Welcome back to the Theology of Business Podcast, the show that helps marketplace Christians to partner with God in business, to transform the marketplace and make an impact in eternity. I'm your host, Darren Sheer, author of the books, The Marketplace Christian, a practical guide using your spiritual gifts in business, and marketing like Jesus, 25 Strategies to Change the World. Today's episode is gonna be one of the most important episodes released on the Theology of Business podcast. I mentioned a few episodes back that there's an initiative underway here in the United States to pray for, care for, and share the gospel with every person in the workplace by the year 2020. And that's somewhere around 156 million people. I mean, these are our coworkers, our clients, our bosses, our board members. I mean, anybody that we encounter in the marketplace, that's who we're talking about here. And there's a lot of history leading up to this initiative that I'm gonna talk to you about today. And you're gonna hear from the leader of this initiative. And I just want to give you a quick background of how this kind of came about. The origins of this marketplace initiative to reach 156 million people in the workplace by the year 2020 is an initiative that can be traced back to Dr. Billy Graham, who back in 1974 led the formation of a coalition to quote unite all evangelicals in the common task of the total evangelization of the world. And this coalition was named the Lazon Congress, and it's now known as the La Zan Movement, named after a city in Switzerland, Lazon, Switzerland. And the branch of this movement focused on reaching the United States is called Mission America. And again, by reaching, I mean praying for, caring for, and sharing the gospel with each person in the United States, is what Mission America is all about. And before we go any further here, I should acknowledge that we have people in at least 66 countries who listen to this podcast. And you can be certain that there's some initiative of the Lazanne movement focused on reaching your nation for Christ as well. Around five years ago, the steering committee of the Mission America Coalition identified 40 specific spheres of influence throughout the culture and cast a vision to reach everyone within these spheres by the year 2020. And this initiative was called Love 2020. And the spheres of influence that are being targeted include education, people with disabilities, law, government. But the largest sphere identified of these 40 was the workplace or marketplace sphere. And a leader has been appointed to lead the steering committee for each of these spheres, and the leader appointed to the workplace sphere is Ford Taylor, who you're probably familiar with him if you've been listening to this podcast, especially because I interviewed Ford back on episode two of the Theology of Business podcast on the subject of a biblical model of business leadership. Ford is just an incredible leader, an incredible man of God. And I also featured Ford in my new book, The Marketplace Christian, a practical guide to using your spiritual gifts and business, for how he uses his spiritual gift of leadership for the glory of God in the business world. And I've been working with Ford and this team focused on reaching every workplace person in the United States by the year 2020. And today you're going to hear Ford share the vision for praying for, caring for, and sharing the gospel with these 156 million people by the year 2020. And this is Ford's presentation from the Love 2020 conference that I participated in in Long Beach, California just last month. And as I heard Ford speak at this conference, I knew instantly that you, the theology of business community, needed to hear this. And if you're moved by what Ford is about to share with you and you want to join us, I encourage you to reach out to me. You can contact me at Darren at hybridgebooks.com or certainly reach out on social media as well. So without further ado, here's Ford Taylor speaking about the workplace initiative of the Love 2020 movement at this most recent Mission America conference.
SPEAKER_01Number two, what are we doing in our infinity sphere? And then he asked me to share a little bit about what I do in transformational leadership. I may not have time to do all of that, but I'll go as quick as I can and get as much of that done as I can. You know, in 2004, Billy Graham said, I believe that one of the next great moves of God is going to be through the believers in the workplace. Who would have ever thought that a Baptist guy would be that prophetic? But anyway, so so what are some of the trends? Okay, what are some of the trends that are taking place now? There's significant unity coming. I mean, it's been happening. Things that we weren't seeing 10, 15, 20 years ago, it's happening at an accelerated rate. You know, in 2007, I texted this to myself and the Lord at a prayer meeting. He laid this on my heart that you'll get to live to see a day, that there'll be leaders in cities and across the nation that will learn to humble themselves before God and submit to one another. And when they find each other, you'll see an accelerated convergence of synchronized destiny. Look around the room. We're seeing an accelerated convergence of synchronized destiny. Prayer in the workplace, intercessors and pastors and workplace people working together at rates that we've probably never seen before. Technology, innovation, things that we can do online with one another to stay connected. There's more training being birthed over and over, not just about the what leadership is, what marketplace Christians are, but the how to do it. See, that's what we've missed for so long. I was in church my whole life. I've got the 13-year pens that I didn't miss church for 13 years, and I'm still the guy that grew a company from scratch to the number one in our industry. And in that place, the most arrogant, prideful man you could be, and in that place, the fall of cheating on my wife for four years. And thank goodness I had a pastor and a wife who understood and were able to restore me to go. But when I asked the question, why is it that I could have all that training and still do that? That's where transformational leadership came from for me. Was trying to figure out if I knew the what, but I didn't know the how. What was it? But this training is coming from lots of different places. There's pastor networks, there's seminaries embracing faith at work. There's approximately a hundred national faith and work ministries that have that have come up. There's about 30 city-based workplace networks. There's approximately 300 city movements taking place. See, those things can't happen unless something shifts in the way we think, and something has shifted. So how many are we reaching through modern-day Faith at Work movement? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there's about 156 million workplace age people in America. According to the research that Barnes said, about 30% of those adult workers are Christians, which is about 47 million people. Well, we believe, and we we have no way to really quantify this, but if we're reaching 5 or 10%, we don't think we are. But if we're reaching 5%, that means we're reaching 2.4 million people. Now we've been given the task to reach 156 million people and to do it in five years. Only God. So here we go. So what's the major problem? The faith and work needs a larger delivery system. We need a channel, and the channels are already there. The problem is how do we work together to get those channels to work together? What are they that's collaboration between workplace ministers, denominations, churches, seminaries, colleges, the actual business people, arts, entertainment, media, all these people coming together and saying, if we work together on a coordinated singular message, we actually can, we could reach 310 million people in America. See, I'm just crazy enough to believe that God can do something like that if we truly do what he says. You know, you quoted from John 14 today, and uh John 13 through 17 is one of my favorite passages because as a businessman I read it through the lens of this was Jesus' last management meeting before he went to the cross. And if I were going to have my last management meeting with my family and my employees, I would tell them what's the most important thing in the world I need them to know. So I want you to go read John 13 through 17, and you'll see the definition of leadership, you'll see the purpose of leadership, you'll see the how to do leadership. If you've ever read the book, Everything I Needed to Learn, I learned in kindergarten, go read John 13 through 17, remove the numbers, look at it as one meeting, and you'll see you'll see. I've told people I'm going to write a book one day. All I ever needed to learn about leadership, I learned in John 13 through John 17. But if we could learn together, and of course he closed that out. He launched us out of that passage with Father, let them be one, as you and I are one. So that those others will know and believe. So that's what it's going to take. So this new initiative called Love 2020, the workplace fear. I just put this together last night and this morning, so sorry that I'm having to look at it so much. I'm not as prepared as I'd like to be. Our vision is to foster a spiritual awakening in our nation by catalyzing workplace leaders. What's our mission? Our mission is to mobilize followers of Jesus in the workplace to a lifestyle of working, praying, caring, sharing, and discipling. For what purpose? That we would become more like Jesus. And if we become more like Jesus, I got news for you. Unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness is now easy. And when we unconditionally love and unconditionally forgive one another, people look at us and go, I don't know what that is, but I want it. So what are some of the strategies and objectives and action plans that we're doing? Number one, we're developing a two to three minute message that we go out to marketplace people, not just about the vision, but about the how. Very quick on how. We're going to try to make it interactive, where they can interact with the video. We have technology to do that now, with on the how to go out and do love through at the marketplace, in the workplace of prayer, care, share. We're going to do one that's going to be focused on the pastors and challenging the pastors to work alongside that we learn from each other to be able to go out and train and equip. We have different people on our team, and I'm not going to put them all up here, but I'm putting the ones that were here this week. One is Oz Hillman with Marketplace Leaders. He has about 150,000 people that get his email every day. He's going to take this message out to all those people, these videos. He's going to do that. A young man here, we have some people on our team that don't have gray hair. Isn't that awesome? Yes. Okay. All right. Darren is one of those. He's written a couple of books, Market Like Jesus and the Christian in the marketplace, that actually has a self-assessment tool to learn how to do your gifts in the marketplace. But he also has a podcast called The Theology of Business. He's going to be sending this message out. He actually asked Paul and me, could he record this one and send it out on his podcast so that marketplace people that listen to him could be encouraged, that we can cast a vision, we can work together. Another man on our team, John Ramstein, Eternal Leadership. His podcast goes out to 60 countries. And just to encourage you, I've been talking about this as I travel around the world. I'm already having people from Africa ask me, tell us how we can do this in our country. We want to do this too. We don't have a clue yet, but we're telling them about it. Okay? But we're working on it. The Jesus Alliance, Bob Williams on our team. He's going to produce a series of videos that we'll be able to use. And guys, we want to share this stuff with whoever wants it. This isn't just for the marketplace sphere. This is for whoever wants to use these tools. PureFlix is on our team. How many of you saw the movie God Is Not Dead? Do You Believe? Woodlawn, God Is Not Dead 2 is about to come out. I told them they named it wrong. They should have named it God Is Still Not Dead, but they didn't listen to me. So they named it God Is Not Dead, God Is Not Dead. I don't know why they did that, but anyway, no, it's God Is Not Dead 2. But look what they're going to do. They're going to post this on their Facebook that has 15 million followers. Now get really excited here, you ready? They're going to put this message inside of their films. So when people are watching the film, they're going to hear about Love 2020. I mean, guys, this is thinking way beyond any box that we thought of as the church before, in my opinion. With that, they can reach 150 to 200 million people over the three years in the movies they're about to produce. They're also going to put inserts in their Blu-rays and DVDs when they get sold into retail outlets. They're going to put trailers at the end of the movies with credits that talk about Love 2020 and what we're going to be doing together. They're put together a prayer note with Corky Han around this vision. Now, you think we can reach some people? You think we have access? All right. All of us together, if we work together? Think if the church took on that kind of commitment. What if church pastors took on that same commitment that a movie company would take on? The Institute for Faith and Work and Economics, Eric Welt, somebody already talked about Eric today. What a brother. He's he's been networking and will continue to network to get this message to those approximately hundred faith and work movements, the 30 in the cities and the 300 city movements. He's committed to being the person that gets this message into those different networks. Why are we using media so much? Look at this. From age birth to age 17, look at the number of hours we spend at church on average, 800. With our parents 2,000 at school, 11,000, with media almost 65,000 hours. You think we ought to get some control over the media in America to have an influence? Look at this statistic. These people can't add very well, but that's okay. Eight hours of sleep, eight hours of work, eleven hours of media. So in our 27-hour day, okay.
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SPEAKER_01I have a feeling that the reason this is this way, that probably some of those 11 hours we're probably, I mean, some of those eight hours at work, there's probably some of those also on media. Okay. So one of the things that that Paul that they talked about that I do is called transformational leadership. I've already been promoting this at our live events. I'm also going to make a video. We have an interactive training program that people can get online now all over the world that we're also going to be promoting Love 2020 at the end of that interactive program. Lightspeed is a company that produced this for us, and Patrick Williams and I are going to put together these two and three minute videos that we can be sharing wherever we want to do it in churches, in the workplace, to really start getting this message out. The Four Square Church, and I just use them because they're actually on our team. One of their board members is also also owns a company. Another person on their team that's on our team is one of the pastors at Four Squares, and they are completely committed to promoting the Love 2020 message. Now I only share that because at the first time we came together, our team in Houston, oh, and all of us that do speaking engagements are committed to start talking about Love 2020 at our speaking engagements. And one of the things we want to do is host an event where we've been pastors and workplace leaders together to better equip each other to be able to do this, to learn from each other. One of the most exciting things that's happened with for me in the last probably ten years is that when we came to the first meeting together in Houston, I I left our meeting go to the restroom. When I came back in, our team said this to me, Ford, we're already doing this. This is what we do, and that is what we do. That's what FSH Group does. I mean, we we pray, care, and share and disciple people. And they said, We're already doing this, but if Mission America wants us to do this under their umbrella, under this name, we'll do it. But we expect them to bring to us some pastors that we can meet in a room and we can stay at a table and we can have some dialogue over closing the gap on some of these things. And I said that to Paul, and Paul said, Well, I want to do that. Help me understand it better. And I said, Paul, is there any chance you'd come to one of our trainings? And he came. At the end of the training, he said this to me. He said, Ford, you're not one of those marketplace guys that's mad at pastors and mad at the church, are you? You really want to help. I said, Paul, I'm not mad at anybody. I really want to help. All I know is that no sphere of influence can do this on their own. The church can't do it on their own, the pastors can't do it on their own, the business guys can't do it on their own, the government leaders can't do it, the education system can't do it, the arts and entertainment can't do it, the media can't do it, the hospitals can't do it. We none of us can do it on our own. All I want to do is find a way to get us trained and equipped to work together to go do what it is God's called us to do. I'm not mad at anybody. Y'all may be mad at me by the time I finish today, okay? But but this is you know, one of the things that I teach people is everything in the Bible is really, really simple. But not easy. Therefore, we make it complicated. And we choose to live in the river of complication. But once we cross the bridge of transformation, what's always been simple now becomes easy. Okay? So Paul called this meeting together with with some significant pastors, and Claude, I I think I I think I thanked you about I don't know how many times, but I want to do it publicly. Thank you for being at that meeting. Your influence there, uh, your love for Jesus, your love for other people. The way that you stayed at the table, the way when things weren't exactly a little bit tense on on conversations, you just had your way of just keeping it calm and and keeping everybody at the table. Thank you for that. But I want to tell you I left that meeting so encouraged. But that if we did, we would stay at the table. And we talked about some terminology like lay people, and I challenge, could you show me where that is in the Bible? And we looked it up in Greek, we found out it doesn't say lay people, it says saints. And so we challenged, what if we stop using words like that? What if we start stop making the people that are outdoing what we do in the marketplace not feel less than? You know, we challenge the word. Why do we go to a worship service and close the worship service in prayer? Let's close the worship. Now let's all go be heathens. You see the signal we send? Why don't we start launching the worship service in prayer? Why don't we start launching us to go do what it is we got trained and equipped to do? You know, we challenge the question I asked one of the pastors, do you believe that a taxi driver's role, if he's called to it by God, where he can evangelize and be important in his role, he's a safer driver because of it. He's caring about people he drives for. Do you think his role is as important as yours? And he said, I struggle with that. And I said, Well, let me ask you this question. Do you think my role in facilitating this meeting today, my role in what I do going out teaching people the gospel in plain glass language, which means I don't talk about God first. I give them the tools to be successful, then I tell them where the tools came from. Do you think my role is as important as yours? He said, Yes, I do. I said, Well, the difference in you and me is I think that taxi driver's role is just as important as mine, if he's called to it. And I want to train him, equipping how to be the best taxi driver that honors and glorifies God. Because if he does that, people will come to Jesus because they'll see something different in that taxi driver than they see in all the rest of them. And we honor those roles. See, if the dishwasher is doing it to honor and glorify God, you've got a whole lot less chance of getting food poisoned in that restaurant than you do the one down the street. See, there's a logic to this. So we talked about some of those things. We talked about some of the terms that we use and how we might be able to change some of this. And we talked about staying at the table and they said, Hey, could we keep meeting? And I said, I don't have time to lead another meeting. And the pastor said, How about we join your love 2020 team? Come on, guys, did you hear that? The pastor said, How about we join the workplace love 2020 team? And I said, Paul, what do you think? He said, Let's do it. Now, do you realize now what we're gonna get to learn? And what hopefully we can teach and when we work together? So we want to do a we want to do an event that we pull people together and have those conversations. Because see what I want to say to my pastor as I was in church. I want to say, Would you stop trying to make me feel guilty for coaching my kids on Sunday morning? Because see what I do on Sunday mornings when I coach those little girls, I bring them into a hotel room and we do a Bible story and I tell them about Jesus. And then before the season's over, all of their parents are in the room and we're having a Sunday school class. Would you mind teaching me how to do that instead of making me feel guilty for doing it? You know, and then the parents cry when I quit coaching and beg me not to coach, not to quit. Why aren't we teaching people how to get begged not to quit? Taking the gospel out on Sunday mornings and calling it basketball or volleyball or soccer? See, this is a whole shift in the way we think, because you see, Pastor, I'm here every Sunday. I'm not doing that. I'm the spiritual gifts pastor at your church. I'm doing marriage counseling in your church because we've overcome problems in our marriage that we want to help other people with. Why do you want to make me feel guilty? Pastor, what about when I'm out coaching the high school volleyball team and I've never coached volleyball before? And they're supposed to win one match and they have the best season, the best record they ever have in the history of school in one year with no seniors and only one returning starter. And what about that kid that came up to me after practice one day and said, Coach, can I ask you a question? Can I meet with you privately? Well, if your parents are okay, we can. Parents say, Fine, we go in the room. She says, Coach, I want to share something. With you. Because even though you don't talk about it, I can see that you're a godly man. And I believe you're a praying man. And I want to share something with you, but you gotta promise me you won't share it with anybody. You can't share it with my parents, and you can't share it for sure with my granddad. Because he's the denominational leader of denomination. And she pours out her heart how she was sexually abused as a little girl. And why she causes so much conflict on the team from that pain. Well, you pray for me, Coach, and we prayed for her and we came out. I told her you gotta forgive your parents for not being able to tell them and forgive your grandfather, and you gotta forgive the boy that did it. We came out, and the mom and the dad looked at me and said, What just happened? Can't tell you. That's between you and her. And two weeks later we're practicing we had this uh conflict going on. And and we stopped to do a conflict, and she raised her hand and she said, Hey God, I know I'm the reason the conflict comes. Have I been better the last two or three weeks? I said, Yeah. She said, Let me tell you why she told him about being sexually abused. As soon as she finished, and she told what happened in that prayer room, and how she got to me. And as soon as she finished, boom, boom, boom, three more girls, me too, me too, me too. Let me ask you something. How much better do you think those girls play volleyball? Forgiveness. See, this is how this stuff works. What about the company that that I went into just a few weeks ago and it's a the the believer, the the owner is a believer, the CEO, CFO, they're believers. They're executive team, and they have zealot Muslim on the team, they have atheists on the team, they said, We want you to bring in the faith component with what you do. I said, please not yet. Be patient, let me bring in the non-faith. Let me bring it without talking about it. At the end of the second day, the zealot Muslim came up to me. I wish I could tell these stories about somebody else. I do. I start talking about me with pride, I don't know what to do. Okay. He comes up to me at the end of the second day and he says, Can I talk to you? And I said, Yes. He said, I'm a spiritual man. He said, But there's something in your spirit that I've never seen before. And whatever that is, I want it. That's a quote. I said, would you like to know what that is, or would you like to get to know each other a little bit better first? Let's get to know each other a little bit better first. I said, okay, at the end of the third day we're getting ready to leave, and he raises his hand and says, Can I say something for me in front of all the executives? He turns to me and he starts crying. And he starts sharing how his life's been impacted forever from what he's learning in these three days. And he can't wait to learn more. That now the CEO I told the owner I told the story for you. I said, I want you to pray. Because if this man's a tell it from that one, it'd be a tell for Jesus. I've never seen that man shed a tear before. Never seen him talk to me by the way he talked to you. I looked at the owner and said, Should I tell him? He said, Yes, I told the owner. I told the CFO when I finished, they said, We really need to work on him. No, we can pray for him. I said, You need to pray for him, but you don't need to work on him. I said, What do you mean? I said, I'm not the first guy who ever saw that spirit. I said, we gotta work on you. That's what I told him. That's what I'm talking about. We gotta work place. Impact workplace. So what so what do we say? Here's what we said. If we if we're successful, we said spirit climate would change in America, an awakening, bodies would change, church attendance would rise, poverty would go down, uh we'd we'd be given a Christian and social causes would go up, communities need to be transformed, people would be careful more, people would be walking in their gifts. So here's my question. What if we work together? What if the church and the business people and the arts entertained? What if we worked together in unity? What if we stayed at the table if we didn't totally agree with one another? And we said we'll stay at the table. What if we learn to love and forgive unconditionally? What if we stop gossiping about one another? We stopped the gossip. What if we learn not to take offense? I'll tell you what happened. We'd be feeding the hungry house and the homeless, taking care of the orphan and the widow. We'd be leading people to Jesus all over the place. People be begging to get into our churches. We'd be praying and fasting without recognition, we'd be taking care of the prisoners, returning back in the workforce, and I'll tell you exactly what happens. God says, when you do that, my glory shines in your city. So I got news for you. I'm happy to be with you. Thank you for letting me play on your team. You guys are awesome. God bless all y'all. Amen.
SPEAKER_00That's all for today's episode. And again, if you were moved by what Ford shared with you about praying for, caring for, and sharing the gospel with every workplaced person in the United States by the year 2020, or even in your country, maybe you're not in the United States, maybe you're in uh Uganda, maybe you're in China, maybe you're in Bulgaria, wherever you are in the world, is there an initiative that is underway to reach the people in the workplace with the gospel through praying for, caring for, and sharing the gospel with each person in the workplace? I mean, because that's where we spend 60 to 70 percent of our waking hours. And that's where I believe the church's most tremendous potential for impact is there in the workplace, in the marketplace. And and so feel free to comment on this episode of theology of business.com how you're personally working for this in the workplace. I can't hear your feedback. Thanks for listening and keep partnering with God in your business.