What have you learned recently from business leaders?
Pose that question to many church leaders, and they might say ‘nothing.’ And the reasons tend to fall into two categories:
For some, it’s a matter of principle: Some church leaders think church leaders shouldn’t learn from business leaders. The church should have nothing to do with the world.
For some, it’s simply practical: They just haven’t taken the time to learn from business leaders lately.
I’m writing this post to address both reasons.
Here’s the situation almost all of us face as church leaders. The majority of people who come to your church will walk out the door Sunday to go back into the business world Monday.
As a church leader in Western culture, you are surrounded by people engaged in business.
And you can learn some great lessons from them; even some surprising ones that can change your ministry for the better.
If you ignore that reality, I think both you and the business community lose.
What if some businesses are more Christian than some churches?
Before you push back on the idea that church leaders can learn from business leaders, a few considerations.
Recently, at the Orange Conference, I had the opportunity to interview two incredibly bright business leaders: Joel Manby, President and CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment and David Salyers, Vice President of Marketing at Chick-Fil-A. The subject was what non-profits can learn from for-profits. You can read the live blog of our interview here.
When interviewing Joel and David, it occurred to me that the way they run their businesses might actually be more Christian than the way some of us church leaders run our churches.
Joel has integrated seven principles from 1 Corinthians 13 into his organization to introduce a different leadership paradigm based on scripture. If you want to dig a little deeper, don’t miss this four-minute interview he does with Fox and Friends describing how his organization treats people. It’s both moving and convicting.
David shared how Chick-Fil-A works hard to create value for people rather than extract value from people. They also see customers as people, not just profits. This video shows the attitude Chick-Fil-A is trying to integrate into every restaurant.
For sure, not every business integrates Christian principles into leadership. In fact, most don’t. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from business leaders, empathize with them or work together to integrate what we believe with what we do.
It Goes Both Ways
It’s not just that churches should learn from business leaders; business leaders can also learn from church leaders.
David Salyers said, “It’s not fair to my competitors that I get to go to North Point Community Church and learn principles from Andy Stanley to use in my business.” If you’re a biblical leader, business leaders will learn from you.
So for sure, the learning goes both ways.
But because the bias in church world (in my view) tilts away from church leaders learning from businesses, I thought I’d start the dialogue with five things I learned about how to run a church from interviewing Joel and David.
5 insights church leaders can learn from business leaders.
