Three Principles I Learned From My Dad as a Kingdom Entrepreneur

Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ. This article was from a collection of White Papers compiled for attendees of the CEF’s 2019 Global Event.

— by Craig Hill

Throughout most of my adult life, I have been involved in both business and ministry. Having grown up in a traditional church, I was the first one in our family to be born again at university, with my parents soon to follow.

Principle #1: Give Up Ownership and Become God’s Manager

Having degrees in both physics and geology, my dad spent his career as an entrepreneurial scientist in the field of petroleum exploration. When he was born again, he wanted to give 100% of his life, his business, and his assets to Jesus.

Dad felt that his most potentially valuable asset was an overriding royalty on a specific field of natural gas production. At that time (mid 1970s) the monthly cash flow from this royalty was miniscule, but Dad believed that one day it would grow to be very large.

So Dad told his attorney, “I don’t want to be an owner. I want Jesus Christ to be the owner and I want to be His manager of this asset. I would like to transfer legal title of ownership to Jesus Christ and not have my name be owner of record in the county courthouse for the royalty on these leases. How do I do that?”

The Christian lawyer was shocked and said that he had no idea, as no one had ever asked him to do that before. After some research, the attorney told Dad that he could create an irrevocable trust, owned by Jesus Christ (a physically absent person) and managed by trustees. He could then deposit the gas royalty interests into the trust. Dad could never use any of the money from the trust for personal or family use but only for the Kingdom purposes specified in the trust document.

 The lawyer asked if Dad was sure he really wanted to do so. Dad answered that this was indeed his desire and the trust documents were prepared and signed a couple weeks later.

The very next day after the trust documents were signed, a representative from the oil company that operated these leases called my dad with the news that natural gas prices had risen and they had some new technology that would make these tight gas sands very productive. They planned an intensive new drilling program that summer, and consequently, my dad’s royalty would increase many times.

Dad heard the Lord speak to him when he got off the phone, “You see what I will do, son, when you are no longer an owner, operating your own business and committing some of the proceeds to Me, but rather when you are the manager of a business that is owned 100% by Me.”

This began a new adventure for us, as my Dad invited me onto the board of trustees to help steward the cash flow from this royalty. Over the next two years we saw multiplication of more than 1,000 times the regular monthly cash flow compared to what it had been when my Dad had owned it personally.

Principle #2: Walk in Spirit and Truth (John 4:24)

Jesus said in John 4:24 that those who worship the Father must worship in spirit and in truth. I understood this to mean that in all we do, including business, we must keep a balance between basic life business principles (truth) and hearing the Holy Spirit’s specific guidance (spirit).

Through the ensuing years, we were directed by God not only to donate funds to several Christian ministries, but also to invest in the research and development of new technology with other like-minded Christian entrepreneurs. Many of these projects did not bear immediate fruit, and some failed outright. Still, we learned that sometimes God had relational and other purposes for our investments that far exceeded the mere financial success of the project.

In the early 1980s my parents went on a Christian tour of Israel. While visiting the site of the historic battle between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, Dad heard the audible voice of God speak to him, “Come here to work.” Dad didn’t know what that meant exactly. Since he was a petroleum geologist, however, he began to study the geology of the region and determined that the most likely place to find a significant deposit of oil in the region was very near the place where he had heard the voice of the Lord.

Dad then felt that God had called us to take a lease from the Israeli government in the Mt. Carmel region and drill an exploratory well in search of petroleum. This is what we did, but had to terminate the drilling about 1,000 meters short of target depth due to unforeseen difficulties in the drilling. This resulted in the exhaustion of available funds.  

Dad felt that the Lord was telling him that the timing was not yet right to complete the well or for substantial deposits of oil to be found in Israel. He believed that he was not to seek additional funding at that time, but that there would be a future time to return and complete the drilling of this well to target depth. (I personally believe that we will still complete this well to target depth in the near future.)

As a result of this business venture in Israel, Dad became friends with several Israeli Knesset members as well as many local Arab Palestinian leaders. A few years later, as I was pastoring a local church, I received a shocking phone call from Dad asking, “How would you like to go minister to Yasser Arafat?” Dad went on to explain that one of his Palestinian friends in Israel had been invited by a childhood friend to go to Tunisia to meet with Yasser Arafat.

Dad’s friend had shared with Mr. Arafat that he had an American business friend who was very well-connected with Israeli government officials. The friend also shared that Dad had some really interesting ideas from the Bible about how Israelis and Palestinians were to relate to each other in the Land. Apparently Mr. Arafat had been impressed and asked if a meeting could be arranged with this American businessman. 

A week before we were to leave on the trip, however, another minister who was supposed to accompany us told Dad that he could not go. The previous night his wife had a spiritual dream in which her husband was killed on this trip. (This was in late 1989, when Americans and other westerners were being kidnapped or killed weekly in the Middle East by various liberation factions.)

The man told Dad that his wife did not often have spiritual dreams, but he had learned through the years to take her dreams seriously when she had them. So the man would not accompany us. Dad asked him the obvious question. “Did your wife see anything about anyone else in her dream?” The minister answered that she had not. It was only about him, so he could not say as to whether we should continue with our plans.

When Dad shared this news with us, Jan and I realized that we would need to hear very clearly from the Holy Spirit whether we were to proceed with the trip. As we sought God, He confronted me again with the reality that my whole life belonged to Him, and not to myself. Jan and I both reaffirmed to the Lord that the preservation of my physical life was not the goal, but rather the accomplishment of His purpose and destiny for my life was the goal, even if I was not to return from this trip.

As we prayed over the next few days, we received clear confirmation that Dad and I should proceed with the trip and we were even clearly given the name of the third person who would accompany us—Dave Duell, another local pastor.  

Principle #3: Be a Kingdom Ambassador, Not a Private Citizen

A week later we found ourselves in Yasser Arafat’s office with nine other PLO leaders. The Lord had told us that we were to go there as His ambassadors, not as private citizens with our own agenda. We should be open to whatever He wanted to do through us.

Our meeting began at 10:30 p.m. and we were told that we would only have 10 minutes because Chairman Arafat had four other meetings after ours that night. Even so, the discussion between Dad and Arafat went on for an hour and a half.

As the meeting was about to adjourn, neither Dave nor I had said much, so I took my opportunity. I exclaimed, “Chairman Arafat, we did not come here only to talk about the situation in the Middle East, but God sent us here. Could we pray for you?”

Mr. Arafat responded very affirmatively, and I asked Dave if he would lead. I then learned what Paul meant when he said in I Corinthians 1:27 that God chooses “the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.” Dave began to share stories about how he came into the ministry of praying for physical healing.

Dave told the group that he had read in the Bible that if we prayed in the name of Jesus Messiah for sick people that God would heal them. He said he was too afraid to try this on people, so since he was a cattle rancher, he began to pray for his sick cows and God would heal them.

I was watching the faces of these Palestinian leaders as Dave was being translated into Arabic. Why are we listening to some crazy guy talk about praying for cows when we have four more meetings yet tonight? they must have been thinking.

Dave went on and told a couple of other “equally ridiculous” stories. Then he told Mr. Arafat that four years earlier God woke him up in the middle of the night and told him that he would stand before kings, presidents, and leaders and that he was to blow on them to release God’s supernatural wisdom to those leaders. Dave then announced that he would like to “blow on Chairman Arafat.” I couldn’t believe it. I thought we would be kicked out at any moment without being able to pray.

Dave suddenly shifted gears and asked if he could pray for two men he had discerned had severe back pain and twisting of their spines. As Dave prayed for the second man, we all heard a distinct popping sound in his back and saw very visible movement in his legs as his spine straightened and he was healed.

Now all of the sudden everyone in the room forgot about the time and was asking for prayer for some physical ailment. So Dad, Dave, and I all received translators and began to pray one by one for the men in the room. Someone had gone out of the room, however, and began telling others in the compound what was happening. Thus additional people kept coming into the room and were standing in lines waiting for prayer.

We prayed for about 90 people that night, spending another hour and a half in prayer in which we saw many notable physical miracles. This then gave rise to six more days of going from house to house and office to office, praying for PLO leaders and their families with many more notable miracles.

On our last evening before we left, the man who was the childhood friend of my Dad’s Palestinian friend in Israel asked us to visit his home. When we sat down, he told us, “We have met Christians before. We have met Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, and even the Pope, himself. But we have never seen miracles like this. How does this work?”

We were then able to share with him about the blood of Jesus and being born again. Through a series of questions he asked, this man led himself to the Lord. We prayed with him to repent and be forgiven by the blood of Messiah Jesus, and to give the rest of his life to the Lord, which he readily did.

The next day just before we left, this man told us that this had been the most important delegation that had ever visited them, and he asked when we could return. This led to another invitation, so we returned about four months later and many more people were healed and gave their lives to Messiah Jesus.

I realized that we would never have been invited into this context as pastors or church leaders. We were invited because of my father’s business and oil exploration in Israel. I have found throughout my life that if I would accept my role as a Kingdom ambassador in business, there are many more opportunities to minister to unbelievers than I have ever had in church or ministry settings.

Dave, Dad, and me praying Chairman Arafat for Yasser Arafat

Chairman Arafat looking at the Bible we gave him

Dad with Chairman Arafat

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[Special thanks to Szilvia Basso on Unsplash for the cover photo.]