12/17/25: 2125: Shalom as a Career Path
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 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: When you look at the over 2000 interviews we've done over the years, very few have involved institutions of higher learning. One reason for that is I have a rule: anyone with a doctor in front of their name or a PhD after is prohibited from using any five syllable words on the show. And secondly, most institutions of higher learning do not see the significance of whole life discipleship yet and living out our faith in our work yet.
Even if it isn't a ministry degree, they're still learning this stuff, but today's gonna be very different. Very different. While our guest has a doctor in front of her name, she's easy to talk with, and her university, Seattle Pacific University, is dedicated to making sure every one of their students gets the idea behind iWork4Him. JoAnn Flett joins us from Seattle Pacific as she is the executive director of the Center for Faithful Business. The no five syllable word rule still applies, JoAnn, but welcome to iWork4Him.
JoAnn Flett: Thank you so much, Jim and Martha, for having me on the show. I'm so excited to spend time with you.
Jim: Joanna, as we do with every first time guest on the show, we always ask people to share their Jesus story. How did you come to be a follower Jesus?
JoAnn Flett: Oh yeah. No, that's great. I started early. Thankfully God had me in a family of faith, and I saw that faith lived out with my mom and her sisters. And so by the time I was probably seven or eight, I had come to know the Lord, but was actually baptized at age 12 just to get into that real sense of knowing, and it was a childhood following of Jesus, but it was all along the way an accompanying of a God who reached down and has drawn me into a relationship with himself and sustains that relationship. But it's that's how I came to know Jesus - in a family setting.
Jim: Very cool. That's very neat.
Martha: That is. What a blessing it is to have that as part of your legacy. You talk about God accompanying you. Let's talk about how. At what point in your life did you understand or realize that God loved the work that you were doing and wanted to walk with you in that?
JoAnn Flett: That's a great question. So I started off wanting to go to Bible college. I'd actually been recruited to, to be an accountant at McGill and to study accounting and wanted really badly to be a missionary and so decided to go to study at Prairie Bible College in Alberta, Canada. It's interesting because I had this one older missionary person said to me, JoAnn, God is really more interested in the worker than the work.
I think as I get out of 2025, the word "and" is really become the beautiful word for if I have to have a word of the year for 2025, it's "and." I would say now, yes, God is interested in the worker and the work. In the context of our work, we live out our faith. And somewhere in Bible college, I came to this realization that I want to work for him, not in formal ministry per se, like going overseas as a missionary, but in everything that I do. That is ministry.
And I think of ministry as being that role of drawing people into relationships with Jesus and actually in the workplace, I have way more opportunity to do that than I would if I had gone overseas as a missionary, to tell you the truth.
Jim: How significant was that conversation though, for you to be able to grasp that I could still be an accountant and be in full-time ministry.? I could still be in the industry working at McGill, as you said, and still be in full-time ministry. In fact, I've had great arguments on the air with missionaries who've gone overseas and I say, and these people are going to their mission field. " That's not a mission field." I'm like, oh, yeah, it is. There's lost and hopeless people in every workplace. That makes it a mission field because there's people there that need to meet Jesus.
When you got vaulted into your accounting career, you spent a lot of time there, didn't you?
JoAnn Flett: Yes, I did. And so I finished Bible college. I had a year of before I went to college, a really substantive year, working with a CFO, restructuring an oil company. They were in bankruptcy. And they were restructuring selling off parts of it. And my dad knew this person and so I worked very closely with that person. And so when I finished with a bachelor's in biblical studies, the most work I had done was accounting. And so I was one of Costco wholesales first accountants.
Martha: Wow.
JoAnn Flett: And I left it to go work for a local city because in 1990, Costco was not a household name. (chuckling) But accounting, in both of those places, whether it was Costco or the local city or as life would go on, globally in London, working for the Queensland government, there was an opportunity to be friends and befriend people who would never be in church. And they get a bird's eye view of your actions and your person and everything.
And frequently people would stop by my desk and say to me when they were going through whether a life crisis or like anything from even an accident, like someone driving into work had an accident. They'd come by my desk and they had this sense that you have a direct line to God. Literally this is what they would say. And I'm like, what? Because I pray? You do too, if you would. But the context of the workplace allowed for a relationship to form. And as I went through seminary, after Bible college, the idea of ministry was anything I do to draw people into relationship with Christ.
And that can happen on a mission field with missionaries in the pastorate, but it also can happen in the workplace. And so here came my ministry coming alive in the context of accounting. Who knew? To be able to meet and work alongside people, my craft itself would speak volumes to them and the excellence that I had there. But my care for them as people would then offer us conversations. They'd look at how we lived our lives as a family, the decisions we were making to go one place or not another place, and all of that spoke volumes and had them at a minimum, curious about our faith life. And in some instances, overtly asking about it.
So it's a great opportunity that people in the workforce get to have is people can actually come to you and ask you about faith.
Martha: And the story that you tell is exactly why iWork4Him is in existence because God has shown us there are stories all across this country and around the world, where people are seeing how they can minister to their cubicle buddies, to the people around the boardroom, wherever they may be working. They're on business as mission, truly, and getting paid to do that. So tell us briefly how then did the shift happen that got you into academics?
JoAnn Flett: Yeah. No, that's very much a God thing. All of life is at this point. So I had moved to, my husband and I had moved to Eastern University. Eric was teaching theology, still teaching theology, and I was working as an accountant and they put me in to teach a 400 level cost accounting class in the evening.
Jim: Ew. Cost accounting.
Martha: Oh, I love cost accounting. I love it. (laughing)
Jim: We don't agree on this. It's one of those classes they use to weed out the people that just aren't gonna be able to make it.
JoAnn Flett: Yeah, this was a 400 level from 4:30 to seven o'clock one night a week. I spent more hours prepping for that thing than my day job. It was really something, but I absolutely, I had 22 students in the class. I loved it. Absolutely loved it. And the student said, what else are you teaching? If there's anything else you're teaching, we'll sign up for it. And the chair of the department came to me and he said, do you want to teach more? Would you like to teach more?
I said, no, I have a day job. Long story short, the provost then said, we'll create a visiting lecturer position for you, and you can come into this visiting lecturer role. It had me in the classroom half the time and the other half out in industry to stand up and work with internships and working with students to kinda help them through initially accounting and finance. But then we then went out into everything. And it was a - I like to say Eastern University grew me up.
Yes, I took a massive pay cut leaving industry to go into the academy. But my goodness, they unleashed gifts about networking, caring for students. I trained in Bible college and in seminary and never took a pastoral role. But in that professor role, I could really come alongside students. I could develop relationships with local businesses. And so yeah, that was the moment I stepped out of industry and into the classroom. And that was 20 years ago and I haven't looked back.
Martha: Wow. It's so neat when we get to hear stories like this where we can see how God was building this timeline of skills and talents and abilities for a purpose.
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Jim: So how did your time, JoAnn, at Eastern University solidify your understanding of that intersection of faith and work?
JoAnn Flett: That's really good. So I started in the business department. Remember, I'd come through theology.
Jim: You mean you survived. You survived. But you went to Fuller though. And Fuller's one of the only seminaries in the country that really gets this. They really get it.
JoAnn Flett: Yeah. Yeah. They're few. Regent in Vancouver. Paul Stevens. But yes, Fuller really gets this at a whole different level. I had Rob Banks for a professor, and so I'd come through the theology piece. I had gone back into business and I was trying to put those two pieces together.
What I had taken from Fuller was this definition of ministry that Julie Gorman, one of our professors there, had us work out our own private conversation around ministry, and that was anything we do to draw people into relationships with God. Understanding that God is, in God's self, is a trinity of beings, father, son, and Holy Spirit. And that is relationships writ large. I won't use the five syllable word, but there you go. Just because then I'll be barred from the show.
(laughter)
Jim: You just have to give the definition. That's what you have to do. Yeah.
JoAnn Flett: Yeah. There you go. The mutual indwelling between Father, son and Holy Spirit. The dance between the Trinity is known as this idea of perichoresis, and it's the three in one and that relationality and in God's created us to be in God's image. And that image is relational. And then business is relational. Just think of the myriad of relationships we reach out into business, into the stockholder, from the stockholder to the employee, to the customer, to the supplier, to the local government, to larger federal governments. It's a myriad of relationships. My goodness.
So relational God, relational humans, and a medium of relationships. That's not by coincidence. And so I was working out that conversation at Eastern in the business department and landed on this idea of Shalom. Shalom had always been out there, but Shalom is rightness of relationship with God, self, others, and creation. And so this idea that business could pursue Shalom and that we could equip people to think theologically in business and to think about it as working, joining God's work, to restore Shalom.
Jim: And when Shalom is missing, you realize that you're not walking alongside God where he wants you to be. Because his intent is for us to walk in Shalom wherever we are. Yeah, so we're feeling like crazed lunatics, like accountants typically are at year end, quarter end, month end. If you're not feeling shalom in that - and I have a sister who's a CFO, so I can speak to this.
JoAnn Flett: Yeah.
Jim: Then we understand there's something outta whack 'cause God is not there in the chaos. God brought order to everything, which is why accountants love Jesus.
(laughter)
JoAnn Flett: And Cornelius Plantinga in his This is Not the Way Things Used to Be, would tell us that what was broken in the garden was shalom. That relationship with God was broken and with self and with creation, it was all, it all just went out the window in the garden.
And what Jesus came to do is to restore shalom. And so our work in the world is to join God's work in the world to restore shalom. And here I was working that out at Eastern with their MBA students, where we would like to say the MBA students who graduated from Eastern had the head of a business person, the heart of a missionary, and the soul of a development worker.
And they were attracted to Eastern for that reason. They literally would give up top rate schools, other schools, Ivy League schools, to come to Eastern because they wanted this idea of development practice, the theology and strong business acumen. And needless to say, one of the big joys of my career was the program direction for that group of students and that work. So yeah really blessed by it.
Jim: So if you've got students and you're listening to the show today and you, students that you're going, where should I send my students? Sounds like Eastern University's somewhere you should absolutely check out. Of course, Seattle Pacific's also one of those places you should check out.
Martha: And let's talk about this. So in 2021, God moved you to Seattle Pacific University and to the Center for Faithful Business, right? So why did you decide to take on that challenge?
JoAnn Flett: That's great. That's a great question. So I moved from Eastern to SPU, but while even at Eastern, I longingly looked at my colleagues at SPU Jeff Van Dozer, Kenman Wong, Denise Daniels, they were doing something in business. They were scripting this out in the classroom.
I was trying to put it into a specific program with the MBA and they were scripting it out larger for the faith community in North America. And Jeff's book, Why Business Matters to God and What Still Needs to Be Fixed is a critical book taking you through the grand narrative of scripture - creation, fall redemption, consummation - and showing you how businesses at work, how God's at work in the context of business to facilitate that.
So this group of friends, when Eastern closed the program I was just talking about, this group of friends reached out and said, Hey we are hiring for a new executive director and you've been aware of this work and you've also been trying to do this work. You should throw your name in the hat. And I did. I threw my name in the hat and to God's goodness, they gave, they extended the call. I think there were like 21 other people, really notable good people, but they they were kind enough to extend an offer to me.
And so in 2021, I moved out here from Philadelphia and I took on this challenge of stewarding this incredible work, 'cause it's work that they had been doing. This work didn't start when I came. It had been happening since 2004 in the Center for Integrity in Business under Al Airman and John Terrell. And then they hit pause, and Gene Kim, then they hit pause, and then they renamed it the Center for Faithful Business and hired me as the new executive director. So yeah, I get to steward great work. I stand on the shoulders of my colleagues.
Jim: Wow. And it is some great work. And we're gonna talk about that in a second.
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So JoAnn, the Center for Faithful Business. What's the aim?
JoAnn Flett: That's great. It fits exactly with iWork4Him. The work of the Center for Faithful Business is to promote a Christian understanding of business, and we do that through the academy business and the church. I call that the ABCs. So if you're a business professor and you're listening to this, we have resources for you. If you're a business practitioner and you're listening to this, we have resources for you. You wanna promote a Christian understanding of business. If you're a church leader, I'm working with pastors and with pastors of discipleship and executive pastors- we have things that can help you train and work in discipling your congregants. So yeah, we are here to promote a Christian understanding of business, and we have several ways in which we can do that.
Martha: That's so good. So something that I think you're most famous for, that Jim and I were aware of, were the 44 documentaries through Faith and Co. Tell us about that. And I'll share a link so people can go and maybe watch some of them because they're so well done. But tell us what the idea is behind that.
JoAnn Flett: Thanks for that. Yes, we're well known for our Faith and Co. video series. Five Seasons. So please go binge watch them. They are eight to 12 minute long videos. They are separated into five seasons. Business on Purpose is season one and has 14 of the documentaries in there. And then we have serving customers, serving employees, serving the world and then faithful investing. So across five seasons you'll find films of people of faith who brought their faith to work. They lead companies and how the, how that mattered in their work. And so if you wanna see live examples of that, these are the exemplars.
Jim: Yeah. And everybody listening, these are phenomenal videos and they are top topnotch. This is not a documentary by a guy with a cell phone. This is real stuff. Shot on location. Super well done. Do you have your own Roku channel yet?
JoAnn Flett: No, but we should.
Jim: You should have your own Roku channel!
Martha: So let me ask just a couple real quick questions regarding faith and Co. 'cause I think this is, it piques my curiosity. I would love to know if students helped to develop it and where this idea came from to really share these stories with the world.
JoAnn Flett: Yeah. That's great. So students are the aim for it. They're the target market, so we created them to be used in the classroom. But the people behind it were pastors again, across that A, B, C. They were academics. They were business practitioners and they were church leaders, and so they reviewed these videos that were brought to us, so they'd get a rough cut, they'd speak into it, and then we'd tailor it to the specific story.
But the idea was to use it just in eight and 10 minute increments in the classroom to spur conversations on faith. And we wanted students to be able to, because often I don't, if you've been in a higher institution and you've been in the classroom, you ask a question and there's crickets.
But if you hold up exemplars, we know that helps students to get even more interactive, and you can say what did you like about this? Or can you believe that there are people like Don Flow of Flow Automotives who are so faithful in car dealership? And people of integrity that you could trust them. That's not car salesman and integrity or not. We just use those in the same sentence. But his faith influenced that, right?
So yeah so it was intended to, to bring it to this group of students. And it was done in community and the vision behind it was always to help people nurture their faith, to see that they too, whether you're in a hospital, as in our film, Remarkable Always, where she's a hospital administrator. Or you're in the car dealership or you're in the restaurant business, like every business across the industry, you can be a person of faith and that faith matters to God and how you show up, how you do that work.
Jim: For the record, for our audience, we were used car dealers for 15 years.
Martha: And our tagline was what, Jim? (chuckling)
Jim: "Where integrity is just a way of doing business." And it can be done. It can be done. And that's before we understood the faith and work connection. That was just because we felt led by our faith.
Alright, the Center for Faithful Business, known for these incredible videos available to anybody out there to really to learn, to inspire, just like our iWork4Him podcast. We're covering stories of people living out their faith and their work and of people that have got great resources. This is one of those great resources. But in addition to these 44 documentaries at Faith and Co, which they can access online, the Center for Faithful Business is also known for having the largest library of books related to the faith and work movement. Is this list publicized for reference? How do we get access to this list?
JoAnn Flett: Yeah, it is. It's on our spu.edu/library. It's right there. It's on our ccfb@spu.edu. I'll provide the link so you can have it for the notes. There's a downloadable PDF of the 2,400 books and articles in faith and work. And so you can have access to that.
I'll just quickly swing back to faith and co really quickly. One way people have been using this is they've been having watch clubs. So they actually, like you have a book club, they have a movie club, and so they go through a season, they watch all the films. An entire season will be 48 minutes of film watching. So you can easily do that and then you show up, you have a meal and you discuss the films. And they're finding all kinds of great things happening.
I also have a group in rockingham, Virginia, who are, she started this group with season one and it's a lunch and learn. So on Thursday they show the first, they show the film while people bring their brown bag lunch and they're eating their lunch. And then based on the themes on the film, they have local business people responding in a panel to conversations. And so she's gone through season one and through season two and now there are 60 business people who renamed themselves- she was gonna try to be like an outpost for the Center for Faithful Business, but they renamed themselves Rockingham Business Associates, and they're just doing this now to build community around faith and business in that part of Virginia. How cool is that?
Martha: That is so powerful. That's very cool. And it, it just goes to show you, when you hear what God is doing in someone else's life it sparks something that says, wow, what could God use me for? Or what could I do in my work that would make a difference for the kingdom? And so it's very inspiring and I love that people are using it in such practical ways.
In conclusion, as we close this all out, what else is happening at the Center for Faithful Business that we need to know about?
JoAnn Flett: Yeah, there is so much, so locally here, we have a Faithful Work conference in April 18th. We have the guys from Barna Group, we have local business panel, and this is to just feed and nurture and support our local business community. We celebrate local leaders in business who've been faithful. And so we give a Frank Haas integrity and Business award every year, and we use that as an opportunity to talk about this person's testimony locally. It's really great.
We also have the Bruce Kennedy Ethical Leadership lecture. He, Bruce Kennedy, was the former CEO of Alaska Airlines. And upon his death, we received some money for an endowment that kind of keeps moving in this direction. So we keep the conversation on integrity and faith in business really well aligned. But perhaps the most significant work that we're undertaking right now is to start to provide resources for the Christian middle manager.
And so if there are any Christian middle managers out there, and we define middle management as you have three or more direct reports but you do not talk to the C level. You have a in-between level that you're reporting to, so you're very much in the middle, we wanna provide resources for that group of people.
And so our work in the center is starting to think about who these people are, what might they need to nurture their faith and to support them in their discipleship and their walk with Christ. So those are some of the things we have going on.
Jim: What better way to influence an organization than be in the middle? Because that means you can explode down and explode up when you start praying for those people that are working for you and the person you're working for. You start to have amazing influence and it starts to trickle up and down at the same time. If you're a CEO, you only have one direction you can go. And if you're at the bottom, you can only have one direction, but when you're in the middle, you can go both ways. It's incredible.
JoAnn, people really need to check out The Center for Faithful Business. You got a lot of great resources out there. We've got the link in there, but it is ccfb.sp.edu.
JoAnn Flett: Yeah. cfb@spu.edu.
Jim: C ccfb@spu.edu. I know you're gonna look in the show notes anyway, but I wanna make sure we said it because the Center for Faithful Business has been cutting edge for a very long time. JoAnn Flett, thank you so much for being with us today.
JoAnn Flett: Thank you so much, Jim and Martha for having me on.
Jim: You bet. You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, and our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.