6/25/25 - 2100: A Subsidiary of God's Business

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: Brett Johnson is a veteran discipler in the faith and work movement. For decades Brett has poured his life into others as they live out their faith in their work. Investing in people is Brett's thing, and he's done it all over the world.

Brett and I talked earlier this month and decided to have an unbridled conversation about the state of the faith and work movement and what he sees God doing and how we can join God in the amazing work he's doing in the hearts and minds of workplace believers. Brett Johnson, welcome to iWork4Him.

Brett Johnson: Thanks Jim and Martha, it's great to be with you both.

Jim: Brett, we'd like to start off with our new guest to the show, with your Jesus story. Tell us your Jesus story.

Brett Johnson: Sure. I grew up in a family where my grandfather was a Baptist minister. My dad was in the congregational church and I grew up knowing a lot about Jesus, but I realized when I got to being about 19 years old, after I'd led a Bible study at boarding school and been a Sunday school superintendent, all of this stuff, I realized that I knew a lot about Jesus, but there was something missing and that was repentance. And my understanding was good. I think my motives were fine, but I hadn't had a real repentance.

And then God just showed me my heart on my knees in my study and yep, then everything changed. And that was when I was 19 years old.

Jim: So a few years ago. (chuckles) So at what point in time did God draw your attention to the disconnect in your life between your work and your faith and how those became intertwined?

Brett Johnson: Yeah fortunately I didn't have the disconnect because my grandfather actually worked prior to him becoming a Baptist minister and supported himself through his studies and so forth. My father and my mom, they worked together. They had clothing factories and other businesses, and were bi-vocational. They also planted churches.

So as a teenager, I asked my mom, what would dad do if he had more money? And she said he'd plant more churches, and it was just the expected thing. That's what you would do. And so they did that. So when I worked, I went to university, I studied a Bachelor of Commerce, considered joining Youth for Christ 'cause we'd been on their associate staff, went on to become a chartered accountant, but there was no question of one or the other.

And so when I joined Pricewaterhouse, for example, I just prayed, God, where do you want me to work? He showed me Pricewaterhouse. I went, I only ever interviewed with them. And they said, are you interviewing anywhere else? At that stage it was the big eight firms. And I said, no, I believe I'm supposed to work here. And I don't know if they felt the pressure or whatever, but they offered. But yeah, so I feel I was called to Pricewaterhouse.

Jim: But there is a big disconnect that a typical believer experiences when they go to work. What drew your attention? Because you've spent a lot of years discipling workplace believers, how did you begin to understand that most workplace believers have a disconnect between their faith and their faith at work and their ability to flourish in their work?

Brett Johnson: Yeah, I became passionate about the abolition of dichotomy early on back in like 1989.

Jim: Oh wait a minute.

Martha: I like that - abolition of dichotomy.

Jim: Okay, explain that before you go forward 'cause I just got lost and I can't spell what you just said.

Brett Johnson: Okay, sure. So I got involved in a local church. It was started by four business guys. My dad was one of them. And it was like Presbyterian and a Methodist and just a mix of these guys. And they started the denominational church. The church at some point decided to call a pastor. Now he had a background in business, but he came in and I saw it was a little bit like a one man band.

He was extremely gifted. He did a lot of different things. And I noticed that the business people in the church felt a bit like second class citizens. And so then what happened is that he left the church, he got into trouble. There were some issues with him and I had to take over the church.

Now I'm the ripe old age of 24, and Lyn and I, Lyn was still working. We would have elders meetings 5:30, 5 o'clock every morning of the week and then preach on the weekend and then go back to work on Monday. So I was waiting for God to tell me to quit my job at Pricewaterhouse, where I had some of the biggest clients in the country. I was a senior manager there, and he didn't, so now I had two jobs and I had to figure out how to integrate these two jobs.

And because God didn't give me the permission to quit Pricewaterhouse, which I was asking about, and then on top of that, we started getting involved with Youth with a Mission, YWAM, and a friend of mine had started YWAM in Africa on his honeymoon. He and his wife had traveled down through Africa, and just an amazing couple. He was also a chartered accountant, so came out of a business background. And we began consulting to missions organizations. Now we had three jobs and so the only answer was you couldn't try to balance these things. And then we had a couple of kids as well.

So we were leading a church, senior job at Pricewaterhouse, consulting to mission organizations. And we just had to figure out the integration. And raising the two kids. And so then what we had to do was figure out these worlds couldn't be balanced. They had to be blended. And I also noticed that there was a lot of great principles out of the mission world that could strengthen the local church. There was stuff out of the business world that could be applied in the local church, but there were leadership and other lessons, character things out of the church world that were relevant in business.

And these three worlds spoke different languages. And I figured out we have to figure out how to integrate these worlds practically. For quite a few years we took on no staff at the church. I never got paid. And we pushed our business people into leadership positions in the church. We scheduled them to preach, to share, to do all of these things. And then they went on actually to start mission organizations and to pastor churches and do other things. And so we actually deliberately strove to break down this barrier between " some jobs are more spiritual than others. It's more spiritual to preach than to do a spreadsheet, or it's more spiritual to work in a church than to work at Pricewaterhouse." That sort of nonsense.

So that secular sacred dichotomy, I hated it with a passion because it sidelined 95, 99% of people in the Kingdom of God. They became just spectators.

Martha: Oh, and that's so true. And I think a lot of people don't even realize that they've become spectators. It's what the culture has grown and bred. So those same people though, that you were having business people that were leading in the church, what were they doing when they went back into their work? Did they actually allow their faith to be a forefront principle of what they were doing?

Brett Johnson: Yeah, I think they were. I think they were, because we weren't super religious, we were quite close to the communities we were in. And so people were praying about what to do in their work situation, how to do it in their work situation. And I think historically, business people have asked, been asked to do two things, to write checks, to give money, and to witness, which typically means, invite somebody to church, that sort of deal.

But I found that people are chicken and they're cheap (laughter) and so effectively people were thinking about, how do I develop products? How do I do new things? How do I do new things with God? I will say that when we moved to the States, which was in 1986, we came for one year was the plan. And as the aircraft was landing in San Francisco, God said to me, this is gonna be your home for quite a while. And we literally just arrived with four suitcases, and it was gonna be one year, just a tour of duty. Then I would go back. And so we began to ask God, why do you want us to stay in the States?

And he said, I want you to figure out a way to blend together these three worlds. And so then we began working more deliberately with entrepreneurs and business people in Silicon Valley, and yes, the separation of work and faith was an issue. Even after we started our own business, one of my employees came to me and said, Brett, are we a business or are we a ministry? I said, yes. And he said no, you don't understand my question.

So people have been taught for years in church, sometimes by default, and preachers will say the right words: oh no, you're now entering the mission field and so forth, but the upwardly mobile career path in the church is you become an assistant deacon, a deacon, an elder, a this or that. And the career ladder is inside, right?

Jim: Brad, you'll never believe the things that I was told. So Martha and I were entrepreneurs from early on in our lives. Martha grew up in an entrepreneurial family. I grew up as an entrepreneur, and when we were newly married in our twenties, early twenties, youth sponsors of the church, working outside jobs, this is what we were taught by our two mentor couples. Business is business and church is church. They have nothing to do with each other. So make a lot of money in business and give it to the church and maybe you'll serve on a building committee one day. You forgot about the building committee.

There's Deacon, and you know it's assistant deacon and elder, but you forgot about the building committee. 'cause the ultimate goal, of course, of the great commission is to build big buildings. That's in second hesitations. You have to look that up. It's verse four in chapter 17. (laughter)

We need to recognize this is a real thing, but I wanna talk about, I wanna come back after a break here. I really wanna talk about what you're seeing around the world, because we know this is a thing in the States, but is it also the same thing around the world? Martha?

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Jim: Brett, you and Lyn have traveled across the world. You're from South Africa, you have a southern accent, but yet you spent a ton of time in California and today, did I have it in my head, right? Are you in Tennessee? Is that where you're at? Yeah, Chatanooga. That must really throw people off. You say, yeah, I'm from the deep south, and they're like, no, I don't think so. (laughter)

All right. But you've traveled the world, you've discipled people across the world. Is this dissection between faith and work, the sacred secular, false theology, is it all over the place? Is it everywhere?

Brett Johnson: No, not really. So it depends on the country. So for example, about. 40 years ago, more than 40 years ago, I was in the Ukraine and I was speaking to the head of a denomination there and I said, what percentage of your pastors have other jobs? He said, 99.9. I'm the only one who doesn't. Then I went to Egypt and I was speaking there at some Global Leadership Summit and there a pastor, if he takes a second job like driving an Uber or a taxi or running a vending machine, they say, no, you don't have the faith to be a pastor, but they're only paying him a hundred, 200 pounds a month and he's got a couple of kids and they're struggling.

And whereas in Nigeria, bivocational is the norm. So I have good friends over there. They're government ministers, bank CEOs, lawyers, et cetera, and they lead a church. It's just the norm. So it's, it varies by country.

Martha: Take that a little bit further because there's probably a principle behind this idea that when a pastor is bi-vocational, he better understands what? The workplace. He understands that he doesn't turn off his faith when he is driving the Uber, or he doesn't turn off his faith when he is being an accountant. So how does that translate then into helping the everyday workplace believer to better understand that we should never turn off our faith?

Brett Johnson: Yeah. For me, there's some things that should be self-evident. There's a series of principles. Firstly, that work is good. I grew up thinking that work was punishment for sin because when I was naughty, then my mom in particular, she was a disciplinarian, you had to cut the grass, pick up the dog poop, all that stuff. And so the worst the crime, the more the work.

So I grew up with this notion that work was bad instead of work is good. God works. We are gonna work in heaven, and our work on earth is prepped for what we're gonna do for eternity. The reward for doing a good job here is a bigger job in heaven. Then secondly, that work is worship. When people understand that the Hebrew word for work and for worship is the same word, or the word for business and for ministry is the same word. So I can say, my name is. Brett and I go to my place of worship, which is Pricewaterhouse, where I do my ministry. I'll go to a place of work where I do my business.

It's the same thing in the Hebrew mindset. So when you understand some of those basics and that business is a force, a redemptive force for good in society, not something you allocate to a nonprofit. So for example, in Africa right now, there's a big stink about USAID funding being cut and all of that. But the people locally, their biggest problem is poverty and unemployment and handouts don't help. Statistically, they don't. So if we can teach people that work is good, you're expected to work for a living, God has gifted you to do something, it completely transforms the mindset.

So once people understand some of those basics, then they're off to the races. And for me it's not just about, oh yeah, Jack and Jill can have a more fulfilling life. It's that business is the most effective vehicle for discipling nations, for getting the great commission done, for transforming nations. So for me, I don't care if businesses in the US become 10% more profitable, I want to see business people we launched as a force for good.

So back to my own story. You know when I went to visit the guys up at YWAM at their headquarters in South Africa and I was chatting with them and I'd just done a big project for Shell, South Africa, around executive information systems, key performance indicators, all of the normal business stuff. So then I go up to the missions organization and they don't have data, they don't have the systems to gather that kinda stuff. Guys go off on a three months mission trip and they come back and they say it was a blessing. They don't know how many people they saw, what happened, so we put systems together for them and built computer programs back in the 1980s and they got a 25% increase in throughput through their ministry with no increase in staff or budget.

Martha: Wow.

Brett Johnson: And this was taking the business skills of everyday people and then coming along and using it for the kingdom. And it wasn't about evangelism or raising money or doing any of those things. So if you think about the wastage across the body of Christ because A, people have been sidelined, and B, their pragmatic skills are not being used to extend the kingdom.

Jim: So two things you mentioned, I want to hit back on because most people grow up with the idea that work is a punishment for sin. And it's so important to recognize that God gave Adam work before sin existed, but I never thought about the fact that our parents drove home that false narrative by making us work as a punishment. So I never thought - mom and dad, false theology, mom and dad. (laughter)

Martha: So even on a good day they should be making everybody work.

Jim: That's right. All right.

Martha: The kids are gonna not like you, Jim. (laughter)

Jim: That's right. That's right. Okay, but this whole idea that most people, first of all, I'm gonna give you a word. Are you in business or are you in ministry? Thanks to Chuck Proudfit from At Work On Purpose in Cincinnati, Ohio. You're in biznistry. It is a copyrighted word by Chuck Proudfit. So you're in biznistry. It's both. But a lot of times people think, Brett, that being in ministry at work means that it's all about evangelism, but it's so much more.

It's about the cultivation of the earth. It's about bringing about flourishing. And the way I summarize it is that as a believer, everything about us should be changing, but everybody around us should be benefiting from our faith, whether they believe in Jesus or not. That's the kingdom. So our businesses, our organizations, should be creating blessing to everybody around us.

If you've got a business in a city, it should be blessing the city, not only the employees, the vendors, the customers, and you as a business owner, but also the city should be blessed because you're there.

Brett Johnson: Hundred percent. Yeah. And there have been good historical examples of businesses that have actually sought the good of their city. That's what they've done, and they've been there for the benefit of the city. I think that there's a notion of what I call called corporations, like key companies that God has in cities there to bless the city. Now they can go sideways and they can think about maximizing shareholder value and making as much money for themselves.

But a good business will actually be there for the enhancement of the city. We claim Jeremiah 29, I know the plans I have for you to give your future, and I hope, and so on, that's written to people who care about the wellbeing, the prosperity, the flourishing of their city.

Jim: That's not just written to business people 'cause there are people that are serving in government, there are people who are serving in arts and entertainment, there are people who are serving in education, all these other places. To me, it seems like communicating to business people is easy. I understand business, but communicating to people that don't work in business, that their job is important in the kingdom too. How do you deal with those people?

Brett Johnson: Yeah, I've written a book called Transforming Society, looking at 10 spheres of Society. So the things that you mentioned - education, media, government, those type of things. And our job is to, if we are gonna go and disciple a nation, you better understand what's going on in the nation.

So you have to understand what are the foundations, what's the history, what are the assets? I believe God puts assets in every community that are there for the flourishing of that nation. And so you have to figure out what it looks like, an asset based approach, and then how do you steward those assets?

Because under stewardship of assets is one of the biggest giants that we face in society, and you can see it all over the world as you travel. Some languages don't even have a word for maintenance, for example. And so that falls apart. And so the stewardship that you mentioned just doesn't take place.

So if you look at the health of the different spheres and what would it look like if the glory of God was restored to media, to business, to government, to healthcare, to family, to religion and so forth, what would it look like? Because in Corinthians, it speaks about God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

That word there is cosmos, not people. It's not ethnos. So God wants to reconcile the whole kitten caboodle, the whole tamale, as they say in Mexico. (laughter) I was gonna say in Greek, but they'll catch me out, so the whole tamal, reconcile back to himself. So we have to have a grid for viewing society and say, okay, what's going on in the different sectors?

How healthy are they? Who's doing great work? How do we get it behind them? Who's lacking resources? Who's lacking training, education capital? What do we do to treat the whole organism, if you like, of society in a holistic way?

Martha: Man, there are so many things, and I know that, I know you probably have more questions, but something that that just made me think of is we have so many examples in scripture where God purposefully equipped someone with a skill for a certain purpose.

And I think so many of us go through life wondering, how is God going to use me? I am a really good seamstress. What is that gonna do for the kingdom? And I just wanna encourage the listeners right now that whatever God has skilled you in is on purpose. And it is to be used for the kingdom, whether it's you're a good seamstress, so you're gonna clothe people that need to be clothed, or you're just gonna make beautiful things because God made you creative and he made you resourceful, whatever it might be.

That's a worldwide commonality that God created us uniquely, and that we then need to find a way to use that gift for the kingdom. Even the reverse Jim, we had friends that were missionaries in Lebanon and their mission work was to be the human resource person and the accountant within that organization because they were really good at that skill and they could help mission progress by being very accountable for the things that God made them really good at business and using it in that way. So just outta context we think so narrow mindedly in our normal response because we have things like parents that punish us by making us weed the garden.

No, I'm just kidding. We really, we've had that reinforced over the years. There's tiers and that we are just less than, and it's so much more than that. And I hope that's what the listeners are hearing today.

Brett Johnson: Yeah. People used to say to me, Martha, if I knew what my calling was, then I could do what God wanted me to do. And we have this notion of calling like it's Mother Theresa, it's Hudson Taylor. It's somewhere out there. But now I tell people, do you wanna know your calling? They say, yes. I tell 'em you're called to work a hundred percent and you can pretty much safely assume that if you're a seamstress, you're called to be a seamstress unless God redirects you. Yeah, and there's a lovely scripture in Psalm 78, verse 72, where it says that God took David from being the shepherd of the sheep and made him the shepherd of a nation. It was the same job. It was just a different scope and focus.

God took Peter, the fishermen, and said i'm gonna make you a fisher of men. He's oh, I get that. You know I'm a fisherman. Yes. So a farmer, he makes a kingdom farmer. So he likes to take our career and give it a kingdom twist, put it on kingdom steroids, if you like. But it's rare that he's gonna say, oh, Jim, you're gonna become a pop star or you're gonna become a ballet dancer. He's no, Jim, you're good at this stuff. This is the way I made you.

Jim: Belly dancer or ballet dancer? (laughter) Ballet dancer. You know the way you said that, it sounded exactly the same. (laughing)

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It just seems like the local church, they don't seem to recognize the extreme need for workplace believers to be launched into their workplace mission field, their assigned place of ministry. What's your perspective on how do we fix this?

Brett Johnson: Yeah, I think we've made a mistake of making the church the destination. It's actually just a halfway house for business people. So if you look at Abraham, his father was called to go to Canaan. His father was a guy by the name of Terah. And he got halfway there, he found a sweet real estate deal and he settled down. He never went all the way. So Abraham had a recall.

He had to now walk out what his father should have done. And the church has become the halfway house, but it's never intended to be, the destination is the nations. So when we put the nations in front of business people and say, we'll support you as the church, we'll empower you, but we don't want you to do your ministry inside the walls of the church.

We want you to do it out there. Connect them to the nations. They might say, oh yeah, but there's a need in Dallas or there's a need in Pittsburgh or whatever. That's great, but God is the God of, and it's Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth. It's not the God of or. It's not a question of, do I serve God here or there?

No. It's if we can give businesses a purpose that connects to the nations, then they get excited, then they get passionate, they go out, they do crazy things with and through business, and then they come back and they're enriching to their local church.

Martha: I just want to go back to the seamstress analogy because I think that this can really just drive it home for people in the sense that, okay, you have a business where you make clothing, and it's really good, and it covers people and it allows them to be warm or whatever its purpose might be. You can use that business to teach other people.

That same work to employ them, to give them livelihood. You can also do it for a purpose, to fill a need, maybe do something with generosity to clothe people that can't afford to buy your clothing. And you can, there's so many ways that you can use that skill. I think in our lives we've been told, okay, quit making clothing and go and only make clothing in the foreign country.

Jim: I'm gonna quit my job and go into ministry.

Martha: Yeah. But there's so much more. Now that doesn't mean you can't make clothing for other people that are naked and need clothing, but then also the, all of the other aspects of the work that you're doing that can bring glory to God. And I think that's the perspective that I just want people to hear for today.

Jim: Brett, any final thoughts for us?

Brett Johnson: Yeah. I'm reminded, Martha, of one of the first things God did in the garden. I tell people, find your job in the Bible. If you're a seamstress, it's not hard because one of the first things he did was to clothe those guys, right? And then I'm reminded in the book of Acts where the apostles, they took the apostles handkerchiefs.

And they prayed over these things. They went there, laid them on people, and they were healed. We now have businesses who pray over their clothing products before they go out. So an item of clothing can reflect the glory of God and physical products can carry the glory of God. We think, oh, it's just, if I make it nicely, if I make it honestly - actually these things can embody and can carry the power of God.

We had a customer, a client we worked with in Indonesia, and they make towels, just like Terry towels that you use. We talked about this concept of - and think about a handkerchief. It's for blowing your nose. It's pretty gross. But if those things can carry the healing from God, not to get overly religious about this thing, now they begin to pray over everything that goes out so that.

The presence of God, the attributes, the nature of God that is embodied in something like clothing and so forth. People in the garden, they didn't know what God was like because they read it in a Bible, they heard a sermon, and they only saw from his products, from what he made. So people can see what God is like from the clothing that you make, if that's your line of business that you're in.

And my parents had clothing factories, by the way.

Martha: Crazy. That's great.

Jim: Brett, it's a great conversation. We could go on for hours talking like this. Bottom line it for all of us. Go ahead and summarize it for us.

Brett Johnson: Yeah. Pretty simple. Your call to work, your work is your worship. You're probably called to be in the marketplace. There's a very small percentage, statistically, who are called to do something where you're paid to be good, you're in a pulpit, you're in a missions organization.

From a sustainability perspective, the majority of us are called to be in a place where we have self-funding missions models. And every business trip should be a missions trip, and we need to connect the purpose of our business to the purpose of God's business. The goal isn't to get God into our business. That's easy. But how do we get our business into God's business? So what's God doing in the world and how do we, as a subsidiary of God's business, as an employee of God unlimited, how do we work for his purposes and the completion of his mandate? That's the bottom line for me.

Martha: Wow.

Jim: Brett Johnson, thanks for being on iWork4Him today.

Brett Johnson: Great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

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.