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Heeding the Call to
Spiritreneurship
by
Laurie Beth Jones
I
stood before 250 business leaders who had
gathered in a palace in Austria for a special
summit on Innovative Leadership, and asked them
one simple question. "What percentage of people
would you estimate are in the wrong jobs?" Their
almost unanimous response was "seventy percent."
They gave that answer, in the form of an
exclamation, in unison. There was then a long
silence as we all contemplated the implications
of it. If indeed what these business leaders
believe is true, that seven out of ten people
are working in the wrong jobs, then putting
those people in the right positions could
improve productivity, morale, performance, and
profitability, which is every business leader's
ultimate goal.
Let me ask you a question: Which musical note is
a wrong note? Is B-flat a wrong note? C sharp?
Obviously, there are no "wrong" musical notes,
but only notes that are in the wrong place at
the wrong time, thus destroying the harmony. I
believe that Heaven will consist of every person
doing what s/he most loves -- of every note
being in its right place. To me, Hell would be
an eternity of people having to do work they
hate.
Perhaps you are one of those people. You want
desperately to express your talents, but you've
been stuck in the wrong seat and given the wrong
instrument in the orchestra. Perhaps you are
feeling guilty about your lackluster
performance. Maybe you are feeling angry and are
not exactly sure where to direct your
frustration. Or, perhaps you are hearing sounds
that indicate you need to be doing something
else, but are not sure exactly where those
sounds are coming from, or why.
Those sounds may be your future calling, may be
your call to spiritreneurship. "The Launch" will
offer you practical examples of how to discern
what is in your heart, and thus, your future.
Maybe you are feeling the first tickle of wing
feathers beneath your clothes. Maybe, like
Gideon, you are hiding in a low-level job,
thinking God can't find you there. Maybe you are
a widow, in the sense that you have lost your
former identity, either through downsizing or
retirement or death of a loved one. God has a
message for you, and it's good. Read these
pages, and think about the words of Jesus, the
world's most original spiritreneur. And remember
always what he taught us, "With God, nothing is
impossible."
He Believed He Could Fly
Riding one of the winged
creatures, he flew.
-- 2 Samuel 22:11
For each spiritreneur there is a moment
when the lights go on -- when every cell in the
body seems to shout, "I can fly!"
Fly where? Fly when? Fly how? Fly with whom?
These must all be predicated by the very first
question, which is: "Why fly?"
The answer is: "Because you can." Every single
human being is capable of soaring beyond the
daily grind and experiencing the bliss of
heavenly support and motion.
Spiritreneurs are those who bring their heart
and mind and soul and strength -- fully
integrated -- into the work they do, and they do
their work to honor God. Therefore, a waiter who
makes his guests feel like kings and queens can
be just as much a spiritreneur as the housewife
who decides to start selling baskets out of her
home so she can spend more time with her
children.
I met a spiritreneur recently when I was on a
speaking engagement at Lake Tahoe. The shuttle
driver, Ron, met me at the gate with a
hand-lettered sign with my name on it. He smiled
and said, "I'll be your chauffeur for the
evening." He gathered my luggage and, whistling
softly, loaded it up.
He got out a small step stool to help me up into
the large van and then we began our journey to
the Squaw Valley resort.
I asked him how long he had been driving
shuttles and he said, "About five years." I
asked him if he loved his work and he said, "Oh,
yes. Look at this countryside! I get to drive
through it every day and share it with people
from all over the world . . . And on the weekend
I get on my motorcycle and head into the
wilderness with my buddies to camp out and do
some fly fishing."
I asked him what he'd done before and he said
he'd been a professional snowboarder,
representing and demonstrating snowboards at ski
resorts, until he broke his back.
"It took me a year to recover, but the doctors
and therapists were so nice to me. I met friends
I didn't know I had -- and the resort where the
accident happened picked up all my medical
expenses. How blessed I was, even through that
ordeal. . . ."
He asked about me and my work and finally we
arrived at our destination. He bounded out of
the driver's seat to help me out and acted
surprised when I gave him a large tip. "Wow, I
wasn't expecting this!" He laughed.
I smiled and said, "It does my heart good to see
people who love what they do."
Contrast Ron's attitude with what my friend
Catherine Calhoun ran into when she was running
a seminar for a government agency. Catherine
told me that one young man in the seminar had
come up wanting to talk to her. He told her he
was twenty-eight years old, had been married
five years to a woman who also worked for this
agency, and that he hated his job. He said, "I
get a knot in my stomach starting Sunday night
and I dread Monday morning when the alarm goes
off. I get to work and begin counting the
minutes until the day is over."
Since his wife worked in a different part of the
building Catherine figured it wasn't marital
strife that was causing the problem. She asked
how long he'd been working there and he said,
"Seven years. And I can't wait until I retire."
Catherine asked if he'd ever considered doing
anything else, and he replied, "Yes, but this is
a very small town. I couldn't get a job anywhere
that pays the salary and benefits I have here.
So, I guess I'll just bite the bullet and wait
for the gold watch." This young man was the same
age as my shuttle driver, who probably was
earning slightly above minimum wage. Who do you
think was the richer of the two?
(When I spoke to the same agency in another part
of the country I asked the people to write down
their number one goal in life. More than 90
percent of the cards came back to me with two
words on them: To Retire.)
Catherine exhorted the young clock watcher to
consider doing something else -- anything else
-- for a living. "Waiting to retire is no way to
live," she said. "For my sake -- for your sake
-- please promise me that I won't see you here
when I come back next year."
"Do you think he'll do it?" I asked her.
She sighed. "I don't know. There was already a
dead look in his eyes."
How sad. How tragic. How sin-full.
Show me a person who can't wait to retire and
I'll show you someone who hates his or her job.
I'll show you someone who has been crawling to
and from work every day just waiting for the
clock and the calendar to say, "You can do
something else now. It's official. Now you can
fly."
In a little booklet called "The Four Spiritual
Laws," distributed by Campus Crusade for Christ,
readers are told that "Sin means separation from
God." If sin is separation from God, what could
be more sin-full than choosing to devote your
life energies and talents to work that does not
honor God? If your work does not honor God it
does not honor you. And conversely if it does
not honor you, it does not honor God.
Slavery is alive and well in America today, yet
most of the chains are invisible. The keys to
our freedom are always within reach -- if only
we stretch.
Jesus is looking at you right now, no matter how
downtrodden you may be feeling. He says to you
with joy --
Wake up, Wake up,
And clothe yourself with strength.
Put on your beautiful clothes.
Rise from the dust,
take off the slave bands from your neck . . .
recognize that it is I, yes, I who speaks to
you.
-- (Isaiah 52:1-2, 6)
Jesus looked at the people intent on
killing him and said, "Destroy this temple, and
in three days I will raise it up." (John 2:19).
Jesus believed he could fly.
Questions:
1. Is it possible to be a spiritreneur
who technically works for someone else?
2. Of the two young men discussed in the
chapter, who was more of a spiritreneur and
why?
3. Do you believe you can fly?
4. If not, what's keeping you crawling?
He Guarded the Right Treasure
For where your treasure is,
there will be your heart.
-- Luke 12:34
Recently I met with a woman whose highest
gift is painting. An award-winning designer and
artist, she had put her art career on hold to
raise her family. With the final child out of
the home and gone, Eva now had piles of art
books and supplies in every room. In fact, she
had collected so much material for painting that
she no longer had room in her studio to begin
the process. Although several people were
clamoring to commission her work, she found
herself unable to begin. After a friend
recommended that she get some breakthrough
career counseling she called me.
We met at a local coffee shop and began to
identify the obstacles that were keeping her
from pursuing her spiritreneurial dream. She
said, "I can't start painting until I organize
my studio."
"What's keeping you from organizing your
studio?"
"The feeling of being overwhelmed by the amount
of stuff I've collected."
"Why not hire someone to help you?"
She replied, "Because only I can sort through
what's really valuable."
"How long have you put off sorting through the
material?"
"Nine months. Besides, the last time I went
through the stacks of papers and files I found a
check for forty-five dollars. If I just hired a
stranger to throw away old papers that check
might have been tossed."
There was a long silence as we sipped our tea
and thought about what had been said. "Eva," I
finally asked, "how many paintings are not being
painted because of your clutter problem?"
"Countless," she replied.
"So the fear of tossing away a hidden
forty-five-dollar check is keeping you from
actualizing your lifelong dream?"
"Yes," she said, "I guess it is."
"Then you are guarding the wrong treasure."
Tears appeared in her eyes as she looked at the
two pieces of paper before her. On one she had
sketched her "problem" -- on the other her dream
of being a happy, busy, successful artist. "I
guess I have been," she said. One thing that
Jesus admonished us to do was to identify, and
then guard, the highest treasure.
Surely few treasures could be as valuable as our
God-given talents, dreams, and gifts. Yet how
often do we, like the unwise entrepreneur
identified in Matthew 23:13-30, bury and then
guard the wrong gift? In the parable of the
three talents, two spiritreneurs recognize that
the treasure is not the money or talent they
were given as much as it was their ability to
multiply it. "Be fruitful and multiply" was the
exhortation from God we received. The last was
to go forth and share all that we had seen and
heard the Master Multiplier do. When we guard
the wrong treasures, it is those around us who
ultimately suffer the loss.
Susan, a woman truck driver, had worked for
years running a moving company for two owners.
After they once again denied her a promotion,
she got mad and quit. A single mother with two
sons still at home, she took her $3,000 savings
and bought her own truck. She then ran an ad in
the classified section which read, "Two men and
a truck will move you." She was swamped with
calls. Her sons recruited their friends to help
handle the demand and she kept reinvesting the
profits. Three years later, she started a
franchise. She is now a multimillionaire. This
woman became successful because she correctly
identified the treasure she'd been given by
working for years at a moving company. The
treasure was not "a steady paycheck". The
treasure was the knowledge, relationships, and
experience God had invested in her while she was
working there. Finally, she decided to take her
talents and multiply them, rather than guard the
paycheck she had.
I wonder how many of us are investing time and
energy guarding the wrong treasures.
"A merchant goes looking for fine
pearls, and when he finds one that is
unusually fine, he goes and sells everything
he has, and buys that pearl" (Matthew
13:45-46).
Questions
1. What false treasures are keeping you
from multiplying your dream?
2. Identify some possible false treasures that
people guard.
3. How free is a guard anyway?
4. What would friends say your hidden or unused
talents are?
5. Are you willing to change your focus and let
the lesser treasures go?
Dear Lord,
You are the greatest jewelry appraiser of all
time. Please communicate to me in very clear
ways the value you have bestowed in and on me,
and then give me the courage-the sheer
courage-to go out and multiply the wealth in
my heart.
Amen
 This
article is excerpted from
Jesus, Inc : The Visionary Path : An
Entrepreneur's Guide to True Success by
Laurie Beth Jones. Reprinted with permission of
Crown Business, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may
be reproduced or reprinted without permission in
writing from the publisher.
Info/Order this book.
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