Years ago, I lost a good friend and exceptional employee. He was 46 years old and died of a heart attack in front of me at work. Shortly after that, I lost another friend and employee of another dealership at age 42. He was in a motorcycle accident. We lost another great employee the next year. He would have turned 22 years old the next day, but he committed suicide. Sadly, these situations are not all that uncommon.
I regularly get the privilege of welcoming new employees into our company. As part of our orientation and new hire training process, I go over our company history (three generations!) along with a deep dive of our company’s mission, vision, and core values statements.
Have you ever been to the beach on vacation? One popular activity with children is to build sand castles down near the water. You will sometimes find the parents helping them, but more often the parents are sitting back watching or reading a book. I believe it is a subconscious dislike of meaningless work that causes this. Have you considered that?
A couple of great friends of mine visited the Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove for a Corporate Chaplains training conference. One of them told me about the various displays at the center and the interesting facts about Graham’s ministry. As he talked, I thought about how I would love to have the impact that Billy Graham has had for eternity.
We probably all know someone that dresses in a way to stand out from the crowd. Whether it is a wacky looking tie or a dress that is so bright it looks like it runs on batteries, we have all seen examples of people wearing clothes that stand out. Why do you think they do this? What is their purpose?
In my last post, we started digging into 2 Corinthians 5:20 and figuring out what it means to us. We started by breaking out the various components of the definition of an “ambassador,” applying each component to our own situations. You really need to read that last post [HERE] to get the full effect. Today, I want to cover the remaining points that I believe are most critical in this verse.
Sometimes a single verse from the Bible can teach us much that we need to know about being the Christian business owners and leaders that God has called us to be. While that may be too large a task for one verse, I think I have at least one that comes close. Let’s start by taking a look at the following verse about being an ambassador for Christ:
What does your company Christmas party look like? Is there a focus on (or even mention of) Christ, or is it all about socializing and blowing off some steam together outside of work? What is the purpose of the party? What should it be?
Sometimes the exact same image can communicate two totally opposite ideas or concepts. I recently posted about this picture, describing 7 Ways Christians In Business Kill Their Witness. In this post, I took the position that “blending” with the world was a recipe for trouble. Today, I want to take the opposite position – encouraging you to engage culture!
Have you ever made so many copies of copies of something that you eventually end up with a copy that barely resembles the original? Sometimes that is the way I think we can be as Christians – even Christians in business. Maybe we model ourselves after someone else who has modeled themselves after someone else. Eventually, we lose our resemblance to the original – Jesus!