In our church, children often feel like they are limited to three main career types. They can choose to go into ministry, they can choose to go into healthcare, or they can choose to go into education. Now, they're all great, but is it fair that we've erected this... wall in between these holy professions and all of these secular professions. That's the question that we deal with in today's episode.

We also talk about what it would look like for Jesus because he was in business ministry for most of his working life. And how can we think about our lives as being acts of worship, no matter what industry that we're working in. So if that sounds like something that's interesting to you, please stick around and we hope you enjoy the episode. Luke.

When you were a kid and someone would ask you a very common question, such as, what do you want to be when you grow up? Did you have an answer? Like, what did you want to do? I was one of those atypical kids where like I had read about Thomas Edison and that was my picture of the most interesting life possible.

And so I'm like, I'm going to be an inventor. That was usually my answer. Find a need and fill it. Big brain.

Yeah, all those kind of things. This is broke. I'll do better. I love it.

Yeah. I grew up in a Seventh-day Adventist community in the Loma Linda area which is for many kind of one of our meccas and most of my friends it was this you really had just a few options. And this this might have been a number of people's experience. If you grew up in the Sunday Adventist Church of what do you want to be in your group?

Do you want to be a doctor? Do you want to be a teacher? Do you want to be a pastor? And they stopped talking like that was kind of your only option.

They're the only holy pursuits, right? They're the only ones that you can do with a clear conscience. That's it. That's all that.

That's all that counts. And we know that to not be true, but I'd love to dive into that a little bit because we interact with entrepreneurs, people who are doing ministry and wanna do business, but sometimes there feels like a wall between business and ministry and they can't be the same. How do you react? Can they be the same?

How do you deal with that in your own life? I wanna let you know about something that we've been working on behind the scenes. AI is all over the media. Everybody wants to know about it, but I believe we need to be talking about it more in the church.

We are working on a podcast series called Christianity in the Age of AI. This is not going to be in our regular format as we're gonna be bringing in multiple experts. We're going to be dedicating each episode to a certain topic and getting viewpoints from multiple experts on that topic. We're going to be bringing that together and delivering it to you in August.

And so if you are not subscribed, I really invite you to do that. right now. And if there's someone that you know, who should also be subscribed, please send this episode to them. Let them know they should subscribe too. Right.

So I, when I was younger and I was sort of like in the, in like very early twenties or late teens, early twenties, I started preaching and I enjoyed that. I like speaking. You can tell I'm on a podcast right now, but people would say to me, you should go and be a pastor, you know, or, you know, at that time I was getting into websites and they were like, are you wasting your time with that? And so I thought it was really, at the time I was like, oh, Are they right?

Should I be a pastor? Like, is that actually what I'm supposed to be doing? Like, is that the only path forward? And I wrestled with that at the time.

And the answer that I sort of came down to is that that's not a sustainable solution if everybody chose to be that. So that's obviously not what is God's plan. And the conclusion that I came to, and I'm open to seeing where this goes, but the conclusion that I came to is that I can serve God just as well in technology as I can as a pastor. And that doesn't stop me from having the responsibility of doing ministry.

Like, you know, I still do ministry in my daily life, but those things aren't separate things. They're one thing. That's, that's, that's where I landed. That's where I landed.

What about you? I mean, you, you grew up in that system of, of thought. Um, and you know, surprise, surprise, you became a teacher. So how did that happen?

It was interesting because I did push against that. Um, but you're right. My path was I started out as a teacher and then I became a school principal. I'm currently a youth pastor.

So I just reached, you know, preached a last Sabbath and At the same time, I've always had this entrepreneurial side to me. And I have some young, youngish children and we've had like graduations and stuff recently with their friends and the question that comes up, what do you want to do? And that's on my mind. And in this day and age of AI and jobs changing quickly, what advice do we give our kids?

All right, well, you can be a teacher, doctor, you know, pastor, those are the options. One thing I did kind of fund this summer is I have three kids and I challenged them to kind of stretch their entrepreneurial minds. And we're doing some different things. My daughter sold her first website.

So that was kind of exciting. And using some AI tools. What the challenge was, though, is that I wanted from the last day of school, we're going to see, all right, how much money can they make until the first day of school? So they had a whole summer break.

Which of my three kids is going to make the most money? And then I was going to then add to that another hundred dollars. We might have a secondary, a prior runner up, but I want this. I want them to think entrepreneurially because that's that's so important to me.

Mm hmm. Oh, that's so I like I love that. That is such a cool thing. And I'm I can't wait till my kids are just that little bit older where where they have the autonomy to do stuff like that.

When when you when you do that, you're trying to prepare them or give them options, give them exposure to these different things. Do you feel like your experience, you know, having for one of the better word, a foot in both camps? Do you think that? Like, how do they view that?

Do they see that as, well, that means I can do anything, or like, or do you think that even just the fact that you're in Adventist culture is still sort of weighing, weighting their opinion of what they should do next? It is interesting. I, at the small school where we, my kids went, not this last year, but the year before, I think there was, there was a very small number of graduates. I think like seven or, you know, it wasn't a big class.

Every single one of them, wanted basically go into nursing, going into medical. And like one is that is a pretty safe from AI type of industry, but we are in a medical minded community. And that is definitely, we oftentimes look at what our parents are doing, what our parents' friends are doing. And then that's a path that we take them.

And there's nothing wrong with going into medicine, obviously. plenty of lucrative opportunities and careers for ministry and providing for your family. One of the responsibilities I feel as a parent is I want to open my kid's eyes to as many different things. And I am thrilled if they say, oh, look at that. Oh, I'd never want to do that.

Oh, this could be either way. To me, that's a win because how do we decide? what we want to do for a career. And and that's one of my as a parent, I feel that responsibility is let me let me encourage this creativity. So I want to I want to take us in a little bit of a direction here.

So as we were talking, I was just thinking about the some of the areas of overlap. Right. So areas of overlap between these so-called holy professions, as we were talking before, and areas that are more entrepreneurial in nature. And I was thinking about my own experience.

So I spent a lot of time throughout my 20s and early 30s. I spent a lot of time proactively involved in ministry. So that's lay ministry, local church, serving teaching, doing all of the things. I what I didn't realize is that is how much of that is needed in business up until my mid thirties.

I had never built a business. I was a freelancer. So I worked for myself, you could say, but I wasn't, you know, doing the startup thing where you're building a business. And so once I started doing that, I was like, oh, wow, like I'm employing so many of these skills, the leadership skills that are required for ministry to take place pastoral skills, you know, mentoring team members, you know, like in our business, like I have regular Bible studies with with team members who, you know, and I sort of like all of these things.

This is ministry. Right. And so I'm I'm curious, you know, as I as I look into what others are doing in the space. Do you think that it like does everyone see it this way or like or is this a case where there are some like. believers who are entrepreneurs and they see themselves as being no, no, no, I'm just an entrepreneur.

I'm not doing ministry. Is that is that a real thing? Have you experienced that? I think there is opportunity for people who have a traditional business. that is not a considerate ministry for them to have more ministry opportunities and being creative and finding ways.

How do you bring your faith, your Christianity into your business without it harming your business, without it taking over because wanting to make sure that, yeah, you need a profit, you need to do business, needs to go well. I would also add the counter to that. So I'm here in a church and we are getting ready for vacation Bible school. It's later on, but we've got to order signs.

We've got to do marketing so that people show up to our vacation Bible school. Now it's free. There's no charge to it. but there are activities that are very similar, both in a church ministry that is not a business in that sense, but you're doing business activities. So I would say that on both ends of, hey, I have a... a mechanic shop and we fix cars.

OK, well, how can we make this mechanic shop glorify Jesus in a way and the way that we do business? And also, I've got a church. How can we make sure that we are good stewards of that ministry and doing the business type activities to grow the church? What is that?

What is that? Quote that it's something to the effect that you go the Christian Shoemaker I'm just just good enough the Christian Shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes But by making good shoes because God is interested in good craftsmanship. So that was that was I think that was Martin Luther I think that right that and Yeah, I love this quote because I think it's it sort of Shines a lot on what you were just saying If we're going to be Christians and we're going to run the shop like Jesus would run the shop, Jesus was a carpenter. Jesus spent more of his life in business than he did in ministry.

And I think because it's not necessarily the focus of scripture, we forget that. And a lot of that, I'm sure, prepared him, gave him skills and also credibility, because there's a I think I feel there's a very strong credibility piece that competence brings. If you are highly competent in in some area. then that gives you a chunk of credibility with the people that you are working with. That's an opportunity for ministry.

Credibility is opportunity for ministry. I think the other point that I wanted to draw out of what you were saying just then, you were talking about how you need to make signs, you need to do these things. There's these functions that overlap in the worlds of business and ministry. If I look at a business, in order for a business to operate, You need sales and marketing, right?

So you need marketing so people know you exist. You need sales so people make decisions to come into what you're doing, to join you. You need to have a delivery framework. You need people to actually be being served and the promises that you're making need to be kept.

There's customer service to some extent, right? People need to feel heard. And if there's a problem, we need to resolve those problems. You need leadership.

You need... finances, you need a strong finance function to run a business effectively. Churches need finances to operate. That's how pastors get paid. So all of these things, they make perfect sense.

We need them. But for some reason, we're uncomfortable, or at least a lot of believers are uncomfortable labeling them that way because somehow it feels less holy. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's interesting.

I'm on the shoemaker, you know, should you put the crosses on the shoe. One of the things that came to my mind when you told that story is, are you familiar with In-N-Out? It's a burger chain here in the US. I've heard of it, never written it.

Mostly on the West Coast. They have about four or five different Bible verses that you'll find on very small print and different parts that are packaging. So like, if you look at the bottom of a cup, I think it's like Proverbs, like 24, 16. I know like on the French fries, I think it's like, uh, like name one seven.

I know there's, there's different, there's about different packaging. It's very small. It doesn't impact, but it does for anybody who's paying attention. Like, Oh, this is a Christian business.

One of my curiosities is I wonder if you identify as a Christian business. Do you have more? Pressure or more like responsibility to treat people better to actually be like a better person like hey I'm a Christian and I am going to if I have a you know a mechanic shop I'm gonna make sure I charge fairly like is I wonder if that impacts people That's such a great question. I would say that if you have a If you do that, I think it does create a certain degree of pressure But at the same time it shouldn't Because you should be doing good business anyway.

You should be prioritizing others anyway. But inevitably, if you feel like you are carrying the name of Jesus, like you are operating as an ambassador, a public ambassador of his, then surely you would have to think twice before doing something that was dishonest. It's probably good pressure. Yeah, that's not a bad thing, right?

I think in our conversation, what's becoming clear is that the line if you want to draw one, between business and ministry is not so much of a line, a dividing line as it is a continuum, right? That they all exist in the same scale with perhaps the overt purpose of the organization might be different, but they all exist in the same space. Well, and what's interesting is that both you and I have companies that are for profit but have a very strong ministry. So you have Blue Vineyard, that's the podcast that we're on, and it is not a non-profit organization, working with a lot of non-profit organizations and whatnot, but it is to make money and there are owners.

I have a ministry spotlight where, you know, we work with Adventist schools to help them specifically with marketing, like those things, like that is a four, but it's called ministry spotlight is specifically for, you know, built for Christian Seventh-day Adventist schools. That, I think those, what that indicates is that both you and I have observed this and said, I believe in ministry. I also believe in entrepreneurship and I can I think I can do both and to me that's the most fun when we can when we can do both. Yes I think this is one of the things and I'm not I'm not projecting this onto any particular business but in some communities that I've experienced they're you know even and I love ASI I think ASI is a great institution.

It seems to me, though, that at least some of the people involved with that, they have the idea of separation between, well, these are ministries and they get funded by the businesses. And, you know, and I don't think that's a problem. I don't think they're doing anything wrong by doing that. But I think it's perhaps an incomplete picture of what a business can be and the ministry that a business can do.

Because as you pointed out, you know, our companies may be for profit companies, they're not nonprofits. those profits are often used for ministry, right? And so it's all a case of where is it used? How is it used? Why is it used?

And so this level of overlap between them, I think something I'd really love to encourage people or a way for people to think about this is that it doesn't matter what business that you are in. If you are a follower of Jesus, you are on mission and you are doing ministry. And I think if we had that view, that's the same if you're running a church and that's the same if you're running a podiatrist, you know, it's the it's the same the same principle is at place. But you can go in to various extremes of that.

Right. There's on one side, I think of this in a twofold way. On one side, there is like profit idolatry, whereas you're doing anything for a dollar. It's I'm going to maximize my income.

Add to the expense of everybody else that I'm going to profiteer. I'm going to do everything that I can to win at all costs. There is that aspect of people that go into business. And these are the people who represent Jesus poorly, right?

People like those those Christians that look at what they're doing. I don't want to have anything to do with them. That's the one end of the extreme. But there's also the I think there's this extreme at the other end that is also a little bit harder to define, but no less damaging.

And that is the presumptive ministries that are financially irresponsible, and they they close it in faith and say, oh, God will sort that out, you know, and then, you know, they end up bankrupt or bankrupting people that are supporting them. And again, not pointing at specific ministries. But I've seen this happen. There was a ministry that I personally know of that I had friends that was involved with, and they were so zealous.

They were, oh, we're doing this and it's going to be great that. I think two separate families, they mortgage the house, effectively sold their houses to fund the project. And it was mismanaged to the degree that it all collapsed and they lost their homes. And so sad.

So sad. And I don't I wasn't in there. I can't I can't judge motives or any of that. But I genuinely believe these people were they would apply.

They thought they were applying faith. But with that, there's still a responsibility, right? Like, I mean, even one of the founders of our church, Ellen White, she wrote that the church can learn a lot from business if we're faithfully managing our resources. So there's both extremes, right?

Because even in church, you can go the other way and be so profit motivated that it's all about the tides and offerings and building bigger and better and greater. the truth, Jesus, what Jesus would be doing lies somewhere in the middle of that. And that's what real discernment is required. So yeah, how do you figure out what that discernment is, Adam? How do you find where we should be in the middle of that spectrum?

So those are great points. And I think that that discernment comes with a few of the things we've been talking about is that good ministry is good business. Good business is good ministry. Oh, I like that. the types of activities that you would do to grow your ministry.

For instance, I was talking to a ministry, like, oh, they were wanting to build a new website. Like we're talking about funds and like, all right, this is going to cost because these things cost money. And there just wasn't any money there. And the like, okay, well, do you have a newsletter list or do you have people that have been because this been on a long time.

And well, no, we don't have that list or we don't have, you know, we don't know who that is. That's good business is to keep track of the people that you have worked with, that you have blessed with the ministry in the past. Either way, if you are, like I said, a podiatrist, you should know who you've been serving in the past. If you are a ministry teaching, writings or whatever it is your ministry is doing, you should keep track of those people.

And I would say that there is that overlap of things that are going to be true. regardless of whether or not you are a for-profit, business-first, or whether you are a non-profit, ministry-first. I think it's still important to know that. Are you business-first or are you ministry-first? There is some nuance there, but like we've talked about, the difference, I think, doesn't need to be very great, and it can be fairly similar.

One of the things I'd love to get into, kind of getting closer here. We have a fair amount of expertise. Like I don't know how to run a garage, you know, working on cars and stuff. I've never done that before.

But I do know a lot of like digital types of businesses, businesses that run on the internet and ministries that run on the internet as their backbone. They may do other things. I'd love to kind of run through sort of speed through. And we can maybe even pick a type of business.

But I'd love to pick your brain a little bit. What are some of the things that both should do that ministries and businesses should do some best practices? The first thing that came to mind, I think, which is foundational to all of the above, is being other centered. So like from our perspective, I made the mistake early in my career of thinking that meant give everyone what they want.

That's not being other centered. If you're actually loving someone and you're putting their needs first, as a mentor said to me once, if you don't charge enough, then you won't be there to serve them when they need you. And so, you know, charging enough, not overpricing, but charging enough is a sign that you care about your customers, right? That you want to be there for them in the long haul.

So I think being being other centered. And if you're other centered, you're also going to be, you know, promising only what you can deliver, you're going to be, you know, it flows on to a lot of different things. But I would say that's probably one of the lead dominoes in this discussion. I love that actually had a conversation today.

One of the groups I work with are YouTubers that have an audience and they work with people who want to sponsor their YouTube videos. And we were discussing pricing. And pricing is difficult. What do you price this thing at?

How do you decide? And I was like, first off, what is something worth? How do you know pricing? And there's a, we could do a whole podcast just on pricing.

But one of the first principles that we talked about in pricing is something is only worth what someone will pay for it. So like, how much is this worth? I don't know, how much will someone pay for it? Like that's like the first kind of step.

Because if someone won't pay for it, it's not worth that much. Then the next one, because that's not terribly helpful, and actually picking a number. What is more helpful was the next piece that I shared with him said, if they were to say yes to this, are you happy to do it for that amount? If like, all right, we're gonna make this proposal, we give them two different options.

If they pick the more expensive one, and they say yes to that, are you actually happy to do the work for that? Or are you, oh no, now I gotta actually do the thing? Or like, oh yes, I made the money, happy to do it. That is one of those elements and thinking about pricing.

Because like you said and that others, if you are not also taking care of your needs, you won't be there, you'll be burned out and won't be in business to take care of them later on. Yes, and the larger your business is, the more important that gets because then you have other people that rely on that business being functional. So yeah, that it's it's a compounding thing. Yeah, so don't mess it up.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So what else are the areas of overlap? What would also be?

Well, I think so. We're kind of in this in this digital space. One of the ones I was talking about are the people that you're reaching. Like how do you get people?

We're doing, so I'm here at the church and we had a youth fespers and I sent pictures to the church secretary. We also did kind of a fun game night. We've done a few things this summer already. And kind of the comment is that if you don't take pictures and then send them out.

It didn't happen. And we have kind of this obligation to communicate the things that we're doing. And whether it's the church's newsletter about the fun Vespers we had, or it's your business and you are communicating the successes that you have, I think there's some overlap. How do you think about the marketing of your ministry versus the marketing of your business?

One of marketing is hard. And I think one of the key reasons that it is difficult is because it's not directly associated with your outcomes. Like it may be in the long run, but it's difficult to draw that connection in the short term. And so I think that's one of the last pieces of the puzzle for my business that we've been figuring out most recent ones because it felt like it was not important, but without it, you're not actually getting the business in.

And I feel like it's the same thing in, you know, like you were mentioning in the ministry scenario. if people don't, you know, you can organize a great program and then have no one show up just because no one knew about it. And so I think that's it's vitally important. I think another part that is like worth another connection there that's worth drawing is one that I was mentioning earlier. And that is it needs to be sustainable.

I think sustainability is is a big deal. Financial sustainability like a lot of people are very happy to. run a program, but they're really uncomfortable when it comes to financing it, whether that is finding a donor or a sponsor or selling something or whatever that might be. I think that there is this feeling that if you're asking for money, then it's bad or it's wrong. And so I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of ministries struggle with the finance side.

You can have a wonderful ministry, but if it doesn't have sustainable financing, then it's not going to be a ministry for very long and it's certainly not going to grow very large. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know a church is obviously a ministry and we're constantly alright how much do we give away? Like, you know, we do a youth pastor and we do breakfast every Sabbath. We feed the kids.

What we are finding is that all the kids were in the music program and they'd come early to practice, but then they'd leave because they hadn't had breakfast. I was like, well, let's just feed them here. And that has been, if you feed them, they will come if you're curious about how to get teenagers to be a part of your program. It's not hard.

Yeah. But we have had people who have stepped up and say, yeah, we really want our young people in this church. So we're going to make sure that they have breakfast. And those are the things like, if there weren't supporters of it, then that type of just, yeah, free food, that's not that wouldn't be sustainable.

So yeah, how do you make sure that it is sustainable and you can do it for the long term? Yeah. Are there any other things? I was just trying to think of any of the other things that we haven't already talked about.

Any other areas of overlap spring to mind for you? Yeah, I think kind of just to sort of speed read through it, I think that ministries and business marketing is very important. You have to communicate the things that you're doing, like case studies in business. we did this really great project for this company or for this ministry or whatever it is. And if you don't tell anybody about it, you are less likely to attract new customers.

And like success begats success. The same thing with ministries. If people are donating to my youth program and I'm not showing like, oh yeah, we didn't do anything this summer. Well, then why am I trying to support your youth?

Yeah, where does that go? No, no, we're... We're doing a whitewater rafting trip. We're doing like seven Vespers this summer.

We're taking kids, you know, we're doing all these things. It's gonna be great. Oh yeah, I support that. I'm going to put money there.

And the same thing for a business. Oh, you've worked with them and you've worked with them and you've worked with them. Like, oh yeah, I definitely would like to be a part of that company. So I think that marketing and talking about the things that you're doing is important.

Making sure that you are financially responsible, that you talked about the ministry where they sold their houses and all that stuff to have that money, but it sounds like there wasn't a plan in place to take that blessing of the money from the houses and actually build something sustainable. It was a risk that people lost on. So we have to be careful with like over extending and making sure that we are sustainable. But yeah, I think kind of on and on, we could start drawing parallels of this is a good business practice.

Treat people fairly, both in ministry and at your podiatry office. Yes, yes. So I think if I'm hearing, just to sort of start pulling these ends together, I think overall, conclusion that we've come to is kind of come full circle to a degree here. And that is to say that it's all sacred.

It's all God's work, whether it's primarily focused on on ministry or charity work or whatever that might be, or if it's if it's a for profit business that is doing technology solutions like we are or whether it's a tradesman or whatever it is it's it's all ministry it's all done yet it do all things as if to the Lord right we are doing this work and we should be doing it to a level of excellence bit ministry or commercial work we should be doing it to a level of excellence that Jesus himself would do and it. It has meaning. All of it has meaning. And it's not a case of, as we were talking about earlier, putting little crosses on what we make.

It's a case of having that level of quality, treating people as you would want to be treated and doing business like Jesus. They're like, that's it. It doesn't matter whether you're in ministry or commercial work. Yeah.

I think that my encouragement is to blur the lines between your ministry and your business as much as possible. I mean, there are some true like you are a teacher, you are a pastor, you're like, that's pretty solid and ministry, that's great. But as much as we can to the importance of blurring the lines and that, yeah, I was a teacher. and then I was a principal, and then I actually left that started a business, but then I got kind of back involved in my community, and I'm on the school board for my Christian church school. I filled the role as this part-time youth pastor because I believed in that.

I still have business that I do with secular people, and that's good, but... those tend to blur and it's fun how sometimes those conversations can also blur. And someone who was very much in my secular life, we end up talking about Jesus and someone that I'm talking at church and then we end up talking about good business practices. And I think that's all pretty good. put it out there, if anybody is interested, if you are either in business, in ministry or considering one or the other, and you would like to have a conversation about that, even if it's just about some ideas or just to have a bit of collective brainstorming, we're very much open to that. So if you if you want to reach out to us, you can you can connect with us via the website, which is just bluvenia.com.

But we are always really interested in supporting people who are newly on their journey, either in entrepreneurship or in ministry. And we would love to have a conversation with you if that's something that you would find helpful. Oh my goodness. I love it.

No strings attached. Yeah, just just talk to us. I love And sometimes having that third party perspective, someone that doesn't have a vested interest, just someone to bounce those ideas off of can be really helpful. I was talking to a gentleman, he's been trying to get a book published and there's a business of publishing a book.

And we just spent a fair amount of time and he's like, oh, I never thought of that. Oh, what about this? And it wasn't because I have some brilliant insight, I have experience with some of these things, but it was... he was too close to it. And I think sometimes someone coming from just like, hey, how about this?

And like, oh, yeah, I hadn't really thought about that. Because maybe you're too far down that route. You just need to have someone help step you back. And if that's you, if you want to help, we'd love to talk.

All right. Well, we'll leave that there. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Blue Vignette Podcast. And we will talk to you soon.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Blue Vinyard Podcast. For more episodes, information about our services and more, please visit bluevinyard.com.