Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the RGW Dunnham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. I'm your host, Derek Kerr, and this is the show that helps Christian business leaders integrate biblical values into business. Get more information about HW's 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 Christianitybusiness.com. Today we're going to be discussing bridging the gap between business professionals and their local churches. And we're joined by Matt Rustin. Matt serves as the executive director for Made to Flourish, which provides resources and training to empower a growing network of pastors to connect Sunday faith to Monday work for their churches. And this is an organization, if you're not familiar with it, uh it has just taken off rapidly, and pastors all over the country are jumping on board with uh with bringing this message to their churches, which just really hasn't been there in so long. And in fact, uh Tom Nelson was the one who started it, and Matt will tell us more about this, but but the Lord convicted him that he would had been committing pastoral malpractice, as he puts it, by not by not helping his people to understand the value of their work unto God. Matt received his Master of Divinity degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and has served in churches in North Dakota, the Chicago area, Kansas City, and most recently as pastor of spiritual formation at Blackhawk Church in Madison, Wisconsin. He and his wife Margie and their daughter Olivia live in Kansas City. Matt, welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast.
SPEAKER_01Thanks a lot, Darren. It's a pleasure to be with you today.
SPEAKER_00Well, we're going to hear more about Made to Flourish and what you guys are doing, but first want to dive into this topic. Why, you know, we're talking about bridging the gap between business professionals and their local churches. Why do you think this disconnect exists to begin with?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's a good question. And I think there's probably a lot of reasons why there is a disconnect between many pastors and the business leaders in their congregations. I think first, as a former pastor, I think we'd have to admit that we haven't always done a great job connecting the dots. We've had faulty paradigms of ministry. We haven't modeled it well. Even our language sometimes betrays us when we talk about things like full-time ministry, as if that's only what pastors do, or uh the different songs we sing, the prayers we pray. Um so I think some of the blame is is because pastors haven't connected uh the dots. One of the reasons why Tom says he committed uh pastoral malpractice, he says that uh he spent a majority of his time equipping people for a minority of their lives. Wow. So it's almost like people came and rallied around his vocation, but according to Ephesians 4, the pastor, the church exists to equip people for their spheres of influence, the places where they serve. So I think some blame is uh probably on pastors in the local church. But I think we're also I think we're also in a cultural moment where for a lot of people they feel like their faith has to be really a privatized thing. And it's good on Sunday, it means something to me, but on Monday, my world of work is completely different, and I need to seal off those things. So it's almost like you put on a different pair of glasses, a different lens for what church is and for the world of work. So I think that's some cultural pressure around us. And then the final thing that I say, you know, why is there a disconnect? Um I think just a lot of pastors and especially marketplace leaders, they just might not understand each other's worlds. I've heard pastors say, I'm in, I'm intimidated by some of these business leaders that that come here, and they they might have really important, you know, high-power jobs and and I don't know how to connect. And I've heard business leaders say the same thing about pastors. You know, I feel like I they might say, I feel like I don't know the Bible very well or theology, and I just we we we we're speaking past one another. So there's a lot of reasons. Those are a few of the reasons I think there's a disconnect.
SPEAKER_00Well, our business professionals listening will be comforted to know that Matt and Tom and the this growing network of pastors are are working diligently in order to address this from the pastor's perspective and from the the church leader's uh perspective. And and so we're gonna kind of come at this topic of this disconnect. You know, we're not gonna beat up on pastors here today. We're gonna really focus in on how you as a business professional uh can help to bridge this gap. You know, what can you do as um as as a congregant? You know, maybe you you run a company, maybe you are working within a company, and you kind of come into church on Sunday morning for an hour, two hours, and you don't really you you just you sense that disconnect and you maybe not you don't feel like there's really much that you can do about that. Matt, what would you say to a a business person like that? What could uh he or she do in order to help his or her pastor to bridge this gap?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so there's leaders all over the country who are doing this really well, and there's a lot of examples I could point to. But one of the most practical things that you can do, and this is this might feel like you're taking a big risk, taking a chance, but we're seeing marketplace leaders invite their pastors into their workplace. Um you actually get them out of the office instead of meeting on their turf like you might do on a Sunday or in their office, you say, Hey, come to my come to my workplace. And that breaks down so many uh barriers. Actually, one of our pastors in our network uh he had a take your pastor to church uh announcement. He said, Take your pastor to church. Anyone who's willing to do that, he had 15 people take him up on the offer.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_01Some were university professors and people with very white, you know, white-collar jobs. But he had a hog farmer who asked him to come out to his hog farm and work with him. He had he had a crane operator, and he said, This crane operator would never lead a Bible study. He would never be the type of person to you know have a real uh public leadership role in the church. But this pastor said, when I got on his turf and saw his network of relationships, the expertise that he had, he said suddenly I knew how to how to pray for him better, I knew how to preach to him better, I knew how to apply the text to him better, because I began to understand his world. So I think even just a simple exercise of just say, hey, come out, I'd love to show you my workplace and and you know, maybe meet a few of the people that I work with on a daily basis. And hopefully there's some coaching that you can give the pastor just to, you know, not totally make you f make it awkward, but um that's a real tangible thing that I can uh see a business leader doing. I could also see a marketplace leader just inviting their pastor into some of the challenges that they're facing. Um, you know, it could be uh a firing. You have to let someone go, and you just ask your pastor for prayer or for advice or different initiatives that you have going on in your business. And the mere act of asking uh the pastor to either speak into that or to pray for that um can be a way that you're helping them uh connect the dots.
SPEAKER_00Um that's so powerful, Matt. You know, it actually made me think about how you know oftentimes I'll I'll hear from you know workplace people that aren't on maybe in pulpit ministry, uh, but they're a little bit frustrated that their pastor doesn't kind of lean on them more and invite them into some of the decision making of the church. And and you know, when was the last time you invited your pastor into maybe a tough decision that you had to make for your business? And so it it really ought to be a two-way street. I didn't really think about that until you just said that. Uh sorry to sorry to interrupt you there.
SPEAKER_01No, no, I think it's a it's a powerful example of you're just starting a dialogue. It has to start somewhere. Um, and then I would just say one of the things that I really appreciated from congregants is when they would send me different articles uh to help me learn about their world of work. Uh might be from the Wall Street Journal or wherever they're reading. And to be a pastor and to be learning about people's work uh was always helpful for me. So even right now I've got a guy who works at a bank, he's an economist, and from time to time he'll just send me updates on kind of the latest economic trends. And so I'm I'm becoming a learner about his field.
SPEAKER_00Matt, had you really gotten a hold of this message and and this revelation when you were working as a pastor before Made to Flourish? Kind of how what was that personal uh uh journey like for you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, I I think some of the foundation was laid in seminary, but I would say it's not until I came into my first church environment and I saw it really modeled by Tom Nelson here at Christ Community Church in Kansas City. And I was immersed in an environment where that was a huge value. But actually what turned me was not simply what the pastors did here, but it was as I met congregation members who were incredibly thoughtful in their place of work and incredibly thoughtful in their faith that really it opened my eyes about what was even possible. Um there was a guy who owned a business here, and even his entire architectural plan uh had a theological foundation. He talked about how we were made for community, so the inside of his uh walls were glass so people could see each other. Every Thursday he had a half an hour where they would just have ice cream out on the front lawn. Um he worked to give every single person a livable wage in the company. There was a library because he believed the life of the mind was important. Uh the cafeteria area had an area for kids because he said so often workplaces tear family and kids apart. Uh on and on and on it went. He had a he had a four um he had a painting by Mako Fujimura that shared like the four-chapter story of creation, fall, redemption, new creation in in an abstract form of art as you came in. And just all these different touches, and you couldn't help but walk through there and say, I would want to work at this business. Like I would want to be here. And he had taken his faith in and thought through every aspect of the business. And when you're a pastor and you see someone in the marketplace being that thoughtful about how faith relates to every aspect, it makes you do a double take and say, Wow, I need to be thinking more deeply about how fet faith can impact every sphere of our lives, especially our work that we do from day to day.
SPEAKER_00Wow, those are incredible examples. So what let's say that I'm a business person and I I've just become so frustrated and and just so disengaged from the church because I feel like it's so irrelevant. Uh, that I feel like my pastor doesn't understand me. You know, I feel like m maybe he just wants me to attend services and volunteer and and just give financially, like you mentioned in one of your articles. Um you know, what would you say to somebody like that that may just kind of be disenfranchised right now?
SPEAKER_01Well, first I would say I get it. I get the frustration. I I get that uh for many of us as pastors, we don't make those connections very well. And we want you to come and support our vocation, uh, come to our place of work once a week, but we're not real interested in supporting you and yours. So first of all, I just say I understand. Number two, I would say that God, as you read scripture, he's really set up two institutions uh to be critical um institutions of human flourishing in our society. Number one is the family in creation uh and how important the family is to a flourishing society. And number two, as you turn to the New Testament, it's the local church. It's the church. And just as we would say, you know what, marriages in this country uh we should just give up because they're failing all over the place. We wouldn't say that because we know how important uh marriages are. In the same way, I think we have to look at the scripture and say, the local church, with all its warts and with all its shortcomings, it's still what Jesus loves, and we should be about the local church. So, how what steps can you take to begin uh kind of uh the small steps of making that connection? You know, some of the things that I talked about earlier, just some simple steps that I think people can take as they reach out to the local church. But I would say don't give up on the local church and point them to resources uh that can help them uh kind of get going in the right direction.
SPEAKER_00I love that. You know, one of the things that has worked well, and I'll I'd like to hear maybe some more kind of best practices, things that you're seeing. Um we've we've been gathering a group of entreprenez at my church, and and that's kind of low-hanging fruit, because every church, especially these days, is gonna have people in there that are wanting to start businesses. And and so I would start to gather them, and and I would I would ask, you know, why do you come to this group? What what's really in this for you? And they would say, I would, I would, because we started out kind of doing sort of theological faith and work kind of conversations, that kind of thing. And then I would ask them, why do you come? They would say, I want to know how to build a business. It wasn't just that we want to come to a deeper understanding of faith and work, but we just want to know how to build a business. And the church has an opportunity, not that the pastor should try to lead something like that, but you know, and and what I found is you know, we've we got a guy that just started coming, the guy's a a judge on the Rice University Business Plan competition, which is like the largest in the world, and and I had no idea he was even in our church. And so now he's coming to give guidance to our entrepreneurs in our church, and it's just such a been such a great opportunity. What are maybe some other examples of of how business people they don't have to necessarily wait on their pastors to kind of make the first move, but maybe some of the things that they can do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's a great example of just people of a particular sector, uh vocation sector that are getting together to you know hash out the um the particulars of their vocation, either just for excellence or um, you know, encouragement. Um I came from a my last church experience was in a college town, Madison, Wisconsin, where the University of Wisconsin was. And it's a great example of you gotta know what your location is, what your unique congregation is, because there it makes all the sense in the world that you would pair uh just some different generations because there were so many college students and then you had so many um people who had been down the line a while. I talked to a lawyer who is an elder and is a fantastic man of faith, and I asked him if he wanted to get with other lawyers uh for a vocation group. And his personal answer was, um I don't I don't think we want to do that. Lawyers don't really like each other. And he kind of said it in jest. Um but when I talked to some younger lawyers in the congregation, they were so hungry to have older Christian voices that uh just talked to them about um the practice of law and different ethical challenges they had faced, different ways they handled situations. So that was a unique opportunity that existed uh just in that congregation because of who attended. But it's gonna be different in each congregation, whether you do vocation groups. Um, oftentimes churches and pastors are looking for is just people who can give testimonies of what's going on in their lives. So there's a church in Phoenix called Redemption Church, and there's a pastor there named Jim Mullins. He had a conversation with a biomedical engineer in his congreg congregation. And this biomedical engineer said, I just don't see the purpose in what I do. Um maybe I should become a missionary or a pastor, but I just don't I don't know why I'm doing this. And his pastor said, Wait a second, do you understand you are making devices that save people's lives? Like, what do you mean your job doesn't matter to God? This is incredibly important. And then he said, But wait a second, I we preach this at our church. Haven't you heard the sermons where I said your work matters to God? And a light bulb went off on this in this pastor's head, and he said, You know what? I realized that even though this person had heard it, he had heard it from me, but he hadn't seen it. And what he began doing is once a month he'd bring someone uh from his congregation and he'd interview them for five minutes and he'd ask him three or four questions. How does your uh how does your work kind of image the God who works and represent some aspect of who he is? Number two, how does your work give you a unique view into the brokenness of the world? Uh number three, how does your work uh offer you a unique, unique chance to love and serve your neighbor? And there was a fourth question that I can't remember offhand, but you get the idea. Um it's that that people are beginning to actually see it. And what happens over the course of a year or two is people in the congregation begin answering those questions. You know, I'm a I'm a nurse, I'm I'm in a marketing, I'm an engineer, I'm a carpenter, I'm a plumber, and they start seeing things through the lens of faith. So a conversation like that, you know, you don't have to be the perfect answer. It doesn't have to be a spectacular uh story, but you're giving uh a picture of of how faith intersects with you with your work.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Well, this has been encouraging and and insightful. As we're wrapping it up here, Matt, why don't you tell us a little bit more about what Made to Flourish is, what it what's happening with Made to Flourish, and how people can get involved.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So Made to Flourish is a national membership-based network for pastors who are learning how to equip their congregations to connect Sunday faith to Monday work. Uh right now we have about 1,400 pastors, just shy of that, 1,396 as of today. Um about 1,400 pastors who have officially joined our network. And I would say if you're a marketplace leader out there and you've got a pastor and um you know you want him to grow on this, or maybe he's already down the road on this, point him to our website, madetoflourish.org. Madetoflourish.org. Membership is entirely free, but we'll send him immediately four or five books to get him down the road, um, some DVD uh curricula, uh, just some different things to offer training and resources to get him started in first steps of how to connect with marketplace leaders. So we also, in conjunction with that, have uh a website with a lot of resources. I just mentioned uh we have different webinars and virtual workshops. And for anyone out there, uh, if you want to join us on our our monthly webinars, we're gonna be having one with Amy Sherman, um, who's the author of Kingdom Calling and just a really thoughtful leader in this space. She'll be in December. Um and so anyway, we have these every month though. And we also have city networks, 11 across the country. And we're gonna be expanding to 17. So if you see on our website you're in a city where one of these networks is going on, it's a place to point your pastor. There's different trainings that you might be able to take part in. So that's just a little bit of a snapshot of who we are. We're a young organization, but uh the pastors who have joined us are really thoughtful and have been encouraged because this was a training we didn't get in seminary, we didn't talk about this, and yet it's where our people and our congregations live and um spend most of their time during the week.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, how about a parting piece of advice for our business people listening?
SPEAKER_01I would say your work matters to God, it matters to people. It's the primary place uh where you experience worship in terms of worshiping God through what you do every day. It's the primary place where you're spiritually formed as God uh shapes you and molds you and builds his character, and as you bring your Christian faith to your work, and uh God has incredible purposes uh for you in your place of labor. There's no higher calling, there's no uh sacred secular split. Uh where you're at today, uh God wants to use you. And uh, you know, i I I think of the analogy of salt and light, and that analogy of salt, uh I I love to grill steaks, and I don't just put salt on one part of the steak. Like I want, I put salt on every square inch of that steak because I want it to seep in. And if God is calling us salt in his world, uh he doesn't just sprinkle us all in the church, but he sprinkles us in every sphere, every sector uh to bring his light and hope as we live as a faithful presence in our workplace. So keep up the great work, don't give up on the church, and uh let's continue this conversation.
SPEAKER_00Well said. Matt, thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise and your passion for this message and for the for the body of Christ and what the Lord is doing. May God continue to bless everything you put your hand and your mind to, and definitely everybody go and check out made to flourish.org. And in addition to learning more about made to flourish, Matt's got some great articles out there as well. Thanks again, Matt. Really appreciate it, Darren. Thanks. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you'd leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and business podcast on iTunes. Give more information about HPU's Center for Christianity and Business at Christianity and Business.com. Thanks for listening and keep integrating biblical value into your business.