How to Reflect God’s Character in Business (w/ Dr. Michael Cafferky)

On this episode, Darren sits down with Dr. Michael Cafferky (former Ruth McKee Chair for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics at Southern Adventist University) to discuss how to reflect God’s character in business. 

Thanks for listening, and keep partnering with God in your business.  

And don’t forget to check out our sponsor at HighBridgeBooks.com. And feel free to contact me directly at darren@highbridgebooks.com if you’re interested in writing, publishing, and selling a book.   

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Christian Business Leader Podcast, where Christ-following business leaders explore God's will and ways for business. This show is the ministry of the Center for Christianity and Business at Houston Christian University and features conversations with today's Christ-centered business leaders who are representing Christ faithfully in the business world. I'm your host, Darren Scheer, and if you want to make your work, Leadership and Companies Culture More Christ-centered, you've come to the right place. On this episode, we're joined by Dr. Michael Kaffriki. Dr. Mike is the former Ruth McKee Chair for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics at Southern Adventist University, where he taught business for 17 years. He's authored scores of peer-reviewed articles, conference presentations, and nonfiction books, including two peer-reviewed university textbooks. One of those is Management of Faith-Based Perspective, and also Business Ethics and Biblical Perspective, a comprehensive introduction. Prior to his teaching career, he served as a pastor and for 20 years as a healthcare manager. And since retirement, he has remade himself, completing requirements for the MFA degree in creative writing at Lindenwood University. He now writes contemporary and historical fiction, exploring family relationships and Christians and society. His latest book is On the Brink, which is a fictional story that explores the challenges Christians face in seeking to be ambassadors for Christ in the workplace. Mike, welcome to the Christian Business Leader Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Thank you. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah, and Mike was on a previous iteration of this show uh years ago before we rebranded. Um, and so he is a repeat guest on the show, and for good reason. Uh Mike, when did you first realize God wants to be involved in the marketplace?

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Yes, I I an event happened when I was 20, but I didn't really realize it then until afterwards. Sometimes it's only in retrospect that we realize, oh, there's some there's a message, deeper message there. But um I took a full-time job as a janitor at a large research medical center. And the first day in the job, this was a job where I worked from 6 in the evening until 2:30 in the morning. And I was assigned to the urology clinic, which is a daytime-only uh service area. And the first day in the job, the supervisor didn't talk about company policies so much and whatever. He walked me into one of the exam rooms in the urology clinic, and he said, Take a look at the floor here. Tomorrow morning, when patients come in, they are anxious. These are new patients, they weren't here today. They are anxious about their health. And when they see spots of bodily fluid on the floor, it undermines their trust in the caregivers. Every morning, these floors need to be spotless for good reason, not because of not just because of cleanliness, but because it also speaks about the caregiving that goes on here. And so this is really the purpose of why you're here to build trust. Right, the first day in the job, I wasn't sure how fast I would be and all that. But that question and that that issue that was raised stayed with me long in the future. In fact, it began to grow as a as a question: what is the purpose of my work no matter what I'm doing? And then that even grew deeper to what is the purpose of human work? But that was 20, 30 years later. That question was still spinning in my mind. Uh, and so that's that's really when it the the uh seed was planted as to uh how working for God and how God's perspective on our work makes a difference.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah. What's the time when you saw God's hand at work in business?

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Oh wow, that's an interesting question. Um I think when I was a um hospital administrator, and one day an employee came into the executive office area, and we were discussing should we continue our maternity service obstetrics um delivering babies in that community uh because we weren't getting the patient count that we thought we needed for cash flow? One of the workers came in and we were talking about it, and they said, Do you realize that a good percentage of our patients, maternity patients, don't even have transportation to the hospital to deliver their baby? How are they gonna go 40 miles or 50 miles away to the next hospital? You know, and that that really sunk in, like, okay, what are we here for? We've got to find other ways to manage our costs, but try to keep our doors open to serve this community. And it was that one little conversation, I as I looked back on it, uh, as a as a way of God was speaking from the community, through the community, saying, This is important, because there are some people here that will not get health care if we close our maternity service. And so we ended up keeping it open as a challenge financially. Um, but that that's one example, I think, where God's work uh on behalf of the entire community, not just on behalf of one employee or one situation.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

So, having studied and taught business from a Christian perspective for so many years, what's been one of the most important discoveries you've made regarding the intersection between the Christian faith and business?

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Well, for years I read the scriptures that are often used and quoted, uh, that relate to work, earning money, and so forth. But for a long time, these were just a collect, a loose collection that didn't have a spine that connected them, other than the fact that they were in the scripture, which I don't want to demean that, but uh I was looking for for some connecting thread to all of this because I I had gone to seminary and had learned from seminary professors that Jesus Christ is the center of Bible teachings, right? And so I was looking for that. Uh and it was in 2012, I happened to be in uh South Africa getting ready to go to the platform to give a speech on Bible and business to a large group of people, and I'm reviewing my notes, sitting in a chair, reviewing my notes, and reviewing some of the scriptures that talk about uh Jesus Christ's identity and the character of God, and the scriptures that that uh refer to our behavior or our obligations, uh, our opportunities to serve God as Christians. And it was at that moment I realized that at a very deep level in Scripture, the things that talk about God's character, the things that talk about our activities in the marketplace, these two things are the same thing. And that was like a lightning bolt that charged through me from head to toe. And then I really started digging into okay, what is this? And started seeing in the scripture something I hadn't noticed before. And over 500 times in scripture we have these themes of God's character referred to. And many of those times the same themes come up when the Bible writers talk about our behavior uh as human beings. And so that that really was transformational to me. It's at a very deep level to think about the themes that the scripture writers uh draw upon to talk about God and talk about us. Uh, but that that has been the most powerful, single most powerful um concept. Uh, and it was that it was at that moment that I realized that Jesus Christ is the center of business activities.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

What's an example of one of those themes and how and the practical application for business?

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Yes. Wow. Um the scripture in the the Old Testament, there's a there's a Hebrew word that is used that we the Bible translators most often translate into the word truth, okay, in the English Bible, the word truth. In the Old Testament, that Hebrew word, as I started digging into the the biblical scholars, came to understand that word truth really means faithfulness. Faithfulness. And so as I began to think about this faithfulness idea, uh, I began to realize, wow, when we're in a strategy session, for instance, we're talking about our our um opportunities and our the threats in the marketplace and and the things that we do best at, the things we need to learn to do better at, and so forth. Uh, I realized there's a different way to have a conversation about those things in strategy discussions. And for example, we can ask the strategy leaders, we can ask the question Will this particular strategy concept or these this cluster of commitments we're thinking of doing in the future? How will that help or make more sure our faithfulness to the stakeholders that we serve, employees, investors, suppliers, and so forth? How will it how will it make stronger our faithfulness? Often the conversation is what will it do to cash flow and future net worth, right? What's the return going to be? Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with thinking about the financial piece of this. But the the uh scriptural application, when we when we translate the conversation uh into the character of God language, it's what does the faithfulness do for the relationships we have or that we want to have in the future?

SPEAKER_00 11:13

So then I heard a definition of deception recently, that deception is trying to convince somebody else to believe something that you yourself don't believe. And so that that's really is is the opposite of of faithfulness, right? Because and trying to withhold truth with and and this happens all the time in sales scenarios and marketing and advertising and accounting, um, trying to get somebody to believe, whether it's trying to get the IRS to believe something you don't believe, or trying to get your your shareholders to believe something you don't believe, or trying to get that prospective customer to believe something that the salesman doesn't actually believe about the product that he or she is is selling, is is the opposite of faithfulness and the opposite of God's character.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Yeah. I think it was it was the growing awareness of the traits of God's character and how we can talk about those things at work, not necessarily in religious language, because religious language is often unwelcome in secular marketplace uh organizations, nonprofit, for-profit government, for example, uh, but we can still talk about the things that are central to God's character. And over time, it was that idea of talking and what the language we use that sparked the story concept in the book on the brink.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

And this is why we're called to make disciples as marketplace Christians and why the workplace is the primary place where, at least for adults, uh working age adults, the workplace is the primary place where that happens. For most of us, that's in a for-profit business setting. And and so when you study the character of God, uh the and it's all summed up in Jesus, um, the the question is is how do I how do I how do I imitate that? How do I be an imitator of God and then help those around me uh to do the same? And businesses, organizations have an opportunity to do that on a on a macro level. It's not it's not just sitting down for coffee once a month and going through a book of the Bible, but it's baking in faithfulness and and goodness and kindness and all of the the character aspects of of God into the culture of the company. Because there are are there companies that or is there an example of a company that you would say really has done this to where the character of God is evident in the culture, which you know would as I understand it, is the the the prevailing uh habits of that of that organization. Um have you is there a company that comes to mind?

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Well, my background uh in uh corporate world was in healthcare. And so there are, I think, good examples of healthcare organizations where the top echelon leaders and middle-level managers work together to uh build the organizational culture that reflects uh the deep values consistent with Christian faith. Uh certainly the Adventist Health System, uh some of the Roman Catholic hospital systems also, in their mission, but not just in the words that they say about what they do, but on a day-to-day basis in uh the things they do, the uh the cultural artifacts that are around them, the language that they use when talking with patients, when when talking with each other, I think are great examples. Uh, in contrast to, and I I did have an opportunity at one point to work in a for-profit healthcare organization. And uh you could just sense the difference in the culture. And I this is not to uh speak negatively about for-profit healthcare, uh, but in the particular organization I was in, uh, the one facility, uh, there was quite a difference in terms of focus. The the language of business in that particular organization was definitely money. Yeah. Uh versus faithfulness uh in the other organizations that I had an opportunity to work for. And so it was it was quite evident, even though it may be hard to describe, uh, if you recorded the conversations and played them side by side, uh, you can hear the difference in the language that is used. And it you know, the language of business is is crucial because it's in not just our behavior, although that's important too, but what we say as leaders continually shapes or refines or builds organizational culture. And um the phrasing, the words we we choose are absolutely crucial.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Yeah, the habits. Uh so I asked you about some of the the or one of the most important discoveries you've made as it relates to faith and business. Um what's a question? I mean, you've the more you study something, you know, the more questions emerge. Um, what is a question about faith and business that for you still remains unanswered?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Yeah. Yeah, this is this is a challenging one. And uh maybe I'll write a story about it or something at some point. Uh if you think about the key stakehold in for-profit business, uh, we've got investors, okay, we've got the employees, you've got suppliers, you've got customers, and then you've got some other stakeholders, maybe government, depending on how heavy the regulations are, or maybe the community that you're located in, and maybe the natural environment could say as a stakeholder also. So, one of the biggest challenges that I see is that some of these stakeholder groups have competing interests. And as a top-level or even mid-level manager, the decisions that we make, the actions that we take, uh could affect one or more of the stakeholder groups in a way that's unfavorable to them because we're trying to help another stakeholder group. So it's the competing interests, and now this is not always the case, all right, uh, but sometimes it is uh more difficult. Um and so the the managers' jobs at that point, you could maybe talk about it in terms of balancing the different interests and needs of the stakeholder groups, uh, or you might think in terms of creative moral imagination to find a way to find an alternative that serves the needs of the multiple stakeholder groups. But the challenge, I think, for the Christian is in those more complicated, difficult situations, difficult in the sense of knowing what to do, what is right, uh, is you know, the scripture may not be explicit in providing guidance. And so what are we to do? And at that point, I think we we need the community dialogue uh to talk with the stakeholder groups and to find where there is opportunities, find an alternative that maybe is new and different, where we do our best to serve the needs uh and sometimes competing needs. I don't think it always works out in a nice clean manner. Sometimes it can be a little messy and maybe more complicated to serve multiple competing needs, but I think that's one of the more difficult issues that that I as I see it. Now, you might have another guest that will provide a clear, concise, unambiguous answer for that. Um, but that's a big challenge.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Yeah, it is indeed. Actually, I just got an email yesterday, one of our listeners who is um owns a pool company, and uh he was responding to the interview that I did on the the subject of DEI and ESG a couple episodes back, and um was giving his his take on affirmative action was a topic that came up in there. And it's uh it's a tough one because when you when you take when you give opportunities uh to one group of people, you are by necessity taking them away from another group of people. And and so it's just like you're talking about all of these competing interests among stakeholders. I think the starting point has to be that Jesus is the ultimate stakeholder. And and and he's not just the chairman of the board and the CEO uh and the owner, but he's also the entry-level employee. He's also the contractor that it often gets uh you know the the price gouged and uh and all the rest. And and so how is Jesus um Jesus is on the receiving end of every thing we do in business. He's on the receiving end of every transaction, every conversation, uh, every decision that gets made in business. And uh I would like to think that simplifies all the decision making. In a way it does, uh, but but still on the issue of giving opportunities to marginalized groups, for example, you know, that's a that's a tough one.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

It is. Yeah, I think there are some issues. Certainly, I I experienced this a few times. It wasn't on a daily basis, but uh a few times with the maybe big, more complicated questions in the organization. Uh, I went to bed at night uncertain that the choice that we'd made. Was unambiguously the correct choice. But we had to make a choice and move on and make the best of the result afterward as much as possible. And so for a Christian, what does that mean for our faith? We have to make a choice, decision. We just can't stop everything. And next year, we'll say, well, think about it for a year. Some decision, no, you can't have that luxury to do that. You move on and you do your best. And sometimes it feels like we're just muddling through the really difficult ones. Fortunately, those don't come up too often, but still they're they're they're really challenging. And uh yeah, the trade-offs, which you referred to, those are those are very difficult to deal with sometimes. You know, the biblical idea of shalom uh kind of carries that uh implicitly, at least in my mind, implicit uh challenge, because what is shalom for someone might not be shalom for the other person. And what is flo what draws or leads to flourishing for one group might delay flourishing for another. And yet the scripture says in Psalms we should pursue shalom. And in Jeremiah, I think it talks about praying for the shalom uh of Babylon, because in their flourishing, you will flourish, right? And that sounds great, and for most things, I think it it does work out well. But there are some elements, some decision situations where shalom is it's ambiguous, what's going to lead to flourishing for all involved.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Yeah. And these these challenges are part of what is going on in your new book on the brink, where you've written this fictional story that I'm sure is based on a lot of real life experiences that you've had, others have had. Um, tell us about the book and what readers can expect to get out of it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Let me start by saying that one of the key dilemmas that Christians face in the secular world of business, we all under Christians understand the great commission to go out and disciple others, right, to spread the gospel. But when we work in an organization where religious language is unwelcome, therein comes a dilemma. We need to speak, but to speak is to do something unwelcome in the organizational culture. So what do we do? Right. And so the the protagonist in the story, uh, just like two people that I heard, well, actually, one I heard tell his story, the other one I read him write his story. Um, he's a he's a leader in a healthcare organization, and he goes through a life experience that where he realizes he's really not a lot different at work than other people, even though he's a Christian. And yes, the story is built upon uh two real life stories. Uh, but I have fictionalized it and I've written about things that I have experienced as a as a manager and so forth. Uh, but what's he gonna do now? He's God has brought him to a turning point. And what's he gonna do? What's he gonna talk about at work? And that the the theme of the language of business starts in chapter one and goes all the way through the entire story. What is the language of business? Especially when we want to share the gospel, but we can't, because it's so unwelcome, people turn away from us in some organizations, not all organizations, but some, it's just taboo. Uh, and so the story is about what happens? What does he do? How does he get through this dilemma? Does he find a way? Who helps him? And what's the result?

SPEAKER_00 26:03

So, in practice, what do you mean when you say Christians uh like the character in the story need to be vocal ambassadors for Christ at the workplace? Like what does that look like in practice? Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Well, we we know, and even though some of us feel uncomfortable because of our experiences in organizations, we're uncomfortable talking about uh the gospel, because we know that you can't get too far into that conversation about the gospel before you start using religious words Jesus, faith, sin, salvation, the cross, and so forth. And these are the heavily loaded words that are unwelcome in conversations, and so we realize okay, we're stuck here. We we what do we want to do? And so for many Christians, it's so I'm just gonna let my silent witness, just my behavior, speak for God. And in the story, I decided that to take this really to his logical conclusion, my protagonist wouldn't be satisfied with a silent witness. And I also came to realize how important speech is in organizational cultures, and so that's what he does. He's got to find a way to speak about the gospel, but in a way that doesn't offend people. And I don't want to give away the story, but uh this is the big challenge. And uh, so can we can we use a language at business organizations that doesn't use these reserved special religious words, but at the same time, in a vocational kind of way, translates these religious ideas into business activity thinking. And I think that's a that's that's a more difficult challenge than memorizing a a two-minute elevator speech or elevator testimony about my faith experience with God, right? I mean, I can I can memorize and write and rewrite and craft my little two-minute or 60-second elevator testimony and just have that ready at a moment's notice. Far more difficult to think about the conversations going on at work and how can I represent God's character through what I say in these normal business conversations.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Yeah, because the calling is to make disciples and not just to give the, you know, the two-minute explanation of the gospel and then check the box. And then hopefully they're gonna ask, what must I do to be saved? You know, that's kind of what I think a lot of us are expecting should have ought to happen, but doesn't happen that way. And then we just decide, uh, I guess maybe Christianity isn't really for uh outside of church. But you know, we have we have two spirits making disciples of people today, and it's the Holy Spirit and it's a spirit of the age. And the primary disciple making for adults, working age adults, will be in the workplace because the spirit of the age doesn't have a a house of worship on Sunday. Um the spirit of the age's house of worship is is your office on Monday and or your factory or wherever it is that that you work. And so, I mean, it would almost be like somebody from um you know from another religion coming into your church on Sunday morning and wanting to share their faith with you. And and hopefully we would be, you know, kind and gracious and and and display Christ to them. But um but in the in the workplace you are you are and and certainly there are companies that are Christ-centered because their leaders say that you know what, it's not just gonna be okay to honor God, but in fact, that's why our company exists. Like Chick-fil-A, to be stewards of everything that God has entrusted to us. And so it's it's less about the two-minute uh gospel presentation and more about what you were saying earlier, where let's look at the character of God, which is all summed up in Jesus and demonstrated through Jesus. In fact, what does love look like? Uh well, the Bible tells us God demonstrated his love in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So he demonstrated his love through through action and dying. And that's we don't get a pass on that. And so our dying on Monday is to die to self and selfish ambition and selfish motives for for doing things and and and choosing to honor God by ministering to those around us and putting their needs ahead of our own.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

So let's let's take a real deep dive just very quickly into the idea of being created in God's image, which is one of the scriptural teachings, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

I am learning that this is really important for sharing the gospel in a contextual way, meaning that for the special circumstances that I'm in in the marketplace, where it is unwelcome to right out of the gate start talking about sin and salvation and Jesus and the cross and the empty tomb. The traits of God's character reach into the deepest part of human experience created in the image of God, and these treate the these traits of God's character ring out in people's in their understanding, their awareness, because they want to experience the things represented by what the Christians say are traits of God's character. They want this, and as it rings out through the tongue to the speech of faithful Christians at work, I think many people are gonna say, I I'm hearing what you're saying, I don't know where you're coming from, but that's where I want to go, because it reaches deep into their own soul and it speaks of things that are their deepest desires. And so when leaders speak about uh speak in ways that will honor people over profit and relationships over expedience and restoration over punishment and so forth, stakeholders take notice, especially if you're a champion of a particular idea or a particular trait of God's character. And let me say parenthetically, I'm not sure that all Christians can repres each each Christian can represent the fullness of God's character all the time in the marketplace. But we can be a champion of at least one of God's character, right? So that this infuses our speech and our actions, so much so that when people hear us becoming over and over championing the idea as it relates to the good of the business and good of the people, you're gonna get permission to speak about it. Where does this come from? Why are you constantly talking about this? I want to know more. You're now receiving permission to to translate uh out of the language of business directly into talking about uh the gospel.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Yeah, it's it's much more like Paul at Mars Hill, you know. Let me tell you about this unknown God uh that that you're worshiping and um or that you're seeking. And everyone is is seeking God, um, but he's unknown to them. And you know, certainly they have other things that they worship um that are not God, um you know, worshiping money, worshiping um their worries in a lot of ways, um, worshiping their upward trajectory on the the corporate ladder, uh, but to be able to help the help introduce them to the uh to the character of God. I mean, there's no better opportunity than what we have there in the workplace because we spend more time with them than anybody. Uh, and they see God's love or they should see God's love demonstrated through us in the way that we lay our lives down uh for them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

Paul Paul's experience uh in Athens is one of several experiences in scripture where we would say this is this is a special circumstance. He chose not to lead the conversation with religion, but he started quoting Greek poets, right? Um same with Queen Esther in the Old Testament, same with Nehemiah. These Bible characters they didn't start by talking to the person in power or in influence with religion, but they they used the common, the situation at the time for the conversation. But at the same time, they were representing God's character in the conversation without the use of the religious language. So we we do have precedent in the scripture for this. You know, there are some people who say, well, you're not really doing evangelism then. You know, if you're not mentioning Jesus' name, how can you call it evangelism? Actually, you're pointing to the very center of Jesus Christ when you when you use the language that focuses on the character of God, even if it's translated into secular terms, you're still focusing on and you're you're feeding that deep desire in human hearts that want that deep thing that God created us for.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Well, everybody, if you want to see this play out in a fictional story, um get the book on the brink. Um Mike, anything else you want to say about uh the book and how people can hear more from you? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Well, the book is designed for small group conversations, uh, whether it's in a congregation or a uh business uh affinity group that might meet once a week or once a month, whatever, to encourage each other in the marketplace. Uh at the end of the story, we've included several uh like dozens of actually discussion questions so thoughtful Christians can read the story and say, well, okay, what does this mean for me? What does it mean to be an ambassador for Christ at work when religious language is unwelcome? And how can how can I, as a Christian in my organization, uh find a way to be a vocal ambassador? If I believe that silent witness is not enough, then how can I be a vocal ambassador? And that's what really what the story helps a person think through. And so it's a way to engage in real life situations, uh, in an interesting story, and yet at a deeper level, think about yourself and what is it you want to experience. So, yeah, the book is available on Amazon. If you're a Kindle unlimited subscriber, no additional money needed to access that.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

All right, on the Brink by Dr. Michael Kafferkey. Mike, thank you so much for the opportunity to interview you again. I appreciate the wisdom you've shared with us, and um we'll look forward to another interview in the days ahead. All right.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

Well, thank you so much. God bless you, and and uh just wish you the best in your ministry as well.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Christian Business Leader Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and tune in for the next episode as we continue exploring God's will and ways for business.