Video Transcript: "The Marketplace Christian's Primary Mission in Business (Part 2)"

All right, so now that we've talked about some of the things that our primary  purpose as marketplace Christians is not, we're going to talk about what our  primary purpose actually is, and it's all about making disciples. The Great  Commission is not to go into all the world and to make profit. It's not even to go  into all the world and build churches. It's to go into all the world and make  disciples, and not just of individuals, but of entire nations. So as we are  discipling individuals, we can ultimately disciple companies and industries and  entire communities that are affected by our business. And we're going to get into how we can do that here in the next segment. But in this segment, we're going  to talk a little bit more about what does it mean to make disciples, and  specifically to make disciples in the business world. What does it look like to  make disciples in the business world? What is discipleship? Christian  discipleship is fundamentally about becoming more like Jesus and helping the  world around us to look more like Jesus as a result. Habakkuk 2:14, says, For  as the waters fill the sea the earth. What is the Earth? Does it include the  marketplace? Of course it does. The earth will be filled with an awareness of the glory of God. What is the glory of God? The writer of Hebrews tells us that the  glory of God is Jesus, that Jesus, the Son, is the exact representation of the  Father. And so the earth is to be filled with an awareness of Jesus. Is another  way that you could translate this verse, and that's what discipleship is all about,  is becoming more aware of Jesus, becoming like Jesus, and it following Jesus  and becoming more like Jesus as a result of following Jesus. And all of that may sound a little bit too complex, we can distill it down, and the Apostle Paul has  done it for us nicely when he said in I Corinthians 11:1, Imitate me as I imitate  Christ. That is the essence of what discipleship is all about. It's living our lives in  such a compelling way that we are attracting people to Jesus based on how we  live and conduct ourselves in our case, specifically in the business world. So  another question behind this question of what is our primary purpose in  business? We know that our primary purpose in business as Christians, as  marketplace Christians, is to make disciples. And so making disciples means  looking like Jesus and helping the world around us, the people around us, to  look more like Jesus. What does Jesus look like in the business world? Once  again, the apostle Paul has helped us out here, he says in I Corinthians 12:12,  there is one body, but it has many parts. But all its many parts make up one  body. It is the same with Christ. What are these many parts that the apostle Paul is talking about here? You're probably already guessing where I'm going. Here  we're talking about spiritual gifts. These are the different parts of the body that  make up the body of Christ, the hand, the foot, the tongue, every the ear, every  part of the body is absolutely essential, all of the internal organs, all of the cells,  every part plays a role. So what is a spiritual gift? A spiritual gift is a special  ability given by the Holy Spirit through a born again Christian to the people of  God for the purpose of spreading the awareness of the glory of God throughout 

the earth. So I'm going to back up and unpack this a little bit. A spiritual gift is a  special ability given by the Holy Spirit. So we're not just talking about your  natural abilities. We're talking about and yes, you can make the argument that  God made every person, regardless of whether you're a Christian, regardless of  whether you're born again or not, the Holy Spirit was hovering over the waters at creation. The Holy Spirit was involved in the creation of everything that exists  absolutely but we're talking about something that an ability that is uniquely given to a born again Christian. But the next part here is that it's giving. It's given  through a born again Christian. So it's not just giving to you as a marketplace  Christian, so that you can make more money or so that you can be more  spiritual, so they can be more influential. It's given through you to the people of  God. So it's not even necessarily given to your business. It's not even  necessarily given to the culture. It's given to the people of God for the purpose.  Why of spreading the awareness of the of the glory of God throughout the earth. So why are spiritual gifts given? They're not just given for selfish ambition.  They're not just given for us to do better in life or they're better. They're given to  us for the purposes of spreading the awareness of the glory of God throughout  the earth. And we know what the awareness of the goal, what the glory of God  is? It's Jesus Christ, and we just unpacked that on the previous slide. So what is Jesus? He consists of these different parts. This is the language that the apostle Paul has given to us, where we can each understand the various roles that we  play in the body of Christ, but specifically as extensions of the Body of Christ out in the marketplace. Here's some of the examples of spiritual gifts,  administration, there's giving, there's wisdom, there's encouragement. There are all of these different parts that make up Jesus Christ and and so you may  certainly we are all called to do each one of these, but some of them are going  to be more of your default. Some of them are just going to come more naturally.  I mean, you're the person I talked about evangelism in the workplace, in the in  the previous segment. So if you're when you think about marketplace ministry, if  immediately what comes to mind is that I'm going to go into my workplace, I'm  going to pass out, I'm going to leave tracts in the lobby, I'm going to figure out  who I can share my testimony with at lunch, and I'm going to do that every day,  and I'm going to have a plan of action to do that. You probably, my friend, have a gift of evangelism, which is just absolutely awesome. I mean, maybe your gift is  is compassion. And we're going to get into how these different gifts kind of  operate. Maybe you're the person that when there's a sick coworker or maybe  one of your coworkers has a death in the family, you're the person that wants to  go and raise that benevolence fund so that that person can have some just just  know that their company is behind them. Just know that their coworkers are  supporting them through their personal hardship. These are just some examples of spiritual gifts, and there's going to be an assessment that you're going to be  able to take at the end of this unit, and I would absolutely encourage you to do 

so, to find out what your gifts are. So I'm going to take just a couple of these  different gifts, and we're going to look at some examples of what these look like  in the lives of actual marketplace Christians. So when you think of the heroes of  the Christian faith who typically comes to mind, oftentimes it's probably not a  business person, it's probably somebody who stood behind a pulpit, and they  were known for standing behind the pulpit, or they were, they were just kind of  known as sort of the you they they were like the Mother Teresa or the Billy  Graham, or these are the heroes that come to mind. Typically don't think of  business people, and yet, that's 85% of the Christian workforce. So if we are to  truly fulfill God's calling for our lives as marketplace Christians, we need some  heroes that we can relate with. We need some we need to understand more  specifically, what do these various parts of the body of Jesus Christ look like in  action in the business world. So here are a few examples. The first one we can  look at here in the upper left is John Wanamaker. So John Wanamaker and I'm  going to talk he's one of my personal heroes. We're going to talk more about him later on in a couple of the different segments, but John Wanamaker is  considered the father of modern advertising, and he had just a tremendous gift  of hospitality. And when people came into his store, he wanted them to feel just  so welcome that they wouldn't want to leave. I mean, this was a day and age  when people felt very uncomfortable in stores because they were they had to  come in there and kind of haggle. They didn't. There were no price tags on  things. They were just basically the clerk would try to get whatever he or she  could get out of that person. So he invents the department store number one,  which was just this unbelievable, almost like a theme park attraction in his city,  there in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. And He also invented  the the price tag in those days, like I said, nobody knew what the what the price  was when the customer came in, the clerk would just try to get as much as he  could out of that person. And so John Wanamaker says, No, I want people to  feel comfortable. I want them to feel relaxed when they come into my store. And  so we're gonna put price tags on everything so they can come and enjoy  themselves. They can shop and and just feel comfortable. I mean, he would  actually, he'd come up next to a shopper, and he'd have a handful of chestnuts,  and he would give him a few, and they would just kind of walk around the store,  just talking about life, and he would just share some snacks with them. When DL Moody, the great evangelist, wanted to come and do a an evangelistic meeting  at in his city, John Wanamaker said, you can have it at my store. In fact, I'll give  you 300 of my own staff to help work the event as Ushers and so forth. I mean,  that was just kind of his heart of hospitality at work in the business world. And he was just a man of God in the upper right there is my friend, Daniel Gill, if you've  seen the show, American Ninja Warrior, I know some of you who are watching  around the world. There's Ninja Warriors in other countries as well, but he's one  of the great ones here in America's personal friend of mine, and he really walks 

in a gift of healing. And so you can imagine, if you've seen the show, you know,  how many injuries happen because they're just jumping over things and twisting  their bodies in ways that, you know, they just really weren't made to be twisted.  And so he would actually go and pray for people who were in the line as they  were going for these different qualifying events. Somebody would turn around  and say, Man, I just can't make this run. My ankles just really hurt me, and then  maybe they sprained it, or even potentially broke it. And he's got countless  stories of how he would just have this compassionate heart of Jesus and just lay hands on that person and just believe God for their recovery so that they could  go and they can make that run. And he has numerous stories of where these  people were instantly healed through the power of Jesus Christ, as a result of  them stepping out and using, first of all, the name of Jesus, but the gift that God  had put inside of him. There in the entertainment industry in the ninja the  American Ninja Warriors circuit. A friend of mine's name is David, and he's an oil Man. He works on oil rigs. And there was a time when there was a severe safety hazard on his on his rig, and nobody was doing anything about it. And and so  there were these, these pipes that were being lifted that would just crush a  person if they had fallen on them. And they were being lifted, there was, there  were no chains. There was nothing kind of roping off that area. So people were  just kind of walking directly underneath it, and David said he just had a word  from the Lord the God, because God said to him, If you don't do something  about this, David, somebody's going to get hurt. And so David elevated it to his  manager. Nobody really thought, apparently, this is kind of a common thing.  Nobody really thought it was a big deal. So nobody was doing anything about it.  Nobody was taking David seriously. So ultimately, he has to elevate it all the way up to the rig manager. And the rig manager, the highest ranking person on the  rig, says, All right, David, we're going to walk down. We're going to deal with this thing. And so they roped it off so that as people would walk, and they would  come right to the chains. They would take a right, and then they would go  around. They would go on their way. Well, David left for a couple of days, and he comes back to a standing ovation. They were saying, here he comes because  David, because he moved on the prophetic word of the Lord and said, we've got  to do something. But he wasn't the safety guy, he wasn't the highest rank. He  wasn't a manager. He wasn't accountable. In fact, he was accountable because  of the word from the Lord and the fact that he's called to be, again, a royal  priesthood. We're called to protect those that we work with in the marketplace,  and they were they were applauding him, saying, here he comes. Because one  of David's friends on the rig, one of his co workers, had walked right to where  those chains had been put up, and walked around it, and right as he turned  those this pipe fell that would have just crushed the man and would have killed  him. And so because David stepped out on that prophetic word of the Lord, he  saved that man's life. And so that's how prophecy can work in a for profit 

business setting. And the lower right, there's a picture of my friend Ken Eldred,  who really walks in a gift of cross cultural ministry. And so some, not everyone,  is called to that, but and certainly, as we are becoming more pluralistic, where  our countries are becoming more diverse around the world, they're not just the  

people that we grew up with, but people from all different racial backgrounds, all  different national backgrounds, and so he really has a passion to reach out to  people that aren't of his same skin color, that aren't of the same background that he comes from. And so he he likes to go into these and he's a venture capitalist,  and a very successful one at that. I mean, he sold his company for, I think, about $300 million if you've heard of Dell computers, Michael Dell used Ken Eldred's  catalog back in the 80s. He was ordering the computer parts out of it was one of the first mail order computer part catalogs in existence, and Michael Dell used  those catalogs to order parts to be able to build those earliest Dell computers.  And so now Ken has call centers around the world, one notably in India, where  the population there's very few Christians proportionate to the overall Hindu and  Muslim demographics, and he sets up these call centers partners with the local  churches in the area to be able to provide discipleship training for those Young  people, to give them not only professional skills, but also discipleship in terms of their personal walk with God and Bible reading and prayer times and all of those kinds of teaching them the Bible, but then helping them to understand how that  fits into their work life, and then they get that professional experience they can  get then go on and do great things in the marketplace all around the world. So  these are just the four examples of spiritual gifts and what they look like in the  business world. And I want to go back again to the fact that these are the  various parts of Jesus Christ, when the Apostle Paul gives us the language to  talk about, what does Jesus look like in terms of, how are we to represent  Jesus, He gives us the language of the Body of Christ, and that each person  has a different part to play. And because 85% of the Christian workforce, at least here in the US, probably somewhere around the world, 85% of the Christian  workforce works in a for profit business enterprise, and that's where we're called to represent him, and each of these parts is A representation of that body. So  how can you, as a marketplace Christian, discover and surrender your spiritual  gifts? First of all, as I mentioned the previous unit, there is an assessment that I  would encourage you to take, and you can find it here within the course, in the  course syllabus, that there is an assessment where you can find out what your  spiritual gifts are. And the assessment I've taken a lot of spiritual gifts  assessments, the reason why I created this particular one is because  oftentimes, when I've taken these assessments in my often in my local church,  the purpose has been to find out where I can where I'm supposed to volunteer in my local church, and yet, I only spend just a handful of hours in my local church  each week. I'm spending far more hours in the business world. So I wanted an  assessment that kind of took away some of the kind of churchianity type 

language to help really get to the heart of what each one of these spiritual gifts  are and how they operate in the business world. And so as you take this  assessment, it's not just based on we're going to ask you questions, not just do  you think you would. Score high in this area, but what would other people say  about you in this particular area? And so take the assessment. After you take  the assessment, it really should only take you less than probably 30 minutes get feedback from other members of the Body of Christ. So again, when you find out what your probably top three most most prominent gifts are, and again, we're  probably supposed to, we're supposed to use all of the gifts, but there are some  that are going to be more prominent, that are that are going to be more distinctly you and so get feedback from other members of the Body of Christ. Let them  affirm the results that you get in that assessment. And and then the third thing I  would say is to cultivate spiritual fruit to fuel your gifts. So that's a significant  difference between just your natural abilities and your spiritual gifts, because  whether you're a believe, a Christian believer or not, you could be a non  Christian and have a strong, just natural ability of administration and do very  well in the marketplace, and yet Paul talks about a spiritual gift of administration. So what makes the difference? Well, even as a Christian, you could operate in  the natural and administration. It's not a spiritual gift, because it's not being  fueled by spiritual fruit. What is spiritual fruit in Galatians, we find Galatians 5,  that is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness  and self control. So these are the gifts. These are the fruit. Rather that ought to  be fueling your spiritual gifts, because you could fuel your natural talent, your  natural ability with selfish ambition, pride, ego, insecurity, all of those different  things. But what fuels spiritual gifts are the fruit of the Spirit. And again, you can  go back to Galatians 5:22-23 to read more about what those gifts are. You may  be curious about that picture there. There's a painting there of Moses before the  burning bush. And what's happening there is Moses is laying down his staff. And one of the things that's happening there, I should say, and when he lays down  his staff and the Lord says, what is that? He's looking at it there before the  burning bush, it's just a simple stick, but it represented it was much more than  just a simple stick. It represented his livelihood as a shepherd. It represented his identity. It represented really deeply who he was as a person. And so he laid it  all down, and then the next time that he picked it up, it became the Bible. Began  to refer to it as the rod of God, because he had surrendered his identity at that  burning bush symbolically through that staff. And so I would encourage you to  take those gifts and lay them at the feet of Jesus, lay them before God, allow the Holy Spirit to breathe and to empower the the abilities that he has given to you.  Don't rely on on just the flesh, but walk by the Spirit, as we're taught in the book  of Romans. And this is so key for marketplace Christians, because otherwise  we're just going to conform to the pattern of this world, like Paul cautioned us  against in Romans 12. But Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world, but 

be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Yield to the Holy Spirit. Let him  tap into the gifts that he has put into you, because those gifts are what is going  to reveal Jesus to the world, and specifically in the business world. And the next  unit we're going to talk about, what does it look like to run a disciple making  company? Because, again, we're not just called to make disciples of individuals, but the great commission is to make disciples of entire nations and between  individuals and nations. You have companies, so we need to figure that out  together.