Welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast with host Darren Sheer, an initiative of the RTW Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. This is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. You can get more information about the HBU Center for Christianity and Business and sign up to receive free access to all five issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at Christianityandbusiness.com.
SPEAKER_01On today's episode, we're joined by Bruce Hartman. Bruce is the founder of Gideon Advisors, a Christian advisory firm committed to walking with people into a brighter future as they help clients navigate life and career transitions and advance Christian values in the marketplace. He's a seasoned executive with 30 years of success creating shareholder value for Fortune 500 firms, including Yankee Candle and FootLocker, where you were the CFO of those two companies, right?
SPEAKER_03Yes, and at Yankee Candle, I was the chief administrative officer as well.
SPEAKER_01And he graduated in 2013 with a Master of Divinity from Drew University Theological School. So just, you know, kind of the natural career progression, you know, to go from CFO of these massive companies into seminary, because everybody's doing that these days, right? Not really. And uh, but he he earned the Daniel P. Kidder Award for the highest GPA in pastoral care while he was there. And and so he's a trained theologian as well as a seasoned executive, and he's put this experience and his passion for Jesus into this new book that just released at the time of uh the airing of this episode, Jesus and Co. Connecting the lessons of the gospel with today's business world. Bruce, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, thank you, Darren.
SPEAKER_01So there's uh a passage. I just want to read this passage because I I think it'll help us with a jumping off point uh to understand your background, kind of what's brought you to this point and and where you're headed from here. You said, I set up my business believing this was what God wanted from me. And the first year it was a huge commercial success. My monthly income from fees earned was forty to sixty thousand dollars a month. So when you're the CFO of Foot Locker, CFO of Yankee Candle Company, I mean you're you're you're in high demand. People want to uh want you to consult with them. But at no point was I ever happy. I stayed troubled, I was impatient, and many of my old habits returned. In 2015, I flew over a hundred times. I was not where I was supposed to be. I wasn't asked for my theological advice, I was wanted for my business advice. In 2016, I rearranged my vision and gave up providing help unless I could help from a Christian viewpoint. So, Bruce, what was going on uh at the time of that that these things were happening in your life?
SPEAKER_03Well, they you know, I had this business and I was uh flying around, and uh, but frankly, Darren, most people were interested in how I could help their business. And you know, with that comes a set of problems. Uh one of the one of the hardest things to do is to work with companies that may not have the same alignment that you do. And that was discomforting for me. Um so we referenced in 2016, it's a it's a value judgment that I had to make. You know, what was I what was I after? Was I after making money, or was I after um helping businesses that have a had a Christian orientation? So that's when I decided to change uh my focus and also focus on not businesses that were treating me like a mercenary, but businesses and people that I could be I could be partners with in their lives and help them grow. And that was probably the biggest reason for that change.
SPEAKER_01So when you were an executive in these Fortune 500 companies, how did you deal with those feelings? Was it something that kind of started after that? Or when you went into consulting with the seminary, um, what when did you kind of start to get this unsettled feeling?
SPEAKER_03Well, it was it it it was uh in the later part of my career, it existed. Uh, particularly I had a number of pastors that saw something in me that I didn't even see in myself. Um, and I really wasn't happy with um all of the decision making that you would see. Now I was really happy with Yankee Candle uh in particular. Great company, uh, great reputation, and they really do live up to a lot of the things that are in the book, but it's the association that you have with banks and um other commercial enterprises that unsettled me. But it was almost a compelling drive or force to move on, do something different. It was almost as if God had said to me, Um, you've done what you wanted to do as a youth. It's now time to work for me. And that's why I went to seminary. And what I've discovered, Darren, is anytime I move off of that mission, uh life gets unsettled for me.
SPEAKER_01So you really wanted to be talking about Jesus with these companies, and they maybe they're not so interested in Jesus, they want to know how to increase their profitability and so on. And and so you said, okay, well, let's let's kind of give them give them what they want, and then I can give them what they need, which is Jesus. And so you wrote this book, uh, Jesus and Co. Jesus and Company, connecting the lessons of the gospel with today's business world. It's a very clever uh a clever approach to to kind of bring them Jesus at the same time bring uh increased business acumen and lessons from you know, I mean, I uh Jesus, I mean, if you want to look at almost all of Jesus' parables had a manager of some sort uh as the main character, and they're and and just the way that Jesus carried himself, lived his life, of course, you know, the the beginning of his life almost entirely in the marketplace, uh and and even after during his ministry, uh almost all of his public appearances in the marketplace. Um so so tell us about this book and a little more of kind of what it's about, and I think we have a clearer idea, understanding of why you wrote it now.
SPEAKER_03Right. So, you know, every when you go to seminary and you I'm certain you remember this, Darren, they always ask you what your calling is, right? Yeah, and you're surrounded with folks that that want to be pastors, they have a real sincere desire to be a pastor, and it's and so I was always struggling with what was my calling. Um, and up until uh you know, probably about two years ago when I had started getting my doctorate degree. Uh and by the way, Darren, I I'm graduating with my doctorate degree this May, so I'm excited about that as well.
SPEAKER_01Congratulations.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. So what I discovered, particularly when I was doing individual counseling or with businesses after the 2016 uh moment, is that that was my calling. There gives me no greater joy than to work with uh folks in terms of helping them get a job, um, you know, particularly if they're a younger person trying to get into the workplace and then those that have been displaced from the workplace at a later age after 50. And also young, exciting people that are starting out a business. I spent some time on Sunday with a young man who did a great job identifying and analyzing his business, but he was really unsure whether he'd made the right decisions. And he's a faithful Christian. He actually was one of the early readers of Jesus and Company. That's really what excites me. It's not about my identity by how much I make, but it's my identity by how much I help. And that's probably been the biggest movement. So out of that movement, I've decided to, I decided to write this book, Jesus and Company, to, because I what you just said is really important, that Jesus spent a lot of time in the marketplace. 35 of the 42 parables fit what you described. It's a manager, or it's a manager giving people things to do, or people finding money, and what should they do with it. Um so I saw that connection, and I am you know been very fortunate to have had wonderful people work for me and with me in my business career, and I also have the ability to do a lot of theological research on Jesus, and that was principally my focus. So to be able to put these two together, I now then I understood this is what um Jesus wants me to do. Now, the reason why I'm sure of it now is I get up at four in the morning excited to go downstairs and work and write or um think about what I have to do. This is work that isn't a burden to me. This is a work that I enjoy doing every day. And I'm usually dissatisfied at the end of the day because I didn't get enough done. And that's a that's uh been a big mindset change. Um so Jesus and company is a culmination of all those efforts.
SPEAKER_01And and there are so many different facets of well, there's so many facets of Jesus, but there's so many facets of Jesus that you presented in the book, and it's broken down chapter by chapter that way, looking at uh these different um qual these different ways that you can observe the business acumen of Jesus. And so we don't have time to go through all of them on this episode, which is why people need to go get this book, which just came out. But I just want to look at let's say maybe uh two or three of them. Um the the first one that, as I was going through the book, the first one that really caught my attention was the Jesus, the reputational borrower. What's that one all about?
SPEAKER_03So a lot of a lot of people uh, you know, it's usually the first question I get about the book, but the the the reason why I put that in is one of the most important and most uh common things in business is borrowing money and what should your attitude be? And a lot of times, um, Darren, I would see in business that people were very resistant to talk with the people that they borrowed from, which I always found ironic because they were very interested in talking to them when they wanted to borrow, uh, but not so much after they borrowed. So to me, and then all the businesses I worked in, you you know, we had a tremendous amount of respect for for those that we had to borrow, and almost all businesses have to borrow. So it's a it's a reality. So what I did was take three of Jesus' stories and married them up with people that that I met that I thought were particularly strong with how to how to borrow and the importance of your reputation. So, you know, the first story that I really love is they have we have 5,000 people sitting on a hillside, and Jesus is approached uh by one of the disciples and says, it would take us six months' pay to feed all these people. And I'm summarizing, but Jesus said, Don't worry. And he went to a small boy, young boy, who had the five loaves and the fish, and he spread those, he he had that passed out throughout the crowd. What's hidden in that story is he borrowed from the boy. Not only did he borrow from the boy, he paid the boy back many times more than what the boy had given him. And to me, that's the relationship that Jesus asks us to have with those that we inevitably have to borrow from. But it was, he did it through his reputation. Uh think about um in the first century, uh, a man is outside the city doors and says, I need a donkey and a colt. Just tell them Jesus needs them and they'll give them to you. And as we all know, the story of the Palm Sunday story, Jesus was given the colt and the donkey. Um imagine going into New York City and saying and saying to a major landlord, I need to borrow uh the top of the Empire State Building because I have a committee meeting. Um it would be very difficult for any of us to do, but Jesus could do that in Jerusalem. And I think it's some of the hitting the hidden stories about Jesus that he could actually get folks to lend him things. And even in death, Joseph Aramathea and Nicodemus uh borrowed or gave him the uh the things that were needed for his funeral. So, but it wasn't that he borrowed that was as important as the way he carried himself. He carried himself with great reputation. Uh people knew who he was and they could trust him. And that's the single most important thing when you're a borrower, is to behave in a manner that is similar to Jesus, and a lot of your obstacles go away. Now, with that said, uh, this isn't a license to go out and borrow money, and I'm not suggesting go out and borrow money for whatever reason. It has to be a well-thought-out reason, obviously.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Gosh, that is so such a great observation. And it's one of those things where at first you hear it and you're like, Jesus was a borrower. You know, the borrower is slave to the lender, and you know, think all these verses that we hear in the personal finance world now uh against borrowing. Um, but again, you're not saying that this is a license to go out and take out a uh a business loan or a personal loan or something like that, but looking at it more from the the the reputational standpoint and how Jesus he always added value and people knew that if they were gonna put something in his hands, something great was gonna happen. I love that. So the the next one I wanted to to hear from you about is Jesus the perfect salesman. And so if you thought the borrowing, you know, kind of uh made people scratch their head, this one certainly will.
SPEAKER_03Yes, the I so this is the second most asked question, Darren. So well done. Uh the the there's a dichotomy in sales. Um, and you saw this with Wells Fargo. I'll give you the extreme of what Jesus wouldn't want you to do, and I'm sure a lot of folks are familiar with what with Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo's employees were pushed to increase sales, and they did it uh by filling out applications for fake clients or people that they knew and issued credit cards. And at the same point in time, they were meeting the goals and the standards that were being pushed by Wells Fargo. As we all know, the end of the story, the CEO loses his job, 5,000 people get fired, and Wells Fargo's reputation is ruined. So, and and the the story is in the book. Um, but now let's let's turn to another story, and I think this is a more common story in how people want to be able to sell. So I have a friend of mine who's a finance manager for uh a local car dealership, and I picked, they specifically picked a car salesman because they are considered to be the most nefarious of all salespeople. So I asked him, who was his number one salesperson? So he pointed this gentleman out. And my question was, why is he your number one salesman? So what's interesting about this person is he sold 30 cars a month. So if you think about it, that's a car and a half a day if you work 22 days in a month. And if you know the paperwork and all the follow-up a salesperson has to have to do, that's pretty impressive. And the reason why he sold so much, according to the finance manager and from my own conversation with him, is he didn't sell the customer what his dealership wanted him to sell. He sold the customer what the family needed. So even if a particular customer, uh particular model was on sale and he could get a spiff or a bonus for selling that car, he spent more time with the mom and the dad and understanding their family and their needs. And so what happened over time, people would come in and hear about him, and they would ignore the call-up line uh that salesmen have in these dealerships, and they would say, no, no, no, no, no, I need to talk to John. And John did other things. He knew birthdays, he knew graduations, he would send them notes. So these weren't his customers weren't a commodity. His customers were people that he built relationships with. And that's what you see in this chapter. And when you think about Jesus, his sales style was about how he behaved, and it certainly he was extraordinary with speaking the word of God. But what he sold is he sold solutions to people that had problems. You think about the the number amount of people that were paralyzed that he healed, and certainly the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. He was selling his solution to those people and how often he would say to them, your faith has healed you. And that's the correlation that we draw between being a good salesman, which is building a good reputation, doing it in the spirit with which God would want you to do, and making sure you were taking care of the customer in the most responsible way, compared to Wells Fago, which viewed their customers like apple trees, that we just will pick the apple off the tree because it's there for us. And that's the difference that I try to point out in this chapter, and that's why the chapter's name, Jesus the perfect salesman.
SPEAKER_01When I talk about Jesus as a salesman, one of the rebuttals I get is well, Jesus wasn't selling per se, in a sense of uh financial transactions. So I've no I noticed people, a lot of people get hung up on that. Uh, what do you say uh to people when they come at you with that?
SPEAKER_03Well, well, one, you can you go back to the the parables. Jesus is very consistent in how he tells us to behave as business people. Um that's one of the valuables of the parables. But what I always like to do is go back to the woman at the well. You have a woman who meets a single Jewish man at a well at noontime, and there's some clues about how desperately low in the society scale she was. Um it's noontime. Why would a sub-Saharan African woman be at a well at the heat of the day? Because she's rejected by her society. Uh, we find out later in the story she's had five husbands. Uh we also know that she's a woman at a time when women's rights were extraordinarily low. And so she was a pariah in many sense. But what Jesus did was he sold her on the value of his word and his presence in the word of God to an alienated nation. So if you take this woman who is the lowest of all in the Samarian society, she ends up at the end of the story, as you read the end of the story, converting an entire nation to believing in Jesus and believing in the word of Jesus. And that to me is really what great salesmanship is. And it's something that we can all follow, that every person we meet is an opportunity to make a friend, but potentially for a salesperson to make a customer. And a lot of times, if it when you talk to the really great salesman, they will tell you that they identify with Jesus and how he talked to this woman of very low social status. Because they will all tell you the most important person in the company is the receptionist you meet, or maybe it's the guy that works in the warehouse. They make your life easier. So I think the modeling Jesus does, it's not necessarily about money, it's about our behavior to other people, and that's what makes you a great salesman.
SPEAKER_01Right. I and I think I think people are okay with talking about Jesus as um uh an an expert, influencer, uh, the art of persuasion, and so on, those lessons that we can learn from him. But when I hear there's something when you bring in money into the equation, and when people start to think about Jesus ringing the register, and and we have in our culture uh kind of a disdain for uh making profit in some many many cases and and something something wrong with making money and so when people kind of see jesus in that light I think people really kind of they kind of bristle I've noticed I mean the the thing that I tell them is that Jesus wasn't just selling something for $9.99. I mean like how how cheap is that i and and so they have this idea that that Jesus was just giving everything away for free and was expecting nothing in return and yet Jesus expected everything in return from the person that he was inviting you know when when Jesus invites you to become his follower he's he's saying to lay down your life lose your life so that you can find it. I mean it it wasn't 999 it was everything and so I think i the there's there's the lesson there that we really have to be passionate about what it is that we're that we're selling and and that the what we're expecting in return really should match the value that we're bringing and Jesus was bringing far greater value than just 999 which is why he could expect that somebody would lay down their entire life for him.
SPEAKER_03Is that the way you tend to think about it too yeah a couple things uh you know in contemporary uh theology um you know has painted Jesus that way but the reality is this there's a human reality in the reality of Jesus Jesus was a carpenter and there's this hidden life that he had from the age of 12 to 30. And I've been through a number of the documents um scholarly documents that talk about how people wrote about him in the generation the couple of generations after him he was a carpenter and we can certainly assume based on the quality of the parables and his visitation in the marketplace that he he also owned a business uh whether he worked for his dad or he had had his own small business in Nazareth there's a there's plenty of um examples of this period there's plenty of plenty for us to see that from this period of 12 to 30 this 18 year period Jesus worked the now for the human reality is we all have bills to pay and we can't escape that the second thing is we all need to work to pay the bills and the third thing is we all need to develop a relationship in terms of how do we earn the money to pay our bills and that is through our personal relationship with Jesus. So I think it's somewhat naive to assume that Jesus didn't understand that money was an important part of life. It's what how we handled it. And one of my quotes that I have in the book that I I end up saying a lot it Jesus is is interested in our self-worth self-worth not our net worth but he's also interested in us being able to survive and function.
SPEAKER_01Right that's excellent before we go into the the third one I'm curious looking back over your career uh as an executive in these companies you didn't really you didn't have this understanding of Jesus I assume back then that you do now as you have you know poured yourself into your studies on this on this topic um what difference do you think it would have made in your in your various roles looking back?
SPEAKER_03I think extraordinary difference uh you know while I had a a great career um and perhaps some of the uh the life lessons I learned helped in writing this book but I think I would have been a significantly better executive uh and probably could have accomplished a lot more and it's one of the things this question you've asked about I ask all the time uh when I review my past and you know things like that so I I think that for me if I'd gotten this book if if I had read this book at the age of 22 it would have I would have had a much different career.
SPEAKER_01Do you think it would have kind of because you spent some time working in the church world right after uh after your business career and now you're kind of back in business is that right if I if I understood your bio correctly do you think that because I think sometimes when when business people get a hold of some of these things they they just they get so fascinated with the scriptures that the and then the their mentors are not business people. Their mentors and and people discipling them oftentimes are working in the church world but they can't kind of came up through that career path. You know you go to a seminary then you go take over church or plan a church um whether stateside or or in another country um is do you think that you might have been led faster kind of into the church world earlier if you would have started to dive into these topics sooner?
SPEAKER_03I yeah I think so um I it's particularly if I had that knowledge which is it's always speculation is difficult uh because we are where we are for a reason.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03But yeah I probably would have and I probably would have answered the call quicker but then I might not have learned as much about the business world and thus my calling would have been incomplete. So it's it's it's a logical uh it's a it's a logical answer that's hard to answer. But back to your question your the initial part of your question I was really fortunate because I had three really good mentors as I was going through school and as I was trying to find my calling one was the Bishop of the United Methodist Church was very helpful but he understood this issue that you were talking about that it's hard to mentor somebody if you've never been in his field or his or her field. So this is an important point. But the the bishop uh that I'm talking about very well versed in business discipline so he understood what I was thinking and could get uh a handle around how to help me you know navigate that and um a couple of other very strong um pastors and professors you know helped me a lot in in clarifying this it's it it's even an unusual path that I've taken for somebody that's got an MDV. Most people go on to become pastors or something else with the church.
SPEAKER_01Very few really go back into the business world uh which I've done yeah and that really segues into this third facet of Jesus that you talk about in the book Jesus as a marketplace coach because if I I think because the Bible is often interpreted by um pulpit ministers they're it it just they just kind of or for those of us who went to seminary kind of the the highest um level of gratification it seems for a seminary professor is that their student would go on uh to become a seminary professor and and devote themselves uh to the um uh to the academy which is uh which is wonderful um if that's what you're calling but but to assume that that is kind of the natural progression for somebody who is called to the quote unquote ministry it really is um fallacious and and really destructive for the mission of the church. But to understand Jesus uh as a marketplace coach is a game changer. What do you say about that in the book?
SPEAKER_03Well yeah this is uh that's a really good point you brought up uh that the academy tends to send people off to be pastors but the reality is that's a very small part of our population uh on on any given day 161 million Americans are working they the same group of people feel disenfranchised uh for the large part from the church because they don't understand why uh pastors don't understand more about their lives why on Sunday morning can't they get a message about to what to do with a boss that's asked them to do something unethical or perhaps a woman who's been approached by a superior man who's harassing her. These are the issues that are real for folks in the business world and they're largely uh ignored and that's not the sermon you hear on Sunday for the person that has to deal with real life at on Monday at 815. So that's why I wrote this chapter um to take Jesus out of the pulpit and put him put him into their lives.
SPEAKER_01And one of the things that we did or that I did uh and edited um by this wonderful group of editors that I used is we put the sermon in the mount it's all there for us about how we are to conduct ourselves in the business world as well as in life and it's very transportable and that's why we wrote this chapter was to show great people that I'd been associated with and how they did it and to give people road a roadmap connected with the Sermon on the Mount which is you know Jesus's uh that that is the the keynote speech of speech of Jesus but to connect it to real life circumstances and real people who on Monday morning at 815 re-enter the workplace that's so good I mean it's it it's somewhere around 85% of the Christian workforce works in a for-profit business you know of those 160 some odd million um and and fewer and fewer are going to local traditional churches and and and so if they're gonna be discipled and the Great Commission is going to be carried out it's gonna happen where they're spending the majority of their waking hours which is in the companies that you know somebody's on their way to work right now or they're leaving work or they're on a lunch break. But if you're wondering where does the ministry happen where does discipleship happen it's right there in your workplace.
SPEAKER_03So tell us Bruce about about getting advisors and how you're helping uh people in companies so I would say um Darren that you know the first thing that I do is I assess the situation in terms of and I don't assess it in terms of whether I'm going to get paid or not that that's always something I've learned to leave behind. So if for instance uh I told you about this young man I met with Sunday night faithful Christian really had done his work well and he listened to learn. And so that combination for me is what really attracts me. You know I may also have a well recently I just acquired a young woman who was having a great career and all of a sudden got fired and it crushed her and helping her through the grief of of that has been very important in terms of getting her to the next step. And it's about helping people move from this point of of grief and disaster to what I I call a future with hope at which you read my um what I try to do with people is give people a future with hope.
SPEAKER_01So if I can do those things that's whether it's a business or it's an individual that's that's what first attracts me and that's how I select select um who and what I work with beautiful and what is the website people can go to to learn more about you and the book?
SPEAKER_03Yeah www dot brucelhartman dot com excellent we'll have that in the show notes.
SPEAKER_01And wrapping it up here Bruce what would be a parting piece of advice you could leave with our Christian business professionals today that it's very difficult to navigate the world of business when each day and each hour we're we were we all I was and and the folks out there that are are there we're confronted with this one choice do do we do what we want to do or do we do what God wants to do?
SPEAKER_03And within that there is that the the short-term fear of if I don't do what my boss wants or maybe I can cut a corner here I can get ahead at the end of the day that's a short-term decision and all we really need to do is follow the simple ethical decision that Jesus made in the garden when he said not my will but yours and that's something I focused on a lot and practice a lot and I'm not perfect at it and I wish I were uh but that's the one message that I that if you could get anything out of Jesus and Company the book or um our own lives as Christian it's not our will but God's and every decision we make we need to follow.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful well Jesus and Company is the book and BruceLhartman.com is the website we'll have links to those in the show notes. Bruce thank you so much for uh your generosity with your time and your expertise and I know having been to seminary not uh at the doctoral level I know how much time you have poured into uh this material and and we are better for it and we appreciate you brother.
SPEAKER_00All right thank you thank Darren thanks for your time 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 the HBU Center for Christianity and Business at christianitybusiness.com thanks for listening and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business