Archive for October, 2009
A powerful illustration of our relationship with the Creator and His Son
It has taken a long time for us to understand what God’s plan for mankind really is. We have gone through many stages in our understanding including: Jesus died for us so we could escape hell, to Jesus died for us so we could go to Heaven. But God’s original purpose for man is clear. We were created to be the image of God.
When we were first formed, God made it clear what His intentions were for us as seen in what He said when He created us. “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.””[1]
We were designed to be the likeness of God. Today we would say we were to be the image… mirror… reflection… of God. Mankind was created to reflect the attributes and characteristics of God. We were intended to be a physical manifestation of an invisible God. God breathed His own life into mankind to enable us to do this.
It is important to realize that God’s will for mankind has never changed. Whatever God gave to Adam and told man to do in the Garden of Eden, is still what God wants today. They had dominion and that is God’s will for us today. They were the image of God, and God wants us to be that today.
Mankind very quickly failed in reflecting God, as seen in the failure in the Garden of Eden.[2] They were tempted to be like God, but didn’t realize that in the important ways, they already were like Him. They already were reflecting Him. The one thing they wanted, they already had. The effects of that failure is still felt today among people, and there is nothing we can do to change it.
That is the bad news, now here is the good news. Jesus Christ came to earth in the image of God.[3] The very thing we were supposed to be, He is. But that is only half of the good news. We are being changed into the image of Jesus. “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”[4]
This is illustrated simply by our own solar system. The sun gives the earth light at day and the moon at night. But under closer examination, the moon does not give light, it is still the sun. Actually, there is no moonlight. It is sunlight reflecting off the moon. In fact, the moon is reflecting the light of the sun whether we see it or not.
It is the most natural thing for the moon to do. You can go outside at night, and you will never hear the moon grunting, “I think I can; I think I can; I think I can.” It reflects automatically. The only time it does not reflect is during a lunar eclipse, when the moon passes in the shadow of the earth.
This is a powerful example of our purpose and relationship with God and His Son. We were created in the image of God. We were designed to reflect Him. It is the most natural thing for us to do on our life journey. In fact, as long as we stay in the presence of the Son, we will reflect Him. The only time, we don’t reflect, is when we pass into the shadow of the world. When the world gets in between us and God, we stop reflecting the Son just like when the moon gets into the shadow of the earth it stops reflecting the sun.
This issue of Business Life explores that very concept. The goal of our life path is not to head toward self-actualization or self-fulfillment or even Freedom 65. The goal of our life development is still the same goal as the original — to reflect Christ. Our goal is to become spiritually mature. May this magazine and this ministry help you get there.
Footnotes
- Genesis 1:26-28 NIV
- Genesis 3:1-7
- Colossians 1:15
- 2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV
First appeared in Spring 2007 Business LIFE
Selling with Integrity in Today’s Tough Times with Ed Huculak, General Manager and Director of Advertising
In April 2007 Ed Huculak was appointed to the position of General Manager/Director of Sales for the Calgary Sun. A graduate of the University of Manitoba, Mr. Huculak worked initially for Xerox before spending 10 years at the Winnipeg Sun as an executive in national and retail advertising. He was Director of Advertising at the Calgary Sun from 1996 until becoming Publisher and CEO of the Winnipeg Sun in 2003. He is an active member of the community, involved in charitable and business-related causes. Ed was in a TEC group in Calgary for four years.
Date Thursday Nov 5, 2009
Time 7:00 – 8:45 am (breakfast provided)
Place Calgary – 201, 1202 Centre Street South (Kahanoff Centre)
Parking Free on the street till 9:00 am
Costs Corpath Members (no charge) Member guests and non-members ($45 per person)
RSVP Click here or call (403) 254-5286
October 30th, 2009 in
Events | tags:
Selling |
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A fresh perspective on living in this world when compared to eternity
Do you think you could be happy with one million dollars? Suppose I were to give you $1 million, with one stipulation. What would you buy? A new house? A pleasure boat? Undergo cosmetic surgery? Buy that beautiful luxury car you have dreamed about? Yes, without question, becoming a millionaire could be tremendous fun, opening up many new opportunities for you.
But remember, I said “with one stipulation.” What stipulation is that? Simply this: You would become a true, bank-certified millionaire — but for only one day. After the end of that day, you have to give everything back. Return the house, the boat, the car, or whatever else you chose to purchase. You would also have to reverse the surgery.
Suddenly, becoming a millionaire does not seem as appealing, does it? Maybe it just does not seem worth the effort and the momentary enjoyment wealth can provide if it is to be lost so quickly.
We live in a world like this, however. We want what we want, and we want it now. Interestingly, it has been observed that a mark of maturity is one’s willingness to defer immediate gratification for long-run gain.
There are two distinctly different scoreboards in life, regardless of whether your vocation is in the business and professional world or an athletic field. The first scoreboard is found on “Planet Earth.” It has at least four general categories: Beauty, Intelligence, Strength, and Money.
Beauty equals external appearance. This relates to your physical appearance, the clothes you wear, whether your spouse or “significant other” is attractive to others. “Beauty” also concerns whether your house, car, personal attire, children, work or hobby possessions inspire admiration and envy.
Intelligence relates to mental capacity and skill, real and imagined. For the past 200 years, doors of opportunity were often opened based on the college attended and the degrees earned. Now a “killer-concept” (such as innovations that started enterprises like Federal Express, Apple Computer, Microsoft and Google) can open those same doors. Today, as never before, one creative or innovative idea can change your life.
Strength pertains to physical strength, physical appearance and physical health. You cannot fully enjoy the other aspects of life if you are not healthy.
Money often equals power. It’s amazing how we envy and cater to people with money. Dollars open doors — providing the best seats in restaurants, special attention at social events, deference in important meetings.
But the harsh reality is that this life on earth, no matter how enjoyable, is a vapour. Our life spans, compared to eternity, are as fleeting as steam escaping from a tea kettle. We spend our lives playing according to the Planet Earth scoreboard, but one day, sooner that we can imagine, everything is going to vanish. It will all be replaced with what we might call a “Heaven or Hell” scoreboard: Where will you be spending eternity?
The Bible explains it this way: “And just as it is appointed for people to die once, and after this, judgment” (Hebrews 9:7). “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10).
Suddenly, beauty, intelligence, strength and money will become useless. Sooner or later we will discover that the Planet Earth scoreboard is just not worth the effort.
October 26th, 2009 in
Uncategorized | tags:
Devotional |
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How the Church is adjusting to better deal with an ever changing society
We are living in a time of dynamic innovation. The last 25 years have brought us the PC, the Internet, Google, Apple’s iPod, digital cameras, PDA’s, satellite phones and instant communication.
We can now e-mail our friends around the globe, use our BlackBerrys to stay in touch and even blog to get our thoughts ‘out there’ in cyberspace. Podcasting lets us view our favorite programs or news whenever and wherever we want. Skype enables us to talk long distance over the net — for free. And when separated by distance, as many families are, our computers double as a video conference center. These tools are amazing and creating a tidal wave of new ideas.
Even our world seems so much smaller now. CNN brings us what is happening, while it is happening. Imbedded reporters show us the violence of war from inside a tank or bunker. Consumers are getting into the act and using YouTube to show anyone with a computer, products that are faulty or how the little guy is being ripped off. Giant corporations are watching, listening and responding as people experience the radical influence one person can now have. Something about the old saying, “Power to the people” is becoming true in our day. Tremendous dynamics abound in today’s exciting and ever-changing marketplace.
This is not the only place change is happening. The Church is experiencing a major revolution, a dynamic shift that is being welcomed by marketplace ministers. While the message remains the same, the methods of how we do church are changing as rapidly as our society.
New models of church are emerging. From group specific churches to corporate chaplaincy, from small gatherings in homes to weekly office Bible studies, the church is focused on being the church in daily life.
Church size makes no difference anymore as pastors and people use many of the tools of the digital world. Web pages, e-mail, iTunes to broadcast the service or messages via video or audio. Modern TV and radio are just one of many tools being used by today’s church. As more tools emerge, the church will embrace those as well.
A pastor once said, “All truth is parallel!” He encouraged us to view world events both naturally and spiritually. What is happening in the seen world is a reflection of what is also happening in the unseen world.
As products are developed in secret, then made public, so too have the men and women of faith been preparing in secret. The full effect of marketplace ministry has not been seen yet as God prepares His people for service in the 21st century — a church without walls!
Over the last 25 years evangelicals, pentecostals and mainline leaders have come together regularly to affirm their love for the Lord and need to reach others for Christ. High on the agenda was the importance of their people knowing their natural and spiritual gifts, their vocation and call to service. Believers now understand that their ministry is what they do from Sunday to Sunday in daily life.
Christians everywhere are being called upon to answer questions of ethics, morality and values as the speed of change in society increases. Whether we like it or not, the Church represents God’s government in the earth and He has something to say about how we shape our families, educate our children, use media, arts, sports, fashion, and use our wealth of creativity, influence and money. God has an opinion about the marketplace and He is making that opinion known.
Societal and spiritual transformation is happening side by side. God’s leaders and people have awoken to the need to be trained to serve in the marketplace. Churches are offering courses on basic doctrines, spiritual gifts, personality profiles and workplace book studies. The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren and The Day of the Saints by Bill Hamon are helping to equip the saints for the work of ministry.
The Church is more intentional in making Jesus and His message known. Why? Because the marketplace is the ‘acid test’ of our faith. It is here that truth is lived out among non-believers. It is here that we model something eternal. It is here that we witness to a life lived for purpose not just a pay cheque. We live to know God and make Him known. It is here in the marketplace that we see value in our work and in our co-workers.
Churches understand the opportunities before them today and are seizing those opportunities. Change brings a new language and whoever adjusts quickest wins. In marriage, when you say “I do” change happens in a moment and from that moment on your head and heart need to be wrapped around your new situation.
In the Church, words like reform, nurture, empower, revitalize and redeem are emerging again with new meaning. Christians are seeking ways to bring the essence of these words into their workplace.
Marketplace ministry is about bridging the gap between the spiritual and the natural. Seeing employment as a place God has planted us to be a blessing earns the respect of our co-workers and gives us an opportunity to minister to their spiritual needs.
Modern companies are seeing the value of mergers and focusing the strengths that each brings to the table. Today’s Church sees the same need of mergers. We need to be a united community. While the denominational lines are still clear on Sunday morning, those lines are blurred throughout the week in the marketplace.
The impact God is having through marketplace ministers is raising the bar. In the midst of all the recent financial scandals, Christians in the marketplace are at the forefront of calling on companies to model responsible profit sharing and to help others in practical and creative ways. The recent ‘red campaign’ by U2’s Bono and Bobby Shriver points out how corporations can model giving back. Profit is needed to stay in business, but living for ideals that are nobler than just profit is catching on. This is marketplace ministry redeeming corporations and directing them to causes, which benefit the world we all share.
Just as God lived incarnationally in Jesus and effected change in the world of His day, so Jesus lives incarnationally in His Church effecting change in our world. God is in the business of redeeming people and transforming society. He wants to affect change in the world through you — will you
First appeared in Winter 2006 Business LIFE
October 21st, 2009 in
Business Life |
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Businesses today want to win — no matter the cost. Perhaps the marketplace could change its ways — and maybe the world.
It must be a coincidence, right?
Andrew Fastow, Enron’s former chief financial officer, was recently sentenced to six years in prison — and on the same day he names 10 prestigious Wall Street firms as his “co-conspirators”, including Merrill Lynch, RBS and Barclays.
Former Hewlett-Packard board chairwoman Patricia Dunn has testified to the use of “pretexting” to investigate its own board. “I do not accept personal responsibility for what happened,” she says. And then Ann Baskins, HP’s former general counsel and nine other witnesses all said they wouldn’t say anymore on the grounds it may incriminate them.
Oh, and here’s one more item — an interesting recent study by Donald McCabe, professor of management and global business at Rutgers University: Among all graduate students, MBA candidates are the biggest cheaters.
According to survey data from 623 students at 32 graduate business schools in Canada and the USA, 56% admitted cheating. But, as McCabe notes, it’s not cheating for cheating’s sake: These students are doing it to win. Cheating can help them get great internships and high-paying jobs at big name companies. So maybe it isn’t a coincidence. Even so, that doesn’t answer the deeper question: What’s wrong with the business world — and, in particular, as business leaders who are followers of Jesus Christ, how do we respond?
Difference in professions
Part of the answer could lie in the history of business graduate schools. The MBA is a fairly recent invention, unlike the other professions with graduate degrees. The oldest graduate school for business in North America is a little more than 100 years old; Europe’s oldest is only a bit more than 40 years old. Compare that with law and medicine. Law schools date to the Roman Republic. And though lawyers might not have the best reputation, at least the Canadian Bar Association has issued its Code of Professional Conduct. Medicine goes back farther, even if you consider only Western medicine. Hippocrates of Cos, who lived in the age of Pericles, is widely considered “the father of Medicine.” Science might have advanced, but Hippocrates lives on today in the Hippocratic Oath, which proscribes a moral basis for doctors.
So perhaps part of the difference between these schools is what it means to be a profession. But there is also a wider gap that separates business from medicine and law. The Marketplace has yet to answer a question of the first order: What’s the point of the exercise?
In the case of medicine and law, there are higher purposes. Doctors work to heal the sick and provide comfort to their patients. Lawyers are charged with representing their clients and also with upholding the nation’s laws. What about business men and women? What’s our higher purpose?
Christians in the Marketplace
The ads in The Economist offer a good idea of the missions that leading business schools assign themselves. The promotion for the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management is “We’ll make you a better leader.” South of the border the ad for the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business says, “You’ll experience the people and ideas responsible for revolutionizing the business world.” How perfectly it complements Harvard Business School’s mission: “We educate leaders who make a difference in the world.”
At least these ads are consistent with what today’s businessmen have taken as their key responsibility: Increasing a company’s share price. Or, as Jack Welch so succinctly put it in the title of his recent book, Winning. But winning, as the data is showing, can become a rationale for cheating.
What if, instead of seeking to create shareholder value as their definition of success, business men and women sought to establish well-articulated social values — and then applied them to their own careers and organizations? What if, instead of writing books called “Winning,” they called their books “Serving”? And what if, instead of measuring success only by their ability to amass financial capital, they also sought to grow social capital?
Because the real problem with the marketplace today isn’t the few scoundrels who bring disgrace to so many honest managers. The real problem is that it needs to serve a higher purpose than making a lot of money. The challenge today is to answer a fundamental question: what is the purpose of work?
What is the Purpose of Work?
This is hardly an academic question, what with issues of global warming, the growing gap between the haves and have-nots, and the seeds of war and terrorism sown by divergent economic systems. Business leaders need to espouse a bigger game than just winning that connects to a view of the world as an interconnected community, where the future of the wealthiest depends in equal measure on the future of the poorest.
Over the next year we will be outlining our Pathway to Purpose. This is our strategic vision to help business leaders in Canada express the love of Jesus in the marketplace. We see four pathways that lead us on a journey with Christ in the pursuit of personal and business transformation: Life, Leadership, Ministry and Business Excellence.
As business leaders we need to think about this bigger game that asks fundamental questions about the purpose of business. Jesus teaches that we must serve each other to be true leaders (see John 13:14 and Matthew 19:30). Or as the teacher William Hundert, played by Kevin Kline, says to future business leaders in the movie, The Emperor’s Club, servant leadership teaches how “it is not living that is important, but living rightly.”
First appeared in Winter 2006 Business LIFE
