Author Archives: Donald McGilchrist

International Vice President for the Navigators.

Donald McGilchrist is a UK missionary serving in the U.S. and member of the International Executive Team of The Navigators.

September 2008

Worldview | All In

Donald McGilchrist tackles the foundational nature of developing a robust biblical worldview.

The Ships of Tarshish

Donald McGilchrist discovers a familiar thread of commerce and faith in the writings of William Carey, circa 1792.

January 2008

Robert Hemsley
Loosing My Stake in the Economy, New York Times, July 20, 2002, Op-Ed
Last year the C.E.O. of my company made 592 times more than I did. I wonder if that makes me underpaid or the C.E.O. overpaid. Recently management told hourly employees at my mill to make concessions or risk losing our jobs. We made the concessions last autumn, but last spring the C.E.O. received a stock ‘gift’ worth $1.4 million. ...I imagine my concern about my company’s share price is as great as my C.E.O.’s; a portion of my 401(k) is in company stock. I recognize my job depends upon my company making a profit. But I wonder if corporate executives appreciate the role workers play in their success. Free enterprise is a system of risks and rewards. As it now stands, employees suffer most of the risks, while executives enjoy most of the rewards.

December 2007

47: Reach

Paul Tillich
Theology of Culture (p 41), Oxford University Press, London, 1964
The universe is God’s sanctuary. Every work day is a day of the Lord, every supper a Lord’s supper, every work the fulfillment of a divine task, every joy a joy in God. In all preliminary concerns, ultimate concern is present, consecrating them. Essentially the religious and the secular are not separated realms. Rather they are within each other.

46: Time Sensitive

For those whose sense of time is defined by Greenwich, it is almost impossible to conceive the sense of time innate to those who lived before such an innovation. For workers whose existence is punctuated only by the time clock or by meeting the schedule of appointments, time becomes a tyrant that enslaves the soul; selfconsciousness for them can be revived only by breaking this tyranny and reasserting the independence of the will to act in accordance with its own quiet purpose rather than as directed by that most subtle of all modern dictators — one’s watch.
Paul Sevier Minear
Eyes of Faith, a Study in the Biblical Point of View (p 102) The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1946

45: Calculated Risk

Of all detestable things, I think hypocrisy is the greatest. The man who joins the church or joins a lodge to help him in business is nothing short of a skunk. To use such an institution to help him socially or to aid him in selling goods is almost an unpardonable sin. Therefore I hope no one who reads this article will go to church in order to be a bigger business man. The basic principle of Christianity was expressed by Jesus in the statement: “He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” This means that spiritual power comes not by going after it, but as a reaction from sacrifice and service...
Roger W Babson
Business and the Church: A Symposiom (pp 49-50), The Century Co., New York, 1926

44: Business Ethics

John Dalla Costa
The Ethical Imperative: Why Moral Leadership Is Good Business (pp 109-110), Perseus Books, Reading Mass., 1998
Attempting to codify its ethical practices, Levi Strauss & Co. first adopted a ‘compliance–based program.’...However clear and comprehensive, the list did not work. )Chairman and CEO, Robert) Haas explains: &squo;First, rules beget rules. And regulations beget regulations. We became buried in paperwork, and any time we faced a unique ethical issue, another rule or regulation was born. Second, our compliance–based program sent a disturbing message to our people—“We don’t respect your intelligence or trust you!” Finally, and one of the most compelling reasons for shedding this approach, was that it didn’t keep managers or employees from exercising poor judgment and making questionable decisions.

43: Intangible Assets

Merrill Oster and Frank Toney
The Leader and Religious Faith, Journal of Leadership Studies (p 135), Volume: 5. Issue: 1, 1998
The relationship between religion and business represents a paradoxical situation. What appear to be contradictory factors characterize CEOs who always apply the teachings of their religion. How can a group of CEOs who set dramatically lower financial goals, focus less on profit as a goal, and profess to be more relaxed and worry less; earn more than those who focus more intently on wealth, profits, and personal income?

November 2007

42: Net Worth

Denis Goulet
Goals in Conflict in The Judeo-Christian Vision and the Modern Corporation (p 222), Notre Dame, 1982
The Christian profile of virtuous man or woman has little in common with the dominant image of the successful corporate executive as one who is “on top of things” and confidently issues orders which galvanize a worldwide array of actors into efficient action. Consequently, one needs to be skeptical of heady optimistic claims that career professionals can be easily reconciled with the cultivation of genuine Christian values.

41: Actuals

Robert Wuthnow
The Crisis in the Churches (p 88), Oxford, 1997
...we have come to the point in our society that we can scarcely image how clergy might be able to guide us more effectively in our work...Moreover, the most explicit counsel we may receive (from them) is to pray for a good attitude about our work. But attitudes are only one dimension of our existence. How we actually behave, the decisions we make, whom we interact with, and what we say are equally important. If religion now influences only our attitudes, then its power has surely been weakened. And if the main criterion of faith–informed attitudes is that we are happy, then we have become the measure of faith and the end of faith, displacing God and the glorification of God.

40: Crash

Jacques Ellul
The Technological Bluff (pp 405-406), Eerdmans, 1990
What, then, is required of people today? Essentially four things. Their first and chief duty is to work well, painstakingly, and punctually. The second is not to be bothered about collective matters, not to become involved, not to meddle, to leave things to those who are qualified to see them…The third thing is to be a good consumer, to have good wages and to spend them, consumption being an absolute duty, the only imperative duty, for if people do not consume the pace will slow down, money will not circulate, and there will not be enough work. The final thing is to follow the opinions propagated by the media, to adopt the information and themes for reflection that are proposed, and not to seek further afield...

39: Mentored

Emilie Griffin
The Reflective Executive (p 167), Crossroads, 1993
The reflective executive is in short a hero and a saint, dressed in the ordinary garb of the marketplace. This executive is one who lives not only by getting things done but by getting the right things done because she lives in the sight of the Lord all the days of her life. Her courage and her vision are unconquerable. She lives for her Master’s counsel, and in his presence her heart is lifted up and consoled. She is anointed with the oil of gladness because she understands the generosity of the Lord’s favor to her; and she is willing to walk through the canyons of cities built by commerce and weakened by double-dealing, to mend the broken statues, and to repair the shattered dreams.

October 2007

38: Win/Win

Charles Baron de Montesquieu
The Spirit of Laws from Great Books of the Western World 38, (p 146)
Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost a general rule that wherever we find agreeable manners, there commerce flourishes; and that wherever there is commerce, there we meet with agreeable manners. Let us not be astonished, then, if our manners are now less savage than formerly. Commerce has everywhere diffused a knowledge of the manners of all nations: these are compared with another, and from this comparison arise the greatest advantages.

37: Decision Grid

Randy Kilgore
Marketplace Moments, 2 June 2003
Micah’s three–fold test applies to those of us whom God has placed in management roles today. These three statements of responsibility...do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God...are demands that working Christian managers should be using to measure each business decision they make, especially in the context of its impact on their employees...Christian managers owe our allegiance to the God who sacrificed His Son for their eternal security, and for their present comfort. And what does God require of us...that the very acts we engage in, the very principles we rely on, the very decisions we make, not be in service to ourselves, but in service to those around us, doing justice, loving mercy and demonstrating clearly to them just how glad we are to be walking where God walks. It’s time for the corner office to serve the cubicles again.

36: Virtuous Circle

Edward W Younkins
Markets & Morality (p 95), Volume 4, Number 1, 2001
No economic system can make people virtuous, it can only provide the occasion for virtue or vice. Morality requires the freedom to act immorally. Capitalism, the system that maximizes human freedom, cannot guarantee a moral society; however, freedom is the necessary condition for a moral society. It is only when a person has choice that he or she can be moral.

35: The Risk of Commoditization

John Paul II
Cestesimus Annus on the 100th Anniversay of Rerum Novarum (p 59), Pauline Books, 1991
Certainly the mechanisms of the market offer secure advantages: they help to utilize resources better; they promote the exchange of products; above all they give central place to the person’s desires and preferences, which, in a contract, meet the desires and preferences of another person. Nevertheless, these mechanisms carry the risk of an “idolatry” of the market, an idolatry which ignores the existence of goods which by their nature are not and cannot be mere commodities.