Is Business God’s Business?

TROWEL & SWORD

Laurie Skilton
Laurie is an Anglican minister in Western Australia who is now earning his bread as a senior business manager. Taken from ON BEING with permission

“If I ran my business like you run yours, I’d be out of work in no time. I want some truth about my order.”

“Don’t tell me lies, you didn’t do the installation properly in the first place. Once you get the money you don’t care what happens to us. Have you people forgotten that we are the customers?”

“Your company promised to pay my bill last week and I haven’t been paid, so I am not supplying anything more.”

This is the normal Monday-to-Friday pressure for business people.

Modern industry pressure encourages business people to express anger at times, and they are probably getting the same anger and hostility from their customers and suppliers. This anger is often short-lived and on the surface. Customers may be furious; using strong and emotive words, even threatening with legal action. But once the goods have been received, they behave as if everything was most satisfactory.

This symbolic ‘stamping’ is part of the behavioural environment of business, as cultural anthropologists have often noticed. The temptation for the Christian in business is to play the same game.

“Now we have the customer on the back foot, we can enjoy it a bit.” said one of the sales team with a sense of satisfied payback. However, the Christian must consider whether the motive of payback is appropriate to the gospel.

This world of business strives to take charge of the Christian. On Sunday he or she may enter the comfortable envelope of the church, only to be sent back into the business environment on Monday at 8.30 am as if Christ never even happened. He or she is up-front, fighting to gain some advantage in a world where people are pitched against each other in the pressure tank of emotion and stress.

On Sunday the preacher may speak of the victory of God in the lives of Christians who may be encouraged with the knowledge that God is in control, that he reigns as head of his people and as the Governor and Ruler of all things. On Monday the emotional lift evaporates as soon as the telephone rings.

The Word of God says: “...everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” (1John 5:4-5)

In other words, the telephone challenge and the stress should not overcome the Christian. The Christian is to be in charge as Christ’s representative in the knowledge that Christ rules the world.

“Lead us not into temptation”, we pray in the Lord’s prayer, or as it can also be translated, “keep us from the ultimate testing”. On Monday the Christian will discover whether the time of testing is to be a success or failure.

Telling the truth

Honesty is essential in Christian business and it must be seen as the mark of any company associated with Christ. We must tell the absolute truth.

There is the truth about the products to be sold, their standard and availability. Then there is the truth about employees, their standard of performance and their integrity within the purpose of the company. As well, there is the verbal communication of truth by employees at all levels of the company.

Not even avoiding the truth should be permitted, even if it means losing a customer. It is tempting to let the customer or supplier misconstrue a message by offering oblique side-stepping answers, but that is also lying. Truthfulness involves acting in truth. It is easy to avoid calls or contacts when the going is tough. The salesman or manager must simply tell it as it is.

Truth is vital and most difficult to face for a Christian in the work place. Jesus makes the point that Satan is the father of lies. Lies are used to protect the speaker from difficult situations or immediate accusation.

Salespeople are able to lie without knowing it. Telling the truth is sometimes a threat to the possibility of a sale. When a half-truth slips out, it is not considered a lie, but merely stretching the point. “After all, we’ll probably have the goods by then or at least soon after-and we’ll be able to cover ourselves in the meantime.”

For a sales and marketing organisation, everything must serve the sale. There is a basic flaw in this position for a Christian, since we are not about sales but about people for whom Christ died.

The person as well as the product is to be in focus. This means that the sales person must be as concerned to address the needs of the customer after the sale as before it. It is the customer that is the focus of value, not the product. The product must be of the highest standard and offered with the highest possible service.

Christians are as apt as anyone else in the workplace to forget this sense of all pervading integrity. Life tells us to get the world’s values onside to make sales. A salesman came to us selling socks. They were presented as a quality product, nicely packaged and offered at a good price, and my wife bought some, but wearing these socks soon showed up the lie in the sale. The socks were so hard that they squeaked in the shoes, and so poorly made that the toe area was transparent after one wearing.

The lie was possible because of some unscrupulous business entrepreneur, but it was perpetuated because the young salesman was able to submerge his personal integrity for the small commission he would be paid.

Is the lie built into our philosophy of sales and marketing?

Some theorists have seen selling and marketing as founded on questionable principles. New technology and new products are sold because a need is created for them. This ‘need creation’ is a subtle process of making a customer think his difficulties may be solved with the product offered.

Good selling requires the sales person to listen to the customer and address needs with possibilities. However, the potential customer may not have been aware of these needs before the salesperson appeared.

Even the process of determining the potential needs of a prospective customer is somewhat subversive. The salesperson is able to subvert the status quo of the potential customer because of his or her sales experience and the ability to persuade from a position of knowledge.

We can always argue that we are doing a service, improving the quality of life or making the customer’s business more efficient. All this is true by the values of the modern consumerist society.

Why have anything to do with sales and marketing?

Why are we unable to remain satisfied with the way things are? If we could be satisfied with the way a car was in 1960, we could be doing quite well financially. We wouldn’t pay for the new look and probably get around a lot cheaper.

I remember saying something like this to a businessman some years ago when I was happily enclosed in the protection of the parish ministry. “You would put people out of jobs if ideas like that got about,” he said. When I mentioned that I did my own car servicing, another businessman was most scathing and asked if I had given a thought to the local automotive repair industry.

We cannot separate ourselves from the world. We must accept its rules if we are to maintain a social order. Sales and marketing is an essential element of maintaining that order. Without it we would not have the continuous production and employment our society requires.

There is nothing wrong with generating the market for goods. However, our ethic must not be generated from the market, but from the God in whose presence we operate.

To be generated out of God

“For whatever is born of God overcomes the world.” (I John 5:4 NKJV) To be born of God means to have been “generated out of God”, as the Greek puts it. The Christian in industry must be the one generating all activities out of God. The very presence of the Christian in the work environment is the presence of the risen Christ.

It is a sad reflection on many “Christian” businesses that they are regarded as having no greater integrity than any business without the fish sign or religious tag.

The Christian organisation must be an extension of the Christian presence in a hostile world. If a company is to be “Christian”, then the leadership must ensure that the public acts of the company reflect the values of the kingdom of God.

Such an intent requires discipline and honesty. The Christian organisation must learn to see its customers and suppliers as people who are loved by God.

This means the Christian entrepreneur must ruthlessly examine every operation and every employee. No one can remain in a position unless the standard of work and honesty is appropriate to the Kingdom.

Firm and compassionate management is the style for Christians. Accountability of all employees with regular and honest reviews should be the norm.

The management must mean what it says and keep to what it means. Employees must have clear, godly communication that leaves no room for misconception. God is a God of order, and a Christian management should have order in its affairs.

Salespeople should be prepared to forego business if they cannot honestly say whether the goods are or are not in stock at the time. Suppliers should know they will be paid according to the agreed schedule and know that the agreements will be met.

If the business is unable to operate within its financial or organisational parameters, then it is probably too cumbersome or too large for effective management. The management should be prepared to take a cost benefit analysis of the whole organisation and make changes that will enable the organisation to operate within the expectations of the Kingdom.

Managers who claim Christ in their life must practice the presence of God in the midst of the daily crisis. The Christ of the New Testament did not labour with people who would not walk with him. He let them walk away.

The Christian entrepreneur must be very sure he or she is working only with the range of products, services and customers that are appropriate for a viable business. The entrepreneur must be aware of the temptation to do anything and supply anything if it offers possible returns. Such stretching of resources outstrips the known risks and opens the possibility of failure.

The Christian in management must be able to manage risks, as Jesus did. He knew the risks involved in the incarnation, and he knew the risk of taking Judas on board. But Jesus knew also what the outcome would be. We should know possible outcomes before accepting a risk. Honest analysis of the business to identify the core of expertise and business is an essential defence against unreasonable risks.

Once the core business is identified, it must be consolidated and non-core activities of sales should be contracted out.

Decision making

Decision-making is at the heart of Christian management integrity. A company will flounder without clear decision-making; this is part of the way God orders human affairs.

Procrastination should be regarded as a sin requiring vigilant attention. Putting off decisions gives the devil every opportunity to gain a footing. This is how procrastination works: a salesman has lost the discipline of well-organised behaviour and regularly lets customers down. The manager knows that this is happening, but he may be so impressed by the apparent sales performance that he decides not to address the matter.

It is more unpleasant for the manager to confront a colleague who may argue the position, than it is to deal with customer complaints.

Time goes by and the situation deteriorates. At each point of conflict the manager has to decide if and when to face the problem. Once the problem has been put off, it is easier to keep doing so, and the possibility of addressing the person concerned becomes more distressing.

The lack of immediate action clouds the issues. The salesman’s unfortunate behaviour appears less serious. It is possible for the manager to argue that these concerns are now only minor problems. In reality they are major ones for a Christian organisation, as they address the fundamental principle of Christian behaviour and values.

The consequence of this procrastination is that eventually the problem reaches mammoth proportions. This is simply because the lie of the salesman’s performance has been maintained by the management.

Irving L. Janis and Leon Mann (Decision making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice and Commitment, New York Free Press 1965 pp 143-145) have identified four defective problem-recognition and problem-solving approaches: relaxed avoidance; relaxed change; defensive avoidance; panic.

A Christian cannot allow these defective decision-making patterns to continue; it is his or her responsibility to counter all such behaviour with truth even when it hurts. Only then can God be glorified in a Christian’s business practice.

Body ministry

A Christian entrepreneur is also part of the Body of Christ. His business is a vital activity of the local Body.

Christian ministers should be invited into the industries of their flock and as much as possible spend time participating in the actual hands-on activities of business.

The greatest opportunity open for a minister who wishes to be evangelistic is to spend some time in business. No better training could be offered a minister of religion than for a while to be a salesperson in the vanguard of business experience.

Personal awareness

To overcome the oppression of being in business, the Christian worker should develop a discipline of remembering who he or she is in Christ at regular points in the day – and especially at points of crisis. This is a discipline that should be supported by the worker’s pastor.

While involved in day-to-day work, a discipline of prayer is not an option for the Christian in business – it is a requirement from the Lord. Without it, a Christian should seriously consider whether he or she should bear the name.

There is a story of Alexander the Great, well disposed after a successful battle, asking a young deserter his name. “Alexander, Sir” was the reply. The furious Alexander came back with the charge, “Change your name or change your nature!” So it should be for Christians who do not shape up as disciples of Christ in the modern world of business.

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