Word of the Week - Testimony (God Story) - Part 3
“They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” Rev. 12:11
Testimony" is translated from the Greek word martyria, which means "evidence." But not just any evidence. To put it simply, your Testimony is your God story, which includes the pain you've been through on the way to where you are today. Every believer has a Testimony and even though they can be very different from person to person, they all matter and should be used to testify to what God has done in our lives.
My Personal Testimony – In last week’s “Word of the Week”, see below, I shared my personal testimony (our God Story). This week I am hoping to share how my personal walk with the Lord has impacted and influenced every other area of my life for the good. This has created chapters of my testimony related to certain areas of my life. For example, I founded Founders Advisors, shortly after I came to faith. The new Duane approached business in a totally different manner from the old me, which over the last 21 years has turned into something that is quite amazing from my perspective. I wanted to share a short overview of this chapter of my God story that I hope will encourage you to invite the Lord into every area of your life, especially your vocation. If you are in business, I would encourage you to invite God into your business and see what He will do in you and through you.
Before I knew Jesus in a personal way, I saw my vocation in business as a means to an end, to achieve and get the things I desired for me and my family. I saw the people in business that worked for me and with me as resources to help me and the business achieve our goals. I felt no real desire or responsibility to invest in people beyond the task and mission at hand. I did understand that if people liked me and/or respected me they would produce more, so I worked to gain favor with others, but it was mostly out of selfish ambition. I bought whole heartedly into the idea that the goal of a business should be to maximize profits and use whatever tactics needed, as long at legal and ethical needed to achieve this goal, even if it meant pushing myself and others to an unhealthy place. I am not just talking about working hard or being challenged or stretched, which I still believe are important to a winning attitude and culture. I am talking about trying to squeeze as much as I could out of myself and those around me to a point that was not healthy or sustainable. I had a scarcity mentality, which translated into more of a lose/win zero-sum view of the world. This drove me to operate more out of fear vs. faith. This is the more secular worldly approach to business. Operating in this way brought a small measure of success, but the cost and damage to me, my family and those around me was high. This was not a life giving or sustainable path for me. Deep down I knew there was a better way that I had seen and witnessed but I did not have a map or model to know how to change from my mode of operation that I had learned developed over the years. The trauma and pain of my first entrepreneurial venture made me question many things about myself and life at a different level. This put me on a path of seeking the things of God to answer these questions.
How my faith came alive in my vocation/business – As I shared last week, I had a life changing faith awakening at the age of 33 when I connected the dots of knowing my life purpose by knowing God and surrendering my life to God. A few weeks after having this life changing experience, I had lunch with Pastor Chris and shared what God had done in my heart and my life. He was encouraged for me and asked me where God was leading me in this new paradigm of faith. I told him I was thinking about going into full time ministry. He asked me why, and I said “well I thought that is what you did when you were really serious and fired up about God”. He laughed and said not necessarily! He asked me what I did for work, and I told him I was an investment banker who did M&A advisory. He asked me if I enjoyed my job and if I felt like I was good at it. I told him that I really loved my job/career and felt like I was pretty good at it and could be great at it one day. He encouraged me to continue to work in my current job/career and suggested that I could think about my job/career as a platform for ministry. That I could minister to others in the marketplace and possibly reach people who would never be reached by “churches or ministries”. That doing business and making money was as holy a calling as being a pastor. That I could love and serve God from the marketplace as well as I could working full time for a church or ministry. This was such a gift that encouraged me and gave me tremendous energy as I began to think about how God could use me to live out my God purpose through the marketplace. After my first entrepreneurial experience I had pretty much resolved that I would never own a business again. My newfound faith, coupled with the perspective I gleaned from my conversation with PC, ignited a new vision within me for how I might walk out my God purpose in the marketplace and shortly thereafter Founders Advisors was birthed.
How God has impacted my vocation/business over the past 22 years – First and foremost, my new perspective on life from a lens of faith and surrender, changed how I saw my vocation/job/business. As I began to walk out my faith day to day, it had a huge impact on my attitude and behavior. My perspective shifted to a mindset of stewardship and understanding that God was the owner of all things, and I was being given the opportunity to manage and steward the things placed under my authority. This changes everything, especially how we see and deal with people. There is a much higher calling and purpose to what we are doing and God’s standard on how we deal with people is very high. I began to have a mindset of abundance vs. scarcity and understood that in God’s economy win/win is the way. Simply add value and there is plenty to pie to go around. When I started Founders Advisors in 2003, I prayerfully navigated the process and felt like it was truly a divine set of circumstances that led to the opportunity. This time around I was determined to do things differently. I started by committing the business to the Lord and acknowledging before God and others that this was not my business, even though I had the company stock in my name, but it was God’s business, and I was simply designated as the lead steward.
Ove the past 21 years I have held the company with a loose grip, knowing that it is not my business, and ultimately, I am not in control. I simply get to be a steward and leader. Since the beginning, we have framed our vision, mission, and values upon scriptural truths that we felt aligned with our faith. I have also remained committed to a daily abiding walk with the Lord to stay dependent upon Him and made First Fruits a daily rhythm. God has spoken to me in amazing ways over the years and directed many of our decisions over the years. I routinely spend the first part of my day in God’s word along with prayer and praise, seeking my daily bread and fresh manna. In the early years of Founders, my partners and team decided to start doing First Fruits to see what God would do, and we would set aside 45 minutes each morning for a time of “First Fruits”. This was a special time that God blessed and used in amazing ways over the years. We have always started the week with a desire to connect with God and with each other. To this day, we encourage our team on Monday mornings to pursue First Fruits by putting on praise music throughout the office for the first 45 minutes of the day. During this time, my partners and I connect and pray together. We then have a time of connecting in small groups within the firm to be begin our week with a relational connection before we just get going. We begin these meetings with prayer. We are mostly a firm of type A go-getters, so it would be easy and natural to just get to plowing on Monday morning. We intentionally practice the discipline of “Order”. Put first things first, people. This reinforces the essence of our culture and firm purpose which is Servant Leadership. Thinking about and putting people first. Our stated Purpose “Be Servant Leaders who value relationships and results”. Both are equally important, but people come first in God’s economy. These are just a few examples of how we invite the Lord into our business.
Our business has grown and realized much success over the past 21 years and that is attributed to many factors including great people. I would not imply that our business success is solely based on God blessing because of these practices. I would say that God has blessed me and our firm immeasurably over the past 21 years in ways well beyond business success. We have seen young men and women come to know God in a personal way and watched endless numbers of our team members grow and flourish in life both personally and professionally. I would say that the health of our team and business is better than it has ever been, and I do give much of the credit to God working in and through me and our leadership team. Our focus as a leadership team is to build a healthy and sustainable business. Profit is an important consideration but should be evaluated as a function of health and sustainability longer term. We are positioned to grow and flourish, and I do believe that this is a result of God’s hand on our business. We have a bold Vision, Mission and Purpose that has been inspired by the Lord, that I believe will allow us to reach goals in our business that would have not been possible but for God and His leading and blessing. I believe that we are just beginning, and the best is yet to come.
I wish I could share more about what God has done and what He is doing, but hopefully this gives you a glimpse of this amazing chapter of my God story. If you are interested, you can glean more of this story by watching some of the videos we put together for our firm’s 20th Anniversary Celebration last year. See below:
History – https://vimeo.com/821045048
Culture – https://vimeo.com/user17937465/ourculture
Future – https://vimeo.com/820959786
Blessings,
Duane