Welcome back to the Theology of Business podcast. I'm your host, Darren Shear, author of The Marketplace Christian and Marketing Like Jesus. And this is a show that helps Christian business leaders to partner with God in business to transform the marketplace and make an impact in eternity. And before we get started with today's show, I want to invite you to join me at the upcoming Faith at Work Summit on October the 27th through the 29th in Dallas, Texas. And at this event, over 400 leaders from churches, businesses, and academia will gather to learn, discuss, and work together to extend Christ's transforming presence and help Christians find eternal purpose in the workplace. It's gonna be a fantastic event. It's put on by my friends up at the Waterno Center for Faith and Work at Waterno University. You can find out more information about this event at fwsummit.org, S-U-M-M-I-T.org. Or you can just contact me through theology of business.com or on social media and I'll be sure to help you get connected. And either way, I'd love to know if you're gonna be coming so we can connect at the event. We'd love to meet you, would love to have a chat and find out what God's doing in your life and your business and uh to just connect. So definitely go check that out at fwsummit.org. Hope to see you there. So a question I've been wrestling with lately is does God want us to compete in our industries to aim to take away market share from other companies? I mean, is this attitude of competition in our industries the attitude? Is it a Christ-like attitude? Is it the attitude the Lord wants us to have? As Christians working in business, we know what Jesus has commissioned us to do. What's that? It's to make disciples of all nations. That's the great commission from Matthew 28, verse 19. So it's not to go into all the world and make profit or go even go and build churches, it's to make disciples of all nations. So, in short, this means that Christians are called to help the marketplace and those who come in contact with it to reflect the character and the image of Jesus. So that that includes our companies, I mean our departments, everything that uh that we do, every organization, every individual would ultimately reflect the image of Jesus Christ. Christians working in business are not exempt from this disciple-making mandate. And businesses themselves are vehicles God has provided to carry out this great commission. And discipling the marketplace begins with discipling our own industries in which God has placed us. Because in those industries, there are it's made up of people, and God has called us to disciple nations, not just individuals, but entire groups of people, and and large clusters of people are represented uh by those different industries in which God has placed us. So God wants to use you and your company, He wants to use me and my company to disciple our entire industries. But Christians working in business have a major dilemma here. How are we supposed to disciple our industries, you know, reveal the glory of God through our industries while competing for market share at the same time? I mean, is it even possible to compete against people and companies while discipling them for Jesus at the same time? What do I mean by discipleship? That just means simply setting the standard in your industry when it comes to discipling industries. It's it's it's to set the standard. And making your industry a disciple of Jesus means causing your industry to reveal the image and character of Jesus Christ. And this means we're called to lead our industries in ways that reveal Jesus to our world. As Christian business professionals, this is the disciple-making attitude we should have. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1, imitate me as I imitate Christ. So we're called to set the standard, and the standard for value creation in the marketplace you know, what do I mean by uh the standards? Excellence, service, innovation, all of those things. That standard is Jesus Christ. Because Jesus is the fountain from which all value flows. All of our marketing, accounting, customer service, human resources, and all other types of business practices should result in creating in creation revealing more of God's glory. What is God's glory? It's Jesus Christ. That's what the Bible tells us in Hebrews chapter one, verse three, that He is the exact representation of God's glory. As part of the body of Christ as Christians, each of us has unique ways in which God has called us to make disciples, and that's according to the gifts and assignments the Holy Spirit has given to each of us. So we're called to make disciples, and set that means setting the standard for our industries. It's not just kind of going along and hoping that we somehow, you know, make an impact, but it's actually to set the standard that we would be the standard bearers. So I want to talk about kind of there's there's kind of two major economic philosophies, one's socialism, one is capitalism. So I want to just talk briefly about how these two uh in and of themselves fall short regarding the Great Commission and this disciple-making mandate. So in socialism, people are disempowered from taking a leadership approach to doing business. Because the emphasis is not on creation of economic value and setting industry standards, but on the redistribution of wealth produced as a byproduct of such value creation and industry leadership. And because discipleship in the marketplace involves leading others and setting the Christ-like standards that cause industries to reflect and reveal Jesus. So now let me talk about where capitalism falls short regarding the Great Commission. Being laced with social Darwinism, pure capitalism often looks more like a poker game in which beating others is the name of the game. So it looks more like a poker game than an economic system aimed at making disciples of Jesus. And in a poker game, nobody at the table is focused on helping the other players to win, uh, which again is part of discipleship, is helping other people to succeed. It's it's helping uh to lead the way and show people what Jesus looks like so that as Paul said, imitate me as I imitate Christ. Paul didn't say, you know, don't don't imitate me because I don't want to give you the secrets. That's not the attitude, that's not the Christian attitude. As Albert Carr argued in his 1969 Harbor Business Review article uh titled, Is Business Bluffing Ethical? He said, conscious misstatements, concealment of pertinent facts, or exaggeration are all permissible in the game, quote unquote, just as they are in the game of poker. And you can see my critique of that particular article in uh the episode I did on four reasons secular humanism is bad for business. You can check that out at theologyofbusiness.com. The Apostle Paul wrote, Don't you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win in First Corinthians 9 24. So a purely uh capitalist interpretation of this verse may lead someone to assume that Paul was suggesting that we should take a zero-sum game, Darwinian survival of the fittest, winner-take all approach to doing business. And after all, only one person or one company gets the prize, right? Being better than someone else or another organization or another company does not define a person or organization of excellence in a biblical sense, maybe in a capitalist sense, but not in a biblical sense. Biblical excellence is about being in a state of continuous improvement, it's not about trying to conquer other people and organizations, particularly when we're supposed to be leading them as disciples of Jesus. The prize to which Paul was referring in 1 Corinthians 9 24, it wasn't market share for his tent-making business as an example. The prize for which he was striving to attain was his full participation and God's plan for his life. And in the context of your work in the business world, part of your prize, quote unquote, includes your full participation in your part of the Lord's disciple-making mission. And in the gospel, there's enough of this prize for everyone to attain. It's not a zero-sum game. So, so what's kind of the the application here? That's to focus on getting bigger, or excuse me, focus on getting better, not getting bigger. Around the year 2000, the famous fast food chicken chain Chick-fil-A was facing its first major competitor, Boston Chicken, which is now known as Boston Market, was preparing to launch an aggressive growth strategy that involved opening hundreds of new restaurants. And the threat posed by Boston Market became a major topic in the Chick-fil-A board and executive level meetings, as you can imagine. And in somewhat of a reactionary panic, the Chick-fil-A board and executives began to promote the need to counter Boston Market with an aggressive growth strategy of its own. And in the middle of a meeting, Chick-fil-A's sagely founder, Truett Kathy, who's been referenced on this podcast many times before, he slammed his fist on the conference table and said, Gentlemen, we don't need to get bigger. We need to get better. When we get better, our customers will demand that we get bigger. The focus for Truett Kathy w on on getting better rather than just getting bigger is at the heart of discipleship. That's why the entire fast food industry looks to Chick-fil-A as a model of quality and customer service. I mean, in effect, Chick-fil-A is discipling the fast food industry and beyond. So to kind of wrap it up here, capitalism and any other economic system must be fueled by the Great Commission to operate in a God-honoring biblical way. Rather than focusing on competing for market share, we're called to focus on setting the standards for our industries and the unique ways in which God has called each of us to lead. It's so it's not about rolling over and becoming a doormat, it's about actually leading the way, setting the standard. It's not, I mean, because if you're just competing against other people, it's like as long as as long as we're a little bit better than those other guys, we feel confident instead of but that's not what God is going to c hold us accountable for. It's what did you do with what I gave you and what I called you to do? It's not, he didn't call us to just compare ourselves to each other in business. Rather than aiming to be better than others, we're called to lead and disciple them. Our mandate to make disciples is the bottom line for every Christian. So I'll leave you with this question to think about. You can actually comment on this at theologyofbusiness.com. With all other things being equal, would a disciple-making approach to business tend to make a company more or less successful than a company that primarily uses a competitive approach? Hope you've enjoyed this episode and I would love to hear your feedback at theologyofbusiness.com where you can get more information about marketplace ministry, spiritual gifts in the marketplace, marketing like Jesus, and Christ-centered leadership and entrepreneurship. And as a reminder, like I talked about at the beginning of the episode, be sure to check out fwsummit.org for more information about the upcoming Faith at Works Summit on October the 27th through the 29th in Dallas, Texas. I'd love to see you there. Definitely let me know through theologyofbusiness.com or social media, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn if you're planning to come. I definitely want to connect with our listeners. Thanks for listening and keep partnering with God in your business.