well thank you very much I'm really grateful to chance to be here I have admired the work of Redeemer and the faith and work group from a distance for a long time and so to have this privilege of intersecting even a little bit with its work is really quite an honor for me so I'm I'm very grateful for this invitation what I want to talk about this afternoon is what I would call a theology of business kind of how God thinks about business and specifically I want to talk about two big questions why why business why business matters to God and secondly how how should business be done from God's perspective sometimes I think of why and how under the headings of purpose what's the purpose of business and then practice how should business be practiced before I jump right into that though I thought I might begin by giving you just a little bit of sort of team this conversation up with some sense as to why I think right now a theology of business is so critical as was said in the introduction I am the the Dean of a business school and really part of my job then is to get out regularly and to meet with community leaders and because our Business School is affiliated with the Free Methodist denomination I often will meet with Christians Christians in business and Christians who are not in business but who have opinions about business and over now looking back over kind of 10 years of coffees and lunches and breakfasts and dinners some some themes have emerged and and I think three of these themes could be captured as answers to big questions so let me just share those with you first first can ask as a Christian how do you think about business and what has struck me here is the incredible polarity of responses that I've seen from my friends who are not in business typically they will tell me things like business is evil that capitalism is really raping and pillaging the developing world that free trade is a scam that CEOs are lining their own pockets at the expense of the workers that Wall Street's games and gimmicks are bringing down our country that basically business is kind of a bad thing and it's Christians as miles probably shouldn't be that involved with it and at a minimum from a societal standpoint business needs to be tightly controlled when I go and talk with my friends Christians in business however I get a very different picture here I get the picture that capitalism and Christianity are joined at the hip that you would have a hard time slipping a thin piece of plate paper in between them to follow the market is to follow Jesus the invisible hand of Adam Smith is actually the hand of God and if these nattering critics over here and the government would just get out of the way and business could operate in a true free market it would in fact lead us to God's heavenly kingdom huge polarity of use and it does seem to me that what we need in a theology is a capacity for nuance a capacity to sit in the middle of these warring perspectives and to be able to affirm where affirmation is appropriate and critique or critique is appropriate the second question I will often ask just to Christians in business I'll say how does your business or how does your work in business contribute to God's kingdom and the answer that I'll usually get here or at least frequently get will be something like this well Jeff I make a lot of money and I can use my money you know I take care of my family but I also support the church and I support missions and relief organizations I do a lot of good with the money that I make and I absolutely want to affirm that God calls us to be good stewards he calls us to generosity and I get all of that but when I'm in a snide mood I will say you know even bank robbers can tithe you know tithing is a good thing but it doesn't really tell you anything about how God feels about bank robbing per se or in my case about business what I want to know and what I want a theology to be able to do is to figure out how the day to day stuff that we do in business you know the hiring and firing and negotiating leases and playing with a financial instrument and reading a balance sheet the nuts and bolts of business how is it that that stuff matters to God how is that stuff advancing God's kingdom third question as a Christian business what difference does your faith make in how you do your business and here what I often get is a kind of sheepish well Jeff you know business is business it's a little bit like chemistry if you take two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen you put them together you're gonna get a molecule of water and it really doesn't matter if you're a Christian chemist or a non-christian chemist in the CMAs you know business is business everybody has to kind of do business the same way but as a Christian I try to be a little more nice when I'm in a snide mood I refer to this as Enron with a smile it does seem to me often our view of what God calls us to in business is limited to this sort of micro personal level that is you know to be kind to be respectful to act with integrity and we tend to think of the structures and paradigms of business as if they're sort of immutable like gravity or something but that's not true business is a social construct and God cares a lot about how it is constructed and a theology of business needs to be able to be sophisticated enough that it can look at the ways the structures the paradigms of business hold them up against God's values and where they are out of line call business to a realignment so I think a theology of business is desperately needed a nuanced one that can affirm what is good and important about the really intrinsic day-to-day business activities and yet at the same time critique and call into question those places where business is out of whack so purpose and practice my big tube topics let me start with purpose why purpose a business what I really mean by this is if God were to sit back and write a mission statement for the institution of business as a whole what would he put on that mission statement not for any one company but for the whole of business what would God say that's purpose was I remember one time trying to explain this to my dad my dad is a mild mannered quiet kind of honest zooming professor for electrical engineering and I was explaining that our faculty were wrestling with this question of purpose and I could see that my dad was getting more and more agitated and then really in a way that was quite uncharacteristic he interrupts me and he says Jeff come on everybody knows what the purpose of business is it's to make money or as we like to say in a slightly more sophisticated way in Business School to maximize the return on shareholder investment this is what Milton Friedman which business of business is business and that truly is the dominant model of business operative in our world the dominant understanding of business purpose virtually all public corporations run on that model many private organizations run on that model and I can tell you that virtually all of Business School curriculum is built on that model I want to suggest that that model is at best insufficient and probably just wrong and that as Christians we ought to be holding up a different understanding of purpose and let me tell you how I get there we we were as I said faculty gathered around this question of purpose and we thought well let's start by trying to figure out what Scripture might have to say about purpose of business and there'd be different ways that you could get at this but what we found ourselves being attracted to is a methodology or an approach that kind of looks at what I call the grand narrative of Scripture as you know the Bible is composed of lots of different little stories lots of different types of genres but if you stand back and look at it as a whole it tails one big story often described as coming in four different movements creation fall Redemption new creation and so we said well let's take a look at each of those movements and see what we can learn about business that might come out of those and I wish I had enough time this afternoon to kind of take you through all four but I'm really when it came to purpose at least where we started was looking at the creation account this is just really the first two chapters of Bibles Genesis 1 and 2 but we pick that in part because it gives us a glimpse and admittedly only a tiny little glimpse but it gives us a glimpse of what God intended for world before sin got in and messed everything up it's a picture of God's perfect intent and so we thought if we could figure out the purpose that God might have for business coming out of that that might give us a good place to start so we started to make some observations some pretty straightforward observations first we notice that Adam and Eve were assigned work in the garden I start with this because remarkably to me when I talk with Christians many times they have in their mind that work was assigned as a part of the curse because Adam and Eve disobeyed God said now you have to work but really nothing could be further from the truth if you go through the first couple of chapters and you'll see that there's a whole set of responsibilities given to humanity you know ranging from good Tate having dominion over the garden guarding the garden tilling the grand grounds naming the animals it's a collection of seven or eight of these and the theologians put them together and they call them the creation mandate so from the beginning God's intention for Humanity in order to be fully human at least part of our activity is to be engaged in work we are said in the 26th verse of the first chapter to have been created in the image of God now theologians have debated over the years what what exactly that means how could the creature carry the glory of the creator' how could it all happen but you know in a very simple-minded way if you just start at the beginning and you read down to verse 26 you don't know a lot about God except this God's a worker God makes things God creates things and the things he makes and creates he calls good and they have meaning and if you and I are to be made or to reflect the image of God then at least a piece of what that means is that we are to be engaged in work that is creative and meaningful then we made another observation we noticed that work in Genesis was set in the context of relationship you see this first when you think about God if you that same verse the 26th verse of the first chapter that talks about image of God it's actually a quote of God speaking and it says quote let us make man humanity male and female in ow image let us an hour it is a plural statement and it theologians say that really this is the first indication of the Trinity anywhere in the Bible and what it reminds us is that before God did anything God was in relationship in loving relationship in the Godhead and that all tasks all work proceeds from relationship and is intended to come back for the benefit of the relationship and the same was true with human beings God looks down in chapter 2 and he says it's not right that Adam is alone and so he creates Eve not a second Adam but Eve someone with different gifts different abilities different skill sets he puts them together so that out of that relationship their work can flow they can engage in the so called creation mandate and how that work can then come back for the benefit of their relationship and as the population grew it would be to come back for the benefit of the whole what we sometimes talk about for the common good so we were thinking about these ideas and we said hey you know what that's what business does business is particularly well-suited to bring people together in relationship so that they have opportunities in relationship to engage in meaningful and creative work and so we concluded that the first statement that God would put on a mission statement for business is that business exists to create opportunities for individuals to express aspects of their god-given identity in meaningful and creative work then we went back and looked again we noticed again a fairly obvious conclusion that the material world matters to God it's interesting you know we don't actually read anything about God creating souls or spirits in Genesis 1 and 2 he creates real things and each time he creates them he says that's good and when he's done creating the whole thing he says that's very good so material things mattered to God and then we went on to notice that the Garden of Eden was not complete now this actually was a little troubling to me at first because I had always grown up with the understanding that really the Garden of Eden was perfect I mean it's what God made it was perfect how could it not be complete but my picture of perfection was a kind of static picture kind of like a picture in a picture frame and if only if only Adam and Eve hadn't screwed it up by eating that fruit we would still all be walking around the gardens and having grapes fall in our mouth and that was really what God intended but if you look closely you'll see that that's not case the garden was perfect but not in a static sense but in a dynamic sense in the sense that it was perfectly resourced everything that was needed was embedded in the garden but what was intended from the beginning is that God would and you can always have the nuance this word but partner with humanity to bring forth its feel it to bring forth its productivity if you look at the fifth verse of chapter 2 there's an interesting statement he says God's made the fields but as of yet there were no crops why 2 reasons 1 God hadn't sent rain that makes sense but then 2 because as of yet there was no humanity to till the land what appears to have been God's intent from the beginning is that human beings would in some fashion again putting quotes around the word partner with God to take this perfectly resourced environment and to carry it forward now of course God didn't have to do that god I mean if he's you gonna intends if the garden suggests that he's going to use humanity to provide for the needs of this flourishing population through humanity's own work he didn't have to do that he could have for example said I'm going to feed the world on a daily basis by dropping little bread flakes from heaven manna and if that was the case than you and I each day would go out and clap stick our tongues out til we were full come back at lunch perhaps and that you know God did that for a brief period in history but God didn't do that God said you know instead I'm going to create human beings who are capable of pooling their resources we call that capital who can design an oven we call that innovation who can gather supplies from a supply chain who can bake bread that's operations who can put it in trucks that's logistics who can take it out to feed a hungry world and that's the purpose of business when Martin Luther says that when we do the work that God has given us we are become God's hands for providing for the world and as we thought about it we thought you know business business is uniquely well situated to provide the material the material needs of a huge world and so the second statement that we would have on our mission statement is this business exists in order to produce goods and services that would enable the community to flourish broadly we sometimes say it this way business exists to serve but it serves in two dimensions one is a more internal sort of employee looking that is it serves by providing opportunities for individuals to express aspects of their god-given identity in meaningful and creative work and then it has an external dimension we it serves by providing opportunity a tting products and services that will enable the community to flourish and I believe those are the two statements you would find on the mission statement that God would write now you might notice that there's nothing on there about profit or shareholder value or return on investment and a lot of times when I give this talk I get kind of a come-on sort of reaction oh come on Jeff you are the Dean of a Business School for cryin out loud you mean to tell me that your business school doesn't teach about profits and return on investments and shareholder value and efficiencies and all those kinds of things and of course we do we have a pretty conventional business program touch all the kind of major subjects spend a lot of time talking about that stuff but here's the difference we don't talk about profit as the end as the purpose we talk about profit as the means profit is the means for attracting the capital that will enable the business to do what it's supposed to do which is to serve now if you think about this for a moment you'll recognize that I am in a sense turning this dominant paradigm on its head the dominant paradigm says that the purpose of business is really to shove money upstairs to the shareholders and yes most of the time you should be straight with you're customers why because it'll build brand loyalty increase sales more money for your shareholders yes most of the time you should be kind to your employees why it'll reduce turnover keep your expenses down more money for shareholders under the dominant model customers and employees are the means of serving the shareholder and I'm suggesting that from God's perspective it would be better to look at it the other way around that capital is in there to enable the business to do what it's supposed to do which is to serve sometimes when I say that people say come on Jeff you're screwing this up you're mixing up a not-for-profit with a for-profit I mean a not-for-profit yeah that's about service but a for-profit that's well for-profit I say no no you are mixing up purpose and tactics because in some big sense I believe both not-for-profits and for-profit organizations from God's perspective have the same purpose and that is to serve they serve in different ways they serve slightly different constituencies but the big difference in them is a tactical how does a not-for-profit get its money to serve most of the time it comes to people like you and me and say could I have a little more could I have a little more a for-profit runs a revenue generating activity that spins off enough revenues in order to attract the capital that it needs from shareholders from investors different tactics same purpose I mean think of it this would give you another way to think of it it's a supposing you went to a not-for-profit let's us pick a big one no American Lung Association and you found the executive director of the American Lung Association and you said to her why does your organization exist wouldn't it strike you as weird if she said we exist to raise funds wouldn't you expect her to say something more like our organization exists to promote scientific research to end lung disease or something like that you could ask a second question what do you spend most of your time doing uh uh most of the time we're trying to raise funds the same is true for business why does your business exist it exists to serve what do you spend a lot of time a lot of time focusing on making a profit it is hard on a profitable business sometimes people accuse me in this talk of denigrating profit I don't denigrate profit at all I think profit is an incredible important tool it's a tool not an end of the business in this way I think of it as kind of like blood circulating in our bodies if you don't have blood circulating in your bodies you don't need to spend a lot of time talking about service you're dead and the same is true for a business if a business doesn't have profits circulating it's dead and cannot serve it's critically important but which of us really gets up in the morning and says today today I'm going to live for the opportunity to circulate blood we don't do that because it's the means to the end so for me that's really where I come down on purpose of business the purpose of business is to serve in these two key ways by providing meaningful and creative jobs and products and services that will enable the community to flourish what about this notion of practice what do i mean by that well think of it this way imagine it's kind of a word picture imagine that business is like this mighty river of water racing down the hill the destination to which it is heading is in my analogy the purpose of business that's where it's going that's what it's aiming for and as I've just suggested I think getting that right is critically important but here's the deal unless there are levees along the sides of the banks of that River it's going to spill out of its channel and do damage to the surrounding countryside there's just too much water too big a volume and so when I talk about the practice of business I'm really focusing on these levees that is what are the limits what are the constraints what are the boundaries that business must respect while it pursues the purpose I think it's critically important that we both understand both purpose and these limitations and practice let me give you another analogy of thinking about supposing that you invited me to your house to watch a football game unless supposing I said I don't know anything about football I don't think I'll enjoy it very much and you should come a little bit early and I'll explain to you how the game is played and so I come a little early and imagine that you explained to me the whole object of the game to move this funny shape thing from here down to there you get certain number of points you can kick it between the sticks you get more points and whoever has the most points wins surely if you told me all that I would understand the game a lot better than if you didn't I would know what people were trying to accomplish but still there would be lots of stuff I wouldn't understand like why after three tries does the team always kick the ball to the other team this is a question actually if you live in Seattle and watch the Seattle Seahawks you ask with some real frequency but why do they do that why don't the players on the sides just jump out on the guy running down the sideline and knock him down why don't they knock the quarterback down before the balls hike that seems like it would be better defense the problem is I wouldn't know the rules I'd know the object but not the rules now supposing instead I came to your house and you all you did was spend the whole time before we got started talking to me about everything in football that could be a penalty well that would surely help I would understand why there were only 11 players on the field why everybody waited until the ball was hiked I'd understand why but if I didn't know what the whole point of the game was I still wouldn't really get it it's only when I know both the object and the rules the purpose and the limits that I really get the whole picture and so I think it's also critical that we not just talk about purpose of business but we also talk about what are some of the limitations well again returning to the garden story the garden narrative it does seem to me that we have some hints first of all we have a hint that humanity was intended inherently to respect limits in the very identity of Adam and Eve was formed around a limit at the very center of the garden there was a single limit that really in a sense stood for a whole set of limits but the single limit that says don't eat from that tree it was at the center of their identity and in fact in the next chapter chapter 3 the fall really could be described as humanity's unwillingness to live with limits is in other words to be like God they don't want to be limited we were made to deal in the context of limits now what limits might there be inhibit in the garden well one thing is that Adam and Eve were told not only to make the garden productive but they were also told to guard the garden there's a sense that the garden was to be protected and preserved the food that they were given to eat was seed bearing fruit suggesting that they could eat and be satisfied without in any way impinging on the underlying productive capacity of the garden there was a sense and you can pick it up in little hints of Shalom scattered throughout the rest of Scripture so there was a sense in which the garden was to be reserved in a harmonious balance that over time would be sustainable and I'm wondering if this word sustainability might not capture the limits that business needs to operate within now when we talk about sustainable business in the United States most of the time what we're talking about is business interactions with the natural environment is the business imposing more costs on the natural environment than its carrying capacity and therefore doing long-term damage in Europe I'm told that when they talk about sustainable businesses they mean it much more broadly than that and they really mean can the business operate essentially forever in a way that is not taking from any of the stakeholders of the business and that means investors that means employees customers vendors natural environment community any of the stakeholders in business can business pursue its purposes in a way that in effect does no harm it's kind of a Hippocratic oath for business does no harm for it to these stakeholders for example what that would mean with respect to investors a business cannot take the capital of an investor and not pay a reasonable risk adjusted rate of return because otherwise you are using up capital and that's not sustainable with respect to employees it's a critical that businesses pay a living wage why because if a business uses the full productive capacity of an employee uses it up and doesn't pay him or her enough to live on that's not sustainable that can't be sustained it's critical that advertising not create a permanent sense of insatiable desire for a little bit more because that's not sustainable John Wesley when he was giving his general rules for moral living he has two big introductory ones the first was do good I think there's actually his second but one of the two is to do good and that really relates to this purpose that is go out and serve but the second was do no harm along the way do no harm along the way I think really the way to think about business is business is called to pursue these purposes of service but it must choose between a constrained range of options that if chosen will not impose harm on the stakeholders it'll do it in a sustainable fashion and that's really what I mean by practice and so in a sense you've got it now in a nutshell there's obviously if I had more time I'd kind of elaborate from other parts of scripture and so on but in a nutshell purpose of business the practice of business to serve to do it in a fashion that is sustainable now when I get to this point in the talk invariably I pick up that there are people who want to push back or questions critiques and I've done this enough now that I actually know what out the number of those are and so for the balance of my moments here I want to actually respond to some of those critiques it's a little bit like question and answer but you don't get to ask the questions so one of the first critiques is Jeff will this really make any difference I mean because you've already said that business needs to be paying a reasonable risk adjusted rate of return to investors if business does that doesn't the sort of shareholder maximization model really just collapse into your service model don't you basically end up in the same place and if you believe in kind of classical economic theory perfect information perfect rational behavior arguably the Martin with perfect markets it might push you to the same place but nobody lives in that world that isn't that just isn't the real world that we live in and I believe these models will make very different over time because fundamentally you are asking different questions under the modern paradigm the current paradigm a manager and business faced with two choices would be asking this which of these two choices will maximise on a risk-adjusted basis will maximize my roi under the model I'm proposing the first question that the manager should be asking is given the core competencies of my business given the assets under my control how can I best deploy these to serve and those are different questions and over time they will lead to different answers if you want one little example ask yourself what if mock mortgage brokers around the country had instead of been asking how can I make more money for my company had been asking would putting this person in a house they can't afford with a loan that they can't repay really encourage and nurture flourishing in my community I believe if we've been asking that question we'd be in a different place than we are today so that's the first question will make any difference second question I sometimes get is boy Jeff this seems a little far out there you know turning the dominant paradigm upside down aren't you kinda weird and I honestly when we first started this in the business school you know six seven eight years ago I was a little worried I was gonna be the Dean of the flaky business school that you know no one would go to or listen to but what we found actually is that we're not actually way out of the mainstream I don't want to suggest that other people are saying exactly what I've been saying but over the last decade 15 years or so there has been a huge movement in business which if you've missed you've missed probably the most important thing happening in business it is a minority movement it has not displaced the majority paradigm but it is a movement that says business has more purpose than just maximizing the bottom line you see it every way there's a four Fortune magazine's written a book called faith and fortune it's doing little case studies on different companies that are behaving in more of a service orientation and he the subtitle of his book is a quiet revolution in business we had Blake Nordstrom's CEO of Nordstrom's come to speak to our students a couple years ago and he said you know in the 90s we lost our way why because we started focusing on shareholder value you know what we did in the 2000s to recapture our sense of who we were we began to focus on what we knew we should have been doing all along was how can we best care for our customers and you see this in all sorts of different things the CSR movement the stakeholder move and conscious capitalizing Bill Gates compassionate capitalism the writings of the Co Roundtable there's a lot of folks doing this and it's hitting some of the conventional model conventional places as well I came across this quote from Harvard Business Review I say it that way because there's no left-wing flaky little thing this Harvard Business Review and at the IRA the article was called what's a business for but the turn shareholders needs into a purpose is to be guilty of a logical confusion to mistake a necessary condition for a sufficient one we need to eat to live food is a necessary condition of life but if we lived mainly to eat making food a sole or sufficient or sole purpose of life we would become gross the purpose of a business in other words is not to make a profit full stop it is to make a profit so that the business can do something more or better many of you are familiar of some of you may even work for McKinsey and company a very big consulting metrics driven no squishy company there every couple years they do a big global survey of c-level officers all around the world a couple years ago this was one of their key findings unquestionably the global business community has embraced the idea that it plays a wider role in society more than four out of five respondents agree that generating high returns for investors should be accompanied by broader contributions to the public good for example providing good jobs making philanthropic donations and going beyond legal requirements to minimize pollution and other negative effects of business only one in six agrees with the thesis famously advanced by Nobel laureate Milton Friedman that high returns should be a corporation's sole focus so when I suggest that not all these things are exactly talking about this service model that I'm proposing nonetheless it does seem to me there is a huge openness in society now a willingness to say isn't there something else isn't there something better than what we've been working on and it seems to me it gives Christians an incredible opportunity to speak into the marketplace third question isn't this kind of not competitive can this really work on the ground I mean Jeff it makes me feel all warm and gooey inside when you talk to me about service and sustainability but I have to go out day after day and practice against people who are manically focused on the bottom line and are trying to squeeze every last dollar and now those are the people I have to compete with could this really work and when I get this question I feel like I always have to stand back for a moment and say I am never wanting to to understand that I give you this model because it will work because it will make you more money in fact it seems to me that I'm proposing this model because I think it's what God calls you to do sometimes we like to say good ethics is good business and by that we mean if you do the right thing it will redound to the bottom line and the number of times that's true in fact probably most of the time that's true but not all the time sometimes what God calls you to do is going to cost you and that's why we teach ethics in business school not just a second section of strategy this isn't about how to make more money it's about how to do the right thing so I'm not gonna promise that in every case doing what business God's Way will redound to a better bottom line now that's a caveat set that aside for a moment because in this context I actually think the model I'm proposing is likely to be very competitive in today's market why what else there's several reasons well let me just focus on one most people today believe that the real value of companies is no longer found in the assets you can look at on a balance sheet but is really found in the creative energies and juices of the workforce and if you want to get the most out of your company what you really want to do is to energize your employees to bring their best to the workplace now imagine this scenario natchan you're in Seattle Monday morning you gather your team around you at Seattle that means it's grey it's kind of speedy sort of rain this it's early they haven't got their lattes yet they're all kind of sitting around the table and you say to them today today I want you to go out there I want you to leave it all out on the table I want you to give me every last ounce of creative juice you've got one of them goes why so that we can maximize the return on the shareholders investment I don't know about you but not very inspiring to me today most leadership is really inviting or the most of the education around leadership is inviting leaders to find ways to connect the passions of their employees with the work of the business to find ways to help their employees understand that they are not just working for themselves that they are not just working for their company that they are working for something bigger and better some of you know Jeff Immelt CEO of GE a few years ago he said this he said to be a great company today you also have to be a good company the reason people come to work for GES they want to be about something that is bigger than themselves they want to work for a company that makes a difference a company that's doing great things in the world some of you may have read Jim Collins work good degrade is a very popular book he wrote one before that didn't get quite as much press called built to last but same basic model what he did is he looked across a whole slug of different industries and in each one he picked out what he called the gold medal winner and then the silver medal winner the gold medal but these were both measured on long-term financial returns so the gold medal was the best in the silver medal was nearly as good but not the best and so he stood then stood back and looked across all of these industries and said is there any consistent themes that seem to consistently explain the difference between the gold medal and the silver medal companies and he comes up with about five or six but the one that he says has the highest correlation is this the gold medal companies never focused about profit they didn't talk about profit they didn't call their companies to be more profitable they focused on mission they focused on what they were trying to do now they were very very profitable but their focus was on mission in this day and age every company has a mission statement as you know many of these are just paper that hang on the wall and most people don't even know what's on them but some companies some companies truly try to run their businesses on the mission and at that least at that time he was singling out certain of these gold companies for example he picked on Sony and he said Sony here's its mission statement Sony exists to establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation be aware of their mission to society and work to their heart's content or hewlett-packard Hewlett Packard exists to make a contribution to society by designing developing and manufacturing the finest electronic equipment for the advancement of science and the welfare of humanity my favorite one is Johnson & Johnson this company exists to alleviate pain and suffering imagine getting up what are you gonna do at work today honey I'm gonna go in and alleviate to pain and suffering if you could get a sense that the work you are doing connects to something bigger or better I actually believe that's likely to bring forth the very best from your employee base I actually think this model would likely do very well on the ground in this day and age one last question and I'll take your questions why do I think this is so important why have I spent so much of my last decade working on this and I really think there are two reasons I feel this way one is kind of more in inwardly looking in particularly in America we are experiencing a huge crisis of meaning in the workplace this day a recent Harris poll said this one in five one in five American workers sees any connection between the work they do and their organization's goals one infant in a second in fact one in five care at all about their organizational goals you put those two together and it says to me we have a very small of our workforce in America that is doing anything day in and day out that they think has any meaning that they care about and as I suggested at the front end I think this is particularly true for Christians in business in part I think the church hasn't done as good a job as it might have in trying to help Christians in business understand the truly intrinsic value of their work as long as we see our value as you know making money so that we can go out and support what is really God's work you know missionary sort of stuff it renders the work that we do which for most people is a hundred thousand hours of their life as kind of meaningless spinning of the wheel that's not the way God looks at it if we could help Christians understand that the day to day stuff they are doing if oriented towards service is constrained by sustainability is advancing God's kingdom here on earth it seems to me it would animate it would give us a greater sense of the nobility of the calling that we have as Christians in business second reason I think this is so important this is more external our world is facing enormous problems we have 20% of the world still living in extreme property we have 25,000 children dying every day of largely preventable causes we have a natural carrying capacity of our world that is being threatened water air temperature whole continents are ravaged by aids and other epidemics ethnic tensions and hatred seem to be on the rise around the world we are facing huge problems and the organizations that are typically the ones looking at those government's United Nations NGOs I believe are overwhelmed I believe that over the next 50 years for good or for bad the institution that is likely to have the biggest impact on shaping the world that we live in it's going to be business it's going to be business because frankly the world business owns too much of the world's assets and it's reaches now to above nations to supranational to be controlled by any one nation and so for good or for bad business is going to shape the world we live it if business leaders still insist on seeing their purpose as simply focusing downward on maximizing the returns to their shoulders from their business I don't think these big problems are going to be solved but if instead business leaders were invited to say how can I operate my business profitably as a business how can I my business but aim it directed at some of the big problems facing my community facing my world I think we would see huge changes I think business leaders are poised to be incredibly effective world changers they have all sorts of skills they're the best at getting a lot out of little they organize and deploy our resources with remarkable efficiency they tend to be optimistic they tend to look for that win-win solution when other people are just seeing everything in the terms of trade offs they tend to be people who once they think they're onto the right course are willing to stick with it in the face of enormous obstacles I think the world desperately needs business to get engaged and I think business matters to God that's why I would invite you to pray with me a prayer that Jesus taught his disciples not the Lord's Prayer but in Luke 10:2 he says this he says the harvest is ready ask the Lord of the harvest therefore to send out workers into his harvest field those aren't just pastors and those aren't just missionaries pray that God will send business leaders out into the world he loves thanks very much you