When you think of a “Christian business owner,” what comes to mind? Perhaps you think of large, well-known companies like Chick-fil-a or Hobby Lobby. Or, on a smaller scale, the baker who made headlines for refusing to make a certain wedding cake. Maybe your mind even drifts to pop-culture figures like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life—someone who regularly sacrifices his own personal wealth and convenience for the benefit of his customers.

First Free has a significant population of business owners and business leaders within our church family. We sat down with some of them to talk about what it’s like to live and operate at the intersection of faith, business and culture. 

In this discussion you’ll hear from…

Let’s dive in!

How do you balance things that come with being a business owner/entrepreneur like risk and the need to self-promote, while also trying to allow God to lead you and move you in your career?

Kathy: 

We are not risk takers at all, but I had the luxury of leaning on my husband who makes a good income for us. 

I think it’s a hard road because, as an entrepreneur, if you don’t put yourself out there and if you’re not constantly taking the lead, you’re not getting clients. Not that those two things (always) go hand in hand, but if you’re going to be an entrepreneur, you can’t be lazy. You can’t be sitting around waiting for God to bring you people to photograph or whatever your business is. 

Even with The Haven, it’s another woman and myself. We run it. And people are like, “We want to see more of you. You are The Haven.” But that’s really difficult for us. The Haven is a Christian ministry. People don’t need to see more of us. I want them to see what we’re doing. 

Keith:

I do like risk. I didn’t know that until maybe 15 years ago. Someone kind of coached me through looking back over my life and I was like, Oh. Yeah, you’re right. I’ve taken risks a lot, now that I look at it. But the challenge for me is to know when am I charging ahead because the Lord wired me this way and wants me to take risks and do things, and when am I getting in front of him? When is it me making a decision? It’s a really tricky thing. 

We try to simplify that by saying things like, “Well, the Lord will guide you. Pray about it and the Lord will tell you.” It hasn’t been that formulaic for me. It’s harder for me to know when I’m acting based on how I was created, and God’s good with that, and when I’m kind of overreacting to how I was created, and God wants me to get back in the back seat. So I struggle with it a lot. 

So usually for me, what that looks like is I’m just forcing myself to slow a second, and then see if peace comes along with it. And usually the Holy Spirit will keep me unsettled. That’s how I start to detect if it’s probably me running a little too fast. It’s just not a peaceful feeling. 

For those of you who are second or third generation business owners, did you feel pressure to carry on the family business?

Matt:

As a kid, I hated going to work. My dad forced me. I just wanted to play sports with all my friends on Saturday morning. You know, I still joke about it. Like he’d wake me up early. I never appreciated the value of what he was teaching me until later on. He never forced me to go into the business. He just wanted to show me the appreciation of hard work and the value of it.

I did go away to school. I always knew I’d be in the food business. I went to school for marketing. For a short period of time after college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I worked in a supermarket cutting meat and I saw that end of the corporate world, and I knew that wasn’t me. So I came back with my dad, and I just knew at that time it just lined up. You just kind of know. It just kind of fell into place. But there was never pressure. At least I never felt it. 

Chris:

There wasn’t any obligation. I didn’t feel any pressure, but I thought, OK, that’s an opportunity for me to go there. It wasn’t like, One day I’m going to be something… He allowed me to come in and work with him and learn down through the years. 

We are a 46-person place, so there’s a lot of really smart people. I don’t ever feel like it’s some great level of competence or confidence that’s resonant within me. God, for whatever reason, has allowed me and my brother to be a part of this thing. And in it, I take it seriously in the sense of the lives that we affect.

Do you struggle with pride as a business owner? 

Chris:

You know we say, “I trust you, Lord.” Well, do I really? “You’ve given me this, this, this, this. I trust you, Lord.” But what if he starts to take these things away? 

I drive a 2008 Honda Civic. I don’t care about how my monetary life looks. That doesn’t mean I don’t struggle with pride. I probably struggle with security. And so for me, what does security look like? You don’t know this about me, but I’d rather save money and that’s where my security is. 

And that can look good, like you’re a responsible guy or whatever. But in the end, is that what God wants? How much does the Lord have my heart versus how much am I keeping back because I’m worried, or something like that.

Do you/did you intentionally brand yourself as a Christian business? Why or why not?

Keith:

We never marketed ourselves as a Christian agency. I was happy to learn quickly in the first year or two that just being a decent, ethical human being was a strategic advantage in our industry. Who knew that things like honesty and being interested in people would suddenly put you in a different league? So maybe in a way, being a believer helped define our company. But I think if you asked our clients, what they would say is, “I can trust those guys with anything. I could depend on them for anything.”

And then the ones who cared to have a conversation further – you know, if you ask one or two questions about someone’s life. If you’re truly interested—and I find people fascinating—it doesn’t take long for them to ask you why you’re asking. And then the Lord takes over. Some of those went great. Some of them were very short conversations.

So the short answer is, we never intentionally said we’re going to brand this as a Christian group and go after clients and make sure they know we’re believers. But we didn’t find that we had to. If we weren’t afraid to be honest, it wasn’t hard to find opportunities to talk about the Lord.

That’s the same with anything, right? You could say business, you could say family. You could say grocery shopping. You can say going to church.

Marshall:

I think I agree. You’d love to work among Christians, but that’s not realistic. But I think people recognize those values. It doesn’t take long to figure it out. Your language, your integrity, it rises to the top really fast. Did you call them back? Were you a person of your word? That kind of thing.

Matt:

My grandfather once told me when he was in business, and he always had retail shops in Chicago, he always said “There are two things you never talk to your customers about: politics and religion.” You don’t alienate anyone. And, I kind of stuck to that. However, as I’ve grown more in my faith, grown older, there are characteristics that can come out to customers that kind of show your faith and show you’re treating them as a human being and you’re taking interest and you’re valuing them.

You may not say you’re a Christian to your customer base, but at the end of the day, I think they feel good knowing that they’re shopping with you and that they’re comfortable coming into my shop. And I think at the end of the day, they probably would say that I am [a Christian]. There are certain expressions that I always use to my customers, like, “God bless.” You know, just little things that I say. 

As far as my workforce, I’m a believer in leading by example. So everyone is of faith. Everyone is a Christian in my shop. Some different walks of life than others. But myself, I lead by example, and that to me is huge.

Chris: 

You know, we have a spectrum. We recently hired someone who just left the mission field. But then there are other people where I hear, “Hey, we’re going to send you this temp worker.” They give us his name and I put it in Google and see that seven years ago, he and a buddy, one had a gun, one had a bat, and they held up the Papa John’s on Perryville. Well, we’re not running a child care facility here so it’s not like there’s a background check requirement. So I was like, “OK, bring him on.” Well, anyway, we have since hired him on and he is extremely grateful for the opportunity. And it’s no credit to us. It’s just like we treat people a certain way.

In the business world, sometimes people sell a product and you open the box and on the inside I see John 3:16. Or on the invoice. We don’t have that, but on our website, we have our mission statement and one of our comments is “through Christ-centered leadership.” We had a guy one time call up and say, “Hey, I liked your place, but that bullet point about Christ-centered leadership— just so you know, that’s the reason why I’m not coming to you.”

OK, whatever. But in the end, it doesn’t always matter, really, what we write down on paper. It’s how you conduct yourselves around others and just the magnetism, I would say, that people hear about.

We had pizza this past Tuesday and we got everybody together. “Let’s pray.” And, “You know, thank you for you guys. Because without you guys, we’re useless.” And so, kind of giving back to them. Obviously they get a wage, but just maybe the culture. People hear about that kind of thing.

Kathy:

I feel like there’s just ultimately a huge responsibility when you put yourself out there and say, I’m a Christian business. I feel like I don’t want to say or do something that would give Christianity another bad name. 

When I first started my business, I had one of those magnetic signs on my van with my business name. And I thought to myself, and I even said something to my husband, you know, we get so much road rage sometimes when we’re driving. And I don’t want someone to look at me and say, “She says that she’s a follower of Christ, and yet she’s losing her mind in traffic today.” I mean, I’m a human being and some people are just going to push your buttons whether you’re a Christian or not. But I don’t lean away from God or the fact that I’m a follower. On my website, there’s a verse and stuff like that for my Honey Bee Project.

But I feel like you’ve got to be so careful. Somebody that my husband worked with one time, he is a mechanic, and he said “The absolute worst customers we ever have are the people that come in with the little fish symbol on their car, because they’re the rudest, they’re the nastiest people I have ever seen.” And so I try and keep that in my mind. 

But at the same time, I don’t want to be following the world, and making sure that I’m pleasing everyone. Because that’s not a good thing, either. I do feel like there’s a big responsibility when you say that I am a Christian-run business.

Keith:

I never prayed with a client. But I did learn to just say what I was thinking. I got confident enough. And I don’t know how many times, someone was vulnerable enough to share something like that which was usually in a business setting. And I would just be honest and say, “I’m trying to get better at praying for things as God brings them to mind. I promise if God brings your son to mind, I’ll pray for him.”

And that might sit there for three months, and all of a sudden, the next time you’re together or you get an email or something. Somebody’s like “You want to have lunch next time you’re in?” It just doesn’t take much for people to see that’s a person who sees me as more than a client. And I never had to sit and do Bible study with them. But when you care about somebody—you actually care about what they’re going through—everything just kind of naturally happens after that. The conversations, the trust, the vulnerability. 

One of my favorite things in looking back over those two decades was how there wasn’t this wall between business and personal relationships. I thought there would be. … It just kind of was all life. The only thing I miss about my business is that, frankly. It’s crazy what a little bit of honesty and vulnerability will lead to—which maybe again, that’s the risk taker in me because there’s a risk there.

What’s some advice you would give to someone just starting out in the business world, or maybe you wish you could go back in time and give to yourself?

Marshall:

Stay grounded in your faith and stay humble, because it’s very humbling at times, this business. 

Chris:

The stolen truth that I want to share is, in life you think you need to be good at this, this and this. And it’s good to exploit the things that you’re good at and to do those well. But at some point you begin to realize, it’s okay that I suck at this, and I don’t have to do that, and I don’t have to be that. I don’t put on airs, that I am that. And so it’s just the idea of knowing what you’re good at in life and knowing what you’re not good at in life, and that’s OK. It’s kind of freeing. …

And as far as the faith component, I’m 57, and now at some point, not that I’m a giant of the faith, but maybe it just comes with maturity or life or whatever. If you allow it to, it’s like, I’m comfortable in my own skin now, more so, and I can be more bold about the truth that God has implanted in me.

I know enough not to be that dope with the fish on the back of the car, being a jerk about it and flipping somebody off. That’s not what God would want me to do. Not that I always perform perfectly, but anyways, it’s just easier to be bolder now. And it’s, “Wow, this is kind of how my dad used to be.”

Kathy:

I’ve become a lot more bold. Before, I would— and not in a bad way. But I had a customer last week who said, “I bought the entire gallery. I don’t have access to it. I don’t understand what’s going on.” And you can just tell in the tone in her voice. She was just angry and felt like I had jaded her. I had uploaded her gallery three different times. I don’t have unlimited web space. I have to pay for pictures. So I responded to her firmly and I was proud of myself. I didn’t go off the rail and handle myself unprofessionally, but I couldn’t have done that when I first started 20 years ago. I wouldn’t have done that. I would have been like, “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

She responded back favorably and I’ve probably had that happen, I don’t know, four or five times a year. And it always ends well, because I’m old enough to step up and defend myself.

Keith:

I would say, “Just calm down. It’s going to be OK.” And then on the spiritual side … I’m not sure I trusted God. I think I said I did. “Trust God” doesn’t mean I’m not going to work as hard as I can. But, what I would try to do is remind my younger self that while you’re thinking that this is about growing a business and providing for your family and everything, the Lord’s up here (on a higher level) thinking that the whole story is about trusting him.

And as long as I’m thinking it’s about these things (growing a business, etc.), I’m going to be stressed. I think almost the only thing the Lord said to me for the last 15 years is, “Do you trust me?” Every prayer, that’s what I’d hear back: Do you trust me? So I would like to go back and say, “Keep doing all those things, but don’t get tricked into thinking that this is what the Lord’s ultimate goal is. His goal is about you trusting him more every single day, and the rest of this is just a means to that end.” And I don’t know if a 30-year-old would listen to that, but I would try.

Kathy:

Having faith is a blessing. When it comes to the clients, people see it. And it does guide you in how you conduct yourself and how you conduct your business. I can’t imagine what I would be like if I didn’t follow Jesus. If I followed the world. My business, I think, would look a whole lot different.

It’s kind of, treat others as you would treat yourself. And the Golden Rule that your parents hopefully taught you, I think that falls in line. And, you know, every person is worthy of that care and time and love. And I, I just follow that. 

Keith:

We’ve all heard the title, “Christian business owner” before and it never really sat well with me. And over the years I think I’ve realized why. It’s because it implies that there’s something different about a Christian business owner than there is about a Christian employee or a Christian mom or a Christian fill-in-the-blank. 

There should be a roundtable here with any group and you can ask almost identical questions. What’s it like to be a Christian and to be a parent? The conversation, I think, is: No matter where life steers you, it really doesn’t change. You’re going to be Jesus-follower something. I’m not even talking about career. 

We can come up with 100 nouns to put after that. But I really think the conversation will be just as interesting. It’s our culture sometimes that really wants to esteem the Christian entrepreneur or Christian business person

But I’ve learned to just kind of not be impressed by any of that because we’re all on the same journey.