1/3/23 - PowerPod: The Day I Met Stanley Tam

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the iWork4Him Power Pod. I'm Michael Miracle producer for iWork4Him, the voice of the faith and work movement. We are on mission to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. Each quick listening Power Pod is designed with you in mind and jam packed with Kingdom resources to help you connect your faith and work.

How will this impact your work? Let's find out right now.

Jim: Today I want you to hear the story, the founding story, and more about the Fellowship of Companies for Christ International - FCCI. You've heard us talk about it a couple times on iWork4Him in the last five years. But today you're gonna hear from one of the founders, Bobby Mitchell and the current CEO Chad Merrill. Gentlemen, Bobby, Chad, welcome to iWork4Him.

Being one of the pioneers of the Faith and work movement, Bobby Mitchell, as you guys you started this with well, I've read your, reread your book again this morning on the plane, but I mean, the only faith and work book out when you realized that [00:01:00] your faith and your work should be connected was Stanley Tam's book, which was written in the sixties. That was the only book that was out there and available.

Bobby Mitchell: Well, really There was one book before Stanley.

Jim: Oh, which one? Oh, well, the one from Charles Sheldon.

Bobby Mitchell: Charles Sheldon, 1896, in His Steps.

Jim: Yes. We know the book well and have talked about it on the air.

Bobby Mitchell: So I prayed to receive Christ. My wife recommitted her life as well. And so we started going to every seminar we could find.

And what happened along the way was I realized that what I was saying I believed was not reflected in the way I lived my life and that I needed to make changes in my life. And the Lord brought in this book In His Steps. He brought in a friendship with Larry Burkett and he brought in a model of my dad, who was a man of great integrity and that started me down a path of questioning if I had integrity, deciding I didn't and making changes to ensure that I did. And so [00:02:00] Larry and I, after a year or so meeting every week or every other week, decided we'd question whether you could have a business and operated it on biblical principles.

Jim: Right. I'm gonna have you stay there. Stop on that part of the story. I'm gonna take a step back cause I really want to go into detail on that in the next segment. But I love that story. But to say, Hey, your good friend Larry Burkett . How did you become good friends with Larry Burkett? I mean, what a, what a fantastic privilege. You were friends with Larry Burkett and Bruce Wilkinson.

Bobby Mitchell. When you hear the word iWork4Him, what does that mean to your heart?

Bobby Mitchell: It's just what I believe. We need to work for the Lord. Larry had some foundational principles. He said, God owns it all and we're stewards of what he's entrusted us with, and we need to use that for his glory and not ours. So that became the mantra of Fellowship of Companies for Christ and my life.

Jim: How and [00:03:00] when did that paradigm shift happen for you?

Chad Merrill: So, quite frankly, that paradigm shift happened to me in, in a period of, of little, and there was a very difficult period of time, and I was discipled through it. And several folks in FCCI helped me through that period. And then when there came a time of plenty and it became impressed on me that we have an obligation that God owns it all and we've been blessed. And so they came together kind of simultaneously - my personal life and in my work life.

Jim: Bobby, when you and Larry Burkett started this exploration, you're like, you didn't even have a name for it. You didn't have the name Faith and Work movement. Yeah. I mean, none of that stuff existed. You guys set out to go, what does the Bible really have to say about work or business? Right?

Bobby Mitchell: That's right. We fairly quickly assembled a group of other people that had some interest. We invited 80 people to come to a meeting to see, to sort of share the thought of studying the Bible and trying to operate a company on biblical principles. [00:04:00] And from that group, nine of 'em wanted to meet weekly or every other week.

And then seven of 'em ended up becoming what we call the founders of FCCI. And so it was a great time, but it was not a mild deal. We would argue, we would scream, we would fight, we would challenge each other, and we worked through a process, but we had a principle.

Jim: But what was this? Lemme just stop you there for a second. You were arguing. You were fighting. Why? I'm guessing this, but was there so much frustration because some people thought that the Bible didn't have a thing to say about business?

Bobby Mitchell: No. I would say all of us were like-minded in believing the Bible was the answer.

And so we wanted to look to the Bible to give us reality, but the application was what was difficult. How do we apply love your neighbors, yourself? What does that look like in a business? And so there was a lot of discussion. It's a little tongue in cheek to say loud arguing and shouting and everything.

Jim: Okay, but 44 years [00:05:00] ago, were you hearing sermons on, Hey, faith and work should be interconnected? Were you hearing that your workplace - because you ran a big company. What was your company called again?

Bobby Mitchell: Applied ceramics.

Jim: Applied Ceramics. So I'm assuming this wasn't pots and you know, vases.

Bobby Mitchell: It was electronic parts for industry and it was catalytic converters for automobiles and that type stuff.

Jim: So, oh, so you were on the cutting edge of catalytic converters, cuz 74 is when they started putting 'em in cars.

Bobby Mitchell: Yeah. 73. Yes. 73 .

Jim: Okay. I stand corrected. Okay. I was pretty close. I was only eight when they came on a cars so I thought that was pretty good that I knew that, you know, that history. So, I mean, this was a new concept because you weren't hearing it from the pulpit.

Bobby Mitchell: We didn't hear it from anybody. It was literally something God put in my heart to say, I want to do that. I wanna find integrity in my life. I want my life to reflect what I say I believe. And Larry was a partner, more knowledgeable than me, somebody I could look up to and we could dialogue and come up with a plan for doing it.

And so we invited these people to come. [00:06:00] Nine of 'em came and we started having these meetings. And so the, the meeting was to try to work out principles of, of how do you apply this?

In the book, In His Steps...

Jim: Writen by Charles Sheldon in 1896. You're talking about, you're thinking in 74 this was a big idea. Charles Sheldon wrote a book 78 years earlier.

Bobby Mitchell: That's right. And it had a guy in the book that tried to operate a store on biblical principles, and so that became sort of a model for how to do that.

And so we invited Bruce Wilkinson, who had come to one of the earlier conferences to be the conference speaker at a place called Point Clear, Alabama. And Bruce was in there and he was teaching. And then he said, I've got it. I understand what y'all are talking about now. Everything that I've been teaching you at this conference is wrong, , and we need to, to get down on our knees and pray for God to guide us.[00:07:00]

So there were 44 people at that conference. We got down on our knees, we wept, we cried, we whatever, and God united and that really was the point in time that FCCI was birthed.

Martha: Maybe we could hear just real quickly, what FCCI actually is.

Chad Merrill: Absolutely. So at a high level, FCCI is an organization of business owners and CEOs and, and business leaders in some cases, whose vision, the vision has remained the same from the beginning days, which was to transform the world through Christ, one company owner at a time. And then the mission or the manifestation of how that lives out is to encourage and equip people to run their businesses and conduct their lives according to business principles.

So we are essentially, you know - the vision is to transform the world through business. And the mission of FCCI is to encourage and equip, if you boil it down to those two simple terms. And, you know, along with that, in the shadow of Billy Graham's passing, a lot has been guided by and it's used many times and I'm sure used it on air many times of his [00:08:00] statement, his prediction of the next, great movement of God will be in the workplace. And so that's really a guiding principle behind FCCI.

Bobby Mitchell: I went and visited Stanley May, May 7th, 1980. How many meetings do you remember the date of?

Jim: Well, but with Stanley Tam, I can imagine I'd know the dates of.

Bobby Mitchell: So I went in the his office and I asked him to tell me about his work. I'd read his book. He had a film that he had developed. We'd shown the film and I said, what is your major goal? He said, I wanna lead five people a day to Christ. And I just said Come again. Tell me what you said. My church didn't lead five people a day to Christ. The churches of Atlanta may not lead five people a day to Christ, but Stanley Tam did.

I said, how are you doing? He pulled out a little black book. He said, well, today is May 7th. I had a good month in April. I led 222 people to Christ. And so he knew how many people he had led. He said, you see these filing cabinets, they're [00:09:00] full of people that we've led to Christ.

He had Christ is the answer on six foot high letters on his side of his building and limo. And Stanley - that, that sort of sparked the thought. And Larry and I took that and beat that around a little bit. And we decided that if, if there. . One, one other thing Stanley was doing, he was giving 2 million away a year. This is 1980.

Jim: Which was huge. Must be like giving away 200 million a year.

Bobby Mitchell: A big number. And he had planted over a hundred churches internationally. And so I'm an engineer and so I took the a hundred churches, the, the all these numbers and I put 'em together and said, goodness, we could complete the Great Commission in three years if, if we had enough companies like Stanley's company to do it.

And so it gave us a model from the very early time of - this is just a few months before the Point Clear meeting that we talked about with Bruce Wilkinson. So it was a powerful thing to give us a guide to accomplish [00:10:00] God's ministry and turn this world around.

Jim: Jesus led the groundwork for this 2000 and some years ago. I mean, he was the greatest kingdom collaborator. He was pulling from all different sectors of society except for the religious people. Although he was talking to the religious people, but they didn't like what he had to say because he was threatening their money, power, and control structure.

Bobby, have you ever heard a sermon? You got a few more years on me. Have you ever heard a sermon about Jesus' reputation in the marketplace?

Bobby Mitchell: I'm sure I have. I don't know that I, I remember it.

Jim: Chad, have you?

Chad Merrill: Not that I can recall.

Jim: I mean, that's one of those things when, when we look at Jesus, most of us think of Jesus as a three and a half year itinerant preacher. But he was a small business guy. He might not have been an FCCI guy, cuz he was really a small business guy. I mean, was maybe a, he was maybe a solopreneur.

But I mean, his reputation in the marketplace had to be spotless. It had to be, like you were talking about your dad, Bobby, a man of integrity. Jesus had to have a fantastic reputation in the marketplace, didn't he? Or his ministry would've meant nothing.

Bobby Mitchell: Well, Jesus, you know, spoke the truth and he had [00:11:00] no patience for people who didn't speak the truth. So we see a real conflict in Jesus in that he, these people that didn't speak the truth, he had no interest in spending time on them, but the people that did maybe imperfectly, he wanted to pour his life into. And that's sort of a model of what FCCI is about. We are trying to pour this ministry into people's lives that want to make a difference, that want to speak the truth, that want to have integrity, that want to reach the world, that want to see it turn around. So those are the sort of the foundational things that we wanna see FCCI do.

Jim: All of a sudden the walls are coming down and everybody's going, Hey, this is about the kingdom. It's not about our ministry.

Martha: I think we've learned too that we're in an era where the world really doesn't have boundaries. I mean, we can, we have access everywhere. And one of the things that we know with our radio program that it's not a message just for Tampa Bay. It's not a message just for Jacksonville, Florida. It's a [00:12:00] message for every Christ follower and pre-Christian because as they're exposing themselves to, what is this about following Christ well, what's it look like?

How do you walk that out? And if Christ, we say all the time on the radio, if Christ changes us, he's supposed to change all of us. Not leave our wallet, not leave our our business card out of the equation. So hearing that and just knowing that - it can have such a big impact.

Jim: So what does involvement with fCCI look like? Cuz I know the once a year, the last several years you've been doing your annual conference has been in Florida because, you know, everybody wants to go to Florida. Okay, but what, what else does involvement in FCCI look like?

Chad Merrill: So, as you said, the conferences were big from the very beginning, so we have at least one annual international conference a year.

This year we'll have three or four, a couple of regional conferences as well. Just back from Albuquerque last week. And we have one coming up in North Dallas in October. . So that's one primary way. The second way is we try to assimilate business leader groups. So you [00:13:00] can think of as chapters in a city where we put like-minded businesses folks who want to learn how to be equipped and they want to be encouraged and how to run their business according to biblical principles. And so we provide materials and groups and they become encouragement groups for each other.

Jim: Mm. And you've, I mean, you've had thousands of people involved with FCCI over the last 44 years. The impact, Bobby Mitchell, when you look at the impact of FCCI on a business owner, leader, a CEO , what do you see once they understand, once they get it? How much does that transform their company?

Bobby Mitchell: It totally transforms. We believe in FCCI that life change really happens through small groups. And so we see groups as being a dynamic that can change lives. And so I think that if somebody really commits to do it, you can almost see it in their eyes that I'm, I'm serious about this and I wanna follow in these steps.

And then all of a sudden you see them bear fruit. You see them lead people to [00:14:00] Christ. You see them grow people up in Christ. You see them do service projects in their communities. And so it's sort of a total change. It's going from, I wasn't saved to I'm saved. It's going from I was a baby Christian to I'm now growing rapidly as a Christian. And so it's dynamic and it's visible and it happens quick.

Jim: When you look, Bobby, over the 44 years - if you look at what, like one or two of the most major concepts that Christ following business owners need to understand in order to make that paradigm shift, what are one or two of those things that they just, they need to understand and then all of a sudden it starts to transform their lives?

Bobby Mitchell: Well, I believe, first of all, they've gotta be a Christian. And there are a lot of folks out there that go to church that are not Christian, right? We've had people come to FCCI conferences and, and get converted at a conference, and almost every conference we have one or two people do that. So they came, not because they thought they were not a [00:15:00] Christian, but they just didn't know. And so they need to be a Christian.

And then I would say that some of the things we've spoken about before, salvation, sanctification and service are the outreach of - activity that these companies need to have. And I think going way back, God owns it all and that we're stewards.

And I think, you know, it's a major cultural shift to say, I don't own this money. It's not my money. And so, what it says is I'm gonna use everything I've got as a good manager, a steward to impact the world around me. And so, whatever Lord you want I will do. And so it's complete change. It's complete bowing the knee to the Lord.

Jim: Walking by faith, running your business. Unbelievable.

Chad, as you look at the next generations, you look at the millennials and you look at the digital gem, which comes up after them. How is FCCI preparing to reach out to the millennials? Cause they have a totally different worldview. They want everything that they do to be significant. [00:16:00] How are you guys reaching out to them? .

Chad Merrill: So we're spending a lot of time with them and you'll see more and more of them at our conferences and in our groups. In some ways we've got a little easier path because millennials get a, get a difficult rap in a lot of ways, but a lot of reason is because they're authentic and they wanna see authenticity, right? And so if they like or don't like something, you usually hear it very straightforward. And oftentimes I think the older generations hear what they don't like or they hear straightforward talk and that becomes a divide. But I think we've got a great opportunity because they do want more, they do wanna make a difference, Christian or non-Christian.

So I think the millennials that we've been associated with and the new entrepreneurs, and, you know, let's face it, there's thousands, tens, and hundreds of thousands that are starting companies now, earlier and earlier than ever. You know, when they catch a passion, I believe they can really, truly impact the world maybe even at a greater pace, likely at a greater pace than we did and the generations before us did.

Martha: I know we talk a lot about the fact that we pray that that generation doesn't have to learn what we had to [00:17:00] learn. You know, we segmented all these sections of our life and we've had to learn how to bring 'em back together, whereas we would hope that these future generations will just get it - that God, when he changes us, he changes all of us.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him!

Outro: Thank you for listening to the iWork4Him Power Pod with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Want more? Hear the full broadcast at iWork4Him.com. Stay connected and receive power packed content when you sign up for our blog at iWork4Him.com or follow us on social media @ iWork4Him .

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