8/9/23 - 2002: Is It OK to Pay People to Pray?

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: We're talking today about the power of prayer at work. Why are we talking about this? Because prayer changes things. Why on earth wouldn't we involve God in our work? God created work as a gift for us and already knows the answers to our questions and the solutions to our problems. If we would only ask him. So on iWork4Him today we're going to talk about the power of prayer at work and then hear from some organizational leaders who are using prayer Intercessors as key staff members as they operate their business for Christ.

Guess what? We use them too! Scott Flora joins us today from Coreign, a marketplace focused prayer intercessory company. He's joined by David Mckay. David and his wife Karen own HMK company out of Salem, Oregon and uses Coreign as their prayer intercessor. Scott, Thanks for joining us today on iWork4Him.

Scott Flora: It is my pleasure. Thank you very much. I'm excited about our conversation today.

Jim: Let's hope that you still will be when we're all done! So Scott, where did the idea come from of having a business that prayed for other companies?

Scott Flora: I've been in the prayer, house of prayer, culture of prayer, communities of prayer, something that we used to call praying missional communities, since 2009, really. And I had someone approach me to begin with that really had a vision for prayer to be a part of their God assignment, and they owned several businesses, but one of the things that they really felt that they wanted prayer for was their NASCAR.

And so they came and they said, Hey, we want to have a whole bunch of things that are going on. Will you pray with us and for us for our not NASCAR? When I first heard the idea, I was completely turned off to it. I actually said, no, that feels witchcrafty. No way. And then over the next few months, the Lord dealt with my heart, took me on a deep dive Bible study through the Word of God on what prayer does and where prayer really connects to kingdom assignments and all of that.

And I went back to him and I said, Hey, I would love to figure out how this looks. And so for the next few years we dabbled a little bit with ones and twos, and we had two or three or four and as the story unfolds with every kingdom assignment, the Lord led me to create a discipleship training school that had a bunch of young adults in transition either out of high school or in between college or after college. And I had 20 20 year olds living with me and doing life and prayer room and missions and evangelism and all that.

And I needed a practical tool to connect them to the value and the authority to prayer, to how we're shaping the world around us. I reached out to my ones or two little marketplace partners that I had, and I said, I want to invite our students into this relationship. And so we created a training tool. And training tool developed into a global ministry that is now touching over 80 nations.

Jim: Wow, so let me just get this straight though. So you thought it was weird that a group from nascar, they have a driver driving 200 miles an hour three feet from the guy in front of them, you thought it was weird that they wanted prayer?

Scott Flora: Yeah, that they would pay for it!

Jim: Seriously, when you're driving 200 miles, not that you and I get a chance to do that, but it seems like prayer would be a natural thing. I'd be doing a lot of praying if I was driving 200 miles an hour, three feet from the guy in front of me. I don't know. Sorry, Martha. Go ahead.

Martha: No, but that does really lead into the next question I want to ask Scott because a lot of people, yes, we ask our friends, our neighbors, our pastor, people in our Sunday school class to pray for us. But you're talking about it at a whole different level, where it's actually, you're employing, or contracting, or paying, however you want to say it, someone to come alongside and pray on behalf of a specific organization.

So walk us through that, because I would guess that there are more people listening to this podcast that would question that than there are people that would say of course! So we're exposing this and talking about it so we can better understand it. Is it okay to pay people to pray? What's that whole thought process?

Scott Flora: Yeah on my website, Coreign. org, I have a series of videos where I go into all of these, and it's actually a paradigm shift that the Lord is actually inviting the body of Christ to. So it's not necessarily about - the question that should be asked here is not about, is it okay to pay someone to pray? But a laborer is worth his wages. So it's really about collaboration and gleaning from other people's skills and expertise so that we can go further together, and every collaborative covenant relationship is bound together by two things. The word of mouth. Our word, we actually say it out loud. I'm covenanting in relationship with you, to link arms with you and do something that you can't do to the level of excellence that I could bring my expertise to the table and we could do it better together.

And then the other thing that seals every covenant relationship is a financial obligation. You look at it all the way through scripture, it was all connected to resources. And today, we don't sacrifice animals and we don't trade our daughters in marriage to the neighboring family so that we can do family covenant. We don't do that anymore. So the way that we covenant to one another is by our words and our heart and saying where i'm committing to doing something. And the second way is through finances. And so really what we're doing is we're marrying two realities together because we see that collaboration is not only essential and they're necessary, but it's actually paramount to extending the kingdom.

Let me say this. We can go further, better, together than we can alone, and this place of collaboration with prayer, it's marrying the Zechariah idea of the priestly calling of the Joshua, the priest, with the Kingly Zerubbabel, and marrying these two realities of the priestly and the kingly together. And actually what it says in Zechariah, is it says these two things that are separate, God is bringing back and joining, and will never be separate again.

Martha: Okay. So I'm a practical kind of person. And what you just explained to me gives me, even me who I understand this and believe in what you guys are doing, a new perspective. I am not a marketer. I can do a decent amount of marketing. I can create things and, make images and put things on the website and things like that. But am I the very best at it? No. I sometimes employ people to do a project or to take it to that next level, and what you are just explaining in a beautiful way is the same thing with prayer. We pray for our organization. We pray for each other. We pray for our co workers.

Jim: We gotta pray just to make it today.

Martha: Amen. And we do that to the level that we have that relationship. But we contract with you to say, let's take it to another level because we really need to pray into this. And I guess that just made sense to me.

Jim: We've been using Coreign now for three years, Martha. What's your perspective on how having Coreign and their team pray for iWork4Him over the last few years, what's your perspective on that?

Martha: A couple of things come to mind. One is we have a lot of people in our life that we ask them to pray for us and to pray with us about iWork4Him specifically. And it's direction and things like that. And I believe to a certain extent they do that, but I don't think they really lean in necessarily to God's guidance in what our next step should be and where he's warning us or where he's telling us to pull back.

And I know that our prayer partners at Coreign, our intercessors are doing that, that they are saying. Okay, I want to really ask the Lord about XYZ. I really want to land on this, this one thing or this big concept, whatever it might be and really lean into that with us. And I think that's the difference. We know wholeheartedly that it is a part of what's happening on our behalf.

Jim: Scott, are all your customers as difficult as us though? We've got, we have a lot of needs. We're always asking you to pray about specific things. Are all your customers that interactive with you?

Scott Flora: I would probably say the only one that's a little more high maintenance than you is probably David McKay.

Martha: Wow. He's going to be joining us.

Jim: He'll be joining us. A chance to defend himself. At iWork4Him, we really believe in the power of prayer and actually have a prayer team that receives special emails about the things that they could be praying about for iWork4Him, the events we attend, Martha, and the people we meet with and specific needs we have within the ministry.

We want to invite you listeners to join our prayer team, please join our prayer team. Pray along with us. Get special mess special messages from Martha and I on a regular basis. Go to iWork4Him. com. That's I work the number for him. com Forward slash prayer team. Join the prayer team, become a part of praying for this ministry. We have influence over thousands of people every week. We'd love to have you join us.

You know, Martha, we've prayed about a lot of things in our businesses over the years and over iWork4Him, we spend a lot of time praying. Can you think of one time we spent a lot of time praying over something and we saw an amazing result or an answer?

Martha: You know what I think of, there's so many things. Two things come to mind just real quick. One was actually, this is pre having Coreign as a part of our team, just asking the Lord to use us in a way that's above and beyond our own gifts, talents, and abilities. And he answers that every day with iWork4Him because we did not have training in this industry or, there's no background.

But yet we've seen God's hand and how he prepared us for such a time as this. And I would say today, Jim, still praying into Lord, we've renovated a building, we've spent a year of our life prepping it for whatever God wants it to be for ministry, and we still don't have that answer. So praying into Lord, we're open to whatever your leading is and we're ready. We have a building that we've restored and given new life for God's kingdom. And we don't know yet all of the aspects that it will be used for and praying into that, knowing that he's gonna show us each step of the way.

Jim: So Scott, I got a question for you. So as business owners we're always have decisions before us that we're looking for. We really just want to do what God wants us to do. We really we just really want to know, God, what do you want us to do? We really want to know the solution. I don't want to waste time screwing it up. We understand that God already has it figured out. How often do the business owners and organizational leaders that you represent, do they come to you with specific things they're wrestling over to ask you to intercede on their behalf alongside of them to get the specific answer?

Scott Flora: Yes, absolutely. So many times that we actually don't let more than about seven to ten days - like it's actually a long time for us to not have communication with any of our CEO partners. Because we want to know what's going on. I come from a special forces background and so I'm like really military and intense a little bit. Like I want to know what y'all have for breakfast. I want to know everything, like I want to know how the lawnmowers working on sunday afternoon. Like I want to know everything that I can know.

And we spend a lot of time, capitalize a lot of time praying for marriages and relationships because this is what we know for sure - your Business that you're doing for kingdom expansion is an overflow of your relationship that you're having with yourself, being authentic and true to yourself. Your relationship that you have with God and your relationship that you're having with those five closest relationships, and we could say wife, children, and maybe one or two others, would be added to the mix.

So we spend a lot of time praying specifically into those because your decision making ability Is drastically reduced when we add in the dynamics of all those relationships that I just mentioned, right? So you're not outsourcing your prayer. I'm not your Holy Spirit, but what I am trying to do is make sure that everything in your life is where it ought to be, which is the biblical definition of righteous or righteousness, is everything as it ought to be.

So I'm praying things into you: righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, so that the decisions that you have to make, that are transitions, that are shifting the way that several other people, some of our companies have multiple levels of employees and leadership staff. Everything that our ceo partners do not only affect their own household but multiple other households that they're responsible of creating this culture. So Absolutely, it's all the time. I'm constantly texting and calling.

Jim: So Martha, we've spent a ton of time talking about how prayer has impacted our ministry and our walk.

Martha: Yeah, and you know it makes me think of, Jim, early on, actually before iWork4Him was even birthed, God really showed you this thing that has become what we call the iWork4Him nation covenant. And prayer is a big part of that. And so I just want to encourage the listeners to go to iWork4Him. com to the bookstore And find where you can get the PDF of the book that we have written. iWork4Him. It has the nation covenant in there.

Or if you click on join the nation, you can actually learn more about what God just laid out as our steps to help in this connection between the prayer that can happen in the workplace and seeing God's hand in all that we do.

Jim: It's really a secret to turn your workplace into a mission field. It really is.

Martha: Even let me just say this. Since our very first date, we have prayed together every day, you and I for almost 40 years have prayed together every day. And when we are even at a restaurant and some server asks us, what's the secret to a long marriage? We say, it's prayer. Prayer is that secret sauce. And that's really what we're talking about today, is that inviting God into the conversation, is really the foundation of what we want to talk about today and open up our listeners to that idea that there's more to it than just saying, God bless what I'm already planning to do, right? That's what most of us do is we say, God, just bless what I'm already planning.

Jim: And I think it's amazing that MC Hammer said it best in 1990 and I alluded to this earlier. He said it in a great song. "You got to pray just to make it today." You do.

Scott, you brought a guest today. You've already hinted at who the guest is that could share from their own experience of using prayer, of having a prayer intercessor on their staff. Why don't you introduce your guest today?

Scott Flora: Yeah. It's my pleasure to bring a dear personal friend and partner in the marketplace. David McKay is the president and CEO of HMK company. They primarily build schools and government projects. A lot of us vote on the budgeting and different things that we do in our communities. And David is the company, once those get passed and then voted in, David is the company that they would hire to project manage and to actually do all of those buildings. So he's the liaison in public school systems and government agencies to build those projects that the people vote on to create, and he has multiple levels of employees. Just an awesome man of God and one of my longest partners. And it's just a joy to introduce you to David McKay.

Jim: David, we're grateful to have you here on iWork4Him and I now know based on what your job is why you need prayer because you're working with governmental agencies and educational organizations. You're needing a hot mess amount of prayer, David! How did you learn about having an intercessor for your company?

David McKay: My history comes from grandparents and mothers that were mighty intercessors. I'm here as a product of prayer. Frankly, I was considered most likely to get a life sentence in high school, and it was truly their prayers that drew me to the Lord and got me on this path of a deep personal relationship with the Lord.

So my wife Karen and I, prayer has always been a huge part of our lives. Going back to a mission trip in 1989 we took to Chile and Argentina. I was off in Chile with a missionary doing some work. She stayed in the city of Santiago. They went and did some tourist type things. And all of a sudden there was gunshots. This is when Chile had lots of civil unrest. And there was somebody from a building, a sniper from the building shooting in the area that they were. And she had her child on her back, one year old on her back. And they said, get down. And she was afraid that Ana would come out of the backpack.

But, from those moments, you just felt the power of prayer. You felt the protective power of prayer. And then just throughout our life Psalms 91 became a huge part of our life very early on. Our youngest son had terrible night terrors. I would have to hold him and pray for him two, three, four hours at night. Just because of the night terrors at a very young age - two months, three months, four months. And when he was about two, we started reciting Psalms 91 every single night. And the very first night we did it, when we got to the very last verse with his three, his two other brothers he immediately fell asleep, slept through the night, first time he'd ever slept through the night his entire life. He was two years old.

Within a week, Psalms 91 was memorized. And every night we would do it before we'd go to bed and he would sleep. So just things like that have really developed in what I would like to say, David and Karen, the McKay family's DNA, the power of prayer. The interesting thing I just want to share with you, can I just share one, one little piece real quick with you, Jim?

So six months later, I asked Joe to go to bed. And at 10 o'clock, which was our normal time and he refused and then he refused to do Psalms 91 that night. And that night he didn't go to sleep, and he saw something that scared him outside of his window. He came in shaking and I said, Joe, you see what happens when you harden your heart and not pray. And so I said, do you think we should do Psalms 91? And we did. And the moment we got to the last verse, he was out and slept through the night. So it's just things like that, that have continually reinforced the need to lean in and for prayer to be just really a part of who we are.

Martha: So translate that to HMK. So your company is to the point where it has intercessors as an active part of the organization. It was part of family DNA. So explain to the listeners how does that impact decision making and other aspects of your organization?

David McKay: Basically, every major decision is made in prayer. So for instance, are we going to pursue an opportunity through a public RFP process. We really try to press in and understand what God's heart is. We don't want to, I'm not building an empire. I'm establishing a legacy and there's a big difference between the two.

And so we want to make sure that we understand what his heart is. When we reopened HMK 10 years ago, I felt like the Lord came to me and said, David, would you partner with me to reestablish HMK company? And I say that in that often people will go to God and say, will you partner with me? We really felt strongly that he asked us to partner with him. So that partnership requires that we are constantly leaning in. We're constantly wanting to walk closely with him and to really understand his heart for everything that we do.

Jim: Again, I just want to dig a little bit deeper. Would you have an example in your life of somebody that said, Hey, not only is prayer powerful at home and in your family, but prayer is powerful at work. Prayer is powerful in business. Prayer is powerful in contract negotiations in determining decisions. Did you have an example in your life, a mentor in your life that said, I've been doing this, you should do this too. Or did it just come naturally?

David McKay: It came naturally. It was really the family heritage, family legacy. My mom was a stockbroker and prayer was always a part of her life, all the way through my career. So I've always had intercessors. I was a pastor in a local church in the Beaverton area, Portland metropolitan area, for well over 20 years where prayer intercession was my part in that large church. So prayer has always been huge.

Martha: David, it's so amazing that you've had that legacy. And I would love for you to talk to the listener who maybe hasn't had that. Maybe their spiritual life hasn't always been a solid relationship with Jesus Christ. And as they're learning, they're listening to things like iWork4Him to learn more about connecting their faith in their work.

So talk to that listener for just a moment about how you would encourage them to incorporate prayer into their organization or in their own walk in their work, because maybe they're not a leader, maybe they don't get to make the decisions, but then also to the decision maker. Like, why would you, what would you say to them to encourage them to have an intercessor involved in their business?

David McKay: I think first and foremost, God cares. He cares about the little things in our life and he really wants to be a part of it. If we look at Jesus as an example of a man, God who laid down his divinity, right? And walked as a man empowered by the Holy Spirit. He's a tremendous demonstration to me, to us, of how God really wants us to walk. And so there's this relationship with the Lord that He wants to be intimately involved in those things of our life. And practicing that continual, His presence continually, He cares for us. Every worry, every care, every concern, every success, every good, bad, he wants to be involved.

And so I think it's just this tremendous opportunity. And what I would say to your listener is I invite you, I encourage you to begin to cultivate this relationship with him to invite him into those conversations. When you're struggling, when you have that challenge and it doesn't matter if you own the business or you work in a business, when you're facing major challenges, take it to him. Open up, allow him to open up scripture, allow him to begin to give you insight.

The work of the Holy Spirit is to help bring wisdom and counsel, to help give us strength, right? To face those, and I believe this with all my heart, and for every challenge I face, there is a heaven solution. And so my job is to slow down long enough to understand what that is because he's asked us to be a representative of the kingdom of heaven. We're ambassadors. And in everything that we do, we're to live from that perspective.

And so Jesus wants to be a part of it. The Holy Spirit wants to empower us to be that representative in the earth today, in the world. Or the oikos, the Greek word oikos is that world that I live in and who my life touches, he wants me to be that representative to the greatest ability that I have. And so I want to invite him to help me be that to the best of my ability.

Jim: And David, I love that example. And I love the fact that you said that God cares about the intimate details, those small things. It's not just about big decisions. that he wants to be involved in the intimate details of our lives, especially in our work, whether it's business or education or whether it's in the military, whether it's in the government or wherever it may be that God wants to be involved in those details.

One last question, David, and then we're going to wrap this conversation up. When you look at the impact of intercessors on your business, and you look at the impact on ROI, and you look at the impact on profit and loss, how can you, because a lot of people are going does it really make a difference in the money that I make? Does it make a difference in the people that I hire? What would you say is the most substantial way where you can identify the impact it's made on HMK?

David McKay: Great question. I'd say number one, the culture. It's a place that people want to come to work. I'd say that there's just this sense of peace. People genuinely like each other. And so I'd say that is the biggest impact that we've had. If I could share one more illustration, I remember a number of years ago, we had just finished doing a major remodel of an elementary school. Now we're not constructors. We manage every contract an owner enters into.

But so we're very engaged throughout the process. And the first day of school, it was a Friday. Kids had been in school for 4 days and I was standing in the middle of the hallway with the superintendent and all of a sudden to one end, there's a group of kids that are walking in single file from the playground. They're in perfect line and order. There's no monkey business. No, no noise. And I was just thinking, and I said to him, man, this building has this incredible sense of peace.

And about that time, that group of kids walked by us and they said, yeah, that's kindergartners. They've only been in school four days. And what it was like the Lord knocking on my shoulder saying, David, there is far more to what you do, the work of your hands, the blessing from the work of your hands that have impacts on the buildings that you're building. And so that was a real encouragement to me that there, there is a marked, if I could use the term, a marked kingdom influence in the work that we do.

So do I measure it in our lives? Do I measure it in profitability? No, I measure it in culture. I measure it in the work that we do and the lasting impact and the lasting effect it has. I measure it in the relationships that we build in these communities. And and to me that is the impact, the long lasting impact that I'm looking for.

Martha: Amen.

Jim: Great summary. Thank you, David.

Martha: Scott, I can imagine that there are a lot of people with maybe more questions than they even started with at the beginning of the show. Things they never even knew that they would want to know about. And I know you talked about the fact that you have videos on your website that can help answer some of those questions.

But I think about the fact that you are offering for people to have a free consult with you. And this is just a resource. One of the things iWork4Him wants to do is be that place to say, have you thought about this? And let's direct you in the right direction. And so let's talk about that just for a minute for the people that are curious about what next steps would look like. How can they get a hold of you, and we will put the link in the show notes for the calendar where they can go and connect with you, but just talk about that for a minute for our listeners, as we wrap up.

Scott Flora: Yeah we didn't really get into any testimonies, but I have documents that are,

Jim: David's qualifies as a testimony!

Scott Flora: Yeah, so we just have, we've had course cases overturned and reversed. We've had things open where it was closed. We had things closed where they were open and we've had so many stories of God's breakthrough. On a consult, what I would want to do is I would want to just hear stories like what is your story connected to your kingdom assignment? And why are you in it? And what is the Lord doing? And then we'll discover strategy.

I was just meeting with the largest prison ministry in the world. And I just had a morning meeting with several of the decision makers and we were discovering ways that we could create and strengthen the culture of prayer within their ministry. They're a national ministry. They're in, I don't know, 80 percent of the prisons in America. They have a chapter and so they're a significant ministry and they have lots of partners and we were talking about different types of strategies and different types of initiatives.

So those meetings would really be about number one, we would talk story and we would just get to know each other and then discover the best prayer strategy for you. Cause you're not outsourcing prayer. We're discovering the prayer strategy that fits you the best. And sometimes that means we're doing something that is a little more facilitated in house.

And sometimes that means engagement, full engagement at different levels that we have available, of different ways that we can help you create a culture of prayer. And so this isn't about you hiring me so that you can pray or so that I can pray. That's not what we do. You're not hiring me to pray for you but we are collaborating in how we can create prayer strategy that shifts a culture and it strengthens the assignment that God laid in your hands.

So that's what that consult would just be about, lots of story, lots of relationship. This is all built on relationship. Kingdom moves at the speed of relationship, and relationship moves at the speed of trust. So we just begin the friendship.

Jim: So you're saying one size doesn't fit all, that when you set up an intercessory for an organization, you really find out and match up. This is the approach we will take as we walk alongside of you. It's all custom. So, Martha, Scott wanted to give away something. Help him do it.

Martha: Yeah, he's just offering free consultation and people can do that by connecting to the calendar link that I will have in the show notes, and through that just get a connection to Scott to learn more. And this is just Jim and I endorsing, encouraging that to happen.

Jim: It's made such an impact on us. Coreign. org Coreign, right? I got it right, Scott, right? Coreign. org I don't know all of a sudden. We encourage you to check it out. Check it out online Scott flora with Coeign and david McKay with hmk. We're grateful that you guys joined us today and iWork4Him Thanks for sharing your story.

Thanks for talking to us about the power of intercessory prayer And we just we can't wait to see what comes out of this show, but thanks for being with us today. You're listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately, iWork4Him.

Outro: Did you know that God has a calling on your life? It's true. He's called you to bring Jesus to the world. For some, that may look like a pulpit or a foreign mission field, but for most of us, it looks like a construction site, a cubicle, a hospital, or a classroom. Wherever it is that you work, live, volunteer, and invest, that is your mission field. To learn more about integrating your faith into your work and retirement, check out our books, iWork4Him, sheWorks4Him, and iRetire4Him by going to iWork4Him. com.

Thanks for listening to the iWork4Him podcast with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Please visit iWork4Him. com to learn more about connecting your faith and work, to join the iWork4Him Nation, or subscribe to our weekly blog. You can also follow us on social media at iWork4Him to stay up to date and meet our guests. If today's message spoke to you, please subscribe, rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. Your review will launch more workplace missionaries across America. That's at iWork4Him and online at iWork4Him. com. I work the number 4 him. com.