the business
• Incorporate biblical truth into organizational goals
• Incorporate biblical truth into vision and mission statements
• Study Scripture to discover and apply truth to the way I run my business
• Recognize God’s ultimate ownership of the business (My stewardship)
• Give generously to extend the kingdom
• Provide life improving products/services
• Share faith with others at work
• Share faith with customers
• Conduct business with biblical integrity
• Apply the golden rule (Do onto others).

Cultural Differences Between the Flock and the Firm

Learning the culture and speaking their language!

A sociological view of culture would break culture down into Ideas (and Ideals), Norms and Material Culture (and technologies). I have had the privileged of working in both the church and in business for over 25 years. One of the things that I have come to realize is that there are some cultural differences.

When I returned from being a missionary in Africa and started my MBA studies in 1999 the Lord spoke to me and said “welcome to language school.” He also spoke to me about “contextualizing” (a missiological term) for business people, and gave me 3 keys:

• Communicate in terms of Return on Investment (ROI)
• Communicate in terms of Innovation
• Engage them in their proficiency. (i.e. value what they do not just what they make).

I have started and stopped work on a scholarly article on the topic of cultural differences between the Flock and the Firm half a dozen times over the years. Probably because every time I try to narrow it down I feel that I am making sweeping generalizations – too many nuances. Nevertheless, there are often differences between the flock and firm in cultural Ideals (a combination of ideas and norms) with regards to:

• Goal setting
• Use of fiscal resources
• Leadership promotion
• Decision making
• The forming and keeping of relationships
• Planning and execution cycles
• Distribution of resources
• etc.

As a missionary trainer I would always say to missionaries “If you want to know about someone’s culture, take the role of a learner and ask them to teach you.” We call it ethnographic research. I think the principle serves us well in pastoring our business people: engage them in dialog – learn from them. If you are willing to learn what they can teach you, they will typically reciprocate and open the door so that you can teach them what they need to learn from you.