Kathy English
Hello. I’m Kathy English, and I want to welcome you to Profiles and Stewardship, where my husband, Bill English, has conversations with business leaders about how they integrate their work with their faith in Jesus Christ. Today, Bill is talking with Dr. Rob Plummer, the director of the faith and Work Institute at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is also a professor of Biblical Studies in their school of theology. I invite you to take a few moments and learn from Dr. Plummer as he and Bill discuss various aspects of integrating our Christian faith with business leadership in this Profiles and Stewardship episode.
Bill English
And welcome. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business. I want to thank you for joining us this morning. Joining me today is Dr. Rob Plummer, and I’m going to just go ahead and say hi, Rob, real quick.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Yeah, honored to be on your show here.
Bill English
Yeah. And so before we get going in our conversations with Rob, I just wanted to let you all know that one of my books that I’ve just recently published is now out at Amazon. It’s called biblical wisdom for business leaders. 30 sayings from Proverbs. I wrote this book for the mid and upper level managers in corporate America who face challenging situations relative to their faith. In other words, how do they integrate their faith into their role as a mid or upper level manager, and is there anything that the Bible can speak to them about? And I found that these 30 sayings from Proverbs chapter 22, verse 17 through the end of chapter 24, really have quite a bit to say about that. And so I just want to let you know that that book is out and that it is available. Also, this book, A Christian Theology of Business Ownership, it’s heavy, it’s meaty, and the longer it’s out, the more I think I need to write in a Bridged condensed version. So I’m actually doing that right now. Not a lot of business owners are going to read a 350 page book, I’ve been told, so I’m going to be doing an abridged version of that that should be out by the end of the year.
Bill English
I’m going to strip out all the quotes and strip out a lot of the what do I say kind of the adjacent content. So that basically what I’m doing here is if this book here that you’re seeing on screen is Matthew, I’m writing Mark. So I’m just going to get to the point and move on. But I just wanted to let you know about those two things and really want to thank Rob Plummer for being here today. Rob, many of you probably don’t know him, but he is the director of the Faith and Work Project at Southern Seminary. He is also the Chair of New Testament and the professor of Biblical Studies at Southern Seminary. And he’s also the director of Daily Dose of Greek, which I subscribe to, by the way. I would advise everybody to get out there and subscribe to both the daily dose of Greek and the daily dose of Hebrew. While I don’t watch them every day, when I do watch them, they’re really interesting. If you’ve had any Greek or Hebrew, you’ll find them very interesting. I just want to welcome Dr. Rob plummer to Bible and business.
Dr. Rob Plummer
That’s great to be here. And just a little shout out. I have read through both of those books that you mentioned, and they are excellent. So I’m happy to just give a word of endorsement for those, too.
Bill English
Yeah, thanks. That means a lot coming from you. I feel like the theology book is just I shouldn’t say this right, but I’m a transparent guy. I just feel like it’s filled with errors, and I just need to go back and take a year and fix it. But I don’t know.
Dr. Rob Plummer
I really benefited from it and have recommended it to others. So I think you’re probably too hard on yourself there. But, hey, we need Christians speaking thoughtfully and faithfully about how to be believers in the marketplace. So you’ve done that. Well, thank you.
Bill English
Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. But this show is not about me. This show is about my guests. And today this show is about Rob Plummer and the director who is the director of the Faith and Work Project. And Rob, why don’t we start out and just tell us about the Faith and Work Project, why you’re doing it, and I’m also going to be interested to know how my viewers and listeners can be involved in that.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Yes. If people want to check it out, the easiest way is go to the website The Faithandworkproject.com. Includes the word the on the beginning, the faithandworkproject.com. When you go there, you’ll see this tagline at the top. It says, helping Christians to love God and love their neighbors in every aspect of their daily lives. And so this is a little study center at my seminary, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Basically, it’s me as the director. I have an assistant director, and we’re trying to do events and provide content to help, especially seminary students, because that’s where we are, seminary and Bible college students, to think about all of life under God’s sovereignty and all of life as for his glory. So though they might not be going into business, how when they’re pastors or missionaries, can they help 95% of their church to think about their daily life for the glory of God as a way of loving neighbor and loving God? When they’re a taxi driver, when they’re an airplane pilot, when they’re a lawyer, when they’re a janitor? How do you think about those things? So when you go to the website, you’ll see there are basically three portals, and we just are providing resources, especially in those three areas.
Dr. Rob Plummer
The one of them is vocation that’s kind of what I’ve been talking about, like how every aspect of our life is under God’s sovereignty. We are called not just to ministry, but we are called to be fathers and to be husbands and to be business owners and to be faithful employees. What does it mean to be called by God to be a faithful business owner or employee, to love your neighbor in that setting? So that’s about vocation. Another one of the three portals is about economics. Like, when we read the Bible, what do we learn about personal responsibility? What are the economic policies that allow people to flourish in society? We’ve had some posts there recently about inflation and what inflation is and what it does, just especially trying to educate pastors and ministers about some of these more public policy economic topics. And then the final portal, right? So we have vocation about calling economics, and then the third portal is personal finance. And the focus there is especially on pastors ministers who maybe don’t know much about personal finance, don’t know how to plan for their family’s future, don’t know about life insurance, don’t know about Roth IRAs.
Dr. Rob Plummer
And we’re just trying to provide some basic training so that they don’t get to be 60 years old and think that they can rely on Social Security to take care of their family in.
Bill English
Retirement if it’s even there, right.
Dr. Rob Plummer
To be responsible. Recognizing many ministerial students just have no background in that at all. And rather than being taken advantage of by some unscrupulous people trying to provide reliable, clear, accurate guidance.
Bill English
That whole concept of a theology of saving for the future is a seldom taught, very thin theology, I think, in most Christian circles today. When I was writing my theology book, I only spent a couple of three pages on it, but I thought, you know, we should probably save enough for the to meet what’s reasonably expected for future expenses. And then the rest of it, let’s just give it away. I don’t need 20 million sitting in the bank to make me feel secure and shouldn’t really have that. In many ways, there’s a difference between.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Hoarding and being responsible, right?
Bill English
Yes. Hoarding is not something that a lot of pastors or Christians really face into as a sin, maybe that they would put on par with pornography or affairs or lying or cheating or plagiarism. But yet in James Five, it’s very clear that we are not to hoard, we are to be generous.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Yeah, absolutely. At the same time, and I know you agree with this too, the retirement system for the Southern Baptist Convention has been renamed, but it’s called GuideStone, and one of their main ministries is helping the widows of pastors who did not plan for retirement. And so when you see that, I forget the exact name of it. But they’re constantly raising money to assist these elderly widows whose husbands took little churches, gave it all for the lord, but didn’t think about the widow they would leave behind or the children. On the other extreme, don’t want hoarding, but don’t want to fail to take care of your own family.
Bill English
It’s hard to criticize a heart that’s willing to take a small church in a foreign land or rural area and really pastor those people knowing that he’s going to make 12,000 a year, 14,000 a year. It’s hard to criticize that. And yet there is a responsibility there.
Dr. Rob Plummer
If he’s 25 years old and he starts putting away just 10% of his income, very likely there’s not going to be a problem 30, 40 years from now. Right?
Bill English
Very true. Yeah, very true. I want to go back to the vocation calling aspect for just a moment because that’s intriguing to me. I think it’s starting to get baked into Christian circles that one can be called to business ownership, one can be called to the marketplace every bit as much as one might be called to the pastor or the mission field. In fact, I would submit that the marketplace is probably as large a mission field as what we have anywhere in the world. How does the faith and work project look at a how does God call a person to business? How do they define that call? If there is a definition I’m not trying to put words in your mouth.
Dr. Rob Plummer
No.
Bill English
And how should a person like myself, who really is full time in business experience, that calling? So can you speak to that just a little bit?
Dr. Rob Plummer
Yeah, absolutely. I’ll first mention if people want a little bit more detail on this in terms of organized reflection, if you Google my last name, Plumber Poummer, and you type in a New Testament Professor’s rediscovery of the doctrine of vocation, it’ll take you to a free download from Southern Seminary. We published in the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology a New Testament professor’s rediscovery of the doctrine of vocation. And it’s a 20 page article on vocation. And this is a doctrine, the doctrine of vocation. Vocation, of course, comes from I grew up in Tennessee, Bill, so when I hear vocation, I thought that vocational training. Isn’t that the students who don’t do so well and they send them like they’re not going to get into college, so they’ve got to learn to work on diesel engine vocational training. Exactly. Which dow a diesel mechanic can make a lot more than most college graduates.
Bill English
I imagine most truck drivers are making more than us right now.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Yeah. But the word vocation comes from the Latin vocal volcano to call. And so it’s about a doctrine of God’s calling his divine placing of people in their stations in life. And so Martin Luther was probably, in the last 500 years or so, one of the people who wrote and thought the most extensively about this. And so the Lutheran tradition is often very strong invocation Genevieve, who’s a Lutheran thinker today, writes a lot on it, but a key verse for it, for the calling to business or wherever is one corinthians 720 where Paul, he’s talking about marriage, he’s talking about circumcision, he’s talking about slavery. He’s talking about all these different dimensions of life. And he says each one just very literal translation here, each one. And the calling in which he was called in this he must remain. Now, he qualifies that later, saying, obviously, if you’re in slavery, you get your freedom. Get your freedom. But it’s basically saying, hey, wherever you are in life, in that moment at least God has called you to that. That’s under God’s divine sovereignty. He’s called you to be married or he’s called you to be single or he’s called you to be a circumcised person or uncircumcised person.
Dr. Rob Plummer
He’s called you to be in that moment again, not excluding the idea of someone getting freedom or even the culpability of someone the problems of the institution, but he said, if you find yourself in slavery, god’s sovereignty extends to that. And you need to realize that in that moment, you’re called to be faithful wherever you are. And so that certainly extends in modern times to different business opportunities, different employment opportunities. I mean, we’re called to be a janitor, called to be a teacher at a school. Those are places that God has placed us where we can then love our neighbor and glorify Him through our work. I think it can really transform the way people think about their work. Rather than thinking, I’m just doing this to support God’s work in the church, I’m just giving or maybe I’ll share the gospel with my coworkers, which those are all great things, but the actual work itself is a way to glorify God and to love your neighbor through serving them.
Bill English
Yeah. And that makes me think I don’t know where the verse is, but there’s a verse that says basically our work is our worship, that we should worship God through our work. I want to say it was in James, but I could be wrong about that.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Well, I’m thinking about whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of Lord Jesus for the glory of God. Right. We’re supposed to whatever we do, whether we eat or drink, whatever we do, whether we work or then it’s for ultimately for the glory of God. Totally, it is.
Bill English
It’s all about him. It’s not about us.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Yeah. And that can transform the way we interact with other people, too. I remember when I was in New York City with the Faith in work, and I was traveling with a colleague who was the leader of it at the time, and we had a taxi driver who was just complaining the whole time about stuff. He’s from some other country. And when we got to the end of the ride, my friend very consciously said, we got here. We don’t know our way around New York. We really needed someone to give us a safe ride from the airport to where we were going. And you really loved and cared for us today by taking us from one place to another safely. And we just thank God for the way he took care of us through you. I mean, that’s a beautiful like, if you think go through life thinking that way, it can transform the way you treat other people, the way you see the value of your own job.
Bill English
Yeah, I know that’s great work. Thinking theologically about our vocation is really what you and I are talking about. It’s one way to put it. Rather than thinking pragmatically in American business terms, not that the American business terms are always wrong, but thinking first theologically right for whatever reason, that brings to my mind the Matthew 633 seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Everything else that you need, it’ll show up. It’ll be given to you. But I tell you, when you interpret life theologically and I would also argue with eternity in mind, with God’s perspective in mind, it does really transform how you do life.
Dr. Rob Plummer
That’s good. Yeah. A verse that I think of two that I think is pivotal in the realm of business is taking us all the way back to Genesis, chapter one, verses 27 and 28, where God gives dominion to the men, to Adam and Eve, to man and woman over creation says, have dominion over the fish of the sea. The birds there have every living thing that moves on the earth. And we realize that business is that creational or cultural mandate to hear, God gives us this beautiful world, but it’s in raw form and we get to take the sand and make it into a screen for an iPhone. Just the beauty of we reflect his glory as Creator by taking the stuff he’s created and reshaping it into new things. And we’re following that creational or cultural mandate. In some ways, like I’m borrowing this from a colleague in some ways we’re sort of like Taco Bell workers. We can’t make meat and we can’t make cheese, but we can put it in new arrangements. We can move this. We can call it chalupa or taco, whatever. But in the end, we have all this raw material that God’s created and he delights to see us be many creators.
Dr. Rob Plummer
And whether that’s in your case, the bit I know of your work going into situations where there’s disorganization and chaos in a business and you’re bringing order, which means preserving people’s jobs, loving them by having a business that can continue to work, maybe helping other people find the job they should be in rather than that one. For me, it’s trying to bring order. I’m a professor. There’s knowledge that I want people to have and use and for me to pass that on to them in an effective and win some way and even what we’re using here today, this technology. Isn’t this amazing that someone has come up with a way that we’re hundreds of miles apart, that we can communicate like this can be recorded and preserved for others? What a wonderful way to love your neighbor by creating this kind of technology.
Bill English
I was marveling at technology about a year and a half ago when my daughter was spending a month in Mongolia on the End Bible Poverty Ministry, and she was passing out Bibles in the rural areas of Mongolia, and she happened to be in a very small hamlet that had Internet access. And so she FaceTimes me, and I’m in my truck driving between Minneapolis and Duluth. So there I am, 70 some miles an hour, and she’s in Mongolia, and we’re talking to each other like you and I are talking here. And I was just marveling at the technology. It was really amazing.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Yeah. And again, similar to almost everything else in creation, it can be used for good or for evil, right? Yes. That’s one of the part of the brokenness of this world we live in where wonderful things can be invented and then people can use them for wicked things, too.
Bill English
When you mentioned taco meat and wheat and stuff like that, whenever I go out for breakfast, I never look at the menu because they all package the same stuff differently. I’ll meet somebody and they’ll start looking at the menu, and the waitress will come up and they’ll just give me this, this, and this. I really don’t care how it’s packaged on your menu. This is just what I want. My friends are like, hey, I need to do that. I need to stop looking at them. Yeah.
Dr. Rob Plummer
I don’t know that Taco Bell really has more than one item on their menu, if you think about it’s. Just slightly organized, stacked in different ways.
Bill English
Yeah, exactly. Let’s shift gears. A Christian business owner. So I traditionally have written a Bible and business I’ve traditionally written for business owners. I’m starting to shift into that mid to upper level manager in corporate America because I find that so few people even pay attention to them. And I’m guessing that there’s between five and 10 million Christians in business, in for profit businesses who are mid to upper level managers who serve difficult and sometimes really godless people. That’s why the book that I’m writing right now is I’m Taking the Life of Daniel, the first six chapters, not the eschatological part, but the first six chapters. And I’m I’m trying to come up with some principles that these people can use every day, daily principles that they can use. But for the Christian business owner at the Faith and Work Project, what are some common themes or some common issues that you see or that the project is seeing that Christian business owners are facing that are difficult for them to face into? Can we just outline one x number of those.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Yeah. And I’ll say at the beginning, this is not humility on my part. It’s just the truth that I don’t know that I’m the best person to speak to this because my ministry, a lot of it is to seminary students and ministers, to kind of catch a vision for vocation and all that. So I don’t have as much the kind of interaction that you have with business owners. So a lot of that is just like in other words, I read the news reports about the cake baker who sued and going through issues of the freedom of conscience and can they continue to operate if they’re forced to make cakes for marriages that they civil unions that they disagree with on the basis of Scripture? The government says you have to do this. We call this marriage, we say, I’m not interacting with people on a regular basis like that. I do think, though, honestly, the interactions I have friends in the business community and so on. I think probably the biggest problem I see is probably an old problem is just that this siloing of there’s business. That’s why I do nine to five or eight to ten, whatever, Monday through Friday, Monday through and then I go to church.
Dr. Rob Plummer
And so there’s sort of this bifurcation. This is spiritual life and this is what I do most of the time. Rather than having a we talked about more of a theologically informed, biblically informed vision for all of life as lived under God’s sovereignty and under his rule. Beginning to catch a vision for their business as God’s calling them to that as a way of loving neighbor and providing for their family and evangelizing, like all of that happening there. And so, like, I know I don’t know if you’re familiar with this ministry. It’s not a huge ministry, but it’s based out of Hendersonville, Tennessee, called Living Scent. Living Scent?
Bill English
I haven’t heard of it.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Yeah, so that’s kind of what they came up here. We had a meeting with them and I’ve spent some time looking at their materials. They sort of have these cohorts in cities of business people trying to give them a vision for, hey, you are nine to five, you are in the business place. God wants you to be a Christian there. And even just very simple ways of how to manage with allowing their Christian ethics and belief, the teaching of Scripture, the way we treat other people to influence how they manage, how they train, how they interact with customers, how they deal with profits and disputes and all of that. I really think we need churches. Hopefully we could be doing that. I mean, there are some churches that are like I don’t know if you’re familiar with Tom Nelson. Tom Nelson. He wrote work matters. He’s done a lot of stuff with work and vocation. He went to Trinity. Trinity? And he’s at Christ Community Church in Leewood, Kansas. And I know in his church, like on Sunday, they’ll focus on a particular profession. Like they’ll pray for people in the firefighters and policemen one week they’ll pray for small business owners and there’s a real conscious and the members of their staff will go out and hang out with people in their business.
Dr. Rob Plummer
So they’ll spend half a day hanging out with the radiologist, hanging out with a janitor and try to discover what they’re doing and let that inform the teaching and ministry of the church, but also speak into in a discipleship way, like, how could you catch a bigger vision for what God could do through you here? So I think, yeah, that’s probably the biggest challenge that I’m aware of is just seeing their work as under God’s sovereignty, a calling beginning to let it be shaped by scripture rather than just something they’re doing.
Bill English
You know, I I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think you’re spot on. This siloing between by the way, we’re talking with Dr. Rob Plummer today who is the director of the Faith and Work project at Southern Seminary in Louisville. He’s also the Chair of New Testament and a professor of biblical studies at Southern Theological Seminary. Full disclosure or disclaimer? My son is going to Southern Theological Seminary, so I have a lot of my class.
Dr. Rob Plummer
We won’t affect his grade.
Bill English
And he’s also direct do I say the director of the Daily Dose of Greek?
Dr. Rob Plummer
Well, I don’t know what I’m the founder and host of the Daily Dose of Greek. Okay.
Bill English
So he’s also the founder and host of Daily Dose of Greek and we’re talking about right now this silo effect that Christian business owners face in a lot of churches between you kind of have church on Sunday and you have business the other probably six days of the week for many, and there’s just not a lot of overlap there, I can honestly say. Just several comments to what you said. First of all, I’ve never had a pastor come out and pray with me at my work ever. And that’s not as much a criticism as it is a recognition of that siloing effect. I think if I was a church planter, I think I would probably get more FaceTime with a pastor. But pastors, I’m going to give pastors a lot of grace here because they are the most heavily marketed and most heavily in demand of anybody I know of in America. It’s a very difficult role to be the pastor of a local church. I’m an elder at my church and I even have a hard time at times getting FaceTime with my senior pastor. I see him every other Tuesday night, but that’s in a group setting and I know some of the other elders never meet with him individually.
Bill English
Again, it’s not a criticism, it’s just a recognition of the demands that are on pastors today. But going back to your comment about management and training employees. This is kind of what we do that kind of bleeds into what I thought was one of the four core purposes that God had for business, which is to help employees develop their God given talents, their God given passions, and give them a structured way to express those things and get paid for it at the same time. Right. God has gifted you to take knowledge, to learn it, to assimilate it, to synthesize it, maybe to repackage it, add some new knowledge to it, and then teach it and motivate others. And from what David tells me, you’re very good at it. Even though he hasn’t sat in your class, I know he has a high regard for you. I have an intuitive way of understanding organizations. This is some feedback that I’ve been given by others in the field. It’s not so much that I understand balance sheets and income statements, although I do, I can read them. It’s that I have a knack for understanding where organizations are off base, and it almost always resides with the leadership and understanding how to fix those things.
Bill English
So as we come in, from a theological perspective, when we look at Christian business owners, one of the ways that I think that they can fulfill kind of close that gap between the church and the work. Silos close. Those suit two silos or at least bring them closer together, is to say that one of the things I can do that it really is God honoring and is a purpose that God gave me. A business is to help my employees grow professionally and help them grow personally. I think if you were to go to most of the younger people today, I’m just going to say 45 and under, maybe even everybody, but you were to say as a business owner, you were to say, how can I help you be a better you? I think a lot of people would respond really positively to that, and it wouldn’t be about necessarily increasing profits. Yeah.
Dr. Rob Plummer
And it’s really about you really are loving them as someone made in the image of God there. They’re not just a cog in the machine to make you more money. So it’s, how can I develop your gifts, your ideas? How can you grow? That’s a beautiful kind of management. I would think that would build an immense loyalty from employees because they’re being treated as people, as humans in the image of God. I think that’s a really good insight.
Bill English
I don’t know if many business owners think that way because American business doesn’t think that way, although I take that back. Some businesses do. I know I’m kind of generalizing here, but many do not. The other piece that just left my mind, so I don’t know what it was. I’m 61, Rob.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Well, you’re fine. I’ll just jump in. You’ll remember as I start to say something tangentially related when we develop them like that because. We are made in the image of God to be creators. You’re really allowing them to flourish as a human in the way God created them, to have the joy of creating and serving and loving others. And that reminded me. I’ve set this book out beforehand because I was hoping I’d have a chance to mention it. It’s called poor. No more Rethinking dependency in the War on poverty. The main thing I remember from this book is they were trying to help people in, like, poverty and recently released people from prison, all this kind of stuff. The main thing that really helped people, none of these training programs, according to him, what really helped them was getting them a job and where they could have some dignity of getting a paycheck doing work that was honest and meaningful and that served other people. It transformed their lives. And how can we explain that? I think we can explain that theologically by saying we are made in the image of God to be creators.
Dr. Rob Plummer
And when we don’t do that, it’s a downward spiral into defeatism and frustration. They’ve done studies on prisoners. Prisoners when they’re in prison, who do they get paid pennies to do the laundry and the cooking, but who do that kind of work when they get out? Readjust to society so much better, have such a lower rate of recidivism. I mean, work is a beautiful thing for humans. It’s a good thing.
Bill English
That topic is partially dealt with in Jonathan Sachs book. I don’t know if you’ve ever read this book, The Dignity of Difference.
Dr. Rob Plummer
I have not.
Bill English
I’ll just hold it up here.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Yeah.
Bill English
The dignity of difference. He’s a British Lord Rabbi. He’s now passed a couple of years ago, one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever read on economics. And he wrote a whole series of books on the Torah that I have found very helpful, very helpful to understand from a Jewish perspective. But I would recommend Dignity of Differences as another book to read besides Poor no more. Who wrote that book? Poor no more.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Yeah. I don’t know. To be honest. I can’t wholesale recommend the book. Like, it’s been a while since I read it. But the thesis of it, the broad thesis I remember, was he founded this thing, America Works a for profit, welfare to work company. And I mean, the book is a little bit repetitive. I kind of summarized it. Don’t get people don’t spend millions of dollars training people and doing all this stuff. Give them a job. Get people a job. Get them in there. And that’s the main indicator of success. Like getting people where they work and they’ll struggle. People will have problems. They won’t know how to dress. They’ll not be used to behaving in an environment like that. Remember a guy once in a church group I was in 20 years ago, he got this job. He had been a skater before this. He’s like, I can’t believe these people are so uptight about you showing up on time. You’re like, well, people do expect you to show up at the beginning of your work. That was obviously a learning experience for him.
Bill English
That’s funny. That’s funny. So from the Faith and Work Project, you guys also deal with economics and talk to me about some of the new research or the new publications that are going on from the Faith and Work Project about economics and how business owners might consume those materials and what kind of difference it might make in their daily lives managing their businesses.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Yeah, well, in terms of broad economic policy, what we’re trying to do is provide. We’re not really writing original content at that level. We do have publications and stuff. Our focus usually in that is on the role of the church and so on. And I wouldn’t be against doing it, we just don’t have anything coming out right now. But if you go to the website, we do have links to a lot of articles online and speaking about everything from for example, people can get very upset about the price of rents going up to make things unaffordable for hourly workers in the city setting. San Francisco, New York, whatever. And this is a problem. The cost of housing is so high. But I think sometimes ministers, because they have a heart for the poor, they should have a heart for the poor. They haven’t necessarily thought through all the ramifications of proposed solutions. So one of the proposed solutions is let’s set a limit on rent, rent control or something like that. And seeing that, well, actually what that does is create all sorts of other problems rather than solving the problem. Like the problem might be better solved by promoting situations that would allow people to develop more properties so there could be more apartments of supply and demand.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Understanding basics about supply and demand and how the government creates incentives for people to do things or not do things. And just the long term ramifications. It’s sort of like the Henry Hazlett book Economics and One Lesson, and he talks about basically the one lesson is thinking about what are the incentives and ramifications that we’re creating through policy. And I think we want our government to create policies that respect people’s private property, that allow them to flourish and to create and do things beautiful and not to create weird incentives that would you think about rent control? Again, if you see articles where they’re interviewing people and they’re like, yeah, I have lived in this apartment for 50 years because of the rent control, I couldn’t give up. Well, very likely that person a job or relational opportunity, they should have moved from there. And that incentive to stay in an artificially low priced apartment has sort of controlled their lives. At the same time, probably that apartment building is run down because the apartment owner is not making a market rent to do it. And secondly, he probably didn’t build that other building he wanted to build because he’s like, I don’t know if the government is going to suddenly slap on artificially low rates.
Dr. Rob Plummer
So in the end, it’s a simple example. Rent control is an easy example on that, but there’s similar ones, like cash for clunkers. Like, you’ve got the government creating incentives to destroy great used cars. And wouldn’t it be nice to have some more of those used cars that were destroyed back in the Obama administration right now, when used cars are ridiculously. Just helping people think. People don’t really understand always what inflation is. Inflation is people debate this, but it seems most natural. There’s too much paper money floating around it’s artificially creating extremely high prices. I realize it’s more complicated than other issues involved, but understanding that what that really is doing is a huge tax on the whole country, that’s reducing the savings of many people who are on the margins. Elderly people, poor people who are relying on money in a savings account that’s going to be worth eight and a half percent less next year. Thinking through like, oh, this really does matter. Government policy really affects people and their ability to flourish.
Bill English
In 2007, we had $1.3 trillion in our economy based on the St. Louis Fed, if I remember right. And today it’s over $20 trillion st. Louis Fed’s numbers. We just have too many dollars chasing too few goods. There are things in the supply chain that would temporarily increase prices, to be sure, but I was always taught good old Adam Smith stuff back at Indiana Westley University, where I got my bachelor’s in business, that inflation is ultimately the result of too many dollars chasing too few goods and services. Agree with the project on that. Let me shift gears for just a moment. You have a history of missionary work, do you not? And so I wonder if you are able to speak about missionaries going into closed or difficult countries as business owners and then trying to do evangelistic work on top of that. Do you have any desire to speak to that particular topic? Here’s part of the reason that I asked. It’s actually a little personal here. Next week, I am flying to a foreign country, and I am teaching the fifth of a six week course to missionaries who are going to be going into closed countries as business owners.
Bill English
But that will be their way to evangelize and to share the gospel. And my job in the fifth week is to talk about all the stuff that could go wrong and how you mitigate. What do you do if somebody on the team dies? What do you do if there’s three owners and one of them decides to have an affair with somebody else on the team? Or what do you do if somebody’s call changes? Or what do you do if you make a lot of money? What do you do with that money? Or what happens if you lose a lot of money? Who’s going to pay? Because somebody’s got to pay. Whenever there’s a loss, somebody has to pay. I don’t know if that’s a topic that you would be interested in talking about this morning.
Dr. Rob Plummer
A few years ago, when I was not the director of someone else, was he’s taking a job at another institution now or another organization? But I think it was Patrick Ley. He’s a guy who speaks a lot about work and missions. I’m not sure I’m saying his name correctly, but he spoke and he told some very moving stories. One of them, I recall, was about in a closed country, probably a Muslim country. There was a very successful I think it was a closed manufacturing thing. So the missionaries had started, christian foreign workers had started, and the government wanted to shut it down. And the workers were like, no, this is a great place. We have a job. We have money. We can take care of our family. This person is kind to us who runs this business. They stood up to the authorities and said, what are you doing? So I think this story was told to illustrate when we do Christian business as a means of being in another country, we want to make sure it’s legit. Like, we want to have real products. We don’t just want to have a shell company that we’re really people, after five years are like, Why are you here?
Dr. Rob Plummer
What do you make? What do you sell? And we realize it can just be being a teacher. Being an English teacher is a totally legit business that will allow you to flourish in many close countries. But you want to do that well. You want to be a great English teacher. You want to be growing. I think that’s a great way, especially if it’s a legitimate business to love and serve. You’re providing employment. You’re giving an example of how to live in society as a Christian, how to treat other people in your daily lives, really loving and serving your neighbor while you’re announcing, the greatest love that we have is Christ. The greatest service we can offer is to introduce them to the Savior and to know what he’s done for them. So as you know, probably better than I, as you’re going on this trip, there are many places in the world where you can’t just show up and say, I want to preach the gospel. You have to do something that that society views as beneficial to them, whether it’s being a radiologist in the Middle East or whether it’s being in a petroleum engineer or being an English teacher or whatever.
Dr. Rob Plummer
There are a lot of people doing that. And some of the most exciting things are things that you and I can’t talk about because it would compromise their ministry. Right? There’s one guy I know he went to a place that most of us would be terribly frightened to go. It’s like one of the places he thinks someone’s going to kill me there and take me hostage. And he retired from JCPenney as an executive years ago, when JCPenney was more of a thing yeah. More of a successful company than it is now. But he spent decades of his life I think he’s retired now, but spent decades of his life in this country. And I remember talking to him, I said, hey, I know people will work in places like where you are for decades and not see any one convert.
Bill English
Right.
Dr. Rob Plummer
What do you see there? He said, I’m aware of 50 people in my personal sphere of influence who are new believers. Yeah. And he told they stayed with us one Christmas and gave us a little Christmas ornament made by one of the ladies in this country. It was trying to support herself with a business, local business. And they made some comment about her being married to someone who was younger than her. And I thought that was strange in that traditional culture. And it turned out that her first husband had been an underground pastor, and when he was found out, he had been made to stand in the public square, hold his Bible while they chopped his head off in front of everyone else. And so this younger believer, younger than her, married her to save her life, really, in that culture, that kind of stuff’s going on that’s happening in our world today.
Bill English
Yeah, I stay in touch. Voice of the Martyrs is one organization that I subscribe to because I I want to be reminded that our comfortable American Christianity is not experienced by most of the world, that some 400 million or more Christians live under some type of physical, economic, social persecution. And what we have here in America is not the norm. It just isn’t. One of the messages that I’ll give to the class is that you have to be called to business. You can’t just go in under the guise of business and then not be very good at it. You really have to be called because running a business, I have a phrase, you can’t part time your way into success. Somebody’s got to really be called. So if there’s a group of six who are going over, at least one of them has to be called to do the business, and that’s their calling. And the others may work in the business, or they may go get jobs elsewhere. But the point is, somebody on that team has got to be called to actually do the business. And that’s where I think it’s so important for those who have a heart to spread the gospel in these closed countries, to remember that if they go in just under the guise and they don’t really work the business, well, they’re kind of lying to the government and they’re kind of lying to themselves and they’re probably not stewarding well, the entrustment that God is going to give them in that country.
Bill English
Well, thank you for meandering into that. Look, if somebody wanted to get a hold of you or get a hold of the Faith and Work project again, I was trying to bring the website up. Faithandworkproject.com.
Dr. Rob Plummer
It starts with the oh, yeah, that’s the key type Vfaithandworkproject.com because there’s a lot of similar sounding things out there. Yeah, if you include the Vfaithandworkproject.com. Okay, there it is. And then you’ll see there’ll be contact information and email down at the bottom.
Bill English
Yeah, I’m going to share the screen just so people can see it here. There’s the Faith and Work Project, the personal finance area, the vocation area, the economics area. And you can subscribe down here. I believe I’m already subscribed. If I’m not, I will today. And they also have their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, looks like, and YouTube channels over here on the side. So you may want to take a look at that. And then in the about section here on the website, they go into a little bit more about the finance, the vocation and the economics there. So I would encourage everyone who has watched this, or if you’re watching right now, just go out and take a look at the Faith and Work Project. And I just want to thank you, Rob, for coming on board and spending some time with us here today. You’re really a wonderful guy and I’m so privileged to be getting to know you more and more as the months pass here. So it’s just been a pleasure to.
Dr. Rob Plummer
Have you mutual joy. Yeah, it’s been fun to get to know you and know more of your work. So I appreciate the encouragement. And thanks, too, for the chance just to tell people a little bit more about the Faith and Work Project.
Bill English
Oh, you’re welcome. You’re welcome. So I think at this point, we’re going to end the broadcast. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business, and I want to thank you for joining us today. If you’re a Christian business owner or a Christian in management leadership in for profit businesses, I would love to talk with you. I would love to help you. The Bible and Business website has a number of different resources for you, but you can always reach out to me at my email address, Bill@bibleandandbusiness.com, and I’d love to hear from you and talk with you as well. So, again, thanks, Rob, for being with us today. Thank you all for joining today, and I hope you all go out and make it a great day. Take care.
Kathy English
Thank you for joining Rob and Bill today. I hope you found their conversation to be helpful to you as you grow in your faith in Jesus Christ. If you’d like to talk with Bill, just email him at bill@bibleandbusiness.com. I think you’ll find as I have that. He’s a good guy to talk to, Bill. And I hope you will join us again for another Bible and business profiles and stewardship podcast. So until then, please go out and make it a great day. Take care.