2/7/23 - PowerPod: Kingdom Business: It's the Why, Not the What

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the iWork4Him PowerPod. I'm Michael Miracle producer for iWork4Him, the voice of the faith and work movement. We are on a mission to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. Each quick listening PowerPod 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: Welcome to iWork4Him. We're Jim and Martha. We're in, we are in Lubbock, Texas. It's amazing. We've traveled 3,700 miles so far on the iWork4Him road trip, and this week we get to sit still in Lubbock, Texas for five nights. It's amazing. And we're on location at Kingdom at Work.

 And they're hosting the Kingdom Business Workshop this week. I can't wait for you guys to hear the stories that are gonna come, but before we get to our guest for today, please check us out online.

Martha: Yeah, so they can go to our website, which is I work the number four him.com . [00:01:00]And there you can connect to us on all our social media platforms as well as connect to us through a contact page. You know, Jim, that's something that we've had people use it for the years when they just have a question. They've heard something, maybe they just didn't understand, or they know somebody who is living out a Kingdom story in their workplace and they wanna share it with us. So we, we would love to hear those stories and connect with those people. So iWork4Him.com.

Jim: Lubbock, Texas - elevation over 3,200 feet above sea level, which by the way is noticeable , when you live at two sea level, at feet above sea level. Population over 300,000 super fine people in this town. Nicknamed Hub City, Martha and I are here to highlight free the incredible ministry impact of Kingdom at Work Ministries.

A ministry started by the founders of Betenbough Homes. This week, Kingdom at Work Ministries is hosting their Second Kingdom business workshop. Today we sit and chat with Rick Betenbough and Casey [00:02:00] Brewer about this week's workshop. Rick Betenbough and Casey Brewer, thanks for hosting iWork4Him all week. Welcome back to the show.

Rick Betenbough: Thanks Jim .

Casey Brewer: Thanks, Jim. Good to be back with you.

Jim: Rick, just talk about how, how did Betenbough Homes become a kingdom company? How did God work all that?

Rick Betenbough: Well, that's a long story. 26 years in the making, I guess. But I would say that Homes is a kingdom company because of its purpose.

So Betenbough Home is a home building company, thus the name, but that's what we do, not why we exist. So our purpose, why we exist is to reveal God and His kingdom through our work in the marketplace. That is our purpose statement that our leadership team has established, and that I think is what makes our business, a kingdom company.

It belongs to God. It's his and it exists to reveal him and his kingdom to everyone who comes near, we say, and that is through our work. Over the years, we haven't always understood that. So that's a, that's a journey the Lord's had us on, [00:03:00] and we don't even understand the end of that even now.

 We're still on that journey. Even a week ago or yesterday, the Lord has given us new revelation about what that looks like. So that is a dynamic thing as the kingdom is, it's dynamic. We can't understand all of it in a lifetime, right? So how could we understand how we're supposed to be a part of it?

Jim: So all of this has morphed over the years, as you said, developed. God has developed it over the years and it's, it went from Betenbough Homes. Then you started this Kingdom at Work, you started this ministry. Where did, where did the idea, how did God lay this on your heart?

Rick Betenbough: Well, kingdom at work technically is a movement we like to say. It's a movement, an expression of what God has been doing in our business, his business that he trusts us with all these years.

So as God has shown us and changed us and refined our thinking we've come up with some ideas about how we might share those with other people. For a long time, we've done that, shared it kind of sporadically, I say by a long time. I mean 10, 12 years. [00:04:00] About three years ago, Casey Brewer and I traveled in Europe talking to Christians there about the possibility of them dedicating their business to God for his purposes becoming a kingdom business.

And as we did that, It became clear that Casey should join us and we should create a full-time environment to express this, for this movement to come out of. And we say this movement, it's a movement because it doesn't belong to us, right? Kingdom At work. The idea that your workplace, as you well know, and our preaching every day on the radio is a place for God to, to be revealed to all the people in the marketplace.

And. How do we do that boldly? How do we do that appropriately? How do we help each other do that? That's a big conversation that belongs to everybody , not just us. So we say all the time, Kingdom at Work is a movement out of our business that God has shown us, and it's, it includes everybody and everybody's invited to join into it.

Jim: It's exciting, isn't it, Martha?

Martha: It is. And I hope that our listeners gathered from what you [00:05:00] said, Rick, you said, I mean, you had so many intense nuggets in there that I just love and I hope people get it to kind of digest it a little bit. But one of the things that you have said more than once that I've heard is that, you know, we didn't get all this from the beginning.

Right? And it continues to grow as God reveals new things to you. And I hope our listeners are encouraged by that, that, you know, the day you start a business, you don't know what that ministry is really even gonna look like or what your kingdom impact is. Or you may not even know what your purpose is, but being obedient and listening and, and allowing God to work in your life, that's what we hope people hear from what you're saying because, They may be in that place of saying, you know, I, I don't know why I'm doing this. I don't know why I do what I do every day. Ask the Lord. Is that what you would tell people?

Rick Betenbough: I would, I, in fact, I might say it like this. Don't be defined by what you do, but instead why we do it. Whatever you do - sell shoes build homes, advise people in their finances - those are what you do and those are a context for God to bring people to you [00:06:00] so that he can be revealed to them.

The purpose why we exist is a much deeper way to think about it, and we should live out of our why and not out of our what. God might change our what. We, we were a home building company and we still are, but now we have a farm. We have an event center. He's gonna change our what. He's gonna add whats to our bag.

Jim: Sometimes he takes away whats.

Rick Betenbough: That's, that's right. And we're always going to be thinking about why we do this. We wanna reveal God. He's the reason we're here. He's the reason we're in business. It's his business, his ministry.

Jim: Hmm. Casey Brewer, as Rick already gave you this little introduction, you know, three years ago you decided to join this team. Although Rick Betenbough was no stranger to you at that point in time.

Talk to us about Kingdom at Work, as you have led this organization, as you now prepare for your second Kingdom business workshop, what is this all about? What, what are you hoping to do?

Casey Brewer: Well, as Rick said, we're hoping just to inspire other business people to think about what they're doing a little differently.

That there is, there is a why behind it. [00:07:00] A lot of people come, they've heard about Betenbough Homes from the Global Leadership Summit. So a lot of people tend to find us and I have conversations with people all the time about, they wanna know sort of the secret sauce for how do we change the culture of our organization.

That's the leading question. But really, culture. And, and we'll talk about that more this week. Culture is simply a byproduct of a couple other things. Every organization has a culture. If you don't really know what it is or think you have one, we'll just go ask the people that work for you and with you, and they'll tell you about the culture because there is one.

But you don't change your culture about addressing the culture. You change a culture through God's help, starting with the leadership and how they lead their operations and their people every day. But again, that has to flow from the right why. If you, all you do is focus on the what sometimes the what's do change as you said a minute and go, Jim, then if that's been your focus and God changes that, then it feels like failure. But that's not the way God [00:08:00] set this up.

Jim: Rick, why don't you just give people just a little picture of the Kingdom when you started to understand that Betenbough Homes was a kingdom company, what does it look like? Because a lot of people are like, yeah, I don't understand what it means to be a Christian run a business, but what's this kingdom thing all about?

Rick Betenbough: Well, you know, I think we are a bit caught up in the gospel of salvation in our church world, right? I think we learn about being saved and then we don't know necessarily what to do with that. I, I always think of the kingdom as life with God every day under his reign, under his rule and his authority, and it, that comes with much blessing.

But I, living with him every day, that means talking with him as I work as in my marriage and my family. It's my whole life under God's reign. That's the way I think of the kingdom rather than a, you know, a subdivided thing that where I go and talk about the Lord on [00:09:00] Sunday and then I don't know what to do with that the rest of my life.

God wants us to be with him as we work. He created us to work. Our work is an important part of the gift he gave us.

Jim: Well, and that's part of it. You know, as you mentioned, we talk a lot about salvation, but we don't talk about the four chapter gospel. The fact that, that God created things and, and creating things he gave us work. Before the fall, before Jesus said to come and redeem us. But Jesus said he came to restore all things. And that's the kingdom. You guys building up to a thousand homes a year, that's kingdom work because you're building. You're taking what God told you to do, which is cultivate the Earth and you're taking, everything you build with was once below the ground.

Everything that you build with - all the trees that you guys build with, those came with the nutrients outta the ground. That's kingdom work. Providing an excellent home. That's kingdom work. You know, I gotta tell you, you guys, you guys would love some of the stories I've told about Betenbough Homes over the last six months.

I said, I've never walked into a business and felt like I was going to church until I walked through here. I believe it was a Wednesday we came in here cuz you guys were [00:10:00] feeding breakfast. Was that Wednesday or Thursday morning?

Martha: It's waffle wednesday. How could you forget ?

Jim: I don't, cause I don't think I got a waffle because we were, we were talking too much.

But then I said never felt like walking into a business like I was going to church. But that day I saw church going on in a business of 160 some employees. There was ministry going on at tables around the food. It was, it was amazing. The example that you guys share. It's so much fun to see that and that's really what inspired you guys to do Kingdom at Work because you want to, you wanna help other people to figure out what you guys are doing here.

Rick Betenbough: Yeah, we do. In fact, this is a workshop, not a conference, which is different than a conference, right? It is. A conference. we're gonna come and hear a bunch of talking and maybe be inspired, maybe retain a little of it, hopefully take some of it home and put into practice.

But a workshop, what we mean by that is roll up your sleeves. We're going to have some inspiration, some equipping, and we're gonna spend some time with the leaders that we've brought. We, most of the, of our attendees are a senior leader and their teams. And together they're gonna talk about what this looks like [00:11:00] to go home and do this themselves.

And we're gonna have a few of those senior leaders that came without their leaders, their, the rest of their leadership team last time, and they're coming back with the rest of their leaders. Cause they went and tried to implement that. And you can't do this alone, right? This is a thing that we do together. It's what we get to do here. We're very collaborative around here and everybody's invited to weigh in and be part of it, and that's what God's kingdom is. It's collaborative, isn't it?

Jim: It is collaborative. What have you heard from people who went last year about the impact it's making on their organizations?

Rick Betenbough: Well, we got to go visit some of our local or nearby, nearly local business leaders.

Jim: Well, in Texas nearby is within 200 miles. .

Rick Betenbough: Yeah, that's within a thousand miles.

Martha: Oh, there you go!

Rick Betenbough: And so we got to go visit a few of those over the last six months. And we have seen tangible movements and changes in their business as a result of that workshop. Some of that is things we directly proposed and some of those things we're doing, and some of those things God told them, this is the way I want you to do this.[00:12:00]

We have one singular agenda at Kingdom at Work, and that is to come alongside people and help them have this powerful impact in their business. Make their business a, a ministry of Gods and we, that's all we want to accomplish here. We're not in the conference business. This is a workshop that's to help people and to tell 'em about what God's done through us and for us and with us, and invite them to go home and ask the Lord what he would have them do.

Jim: Casey Brewer, this is not just impacting people's culture, though this impacts bottom line, doesn't it? People start to, when they start to impact their culture, it impacts the bottom line. Do you get any stories on how this has impacted people's bottom line yet?

Casey Brewer: Well, maybe loosely. One of the things that we, that Dr. Jack Taylor said last time, and I hope he says it again tomorrow, is that God has set things up in his kingdom that if we will seek first his business, he'll take care of ours. That's a kingdom principle that sort of works in reverse order of what most growth experts [00:13:00] outside the kingdom begin to look at the way they, the way they look at things.

And we, we've heard stories over and over again about people who leave here who've been a part of the first workshop. You're actually gonna have one on air with you later in the week - the president of a company here whose video will show on a Wednesday of the impact of their company. They came in the fall. They were already miles down the road as a kingdom business.

They, they understand the kingdom pretty well. They've implemented some things, but they went back to their company and remodeled a couple of spaces inside their building. to specifically to host what we call one-on-ones, which are these weekly interactive relationship building times between a manager or a leader and each member of their team, individually. There's now space for that.

And at first it's a little awkward. What do you talk about? What questions do you ask? But they even said that they're now seeing excitement and seeing people's hearts and interest in [00:14:00] their family's lives that they never even knew before, simply because they've taken 30 minutes or an hour each week to spend one-on-one with every member of their company.

That's over a hundred people. We have over 200 people in our organization, and this is what we've been doing now for several years. It's lowered turnover, it's caused relationships to go deeper. Jim, that's really one of the first transformational points that we hear - stories about when you start spending time together, getting away from the whirl.

When we say step away from the office for a moment, take a breath and just get to know people, know who they are, learn their kids' names, and what sports their kids were involved in. It all of a sudden makes the workplace seem more important because now you're, you understand each other better. It's not just about what you're making it, it goes back to why you're doing what you're doing.

Jim: Rick, this is a ministry that God's laid on your heart. As you and Holly have led Betenbough Homes all these years. You just saw that God had taught you how to do something really cool and you've been trying to multiply this.

I mean, people have been calling [00:15:00] you from all over the country going, Rick, Holly, tell us how to do this.

Rick Betenbough: And it's a lot bigger than me and Holly and has been a lot bigger than me and Holly for 15 or 16 years or a long time. So really, God has added a bunch of leaders over 26 years. And so really together, we said this thing that we have together, this love that we have, that we share with each other.

We know and love our families. We, we live together and work together under God's rule. And he has blessed us wildly every single day of that. Not without problems, but it's been a blessing and so together we decided let's share this. That's what Kingdom at Work is. It's a, it's out of our blessing that we've had all these years.

How can we help other people invite God to lead their business and for their people to come to know God in their business?

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 [00:16:00] iWork4Him!

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