Christianity and business Archives

The Spiritual Art of Business, Barry L. Rowan. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023.

Summary: An exploration of how God can work both in us and in our world through our work.

There is a popular perception that business is a soulless or soul-sucking enterprise. We hear of high-pressure business leaders demanding workers live at their place of work. We read stories of driven leaders who promise advancement in exchange for utter devotion, using people up and tossing them aside, without regard to the personal consequences. Must business be this way?

Barry L. Rowan has spent a life in business. He’s both succeeded and failing in turnaround efforts with companies, often within the C-suite, working in the communications and technology industry. His journey of connecting his daily work with the divine began with a personal turnaround story. At the age of 29 on a Colorado mountain, he faced a crisis of meaning. Why was he working so hard? His questioning led him from seeking meaning in his work to larger questions of his purpose in life, the existence of God, and if this was so, was he willing to utterly surrender his life to God? After six months of searching, of evaluating evidence he says, “I chose to believe that God exists, as the lawyers would say, on the preponderance of the evidence and would give up everything I have to follow Jesus” (p.2).

This book is a story not only of how Christ transformed his life but transformed his view of work. Instead of seeking meaning in work, he understood his calling as bringing meaning to work. He goes on to describe a four part cycle to what he calls “the spiritual art of business” and this book of 40 short chapters is organized around those four parts:

Surrender. We begin by surrendering our all to Jesus.
Transformation. Our lives are transformed as we go from living for ourselves to living according to God’s dynamic design.
New Creation. We are realigned with God’s purposes and we then live, work, and relate differently as new creations.
Into the World. God then sends us into the world and transforms the world through us.

The forty chapters that follow in these four part are short, pithy reflections beginning with a scripture text, a key idea, and a couple pages of elaboration with some explanation laced with examples and personal stories, concluded with a few reflection questions. I can see these chapters being read and pondered over morning coffee before heading out the door to work.

There is a lot more to this than an inspiring thought. Rowan makes us think, perhaps going through a process similar to his. One early chapter for example is titled “Our Essence Is Our Emptiness.” For scripture, he quotes Philippians 2:5-7 on how Christ made himself nothing as a servant and Galatians 2:20: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” His key idea is “God empties us of ourselves and fills us with himself.” He explores the idea that only when we are emptied of the idea of filling our lives that we can experience union with God and find our fullness in God. He then describes a sustainable energy business that failed when oil prices tanked and described himself as D-E-A-D to Dreams, Expectations, Ambitions, and Desires. It brought him to a realization that even very good things could not fill him. Gritty stuff. The loss of money to investors and lost jobs Not “trust God and he will make all your dreams come true.”

Rowan’s book was released this fall. Not around Lent. But I think this would make a great set of readings for the forty days of Lent. Rowan re-traces our path to the cross as we surrender all, the transformation of resurrection, the new creations we are becoming as we are aligned with Jesus, and our sending into the world as God uses our work to change both us and the world. I could see this being used by workplace groups, perhaps over a brownbag lunch. The short readings lend themselves to being read onsite with a few questions, material that could be covered in 30-45 minutes.

Toward the end of the book, Rowan writes about the why of business, speaking of value creation, that business is the one place in society that creates economic value that others distribute; that businesses can create environments where employees grow into full expressions of themselves, in the place where the most of their waking hours are invested; that businesses serve customers, contributing to their flourishing; and being valued corporate citizens, enriching their communities. It strikes me that all of this is a manifestation of the goodness and providence of God in the world. Rowan shows the way we become God’s instruments for the good work he would do in the world.

____________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

The ServiceMaster Story, Albert M. Erisman. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2020.

Summary: A history of ServiceMaster, attributing its success to its ability to hold four ethical principles in tension and to the five leaders, who like overlapping shingles, led the company for over 70 years, including 29 consecutive years of revenue growth.

This book is fundamentally about four principles and five men, and the company that became known as ServiceMaster.

Four principles:

To Honor God in All We Do
To Help People Develop
To Pursue Excellence
To Grow Profitably

At one point, the last three principles were portrayed as arms balanced on the fulcrum of the first, to honor God in all we do. Erisman traces the development of the principles from early versions by founder Marion Wade, to this version, which existed for most of the company’s history and is still referenced by some franchisees. The first two were perceived as the ends, served by the other two, and this, in the author’s mind, was significant to the success of the company. Honoring God by acting with integrity, and valuing developing people as an end, rather than the means to profit led to highly motivated service employees, and management who valued them. It also led to the development of disciplined, highly ethical, and competent leadership.

This was done within a creative tension that valued excellence in products and services that made them an industry leader, and steady, profitable growth up until about the year 2000. The tension was not easy to maintain, and Erisman traces the questioning of investors of the religious commitment at the heart of the company, particularly as the company went public, and as it acquired diverse service lines.

The five men who led the company between its beginnings in 1929 and 2003 served as “overlapping shingles” to each other, developed by and succeeding each earlier leaders who remained in the mix bringing wisdom, continuity, and complementary strengths. The five were:

Marion Wade, the founder who started out in 1929 with a moth-proofing business that expanded into carpet-cleaning and disaster recovery. Wade not only was an innovator who found better products and processes but he laid down the ethical foundations that became the four principles.
Ken Hansen was hired in 1946 after a stint in Christian ministry. He had strengths in finance, sales, and organization that brought discipline to the company while adhering to and refining the ethical foundations. The company incorporated shortly after he came, first adopted the ServiceMaster name under his leadership, moved into hospital services. He oversaw revenue growth from $1 million in his first year as CEO to $100 million the year after Ken Wessner succeeded him and Hansen became Chairman. He played a critical role in developing the “overlapping shingles” ideal of succession, serving under Wade and mentoring and collaborating with Wessner,
Ken Wessner came to ServiceMaster in 1954, worked his way up through the company, leading ServiceMaster Industries, and its hospital services division. Wessner was responsible for finalizing the Four Principles, led the company into international expansion and research. His strength was processes and systems.
Bill Pollard joined the company as an Executive Vice President, leaving a legal career, in 1977. Pollard became CEO in 1983 and led the company into the acquisition of other complementary service companies, beginning with Terminix and Merry Maids. A real focus of Pollard’s work was to ensure the training of service workers in these businesses in the company’s principles and their implementation, particularly the intrinsic value of the person.
Carlos Cantu came into the company with the Terminix acquisition and became CEO in 1994. He continued the pattern of acquisitions developed by Pollard, but stomach cancer forced him to step out of the CEO position in 1999, at which time Pollard re-assumed the reins, as both Chairman and CEO

This began a transition as the company dealt with debt load from acquisitions, a changing marketplace, integrating acquisitions into the company’s culture, and dealing with pressures testing the company’s commitment to the four principles. Erisman deals more briefly with the post-2000 company that began to move away from the four principles under a revolving door of CEOs, spinoffs of parts of the company, including the powerhouse industrial services, acquisition by a private equity firm, and a move from the Chicago area to Memphis. It is a story of fluctuating revenues, transitions in personnel, and more importantly, the Four Principles, in which the first two were downgraded, with a greater focus on profitability.

This is a fascinating case study of whether religious principles could serve as an effective framework for a company, particularly work done to honor God and value the worker. The evidence of the narrative, summarized in a chart of revenue growth from 1957 to 2000 on page 203, argues for a strong “yes.”

This leaves a question. What happened after 2000? Erisman’s account made me wonder about earlier decisions. Until Bill Pollard, people were developed within the company with a vision of succession, the overlapping shingles. By the end of Pollard’s second term as CEO, there were no overlapping shingles, and the company went outside for its next CEO. One wonders if there needed to be an expansion of principle two to the personal development of top leadership. It also seemed that the company became less disciplined in its growth. After early acquisitions that were carefully integrated, the subsequent ones seemed less so, and the flurry of acquisitions incurred significant debt loads, along with the challenge of meshing competing organizational cultures.

All this suggests to me that both principle and people (as well as sound business practice) are crucial to developing and sustaining great companies–whether ServiceMaster or Starbucks. Erisman shows the dangers when profit becomes an end to itself divorced from God-shaped integrity and the intrinsic dignity and value of an organization’s people. Great businesses, such as ServiceMaster from 1957 to 2003, hold these in a creative tension. For those asking whether business may be done Christianly, Erisman offers an extensively researched case study of how this was done in one company at a high level for decades, and the challenges to be faced in sustaining that commitment over the life cycle of a company, and beyond one’s own leadership tenure.

__________________

I received a copy of this book from the author. The views expressed in this review are my own.