10/8/25 - 2115:

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the Voice of Collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement.

Martha: And we are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. And our mission is to inspire every workplace believer to recognize their workplace as their ministry place, where they work with God every day. What can that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: Are you a pastor? Do you work in a church? Do you have to work in a church to be a pastor, or to be in ministry? Why is it so many Jesus followers today are feeling disenfranchised by their local church because their faith on Sunday seems irrelevant to work on Monday. Where did the disconnect happen between the early church and the church of today? And a disconnect it is for sure. Today, we have tears of importance and work that's not worship and so much frustration and stagnation of believers in their workplace. Where did this come from?

I know the frustration, but where are the solutions? In the 12 and a half years of this podcast slash radio show, we've only interviewed two pastors who have understood the reason the faith and work movement was necessary. Martha and I have only located a dozen or so churches that truly focused on Sunday on equipping the ministry workers for Monday, and the interviews of those churches haven't happened yet. In July in Cincinnati, we saw the most amazing thing: four church pastors on the stage, all speaking the language of iWork4Him.

 One of those pastors is James Lenhoff. James is a leadership development pastor and author, a speaker, hosts his own podcast, runs two businesses, Wealthquest and Charis Coffee and Creamery. That's a resume we need to talk through and understand. James Lenhoff, welcome to iWork4Him.

James Lenhoff: Wow. Thanks for having me. What a great intro. I hope to be the person you think I am.

 (laughing)

Martha: And we know just by chatting with you a little bit before is there's actually more that we could even talk about as well. Everybody, I just wanna encourage our listeners, hang on tight because this is a conversation - I have no idea where God is gonna take it, but I know that he has teed it up for a lot of areas that are really relevant to our listeners and so we're excited for it.

Jim: That's right. James, we got a ton of things to talk about and we gotta talk to 'em really quick today, but do it at a pace that people can understand, because they always like to listen at one and a half times and it's impossible for this podcast.

Martha: Not today.

James Lenhoff: You already speak at one and a half times.

Jim: That's exactly right. I do speak at one and half. I do. All right. And that's without caffeine. You should try listening with mountain Dew in me. Alright, let's start off with your Jesus story. How did you come to walk in the dust of your savior and Lord?

James Lenhoff: So I grew up Catholic and had this really beautiful experience with the tradition of the Catholic Church and the honor that was present in those rooms, but also there was a lot of monotony, a lot of an experience of just, we say the same things, we stand up, we sit down. And when I was in high school, there was a man named Matt Massey who led me to Christ, this personal experience of a relational Jesus.

And he then went into ministry and started a church, North Star Community Church, which I then jumped in and was part of after Amy and I got married. We jumped right in and been part of it since then. So I have walked with Jesus now for 35 years or so, and it has been a a lot of beauty and a whole lot of learning. It's been a fun experience.

Martha: Awesome. And I know that there's a lot of that ebbs and flows in a story like that, but the bottom line is God's using you every day and growing you. And I can tell that just from our conversation. So like we said, it is not very often - in fact, it's very few, where we find a local church pastor who understands about business, much less one that is running multiple businesses.

So you launched, you have a company called Wealthquest Business. Let's start there. When it was formed, was it patterned after the world or did it have a kingdom pattern?

James Lenhoff: Yeah, so I had the joy of starting that business with a fellow believer, Wade Daniel. He and I solved the problem of the industry so wealth management, financial planning firm.

And what we realized is, we're solving the wrong problem, as an industry. We keep holding out this idea that the problem that we're solving is investment management. It's a rate of return point. At the end of the day, the real problem is people are lost and they're scared, and they don't understand who to talk to.

They got an accountant over here, they got an attorney over there. They got several different places where money's invested and none of those people talk to each other. And so the model was, we're gonna bring all these things in house. We do our clients' tax returns, we do their estate designs, we do everything in one place. And it created so much more clarity and confidence because what we set out to do, we founded the company with this mission statement of we empower families to live meaningful lives.

And so it is intentional to give people the confidence to say yes to the things that they feel called to. And so it was always this mix, quite frankly, of we have to operate in the world structure of how wealth management companies work. We're regulated by the SEC, we have all these same rules that we have to follow. And we also didn't want it to be something where, by saying to the world, we are a Christian company, that means that people who aren't following Jesus feel like they can't use us, they can't engage with us.

And so we just wanted to make sure everybody knew we're gonna, we're gonna lead people with a biblical worldview, but we're not gonna market ourselves as an exclusive Christian company so that we can have families that we impact in a deeper way. And so it's been a beautiful expression of giving people the ability to say yes to things they would naturally say no to, because they have the confidence to actually press into those things and follow.

Jim: It's so true. And as part of that, that conversation where so many financial advisors get people financially prepared for retirement as best to their ability, 'cause obviously it's up to the people to do the saving. But the church has done an absolutely rip roaring terrible job of preparing people for retirement because they promoted that the American dream of retirement is actually biblical or it's not, and retirement's just another phase of life and very few financial advisors prepare people for what they're going to do in retirement. They all know what they're retiring from, but very few help them to know what they're retiring to. Did you guys help people to know what they're retiring to?

James Lenhoff: We use that exact phrase - we told everybody's got something they're retiring from but if you have nothing to retire to, you are losing the script. You're left listless. And I would have people retire and they would say for the first couple of years, this is great. Every day is a Saturday. Then eventually they would say, this is terrible. Every day's a Saturday. I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know how to actually invest myself in anything.

And so one of our most important aspects of planning is finding meaning. What are you gonna put your hand to? This idea of just retiring into a life of leisure sounds great. It's actually deeply unfulfilling. And so we would always be aiming people at, invest your life into something. We'll do the rest. In fact, that was our marketing tagline: "invest in your life, we'll do the rest."

Martha: Wow.

James Lenhoff: And the idea was, we'll take care of all these goofy moving parts. You go do the stuff that matters.

Jim: So we did a 20 year onsite experiment for misery in retirement by living in Florida for 20 years in two different retirement neighborhoods. One of them, both of them, were homeowners associations, which is literally living in purgatory on earth because those people who have no purpose become the presidents and board members of homeowners associations, and because they're so miserable, they want everybody else to be miserable too.

But they control the money so they can actually make you miserable financially and physically. But we saw the dissatisfaction with living in pleasure. They had the ideal life. They got to live in Florida right off the beach. They got to look at seashells every day, play tennis and golf, and they were miserable people. And it was sad. It was just sad.

James Lenhoff: It's, to me, the parable of bigger barns. Jesus tells this parable, and the farmer that builds these bigger barns, 'cause he has so much abundance, he doesn't know what to do with it. The issue that I see Jesus pointing us to is that the farmer says, he says to his soul, you have ample goods, for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry, effectively, check out and indulge in complete selfishness. That's what Jesus is challenging us with. That is not what I'm calling you to. Endless selfishness is not a biblical model.

Martha: No.

James Lenhoff: That's for sure. And so we need to step into selflessness.

Jim: Say that. Say that again.

Endless selfishness

Martha: is not a biblical model.

Jim: And somehow that comes across

Martha: as the American dream.

James Lenhoff: And that's right. That's the whole point. We do all these things so that I can be endlessly selfish in the end.

Jim: I'm just thinking that would make a great sermon.

Martha: I think we're gonna, we're gonna have to have this conversation with our iRetire4Him.

I love just how God is aligning our hearts in so many things because there is nothing new under the sun. God has given us all of the truths that we can have at our disposal to live by, but we don't often put them through the lens of our daily work.

And that's where I know we fell short in a lot of ways and our eyes have been open. So how did you transition from being a business owner to being a "biznistry" steward? Actually seeing it as stewardship.

James Lenhoff: I had a moment - I did mission work in Haiti for many years and my first trip to Haiti was right after the earthquake. And we're driving, we land in the airport. There was a bunch of rain that came through right before we landed, and so we're driving around all these giant potholes that are full of water. So this was 2011, something in that range. And, as we're driving around this pothole, I look down and there is a little boy in the middle of the pothole that's filled with water and he is naked.

He's probably seven years old and he is bathing himself. And in that moment God just broke through in this deeply profound way. I don't hear an audible voice. This is probably as close as I've ever come to that, but I just felt very confident he said, Hey, James. That little boy did nothing to deserve to be sitting in that pothole. You did nothing to deserve to be a wealthy white man in the wealthiest country on the planet. This story is not about you and none of this is yours. And I was like, oh, I get it now. I get it. This is all for your glory. It's all your resources. The breath in my lungs is yours. The interactions I have with clients, the interactions I have with employees, my job is not to hoard and own anything.

My job is to join hands, link arms with the king of the universe in the work he is doing in the people in front of my face. That's all I have to offer, and that's all that I have to experience. And so I just, it was like this light switch. And from then on Wade and I, my business partner, we were constantly challenging each other: what feels good to us in the Holy Spirit? What are the decisions that the world would say are really terrible business decisions, but we know are the right decisions? We know God is wanting us to move in different directions.

So one example was we developed a mental health benefit for our employees where we pay for all of our employees to get counseling, marriage counseling, individual counseling, get their kids into counseling, whatever. Because we're facing nowadays situations we don't have tools for. We recognized that, as part of our jobs, as the patriarchs, so to speak, of this family of families, we need to invest in their health. Not just their physical health, but their mental health. And so just those are moments where there were just these lightning rod kind of kairos moments where time stands still and God's like "this." And we go, okay.

Martha: Wow.

James Lenhoff: And we would just take those actions and move things forward. And what a joy to see the impact that has made just because we're willing to say yes to things that all of our competitors would say, that's dumb. Make 'em pay for it themselves.

Jim: Yeah, we did, in fact, we just hostsed a conference that was entrepreneurship and mental health as a, from a Christian perspective. So I wanna know, who or what was the biggest obstacle that you faced in that transition from business owner to business steward?

James Lenhoff: Yeah, the biggest obstacle is me. (laughter) I have found that the biggest - I wrote a book called Living a Rich Life, and in that book I talk about this, these generosity circuit breakers, that there's these moments, these stories that we tell ourselves that cut off this hard wiring, that we're supposed to be generous, and I think that's God's image in us. He's a generous God. And one of the things that cuts that signal is this story about being self-made, where we say, I did it, I created it, I put in the effort. I built it, so it's mine. And if it's mine, I get to have authority over it. I get to do whatever I want with it. I get to enjoy it.

And this was Ebenezer Scrooge's problem, right, in the Christmas Carol. He's " I did it. Nobody helped me. Why should I help you?" And then the ghosts of Christmas past shows him the truth. You were never alone. All these people impacted you in deep, profound ways. They're the reason you're here. You're not self-made. You're incredibly fortunate. And I started to realize, like I could have been born as that kid in Haiti. I could have been born during the plague. As I looked back and told myself a different story, I realized a hundred percent of the things that mattered the most, I had no control over. So to claim anything as mine is not just naive, it's insulting to the owner, right?

Martha: Oh..

James Lenhoff: And so I needed to get my mind right on this idea of ownership as a trap. If it's mine, I will make really selfish decisions with it. But if it's his, he gets to do whatever he wants with it, and I just say yes.

Jim: Ownership is a trap. I love that. Speaking of being a steward, every aspect of our work needs to be well managed. We talk on the show often about being a person of excellence to reflect Christ. Well, it's hard to be excellent when your computer's getting attacked by viruses or other nefarious people, or you get exposed to terrible things online.

SaferNet.com is who we use to help us steward all of our electronic devices at home and at work. Their internet controls, filters, virus protection, help us steward our time and our resources to accomplish the calling God has given us. We encourage each one of you to go to safernet.com, sign up, get it on all your devices, and let 'em know that you heard about it right here on iWork4Him.

So with all that perspective, James, and you look 19 years back and 19 years forward, that decision, a recognition that you're really just a steward. You're not just a steward, you have the privilege of being a steward. What's the long-term result 19 years later?

James Lenhoff: I think I would say the biggest result is the trajectory of growth of our business went parabolic.

Jim: Okay. You used one of those words not everybody's familiar with, especially if they didn't like geometry, okay? (laughter) And if they're watching on YouTube, it means up, it went up, it went like almost straight up.

James Lenhoff: Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Yes. That's great. I call this math in the air.

Yeah, so straight up. And part of that was we recognized if we're not owners, one of the things that we want to do is get ownership, the experience of ownership, to all of our employees. And so we became a hundred percent employee owned. We got all the employees involved in it. They started getting profit distributions from the company, started to realize that this thing is really meaningful and valuable to their family. And it started to change their lives.

And one of the things that I think we tend to do when we have an ownership mindset is we say, I had to pay my dues. I had to, struggle and fight and overcome, and you should have to do the same thing too, and I'm not sure that's healthy. I think if we have an opportunity to open doors for families, that give them access to more freedom, more beauty, more health earlier, why would we prevent them from experiencing that?

And so we started to just be way more open-handed and generous with getting owners on on the team that used to just be employees. The other thing is we got super engaged in generosity as an organization. So finding opportunities to invest our team in service projects and different ways to express this, not just monetarily, but also with our physical bodies. How do we actually honor him? By going and serving. And that led to a lot of really meaningful connections for our employees. They found things that they were passionate about and they became connected to those organizations and started to really run with them. And so it just getting them access to some of this stuff was life changing and it was a beautiful experience to watch.

Jim: It's quite a shift. Quite a shift.

Martha: Wow. Listeners, I know that you might be longing for this same kind of paradigm shift in your own business and just can't imagine how to get it done. We are getting some examples today.

A great resource to help you gain confidence in running a Kingdom company is the US Christian Chamber of Commerce and you can attend the Chamber Expo next April 2026 in person, get encouragement and challenged while you're there, Jim and I have the pleasure of being your guide as MCs for this event. Go to swc2026.com. Use code iWork4Him to get registered and we'll see you there.

Jim: All right, James, I know because you're a glutton for punishment, not only have you had this extensive experience at Wealthquest, you're a pastor, a leadership development pastor at your church, you also started a coffee shop. Tell us this story.

James Lenhoff: Glutton for punishment, for sure. I would've lost every bet on the planet that opening a coffee shop would be harder than running a wealth management firm with 2000 clients. It's so hard. (chuckling) But the idea, it's used to be an Italian restaurant that's attached to the church building that we rent our church space. And when I went out of business, I said, I'm gonna put a coffee shop in there. I never had a dream for this. I never had any intentionality for it. And I had no idea how to do it or what I was doing. All I cared about was community space.

I have recognized that people are not coming to church, particularly people that don't know Jesus. There's nowhere for them to gather. And so the coffee shop attached to the church, it's called Charis Coffee and Creamery. Charis is the Greek word for grace and kindness. And we are just this open space, we donate all of our profits to local charities, but it's this idea of creating community. I actually am not a coffee snob. I don't care that much about coffee. The coffee's really good, but it's not because I have anything to do with it.

The bigger goal is just holding space for diversity and connection, and we have tons of Muslim families that hang out there all the time, and they feel safe there, which is beautiful. I had a wonderful connection with a individual that said, Hey, I know you're a pastor. You talk about being, working next door. And I was like, yeah. And she said, I think I'm a Muslim. And I said, yeah, of course. And she said, I don't understand it. I've never felt this safe and warmly welcomed anywhere in the city. And it doesn't make sense to me that would come from you. And I said, oh, that's easy. You are safe and you are warmly welcomed and I'm delighted to have you here.

And it now, in her context, she's experiencing what it feels like to have this unconditional love. She's never gonna walk in the church next door, but she's at least started to taste and see that the Lord is good, right? And so just holding space for people to just be human with each other is my vision.

And then the biggest thing that I've been surprised by is the ministry opportunities for staff members. We're hiring people that have medical issues or backgrounds or all kinds of things. We're bringing them in and giving them opportunities to grow. And it has been a joy and also has nearly destroyed me. (laughing) So both of those things are true at the same time.

Martha: And there, I'm just sitting here laughing because he doesn't even know. I know you don't even know, but this is just that, the journey that you have been on so parallels a lot of the things that Jim and I's journey looks like. In fact, to the point...

Jim: 4 days before this podcast launches,

Martha: we opened a coffee shop. So

James Lenhoff: No way. You should have talked to me beforehand. I'd have talked you out of it. (laughter)

Martha: Yeah, but you know what? It's actually called The Gathering very much for the same reason, a place to have community where people can sit and gather, put their feet under the table, and feel like they can linger and allow whatever needs to happen in that space.

Jim: And we didn't just open the coffee shop. We took a 150 year old building with a hole in the roof the size of a car and rehabbed and re brought back to life this building. And then we're putting a coffee shop in it.

Martha: Yeah.

Jim: And we did all the work ourselves.

Martha: It's been quite a journey for us. But one of the things I wanna hear from you, James, is in the midst of it all, like what kind of conversations did God allow you to have with people, I imagine, that sounded pretty much, what are you doing? Are you crazy? Why would you do this?

From a business standpoint, a lot of things that we step out in faith to, don't look like they make sense. So talk about that for a minute and why you know that it was the right thing for you to do, even though it's probably the hardest thing you've ever done. (chuckling)

James Lenhoff: Yeah, I have, I think, just recently crossed over from a sense of deep regret of having done it because it's been so hard to seeing the beauty of it. And God has really been kind in the, Hey, I know it's been hard, but look at this. Look at this. Look at this. He's been just pointing to things and it's really made my heart come alive. But we're talking the last few months. This is, we opened in May of 24.. So it's been a little over a year. And it is, I think the biggest thing for me is recognizing the deep felt need that the community has had for this place to just be allowed, to just be near each other, be with each other.

When I'm in the barista mode and I'm making a latte, I'm literally pouring the milk and praying over it, and I say, I bless the conversation that will happen over this beverage. I bless the community and the relationship that's gonna connect over this drink. We have gelato as well, so as I'm digging out gelato, I bless this child to joy as they engage in this. It's just an opportunity to take what would be a monotonous thing, because work is worship, turn it into a way to glorify the owner of all of this.

Yeah I don't know for sure if he was like, Hey, do this, or if I just did it. And he's like, I'll use it. I haven't teased that out yet. I tend to jump off cliffs and then he's okay, I'll catch ya.

Jim: But that's not what we're encouraging our listeners to do.

James Lenhoff: Yeah. (laughter)

Jim: We encourage you only to jump off the cliffs your Heavenly Father's asked you to jump off.

Martha: No, but I will say that a lot of people feel like their work is maybe meaningless or that they're not fulfilled in it. And yet in everything that God calls us to, as you've said several times, work is worship, and right now God may have someone in a job that they don't particularly like. They don't see why they're there. It's giving them a paycheck. Maybe that's the only reason they took the job, but God can use every single day, every hour of every work that we do, if we come into it with that approach that it is worship unto him.

And yet we're doing it for whatever that purpose is, as long as it's legal, that it's a position where you can bless other people by being that cup of cold water that they may need in that moment no matter what you're doing. I do believe that even if it's people don't feel like they're in their calling, they are in their calling because God has you there for purpose and on purpose.

James Lenhoff: And if you open your eyes to it,

Martha: yeah

James Lenhoff: you get to join the king of the universe and the work he has. It's a delight. We tend to get stuck in the monotony, but when we just lift our eyes up and say, all right, this is your day, these are this, the breath in my lungs is your breath. What do you want me to do with your life?

The way I read Galatians 2:20, I've been crucified with Christ and I no longer live. The idea of me is dead. It no longer exists. The only thing that's happening now is Jesus living through me. So how do I show up in my day-to-day monotony as Jesus? That's what we need to be called to, and that's what I am teaching at the church.

Like guys, people that don't know Jesus are not coming to church, but they're going to work. Ministry to the non-believer, the unchurched, is not gonna happen here. You need to be activated and prepared to do what God is asking you to do every moment of the day when you go to your place of work. We need to see it differently than just a paycheck. I totally agree.

Jim: We need to have you back to have a couple more conversations. One about church, how do we get our church to be like your church that actually looks at business not as a necessary evil, but as an opportunity for community ministry? But also talk about this retirement, go deeper into that.

But I wanna just close out with this question: many of our listeners today are struggling with the staleness of their faith in their work. Whether they're running a business or whether they're operating a piece of heavy equipment or digging a ditch or selling cars, whatever it may be, they're worn out and they've got very little support or understanding from their local church body. How can you encourage them today?

James Lenhoff: I think the biggest mistake that the Big C Church continues to make is this separation of "this is where holy things happen, and this is where worldly things happen." I think we have done a huge disservice and what I encourage people who are finding their jobs monotonous, who are burned out, who are weary, if you just recognize every moment as holy. Jesus is in every one of these moments, every breath that you take, you are breathing him in. And every exertion, everything you lift, every piece of paperwork that you file, everything you are doing with your physical body has an opportunity to bring glory to his kingdom.

If you bring your everything to it, as monotonous as it is, you're glorifying him. And the most beautiful thing that has happened so many times for me is when someone notices that. When they say, why do you care so much about this? Why are you putting this much effort into it? Because their tendency is to just check out, do it in a half effort way, and call it good enough.

But when you show up with excellence, it is deeply attractive and really uncommon, and they want to know why. And you get so many opportunities to tell them because you're doing it for the king. And he deserves it. He deserves your best.

Martha: James, there are so many things that you have said or brought up or touched on lightly or that we just didn't have enough time to cover that our listeners have been digging into for a long time, and I just want them to know that one of the things that we're gonna do is put a resource in the show notes of a sermon you just preached that we have said for years on the iWork4Him, show that people have never heard the sermon, that their work matters.

They've never heard the sermon about so many things that the scriptures actually have to say about our work. So listeners, I'm giving you this little bonus, you're gonna have a sermon that you can listen to that James presented to a church, just to take that next step and say, here's somebody who gets it, that is teaching others, and that it can happen around the globe because I believe that the scriptures, a lot of us have just had our eyes covered and our ears plugged to the truth of what God really has in store for us on a day-to-day basis.

And I love just what you just said about every moment is holy. And that's really what it comes down to, is that perspective, that paradigm shift that we've been talking about.

Jim: James Lenhoff, thanks for being on iWork4Him today. Thanks for sharing some of your story. I hope you'll agree to come back and we can have some more of these conversations.

James Lenhoff: You betcha. Yeah, you just tell me when, I'll be here.

Martha: Awesome.

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.