This week's episode, Three Christian Heroes in Business that the Church Needs to Know About. Welcome back to Theology of Business. I'm your host, Darren Shearer, author of the book Marketing Like Jesus, and this is a show that helps marketplace leaders to partner with God in business to make a greater impact in society and in eternity. If you want to learn more about how to do business for the glory of God, this show is for you. This is a podcast by Christian business leaders for Christian business leaders. And this show is brought to you by High Bridge Books, which provides professional Christian book publishing services for inspiring thought leaders. You can take the next step toward getting your leadership, business, or personal growth book published by requesting our free three video author training course at highbridgebooks.com forward slash course. And I'm the CEO of High Bridge Books, so you can contact me personally at any time if you're interested in having a conversation about your book. You can email me at Darren at highbridgebooks.com. In a sermon I heard recently, the preacher began to list the great Christian heroes of the church. And among those that were mentioned were Billy Graham and Billy Sunday and Catherine Coleman, D.L. Moody, Hudson Taylor. Yes, these are my heroes too, but as usual, this list of quote unquote Christian heroes or church heroes all had two things in common. And that was number one, that they were all preachers, and number two, that none of them worked in for-profit companies. Now, as humans, we aim to become like our heroes, and our heroes are the people that we aim to emulate in some way. So it makes sense that a preacher's primary heroes would be other preachers. At the same time, we really need to stop subtly communicating that fleeing the marketplace is a necessary step toward Christian heroism. As a church, have we esteemed the spiritual gifts and callings of preachers and preaching missionaries to an extent that when we think of Christian heroes, none of our brothers and sisters in Christ in the marketplace come to mind. And this is especially troubling, I think, considering that 85% of the Christian workforce works in a for-profit company. So why is it that the names of Christian business professionals almost never appear on these lists of who we consider to be our church heroes throughout history? I'll assume that one of the reasons for this is that most of us simply can't think of any Christian heroes from the marketplace. Of course, it's easy to think of the missionaries and the preachers throughout history, but the people from the marketplace, our brothers and sisters in business, don't typically come to mind, even though they represent almost the entirety of the Christian workforce. So let me uh introduce three Christian heroes from the marketplace that, in my estimation, have made a tremendous impact for the glory of God in recent history. The first one I want to mention is R. G. Laterno, who was an inventor and a disciple maker. Having already achieved success in the earth-moving business, R. G. Laterno explained to his pastor one day that he was about 30 years old when he said this. He explained to him that he felt he could serve God better as a bona fastor or as a missionary overseas. He had this paradigm, like many of us, that ministry is something that happens in a nonprofit type of an environment. And his pastor wisely responded to him. He said, God needs businessmen too. So he took those words and he heeded them, and he and sensing the call to become God's businessman as he internalized, he he understood that he was called to be a businessman for God. He decided to use his God-given gift of innovation and creativity in the marketplace. And during his career, he achieved 299 patents for his earth-moving and materials handling equipment. And these inventions included things like the bulldozer and scrapers, portable cranes, rollers, dump wagons, bridge spans, logging equipment, mobile C platforms for oil exploration, the electric wheel, and many others that probably, if you're like me and you're not uh an engineer or more technically minded in that way, a lot of these things might not make sense to you as they don't to me, but suffice it to say that approximately 70% of the earth-moving equipment that was used by the Allies to win World War II was manufactured by Laterno's company. He was committed to using his business as a tool for making disciples of Jesus. And one of the ways that he expressed this commitment was that he hired full-time chaplains to work in each of his factories. And the role of these chaplains was to not only provide that pastoral care for the workers when they had maybe a death in the family or they were going for it through a hard time personally, but it was also to teach the Bible to them. And he admonished his fellow business owners, and I quote, unless we businessmen testify that Christianity is the driving power of our business, you'll always have doubters claiming that religion is all talk and no production. So he viewed the pastors and the missionaries as kind of the salespeople that were sharing the gospel, but then it was up to the business people to really demonstrate that the gospel works in everyday life. And in addition to making disciples of Jesus through his business, Laterno used his spiritual gift of creativity and adding tremendous value to the U.S. economy. Even in the midst of the Great Depression, by the way, his business really took off during the 30s, during a time when I mean people were just scraping to get their next meal, and his business is multiplying exponentially. But even during this season, Laterno habitually and cheerfully gave away about 90% of his income toward the advancement of the gospel around the world. So that's RG Laterno. How about another example? Mary K. Ash. She was a saleswoman and an encourager for the church. According to Lifetime Television, Mary Kay Ash, who was the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, was considered the most outstanding woman in business of the 20th century. As of 2014, her company had approximately 3 million sales consultants and wholesale volume in excess of $3 billion. Before she started her cosmetics company, she spent 25 years working in a sales position in corporate America. And it was during that time that she saw what was happening to women. What happened to her was she was being repeatedly refused promotions and pay raises that her male coworkers were getting. And so in response to this unjust way in which she and other women were being treated in the marketplace, she decided to do something about it. And she started a company that would encourage women to achieve their fullest potential. She was quoted as saying, if you ask me what is the common denominator among women, it is a fact that most of us, most women, don't believe in their own God given ability. So what we try to do is to show them how great they really are. So she was an encourager. That was her spiritual gift to the body of Christ, and she used that in her company to empower women. She credited the success of her company to its decision to take God as our partner. She based her founding principle on the golden rule, which of course, as Jesus said, is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And she redefined business terms like PL, which means profit and loss, to mean people and love. For her, that's what PL stood for. And she taught her sales consultants to keep God first, family second, and career third. So if you ask any Mary Kay consultant for that motto, that's exactly what they would tell you. Here's a third example I want to share with you. John Wanamaker. He was an advertiser and an evangelist. He was an advertiser in the marketplace and he used his spiritual gift of evangelism to make an impact for Christ in the marketplace. He lived from 1838 to 1922, and he's considered the father of modern advertising. He was once asked, To what, Mr. Wanamaker, do you attribute your great success? And he replied, To thinking, toiling, trying, and trusting in God. Among his many innovations, Wanamaker opened the first major department store in the entire world. He introduced price tags to the retail economy because he didn't want people to worry about whether or not they were getting fair prices while they shopped. Because basically, in those days, you walk into a shop and you don't know what kind of a deal that shot that clerk is going to give you. They could charge you whatever they want. And in addition, he started the first mail order catalog and was also the first to run a large advertisement in a newspaper. So he pioneered, he was a pioneer in marketing, which of course is why he's considered the father of modern advertising. He was also committed to taking care of his people as a reflection of the character of Jesus. He pioneered employee benefit programs. Long before these programs were considered standard in corporate employment. His company offered its employees access to training at the John Wanamaker Commercial Institute to get other job-related skills. He offered them free medical care, recreational facilities, profit sharing plans, and pensions. He was deeply committed to personal evangelism and he hand copied evangelistic letters for each of the members of his large Sunday school class, which was actually a class that he started. In this letter he wrote, and this really exemplifies, I think, his passion for evangelism, he said, If you are not saved, my dear friend, flee to the merciful Savior, as you would fly into this warm room tonight, out of the cold streets and the drifting snow. If you are saved humbly trusting in what Jesus did when his loved his love failed not on the cross, think of others not saved, not saved, going to the eternal darkness, your near friend, your relative, and do something. He once sponsored an evangelistic service for the great evangelist DL Moody in his own store and provided 300 ushers from among his own staff to make sure that the event was a success. So Wanamaker, Mary K. Ash, and R. G. Laterno are just a few of the church's great Christian heroes from the marketplace. So I'll leave you with this discussion question. I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode at theologyofbusiness.com. Question is what are some of the other who are some of the other Christian heroes from the marketplace that needed to be added to this list? Because we need to make sure that our brothers and sisters in Christ understand that business is ministry, and we need to have more models, we need to have more examples like these throughout the history of the church to show us what it can look like in the marketplace to live for God, to partner with God in business. That's all for this week. If you'd like to contact me to share testimony about what God is doing in your business, or if you'd just like to share a suggestion on how we can make this podcast even better, feel free to email me personally at Darren at hybridgebooks.com. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening. Have a great week and keep partnering with God in your business.