What Will Make American Business Great Again?

Many people apparently think making money and Christianity run counter to one another. We have a problem putting the words “commerce” and “Christianity” into the same sentence. Sometimes we forget that the love of money is the root of all evil, not money per se. 

As mentioned last week, the Puritans turned the Massachusetts Bay Company into a thriving business by 1640, just 20 years after the first Pilgrims landed in 1620. By 1640, there were 20,000 Puritans in the New World building the Company enterprise.  

Not only did these commerce-minded Saints get great business practices going in New England, but the way they did business provided a pattern for American companies over the next 300 years. Until 1970.

That's when The Puritan Gift began to unravel. 

This is the contention of Kenneth Hopper, an expert in industrial affairs, and his brother William, a former investment banker. The Hopper brothers deftly laid out their case in The Puritan Gift.  

The Puritan Gift was hailed by the Financial Times as one of the Top Ten Business Books for 2007. The Hopper brothers demonstrated that the Puritans gave America a great gift in their approach to business. The authors maintain it's a business pattern we must restore.

What was The Gift? 

Mindy Belz, of WORLD Magazine, called it "faith-based entrepreneurship." Not just any faith, of course, but biblically-informed faith. The Puritan Gift was characterized by "careful planning, a disregard for social class in selecting management, an ethic of work combined with a habit of thrift, placing the good of the community above the individual, and a desire to create a kingdom of heaven on earth." That last point is huge.

The Hopper brothers warned that as America distances herself from The Puritan Gift, the foundation upon which American business rests is defective.

What will make American business great again? 

Kenneth and William Hopper gave a surprising answer to this question in 2007. To the degree that the Puritan way was biblical, I believe that apart from a return this way of doing business, we're only fooling ourselves with a false sense of security, low unemployment notwithstanding. 

It wasn’t just Puritans who provided a pattern for what it means to succeed in business. For the Moravian missionaries of the 1700s, commerce was an integral part of their worldwide missionary strategy.    

We'll re-visit the Moravian vision and mission next.

Posted by Dr. Christian Overman 

Why Is "Christianized" Africa So Poor Today?

Photo by Dazzle Jam from Pexels.

David Livingstone, the famous missionary to Africa, in a speech at Cambridge in 1857, declared: “A prospect is now before us of opening Africa for commerce and the Gospel. Providence has been preparing the way…Those two pioneers of civilization—Christianity and commerce— should ever be inseparable; and Englishmen should be warned by the fruits of neglecting that principle…”

What does commerce have to do with the Gospel?

If we understand the Gospel to mean the “Gospel of Personal Salvation,” it has nothing to do with it. But if we see the Gospel as the “Gospel of the Kingdom,” the two are, as Livingstone said, "inseparable."

Pilgrims coming to the New World in the 1600s understood this. Under the leadership of John Winthrop, Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay Company, which by 1640 became a thriving business. The Moravians, in the next century, also understood the integral relationship between Christianity and commerce.

For these Christ-followers, the “Good News” included personal salvation, but was not limited to it. As the Puritan Pastor George Swinnock declared, “The pious tradesman will know that his shop as well as his chapel is holy ground.” This means “full-time Christian service” includes plumbing, property management and computer programming.   

3 things have impressed me on my visits to Kenya: Christian music pumped over the public address system at the airport; church after church after church along the roadway from Nairobi to the Rift Valley; and ubiquitous poverty. And I mean ubiquitous.

Why is “Christianized” Africa so poor today, 150 years after Livingston? 

Apparently, other missionaries didn’t get the memo. And the Pilgrims (thankfully for me) sailed West, not South.  

Now Islam is encroaching southward dramatically from the northern Islamic nations of Africa. This is in part due to Muslims including commerce in their “Gospel,” as they did in Indonesia. I use the term "Gospel" loosely here, as Islam is anything but Good News. Meanwhile, all of Kenya but the northern part has probably been "saved" 10 times over. (I have no data to support this. Just a hunch.)

Nobody can understand this problem like an African. Particularly one whose mission is to establish churches in Muslim communities, as my friend Aila Tasse courageously does. Rather than write about what he has told me, I invite you to listen to a conversation I had with Aila about “the problem.” This video is under 3 minutes—yet speaks volumes:  

If this video does not play, click here.  When Aila Tasse was 14 years old, he attended a Muslim boarding school in northern Kenya, on his way to becoming an Imam. When stricken with cerebral malaria, a brave Christian lead him to Christ. Aila did not die. After his recovery, because of Aila's decision to become a Christian, he was pronounced dead by his father in front of his entire family and the community. Ostracized and alone at age 14, Aila left his home and his community. He did not return to northern Kenya until God called him back, many years later, to plant churches there. (Aila's parents came to Christ.) For more about the indigenous African work Aila is doing through Lifeway Mission International, click here. Consider making an on-line donation. It will be well-used. 

Posted by Dr. Christian Overman 

Not Part Of The Muslim Mindset

Not long after this post first appeared on September 6, 2013, it became one of my most viewed posts.  I am repeating it below with some updates.

Indonesia has some 17,000 islands (I say "some" because a few disappear at high tide─an Indonesian joke), with 266,000,000 inhabitants. It is the fourth most populous country on the planet, and has the largest Muslim population of all nations.
[Photo by Tom Fisk from Pexels.]

Many non-Indonesians are surprised to learn that 87% of the Indonesian population claims to be Muslim. In fact, Indonesia has more Muslims than any other nation on earth. The number exceeds the number of Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan combined! 

How did it happen that this part of the world, so far from the Middle East, came to have such a large number of Muslims? Michael Baer, in his book, Business As Mission, shared this: 

"I once asked an Indonesian Christian why the country had become so predominantly Muslim...She said that when the Western Christians came, primarily from Holland, they built missionary compounds and missionary churches and expected the Indonesian people to come to them. The Muslims, on the other hand, came as traders, farmers, merchants, and businesspeople and simply lived among the natives."

The significance of this answer cannot be overstated. 

Dr. Darrell Furgason, an expert on Islam, has said:  

"In places like Africa and Indonesia, the church has been intellectually crippled, with one hand tied behind its back. Western missionaries generally brought the Gospel in the way they learned it, as a purely soul-saving faith, with no real bearing on anything else--religion was a mostly personal matter, nothing to do with things like politics, science, law, economics...African people were given the Gospel, but not how to build a righteous nation, how to apply Christianity to everything

...Muslims see their faith as all-encompassing..."

Most Christians have reduced the "Gospel" to the "Gospel of personal salvation." Yes, it is that. But it's more than that. Let me repeat: the Gospel is more than personal salvation. 

The Bible speaks of the Gospel of the Kingdom. And guess what. The Kingdom is larger than human souls. It is all-encompassing, and that's Good News!

The Sacred-Secular Divide, SSD, is not part of the Muslim mindset. Yet, regrettably, it is a big part of the thinking of many Christians. 

Reducing the Gospel to a matter of personal salvation has been done to the detriment of many nations, not the least of which is the United States, where we are now experiencing the painful outcomes. 

We have brought it upon ourselves.

David Oliver, author of  Work: Prison of Place of Destiny relayed this to me: “I visited Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia, and was doing some work for the Focus On The Family folks. On one day off I was doing the tourist thing walking round the 360 observation platform on the Menara Tower. There were 12 observation stations, each one with an audio sound track, and when I got to the final station (12) I pressed the number on the MP3 player. Whilst looking out over row after row of golden domed Muslim mosques, I heard the following narration which is etched into my memory as clearly as if it had been yesterday: ‘In the 18th century Indian traders came to our land, and showed us by their faith and lifestyle that we could be freed from the shackles of Buddhism. So we embraced their faith, their language and their life style, and have done so till this day.'” [Photo of the Jamek Mosque, in Kuala Lumpur, by Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams (Earth), reprinted with permission.]

Posted by Dr. Christian Overman 

What Makes Christian Education Christian?

These are the speakers for the on-line Biblical Integration Summit to be held this coming Wednesday, November 14. Attendees will have the ability to select any presentations they want to view, and view them as many times as desired on that day. Unlimited viewing of all of the sessions after that day will be provided at a reasonable fee through Faith Markets.  

What makes Christian education Christian? Is it having Christian teachers? That's a good start. Christian teachers are necessary. But many dedicated, God-called teachers are working in the state schools. How much Christian education is taking place there? Having Christian teachers, even in Christian schools, does not guarantee Christian education will be occurring. 

What about having chapel service once a week, or daily Bible instruction, and opening classes with prayer? These are important, too, but they do not necessarily Christian education make.

Christian education is "made" when a biblical worldview permeates all academic subjects, after-school sports, and the fine arts program. But what does that mean?

This is where the Biblical Integration Summit comes in! 

Anyone with access to the Internet, worldwide, may attend the Summit at no charge this coming Wednesday, November 14. All of the speakers have been pre-recorded on video, so each speaker's presentation may be viewed individually, as many times as desired on that day, rather than having the whole event streamed linearly.

One special aspect of the Summit is that 3 teachers I know will be sharing about their own "biblically integrative" experiences in teaching elementary and secondary students at their respective schools in Washington State, Iowa, and Virginia. 

I have seen these teachers' presentations and they are truly excellent, both in terms of information and inspiration. These concise presentations by 3 master practitioners in their field are each about 15 minutes long. You will not be bored! I guarantee it! The teachers are Kim Tarr, Vicki Greer and Gaby Urgo.

As for myself, I will be introducing "3 Tools for Biblical Worldview Integration" during my 20-minute session. I will share why "biblical worldview integration" can best be understood as "contextualization," and I will illustrate this through 3 tools that are used by the most "biblically integrative" teachers I know.  

Reserve your seat for this free event today, by clicking here.

Forward this information to your friends and social media connections by using one of the links below: 

Posted by Dr. Christian Overman 

Biblical Integration Summit Online

Faith Markets will be hosting the "Biblical Integration in Education Summit" 100% on line, November 14. 

I urge all teachers and administrators to "plug in" to the free Biblical Integration Summit online, Wednesday, November 14. 

Eleven skilled presenters will be sharing, including Dr. Marti MacCullough (Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Cairn University), Gavin Brettenny (Head of Black Forest Academy, Kandern, Germany), Harold Klassen (educational consultant with Teach Beyond), and yours truly [that's me], plus more.

Three of the presenters are teachers from schools that have completed the Worldview Matters "WRAP" teacher training program [click here to learn more about this program]. These master teachers (Kim Tarr, from Lighthouse Christian School, Gig Harbor, WA, Vicki Greer, from Isaac Newton Christian Academy, Cedar Rapids, IA, and Gaby Urgo, from Grace Christian School, Staunton, VA) will be sharing "integrative" lesson plans they have used successfully with their students, in grade 2, grade 5, and grade 10, respectively.  

You may watch any of the presenters at any time throughout the day on November 14 for free, if you have reserved your seat ahead of time. To reserve your free seat, click here. 

If you are unable to attend the event on November 14, but you would like to watch the event later (or you will attend the free event and want access the content again later), you may purchase unlimited access to all the Summit video presentations for $99, through Faith Markets. (You must reserve a seat in order to access the recorded content later.)

The Biblical Integration in Education Summit will address topics such as:

What is biblical integration?

Why is biblical integration foundational to an authentic Christian education?

How is biblically integrated education done most effectively in the classroom?

This Summit equips educators to effectively lead their students in integrating a biblical worldview into their lives. I suggest you reserve your seat today: click here.

If you know others who would be interested in the Integration Summit, you may use this link to share information with them: https://summit.faithmarkets.com/biblical-integration-summit8s1fd4ji?affiliate_id=1363287

Or you may simply forward this blog post to your social media connections by using one of the links provided below. 

Posted by Dr. Christian Overman