Soma Games

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“If I can impart two things to anybody interested in walking this path, let this be the second thing you commit to: find and commit to a group of deep friends that you are honest with, loyal to, and different from.  Let the first thing be this: find and submit to a mentor.”

For the January 2016 issue, my Startup column in MinistryTech magazine featured Chris Skaggs of Soma Games.

In this article series, we’ve defined a Christian entrepreneur as: a person, driven to glorify God in all he does, and ruled by the Word of God, who starts a new venture and is willing to risk a loss in order to achieve the success of the venture.  Each month I’ve been introducing you to specific Christian startups and entrepreneurs, some of which may be helpful to your church, ministry, business, or family, but my main intent is to encourage and inspire you to be entrepreneurial in your ministry and career.  

This month I’m pleased to introduce you to Chris Skaggs.  In his own words, he has always been entrepreneurial – the kid with the lemonade stand, or the college student doing web development.  With the launch of Soma Games, Chris and his team have been able to bring their Christian faith to the forefront.

Web Development is Good Money

Chris learned computer skills in the Navy, so later, when he was a college student around the turn of the century, he found that developing web sites was a great way to earn extra spending money.  As web technologies developed, Chris stayed on top of the new tools, tricks, and languages.  Over time, that web development business became Code-Monkeys.  Happy customers brought more happy customers and the business grew.  Chris built a team of like minded people from his community.  For Chris that community largely is the church so it turns out that Code-Monkeys is primarily made up of fellow believers.  It was natural for them to pray together over major decisions and pivotal events, and to praise the Lord for their success.

Then God Called

Not unlike many of us, Chris enjoys playing video games.  But, in 2005, a major controversy emerged around a popular violent video game that reached all the way to Congress.  As Chris was reading news about the controversy, he became aware for the first time that there was such a thing as a Christian video game industry, and that there was an industry conference the coming weekend just half an hour from his home.  Chris felt what he referred to as “God’s nudge” to attend the conference, and as he began to pursue that, God’s call into the video game industry became clearer and stronger.  You can read the whole amazing story on Soma’s website – how God providentially intervened time and again over several days to confirm that this was the next step in Chris’ journey.  From the website: “To recap, in the course of five days God had: Convinced me to attend a conference on a topic I’d never heard of; Arranged for an in-depth education on a very detailed subject; Started a new ‘business’ in something I was a complete stranger to; Made it so I was primed to represent that same, unknown industry, to roughly six million people; And paid for every bit of it.”

The Long Hike to the Starting Line

God may have moved quickly to call Chris and his team to video games, but He forced them to be patient and to prepare for this new business.  Not only were there new technologies to learn, but this would be the first business they had intentionally launched, and it required real business planning and discipline.  Most importantly, everyone on the team needed to be prepared spiritually.  One aspect of this spiritual preparation was a dependence on God and not on the world or anyone in it.  As the team read the Bible and prayed, they were constantly drawn to the reality that God was looking for them to be people “who could not be bought.”

It was also during this time that Chris became involved with a men’s ministry called Boot Camp Northwest.  The relationships that formed in this ministry were critical to Chris’ development as a Christian leader.  Most importantly, God provided Chris a mentor, Rande Bruhn, who would become CEO of Soma Games.  Chris says, “If I can impart two things to anybody interested in walking this path, let this be the second thing you commit to: find and commit to a group of deep friends that you are honest with, loyal to, and different from.  Let the first thing be this: find and submit to a mentor.”

Finally, in late 2008, shortly after the launch of the iPhone App Store, Soma Games released its first title – “G – Into the Rain” on iOS.  (On January 6 Soma will be launching G Prime – the Xbox One update of this “gravity gripping, Steampunk styled, moody-beautiful, slingshot simulating puzzle pleaser” that was inspired by the Genesis 6 account of Noah’s Ark.)  G was very well received.  It had a lot of downloads and won a number of awards.  It also brought new business to Code-Monkeys – companies wanting mobile or game development.  In the years since, The Code-Monkeys/Soma Games team has developed over 300 apps and games on 4 different platforms, with over a million downloads.  G, and its follow-ons also opened doors.

Going Big

One of those doors was the opportunity to be the exclusive licensee for video games based on the popular Redwall series of books.  In 2013, Soma launched a Kickstarter to build a Minecraft version of the Redwall Abbey as their Minimal Viable Product, and it was overfunded in just a few days.  Clearly this is a big, and high profile, opportunity.  To prepare, Chris was accepted into the Praxis Business Accelerator Program.  That year-long experience exposed him to many business experts that not only helped with critical elements of the business, but also challenged him to wrestle with key questions about what it means to build and operate a gospel-centered business.  

On their website, the company says “While Soma Games is a group of Christians making video games, we’re not what you might call a ‘Christian Video Game company’ and it’s important for us to be very clear about this to avoid inaccurate expectations. We’re making games that will be founded upon, and informed by Christian thought and the Christian understanding of reality – however, we don’t plan on making games that teach Christian theology. There are no scripture references, no Biblical characters and no telling of the Jonah story – other companies have been there and done a fine job. We hope to try something a little different.”

In their company motto, they acknowledge both their position relative to their Creator and their desire to honor God with their work: “terribliter magnificasti me mirabilia” – Latin for “fearfully and wonderfully made.”  In other words, Chris and his team are Christian entrepreneurs, driven to glorify God in all they do, and ruled by the Word of God.  May each of us seek to do the same!

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Ethos

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“This Fall I arrived on campus as the new Entrepreneur in Residence and I was excited to hear a story that combines my passions for entrepreneurship, Christian faith, and mobile technology. …Summer observed that ‘Today’s students are raised with more choices and are more empowered to control their own life.  This new generation was asking for more than just chapel.'”

For the December 2015 issue of MinistryTech magazine, my column featured Oklahoma Christian University’s Summer Lashley and the Ethos program.

In this article series, we’ve defined a startup this way: a new venture working to solve a problem where the solution is not obvious and success is not guaranteed.  We’ve also defined a Christian entrepreneur as: a person, driven to glorify God in all he does, and ruled by the Word of God, who starts a new venture and is willing to risk a loss in order to achieve the success of the venture.  Each month I’ve been introducing you to specific Christian startups and entrepreneurs, some of which may be helpful to your church, ministry, or business, but my main intent is to encourage, inspire, and educate you.

So far, all of the startups I’ve featured have been businesses, but startups can be new ministries as well.  This month, I’d like to feature a new technology-enabled startup within an existing, traditional Christian organization.

Daily Chapel is Good

Founded in 1950, Oklahoma Christian University (OC) has just over 2,500 students.  According to their website, “Oklahoma Christian University is a higher learning community that transforms lives for Christian faith, scholarship, and service.”  This Fall I arrived on campus as the new Entrepreneur in Residence and I was excited to hear a story that combines my passions for entrepreneurship, Christian faith, and mobile technology.

Daily Chapel has been a valued tradition at OC since the school’s formation.  Most students attend “Big Chapel” but other options include Missions Chapel, Seekers Chapel, Women’s Chapel, Great Songs Chapel, and weekly chapels for each academic college or department.  Historically, students have been required to attend chapel each day, with a set number of absences allowed.

Spiritual Development is Better

Summer Lashley, an OC alumnus, had spent a couple of years early in her career at a web startup company.  That entrepreneurial spirit must have been apparent because, after she returned to campus as part of the student life team, she was asked to move into the spiritual life office and figure out how to “reboot” the university’s approach to spiritual development. Chapel has always been good, but she realized that it may not meet every student where they are in their spiritual growth.  Summer observed that “Today’s students are raised with more choices and are more empowered to control their own life.  This new generation was asking for more than just chapel.”

In true Lean startup mode, Summer started doing Customer Discovery.  She would pull students out of chapel, both those up front and fully engaged and those in the back corner with ear buds in and hoodie pulled over.  What did they like and what didn’t they like?  What was missing?  What was their real need?  She started creating alternatives, forming small groups, and working with YouVersion to launch an OC reading plan within the popular Bible app.  She gave a small group of trusted students the freedom to pursue their own spiritual development plan and to journal what they did and how it impacted them.

As Summer and the campus minister read their own reading plan and considered what they were learning from the students, the Holy Spirit seemed to focus them on the two great commandments that Jesus clearly outlined in Mark 12:30-31 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’” and “ ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”  What if OC could model spiritual development off of these great commandments?

Summer began planning a new program for spiritual development, named Ethos, where students would be encouraged to practice spiritual disciplines in five dimensions: Community, Discipleship, Discovery, Servanthood, and Worship.  But how could the university pull off such a radical redefinition of its spiritual life and how could students be encouraged to adopt the new model?

One day, Summer realized that she was increasingly using her iPhone to discover and to track important things in her life.  In addition to YouVersion, she was daily using RunKeeper and the Starbucks app to track her progress towards important goals.  She realized that, for today’s student, their phone is like the remote control for their life.  There’s an app for everything, so why not an app for spiritual development at OC?

Summer engaged with the OC marketing team and used an online tool to mock up a beautiful Ethos mobile app for creating, discovering, and tracking spiritual development activities.  She showed it to the university leadership team who loved it and brought the IT team onboard as excited partners.  Next she took it to the university’s board who was cautiously supportive, concerned about the school’s traditions.  With the help of a champion on the board, in time, this group also became strong supporters.  A university donor stepped forward to provide funding for the development and launch.

Spiritual Transformation is the Real Goal

The IT team built the Ethos front-end using the Ionic framework to simplify launch on both iOS and Android smartphones.  The mobile and web clients interfaced with the API core backend, with databases for students, check-ins, etc. and interfaces to the university’s student information and event systems and to AD for identifying and authenticating users.

IT also gave Summer a tool for generating reports.  Who is attending which events?  What are the patterns by college, by class, by service club, etc.  This may not qualify as “big data” but it certainly started to provide insights that the spiritual life office could use to fine tune how to enable spiritual development for students.  But, Summer is quick to point out that students are already doing that fine-tuning themselves.  In the first year of operation, students attended over 4,000 distinct events, 1,700 of which were spontaneously created by students (and approved by the spiritual life office).

“For Christian universities, a graduate who can tell the story of how her campus experience transformed her life demonstrates the distinctive value of the Christian university,” Summer explains. “Ethos is not only enabling that transformation, but the software is helping capture that story for the student – recording the spiritual events and enabling the student to capture her comments on how it impacted her.”

Ethos is one of many examples of how God can use technology to change people’s lives, but it also is an example of how God can use an entrepreneurial leader to start a new ministry that can help “reboot” the spiritual heart of an established institution with a rich Christian heritage.  Summer is quick to thank God for blessing Ethos and enabling it to be a blessing to many.

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Thirtyseven4

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“Thirtyseven4 started with Steven’s heart for building trusted relationships and that is a commitment that defines the business.  Customers listen to Steven and his team, and the company listens to its clients.”  

Here’s my November 2015 column for MinistryTech magazine, profiling Steven Sundermeier and his computer security startup, Thirtyseven4.

In this article series, we’ve discussed what it means to be a startup (in business or ministry) and defined a startup this way: a new venture working to solve a problem where the solution is not obvious and success is not guaranteed.  We’ve also discussed what it means to be an entrepreneur, and specifically a Christian entrepreneur, which we defined as: a person, driven to glorify God in all he does, and ruled by the Word of God, who starts a new venture and is willing to risk a loss in order to achieve the success of the venture.  

Each month I’ve been introducing you to specific Christian startups and entrepreneurs.  Some of these ventures and people may be ones that can help your church, ministry, or business, but my main intent is to encourage, inspire, and educate you as I hope you too will be growing as a Christian entrepreneur.

You probably already know Steven Sundermeier as a security expert based on his monthly column in this magazine on being “Protected With Purpose,” but this month I’d like to introduce you to the Christian entrepreneur side of Steven, and his company Thirtyseven4.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly

In 1999, fresh out of college, Steven landed a great job with a computer security company.  He got started doing the dirty work – disinfecting computers that had been hit with viruses, worms, and other malware.  For the next 10 years, he was blessed with the continuous opportunity to learn and grow and advance through the company.

But in those 10 years, he also saw the bad and ugly side of business.  The company hadn’t been started by Christians and the culture that had been established wasn’t consistent with Biblical morals.  Vendors, partners, clients, and employees weren’t always treated with love and respect.   It was wearying Steven to operate in that environment.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord

One Sunday morning in 2009, the Sundermeier’s Pastor chose to preach on Psalm 1.  

Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;

2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
(Psalm 1:1-2)

This message really hit home with Steven and his wife.  They began praying for God to make clear whether Steven should leave his job, and if so, what they should do.  They sought Godly counsel from those around them.  They meditated day and night on God’s Word.  They continued to hear God’s calling on them from the pulpit each Sunday.

They realized that God was calling Steven, in the midst of the greatest economic recession of their lives, to quit his job and become an entrepreneur.  He started building the back-end engine for a new security offering.  He was careful to be above reproach, not using any intellectual property from his first employer, not stealing any employees or customers, not speaking poorly of their solutions.

Steven’s wife was the admissions director at a small Catholic college, so they understood the education market and decided to focus their new business there.  They sought to even more deeply understand what schools need and how they operate.  They sunk their life savings into the business, trusting in God’s call and His provision with the business.  They even named the business after Psalm 37:4 (“Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.”).

Bringing forth its fruit in its season

The business started to grow.  Slowly at first, as potential clients needed to wait through the timing of their existing contracts. But then, increasingly rapidly.  The company has grown every year since 2009 and continues to grow exponentially.  

That doesn’t mean there weren’t bumps along the way.  Psalm 37 goes on to say in verse 7 “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.”  Steven tells of the time a foreign competitor decided to make their education product available for free.  This may not qualify as a “wicked scheme” but it certainly was a test for the Thirtyseven4 team to rest in the Lord and not fret.  

Instead of fretting, they committed their way to the Lord and trusted in Him.  As always, they did not turn to putting down the competitor’s product, but instead again educated their customers of the value of personal support from local U.S.-based partners and the quality of Thirtyseven4’s product.  As with many other times, the Lord turned a challenge into a blessing.

And whatever he does shall prosper

Thirtyseven4 started with Steven’s heart for building trusted relationships and that is a commitment that defines the business.  Customers listen to Steven and his team, and the company listens to its clients.  They have expanded from schools into other non-profits including many medium to very large churches.  Customers needed ways to continue to protect when systems were off the network, so Thirtyseven4 expanded by offering a cloud-based offer.  Not every customer idea is a big winner that can be pursued, but the company has been greatly blessed simply by having trusted relationships with clients, vendors, and employees.

In talking to Steven, he constantly references how God has blessed him through this startup experience.  Not just in terms of business success, but in personal and family relationships in ways that he couldn’t imagine.  From day one, it’s been important to Steven and his wife that the company be a blessing to others.  Every year the company delivers food baskets and winter coats to the most needy in their community, and a portion of every sale provides funding for Remember Nhu, a global ministry saving young women from the sex trade.

According to their website, the mission of Thirtyseven4 “is to glorify God by using the gifts He has given us.”  From what I see, it looks like Steven and his team are being true to their mission, and demonstrating what it means to be a Christian entrepreneur.

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Eagle Ventures

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“Launching our startup hasn’t required changing how the core of the university works, it isn’t competing with the core operation for resources, and most importantly it supports the core mission of the organization.  Do you see similar opportunities where God has you?”

I drafted the below in September 2015 for my series in MinistryTech, but ended up not using it.  I think it does provide a great introduction to what I’m doing at Oklahoma Christian and why.

One of my goals in this series has been to stretch your assumptions about “startups” to include new ventures started inside of churches and other Christian organizations.  Eagle Works is an example to help make that more tangible.   

Cross-Shaped People

God has blessed me with a long and successful career in technology industries.  I graduated with an engineering degree, started work as a software developer, and moved into product development and corporate management.  Along the way, I did a few startups and spent a couple of years consulting primarily with startups.  As my most recent corporate stint felt like it was drawing to a close, I stopped to prayerfully consider what next.  How could God use all the experience and knowledge He has given me to bless others and advance His Kingdom?  As 1 Peter 4:10 commands us “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.”

As I reflected, I realized that the times in my career when I was either launching a startup or working closely with startups were the most fun, exciting, and challenging in my career.  Although none of my startups made me financially wealthy, God provided for our needs and richly blessed me by stretching and growing me.  I believe these seasons shaped me in ways that helped me be successful in my corporate jobs and in many other areas of my life.

I felt called to find a way to reinvest this experience and knowledge into young Christians, to help them have similar experiences and to be stretched and to grow into leaders that can impact the world for God’s glory in whatever field that God calls them to.

I started talking to lots of people to get their perspectives and to develop a plan for how this might tangibly take shape.  I am grateful to the dozens of people willing to sit down with me to share their experiences and observations.  One of the best conversations I had was not specific to young Christians, but rather to college students.  Tom Boozer, director of the eScholars program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City really helped crystallize my own observations.  Tom said “Russ, you and I both know that, when hiring people into corporate jobs, we want someone who can do the current job, but more than that, we want that star athlete who we know will excel no matter what situation we throw them into.”  

Tom introduced me to a concept developed by Tina Seelig, the executive director of Stanford’s Technology Venture’s Program.  She coined the term “T-shaped people” to describe “those with a depth of knowledge in at least one discipline and a breadth of knowledge about innovation and entrepreneurship that allows them to work effectively with professionals on other disciplines to bring their ideas to life.”  I realized that my passion could be described as helping to create “Cross-shaped people” – like Tina’s T-shaped people, but also directing their work and lives to the glory of God.

Oklahoma Christian University

So, where’s the best place to find and help young Christians?  How about a Christian university?  I already had a relationship with Oklahoma Christian University, so I reached out to see how my passion might fit into their vision for the university.  

As a liberal arts university, OC already had a deep appreciation for training students to be both deep in their discipline but also to have a breadth of knowledge across disciplines.  My interest in extending that to innovation and entrepreneurship was a strong fit and one that paralleled other innovation efforts at the school.

So, in August of this year I moved my family to Oklahoma City and began work as the Entrepreneur in Residence for Oklahoma Christian University.

Eagle Ventures

Even before I officially arrived on campus, the administration created Eagle Works, LLC as the legal entity to house the startup businesses to be birthed from my efforts. I’m using the name Eagle Ventures to represent the broader set of entrepreneurial activities God is using me to drive across the university.  As with any Lean Startup, I have a collection of hypotheses about how Eagle Ventures will create value for and serve my target customers (the university, students, faculty, alumni, and the community).  But my most important early work has been to get out of the building and start testing those hypotheses.  Discussions with the target audiences have been helpful, but our most critical early efforts have been to launch a “minimal viable product” version of the value proposition.

The hypothesis behind the value proposition is that we can create value for all of the target audiences by helping students launch successful startups.  The first week of classes, I presented to computer science and business classes on the opportunity to develop the business plan for a potential new business to commercialize software the university had developed for its spiritual life program.  We have pulled together a team of 4 students focused on software development, server infrastructure, marketing, and finance who are digging into all aspects of what it would take to successfully launch a software business.  In December, we will present the plan to the leadership of the university and alumni potential investors.  Between now and then, I expect we will all learn a lot.  Perhaps next year, if God chooses to bless our efforts, I’ll be able to profile this new software startup! [Which He did, and I did, as you’ll eventually see posted here.]

What are the lessons that you can already take from Eagle Works?  I think there are four key factors at Oklahoma Christian that have led to our strong start.  First, the university was willing to embrace a model that didn’t fit their normal academic structure and yet still fit with their mission of transforming lives for Christian faith, scholarship, and service.  Second, the university works very well across traditional organizational boundaries (specifically I work very closely with the deans and faculty of multiple colleges).  Third, as a relatively small university, the students similarly are not as siloed as at larger schools – business majors find it easy to interact with computer science majors.  Fourth, the university is willing to make decisions much more rapidly than the traditional academic pace of decision making.  

Launching our startup hasn’t required changing how the core of the university works, it isn’t competing with the core operation for resources, and most importantly it supports the core mission of the organization.  Do you see similar opportunities where God has you?

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Christian Homeschool Network

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“Looking backwards, what would I have done differently at this stage in the development of the business?  I think we should’ve done a much better job of customer discovery.  When we talked to people, or showed them the service, we subconsciously led the discussion to hear what we wanted to hear…”

Here’s my profile of Christian Homeschool Network from the October 2015 issue of MinistryTech magazine.

Over the past several months, we’ve discussed what it means to be a startup (in business or ministry) and defined a startup this way: a new venture working to solve a problem where the solution is not obvious and success is not guaranteed.  We’ve also discussed what it means to be an entrepreneur, and specifically a Christian entrepreneur, which we defined as: a person, driven to glorify God in all he does, and ruled by the Word of God, who starts a new venture and is willing to risk a loss in order to achieve the success of the venture.  

Over the past few months I’ve started introducing you to specific Christian startups and entrepreneurs.  Some of these ventures and people may be ones that can help your church, ministry, or business, but my main intent is to encourage, inspire, and educate you as I hope you too will be growing as a Christian entrepreneur.

This month I’d like to use my most recent startup as a case study.   

7 Disciplines of Biblical Business Success

In 2008, I taught a class for 3 homeschool families on the “7 Disciplines of Biblical Business Success.”  As part of the class, the seven students formed into teams and developed business plans for innovative business ideas that they had developed.  To walk them through the process, I also developed a business plan for the idea of an online social network for Christian homeschooling families.  Through the course of the class, the idea took shape and feedback I was receiving indicated that it may be commercially viable.

In 2008, online social networks were an emerging phenomenon.  MySpace had ruled the market for the past several years, but Facebook would pass 100 million users by mid-year and pass MySpace by the end of the year.  The opportunity that we identified was that a) homeschooling families are natural networkers and have generally adopted computers into how they run their schools; b) online social networks provide core technologies and capabilities that could enhance the homeschooling environment, including providing an opportunity for social interaction amongst homeschooled kids; c) however, Christian homeschooling families have legitimate concerns about privacy and the safety of their kids on secular social network platforms.  Although not as big as MySpace and Facebook’s broad target market, with approximately 2 million homeschooled kids in the U.S. in 2008, the addressable market for this concept appeared big enough to support a business.

Hschooler.net

With that as background, we incorporated Christian Homeschool Network, LLC and began work on Hschooler.net, the online social network for Christian homeschooled families.  I documented many of the technical decisions we made along the way in a 2010 Christian Computing series titled “Launching Online.”   In short, we leveraged a lot of open source software and web-based services to be able to quickly launch with limited resources.

My primary goal with Christian Homeschool Network was to provide an educational opportunity for homeschooled students to learn what it meant to launch and operate a business in a way that is honoring to God.  Over the next several years, 9 different students served as interns for the company.  Unlike many internships, each student was given a significant role in the company, whether it was taking responsibility for graphic design, marketing, or product development or in writing software for new features.  I and a couple of other dads served as mentors and coaches helping the team make good decisions, and each semester the team met with an advisory board made up of business and ministry leaders, as well as parents representing the needs of the target market.  The interns received virtual shares in the company and whenever there was a profit, 50% of the profits were distributed to these virtual shareholders.  We averaged one distribution a year for four straight years.

By the end of 2008, we had a barebones version of the service up and running and began getting feedback from a few friends and family.  We continued to develop capabilities and make tweaks throughout 2009, officially launching in February 2010.  

Looking backwards, what would I have done differently at this stage in the development of the business?  I think we should’ve done a much better job of customer discovery.  When we talked to people, or showed them the service, we subconsciously led the discussion to hear what we wanted to hear – that this was a great idea; that people were scared of Facebook and MySpace; and that homeschooling families needed something like this.  We had a relatively complex revenue model (subscriptions, advertising, and in-app purchases using a virtual currency) but we didn’t do a good job of listening for whether people saw enough value in the service for it to generate meaningful revenues.  We focused on developing capabilities that people said they wanted (e.g. an online grade book) rather than addressing the needs that were keeping people from becoming active users.

Our first major pivot came in the summer of 2011.  We had realized that the biggest challenge we had was a lack of scale.  Anyone who joins Facebook will find existing friends who are already active users.  That wasn’t the case with Hschooler.net.  We decided to shift our primary target market from individual families to large groups of homeschooling families who would bring existing networks with them.  Our first such customer was Midwest Parent Educators, a network of over 1000 homeschooling families in the Kansas City area.

CXfriends

Our second major pivot came in the spring of 2013 when we rebranded from Hschooler.net to CXfriends, broadening our market to all Christian families and enabling us to target churches, Christian schools, and other organizations not exclusively homeschooling focused.  Unfortunately, we used this rebrand to also redesign the site and introduce a significant amount of new capabilities.  Despite our pre-launch testing, when we moved into production, the performance of the service took a significant hit.  Being near the end of the school year, we were also losing the focus of some of our core interns who had been with us from the beginning and were now approaching graduation.  Bottom line, we lost the opportunity to maximize the rebranding and we lost significant momentum.  Of course, Facebook had been continuing to increase in strength, making it ever harder to compete.

On August 1 of this year, we officially shut down CXfriends and ceased operations.  Although I am very happy with our success against our primary goal of providing learning experiences for the interns, our business success was limited.  We made mistakes and weren’t well prepared to recover quickly from those mistakes.  We failed to spend enough time with our target customers to truly understand them (those that embraced Facebook didn’t need us; those that rejected Facebook were just as likely to reject us).  But our biggest challenge was that our value proposition put us on the same battlefield as a very well resourced competitor with significant structural advantages that we could not overcome.

My prayer for the interns that passed through Christian Homeschool Network, LLC, and for you, is the same as Paul’s prayer in Colossian 1:9-14, which begins “For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God”.

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FamilyArc

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“Most of the time, technology is anti-personal; it drives us apart.  …the intimacy inherent in family relationships requires a focus on privacy that is largely absent in today’s online world.  It also requires a loving human touch that technology, by itself, cannot replicate.”

Here’s my profile of FamilyArc from the September 2015 issue of MinistryTech magazine.

Over the past several months, we’ve discussed what it means to be a startup (in business or ministry) and defined a startup this way: a new venture working to solve a problem where the solution is not obvious and success is not guaranteed.  We’ve also discussed what it means to be an entrepreneur, and specifically a Christian entrepreneur, which we defined as: a person, driven to glorify God in all he does, and ruled by the Word of God, who starts a new venture and is willing to risk a loss in order to achieve the success of the venture.  

Over the past couple of months I’ve started introducing you to specific startups and Christian entrepreneurs.  Some of these ventures and people may be ones that can help your church, ministry, family, or business, but my main intent is to encourage, inspire, and educate you as I hope you too will be growing as a Christian entrepreneur.

This month I’d like to introduce you to Chad Meyer and FamilyArc.   

First Came Fellowship One

Today, Chad Meyer is CTO of FamilyArc, but back in 2004, Chad was a young man who was greatly blessed to be one of the original developers at Fellowship Technologies.  Working on the Fellowship One church management system provided Chad not only the opportunity to grow in his skills writing software for highly scalable web-based platforms and as a manager, but also to be part of a Christian startup and part of a team leaning on their faith as they grew from almost nothing to a fast-growing small business and finally part of a larger company.

In 2013, as the Fellowship family was going through changes with it’s incorporation into ACTIVE network, Chad’s own family was going through changes, with the impending birth of their first child.  Chad and his wife prayerfully considered how God would use their gifts and talents.  Chad felt called to start his own company.

The Birth of BeFamily

With fatherhood looming, God placed on Chad’s heart a growing appreciation for family and stories that cross generations.  About the same time, fellow Christian entrepreneur, Ray Gary, shared with Chad about a road trip he took with his grandfather and how special it was to hear stories from his life, dating back to World War II and before.  Gary had never heard these precious memories before, and, as delighted as he was to hear them, it saddened him to think that his children and grandchildren likely would never have the same opportunity.  Hearing Gary’s experience helped crystalize for Chad an opportunity to use his technology skills to help families capture those stories.

From that seed, BeFamily sprouted – an online digital media platform for preserving family memories.  While still working at ACTIVE, Chad started building the platform and developing the business model.  Working nights and weekends, while also managing the transitions in his growing family, stretched Chad.  He’s thankful to God for using these experiences to grow and shape him.

From BeFamily to FamilyArc

When I talked to Chad, it was clear that his passion is for bringing families together.  Most of the time, technology is anti-personal; it drives us apart.  As he worked on BeFamily, his vision became more clear and he realized that the intimacy inherent in family relationships requires a focus on privacy that is largely absent in today’s online world.  It also requires a loving human touch that technology, by itself, cannot replicate.  Launching BeFamily provided the opportunity to see what worked and what didn’t and to learn from people what they are really looking for when capturing family stories, images, and videos.

After 6 months of developing BeFamily, Brian Patrick Donaghy joined with Chad in this mission.  As CEO Brian brought fresh perspectives and new direction.  I asked Chad if this was a “pivot,” like most startups go through and he said that it was more.  It was a fresh start.  Chad rebuilt the entire technology platform and Brian built a team to more fully address the needs of their client families, including curators, editors, biographers, photographers, videographers, and consultants.  With this new direction, the company also took on a new name – FamilyArc.  According to their website “At FamilyArc, we believe that sharing family memories connects current and future generations. Our private digital archive platform allows your family’s history to be captured beautifully and securely for years to come.”

How is Chad a Christian Entrepreneur?

When you visit FamilyArc’s website, you won’t see any references to God or Jesus or the Bible.  There’s no explicit focus on Christian families.  So, why have I included them in this article series?  I do believe that Chad is operating as a Christian entrepreneur, serving all kinds of families in a God honoring way.

The family is one of the foundational elements that God uses in his redemptive work.  God instituted the family in Genesis 1, and throughout the Bible He uses family relationships (e.g. God as our heavenly Father, the church as Christ’s bride) to reflect our relationship with Him.  I believe that Satan focuses so heavily on destroying the strength, integrity, and even definition of the family because of how powerfully God can use families.  Chad said that, even non-believers, as their hearts are softened through family love, get a sense of God’s love, and may become more open to spiritual truth.

Chad and other Christian leaders at FamilyArc actively incorporate prayer into their daily lives, and they seek how to best love God and love their neighbor when making business decisions. But to me, the most clear demonstration of how Chad and other believers at the company are different as Christian entrepreneurs from others is in their attitude towards their decisions.  They make a decision and move forward with confidence.  As Chad explained, “either God will make it successful, because He’s the one in control, not us, or He won’t, but he’ll use it for our growth and His glory.”

In talking to Chad, I sensed something that you don’t expect from a technology entrepreneur – a focus on humility and love.  Reflecting on the famous love passage in 1 Corinthians 13, I think all of us entrepreneurs could benefit from considering how to apply this truth to our startup journey: “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

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Aware3

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“Several years ago they observed that, in most areas of their lives, digital tools helped them stay connected throughout the week with their work, their families, their friends, and their sports teams, but they’d show up at church Sunday morning, be handed a paper bulletin, and after the service walk out the door and not be connected with the active work of the church until a week later.  From their experience with technology, they knew there could be a better solution.”

Here’s my profile of Aware 3 from the August 2015 issue of MinistryTech magazine.

Over the past several months, we’ve discussed what it means to be a startup (in business or ministry) and defined a startup this way: a new venture working to solve a problem where the solution is not obvious and success is not guaranteed.  We’ve also discussed what it means to be an entrepreneur, and specifically a Christian entrepreneur, which we defined as: a person, driven to glorify God in all he does, and ruled by the Word of God, who starts a new venture and is willing to risk a loss in order to achieve the success of the venture.  

Last month I started introducing you to specific Christian startups and entrepreneurs.  Some of these ventures and people may be ones that can help your church, ministry, or business, but my main intent is to encourage, inspire, and educate you as I hope you too will be growing as a Christian entrepreneur.

Aware3

This month I’d like to introduce you to Aware3 and their Co-Founder and CEO Tony Caudill.   

According to their website, “Aware3 exists to help your church connect with your people.”.  They build mobile apps which “help ministries drive greater generosity, build strong community and enhance connection well beyond Sunday morning.”  And that helps explain why Aware3 came to be.  Tony and his co-founder, Joe Terry, are busy people.  Several years ago they observed that, in most areas of their lives, digital tools helped them stay connected throughout the week with their work, their families, their friends, and their sports teams, but they’d show up at church Sunday morning, be handed a paper bulletin, and after the service walk out the door and not be connected with the active work of the church until a week later.  From their experience with technology, they knew there could be a better solution.

So Tony and Joe built an app for the church.  Everyone loved it and they saw the opportunity to help many more churches.  Of course that initial app was a mere shadow of the branded mobile apps they build today.  In Lean startup terminology, that first app was a “Minimal Viable Product” used to prove the concept and to get a reaction from potential customers and users.  It provided the starting point for continuing to iterate and improve both the front-end that the user sees and the back-end that links everyone together, builds the community, and provides the digital console that their church customers use to provide live content and manage the community.

Tony and Joe funded the startup themselves, working on it nights and weekends while continuing with their full-time (paying) jobs.  At first, as the business was growing, they took on a variety of clients, especially if the project would help build the capabilities they needed for achieving their vision of helping churches connect with their people.

A few months ago, I mentioned that one of the big changes I noticed when I returned to the startup world after about a decade in corporate jobs was how much more community-based entrepreneurship has become.  That certainly has been part of Aware3’s success story.  The company applied for and was accepted into Digital Sandbox KC, (according to their website, Digital Sandbox KC is a “partnership among private companies, universities, entrepreneurial support organizations and government agencies across the Kansas City region designed to spur the creation of high growth companies.”)  Tony was also selected as a Pipeline Fellow.  According to their website “Pipeline is an elite organization of the Midwest’s most successful, high-performance entrepreneurs.  Our Members work as one to face business challenges, funnel opportunities to their peers, and build market-leading technology and life-sciences business together.  Each year 10-12 new entrepreneurs are invited to join Pipeline as Fellows.  After an extensive selection process, new Fellows participate in a unique and rigorous year-long business leadership development program that blends workshop modules, advice from national experts, and a deepening of the relationships among new and current Pipeline Members.”

Of course, even if the startup community has become a tremendous resource in the past few years, old-fashioned networking has always been a key to business success.  One of Aware3’s big non-church customer wins came through the company’s relationship with VML, a global digital marketing agency.  VML needed help building an event-related mobile app for Southwest Airlines.  Although not their target market, the project helped Aware3 build credibility and provided capabilities that the company has been able to leverage for church events.

Another partnership that is clearly aligned with Aware3’s vision is their work with Church Community Builder.  As CCB says on their website “we can’t (and shouldn’t) do everything! We know what we are good at, and we know when we should collaborate with others to help you do ministry even better.”  For a startup with limited resources, this mindset is critical.  The partnership with CCB has made it easier for Aware3 to reach churches around the world and makes it even easier to implement powerful solutions for CCB churches.

After a couple of years of building Aware3 into a profitable business as a moonlight enterprise, Tony quit his job as an Accenture consultant and went full-time as CEO of Aware3.  This month marks the two-year anniversary of that commitment.

I asked Tony if he considers himself a Christian entrepreneur.  He shared details around some of the difficult decisions he has made – quitting the salaried job weeks after his son was born, taking on major non-core projects like Southwest Airlines, and becoming a Pipeline Fellow – he said each of those decisions required lots of prayer, counsel from close mentors, and looking for the Lord’s confirmation.  Sounds like a Christian entrepreneur to me!

I, for one, am excited for Aware3 as they continue to help many to do as Hebrews 10:24-25 commands us: “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

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World Help Solutions

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After writing several articles for Christian Computing magazine on the general concept of startups and what it means to be a Christian entrepreneur, I started to profile examples of Christian entrepreneurs and startups.  That same month, Christian Computing was rebranded Ministry Tech magazine.  Here’s my first profile from the July 2015 issue.

Over the past several months, we’ve discussed what it means to be a startup (in business or ministry) and defined a startup this way: a new venture working to solve a problem where the solution is not obvious and success is not guaranteed.  We’ve also discussed what it means to be an entrepreneur, and specifically a Christian entrepreneur, which we defined as: a person, driven to glorify God in all he does, and ruled by the Word of God, who starts a new venture and is willing to risk a loss in order to achieve the success of the venture.  

Over the coming months, I hope to introduce you to a number of Christian startups and entrepreneurs.  Some of these ventures and people may be ones that can help your church, ministry, or business, but my main intent is to encourage, inspire, and educate you as I hope you too will be growing as a Christian entrepreneur.

World Help Solutions

The first startup I want to introduce is World Help Solutions, founded by Christian entrepreneur Landon Young.  Landon is an expert in clean water solutions.  He has a Masters in Ecological Science and Engineering and is pursuing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Engineering, Resiliency.  He has been involved in a variety of academic research projects including serving as a Global Research Fellow on clean water, clean energy, and sustainable agriculture for the National Science Foundation, and he currently serves as Director of Creativity and Innovation at William Jewell College. He has also been involved in global outreach and building bridges between cultures.  

His entrepreneurial journey began in earnest in 2009 while on a short term mission trip to Uganda, when he saw a young girl using a moldy oil can to collect water for her family. God used that moment to make painfully tangible the horrible reality facing the hundreds of millions of people around the world who lack access to clean water, and to develop deep compassion in Landon and a desire to help.

Landon first formed World Help Solutions as a non-profit providing consulting on clean water systems.  This phase of WHS took Landon and his team around the world and helped them see life and death challenges and implement solutions that saved lives.  But it also revealed the challenges in their approach.  Each project was all consuming, limiting their ability to scale to address broader challenges, and they often found that the situation when they landed in-country was actually quite different from what they’d planned for.

At the end of 2012, Landon was one of thirteen young entrepreneurs from four countries selected for the Kauffman Foundation’s Global Scholars program, an immersive six-month experience that gave the participants unprecedented exposure to leading scholars, policy makers, and business founders to shape them into world changing entrepreneurs.  

At a Kauffman event, Landon met Micah Canfield who had aligned passions, but who was more focused on the needs of short term missions teams.  Together they decided to reshape WHS into a for-profit business focused on building scalable solutions to take as many people as possible from dying to surviving, including addressing clean water, medical, and agribusiness solutions in the hardest hit areas around the world.

In Lean Startup mode, they developed their hypotheses around the problems teams face when traveling to different parts of the world to work alongside locals in addressing life threatening situations.  They believed that a scalable technology platform was essential, and that the technology wasn’t just for the perceived “white saviors” arriving from the developed world, but that the locals needed to be equally empowered with technology to ensure lasting impact.  Still in Lean Startup mode, they began interacting with potential partners, reshaping their hypotheses and eventually building a Minimal Viable Product mobile app that they were able to take to Malawi with missions teams from Church of the Resurrection of Leawood, Kansas.  They were able to learn, adjust, implement a new iteration, and send it with another missions team.  Along the way they learned some painful lessons (e.g. a well-meaning American teenager, armed with an iPad, can reach wrong conclusions with significant social implications in a rural community in Africa), but they were able to learn, adapt, and iterate again.

Over time, as they interacted with more churches, they realized that, while many churches had similar challenges, each situation was unique and required more (and unique) iterations.  To scale, they would need to lock down their product to a single flexible and scalable solution and focus all their resources on operating efficiently.  In other words, they would need to shift from being a lean startup to being a growing business.  

They also learned that working with churches could be a challenge.  Churches have learned how to get things done on a minimal budget.  They get many things for free, or perhaps by trading things that have been donated but they don’t need (e.g. tablet computers), for the things that they really could benefit from (such as WHS’ mobile app solutions).  Many churches also make major decisions during an annual budget cycle.  Miss the timing of that cycle, and you may have to wait nearly a year to close a sale.

Eventually, Landon, Micah, and the World Help Solutions team realized that they had the technology solution, but they were lacking other key resources required to scale to achieve their vision and objectives.  One of their customers, Mercy Alliance, approached them with the desire to acquire the technology.  The WHS team prayed about it and sought God’s will.  They realized that this was the best way to have the impact they desired, which was ultimately to glorify God, but to tangibly do so by helping save as many lives as possible.

The transaction was not your typical corporate takeover.  Instead, for-profit WHS donated its assets to not-for-profit Mercy Alliance.  Based on an independent valuation, the WHS principals were able to enjoy tax benefits, while the WHS team has an opportunity to continue to participate in seeing the magnified long-term impact of their venture.

Titus 3:14 tells us “And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful.”  It is my hope and prayer that these articles will help you be fruitful to the glory of God.

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The Fog of Familiarity

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I’m enrolled in the MBA program at Oklahoma Christian University. (It’s about time, huh?) I’m also serving there as Entrepreneur in Residence. I’m having a blast.

For one of my classes this term, we had a team project and presentation where we had to analyze a company in the Fortune 100. My team chose AT&T. For part of what I presented, I quickly gave a historical overview of the company. While there are lots of twists and turns and details, in general there wasn’t really anything new for me. But for some reason, as I thought about how to organize the history for presentation to make it easy for the audience to get it in a sticky way, I realized something I hadn’t really realized before…

My father’s generation thinks of AT&T as Ma Bell – everything having to do with the telephone, from the device in your kitchen, to the local and long distance networks, to the friendly operator, to the phone book. I remember when we were doing our first Internet startup, Digital Frontiers, back in 1995, one of our early customers was a local publishing company. As we were interacting with their CIO, we asked him who he used for local connectivity to the Internet. This was in the days when many CLECs were popping up to compete with the RBOCs. He answered by saying “AT&T.” So we said, “you mean Southwestern Bell?” To which he said, “yeah, that’s what I said, Bell.” Despite the fact that I know he knew that AT&T had been broken apart about a decade before, in his mind, they were all still parts of the same Ma Bell, even if they were operating as separate companies. (Of course, if he said “AT&T” today, he’d be perfectly and precisely correct, but that’s another story…)

My generation thinks of AT&T as the Long Distance company. Ten cents a minute, if you call after 10pm. Not telephones. Not local. Just long distance.

My audience in my MBA class is roughly my son’s generation. To them, AT&T is a mobile operator. Sure they’re still in local and long distance and they even have AT&T branded telephones, but the ads running during timeouts in the ball game are all about mobile.

What will my grandson (if the Lord blesses me with one) think of AT&T as? A video company? A Mexican company? An IOT company? Time will tell…

When I used to speak frequently to Sprint customers visiting the headquarters in Kansas City, I would be asked to give the corporate overview. I would usually start by saying that part of my job was to cut through the “fog of familiarity.” When we’ve been doing business for a long time with a company, we tend to think of them as the company they were when we first encountered them. Sometimes it’s healthy to step back and get a new perspective on the companies you think you know.

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How to be a Christian Entrepreneur

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Here’s my “Startup” column from the June 2015 issue of Christian Computing magazine.

Over the past few months, I’ve introduced the concept of a “startup” and we’ve discussed why the church should really care about startups.  We’ve developed this definition for our discussion: A startup is a new venture working to solve a problem where the solution is not obvious and success is not guaranteed. We learned that the Lean Startup methodology introduces the scientific method into the new venture process, with multiple hypothesis-test-observe-refine iterations, and we discussed how we can implement this in our ministries (and our businesses).  This month, I want to talk about the person doing this – what does it mean to be a Christian Entrepreneur?

What is an Entrepreneur?

In my previous articles, I’ve used the phrase “startup” quite a bit and we even developed a good working definition that can be used whether starting a new venture in business or in ministry, but we haven’t used the word “entrepreneur.”  What does that big word mean, and how does it apply to what we’ve been talking about?

According to Merriam-Webster.com, an entrepreneur is “a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money.”  In other words, an entrepreneur is a person who starts a startup.  Of course, the definition that Merriam-Webster uses works great if you’re starting a for-profit business, but just as we had to modify our definition of “startup” to encompass ministry startups as well as business ones, I think it’s worthwhile to do the same for “entrepreneur.”  I propose that we broaden the definition to say “an entrepreneur is a person who starts a new venture and is willing to risk a loss in order to achieve the objective.”

What is a “Christian” entrepreneur?

Hopefully you can get a sense from that definition of an entrepreneur of how we might be “all in” when we’re pursuing the cause of Christ, but I think it’s helpful for us to explicitly think about what might be different about a Christian entrepreneur in contrast to an unbelieving entrepreneur, whether we’re involved in ministry or business.

Some would argue that the word Christian works much better as a noun than as an adjective, and I agree there’s some wisdom in that claim.  If you’re in that camp, then I think it helps if we start by thinking about the term “Christian entrepreneur” as if there were a comma between the two words, so for example I might say: “I want to be a Christian, entrepreneur” – I want to be successful in my calling as a Christian and in my calling as an entrepreneur.

I’m going to look very briefly at what it means to be a Christian, and when I’m done, I’m hoping that you’ll see and believe that the comma we’ve temporarily inserted there can’t act like a brick wall separating how we act as a Christian from how we act as an entrepreneur.  No, in reality, what the comma should be is more like a lens, applying what it means for us to be a Christian on what it means to be an entrepreneur.  I say that now, even though you may not yet agree with me, so that as you read what follows, you’ll have in mind both what it means to be a Christian independent of anything else in our lives and how being a Christian might impact the way in which we act as an entrepreneur.

So, what does it mean to be a Christian?  God has given us the Bible to answer that question.  The entire book speaks to that topic, but especially the New Testament Epistles teach us how to live as redeemed believers in Christ living in a fallen world.  

As a very simple example, I’d like to briefly look at three verses from Colossians: “And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.  And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (Colossians 3:15-17). 

I think a very simple summary of these three verses is that we are commanded to do three things.  

First, we are commanded to “let the peace of God rule in your hearts” – in other words, the peace of God, which comes through the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, to those who believe in His name, is to rule in us.  When the unruly passions (described earlier in Colossians 3) rise up in our lives, we are to put them off and put on the love of Christ, living our lives in a way that demonstrates the peace that we have through repentance and reconciliation with God.  In other words, the way we live our lives should be different from how the lost around us live their lives, and I believe the way we operate our businesses will also be different.

Second, we are commanded to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” – in other words the Word of God is to live in us, as a master over our lives.  We must spend time in the Bible and seek the wisdom of God from Biblical teaching, Godly counsel, and even being encouraged in the Biblical truths reflected in hymns and spiritual songs.  Although this commandment comes second in the list, it is a prerequisite for the first commandment, as God’s Word informs us in how the peace of God should rule in our lives.  As Christians, all of our decisions in life (and in our business) must be approached prayerfully and seeking the wisdom and will of God as revealed in His Word.

Third, we are to let the name of the Lord Jesus be glorified in all that we do.  We must be thankful for God’s grace and blessings in our lives (and our businesses), acknowledging that He is the source of all good things, and desiring to please Him, to glorify Him, and to proclaim Him to the lost world around us.  As a Christian, our driving motivation is different from the world’s.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to operate a profitable business, but we can’t let our desire for profits rule how we run our business.  Instead, we must seek to glorify God in all that we do, including in operating our businesses with excellence.

With that as a foundation, I propose this definition: A Christian Entrepreneur is a person, driven to glorify God in all he does, and ruled by the Word of God, who starts a new venture and is willing to risk a loss in order to achieve the success of the venture.

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