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LivFul's Journey towards Creating a Culture of Shalom
— by Matt Elsberry
When taking a stroll along a sidewalk outside a significant number of Pentecostal churches, you might try saying the word “shalom” to a departing congregant. As often as not, they’re likely to respond back without missing a beat: “Nothing missing, nothing broken.”
And there it is.
In a perfectly brisk, four-word reflexive response lies the intent of the God of the universe. That shalom would reign and that reign would mean perfect completeness: nothing missing, and perfect wholeness: nothing broken.
At LivFul we interact with a number of stakeholder groups. On any given day you might find our team members working with investors, government officials, academicians, NGO and non-profit workers, global and public health officials, suppliers and customers. I’d like to share a bit of our thinking when it comes to how we invite employees and our investors to enjoy and bring shalom.
We Are Not Building a Christian Company
It’s harder to get more biblically sounding than our company’s name.
LivFul.
Live Full…or…Live Abundantly.
As you may have guessed, it’s really just a paraphrased version of the second half of John 10:10. “He has come that we might have life and have it to the full”. It’s in our DNA. It’s the whole rationale for why we exist as a company.
But we have zero desire to label ourselves a Christian company. There will be no strategically placed fish symbols in our marketing, you won’t find Bible verses listed amongst the claims on our product labels, and you won’t find us seeking to exclusively recruit Christians
Companies are simply a collection of imperfect people (some Christian and some not), who are all mostly seeking to serve people with a product or service that attempts to make life better, fuller, more worth living.
At LivFul we believe a company can be a tool for bringing shalom to this very dark world, a world where things are missing and broken, and that it should actively work towards the setting right of things (one of the definitions of shalom is “the way things ought to be”). If we are successful in creating a culture that goes about “the setting right of things,” we will appeal to all people who have eternity set in their hearts.
A company is defined by its culture, and while that culture can be based on anything, it is at its highest level of winsomeness when it’s based on timeless truth. All are welcome to join us in this noble effort to be about the “setting right of things.”
A highly capable and accomplished friend, who is considering joining our company, told me: “You guys spend WAY more time on theology and culture than any company I have ever met!” This is a high compliment to us. We will only grow as far and straight and true as our cultural bedrock will allow. Or as Peter Drucker emphasized, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
Challenge to Internal Stakeholders (people paid by LivFul)
How do we create a company culture that resonates with the “better angels” of each person’s nature? For the believer this means connecting them to their identity in Scripture. Proverbs 25:2 states that it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings (or men) to search it out and Romans 8:19 says that all of creation is waiting for the sons of God to be revealed. For those from other faiths or belief systems, this is an invitation. Perhaps, though faint, each person’s lineage as a distant son of Adam and daughter of Eve might stir in them a sense of their Imago Dei; whispering of a soul-deep yearning for shalom, an inkling that things once were whole and set right and peace full, and that creation and their very souls are longing for it to be put right again. That they themselves would be revealed as caretakers and stewards of this great garden we call earth.
A friend of mine likes to say, “We invite people to live life the way it was meant to be lived.”
How does one go about inviting people close and far from God to a culture that is committed to shalom, or the way things ought to be?
If culture is a flowing river, any person invited to swim will naturally flow with the current. If that current happens to hint at universal truth, they might just find their true self as they acclimate to the rhythms of shalom.
Those of us that share the Judeo-Christian faith believe that God is the perfect shalom maker. Just because your life has a different script about the origin of the universe doesn’t mean that the “putting right of things” won’t resonate with your worldview. In fact, LivFul gains when you ascribe your personal value statements to the world the company is trying to create.
When a mentor of mine was working as a senior leader for Apple, the company’s worldview didn’t always seem to line up with his. So, since he was a Christian, he assigned Bible verses to each of the company’s core values. He felt much more alignment and personal devotion to the company because of the congruence that was there; more than dissonance over occasional conflicts.
While indoctrination to a particular faith is not our aim, indoctrination into the LivFul way, or culture, is mandatory. Organizational development guru Verne Harnish admonishes companies to hire and promote people that are the best examples of an organization’s values and to quickly fire values-violators. Therefore at LivFul our chief task is to inspire imperfect people to follow a culture of shalom.
LivFul’s job is to humbly invite our stakeholders to become carriers and purveyors of shalom to the world…to wake up every day just itching to be about the setting right of things. That this one life would be a best attempt to live out God’s will on earth as it is in heaven…to be a force for restoration.
These are LivFul’s values and what they mean to us as we consider shalom:
Mission First – Shalom is insistent, restless until things are set right.
Authenticity – Shalom is light shining into our personal darkness, restless until festering evil is brought into the light, unsatisfied until each of our individual purposes become evident in how we interact with or bless the world.
Service – Setting things right around us – the outworkings of justice and righteousness. It’s more blessed to give than to receive. A generous person will prosper; those who refresh others will they themselves be refreshed.
Curiosity – The playful wondering of what secrets are concealed for us to search out in this world that would aid our efforts to set things right. If creation is waiting in eager expectation, then the wind is full and at our sails as we set off.
We invite imperfect people to pursue a mission bigger than themselves, by becoming their very best self, in order to serve others, by seeking out and liberating innovation for everyone.
This must be pursued with humility so that our passion and conviction is never presented as arrogant superiority. We all have our part and we need others to fulfill their part.
The invitation is clear, when you see something missing or broken, you’re invited and empowered to mend it.
Challenge to Investor Stakeholders
I have long been a student of economics in the Bible. I worked with Crown Financial Ministries for nine years, and even when I left, it was to put into practice the rich foundational economic principles that had been baked into my DNA.
There are two basic ways to use money to make money. You can deploy it to create something new, different or better, using it to fulfill the Genesis 2 mandate. Or you can use it to purchase something others cannot, and collect economic rent. I’ll leave the discussion of whether the collecting of economic rent is pleasing to God for another day. For now, I’ll make the case that the best and highest form of the deployment of capital (stewardship) is to use it to do what God does: create. Since we are made in His image, I see this as a logical conclusion.
From the dawn of time until now, folks seeking to grow their wealth often did it by enjoining in a global game of monopoly where the winners collect rent. Land was aggregated and the more you had the more you could gain.
That’s why God’s proposed economic system is utterly captivating. Every 7th year, debts (another form of economic rent) were to be forgiven (Deuteronomy 15). Every 50th year was intended a massive reset – a redistribution of wealth that would make Bernie Sanders blush.
God set the rules of the system to direct funds away from the mundane collecting of economic rents and legislated that excess land could never be amassed for longer than 49 years. This directed the smartest members of society to create wealth in ways other than collecting economic rent. They needed to create! It also served as a Kickstarter campaign for those who had lived for years without capital, perhaps dreaming of the start-up they would launch if only they could get funded.
In today’s society, overtime, hard work and diligence often get rewarded with wealth. And unfortunately, with the accumulation of wealth, often comes a desire to protect that wealth through the accumulating and collecting of economic rent, rather than putting it at risk to further steward God’s mandate of subduing the earth; of searching out what God has concealed; of seeking to be the solution for a groaning creation waiting for God’s sons and daughters to be revealed.
Solomon says that people curse the one who hoards grain, but bless the one who is willing to sell.
How do we build a company that invites stewards of capital to “get off the bench” (of collecting economic rents) and join God on the playing field, using capital to search out what God has concealed, to be the creative image bearer of our Creator, to fulfill the eager expectation of creation, answering its groaning, by becoming one of the revealed sons and daughters of God.
How do we invite our investors, and others in our ecosystem, to be co-creators with us and other kingdom companies as we seek to co-create with God? How can we entice them to pray about and alongside their investment companies? How can we challenge them to fully embrace the mantle of steward, asking God (and not their financial advisor) what risk profile is right for their God-loaned, kingdom money that God’s asked them to temporarily steward? What’s missing or broken in the world that desperately needs their investment?
This paper’s purpose is not to claim we have it all figured out, but simply that we are striving for shalom. We strive to find and work with investors seeking to use their resources to bring shalom in the world. We strive to run the type of company where our employees can experience shalom in the workplace, as we invite them to bring shalom to the world through the way we do business.
Shalom in the Workplace and in Your Investments
No Shalom:
A “purposeless career” – Working for a paycheck so you can do something meaningful later in life
A single purpose investment strategy, solely focused on increasing your portfolio
Dissonance between your work/investments and your charity/passion
Being asked to compromise your integrity at work, or investing in companies askance from your values
Leaving your full self home when you go to work. Leaving your stewardship responsibilities behind when you’re blindly following your financial advisor’s recommendations without prayer or viewing through a kingdom lens.
Having your company/investments work against you becoming who you are meant to be, so it can keep you as a cog in its machine
Working/investing in companies where their ways of serving the world are unclear or a potential net loss
When working: micromanaged – not trusted. When investing: your ability to hear from God and obey is divorced from the decision-making process since you are not an expert or told to leave these things to the professionals.
Working/investing in companies disconnected from the searching out of the mystery of Romans 8/Proverbs 25:2.
Shalom:
Feel good about what you are paid to do or where your money is invested
Your purpose and your company’s (or investment company’s) purpose have alignment
You bring your full self to the office or alongside your money as you invest
Getting paid (salary or ROI) to bring justice and righteousness to the world
Challenged to get better at your job or stewarding investments (and at living full life) every day
The company trusts you to carry important tasks. You carry the weight of prayer and stewardship with what and how you invest.
Adventure: What things has God concealed that man can search out? What insight/healing/truth/restoration can be discovered in creation when the sons and daughters of God are revealed? How are you scratching this itch with how you spend your time? With how you invest your money?
This is one of the 2020 CEF Whitepapers. For more information on the Christian Economic Forum, please visit their website here.
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