Episode Details

Do you know the Golden Rule? Jesus teaches it in the Gospels: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31 NIV).

Back when Chris worked at a mortgage company, he heard a senior manager tell someone a different version: "He who has the gold makes the rules." This leader was letting business culture disciple him more than he was letting Jesus disciple him.

As followers of Jesus, we must believe that Jesus knows best when it comes to how to live life and how to do business.

In this final episode of our current series, A Mysterious Business, Chris recaps everything we've discussed in the series up to this point, and then concludes by addressing how sometimes business culture and church culture intersect in unhealthy ways.

Richard Halverson, former chaplain of the United States Senate, once said, "In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise." The original vision of the church was the mystery of Christ. But the church tends to imitate the culture around it, regardless of what that culture is.

So in America, we run this risk—in both business life and church life—of letting the business culture around us tell us what success means. We run the risk of letting what Skye Jethani calls "Church Inc." take over, thinking about success in business terms, like how many people are attending and how much they're giving, without reference to the mystery of Christ.

But the church, at its best, can be a business school. Not by teaching how to do business, but by teaching why to do business. When you are part of a church community that is stewarding the mystery of God's presence faithfully, you learn that that's what matters. And that gives you a why not just for church life, but also for business life. Graduates of the business school of the church ask questions like this: Does my business convey the presence of God in the world? Does it communicate God's love?

A mysterious business is a business that has learned to "do everything in love" (1 Corinthians 16:14 NIV) from the church.

Sources:

Luke 6:31 (NIV)