www.marketplacenetwork.com

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that

from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance It is the Lord Christ whom 

you serve.   -Colossians 3:23-24 

Christians don't have a monopoly on ethics or morality. People of other faiths, even people of no

 faith, are often as ethical and moral as followers of Jesus Christ. Christians, however, when they 

surrender their lives to Christ, surrender their business practices to Him as well. The whole of 

Scripture now comes into play, and the standard by which we must measure ourselves, indeed the

 standard by which God measures us, is governed not by societal norms or even "best practices", 

but by what God teaches us through Scripture. This means if we aren't reading Scripture regularly,

 we aren't measuring our work or our company by the same yardstick God does.

 In fact, studies tell us that the more educated a person is in American culture, the less likely they 

are to be reading the Bible; and that the more successful a person is, the less likely they are to be

 reading the Bible. This means that even well-meaning followers of Christ lack the tools to assess 

how God views the work of their hands. Next week we'll examine signs that a Christian worker 

might be in trouble with God for how they do their jobs. This week, though, we invite you to consider

 some signs your company might be in trouble with God.  

 You as a leader, or your company might be in trouble with God if: 

- Your sales strategies target weaknesses in vulnerable people.  

- Your employee manual has a phrase that says..."employees may be terminated with or without cause". 

- You have a high turnover rate. 

- You have pay discrepancies between people in the same job which is not explained by tenure or superior performance. 

- You want to "crush your competition." 

- Your product or service damages the environment. 

- Your employees are afraid of you, or of your managers. 

- You have high profit margins and low wages. 

- You have high wages and lose money. 

- You offer bonuses, but not to all levels of workers in the company. 

- You treat one level of worker with more respect and dignity than other levels. 

- You hire part-time workers as a strategy to avoid paying benefits to workers, instead of as a means to handle variable workloads. 

- Your advertising is "technically correct" but couldn't stand the "sniff test". ("4 out of 5 dentists surveyed say our toothbrush is best" when you picked the dentists to survey.) 

- You lay off a large number of workers and they didn't know it was coming, but you did. 

- Your business is struggling and you hide it from employees interviewing for jobs. 

- You favor Christians over non-Christians in human resource matters. 

- You exploit weaknesses and disadvantageous circumstances in suppliers or prospective employees in order to get their products, services or labors for unreasonably low dollars. 

- Your employment practices pit workers against each other in ways that exceed healthy competition. "The bottom two workers in each department are gone..." 

- You use pricing as a way to destroy a competitor's business.  

- You have economic models for pay scales at the lower end of the organization, but no models to determine true economic value of the senior management of your company. 

- You make workers endure the "walk of shame" (having them personally escorted off the property) after a layoff or dismissal that isn't due to performance issues on the part of 

the employee.

--Randy Kilgore