Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the R.E.W. Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On this episode, we're joined by Dr. Hannah Stolles. Hannah is currently an associate professor of supply chain management at Lipscomb University and executive director of the Wheaton College Center for Faith and Innovation. She holds a PhD in business administration from the University of Tennessee and an MA from Wheaton College. Actually, I have a cousin up there. She's a former member of the US Army, where she served as an import specialist. And for the past 10 years, she's researched more than 40 companies in the areas of global supply chain management and social and environmental sustainability. And she's the author of the outstanding new book, Wisdom Based Business: Applying Biblical Principles and Evidence-Based Research for a Purposeful and Profitable Business. Hannah, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's so great to be here. So tell us about that defining moment you had when you heard a teaching about the Proverbs 31 woman.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's so interesting how scripture speaks to us throughout our lives and our different seasons of life. And you can probably relate to this with your background in the military as well. But I went into this women's Bible study. And you know, I I love I love Bible studies in general. I like reading. I'm I'm a nerd. And uh, you know, they're they read this passage out loud. And you know, before they started it, you know, everybody was talking about how much, you know, women struggle with this passage. My Wheaton students joke, you know, it's the checklist for the hot Christian housewife, you know, all of that. And um, so they were reading it out loud, and you know, this is let me place it where I was in my my life. I had just gotten out of the army. Um, I had an MBA, I'd worked in imports actually as a civilian, and I was getting ready to go into my doctorate in business. And my doctorate in business, you know, I was looking at really more for like, you know, the tent making, you know, that this would be a way of serving people and really having access to go places all over the world. And um, as they read the passage out loud, it started started to hit me that gosh, Israel was a trade route. Israel sat between, you know, Egypt and Assyria. And um, this in this passage, you hear about this woman who's running this company with employees, and you know, they call them servants back then, but employees. And she has enough scale in her textile business that she needs raw materials beyond what she can produce in her garden. This is bigger than her house. And she has merchants that are coming from afar to buy her product. And so it just struck me, you know, this was uh over 10 years ago, so I'm a slow learner, but over the past 10 years, it's just been the passage, and then really moving from Proverbs 31 and going deeper into all of the wisdom literature. So Proverbs, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Job, um, and really having this revelation of, oh my gosh, wisdom is personified as a woman, and wisdom seems to be showing up in the public square. Wisdom seems to be showing up in business, not in a temple or on a throne, like David and Solomon were. And when Jesus shows up, Jesus doesn't show up on a throne. And he's a carpenter first. And then he spends time in the public square with people. And it just started transforming my perspective of thinking I was just, you know, gonna serve people by helping them do business. And then I would do the real work, you know, of the church on the side to realizing, oh my goodness, you Jesus really set an example, wisdom set an example of having so much impact in the marketplace. And it took me 10 years to make the transition to being like, this is really about the marketplace. And it was really um my secular research that pushed me over the edge. Because I was doing all this work with these Fortune 500 companies looking at environmental and social sustainability and like the green lean and global. Um, that was my first project. It's kind of catchy, you know. And um, actually through the Department of Defense, I never moved far from my humble beginnings. And um, as we were working with all these companies, you know, the lean space really dignifies workers. I was like, man, that's really honoring of people. And then the environmental space, you know, they were talking about the next generation and how are we, you know, really planning for our children and our children's children. And I was like, wow, that sounds really biblical. And then they were talking about how this all made them more profitable. And I was like, wow, this is really biblical, and it makes them more profitable. I wonder if anybody in the church is telling people about this.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome. So you profiled 50, or I mean, probably I'm sure more than 50 companies, but there were there were 40 or 50 that made the cut in the book. What are some of those examples? And you've really kind of organized the book on these attributes of the Proverbs 31 woman. Um, what are some of your favorite case examples?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the my my goal in the book is to have three things really present that I think we need, right? We need testimonies of people who've done it, because that inspires us. We need scripture, so we have a plumb line as we go out and try to do it, because we'll fail along the way. So we need scripture to be there to pull us back. And then we need business research because I've sat in so many rooms with theologians and faith and work kind of movement people saying, gosh, I just wish we had some evidence that this worked. And so we need all three, right? Um, and so you know, I do all applied research. I'm a logistician at heart, so very like, that's great. I'm so inspired now. How do we do this? And so I purposefully pulled case examples of companies that aren't necessarily even faith-based, but are exemplary in these different orientations or strategies that seem to really show up in Proverbs. And so I think some of my favorite ones, um, I love, I have taught Unilever cases like all throughout my career. Unilever is one of the top 10 supply chain um companies in the world. They're so global, they have such a massive footprint. They got so many things right and wrong at the beginning. And they have been so purposeful in massive amounts of investment at scale in having social and environmental impact. And so I love that as uh, you know, kind of something to look toward. And it's not just somebody doing it from their bleeding heart. It makes sense for business, it makes sense for doing business the right way. Um, and so I love that case example, um, you know, to inspire Christians to get scale. Because I think sometimes when we start off as Christians in the marketplace, we just think, oh, you know, I can start this, you know, single person business. And we don't think beyond like our own impact and calling to think, well, what happens when I have employees and now I'm bettering their lives? That shows up really fast in scripture. It shows up in Proverbs. It shows up, you know, like a lot of the parables Jesus talks about, it's a master and his servants, right? And so thinking beyond, you know, maybe the businesses that people that read this book are gonna go and build won't be, you know, multi-billion dollar companies like a Unilever. Um, and so there's also in the book case examples of, you know, 12 people companies like I Have a Bean that really started um around a quality product, but also really wanting to draw quality out in people. So I love this picture because um Paul or Pete Pete Leonard um realized that he had a brother who was really, really skilled, but nobody would hire him because he was an ex-convict. And I don't know if you know this, but like payroll companies won't won't won't won't work with companies that have ex-convicts on their on their payroll. And so he actually had to restructure a company so that he could provide opportunities for people that our society said, you're not worthy of a second chance, you're too big a risk. And because of our shareholders, we're not willing to take the risk on to sew into you. And so I love the examples, both at the scale, you know, that like if God calls you to scale, amazing. But if God that might not, you know, just profit growth isn't the only way that we have impact. I think we need to grow things, like there's this expectation of multiplication for sure, and to be profitable is responsible. But I love the example of I Have a Being, which is a company that's built around creating a process and training and bringing dignity to people in a way that brings a really quality product into the marketplace. So I would say those are probably out of the book, you know, and I'm, of course, pulling like sustainability supply chain and quality, which I guess makes me really seem like a logistician this morning. But um, you know, the the difference in example of no matter where God calls us, if it's to be a part of a huge enterprise or to launch a small one, that we can have impact beyond ourselves in that space. And I think that's those are really beautiful pictures of things we can dream about as Christians.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love it. What are some of those other specific biblical applications from the Proverbs 31 woman? Um, because I think typically when people hear about Proverbs 31, as you said, uh there's misconceptions about, well, this is talking about a housewife primarily, um, or somebody that's uh yeah, that she's not necessarily engaged in the in the public square or in the global economy. But as you so point so well point out, through um excellent scholarship and and exegesis, that's uh that's not necessarily the case.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love I love this. This is such a great question because I get really passionate about wisdom and wisdom personified in this passage. And um, so I think it's really interesting when we read that passage, you know, sometimes the things that get lost in translation across all translations of the Bible. And, you know, how how we read passages, like if we were in ancient Israel, reading it in Hebrew is so different to how we read it in English in our own context today. And I love this passage, you know, when it says the noble wife, right? Even just the terminology of how it starts, you know, the the terminology for um S et Hael in Hebrew, it actually means the valiant woman. And the term for valiant that Hael is used in really funny spaces in scripture. It describes David's mighty men who were warriors, and then it describes um Boaz, Ruth, and God in the book of Ruth. And the terminology of Hael is so predominant in Proverbs 31, 10 through 31, that in the Hebrew Bible and in the um the old Hebrew Bible text, the book of Ruth actually followed Proverbs 31, because Boaz and Ruth so personified what the you know the early scribes felt like this passage was really exemplifying for ancient Israel. And it's interesting too, because in the Hebrew Bible, um, the Proverbs 31, 10 through 31 is a standalone chapter. So it's this acrostic that goes A to Z to the Hebrew alphabet, and it really reads like this final 21 verses that captures the A to Z of all that wisdom is in action. And so you start there and you think about this Hayel, which is really important because it says that um this woman is valiant, not just noble, but you know, that that word hayel gets translated as mighty, as wealth, as profitable, as warlike. And so I love it. Some ancient some um Old Testament scholars call it an epic war poem. You know, and who's ever read Proverbs 31, like an epic war poem? Nobody, but the soldier in me really loves it. And um, so you know that all strategies of a company rise and fall on the leader. And so nothing is going to happen in an organization unless top leadership really buys in and supports it. So the book starts with leadership and really looking at servant leadership. And I think now we're starting to see some academic literature come out on sacrificial leadership, even, which I think probably better captures Caesars sometimes than servant leadership. But I take servant leadership because we have a lot of evidence for servant leadership working. And um, just the space that she serves in, she's high L. So she's competitive and valiant and noble and mighty, but she's also Hassed. So it says that like the teaching of wisdom and loving kindness is on her tongue. And I love this as a leader because servant leadership captures you have to be a person of power to empower others, but you also have to be empowering, right? And have that kindness and mercy on your lips as you lead. So it starts off with servant leadership. And then I really threw out Proverbs, I think there's five predominant business strategies that are best practice today. So for 3,000 years, these strategies have been best practice in business, and we've seen them operationalized in each of the cases that I talk about in the book. So it goes from first of all, having a long-term orientation. If you're building your business quarter to quarter on shareholder reports, you're you're gonna lose along the way the decisions that are gonna make you long-term sustainable economically, profitably. Not only that, but as Christians, we're called, we're called to the next generation. And I love this in the promises, you know, of all the covenants and old and the old testament, also looking at the promises and Proverbs, you know, we think in our short-term mindset, like if I do this faithfully, I'm gonna be wealthy tomorrow. And we see all the promises of God that take, you know, like Abraham, you know, you're gonna be like the your children will be like the sands of the beach, I guess. Um, and it was generations, right? And so we're sowing into something bigger than ourselves all the time. Super exciting. So long term, we move into stakeholder, understanding that who we are as people of faith throughout scripture, old, new testament, kingdom of heaven, all of it is called to love God with all of our mind, all of our heart, all of our resources. That old testament term for miode, which we say, like, you know, all of my mind, all of my heart, and all of my strength. Miode is actually all of my resources. I'm gonna love God with everything I have. And so we have this um perspective. And then God says, now that you love me with everything you have, be like me and love everybody else like I have loved you. And so we have to start with our understanding of who I can love through my company. So you have to have a stakeholder perspective. Who are the people? Not just shareholders, not just employees, not just your customers, but adding in your suppliers and the community. And all of this happens in Proverbs. We see it with the the giving to the poor, the preparing for her um servants while it's night, that her husband and her children are blessed by her work. So stakeholders. Then we see sustainability. We see that there is no fear for future seasons, her household doesn't fear for snow. Um, there is this long-term orientation of care for profit, of care for people and caring for the poor. And then even considering fields and buying them and planting vineyards, there's this interaction with the natural environment that I think sometimes we miss out on as Christians because of the politicism of environmentalism. But really, it's it all the whole story starts in a garden. So it's cool. So those three, and then we move from you know, long-term stakeholder sustainability. We move into supply chain orientation, which was the longest one for me to really um kind of capture. But um, you can't read this passage without seeing the supply chain because she is buying food from suppliers, she's buying flax from suppliers, she's selling to merchants, like all this is a you know, 3,000 years ago. We this is a full-fledged global supply chain, which is so cool. Um, you know, in the classroom, you're getting your students to imagine I don't just have to tell inventory miracles like Joseph and his warehouse and Jesus and the water and wine, you know, which there was scarcity, and then God provided an inventory miracle, but also that there were supply chains that we have examples to live from even back then, which is amazing. And then the last one is quality. And I think that sometimes we miss this as well. Um, you know, and I think, you know, having standards of excellence in the church and having standards of excellence in the work that we do. Um, I love this, and I this is my my I'll wrap up because I can get my long-winded answer, but I love it in, you know, Paul's in his writing to the church in Ephesus, how much he encourages them that they, that their good work, their ergon, you know, in the Greek, that it's vocational, it's their occupational skills that God's gifted them with are done as daily acts of worship. And then he prays for them to have spiritual wisdom so that all that we do will honor and glorify God. And that's such a beautiful picture of like how this all comes together, you know, in the skills and the work that God's called us to do. We need to do it with quality and excellence because that it honors and glorifies God and really points people to the gospel.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like I can't imagine ever wanting to serve God in any other way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Do you think Solomon's supply chain manager was a woman?
SPEAKER_02I don't well, okay. So Solomon gets so tricky because you know, a lot of the supply chain deals were done by marrying women. So they're definitely part women were part of the interactions. When you look at how he gets access to lumber, well, marry a princess. Um, no, not strategies I would adopt in modern day global supply chain management.
SPEAKER_00But uh that didn't make the book, huh?
SPEAKER_02No, no, I kept that. But I do think if anybody in scripture had had voices in his life, good and bad, from women, it was definitely Sullivan.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Well, he had a yeah, he certainly had a lot of women, and it was a decent chance that they were doing a lot of the um the supply chain management, the business management work, you know, to build the temple. There was a a whole lot that he was responsible for that he delegated to, I'm sure, a lot of very qualified women. Um so, Hannah, what do you want people to do after they listen to this interview?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think I think the challenge, you know, to to all of us, um in and even it's in the title of the book, is to be purposeful. And you know, I I really think that Matthew 25 is Jesus teaching on Proverbs 31. This is a fun one. Go read Proverbs 31, 10 through 31, and then read Matthew 25, the whole chapter, not just one parable, which is how we get the sermons, you know, one parable at a time. But you have, you know, the the 10 bridesmaids, you have um the parable of the talents, and then you have the sheep and the goat nations that show up in this passage. And we see in Proverbs 31, you know, the lamp that stays lit during the night, you see profitability, and then you see care for the poor. And Jesus, you know, as as a you know, the rabbi doing a mid-rash, you know, a teaching on this. I think that what I would hope that people do is understand your resources. You know, you can you're if God calls us into business, we need to be faithful in it. We need to understand, you know, what he's gifted with us with, both our gifts of the spirit as well as our practical wisdom, you know, and the practical skills that we have. And and be profitable, have margin. And I love the story of Ruth because you don't have to be wealthy to have margin, to have profit margin. Because Boaz, obviously, he's the wealthy guy, the, you know, the goal, the um, the kinsman redeemer with with the fields and the the employees and all of that. But Ruth had margin in her poverty as well. She had leftovers from lunch from Naomi. She had capacity to work for herself and for Naomi. And everything that she did had something left over. So I would encourage everyone, we're all entrusted with something, whether it's one talent, five talents, or 10 talents. God has entrusted us with skills and things that we want to be faithful with. And then at the end of the day, when we have margin left over, the sheep and the goats at the end of Matthew 25 get separated out based on whether they are aware of the people around them. And so I hope the book inspires people with ways that they can be purposeful about the work that God has called us to do, that we love God, but we really need to love people purposefully and serve people. Does that passage in Matthew 25, like you I don't like get into a lot of like the gnashing of teeth and the wailing, but I think it's a strict call. Jesus really wants us to care for people. And business is such a great, sustainable way to do it for generations.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, beautiful. Well, the book again is wisdom-based business, applying biblical principles and evidence to based research for a purposeful and profitable business. So if you're looking for a book about biblical applications for business that um isn't just saying your work matters to God, business person. Yeah, there's a lot of books like that. And and we certainly believe that on this show. But what Hannah is helping us to do is to move beyond the wow and into the how of how do we actually apply the Bible and God's will for business. I think that's the journey that we're all on here on this show. So, Hannah, uh, thank you for writing this important book and thank you for the work you're doing for students and for all of us. We're all on this uh this journey of learning how to do business God's way. So, and you're you're certainly an important voice in this. So we sure appreciate you. Hannah Stoles.com is the website, H-A-N-N-A-H-S-T-O-L-Z-E.com. Anything else you want to say about where you want people to go, what you want people to do?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, the book is available on Amazon as well. Um, you know, Kindle, um, audiobook and all of that. And um, you know, I I think at the end of the day, obviously I would be delighted if you read my book. But I would be ecstatic if it inspires you to read your Bible. And I I'm, you know, I'm an academic, so I'm always wanting a primary source, you know. And, you know, I I love it when people, you know, kind of pull things together for me. But um, I think, yeah, read it, buy it, Amazon, go to my website. But even better, read the read the word of God too, and and really, you know, explore that for all that God has for us. It's it's a pretty exciting journey to be on, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I'm sure some people have already tuned out and started reading Proverbs 31 uh toward the beginning of this interview. They're like, what? This isn't just about being a good homemaker, like housewife. Um, but there's there's so much more in there. So um thank you for pointing this out for us, Hannah. May God continue to bless uh the work you're doing there at Wheaton and and Lipscomb and beyond.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. We hope you've enjoyed this episode, and if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity and Business at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.