Episode 210 - Fruit At Work with Chris Evans
Today’s episode is part of a two-part series that will spotlight ways pastors and the local church engage in the conversation of impacting the marketplace for God’s glory. Joining us as co-host is JD Greear, Pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, NC. We’re going to be talking with Chris Evans, an entrepreneur that JD pastors and author of “Fruit at Work”. Chris shares more about how we can successfully integrate Christian virtues with business. Co-hosting our conversation is pastor JD Greear, who is currently walking with Chris on his journey as a Faith Driven Entrepreneur.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Rusty Rueff: Welcome back, everyone, to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We trust, you're having a fantastic day. Today's episode is part one of a two part series that will spotlight ways pastors and the local church engage in the conversation of impacting the marketplace for God's glory. Joining us as a co-host is a familiar face and voice to the FDE community, J.D. Greear, pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina. J.D. Is a strong voice in the faith driven movement who has contributed to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur book and our Foundation Group video series. As a pastor, he is continually finding ways to connect, encourage and equip Christ following entrepreneurs and investors. We're going to also be talking with Chris Evans, an entrepreneur that JD pastors. Chris has been a founding entrepreneur at successful high tech ventures while also serving on the boards of several companies, nonprofits and ministries. As a Christian in business, Chris is keenly aware of the challenges of living out our faith in the workplace. He developed much of the material for his book, Fruit at Work. When his pastor asked him to develop and teach a Bible study on faith in the workplace, the work was so rewarding and the reaction from the participants was so strong that Chris decided to publish it as a book. Today we're going to talk to Chris about how we can successfully integrate Christian virtues with business. Let's listen in.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. This is a special edition. And yes, if you've been listening to this for a while, you know that I say that a lot. But this one is particularly special. You know, we've got these 12 marks of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur and it started off actually with just five marks. Five marks that we thought we could really kind of coalesce around. And this is five or six years ago as we were starting the ministry, but about a year ago we finally added the 12th mark. And we really feel that having received so much input from you and from other ministry partners, that there are indeed our 12 unifying cultural DNA rules or marks that we can kind of rally around. While the 11th mark that we've rolled out was being a member of a local church. This is something we really believe in. And part of it comes from the cultural DNA of Justin Foreman, who's our executive director, having come out of right now media, which only distributes its products through the local church. But a lot of that just comes from our collective experience and understanding how valuable it is for us as entrepreneurs to be a part of a local church community, to include lots of people who don't understand entrepreneurship. Lots of people that might be coming from an accountancy background, or maybe they're doctors or maybe they're sanitary workers, maybe their teachers, or maybe their stay at home moms. And in all that, even though these are people that don't necessarily get who we are as entrepreneurs, there's something beautiful about the mosaic and tapestry of the body of Christ coming together. And I'll tell you this some of the richest prayers that have ever been said for me and my desire to know God have come from older women who know nothing about entrepreneurship and surely know nothing about technology. So as we look to lean into this concept of partnering with the local church, we want to hit the whole topic head on and understand that lots of pastors don't fully understand a business owner. And even though we're called in to being part of the local church community with that 11th mark, a lot of the pastors don't get it. Our hope is that with a couple of these episodes, we might be able to provide some material for you to talk with your local pastor about Faith Driven Entrepreneurship. And we want to start this off with going back to a great friend of mine, J.D. Greear, who co-wrote this book that we have called The Faith Driven Entrepreneur, together with Chip Ingram to talk about what it looks like to intersect, to interact with, encourage, be challenged by business owners and entrepreneurs in our midst. So J.D. is an easy target. He already gets it, but I think he's going to be able to translate a lot of this for us, because he has been the president of the Southern Baptists. He knows some pastors who really get it and lean into the marketplace. He also knows some objections as well. So, J.D., before we introduce our guest for this week, welcome, dude. It's great to be with you.
J.D. Greear: And thank you, Henry. I always love my time with you, and so it's an honor to be on here.
Henry Kaestner: So last time I saw you in person was probably when we did the Faith Driven Entrepreneur course. We did this eight weeks and it was awesome as the day the COVID hit. Right.
J.D. Greear: Right.
Henry Kaestner: You're doing a great job of filming it. And like in between every episode, you get another call from somebody. The other thing I remember from that day is that this is the first time I'd ever done a video series. So I had one outfit. You had eight outfit.
J.D. Greear: Rookie mistake. That's right. Rookie mistake.
Henry Kaestner: And something I'm just recovering from now is just seeing you change in, like, 20 seconds and just, you know, you look like a German clubber from sprockets, and then you'd go ahead and then you look like a buttoned up, like investment banker. And you had all these [...] and ultimately you had an outfit to appeal to every part of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur audience. And that was.
J.D. Greear: Yeah. Barefoot one time. Just got to be something in it for everybody.
Henry Kaestner: That's right. That's awesome. Yeah.
J.D. Greear: By the way. I get so
Henry Kaestner: I see so.
J.D. Greear: Much feedback on that series and also that book, Random Places. People come up to me and like, Hey, are you the guy that was in this thing? And so I feel like it's been a great blessing not my part of it, but just the whole concept of it that you came up with.
Henry Kaestner: So I hear that you use the word feedback instead of encouragement. Was it positive feedback.
J.D. Greear: Oh it was positive feedback very specific? Yes, it was like, show me that there's another whole community out there.
Henry Kaestner: The answer is, it's amazing. We have people right now, just within this year with this calendar, we've got 3000 people going through it from 88 countries. Wow. And it is really awesome. You know, there's that point where you talk about good and great and you talk about Veronica and how she looks when she wakes up really early in the morning. Also there of entrepreneurs. I've heard of that.
J.D. Greear: Yeah. In order to access that content, you have to buy. We're not going to give you that for free if you want to know what's behind that illustration.
Henry Kaestner: That's right. That's right. Now, of course, on other episodes, we're talking about the fact that the Faith Driven Entrepreneur cost is completely free. There's no cost. There's no catch. But you do a great job of honoring Veronica and encouraging us to love on our brides. Another guy who gets said is our guest. And as we flip over, we were joking beforehand the fact that we're all wearing really nice shirts and what are we wearing otherwise? And Chris volunteer the fact that he's wearing a kilt today, which is I'm still trying to get over, Chris.
Chris Evans: Which is odd because I'm only a little Scottish.
Henry Kaestner: See, I'm actually a lot Scottish. I like the fact that when you wear a kilt, you also wear a knife. I think that's kind of cool. Hmm. I don't know. Maybe you only have kilt without the knife. So, Chris, you are. When I think back to my North Carolina roots and I lived in North Carolina for 17 awesome years, I think about a handful of guys and gals, people in the marketplace who really got the concept of being a Faith Driven Entrepreneur and you're one of them and you're the first technology entrepreneur I knew of even before starting bandWith, which is a long, long, long time ago. And I want to hear a little bit about your background. You wrote a book on this. I want you to talk a little bit about that. But what we're trying to get at with this conversation is just the interaction between an entrepreneur and a pastor of a local church. And the two of you have teamed up on something really special and been able to provide resources and of course, for people at Summit Church, a very large church with multiple campuses, to really lean into where God has them in a marketplace. But before we get into all that, who are you and where do you come from?
Chris Evans: Well, thanks. And first of all, I'm just delighted to be here. Henry. I've been a fan of Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Faith Driven Investor since you started it. You've just had some great podcasts together. Having J.D. Here as well is just a terrific bonus, so thanks so much for thinking of me and inviting me on. Who I am. I was born the fifth of six kids World Canal Town, east of Rochester, New York. And in a big family like that, it was kind of a little weird finding your place in, you know, being good at music, being athletic, being not awkward socially. My other brothers had kind of covered that. So I took like computers. And so I was the only person I knew that had a computer or was interested in it. And then I moved to North Carolina just before starting high school, and I had the good fortune to go to a high school that was a magnet school where there was a whole bunch of other social outcasts that were put on the same bus as I was. And I learned that I had a tribe and started really kind of coming into my own. I would say overall, I'm a lifelong learner. I'm always looking for new things to learn about and to get involved in and sort of see new things and new challenges to figure out.
Henry Kaestner: So you've got the computer I'm thinking of kind of like a Bill Gates type of thing. You're early on. It sounds like that was the thing that helped to differentiate yourself as you're looking for your early identity. Growing up and somewhere along the line, you figured out that there's an opportunity to do things like communicate better and to think about how you might put together an email client. And there's a series of innovations that you've been involved with. Tell us a little bit about some of the problems that you saw. You got the computer, you saw that when they're network together and we can communicate, there could be something greater. Walk us through your early days as a technology entrepreneur.
Chris Evans: Yeah. So some of the people that I met, actually my first day of school in North Carolina, we wound up starting a computer company together. At this point, it was 1984, 85. The Mac had just come out, the PC had just come out. We knew a bunch of like computer geek friends and we figured that we knew as much about this as anyone could, even though we were young because they had only been out for a little while. And so we thought we'd just try and put together a business based on people who understood how to work this, working with businesses who needed to find someone who could do it. Pretty early on, we realized the basic principle of business. If you're working as a consultant, which is what we were doing, if you wanted to make more money, you'd have to work more hours. And we were pretty unanimous that if possible, we wanted to make more money, work less hours, or certainly not more hours. And so the great thing with software is that if you write it once. The second to one millionth copy after that is free. If you write something that lots of people can use. So we thought we'd make an email program and it was actually the first email to run on Windows. So among the many things that would show up in my Wikipedia entry if they let me have one, is that I invented using a paperclip as the icon for attaching documents to your email. Wow. Now, but you know, you could how many days of research it took to get to that would surprise you.
Henry Kaestner: So that's actually really cool. I did not know that. I know a lot of things about you. I did not know that we actually it's our last guest, Dave Evans, on Who Invented the Mouse. And so hopefully our audience has seen this, you know, the body of Christ coming together and doing really cool things. But so you invent the paperclip function.
Chris Evans: Yes. And from then that turned out we want to building millions of users who took on the software. We figured out that it had to be written in different languages. And so we had the first email in Spanish and Katakana and Hebrew and other interesting places. It took us a wide range. From there, I started a bunch of other companies. I created a company that was one of the first Internet advertising companies, so we had to figure out how Internet advertising was going to work, what the reports looked like, what the workflow looked like. After that, I sort of moved away from software. I helped start a company that was making up bioproducts were basically making a bio based alternative to the absorbant that goes into baby diapers as a way of kind of reducing the landfill load of those products. And then wound up in a spin off that was I had to learn about the science and business of bourbon, which is sort of the natural thing once you get through diapers. And now I'm with a company called Aries.
Henry Kaestner: All in the science.
J.D. Greear: You could not just let that go.
Chris Evans: No, I know I just let that hang out there for a moment.
Henry Kaestner: No, no. Tell us about this. And so you go to Summit church, Southern Baptist Church. A lot of people would probably say that that's not the place that would birth the guy who's the scientists of bourbon. But there's probably more to the story.
Chris Evans: I'm as surprised as anyone. But, you know, I guess the other thing in terms of what I do, I try to do the good that's in front of me. And I really just sort of let God show me what it is that I should be involved with. This is surprising in that way, but it turns out that bourbon is typically made by putting in a barrel over a long period of time. And there was a scientist who thought about, I wonder what's going on in that barrel all this time. And he was a wooden paper scientist, so he came up with a different process that would extract the flavor out of the wood, but would leave the toxins and things that work out of it to get a product that was really strong, in fact. I mean, we can we can go from raw material into award winning bourbon in about an hour. But also we can take product that may be aged but may not turn out as well as you hope it would and sort of upgrade it to its best form. And so, you know, that's a market place that, again, I didn't expect to be in. But you you learn a lot in terms of the business and about people and how they make their choices.
J.D. Greear: Because of Chris, we use only bourbon for our communion services in case anybody, us wonder. Yeah.
Henry Kaestner: Chris, Jesus turns.
Chris Evans: [...]
Henry Kaestner: Water into wine. Not bourbon? So that segment may or may not make it to prime time. But this is awesome I now known more.
Chris Evans: Real.
Henry Kaestner: Great world class bourbon just an hour here on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast.
J.D. Greear: Hey, Chris.
Chris Evans: Yeah.
J.D. Greear: I'll just say why don't. You know, the focus of today's podcast that Henry has set up. I've had the privilege of serving as your pastor for I think you can correct me if I am wrong, but it's over a decade, is that right? Yeah.
Chris Evans: Yeah, it's a dozen years now, I believe.
J.D. Greear: Okay. Yeah. And so. And you were involved at a good church before that. I would love to know. And I think our listeners also how has the local church played a role in the ongoing development of this entrepreneurial journey? And if you want to tell any, you know, throw the church under the bus stories, tell us about your previous church, not your current one.
Chris Evans: Okay. I'll see if I can fill to that. Right. But I have no problems with my last church. Just so you know. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things that I learned in working with a lot of technologies now is that you sell the technology, but that's half the problem. Then you have to solve the psychology because any time you introduce some new innovation, you have to have people change a habit of what it is that they do, right? You want them to do it your way to use your product. And that involves changing habits somehow. And habit change is really, really hard. And so I feel like a lot of what I do now is less on the science and geeky part of the technology and more about how do you talk about this in a way, or how do you frame it in a way that somebody will consider or you can get them to make a new habit out of it? Well, where is this comes into the church is that I mean, the gospel is the biggest habit change in the history of man. Right? It's a complete context shift. It's not like a little change. What kind of phone do I use or something? It reorients your whole life and it changes everything in terms of where you are. It's sort of the biggest lift in terms of a change of habit, but it was also went incredibly viral. And so looking at how that works, I mean, a lot of times you have to be able to get to where there's a need in somebody's heart that you're speaking to. You have to find. What it is that they want that they don't have yet. Right. And the gospel does that at a deeper level than really anything else. Right. There's there's a God shaped hole in my heart. I may not have the words to be able to say what that is, but that's what's going on. And so as you communicate it, it gets there watching how when things are viral, when products go viral, what happens is the change observed becomes change embraced. I watch other people do it and I do it myself. And that goes on within the church, right? As the more within a church you're able to see people's lives changed, the more you're able to embrace that change for yourself. And I think the third one is with innovation. Everything that's better about the world now since the fall than it was, has come from some innovation. And so I'm always looking for how do you promote innovation? How do you prompt it? And the gospel is very democratic. It calls everyone to be a witness. Right. So everyone has to figure out how do they say this in their story. So everyone is an innovator in that sense and not only the innovative in their story, but also how do they adapt it to their life because everyone's life is different. And sometimes how do you convey as people, God puts on their hearts a mission field? How do I get to these people at work or how do I get to these people in a country? One of the more rewarding things I've been in the middle of right now is with Door International that's helping do church planting among the deaf. This is hundreds of people groups that have no written language. So how you do Bible translation, how they share with each other? All those things are being invented and it's like having a ringside seat to the Book of Acts, watching these communities sort of figure out how do they innovate the gospel to reach their own people.
J.D. Greear: Yeah. One of the things I hear you saying is that if you're listening and you're a church leader, the role of the pastor in trying to connect the creation mandate and even the gospel itself to the process of innovation and change, that's a a theology, so to speak, that's often, you know, neglected throughout the teaching ministry of the church, maybe our faith driven entrepreneur listeners. You know, I've been on here before. I think I shared last time that of all the messages, if you go back and look at number one top list of messages at the Summit Church, one of the top ones is what you would expect, the ones on sex. But the one that is up there in the top three consistently is when I preach on the theology of work because it's such a need and people say, I've never heard somebody talk about this, how to connect faith into that. Chris one of the things that I've known about you for years, even going back ten, 11 years when we were first getting to know each other, is you've really thought a lot about what it means to live out the Christian worldview in the workplace. So we not, to be honest when we're talking in various spheres, but what does integrity look like? And what is it specifically about fruit at work, which is, you know, a book that we've given out to a lot of our business community here. And you've been very influential not just with me, but you're constantly mentoring other guys, men and women that you meet through the church or that I bring to you or you find in whatever way what I would love to know. You know, especially for people that are listening from the church side and they're asking, you know, how can I be a help to this? What are some of the pain points that you've experienced with the local church and what are some of the things that you're like, Man, if we do more of this, this would really help out that entrepreneur community.
Chris Evans: Yeah, great. Thanks for the question, J.D. So I think the biggest pain point, I mean, what's hard I first really started to live like I was a Christian or try to live like I was a Christian midway through my first startup. And the thing that really frustrated me was a kind of spiritual amnesia. So I'd wake up and I had my quiet time and I had my prayers, and I'd maybe listen to Christian music on the way to work. And I'd walk through the door and then I'd walk out later in the day, and it was like, I completely forgot I was Christian all day long. I walked back out to my car. It's like, Oh yeah, that's right, I'm Christian, but sort of remembering it in the same context as work. And then I would I maybe improve a little bit. I'd put some Bible verses on my computer, set my alarm to do a couple of things, but that was just changing modes, right? I'd be in Christian mode and then I'd be in real life mode, but I was never in the same mode at the same time. And I think that's what's hard for people is it that they know that somehow if when you make this decision, it ought to change who you are in all modes, but they only kind of know how to do it in their Christian mode, right? When they're in church, they know how to act Christian. They're figuring out the rest of the time is hard. And that's what led me to writing Fruit at Work, really. I had that. And another thing, just for the sake of pastors, I had a pastor at the time who came up to me and said, Hey, would you teach a class on workplace evangelism? And I thought, Well, gee, that's a really great opportunity. Let me think about it. And I came back and I said, I'm not sure that I can because I feel like there's a prerequisite. And he says, What do you mean? I said, I think you need to teach workplace Christianity. Like the people don't necessarily feel like they know how to reflect their faith and their beliefs in the workplace. And then it's hard to sort of invite other people to follow you when you're when you don't feel like you're doing what you ought to be doing. And so my pastor's credited at that time. He sort of shrugged and said, okay, we'll teach that then. So clearly he was trying to solve a different problem than I was. But it sort of led me to this notion of how would you teach workplace Christianity? And I went off and spent some time really thinking and praying about it, and that led me to the fruit of the Spirit, because I feel like the fruit of the spirit is they're both very authentic character traits of Christ. I feel like if you asked anyone who hung out with him, what was he like? Just about any answer they give could be classified under Love, joy. Peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness or self-control, the fruit of the spirit. But they're also if you practice them right, they're highly valued in the workplace. So if you're working on how do you get more skill, how do you level up within work? If you level up in a way that also makes you look more like Jesus, now you're actually finding a way to integrate. You're finding a way to be able to show and be different in your faith in a way that is appreciated, organic and authentic.
J.D. Greear: Yeah. So let me ask I got one more question for you, and I would love to hear this not just for myself. I felt like this is something a lot of people listening may want to know. What is it? Because I would say if someone asked me, give me a few examples of the faith driven entrepreneurs, Chris Evans would be near the top of my list. What does that mean? What does it mean? Define what it means to be a Faith Driven Entrepreneur and yeah, just kind of flesh that out for us.
Chris Evans: Well, thanks then. I mean, there's two ways I can take that question. I think faith driven in the sense that this podcast uses and everything else has to do with your spiritual faith. And I think a Faith Driven Entrepreneur is somebody who is actively trying to integrate who they are in their Christian walk and who God is calling to become. With what they do day to day and in their everyday habits and their decisions and actions within the workplace. But I would also say to some degree, all entrepreneurs are faith driven. And I'm going to say that they're faith driven in the sense of Hebrews 11:1 where you have the conviction of things not seen. So an entrepreneur starts out with something that only they can see. There's an idea in their head, right? And nobody else can see it. They can't see it, but they can kind of imagine it. And every entrepreneur's goal is eventually to make that thing into something that everyone can see. So in Henry's case, bandwidth started as something that only he could see. Now everyone can see it. There's a campus the size of our football stadium going up next to our football stadium. So it's going to say bandwidth on the side of it. But everyone knows what bandwidth is right in every company. Nobody could see what the Mac was until everyone knows what the Mac was. Nobody could see what Google was until everyone knows what Google is. So there's this process that you go through and within that phase, what's going on is that you have to be able to keep believing in something that nobody else can see and sometimes you can't even see. And there's this process, there's this muscle that you develop where in every entrepreneurship exercise I've been in, I questioned, Okay, am I just kidding myself? Or is there something real here? And I have to have the ability to sort of talk myself back off the ledge and say, Oh, no, this is real. These are the things I know about it. This is what makes it real. And so in that sense, I think faith driven is a great wording for this because all entrepreneurs know what it means to be faith driven, because to be an entrepreneur is to believe in something people can't see. The special relationship that has or their spiritual walk is having worked that muscle with their idea and with their passion, they know how to follow as they walk with Christ. They know how to follow that and believe in it. Sometimes when it's the most real thing they know and other times where they may think they're just kidding themselves.
J.D. Greear: Yeah. You know, I think when I hear you and I'm actually basing this on coversations you and I have had over the years, there's a sense in which faith is driving the fulfillment of the creation mandate, that your work is good, it's not a necessary evil so that you can do the work of the church. It is a good in itself because it fulfills creation. There's also learning how by faith to connect your work to the gospel itself, both the mission aspects of the Gospel as well as, you know, part of the outplaying of redemption in people's lives. And then, you know, one of the things you and I have talked about, I think this is a real kind of touch point for a lot of people, is what do you do with the fruits of success from that work? What is your responsibility specifically toward money and opportunity and and leverage and power? And so, you know, I just think the way that you've lived, the book that you've written, I think it's a very important element in the conversation.
Chris Evans: Well, thank you. And one of the things on the list of things that pastors can do, right. I mean, something that I felt I really got a lot out of with the Summit Church is that you are often saying that the gospel is not the diving board, it's the swimming pool, it's what you land in the whole time. It's not the thing that gets you to where you're going, but it's something that is always around you. And I think you helped me to have eyes to see that in the workplace and really challenges me to think about how do I create greater spiritual connection. You know, once I think you do understand workplace Christianity, it is incumbent upon us as innovators and as people who are responsible, as entrepreneurs of the gospel, to figure out how do we put that in front of people? How are we uniquely empowered to be able to do that? And so that's an important message in terms of, you know, with success, you know, some entrepreneurs are going to have some material success, others are not. And I guess to me, the first startup I had after I was really walking with God and trying to walk in the gospel was one where I knew that the faithful thing to do was to start the software company, that I felt like God had set it up for me. He was calling it to me. He was telling me not to be afraid of it. It was possible that that company would be so successful that my job as provider, my family would be done, and I could just focus on doing other good that's in front of me in different ways around the workplace for the rest of my life. It's also possible that it could have been a crushing defeat. You know, to me, the process of becoming a Christian was a process of trading in my old map of where I wanted my life to go for the one that God had for me. And He knows me better than I know myself, and he loves me better than anyone else does. And so if what I needed in that next chapter was a crushing defeat, then I'm glad to get it because the person who loves me is the one who is guiding me on that path. So I think from entrepreneur's standpoint, you know, material success may come or may not come. The important part is to be sort of on his map, on his journey.
Henry Kaestner: So, Chris, I want to dive a little bit more into the fruit at work and understand the fruit of spirit. And I absolutely understand how those are qualities that are winsome at work and make people want to work with you, for you and something for us all to endeavor to do, but make it a little more practical for us. So just things like patience with coworkers, team dynamics, distraction, [...]. Walk us through some of the pragmatic things that this translates into because we know that we want to have love and joy. But, you know, I'm about to walk into a team meeting. So what does that mean in a team meeting other than just smiling to give everybody a pat on the back?
Chris Evans: Great. Thanks for asking. And you know, the thing that really engaged me with fruit at work was when I could see how the fruit of the spirit, when practiced artfully, is really highly desirable in work. And at that point, it wasn't a matter of trying to invent anything. It was just discovering it. So one of the things I discovered, love is the first fruit to the spirit for good reason. Everything else is kind of built on it and the kind of love it is. This is Koinonia love that Jesus talked about. And if you go and look at other philosophers of ethics, none of them really sort of get into that. They're all sort of worrying about moral codes. Jesus talked about love, and this is a love where you're looking for somebody else's benefit without calculating whether it helps or hurts you. You're just looking for ways to bless other people. And so it's born out of humility. It's born out of compassion for other people. And as I started looking at this and I went to the first Corinthians 13 and found that love is patient and kind and is not arrogant, not boastful, I was really amazed to discover that. And Jim Collins' "Good to Great", which is one of the best business books ever written. He aspires he talks about the ultimate fifth level manager and the fifth level leader. And he describes in many of those same terms how they're humble, how they're never boastful, how they inspire other people, how they don't take credit for themselves. So what I'm seeing is that Jim Collins, even though he might not have known it, was sort of aiming at the same thing for his ultimate businessman that love is telling you to be. So it helps work that I learned that within team dynamics. One of the things that I've learned and really for an entrepreneur all over the place, is that you have to learn how to manage trust everything that you want to be able to get through. You need trust from customers, from employees, from investors, from the press, all these different groups. You need to figure out how do you grow that trust? Well, it turns out that the people that you trust, the most of the people who love you the most. And so when you figure out how to make love a part of everyday habit, you just naturally wind up building trust in the people around you because they know that there's not some angle that you're trying to cheat them out of, but instead you're just genuinely trying to figure out how do you bless them, expecting it's going to work out for you. But, you know, just sort of happy to do that because that's what God's calling you to do in terms of patience. One of the things that I learned, there's little annoyances in every office. Somebody doesn't put the paper back in the copier, load the printer when they need to. They leave the coffee pot on until it becomes this chemical sludge that fills in odor around the whole office that everyone knows and what people do in meetings and everything else. There's all these things that get on people's nerves and patience is the grease that allows those gears to keep moving instead of locking up. When those annoyances happen, patience is kind of junior varsity grace. You're forgiving somebody whether they know they need forgiveness or not. And when you're doing that, the reason that that's the fruit of the spirit is the fruit of the spirit reminds you of all the things you've done that God's forgiven you. So it's kind of easy to forgive the guy who didn't load the copier up or the guy left the coffee pot on in the context of everything you've been forgiven. So it's a way of forgiving. So all of those things, when you add them up, become a series of habits and attitudes that I think help make every office place better but are also authentically Christian.
Henry Kaestner: You talk about distraction. I think that a good amount of entrepreneurs suffer from, gosh, if I was 30 years younger, I probably would've been diagnosed with ADHD. And I think that that's a hallmark of a lot of entrepreneurs that are creative and look to solve problems and maybe see things other people don't or have a dissatisfaction with the status quo. And maybe it's not fair to label me or anybody else, but distraction is a challenge with creative, visionary entrepreneur types. You talk about that?
Chris Evans: Yeah. So I would look at it two different ways. Sometimes that distraction is born out of stress, and in that way I think tea sort of answers that question. As you learn to let the spirit give you peace about the environment around you, you don't stress over a lot of the details as much, which winds up being a big distraction. Along with that, you know, it's partner in this help, I would say is joy. Joy is when you take a big hit, a big customer decides to move to somebody else or somebody else got the promotion instead of you or something else. And you just it becomes depressing, right? It's hard to find hope. It's hard to be able to see when you're going to feel good about things again. The people who have access to joy are the first ones who can be able to sort of latch on to something. Joy is like a possession. They can kind of give you a boost back into a level set. Now, in terms of the other distractions, not the ones that are necessarily stressful, but just everything out there, I can relate to that. And that really comes to self-control. And self-control is the power to, it goes back to habits. It takes a lot of energy to change a habit, even for the person themselves that want to. And self-control isn't just about not doing things that you shouldn't do. But I think it's. Essentially that change of trajectory, doing something different tomorrow than you would have done normally had you not been able to do differently. And God's spirit through this fruit of self-control, allows us to make these changes to our trajectory and habits that allow us to become the person that God is calling us to be and that our heart wants us to be.
Henry Kaestner: So that was beautiful. Chris, thank you. And I love something that's a simplistic framework. I mean, I love frameworks. How am I doing? Everybody kind of wants to know, how did they do today? How did they do this week, how they've been doing this past month? You want to also be able to get this kind of 360 degree type review like you seen me do. I embody these attributes starting, I think, asking your wife this and then going into the people at work. I love that. And it's something as simple. Most of the people listening to this podcast understood the term of the fruits of the spirit, most of us might even be able to go through the entire list all the way through to self-control. And yet I don't know that we've always seen that as a framework for being an effective leader and an effective manager. So you've done that. Okay. I want to ask you both question. You can pick who goes first, but there's a dynamic that we've seen here on the podcast. I mean, J.D. Knows a lot about faith and work, he has written on it. He's talked about he's co-hosting a podcast right now, talking about it as well. Most pastors probably don't feel as confident as he does in their ability to talk about innovation and creativity and what's going on the marketplace. Many do, and I hope they all lean into that. But what are some of the tools that you might encourage other pastors who are listening to this, or maybe it's a business owner is like, Oh my goodness, man, I wish J.D. was my pastor because he kind of really gets what I'm doing and and we're not having this type of dialog at my church. What are some solutions, both for pastors and for entrepreneurs that are listening to this and saying, I want that type of relationship with my pastor the way that Chris has with J.D.?
J.D. Greear: Well, it's hard not to start with the awkward thing that you won't say, so I'll just say it for you. Okay? You need to be a regular listener to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast and you need to go to the conference and you need to buy the book and you need to do the right now video series. I mean, really, that's got to.
Chris Evans: [...].
J.D. Greear: Yeah, that's right. That really is the purpose of producing those things is to equip pastors and leaders in the business community like Chris and others, especially. They're starting out and how to think those ways. And so, you know, the right now course that you can access these would be great places to start. In addition, you're going to find that when you're at these conferences, you're going to hear a lot of voices that you're going to say, I need to hear more from that guy or that woman. I mean, you know, just a handful of them. And Tim Keller obviously has written and thought a lot about this and some of his writings really work to connect it. Gene Edward Veith was doing it a long time before him. I've been impressed. You know, I'm serving on the corporate board of Chick-Fil-A now and the connections that I'm having with business leaders like Dan, who have just really thought, you know, in Dan's words, quoting his grand dad through it, you know, like businesses can't be Christian. But, you know, we Christians can own businesses that are set up according to Christian principles. And so there's some men, women that have gone down that road before, and you can just learn from them by dialing in to some of these conferences and hearing them on podcast of various things. So that's where I would start because I think there's a growing movement, thankfully. You know, to you, Henry, you've been championing it, but it's much larger than you or us. It's it's gaining a lot of momentum, even recognizing how strategic it is for the unreached places in the world, that there's an incredible mission component that goes to this because the gospel has always gone forward fast, just on the wings of business, even than it has in the mouths of the so-called apostles. And so a lot of great stuff out there. But that's right. Encouraged you to start.
Chris Evans: I think that's a great place to land on. J.D. And very close to my heart is I was exploring Christianity. I spent about six months, I understood the gospel way before I committed to it and there was actually entrepreneur would be familiar with the process of due diligence where an investor comes and looks at you and they sort of look at everything before they invest in you. They kind of want to know all the details of what's going on. And to me, the prospect of becoming a Christian. The worst possible thing that could happen would be for me to decide later not to. Right, to get to some point, and to decide that I was not going to believe anymore. The only way that this makes sense is if you're going to do it for the rest of your life. And so I had to really ask myself, is this something that I can believe for the rest of my life? And on paper I understood? I mean, the gospel makes sense. On paper it makes sense. My struggle was that I didn't know any other entrepreneur who lived like they believed it. I knew college students, but college students can live like they believe anything. Right? [...] looks pretty attractive until you want a house or are thinking about having kids. But when you're in a mode, you need to be able to see it. And at that time, I mean, thankfully, through God's grace, he started peppering me with Christians and to the point where it almost got ridiculous and it was like, okay, I get it, I get it. I understand. He gave me the thing that I needed, but what I've carried on beyond that is that one of the more important things that I have to do to advance the gospel is there's some other Chris Evans out there who. You know, they kind of get the gospel, but if it really worked, you'd see people doing it right and they don't see it. They don't see other entrepreneurs, they don't see anyone that reminds them of them who are living like they believe this. And so it's important to be visible. And I think that's something that's great that your small groups do that these podcasts do, is making visible Christian leaders who are living out their faith. And that's, I mean, other things. One of my favorite things about writing a book is that in my LinkedIn, you see, I wrote this book called Fruit at Work Applying Christian Principles. So, you know, as soon as somebody gets to know me and they find me on LinkedIn, they know I'm a believer. I'm the guy who starts a Bible study at the TED conference where TED talks are born to bring these people coming from all over the world to come together for a prayer breakfast and a friend.
Henry Kaestner: I say, tell us about it. So everybody knows about the TED conference. You're the guy bringing together folks to do a Bible study before the TED conference.
Chris Evans: Well, with Nancy Duarte, who's also been a guest on your show, we came to realize that it would be easy to believe during Ted because of, well, some of the speakers they have in some of the talks that you may be the only believer there. In fact, I remember vividly there was a famous atheist who started their talk by saying, I assume all of you are atheists because you're highly educated and intelligent people. And everyone just sort of stood there and took it and I thought, Huh, maybe I am the only Christian in this room. But then in conversation I started to find other people. It's like, Well, let's, let's get together, let's have a prayer breakfast, let's find other people and invite them so that they are. My goal is for no one coming to the TED conference thinks they're the only Christian coming to TED. They need to know that it's a part of it. And now people will say that it's like their favorite session is this time where they get to sort of be with other believers from all over the world who love learning, like the people who go to TED do.
Henry Kaestner: Theology, evangelism, doctrine. TED, we'd like to close off.
J.D. Greear: Hey, I got one more thing on here. Just thought of it, Henry, while Chris was talking. That may be helpful for especially a pastor out there. You know, it actually, let's just acknowledge it. It could be a little intimidating, you know, when you're a pastor and you're talking to a business leader who's been really successful, but you'll be surprised how hungry they are for somebody that knows the Bible just to help them think through some of these questions and just take them out to lunch and just say, how can I serve you? You know, some of those questions have led I'm actually beginning here shortly, a Bible study with several CEOs here in the Triangle area just, you know, exploring. But the people that are in this, they're some of Raleigh's most influential businesspeople and some of them aren't even wouldn't even call themselves Christians, but they're just hungry to know, you know, how does the bigger picture of the world and how does spiritual things how does that play into all the stuff that I've been given, you know control over? So you'd be surprised. I'm saying this to the pastor at the hunger that's out there. If you just ask.
Henry Kaestner: Great word, great word. Okay, we're running out of time. We like to close out every episode. And of course, we'll do the same here as well with something that you're hearing from God for his word. We believe that God speak to us regularly through his word. Maybe it's something today, maybe it's something this week, but hopefully something recent that you've been encouraged by and in turn you might encourage us with.
Chris Evans: Thanks, Henry. So during Covid time, I actually felt led to be better at memorizing scripture. And with the help of the Bible memory app, I've actually gotten up to about 262 verses and [...], I actually took the [...] challenge and used the Lent period to memorize 103 Psalm. Because I heard him on your podcast say that he was going to do that, but it led me to memorize Proverbs 18:10, which Christians of a certain age would remember the worship song. The name of the Lord is a strong power, the righteous read into it, and they are saved. And so I memorized it. But the thing that struck me as I was memorizing it. What is this doing in Proverbs? It sounds like it's a psalm. And I learned the answer because usually Proverbs are there for contrast. I want a memorizing 18:11 as well, which says a rich man's wealth is his strong city and like a high wall in his imagination. And so it's sort of setting this contrast. And so it sort of spoke to me as I speak to and think about and work with people who are people of wealth. This contrast of how you can feel like your wealth kind of you don't need to run to God's strong tower because you have a tower of your own, right? You have this piece of it. And the sentence about that, it's like a high wall in their imagination. I think about that, not just in that sense of protection, but a high wall also. It keeps the people that you love out as well. It keeps friends out, right. This notion of wealth isolates and how it isolates speaks to me in that verse. Whereas everyone can run into God's high tower and is available for everyone, and it just sort of makes me feel I'd rather spend time in God's high tower around other people who want to be there as well than have my high wall in my city for myself.
Henry Kaestner: That's very, very good.
Chris Evans: Thank you.
Henry Kaestner: J.D. Is there something this morning or yesterday, something that you feel God speaks to you about.
J.D. Greear: That it was reinforced this morning? But it's kind of been a theme for the last several weeks. I'm even preaching on it right now. Lamentation 3, It is good for a man to wait upon the Lord and everything in me says it is not good for J.D. to wait because J.D. wants what J.D. wants right now, and I want to be able to just pray it, into being a God. He delays. He sometimes even appears to resist our answers for success and for resolution because he wants to teach us to be hungry for him and to say that, you know, as long as the shepherd is a part of my life, I'm good. I have no needs. Even if I've got a lot of unresolved things and unmet dreams and a lot of problems, I'm still okay because the presence of the shepherd is life itself to me. And and just being in communion with him, that's where I'm at right now in my life on several things. And God's taught me that, yes, I can trust Him with my problems, but even more I could just feast on his presence. I mean, the times when I feel like I'm waiting. So that's been the top of my heart, Henry.
Henry Kaestner: Awesome. Grateful for you both. Thank you.
Chris Evans: Thanks for having us.