Someone recently found InsideWork in a “Christian Business Directory” and we couldn’t be less pleased.

We do not consider ourselves to be a “Christian Business.”  Business is business . . . it is the worldview of the founders and leaders of a business that is exemplified to the employees, suppliers, neighbors, customers and shareholders (We are a stock held “Chapter C” Delaware Corporation). The founders and leaders are “Christians,” the company is not.

Our business is based on an constantly-expanding and deepening biblical worldview. Our leaders are focused on our personal and shared relationship with Jesus Christ — no question about that — along with our competencies in business and leadership. We have people working for us who have not made any personal decision related to Christ . . . they work for us because they like the idea of doing business based on the tenets of a biblical worldview . . . they work for us because they need to work or want to work and because, most days, the way we do business makes our company a decent place to work.

If you look at our typical “customers” you will find them to be mostly urban, techno-literate and not feeling aligned with the prevailing evangelical, fundamental, “Christian Right,” mainline and liberal expressions of faith. They find themselves, from time to time, telling friends and colleagues, “I’m not that kind of Christian.” Consequently some people assume they must not be any kind of Christian at all. Others wonder, “If you’re not that kind of Christian, what kind of Christian are you?”

I am beginning to be concerned about Christian Businesses showing up in Christian Business Directories. People in our tribe don’t use the word Christian as a marketing term…

You can trust us; we’re a Christian company . . .
Buy from us, we’re a Christian business . . .

One reason for this is purely practical: “Christian” doesn’t signify honesty and trustworthiness in the general marketplace today; it signifies partisanship. Most people don’t trust a business with an axe to grind unless it is a sharpening service.

A second reason is philosophical: people in our tribe want to forge meaningful connections with others who haven’t yet imagined there is a place for them in the kingdom of God. How else does that kingdom expand?

Yet another reason is that we don’t treat faith like a secret handshake . . . and dealing with people who do leaves a bad taste in our mouths.

One of our colleagues in the financial services industry recently had the unnerving experience of being labeled by a stranger as a “Christian Fund Manager.” There is no such animal.

That doesn’t mean our colleague isn’t fully identified with Christ. But his faith is not a professional competence. He performs at a very high level and conducts himself with deep humility as a follower of Jesus who is accountable for managing other people’s resources. That’s not a matter to be trivialized with a breezy modifier: “He’s a Christian fund manager; you should call him.”

I recently received a luncheon invitation that included the quote:

“The business marketplace may well be the primary
mission field of the twenty-first century.”

Why does the marketplace have to be a mission field? Simple answer: the marketplace seems like a mission field because it is a foreign place to Christian partisans.

How about the marketplace just being the primary place where you “walk the talk”? How about the marketplace just being the most normal context you can imagine for refining and living out a biblical worldview that permeates every aspect of your life? Why does anyone have to have the label: “missionary” . . . . what’s wrong with just following Jesus?

People in our tribe are seeking a biblical worldview that’s consistent with Christ’s teachings and the great sweep of the biblical narrative . . . not cultural characterizations about what that means from a modern religious point of view. They recognize in Jesus a voice that sounded like a heretic to the religious partisans of his day. In a very brief span of time Jesus came to be regarded as an insider by day laborers, craftsmen and businesspeople — and as an outsider by the partisan religious establishment.

Maybe we don’t have to choose, but if we do, it’s pretty clear our tribe would rather be heretics, at home in the marketplace, than partisans at home in the temple grounds.