Christian Business Concepts
Christian Business Concepts
The Parthenon Principle: The 4 Pillars of Christian Business
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What does it take to build a business that stands the test of time while honoring God? The answer lies in understanding the power of structural support.
Just as the ancient Greek Parthenon has withstood centuries of storms and conflicts through its network of 96 sturdy pillars, your business needs foundational supports that blend biblical wisdom with practical strategy. This episode unveils a powerful framework of four essential pillars that can transform any business into a faith-centered enterprise: Profit, People, Excellence, and God.
We begin by spotlighting Hobby Lobby, the $5 billion crafts retailer whose founder David Green sacrifices $100 million annually by closing stores on Sundays, pays employees double the minimum wage, and donates 50% of profits to worthy causes. Their example shows how faith-centered business decisions can lead to remarkable success while maintaining unwavering values.
The first pillar, Profit, reimagines financial gain not as an end goal but as a tool for kingdom advancement when managed with integrity. We explore practical strategies for ethical revenue generation and meaningful community reinvestment that honors Luke 16:10-11's teaching about faithful stewardship.
Through the People pillar, we examine how Matthew 22:39's command to "love your neighbor as yourself" transforms workplace dynamics through fair wages, growth opportunities, exceptional customer care, and meaningful community engagement. The Excellence pillar, rooted in Colossians 3:23, demonstrates how quality work glorifies God and sets standards that inspire others.
Finally, the God pillar ensures that every business decision from strategy to daily operations reflects a commitment to glorify Him through prayerful decision-making and biblical principles. We provide actionable steps for implementing all four pillars, including leadership workshops, mentorship programs, and regular assessment practices.
Ready to build a business that honors God while achieving true success? Discover how these four pillars can create stability, strength, and spiritual purpose in your professional endeavors. Share your journey with us and help others find the path to faith-driven business excellence.
Welcome to the Christian Business Concepts with your host, harold Milby. Christian Business Concepts is dedicated to guiding companies and business owners in becoming effective, efficient and successful through God's Word and godly principles. Now, here's your host, harold Milby.
Speaker 2:Thanks, kelly, and welcome everyone to this week's Christian Business Concepts podcast. You know I count it an extreme privilege to come to you each week to discuss business topics and biblical principles and how those two go together. You know our mission here at CBC is to help you find true godly success, and we do that by trying to apply biblical principles in your personal life, in your work life, your career. And you know, because what good is it to have godly success in our careers but we don't have it in our personal lives? Or maybe having it in our personal lives but then not in our work lives or our careers. So without both, I don't think we're a whole person. I think we need to have godly success in our personal lives and in our businesses and careers. This one thing I do know, and you guys have heard me say this so many times, and that is that God wants you to be successful and he wants you to be successful in every area of your life. Successful in every area of your life. You know James 1, 2 through 4 says consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you are involved in various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance, but you must let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. So, in other words, that means every area of your life, you can be mature and complete, lacking nothing, and it just means that we can expect to have a complete life, both personally and professionally. Now, today, I hope that you're going to be encouraged, I hope you're going to be enlightened and empowered by what you hear, and that it'll be a tremendous blessing to you on your journey to having godly success. So please help us grow the CBC community by posting a link to this podcast on your Facebook or on your LinkedIn page, and be sure to share it with four or five other people. That's how we grow the CBC podcast, and we appreciate your efforts more than you'll ever know we do. We really, really appreciate that. Now let's today. I want to give a big shout out to Indianapolis, Indiana, here in the United States, for having so many downloads recently. Thank you, indianapolis. We appreciate you, we love you. We just pray that God continues to bless you and all of those that listen to this podcast, either this being your first time, or if you listen to it on a regular basis. You know we appreciate you, we pray for you and we pray that God ministers to you and brings great success to you. So thank you for being a part of Christian Business Concepts.
Speaker 2:Now, today, in our spotlight, I'd like to highlight a company most all of you know, especially here in the United States, but they are worldwide, most all of you know, especially here in the United States, but they are worldwide and they're the world's largest crafts retailer in the world really. They have over $5 billion in revenue. David Green started this company and that company's name is Hobby Lobby. You know, david started the business with $600, and he started it in his home and today, currently, they have over 1,000 stores. But you know, david's first principle, according to him, is that he was committed to honoring God, and he says it this way committed to honoring God in all we do, by operating the company in a manner consistent with biblical principles. You know, and now their principles have come at a price for them. You know, when they made the decision to close on Sundays, that cost them approximately $100 million a year. They also refused to have their health insurance plan cover abortions, which triggered a very large federal lawsuit that they eventually won. But they close at 8 o'clock in the evening, so that their employees can spend time with their families, eight o'clock in the evening, so that their employees can spend time with their families. You know, all full-time employees are paid at least twice what the federal minimum wage is. They donate 50% of their annual profits to worthy causes and you know, in 2017, they opened a 430,000 square foot museum on the history of the Bible. And you know, we appreciate companies like Hobby Lobby. We appreciate people like David Green, who had a vision of having a Christian-run company, not just a Christian-owned company, but a Christian-ran company. So thanks, hobby Lobby. We appreciate you. Thank you, david Green, for what you're doing in the world today, and we know that you're being a light to your employees, to your vendors and to the public, so thank you for all that you do.
Speaker 2:Now, in today's podcast, I want to talk about how you can align your practices and decisions with faith-driven principles by focusing on these four pillars, and those four pillars are profit, people, excellence and God. These are the four pillars that I want to talk to you about. God these are the four pillars that I want to talk to you about Each of those pillars. As we discuss them, we're going to talk about practical strategies, biblical insights and some actionable steps to lead with integrity and impact on these four pillars. These four pillars you know one of the greatest buildings in the last several thousands of years that has been built and one that has withstood destructive weather, wars, uprisings, and that building is the Greek Parthenon. The main reason for the longevity of this building is that it was built between, they say, between 447 BC and 432 BC and this building is still standing. But the reason that that building is still standing is because it used a total of 96 pillars.
Speaker 2:You know, pillars don't just provide mere aesthetic value, you know, just for their looks, and it's more than just architectural significance. You know they also provide a very strong structural significance because they're load-bearing, they create stability for that building and they withstand all kinds of bad weather. You know, in 1 Kings 7, 15 through 22, it talks about two of the pillars that were built or used in the building of Solomon's temple, the temple of God that he built, and they were given names. These two pillars were given names and the one was Jachin and the other was Boaz, and the definition of these two Hebrew words were Jachin meant he will provide, and Boaz meant in him is strength. And they named those pillars that because God would provide, and in God there was strength.
Speaker 2:And you know there's something called the Parthenon principle in business. Maybe some of you've heard of this, maybe some of you haven't. But when you're building a business, you want to structure your business with multiple pillars. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, I think one pillar is sales. One pillar can be marketing, one pillar can be management, one pillar can be operations. But you have all these different pillars to help prop up the company, to help put a great structure into the company. And so that's why I want to talk about these four pillars, and I think these are kind of foundational, these four pillars. So I want us to just kind of jump right in and look at these.
Speaker 2:So the first pillar of the four is profit, and we're talking about stewarding the resources with wisdom. You know profit is not just financial gain. You know profit is, it's a tool, and it's a tool for, you know, not only you know profit's not only a tool just to advance the company, but it's a tool for advancing God's kingdom, especially when it's managed with integrity. You know, as Christian business leaders, you know we view profit in this way, or we should view it in this way. It's a means to sustain operations, but also to support communities and fund ministry. And that's how we should be seeing this pillar of profit. You know, luke, chapter 16, verses 10 through 11, says whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much. And if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And that's how we should look at profit. You know, when we're talking about business, you know profit reflects faithful stewardship. It should. It enables businesses to thrive and to serve not just thrive, but to serve as well.
Speaker 2:So what are some practical strategies? Well, first of all, you ought to have ethical revenue generation. So make sure that all your revenue streams are aligning with Christian values. Make sure you're not exploiting. You don't have exploiting practices like price gouging or deceptive marketing. But you want to make sure that it all aligns with Christian values. So that's first.
Speaker 2:And the next thing you can do is reinvestment for impact. So you should allocate profits. We've talked about Hobby Lobby and how that they give away 50% of their profits every year. But you need to allocate profits to support community initiatives, maybe employee welfare and even charitable causes. You know, maybe 10% of your profit, you know, goes to local ministries. You know, however, you want to do that, but you need to reinvest, but reinvest from the standpoint of an impact that you can have and then have financial transparency right. Maintain clear, honest accounting practices to build trust with all of the stakeholders in the business, whether it be your management team, if you have a board of directors. If you are on the stock exchange, you have stockholders and then also those who have invested in your company. So you want to make sure you have financial transparency.
Speaker 2:Now, what are some action steps that you can take? Well, first, you can conduct a quarterly review of what your revenue sources are and to make sure that they're in that ethical alignment. Another thing that you can do as an action is create a we can just call it, say a kingdom impact fund. You can call it whatever you want to. I'm just using that as an example a kingdom impact fund and that's from the prophets and that's used to support faith-based initiatives. You can start a nonprofit ministry within your organization where that money goes into the nonprofit and then the nonprofit disperses it out into the ministries, into the community efforts that you feel like you need to, and then make sure that you train your staff. Train them on biblical stewardship principles, use resources like Crown Financial Ministries it's a great again. You want to look at, you know, look at profit in that way.
Speaker 2:So the second pillar is people and with regard to people, you want to lead with dignity, you want to lead with love. You know people are the heart of any business. You know you can't have a business without people, whether they be customers, whether they be vendors, whether they be employees. You can't have a business without people. And Christian leaders should really prioritize their employees. They should prioritize customers and stakeholders and treat them as image bearers of God. In other words, treat them like godly people, treat them like God's people. Whether they're born again or not born again, they're still God's people. God loves them. You know Matthew 22, 39 says love your neighbor as yourself.
Speaker 2:Now that doesn't stop when you get to the office. You know Christian business values relationships, or it should, if you're a Christian business or Christian leaders, that we should value relationships over transactions. You know you want to foster this culture of respect and care for your customers, for your employees, for your vendors, for all of your stakeholders. So what are some practical strategies. Well, first of all, we can talk about employee well-being, you know. First, you should offer fair wages. Look, I'm not saying that you should pay twice what the minimum wage is, like Hobby Lobby does, but it should be fair wages. I would encourage you to offer flexible schedules. Now maybe you can't with your business, but I would encourage you to look at that and then make sure that you have opportunities for growth and that you train for those opportunities. So you want to provide a workplace that supports that, and you want to support spiritual health, too, and physical health and mental health. You want a workplace that supports those things. You could have prayer groups Again.
Speaker 2:Many of you may say well, you can't do that, it's against the law. No, it's not. We in the United States have been given a great gift because in the Civil Rights Act, and the United States have been given a great gift because in the Civil Rights Act, we are protected those of us that are godly people and born-again people and we want to share things. We have a protected right to do that. I did a podcast you can look that up sometime on what your rights are and what the law is in your Christian business, but you can focus on the employee well-being.
Speaker 2:The next thing that you need to do is you need to have some customer care. So you want to go beyond people just being satisfied. You want to go beyond that. You want to build trust through honest communication and then high-quality service. You don't want to be second in service. You want to be the best in service of anybody in your industry and you can do that, but it takes effort. It takes some money to do that as well, so you need to begin to focus on how that you can have this customer care.
Speaker 2:And then next is community engagement, so you could partner with local churches or other nonprofits to serve the community, like hosting job fairs or maybe volunteering. I know one business. He supports a ministry in a church that feeds the homeless people on Sundays, so they go down and they feed the homeless, so he provides finances and resources to help them provide for the food and everything that's needed. So what are some actionable steps? Well, first of all, you could implement an annual employee feedback survey which I don't think companies do enough and you can see what those surveys bring back to you, you know, and then try to address whatever the concerns are that you see, and just try to continually improve workplace culture. I've never been in a business where there couldn't be improvement in the culture of the company with regard to its employees. Another thing that you could do is you could host a monthly value lunch to discuss how faith shapes the team's interactions. Faith shapes the team's interactions. Now, by law, you can't force anybody to go to this and you also can't make it a part of your promotion program. In other words, if you go to these and you'll get promoted faster. You can't do that, but you can have it, and then people can come if they want to. You can invite them and then if they choose not to, well, then they choose not to. The other thing that you can do is you can partner with a local Christian school or a charity. Maybe you can mentor some young leaders. What I'm trying to say is give you some practical ways to impact your community. To impact your community, all right.
Speaker 2:The third pillar is excellence, excellence. You know, I had a high school teacher that told us he was Greek and he gave us this Greek word, arate, and arate means striving for excellence, and that was ingrained in my head from the time I was in high school until now, and I'm in my 60s and I still think about arate. I still think about striving for excellence in everything that we do, and excellence reflects really our commitment to honor God through our work. You know, it's about delivering superior quality and innovation and at the same time we have to maintain our humility. You know Vince Lombardi said one time perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence. And so I think that's important for us to really look at excellence and strive for excellence. You know, colossians 3 and 23 says whatever you do. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord and not for human masters. Whatever you do, work it with all your heart as if you're working for the Lord directly.
Speaker 2:You know, booker T Washington said one time about excellence. He said excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way. I like that definition. Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way. Excellence and excellence in business. It really glorifies God and sets a standard for other people.
Speaker 2:Now, what are some practical strategies here? Well, again, continuous improvement. You know you want to have continuous improvement. You know you want to make sure you invest in employee training, help them be trained well, have leadership programs, leadership training, and then you can process optimizations to enhance either products or service, to raise the level of quality. The other thing is to make sure that you pay attention to detail, you know. Ensure that every aspect of the business whether it be products, customer service, branding, whatever it is make sure that those things reflect care and professionalism, get into the details and then make sure that you stay humble as a leader, you know. Make sure you celebrate team successes without pride, but giving credit to God, giving credit to other people.
Speaker 2:So, as actionable steps, you can set measurable quality goals and you can do that by, again, using surveys to your customers. Maybe you have a goal, say, reduce customer complaints by 20% in six months. That's a great goal. It's measurable, it's something you can do, you've got a time limit on it and something you can track. Maybe you could enroll in, maybe a Christian leadership course that's offered by there's universities that do it. There are people such as myself. We offer at CBC, we offer leadership courses through the John Maxwell Leadership Certified Trainer program that they have, and then just kind of create a wall of excellence. You want to showcase employee achievements, you want to help tie them to faith-based values. So you want to create this wall of excellence.
Speaker 2:All right, now the fourth pillar, which I think is extremely important, is God, and that is centering faith in In all your decisions. It keeps you centered, it keeps you focused. You know God is the foundation, it should be the foundation of every Christian business, and every decision, from strategy to daily operations, should really reflect a commitment to glorify God, a commitment to following his leadership, to following God's leadership, his guidance. You know Ben Carson, who ran for president or the nomination for president, said one time through hard work, perseverance and a faith in God, you can live your dreams. I love that. And a faith in God, you can live your dreams. I love that. Through hard work, perseverance and a faith in God, you can live your dreams. You know the Bible says in Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, of course you know you've heard me quote this many times trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways, submit to him and he will make your paths straight. And I think that's such a great principle. You know, a God-centered business seeks his wisdom through prayer, through the word of God.
Speaker 2:So what are some practical strategies for you here to keep God, that fourth pillar, in your Christian business or in your department as a Christian leader? First, make sure that you have prayerful decision-making. You know, maybe you begin meetings with prayer. You can seek God's guidance on every major decision. You should hear his voice as God speaks to you, seek godly counsel as another thing. And then faith integration. So make sure you incorporate these biblical principles that we talk about on a weekly basis. Maybe you even put some of these biblical principles in your mission statements. You know, in your policies, in your culture. You know, in other words, you could have a core value of servant leadership. You know, in other words, you could have a core value of servant leadership. You know, I think that's something that could be done. You know, have a testimony of faith. Share how faith shapes your business ethically. Whether it's through marketing, community outreach, doesn't matter, but you can share how faith shapes your business.
Speaker 2:So what are some actionable steps you can take? Well, establish maybe a weekly leadership prayer group to seek God's direction for the business. And I know this sounds foreign, it almost sounds like well, we're not a church, we're a business. I understand that. But we need to get back to Christian business principles in the workplace. We need to get back to that. It needs to be powerful. You know there's a lot of businesses that have leadership prayer groups. There's some businesses that actually have multiple chaplains on staff and they have Bible studies and they have prayer time. There's lots of things and lots of ways you can do that. Maybe share a public testimony at like a Christian business conference like C12. That's a great conference to try to inspire other people.
Speaker 2:So how do we kick this off? Do you really want to have these four pillars in your business? How do we kick it off? Well, you should have a kickoff workshop. That's just like a half-day training session for your leadership team and you should cover these four pillars and then you can have some discussion and reflect on some scriptures. Make sure you have monthly check-ins so you can review the progress on each of these pillars. You can use metrics like your employee satisfaction rate, what your profit allocation is to ministries or to the community, and then your customer feedback, and then maybe develop a mentorship program where you can get some people that you see as future leaders put them with some seasoned Christian mentor leaders to help them model these principles and then have annual review where you can kind of assess your business's alignment with the four pillars, and then you can celebrate a lot of great successes and then set new goals for the next year. So I encourage you, you know, go online.
Speaker 2:And there's a couple of things I'll tell you. One is there's a book called the Good Book on Business by Dave Kael. Now I've read that book. It's a great book. I'd encourage you to buy that book and read it. There's another one called Doing Business by the Good Book, and that's by David Stewart and that's also a good book. And then there's some great organizations, as I mentioned, the C12 group, christian Businessmen's Connection, that's another one. So there's a lot of great opportunities there that you can look at.
Speaker 2:So leading a Christian business is really a calling. It's a calling to reflect Christ in the marketplace. And by balancing these four pillars the prophet, the people, excellence and God I believe you can build a legacy, a legacy that honors Christ and impacts lives for God's glory. So let's lead with faith, love and purpose. Father, I thank you right now for taking the time to meet with us today and, lord, for helping all of those who have listened today to build these four pillars in their personal life and in their professional life. And, lord, as they apply these principles, let them produce stability and strength.
Speaker 2:And, lord, I thank you for that. In the name of Jesus. Well, thank you. Right now, I want to thank you everyone for downloading this week's podcast and helping us grow the CBC community. I share with you every week about how you can do that and really appreciate your help in doing that. This is a ministry that is a nonprofit-profit, and we're doing this because it's something that God placed upon our heart and so, anyway. So I just want you to think about how you can help us grow the CBC community. Well, that's all the time we have for today, but I do want you to remember that Jesus is Lord and he wants you blessed.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning into this week's Christian Business Concepts podcast. Go to ChristianBusinessConceptscom for more information and resources. Be sure to check out other podcasts that will help you take your business and your personal life to a whole new level of success.