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Business is Sacred at North Point :: Durwood Snead |
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Written by Justin Forman
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Tuesday, 18 September 2007 |
 We have 17,000 ministers at North Point Ministries. Most of them are businesspeople. They are chosen by God, doing the work that God called them to do, and ministering around people outside the faith every day. As a paid church staff member, I need to look for opportunities to interact with outsiders. Our businesspeople do it as a course of living every day. Many of them are hosting lunch meetings, showing DVDs of helpful messages, and then just discussing life with their co-workers. Their work is their ministry.
Our businesspeople are also having a huge impact globally. Let me tell you about a few of them.
Tom was an executive with a Fortune 100 company. He took an early retirement and was looking for a way to use his business skills, experience, and influence internationally. We went to SE Asia together to explore strategies for reaching those who have never heard the gospel, and Tom felt God was calling him to get actively involved. In just five years, Tom and his wife, Donna, have led 10 trips of businesspeople, who they recruited and trained, to SE Asia to teach church planters how to start their own businesses. More than 60 authentic kingdom businesses have been launched in un-reached areas.
Brian, president of his own executive search company, and I visited East Asia in 2002, looking for business opportunities to help employ those who had come to Christ but had difficulty finding jobs. Brian saw the opportunity for Christian CEOs in East Asia to use their influence to reach their people, so he helped launch a ministry that involves executives from our church going to East Asia to help lead catalytic conferences for CEOs there.
Randy, an executive consultant, uses his strategic planning skills to help leaders in Spain develop church planting strategies. Ryan, a construction project manager, moved to East Asia to start a construction consulting business. Mike, a venture capitalist, felt he needed to uncover breakthrough opportunities to influence the world, so he started a group to seek out those giving opportunities.
These business ministers do not see a distinction between the sacred and the secular in their businesses. They see their businesses as ministries and their ministries as sacred. They look at the skills and experiences God has given them as perfect training and preparation for what God has for them to do next. And what an impact they are having.
We are excited about the potential of thousands of our businesspeople discovering what God has planned for them. You see, we believe God created business as one of His tools to usher in the kingdom. Our staff regularly reads business books to glean the truths in them experiencing what our business ministers are learning. But our role is simply to encourage, facilitate, and stimulate them as they bring the truth of the gospel to the workplace here and overseas.
Durwood Snead is the missions pastor a North Point, a church outside Atlanta in Alpharetta, Georgia. He is one the key church leaders across the country inspiring other church leaders to fuse business and ministry together.
Original content at: .
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Last Updated ( Monday, 17 September 2007 )
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