Dept. of Business Administration

Business Department Majors Meeting

September 4, 2009

Amy Sherman, Senior Founding Consultant for the Trevecca  J. V. Morsch Center for Social Justice, took some time during the latest Business Majors Meeting to share her insights and wisdom with the students. She spoke about how to use one’s business talents to further the Kingdom of God. Some of her key points are found below.

“My goal is that you’ll leave here with at least one new thought in your head on our topic – which is about using your business talents to further the Kingdom of God. I represent Trevecca’s Center for Social Justice and it probably comes as no surprise that the theme verse for the Center would be Micah 6:8. This is God’s call on us – on ALL of us -- to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with Him. You business types have a gigantic sphere of opportunity when it comes to living out Micah 6:8…As future businesspeople you will have incredible opportunity and power to change the world for good, for the advancement of God’s kingdom values of justice and peace and beauty and wholeness.”

                Some of the ways Amy suggested that the students could advance God’s kingdom values in business include:

• Running an ethical, responsible local business in the community. I think we as Christians should be more attentive to this so-called pedestrian good and also more appreciative of it. If you are honest and responsible, and you treat your employees and customers fairly, and from the proceeds of your business you raise a Christian family and support a Christian church that spreads the Gospel in word and deed, you will have done well.
• A Kingdom business owner can create a little bit of beauty and pleasantness for his/her customers. Loving your neighbor and treating him/her as you would like to be treated is a key way to run a Christian business. When we go the extra mile to show care to people, they sometimes ask us “Why?” And that is the opening for sharing about Jesus, to tell them how He has treated us with kindness and how we want to pass that along.
• Another part of doing justice involves creation care since we are called to steward the earth.
• Hiring people that perhaps others look down upon and don’t want to take a chance on. I’m talking about ex-offenders, or people graduating out of drug rehab programs, or inner-city teenagers. This of course will involve some risk. But by giving someone the chance at clean, honest work, there is the opportunity for providing true life-transformation.
• Having educational scholarships available for those employees so they can get vocational school training or go on to college.
• Allowing employees to take two hours per week, or one full day per month, to volunteer in a local nonprofit—and pay them for their hours.
• If one is not the CEO of a company, they can work in finance with banks or credit unions that advance the Kingdom values of economic sufficiency and of equity, by creating economic opportunities for low- and moderate-income people.
• “Socially responsible investing” or marketing positive traits about an urban community to stimulate new business investment is an additional way to be a light in the business world.
• Lastly, one could combine an interest in business with an interest in law or public policy. There is extremely important work that needs to be done around the globe in the area of fighting barriers to market entry caused by unjust regulatory and licenses systems.

“There are exciting possibilities of how you can use your business talents. As Christians in business, at a minimum, I hope you will commit yourselves always to being ethical businesspeople – people who are honest, who are fair, and who are responsible. At a minimum you need to be businesspeople that don’t cheat your customers, don’t rape the environment, people who pay your taxes, and treat your employees with dignity. Where you are able, where you can, where you have capability to go beyond these minimum standards, I pray and hope you will. I pray you will be creative businesspeople, risk-takers for the Kingdom, businesspeople thinking intentionally about how you have Kingdom impact in the kinds of ways I’ve been describing. I encourage you to push yourself, to dream. I love this quote by Nelson Mandela: ‘There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of.’ As Christian businesspeople, please strive to live fully the life you are capable of.”