John Greco's Blog

Just a quick post to say that the blog/devotional/newsletter feature of this site will now be hosted over at Substack. The site address is johngrecowrites.substack.com.

If you were subscribed to this site with your email address, your subscription has been brought over, and you don’t need to do anything. However, if you were reading through your WordPress account, you’ll need to subscribe over at Substack. (And if you’ve never subscribed, now’s a great time to join in.)

I plan on reshaping this site in the coming months, but for now, all the action will be at the new place.

As always, thank you for reading. Now, go dive deep into God’s Word!

Today, the second installment of The TimeFall Trilogy releases into the world! It’s called The Bewildering Courage of Emma Bloom, and it continues the adventure that began in The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein. Here’s the blurb:

Trapped in the future, Emma Bloom and Clay Danvers travel beneath Transom City in a desperate attempt to escape the Marshal. They reunite with Adams Klein who is back from the dead and now possesses powers beyond natural human ability. Together, the three friends flee civilization, seeking a secret resistance community rumored to exist deep in the wilderness. But the kids discover that hiding is no way to live. They must weigh the cost of true freedom. Emma inspires and leads the charge, but will the Marshal prove to be a more formidable foe than anyone could have imagined?

If you haven’t read the first book, it’s currently on sale at Amazon, so now’s a great time to jump in! Oh—and here’s something fun. The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein just won a Top Shelf Design Award for the cover! Woo-hoo!

As always, if you like what you read, please leave a star rating and a review. It helps more than you know!

Now, I’m off to finish book # 3—coming soon!

Hello!

First off, I need to apologize for not posting more frequently. I have been scrambling to finish my next book, and it has been more of a struggle than I imagined it would be. But I’m getting there, and on the other side of this project I hope to do more in this space.

That said, I wanted to let y’all know about some fun updates related to my other books.

First off, thank you to everyone who bought, read, and shared The Easter Lamb this past spring. I love that little book and am so pleased that God is using it to plant gospel seeds in the hearts of small children. Even though it was my first children’s book and the season had lots of great Easter releases, it landed at #16 on the ECPA Bestseller’s List for juvenile Easter books. Thank you!

On that front, I’m happy to say we’re doing it again! I recently signed a contract with Zonderkidz to publish a sequel (or is it a prequel?), tentatively titled The Christmas King. That release is still a long ways away (it takes a while to make a picture book), and I will update you as it comes along. In the meantime, please continue to share The Easter Lamb, especially as we get closer to next Easter.

For those of you don’t know, I also released another children’s book this past summer in connection with my day job. It’s called A Paintbrush for Joni. It’s an age-appropriate retelling of Joni Eareckson Tada’s story, published by Harvest House. If you’re looking for a Christian biography for littles, please check it out!

Going back to Christmas for a moment, there’s a fun promotion going on right now for Rediscovering Christmas. If you head to RediscoveringChristmasBook.com and scroll to the bottom of the page, you can download the first two chapters of the audiobook!

Rediscovering Christmas is something unique among Advent readers. Part retelling of the biblical Christmas story and part devotional, the book is designed to help new and seasoned believers alike discover deep truths often overlooked in the familiar account of Jesus’ birth.

Finally, the second installment in my TimeFall Trilogy series releases on Tuesday, November 4. That’s less than two weeks away! It’s called The Bewildering Courage of Emma Bloom, and it picks up where The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein ended.

This time around, Emma and Clay are trapped in the future and, after escaping one of the Marshal’s comfort prisons, meet up with Adams Klein, who’s no longer the boy he once was. Together, they must seek out a hidden village rumored to exist somewhere in Appalachia. Meanwhile, the Marshal has uncovered an ancient evil and is poised to release it upon the world.

You can preorder The Bewildering Courage of Emma Bloom wherever you like to buy books.

That’s all for now. I hope you are enjoying the fall weather, wherever you are in the world.

I remember my first promotion. I was called into my boss’s office, and I thought I was in trouble. But to my surprise, my supervisor smiled at me and extended his hand. “Congratulations,” he told me. “You’ve done excellent work, and we want you to be team leader.”

I was a bit shocked. I had just been doing my job. I wasn’t gunning for a promotion or competing with anyone. Still, it felt good to be appreciated. My boss then went on to tell me about my new salary and responsibilities. But I had one burning question: “Do I still need to fill out a timesheet every week?”

It sounds a bit silly now, but I’m the kind of person who goes to work, puts his head down, and just plows through. Having to track what projects I’m working on and how much time I’m spending on each one just interrupts the flow and slows me down. I hate that sort of thing. To my delight, my boss assured me timesheets would no longer be necessary.

I bring this up because, all too often, when we think of leadership, we think of the perks of the job, whether they be seven-figure salaries or not having to do the mundane aspects of a role, like filling out project memos and timesheets. We tend to think of authority and privilege, freedom even. Real leaders, we’re told, make the rules; they don’t need to follow them.

When you think about the early church and its leaders, what names come to mind? Peter perhaps? Or maybe Paul? Those are solid choices, and I think you’d be right. After all, Peter was part of Jesus’ inner circle of disciples, and his name comes first in every list of apostles in the Gospels and Acts. Paul, likewise, was kind of a big deal. He was hand-selected by Jesus to be the apostle to the Gentiles. He planted churches throughout the Roman world, perhaps reaching as far as Spain (though we can’t be sure of that). Plus, he wrote more books of the New Testament than anyone else.

But let’s look at how each of these men were commissioned. First, let’s consider Peter’s promotion ceremony:

Then they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!” (John 21:15–19)

Three times Jesus told Peter to feed His sheep. Then, He assured his friend that He would die as a martyr one day. It’s hardly the keys to the company car and a corner office.

Now, let’s think about Paul (also known as Saul). Here’s how God revealed Paul’s new role to Ananias, the man He chose to restore Paul’s sight after he was blinded by heaven’s light on the road to Damascus:

But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” (Acts 9:15–16)

Just as it was when Jesus commissioned Peter, He called Paul to suffer for His name’s sake. Once again, I don’t see the perks and the privileges we associate with leadership roles.

Many years ago, I had a seminary professor who, after reviewing these commissioning texts, concluded that God doesn’t call anyone to leadership, at least not the way we use the word. What God does instead is call people to service—dirty hands, daily bread, and a life poured out for Him. After all, Jesus did say, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

Of course, some might say Peter and Paul are hardly ordinary leaders. Their roles in redemption history were unique, and they were commissioned in the early church when persecution was widespread. True enough. However, the New Testament describes ordinary church leadership in the humblest of terms as well. Remember what Paul wrote to the Ephesians:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11–13)

Regardless of your personal view on the continuing ministry of apostles and prophets, one simple truth remains: God gave gifts and offices in the church for the building up of everyone else. In the kingdom, the org chart is upside-down. The people “at the top” are really on the bottom.  They’ve been placed there to lift others up.

I can already hear someone saying, “Okay, fine. But that’s the church. That’s not a business with stockholders to please and a market to conquer. That’s not a non-profit ministry with budgets to meet and donors to cultivate.” You’re right. It’s not. But so what? If God turned leadership on its head to fashion a church with the power to ambush the very gates of hell (Matthew 16:18), why wouldn’t the model work in other settings?

What if—and hear me out here—God’s kingdom is supposed to spread to every corner of creation? What if Jesus is Lord not just of Sundays and steeples but every day of the week and every sphere of life?

Imagine if everyone stopped looking up as they climbed the corporate ladder and instead looked down to see who they could empower, guide, and mentor. What if managers and supervisors from the C-suite to the mailroom saw it as their job to equip others? For that matter, what if senior pastors actually lived this way too? Instead of running churches like CEOs and following the latest so-called Christian leadership trends, what if they took seriously Scripture’s priorities when it comes to their role?

Check out my latest books:

The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein (The TimeFall Trilogy, Part 1)

A Paintbrush for Joni: The True Story of Joni Eareckson Tada and the Savior Who Turns Tragedy into Joy

And if you’ve missed any of the previous posts in this series, start here at the first article:

“Who’s the Boss? (Kingdom Culture, Part One“

It was one of those issues that could have ripped the early church in two. From the outside, it appeared that there could be no compromise on it. Either the Gentiles who were coming to faith in Christ needed to become Jewish or their religion would be something different than the religion of the Jewish Christians, who saw Jesus’ work and ministry as the fulfillment of Old Testament promises—promises made to and for Israel.

If it had been business as usual, I have no doubt that someone in power would have picked a side and that would have been the end of the debate (and the end of the church as we know it). But Paul, Barnabas, Peter, and James entered in, knowing that it could not be business as usual. They were all citizens of the kingdom of God, and things must be done according to a higher standard.

Certain Jewish believers from Judea had started teaching that in order for Gentiles to be saved, they had to be circumcised and commit themselves to the law of Moses. In other words, they were proclaiming that the only path to Christ was the path of Judaism. But Peter, Paul, and Barnabas had seen with their own eyes that God required no such journey. The Holy Spirit fell on Gentiles the same way He fell on Jews. God made no distinction.

Acts 15 is all about the Council of Jerusalem, the gathering of apostles and elders that settled the debate. Paul and Barnabas came down from Antioch. Peter was there too. And James the half-brother of Jesus, as the leader of the church in Jerusalem, presided over the council.

Apart from Christ, this could have been any corporate meeting. You know the ones I’m talking about. They promise an open forum and real solutions, but somehow the person with the biggest title inevitably gets their way. Most often, the end result favors those who hold power. But because there was a meeting, they can say things like, “Everyone came together on this,” “We listened to all voices,” and “It was a tough decision, but in the end we did what was best for everyone.”

At the Jerusalem Council, no one pulled rank and lorded it over anyone else.

Paul could have said, “Hey, listen. Jesus appeared to me and commissioned me as the apostle to the Gentiles, so this is really my jurisdiction.”

Peter could have chimed in, “I was the leader of the Twelve. I was with Jesus for His entire earthly ministry, and I can say with confidence He would want things this way.”

James could have ended things before they even got started by saying, “Jesus is my brother. I grew up with Him. And I’m the leader of the mother church of our faith. I must do what’s best for this congregation.”

But that didn’t happen. Titles were set aside, and egos were left at the door. Each person spoke from their experience with the Lord and shared what they had learned. Paul and Barnabas told about the Gentiles they saw come to faith on their first missionary journey. They told about the signs and miracles that God did among the people of foreign lands. Peter told about his experience with the Lord at Joppa, how God brought him to a Gentile named Cornelius in Caesarea Maritima, and how Cornelius and his entire household received the gospel in faith and began speaking in tongues.

Then it was James’ turn. To fully appreciate how he handled the situation, it’s important to remember that there was a strong incentive for him to side with the Jewish believers, the Pharisees who wanted the Gentiles to become Jewish. The church in Jerusalem was largely Jewish, and James’ life would have been a lot easier if he simply gave the loudest members of his congregation what they wanted. Sound familiar?

But James understood that the ways of the kingdom are not the ways of the world. It didn’t matter what would make his life easier. It didn’t matter what direction would be the most expedient. All that mattered was Jesus’ opinion. And Jesus had made His perspective clear through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Taking the experiences of other people at face value can be dangerous, even when the Holy Spirit is involved. As fallible human beings, we sometimes make applications or inferences we shouldn’t. So James looked for a second witness in Scripture. He found one in Amos 9:11–12, which describes the Davidic dynasty being restored and Gentiles seeking after the Lord. God was fulfilling these prophetic words in their day.

James also sought a solution that would bring unity rather than further division. He recognized the believing Pharisees had legitimate concerns. How would Gentiles and Jews live in harmony if they were so very different culturally? He knew Scripture held the answer.

Back in the book of Leviticus, God had provided instructions to Israel for the “foreigner residing among them” (Leviticus 17:8, 10, 12, 13; 18:26). These included prohibitions against eating food sacrificed to idols (17:8–9); blood (17:10, 12); eating the meat of strangled animals (Leviticus 17:13); and sexual immorality (18:26). And so, caring for the consciences of his fellow Jewish Christians, James applied the same rules to Gentile Christians:

“Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.” (Acts 15:20)

James didn’t pull this list out of thin air. It came from established practice in Israel’s history and was codified in God’s Word. But he didn’t go so far as to shackle Gentile believers with a new law. These restrictions had nothing to do with salvation. In his letter, James simply said, “You will do well to avoid these things” (v. 29).

Taking a step back, we can see that James—and Peter and Paul and Barnabas—extended grace in every direction. The goal was peace, but not at the expense of truth. They came to a decision using kingdom principles, and no one lorded it over anyone else. In fact, James attributed the outcome of the council to “the Holy Spirit and to us” (v. 28)—to divine and sanctified human wisdom.

That should be the goal, shouldn’t it? To make leadership decisions in such a way that there can be little doubt God was in them. But to do that, we have to first care about what God says in His Word, and that means reading and studying and meditating upon it—and then thinking critically about what we’ve been taught. Only when we make it a habit to bring everything under the authority of Scripture will we begin to live up to the kingdom culture Jesus established.

Next time, we’ll reexamine something so basic, it might just turn everything we think we know about Christian leadership on its head.

Check out my latest books:

The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein (The TimeFall Trilogy, Part 1)

A Paintbrush for Joni: The True Story of Joni Eareckson Tada and the Savior Who Turns Tragedy into Joy

And if you’ve missed any of the previous posts in this series, you can check them out here:

“Who’s the Boss? (Kingdom Culture, Part One“

“The Price of Worldly Power (Kingdom Culture, Part Two)”

“When Your Boss Is a Slave Driver (Kingdom Culture, Part Three)”

“The Choice Before Us (Kingdom Culture, Part Four)”

“One Golden Rule (Kingdom Culture, Part Five)”

“Better Than Greed (Kingdom Culture, Part Six)”

There’s a famous scene in the 1987 film Wall Street, in which Gordon Gecko, a ruthless and unscrupulous stock trader, stands before a meeting of shareholders and says:

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right; greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, [for] knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

I remember sitting in an economics class at an evangelical Christian college and being told that Gordon Gecko was essentially right. The professor quibbled with the word greed. He preferred self-interest, but he conceded the character’s central point. Capitalism works like a machine, and the fuel is self-interest. He added, “by the grace of God.”

On the one hand, I agree, there is something of God’s grace in a system that uses a person’s own self-interest to provide for the many. A businessman trying to get rich starts a company and employs several hundred people in the process. An entrepreneur invents a new product to make money, and the device sparks further innovation and entrepreneurship, making the lives of millions easier. There are millions of variations on this same theme. People working to line their own pockets end up doing a lot of good in the world, even though they may not have set out to help anyone but themselves. That’s a wonderful thing—and it sure does sound like the grace of God.

But it’s also a cheap imitation of something better. You see, in the kingdom, human flourishing is not a happy side effect; it’s the end product. In fact, it turns things upside-down. Instead of a person fighting for himself and helping others by accident along the way, a person thinks of others first, and in the process helps himself.

Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Some people that simply means that by giving to others, you’ll feel really, really good about yourself. Sure, that’s true. But there’s more to it than that. Because we’re all connected, when we think of others first, we end up helping ourselves in every way.

This is why, through the prophet Jeremiah, God instructed the Jewish exiles in Babylon, “Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jeremiah 29:7). God wanted His people to bless the very people who had marched them out of Judah and made them little more than slaves in a foreign land. Why? Because such was the road that would lead to their own prosperity. If we care only for ourselves, we fail. But if we seek the good of everyone, we too will be lifted up.

We were created for connection. We were never meant to live in isolation or to be cordoned off by cubicle walls or by position—to be alone. We were made for interconnection, to be a part of a community. That is why, in the very beginning, before sin ever darkened our world, God looked at Adam and said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

Why, then, even when surrounded by lots of other people at the office or in the factory do so many of us feel alone? It’s because we have been conditioned to enter our workspaces not as human beings but as “employees.” The very term is dehumanizing. When I fix the plumbing under the sink, I “employ” a wrench. When I write a blog post, I “employ” my MacBook to get the job done. People, however, are not tools.

Have you ever sat in a performance review and had a supervisor go line by line down the job description for your position and judge you against it? I have. It’s exhausting and humiliating. That’s because a job description describes a tool, not a person. It’s a complicated way of saying “I need a five-sixteenths wrench,” But a human being is so much more than their skill set. That’s why, years ago, when I was serving in a senior management role at a Christian business, I flipped the script on all of it.

Rather than holding the members of my team up to their job descriptions, I asked each one to go through their job description, line by line, highlighting what they loved about their job and what they hated, what they thought they were especially good at and what they struggled with. I also had them tell me what things were not on their job description but probably should be.

Then we met, one on one, and had conversation about this exercise. And do you know what I found? There were plenty of responsibilities we could shift from one person to another so that the majority of everyone’s days were filled with tasks they loved and thrived in. I also discovered that, as an organization, we were not tapping into all the skills and experiences of my team. So, I changed that.

It was a simple flex. Instead of seeing people as tools to serve a need; I looked at them as people who have lots to offer. I tried to see how I could bless them (by asking them), and the whole organization was blessed as a result, myself included.

Our very design tells us that we need one another. The apostle Paul expressed this idea when discussing the use of spiritual gifts in the church, comparing believers to various parts of the human body. He wrote:

Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. (1 Corinthians 12:15–26)

While businesses and non-profit ministries are not churches, and skills, experience, and natural talents are not spiritual gifts, the principle Paul presents in this passage still applies. Every person has something to offer everyone else. Their presence is designed to be a blessing to the community or organization. No one is to be used and then cast off or treated like a cog in a machine. And yet, following the model of the world, we have essentially made some people eyes and heads and allowed them to say to the hands and the feet, “I don’t need you!”

Hear me clearly here. What I’m not suggesting is that we rid our businesses and ministries of all hierarchy, nor am I saying that key positions within an organization should have no real authority. What I am saying is that the culture of our workplaces should reflect the inherent value of every person. No one should be “lording it over” anyone else. In a place of business or ministry, our roles may be different, but we should all come to the table as equals, with everyone there to bless everyone else. And for that, a massive shift in perspective and quite a bit of ego tamping is required.

And to that topic we head next…

Check out my latest books:

The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein (The TimeFall Trilogy, Part 1)

A Paintbrush for Joni: The True Story of Joni Eareckson Tada and the Savior Who Turns Tragedy into Joy

And if you’ve missed any of the previous posts in this series, you can check them out here:

“Who’s the Boss? (Kingdom Culture, Part One“

“The Price of Worldly Power (Kingdom Culture, Part Two)”

“When Your Boss Is a Slave Driver (Kingdom Culture, Part Three)”

“The Choice Before Us (Kingdom Culture, Part Four)”

“One Golden Rule (Kingdom Culture, Part Five)”

My guess is that someone read the last post in this series and thought about a boss they once had, or maybe it’s the boss they currently have, and shook their head in disagreement. They may have even thought something like this to themselves, But Angela was such a kind boss. She always looked out for me, invested in my career, and took the blame if our team didn’t hit its goals for the quarter.

Fair enough. There are some people who buck the trend. They model Christlike behavior with or without realizing it. But the fact that a rare boss like Angela stands out in your mind is a testament to two things: 1) Bosses like that are extremely rare; and 2) the way of the kingdom can have a powerful impact.

But what exactly is the way of the kingdom when it comes to living out our work lives? If you’re one of those guys who loves leadership books with numbers in the title, like The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership or The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, you’re going to be disappointed. There’s just one law to know, one rule to follow. It comes from the lips of Jesus: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).

That’s it. One universal rule to change the way we work, lead, manage, and collaborate on the job: Do to others what you would have them do to you. It’s been called the Golden Rule, and for good reason. If you can live it out, you are one of the good guys. You will be the boss or coworker people look up to and remember fondly years later. You will be a blessing everywhere you go.

Jesus wasn’t talking specifically about work when He uttered the Golden Rule, but take note. He said the rule applied to “everything.” In other words, there is no sphere of life where doing for others what you’d want them to do for you will steer you wrong. But how many times have you heard someone say, after doing something cold and heartless, “It’s just business.” Well, sorry. Business doesn’t get a special exemption. You still have to be a decent human being when you go to work—and that goes double for followers of Jesus.

There are some who will undoubtedly say that the Golden Rule and capitalism are incompatible. Self-interest is the driving force behind capitalism; it’s the spark that gives it life. If we were to suddenly flip things, our businesses would come to a grinding halt. But that’s to misunderstand what Jesus is telling us. Because we care about our coworkers, our bosses, our employees, our customers, and yes, even our shareholders, a healthy profit is a good thing.

What our current business models do is twist things out of alignment. Your average CEO thinks about his own bank accounts first, then those of the company’s shareholders (for they have the power to remove him), then perhaps his customers—after all, he doesn’t want to alienate them entirely; he needs them to buy his company’s wares—and then he considers the employees, only as much as he must to avoid costly turnover.

Now, they will deny this up and down, because it’s a bad look. And while there are exceptions, this pattern has been observed again and again. It’s by design. A self-interested CEO will do the will of his company’s shareholders, and that means he will do whatever he can to generate ever-growing profit margins. This is all basic stuff, but it’s shortsighted.

In order to increase profits forever, a company must either raise prices (that’s bad for customers), lower the quality of their products (that’s bad for customers as well but also for the long-term health of the company), or get more out of fewer employees (that’s bad for those employees, and doubly bad for the ones who get fired). Of course, a company can keep expanding with new product offerings or it can try to expand its customer base—but both of those strategies take lots of time and capital, and are there’s no guarantee of success.

I hate to get into the micro-economic weeds on this, but stick with me for another minute or two, because Jesus’ way offers something better. When we practice the Golden Rule, we replace ever-increasing profits at the top or our priorities list with broad human flourishing. Rather than a few people winning, everyone does. Profits are still important, because you need them to keep the company operating, but they are not the ultimate goal.

To the believers in Philippi, Paul wrote:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. (Philippians 2:3–4)

There’s a benefit to living this way—the way of Jesus. It creates a healthy environment where we all thrive, especially as this ethic catches on and everyone lives it out. Capitalism is built on self-interest, and that’s not a bad thing. But being truly self-interested would mean looking past payday to the world we’re all creating together.

You may have heard that Henry Ford paid his factory works five dollars a day, an unheard of sum at the time. It seemed to fly in the face of commonsense business practices. But Henry Ford wanted his own employees to be able to afford to purchase one of the cars they were manufacturing. He did unto others what he would have wanted them to do for him. And in the end, everyone benefited. Employees were better off, Ford sold more cars, and competitors followed his example. No one lost. Imagine that!

Now, rumor is that Henry Ford’s five-dollars-a-day idea wasn’t really about elevating the financial situation of assembly line workers; it was actually about eliminating absences at work and keeping competitors from stealing his labor force. However, this just reinforces my point: Doing the right thing can be good for business, and even selfish people can accidentally stumble onto the way of Jesus every now and again.

And that’s where we’re going in the next post. We’ll discuss the beautiful design of the Golden Rule and how it allows everyone to win.

Check out my latest books:

The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein (The TimeFall Trilogy, Part 1)

A Paintbrush for Joni: The True Story of Joni Eareckson Tada and the Savior Who Turns Tragedy into Joy

And if you’ve missed the previous posts in this series, you can check them out here:

“Who’s the Boss? (Kingdom Culture, Part One“

“The Price of Worldly Power (Kingdom Culture, Part Two)”

“When Your Boss Is a Slave Driver (Kingdom Culture, Part Three)”

“The Choice Before Us (Kingdom Culture, Part Four)”

From the very beginning, the Bible presents us with choices, forks in the road that will determine the future. In Genesis, it’s the choice between the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:9, 16–17). In the book of Psalms, it’s the way of the righteous versus the way of the wicked (Psalm 1). In the Gospels, it’s the narrow gate that leads to life or the broad road that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13–14).

This is life. We never escape it. Choices come at us every day. But God, in His mercy, nudges us toward life and goodness in His presence. Wisdom is being able to hear His voice and choose the path that leads home. And when we choose the path that seems right to us without considering God and His plans, the results can be disastrous.

The bigger the stakes, the more important our choices. God’s people learned this lesson the hard way when they told the prophet Samuel they wanted a king “such as all the other nations have” (1 Samuel 8:5). It was a fork in the road, and they made their choice.

Now, to be fair to the Israelites, the high priest Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phineas, had been a disaster, corrupt as the day is long. And while Samuel himself was a righteous man who guided the people according to the Lord’s ways, he was old, and his own sons seemed like Hophni and Phineas 2.0. It’s no wonder the Israelites were nervous and looking for an alternative leadership model.

But rather than driving deeper toward God, their true King, and seeking His will on the matter, the people of Israel looked around at the other nations in the region. They saw how their kings led their people into battle. They saw the flash and glitz of the worldly glory with which those kings adorned themselves. They saw the simplicity and stability of a power structure in which all authority was wielded by a single man. They saw all this, and they wanted it for themselves.

Of course, God saw what they didn’t. God knew that those kings were not mighty at all. He saw that their wealth and prestige were the ancient equivalent of Instagram photos. He knew that the power they wielded came from dark spiritual powers and robbed everyone—including the king himself—of the freedom God designed human beings to walk in.

This is the warning God gave to His people through Sameul:

“This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” (1 Samuel 8:11–18)

Some of the details don’t speak to us the same way they would an ancient Israelite. We don’t know what it means to have our sons run in front of chariots, for instance. But reading through this list, we get the gist of it. A king of this world, without a heart infused with the love of God, will make his people slaves (v. 17). That’s because, as we’ve already seen, a king does not rule alone. There are spiritual forces—”authorities” and “powers,” as Paul described them in Ephesians 6:12—who are in rebellion against God and who seek to do us, His image-bearers, great harm. And these demons often work through earthly rulers.

We see this time and time again throughout the history of Israel and Judah. It wasn’t merely that kings were prideful and taxed the people heavily, although there was that—I’m looking at you, Rehoboam. It was also that the wicked kings led the people into the worship of foreign gods, going so far as to promote child sacrifice. Rather than living up to the covenant with its life-giving commands, the people sank about as low as you can get.

The single, greatest exception to this is David, a king who was hand-picked by God because of what he had on the inside; he was a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). This was a man who mourned when his enemy died, who welcomed a potential rival to eat at his table as one of his own children, and whose greatest joy was worshiping the Lord. David wasn’t perfect, but he was an example of godly leadership. How did David’s God-directed heart make him a good king? He didn’t see power as something to cling to, and he sought to please God in everything he did. That’s a template for us (and we’ll explore it in the next post).

A king like David wasn’t an afterthought. God had made provisions for kings in the law of Moses. It was always His plan to give His people kings to lead them. The problem with the Israelites’ request in Samuel’s day was that they wanted a king like the nations around them had. They didn’t want God’s best; they wanted to keep up with the Joneses.

Now, think back to what Jesus said about “those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles.” He said they “lord it over” their people (Mark 10:42). Isn’t that the picture God painted when He described to the Israelites what “a king such as all the other nations have” would do? It’s not just bad management; it’s evil, the path that bends and winds its way to a living death.

So, when church leaders and Christian authors point to the leadership principles of the world and tell us we ought to adopt them in our churches and ministries, it’s no small thing. It’s akin to saying, “We want a CEO as the other organizations have!”

Does that mean there’s never, ever anything we can learn from the businesses of this world? No, of course not. But it does mean that we need to use our discernment, knowing that the goals of Nike and Apple and Coca-Cola are often at odds with the kingdom of God. Remember: God’s plan in our world is never aimed at mere profit or market share; it’s always directed toward human flourishing—that is, it’s aimed at shalom in its truest sense.

Next time, we’ll look at what Jesus said about how we determine a kingdom approach to business, leadership, and working with others. Until then, think about the current state of corporate culture. The memes can’t all be wrong. Something is definitely broken, and it’s because we’ve chosen the wrong path.

Check out my latest books:

The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein (The TimeFall Trilogy, Part 1)

A Paintbrush for Joni: The True Story of Joni Eareckson Tada and the Savior Who Turns Tragedy into Joy

And if you’ve missed the previous posts in this series, you can check them out here:

“Who’s the Boss? (Kingdom Culture, Part One“

“The Price of Worldly Power (Kingdom Culture, Part Two)”

“When Your Boss Is a Slave Driver (Kingdom Culture, Part Three)”

One of the oft-repeated criticisms of Christianity is that the Bible appears to support slavery. (Spoiler alert: It doesn’t.) In the Old Testament, God provided rules for owning and maintaining slaves. In the Gospels, Jesus did not speak out against the practice, at least not directly. By the time we get to Paul’s letters, we find instructions like, “Slaves, obey your human masters in everything” (Colossians 3:22).

On the surface, God’s Word seems to be telling us that a certain type of strict, no-compromise hierarchy is just fine. Some people should be at the top, issuing all the commands, while others should be at the bottom, taking orders without question. If slavery can be upheld, certainly domineering work situations can.

Is your boss a jerk? Suck it up, and do what he says, because Scripture tells us, “Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as you would Christ” (Ephesians 6:5).

Now, of course, most Christian leadership gurus would say that because business owners and CEOs get to enforce their will freely, they ought to be kind about it. Though they would never use these words, they advocate for something of a benevolent dictatorship wrapped in a servant-leadership veneer. It comes tied up with Scripture verses and Christian sentiment—maybe even a mid-week Bible study—but it’s not markedly different than the world’s approach to work relationships.

In my mind, I hear Jesus’ words about Gentile rulers and the dark powers who hold sway over them, and then I hear, “Not so among you” (see Mark 10:42–45). There has to be a better way—a Jesus way—to approach all of this. And that’s exactly what we find in the New Testament, not coincidentally from Paul, the same apostle who wrote that slaves should obey their earthly masters. He had some personal experience with the slave-master relationship.

Philemon was a friend of Paul’s and a leader at the church in Colossae. In fact, the church met in his home. And he was also a slaveholder. To us, this might sound strange. He a member in good standing in the local congregation despite the fact that he owned a human being. Again, this would seem to suggest that the Bible—and God, by extension—is just fine with slavery. But nothing could be further from the truth. The gospel contains within itself the power to overturn wicked institutions like slavery (and oppressive work situations) without a bloody revolution. Philemon, and his slave, Onesimus, provide the perfect test case.

One day, Onesimus ran away from Philemon and headed to Rome. It was there that he connected with the apostle Paul, who was under house arrest at the time. Paul led Onesimus to the Lord, but rather than encouraging him in his life post-slavery, he urged Onesimus to return to Colossae and to his master, Philemon.

It sounds insane to us today. Slavery is wrong, and Onesimus got away. How could Paul send him back? Because Paul knew that freedom in Christ is real freedom, whether you’re a slave or a slave master. And here’s the gospel in it, the mustard seed that grows and spreads and topples every evil thing. Paul wrote to Philemon:

I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you.… Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever—no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord. (Philemon 12, 15–16; emphasis added)

Slavery makes no sense in God’s kingdom. How can one son of the King own another son of the King? How can someone who’s been set free become a slave? How can someone who’s been made new return to the ways of the world and dominate another image-bearer of God? They can’t. The only way forward is as brothers.

Paul knew Philemon would care for Onesimus and consider his best interests, and he knew that Onesimus would do the same for Philemon. Philemon still had authority over Onesimus, but because of Christ he could no longer lord it over him. Onesimus still had his responsibilities to tend to, but because of Christ he could do them out of kindness to Philemon. That’s how Paul could, with a clear conscience, put the two men back together.

Slavery was still a fact of the ancient world, but in Christian circles it was hollowed out by the gospel. So, my question is, why haven’t work relationships in our day been radically transformed by the same good news?

Right about now, someone is saying, “Modern employment isn’t the same as slavery.” True. It’s not a direct parallel. But if the gospel can change an institution as entrenched and dehumanizing as slavery, shouldn’t it more than enough to alter a Fortune 500 company in Manhattan or the small business across town?

Throughout history, Christians have been change agents, transforming society from the inside out. We pioneered hospitals. We championed literacy and education. And yes, we ended chattel slavery in the West. But when it comes to something as basic as how we put food on our tables, we have accepted the world’s ideas about work without question. We have become social Darwinists. It’s might means right and the survival of the fittest. He who has the gold makes the rules.

There’s a better way. And no, it’s not some hippie socialist experiment where we abandon all the titles and give everyone the same pay. Rather, it’s following the way of Jesus, where service is the path to greatness. It’s trading raw power for selfless love, indifference for kindness, and the corporate ladder for the shared table. It’s choosing the path that leads to the greatest human flourishing over the one that leads to the healthiest bottom line, though by God’s grace, sometimes those paths are one and the same.

The gospel is powerful enough to do all this.

We can’t wait for the world to get things right. The change needs to start in organizations that claim the name of Christ—our churches, our ministries and non-profits, our businesses. We must transform corporate culture into kingdom culture, business as usual into business as kingdom opportunity. In a world where many people spend the majority of their waking lives merely enduring their jobs, we have something better to offer—and it’s something that smells an awful lot like Jesus.

In the next post, we’ll look at how God Himself described leadership under the tag-team influences of dark spiritual powers and our own sinful desires, and how He offered His people a better option.

Check out my latest books:

The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein (The TimeFall Trilogy, Part 1)

A Paintbrush for Joni: The True Story of Joni Eareckson Tada and the Savior Who Turns Tragedy into Joy

The front lines had been breached, and the enemy’s forces were flooding into his territory. Towns were under siege, and trees were set ablaze. His people’s crops were decimated, and their water supply cut off. It was only a matter of time before the entire land of Moab would be overrun. King Mesha looked all around. The end was coming, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Rising higher than the sounds of his people’s defeat, he could hear a distinct cry. It was his son. His firstborn. The heir to the throne. In that moment, Mesha knew what he had to do. Lifting the child up onto the city wall, he raised his voice to his god, Chemosh. And then, with all the fury of the ongoing battle coursing through his veins, Mesha slaughtered his boy. It was a necessary sacrifice to arouse his god, his only hope of turning the tide of destruction.

Disgusting as it is, this is a true story, recorded for us in 2 Kings 3:24–27. The wicked king of Israel at the time, a man named Joram, had decided to invade Moab, because the king of that land had stopped paying him tribute. Together with the kings of Judah and Edom, he laid siege to Moab. He even had the Lord’s help. Elisha had prophesied a small miracle, and everything that he said was coming to pass (see vv. 14–25).

That’s when Mesha decided to sacrifice his firstborn son to the god Chemosh, the chief deity of his land. After all, that’s what wicked pagans do. But here’s the crazy thing: The Bible tells us that after Mesha’s son was dead, “the fury against Israel was great; they withdrew and returned to their own land” (v. 27). In other words, the sacrifice worked. Chemosh apparently aroused and empowered the soldiers of Moab, and they were able to push back Israel’s troops.

This scene doesn’t sit well with modern readers. We’ve been led to believe all the “gods” of the nations are make-believe, that the supernatural realm is populated only by the Triune God, some angels, the devil and some demons. And even with that limited cast, the only one with any real power is God. But that’s not quite how the Bible describes the unseen world.

Dark spiritual forces are real. They’re sometimes called “gods” or the fallen “sons of God”; at times they’re lumped in with demons. And while their power is not absolute and has been constrained by the one, true God, these beings are not fictitious. They are very real, and they are very powerful. This is why, when discussing the problem of eating food sacrificed to idols, Paul wrote:

Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. (1 Corinthians 10:19–21)

While the idols themselves are just evil, little figurines that don’t hold any real power (other than being a gaudy eyesore), the gods behind them do. Paul called them demons and instructed believers not to have any partnership with them. If they weren’t real, there would be no need for this counsel. Similarly, in the Old Testament, God commanded His people:

Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. (Deuteronomy 6:14–15)

If other gods were merely figments of a depraved people’s collective imagination, then there would be nothing for God to be jealous about, no reason for his anger to burn. But God told His people to take the issue seriously. And as we can see from Israel’s own history, following after demon-gods leads unswervingly to one destination: the loss of everything that makes us human.

This is where it all leads when we choose to serve other gods and despise the path Jesus has set out for us. The Lord said, “Those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them” (Mark 10:42). And as we saw in the previous post, they are only “regarded” as rulers because dark spiritual powers are influencing their decisions. So, when we choose to lord it over one another, whether that be at work, in the church, or through politics, we are following the ways of those same dark powers. And while we may not find ourselves slaughtering our babies on the city walls, we will find ourselves becoming less like the people God created us to be.

A few years ago, I was working for a major Christian publisher. In a marketing meeting one day, one of my colleagues was very vocal about the publicity plan for a particular title. Let’s just say he had strong feelings. Now, this guy was not normally so verbose, and one of the vice presidents of the organization was getting irritated. Leaving the meeting, that VP turned to me and said, “I think Jack Welch had the right idea.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I bit: “About what?”

“He said the best companies create positions that can be done by anyone with a broad set of skills. That way, employees are like cogs in a machine. And when you have a bad cog, you can just rip it out and get a new one.” I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.

Now, I don’t know if Jack Welch, the famed former CEO of General Electric, really said that, but the fact that a senior staff member at one of the world’s leading Christian publishing houses—a man who’s supposed to be a leader within the organization—entertained the thought of treating a veteran editor like a cog in a machine made me sick. It was dehumanizing, not just for the editor but also for the VP. And it’s not the way of abundant life that Jesus promised.

The better way that Jesus described is to become a servant, to see our authority as a means to bless those who report to us, not as a pass to get our way all the time.

Here is that same principle from another angle, once again from the apostle Paul:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up. (Ephesians 4:11–12)

Now, this is about offices in the church, of course, but it holds true for every sphere of life where Christians can be found. Those who have been given positions of leadership are to use their office, their authority, their gifting, and their resources to lift others up—to equip and to serve those who have been placed in their charge. That’s how true leadership works. Those at the top of an organizational structure exist for the sake of everyone else—and never the other way around.

King Mesha of Moab found there was real power in serving his false god, but it was ultimately destructive. He preserved his nation but lost his soul in the process. There’s a different sort of power that comes with serving Jesus. It’s the power to transform lives, to shift culture, and to step into our divine purpose. It comes by way of humble service and never by feeding our hunger for validation, comfort, and security.

Next time, we’ll take a look at how power structures are supposed to operate in the kingdom of God. Until then, consider what you’ve let yourself believe about leadership and authority, and ask yourself if, in the end, it promotes human flourishing or leaves people (yourself included) feeling hollowed out.

Check out my latest books:

The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein (The TimeFall Trilogy, Part 1)

A Paintbrush for Joni: The True Story of Joni Eareckson Tada and the Savior Who Turns Tragedy into Joy