Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the RCW Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is a show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. And on this episode, we're joined by my new friend, Pierce Brantley. Pierce is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur and a Christian businessman. He has successfully launched, run, and sold his own company and served as an executive for top 10 social PR firm, uh top 10 social PR firm in Dallas and consulted with numerous Fortune 500 companies. He studied disruptive business strategy under the late, the late great, I should say, Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School. And if if you're familiar with this concept of disruptive innovation, I mean Clayton Christensen actually coined that term. And uh he is the author, uh Pierce is the author of Calling, Awaken to the Purpose of Your Work, which is going to be the focus of our chat today. He's also the author of Creating Heroes, The 10 Tactics of Client Leadership and Organizational Management and Power, Love, Sound Mind. 52 Week Soul Strategy. Piercebrantly.co is the website. Pierce, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_02Hi, Darren. It's been a pleasure to be with you today, sir.
SPEAKER_01What is one of the things that you one of the concepts that you uh you introduce in this book, uh, which is which is a wonderful book. And and we we try to really nuance this conversation about, as I was saying earlier, uh this this conversation of faith and work can tend to kind of rehash a lot of the same concepts. Um, but one that we don't hear about often is this this concept of anointing. What is the anointing, and especially as it relates to work being done in the typical nine to five job?
SPEAKER_02You know, I I as I kind of went through how we were going to articulate this in the book, I kind of became aware of just kind of the wide spectrum that the word anointing kind of brings to people's minds. Um, it's one of these kind of uh it's a word that kind of gets seasoned on a lot of different uh topics within the church and within the Christian faith. But oftentimes we don't kind of bring it down to, you know, first principles, to first truths. And so because of that, it kind of becomes a buzzword. And, you know, uh, with anything in scripture, we never want to become so familiar with it that it doesn't actually have an application to our lives. And that is especially, especially true with the word anointing. So, you know, to ground us, um, I'm gonna just kind of uh use a point of reference, which is first John 2, uh verse 27. And I I love this verse. So just we'll let it soak into us before we get into it. But it just says, but the anointing that you receive from him, meaning Christ, uh in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as it has taught you, meaning the anointing, abide in him. So I I love this verse because it is so linked to our relationship with God, first and foremost. But anointing, the idea of anointing goes all the way back even to you know the edge of biblical kind of times before Christ. And it was just this idea of being set apart, right? Anointing in the practical sense means to be set apart. Both the uh the the name, uh the title Christ and the title Messiah have different elements of this, basically meaning set apart. So when the Bible talks about us being anointing as you know, little Christ as Christians, we are set apart because of Christ's set apartness. And so, you know, throughout scripture, we see imagery and elements of what anointing looks like. Um, and uh and that's important for us to get that kind of root, but it's important to know that uh as a Christian, you are anointing, or you are anointed. Um we can kind of we that nuance is out in different ways for each of us, which we'll talk about, but ultimately it means being set apart for good work and that being in vain with being in relationship with God through Christ.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and I love that verse that you quoted in first John. And and as I'm looking at this as well right now, uh this idea of the anointing teaches you. And and so it's like it's almost like this word is being is interchangeable with this concept of wisdom and the and the wisdom of God and the and the Holy Spirit guiding us into all truth. And I know I typically haven't always thought of anointing as being a teacher. Um, you know, typically in like the charismatic world, you know, the anointing is just this, it's like this, um it's like the force, you know, that kind of comes on you and you're just like you don't even know what's what's happening. Um, but this is this sounds like um the idea of a teacher coming alongside and in the Holy Spirit himself. Is that is that accurate?
SPEAKER_02That is accurate. So if we think about other points in scripture where basically the Lord says, Hey, listen, if you desire wisdom, ask me, and I will give it to you generously and without reproach. The Bible actually says in some for some translations say without repentance, meaning anything that you need to know about my character, my way of doing things, my approach to doing anything on the earth, if we're working together, I'm going to help you. And he does, he absolutely does. I am testimony after testimony of saying, you know, uh, Almighty, uh, I have my ideas about how this can be approached. I have my talent, I have my skill sets out all these different things. What would you say I should do about this? And without fail, he gives me wisdom generously and without reproach. And it's always more effective. It's always more effective than if I had just, you know, tried to mentally muscle my way through something or provide my expertise uh to something. The the way I we talked about in the book is anointing is the spirit of God infusing a skill set, a skill set, which is basically to say, you know, I take whatever skill I think I have, whether that's you know, mental or um, you know, soft skills, you know, EQ, IQ, it doesn't matter. I hand it over to the Lord and say, Lord, all right, you've given me these things. These are gifts and tools that you have given me. If you were to work through them, what would that look like? And then that's when typically the uh the Lord partners with you and does something even greater than you could have imagined. Um one of the stories that we talk about, uh, actually, this is in the Old Testament, but we see the same kind of relationship of God working through people uh is with the story of uh Bezalel and this other guy named Mohiliab. And uh this is you know, right after these the Israel, uh the Israelites are headed out towards the promised land, beginning of their journey. And uh the Lord tells Moses that he's anointed these two guys, and he says that he's given them ability and intelligence with knowledge for craftsmanship, for artistic design to work with gold and silver and bronze and cutting stones and every kind of craft. The Bible says every kind of craft. And so you get one of these guys who's like a super craftsman, another guy who's a super leader, and both of these guys, the Bible says, uh, that God says, I gave them these skill sets, and I gave them these skill sets for specific things. Uh, and then they go and do a laundry list, it's like half a chapter long of work, and we had that same kind of ongoing relationship with God because of what Christ has done in our lives. The key is learning how to abide in it, as you know, first John says, abide in him, and these things will come in order to do good, good work.
SPEAKER_01I love that example. You know, just thinking about a craftsman, uh, as in the example that you gave, the if if the anointing is like a teacher that teaches us how to do, what to do, you know, it's not just in terms of like the the the context of the big decision that has to get made and the Holy Spirit is going to teach us what to do. It could be in like thinking about an athlete that is anointed, where their their their brain and the muscle memory and everything like that, the Holy Spirit can can teach, right? Can teach the body like on like a cellular level what to do in the so like um going one degree this way instead of one degree that way, or or you know, making a split second decision, like all of those can be aspects of the anointing, right? It's not just it's not just when the Holy Spirit kind of leads us to do on when because that's what we often do as Christians is we wait until we have like the big decision that has to get made. And and I want God to anoint that one decision instead of seeking him in the woodworking or in the the sending of the email or or whatever.
SPEAKER_02That's right. That's right. Well, I I love that you brought that point up because you know, for whatever reason, we kind of, and I and I do this myself sometimes, is it's easy to kind of default to we need the power of God, the anointing that comes from God. We need God's help when it comes to big decisions. And so what happens is subconsciously, we wait for those big moments to come, and then we're all stressed out because we haven't abided, right? And uh, and then we have to like try and work up faith or or spiritual gumption in order to engage with God instead of focusing on the mundane. You know, oftentimes I think we we actually wait for like mountaintop or Moses type moments where we would hope that we kind of at some point in the future, God is gonna kind of give me a download of everything I need in order to go fulfill my calling and my purpose in life. And up until that point, I'm gonna be a good Christian, whatever that definition means, right? And then from that point on, you know, we're gonna ride off into the sunset together. But the reality is stewardship, abiding in Christ, abiding in the anointing, abiding in what God wants us to do in the day in, day out work, that's actually how you kind of graduate and you move into more and more awareness of what God is doing in the world. It doesn't typically hit you like a lightning bolt. We've been called from the point that we become, we've we're one with Christ, right? We are one with God. From that point onward, man, it's it's uh it's up to us to engage with God because He gives us a lot of agency, quite frankly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and you were saying in the book about that scripture in 1 John 2.27, where it says, the anointing you receive from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. And then uh on it goes, that that's what happened to you in the boardroom. Uh, what was uh what what happened to you?
SPEAKER_02That was a fun, fun experience. Um, yeah. So I was uh at this really cool plant uh in uh it was uh close, it was just north of Chicago, and so it was a food factory. And so these guys make about or the food packaging and uh factory. And so what they do is they basically make all of the different food that you and I eat on a day-to-day basis. If you know you or your listeners were to open up your cabinet, you'd probably see at least three things that they that they created. Um uh they're they're everywhere. Uh, and so uh what they were doing is they needed a they come to the conclusion that they, in order to move into some new market categories, some new types of clients, they had to reposition how they communicated about themselves as a business, which was a good decision on their part. Uh the problem was, it was a good problem to have, was that you know, buyer needs had changed and um and it kind of had some conflicts with the with the with the way they they sold. And so they were a large company, but they needed to uh they needed to reposition. And so, you know, we're talking through all these different you know, concepts and ideas, and we're not really hitting on everything. And if you've ever been in a situation where everyone knows something needs to change, but they don't know what needs to change, that can be a kind of a it can be frustrating and discouraging at the same time. Uh and so it whether it's an element of having too many cooks in the kitchen or just not knowing, you know, what step one is supposed to be, uh, it can be it can be a problem. And so, you know, what I did was I I I recognized it. And so what I just said was internally I kind of went through what I call active listening, where I just said, you know, Lord, uh you have a solution here, and I don't necessarily know what that solution is, but I know that it is going to, I I know that you're in and of what these folks are wanting to do. And I know you brought me here for a reason. So I'm gonna rest on those two things. What would you do about this situation? And instantly I saw a picture of you know how all their different basically core business processes existed, how they should be organized and how we should talk about them. Uh, and it was kind of like getting an answer to prayer at real time. And so, you know, I'm already an administrative person, already kind of a process analytical type person, but this this understanding came from prayer. It didn't come from from me doing a discovery with stakeholders. We hadn't been there long enough. And so I got up, got the whiteboard marker, which is always dangerous. You never want to get pierced the whiteboard marker, but we got up on the whiteboard, I got up on the whiteboard and kind of drew out what I was explaining. And instantly, there was instant clarity in the room. And it brought a ton of um, well, I'm gonna use the word revelation because revelation is always practical. Again, it's an ethereal world that we don't put tangibles to. It's practical when it comes to business. Immediately it brought clarity into the room, and that clarity helped people understand what they needed to do in order to reposition the business and how they talked about the business. And it was right. So they used it, they used it um how they on all their marketing collateral, uh, they used it and how they trained their teams, and it was a good, good thing. Now, in and of itself, you might have just thought, well, that was a successful, you know, kind of business meeting. About a month later, uh, we'd heard from the CEO, and CEO called up to say that it opened up new relationship opportunities with you know the biggest players in the world when it comes to you know food and food manufacturing. Uh, and so you know, the fruit of what we what had happened in prayer was an outcome of good things for the business. And that's the you know, that's you know, the the effects you could say of anointing. Anointing looks different for everyone. Um uh it's one of those things where you're aware of you know what it is you're good at, and then you offer that back to the Lord as an act of humility. And then that's where partnership typically comes from. That's where the biding is, right? I am asking you, I'm giving this back to you, you're giving back to me. We're jiving.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love that. And and it doesn't it doesn't begin when you're in that big that big meeting, right? It it happens in everyday life. And and I'll have to share with our audience, they won't know this because of of we start the recording once we start the interview. Uh, but I I always pray with our guests before we get on the show. And and I'll have to brag on you, Pierce. Uh, even before I got a chance to initiate the prayer, you said, can we just pray before we start this interview? And so talk about the role of seeking God when you're going into not just when you're starting the day or when you're in church or when you're stressed out or whatever, but just the role of prayer kind of in your everyday life, like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, I I I think prayer is one of those things that is um is instrumental in the way we go about uh our lives. You know, there's a verse that talks about praying without ceasing. And that can without kind of putting that into a kind of a practical day-to-day kind of lifestyle sort of thing, I think that idea can actually bring a lot of anxiety. Um, because you know, it's kind of the same kind of parallels to, you know, what are you gonna do in heaven? You'll play a heart. What do you mean I'm supposed to pray without ceasing? Uh praying without ceasing, without ceasing just means having a constant conversation with your father about the stuff that you're doing during the day. And oftentimes because we don't enjoy our jobs, because we don't like the work in front of us, because business is hard, um, we don't think about God caring about that kind of stuff. And partially that's because we devo devalue it in our own minds. Um, when we kind of shift our perspective to realize, you know, we are typically where God wants us to be. Um, not saying there isn't adjustments that can't happen from our spiritual posture towards that. Um, but treating every situation in business and in our jobs as if, you know what, uh God is more than willing and more than able and likely already working in and through me. What I need to do is basically tap into that and become more aware of it. The best way to do that is in prayer. And first off, it's just acknowledging it and saying, you know, God, you know, regardless of what this day looks like, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to be in and of this work right now. I know you're working through me. I'm gonna be in agreement with you that we can do great things together. Then it's kind of acknowledging the stresses of the day because they're real. Even Jesus said in this world life you're gonna have struggles. Oftentimes I think we think, well, you know, I know God's with me if I'm not stressed out or if I'm not, you know, if there aren't any troubles. The Bible doesn't promise that. The Bible actually says I'm gonna be with you in those troubles. So again, breaking down that kind of mental barrier. And then, you know, really, anytime you uh I there's different times when I when I approach it. Um anytime there's a particular problem or business situation or you know, team prop uh project, oftentimes in my case, that I don't know how to solve, I'm gonna bring the Lord into it, into prayer. And so it's a kind of a regular thing, it's a habit you build up. I it's good always to start at, you know, at the at the top of the day, but the reality is at the top of the day, you're gonna be thinking about what for the reality of his presence and the reality of him and being involved in your life. In the middle of the day, it's gonna get more tactical. So you think of like the morning prayer type prayer discipline as strategic, the during the day stuff is tactical. So, you know, a great example, if I could tell you listeners a story real quick. Here recently, I was um uh I was asked by a CEO and uh an outside consultant for basically my advice, and I wasn't the only one they're asking advice from, but my advice on how the the company should shift how its executives were working um and what that meant for how they were going to be you know uh working as a company and what they needed to do for some some outside things as well. It's a big question. How is your executive team supposed to work together um in order to reach new revenue goals? And how as well, on top of that, are you supposed are are we supposed to rethink about how you know consumers perceive us? Two really big questions. You can't just answer those, you know, uh uh with flippantly. Although I could, I could from you know, experience, from skill set, from a lot of different things. I could shoot from the hip and say, well, you know, these are the principles I use to apply this stuff. Uh and so what I did was I was I said, I just started writing stuff out. I started going about doing my due diligence, and in the middle of that, I just said, you know, Lord, I know how I would approach this. I know what you would do, or I know what I would do just based off of you know my my mental approach to things and and experience. Is there's something you see that I don't see about this scenario? And I'll be quite honest, I've gotten nothing. Got zilched, a little bit disappointed at first, but then I kind of continued in it and and I continued to kind of pray through it. And then within about 10 minutes, I'd gotten again kind of uh a download of what I thought the Lord was asking me to do. Uh and when I say download, what that looks like is I get you know I get inspiration that is practical that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten except for what I attribute to prayer. Uh and uh uh so it's revelation, it's something I could put a wrench to. So anyway, I wrote it down and uh and then I had to go meet with the CEO and this uh and this outside consultant. And what I felt like the Lord had told me was that you had very high paid, you know, supposed to be high level visionary uh uh executives that were spending all of their time doing. Uh tactical work. And so basically busy work. They were basically working in the business and not on the business. If we were supposed to kind of like high-level summarize, it was a lot more detailed than that. So anyway, I laid out everything that the Lord had told me to obviously tell them it was what the Lord had done. And I kid you not, their drop their jaws could have hit the floor there. And it was they were absolutely like blown away by it. And so then they opened up the avenues to talk about that stuff in a lot more detail. Well, I was happy that it I had obviously hit a mark that I couldn't have seen, um, because it was basically what they were trying to internalize, but they couldn't verbal verbally express. About an hour later, I'm off on my own uh in a different part of the building. The CEO comes and finds me, sits down in a chair, and just stares at the wall, kind of blank-eyed for a moment. And then he starts shaking his head. He says, Pierce, he said, I don't know how you knew that that was our problem. He said, I don't know how you could have even articulated that. He said, Like, how did you know? How did you know? And he just, you know, kind of just again was in disbelief is the best way to explain it. Well, then that brought up the the the opportunity for just share to share how I did. I said, you know, I prayed about these things before going into them. This is what I felt like the Lord said about the your business. You know, he cares about your business, and this is kind of how uh uh how he sees you being able to make the most use of your resources and your time. And so it opened up the opportunity for testimony as well. Uh, and so that's great. Uh, I'm glad I was able to share that. But it's just kind of a proof point that God genuinely cares about these details of the business. You know, it's just it it was a management issue. Um, it was a management issue that only God could have seen from his level because he cared about what we're doing during the day, and because it's going to allow him, if we get those things correct, if they get those things correct, it's going to allow them to be more locked up with human values anyway. So it was a really cool thing uh that uh I got to participate with the Lord in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, love that story. Thanks for sharing. Your book is your latest book is calling Awakened to the Purpose of Your Work. As we wrap it up, what would just give our listeners kind of a quick sense of what to expect from this book and maybe give uh uh a takeaway from the book that they could maybe take and apply today?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. So calling awaken to the purpose of your work has one goal in mind, and that is to connect you with God uh with the work that He has predestined, pre-planned for you to do. Uh, God has work for you to do um that can be done at any job with any boss at any point in your life. And uh that looks like a calling, and that looks like specific work and specific mission just for you. And God desperately wants to be a part of that with you during the day. If you've ever felt like that, this is what I made for feeling is lacking, the Lord wants to mend that in your life, and he wants to bring you into greater and greater work, work of testimony, work of promise, work of joy, um, and uh and ultimately to give you give you a calling. So the book does that. The book is 11 chapters, breaks it down how we begin to engage with the Lord in our work, how we discover the work that He wants us to do, how we grow in things like anointing that we talked about today, how we grow in awareness of God during our jobs, and how we get to actually be a part of the kingdom uh missionally through the work we do every day. So um uh that's it at a high level. Uh, I could talk about it for hours, but uh um that's that's what they're gonna get about it, get out of it.
SPEAKER_01Right. Calling Awaken to the purpose of your work is the title of the book. And and uh the last question here, uh Pierce is um what would be if somebody maybe this concept of anointing is new, um, how can they start to operate in that today? Like is there is there a s a certain type of habit or something that they could implement just to start operating on just not on that limited uh human level where if it's to be, it's up to me, but to really start to tap into what's available to them in the in the supernatural.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. So yeah, there is a there's a mental aspect of it, and then there's an applicable aspect to it. So the mental aspect of it is realizing your education, uh, your skill set, your mental capacities, your uh uh EQ or IQ capacities, anything that you hold in your hands is something that has been given to you by God. That's a heart posture thing, that's a mind posture thing. And so we reverently come before God and say, I recognize that everything that I have disposable to me right now uh is something that you have given me. And I'm not going to elevate myself above that. I'm going to recognize that these are things that you give me for a specific time and place, uh, and that uh uh and I'm gonna walk in that posture. And that is something that you have to cultivate in your heart. Um uh there's no place for, you know, I'm the man when it comes to owning a business or um or you know, being, you know, a rock star, you know, in a uh if you're you know uh working on a team. Uh God gave you those things. And you have to cultivate that. You have to cultivate that every day because uh it's something we never outgrow. So that's the that's the mindset aspect of it. The next aspect of it is actually surrendering those things to the Almighty when it comes time to use them. And so that's a prayer thing, kind of like the two stories we mentioned earlier. It just starts with abiding, uh uh like uh uh first John uh chapter two mentioned. So I'm gonna say, you know, Lord, uh I don't know how to solve this project problem, or even if I think I know how to solve this project problem, there's a kingdom aspect to it that maybe I haven't tapped into yet. So what would that look like? Then I prayerfully ask the Lord to, or you prayerfully ask the Lord to use your skill set um uh in a way that would honor him. And you're gonna get new uh inspiration as you pray through that stuff. And you know, it's not gonna necessarily be like a lightning bolt or you know, um some kind of you know vision in the sky, like you know, you know, a prophet from the old testament, but you're going to get you're going to get inspiration and you're going to have clarity about how to approach something because you're doing it in relationship with God now, um, or you're aware of that relationship more clearly. So those are the two things mentally honoring the Lord and recognizing your skill set and then prayerfully bringing that skill set to the Lord before you go about and doing uh your work or your business management processes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Pierce, this has been uh a really uh powerful conversation. I really enjoyed it thoroughly. Piercebrantly.co.co is the website. Calling Awakened to the Purpose of Your Work is his latest book. Pierce, we sure appreciate what you shared with us today. May God continue to bless all the work you're doing.
SPEAKER_02It was such an honor to speak with you today and uh look forward to hopefully getting to do it again someday.
SPEAKER_00We 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 in 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.