Faith and Work (Part 1) - Rick Boxx

00:01 - Speaker 1 In business, every day there's a problem. There's always a challenge that you need to fix. Oftentimes it's conflict related, because anytime there's people, there's going to be problems. God's Word has very practical principles to teach about all of that. The practical day-to-day challenges can be resolved by turning to God's Word, looking at the principles and thinking about how might that apply to my situation today. 00:31 - Speaker 2 Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life. Join us as we delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement and answered prayers. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. Learn more at faithlyco. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry. On the Faithly Stories podcast. 01:12 - Speaker 3 Rick, welcome to Faithly Stories. It is such a pleasure to have you here. 01:17 - Speaker 1 Well, thank you, Alicia. I'm looking forward to the conversation today. 01:21 - Speaker 3 Perfect. Well, Rick, you are the founder and CEO of Unconventional Business Network. I'd love to start by just hearing a little bit more about what that is. 01:31 - Speaker 1 Yeah. So Unconventional Business Network, we are a nonprofit member organization that we began about 23 years ago and we're really focused on helping business leaders integrate their faith in the Bible into how they conduct their work life, and so we try and do that through kind of three primary ways conferences and events we believe there's a way to help people connect their purpose by hearing other people's stories and realizing that God does have a plan and a purpose for them. So conferences and events are oftentimes a way that we draw people in. And then content and resources. So we've created lots of content over the years lots of books, Bible studies, but also daily messages, podcasts, radio programs, et cetera. So lots of resources for people as well as community groups, and so we have groups that meet all over the world of people that can gather and meet with other like-minded business leaders so that they can learn how to map out this journey that God has for them vocationally. 02:46 - Speaker 3 That is so cool, rick, and I love that it's called the Unconventional Business Network, because I think too often faith and work initiatives can make people feel like, oh, this is the easiest thing in the world, it's the most natural thing in the world. But that's not really the case and the word unconventional really speaks to that right. 03:06 - Speaker 1 Yes, oh yeah yeah, I think it creates a lot of curiosity and people wonder well, what do you mean by unconventional? But if you look all through Scripture, it's full of paradoxes. I mean, jesus did things a whole lot different than what even the religious leaders of the time thought, and so I think that trying to model and live out God's word is going to be unconventional and it's going to fly in the face of what so many business leaders believe. The right way is. 03:37 - Speaker 3 Right, right. Well now, rick, you've been doing this for 20 years, but you had a big long this for 20 years, but you had a big long, multifaceted career even before you started Unconventional Business Network. Can you take us through that a little bit and just tell us how you, what was your journey to starting this important ministry? 03:56 - Speaker 1 Sure, yeah. Well, I started. I got an accounting degree from the University of Missouri and went into public accounting right out of school with one of the large CPA firms, and really up to that point, I had very focused. I was going to be a CPA if it killed me, and boy, there were times it felt like it was going to, and when they handed me my CPA certificate, I realized that I just achieved the only goal I had in life, and I absolutely hated what I was doing, and so I decided I need to get out of here, and so I bailed out of public accounting and decided to take a run at being an entrepreneur for the first time, and so I started a car rental agency from scratch at 25 years old. 04:48 I started a car rental agency from scratch at 25 years old, and what unfortunately ended up happening was is right after I opened the doors, interest rates went to 21 percent, unemployment went to 13 percent, and I learned a lot of lessons but boy were they hard lessons. And after fighting the battle for about a year, I realized that I was fighting an uphill battle, and so I decided to sell the cars and pay off the debts while I still could, and so I got out of that business venture and went into banking and ended up realizing that at that time in the banking world if you wanted to get to the top of the heap in the banks that I was in anyway, you needed to be on the commercial lending side. And so I navigated through a management training program, went through commercial lending, ended up managing commercial lending departments for some of the major banks in the Kansas City area and ultimately ended up running a small community bank for some family friends until we decided to sell that to a major holding company, and so that was kind of the career path. But along that path I ran into a bank president that I went to work for and he was different than anybody I'd ever worked for, because whenever I would try and get decisions out of him he would oftentimes quote me a proverb or he would tell me a parable and how I could relate it to my problem. 06:18 And at that stage in my life I had been really kind of hiding out from God for a long time, even though I was raised in the church as a child, and I would leave that guy's office kind of scratching my head going. Did that guy really just pull a Bible out on me, can he do that? But I would go and be obedient and do the things that he would ask and I started witnessing that boy. This is pretty wise stuff, I mean. 06:44 This really helped us turn around a troubled bank, probably in half the time of what our bosses thought was possible, and so it was a very intriguing journey for me to be able to learn that the book I learned as a child actually had business value, and my passion had always been around business, and so I really took to that and began to realize there's something here. And later I kind of went on a journey of looking around are there any ministries out there teaching these principles to business leaders? Because I just thought they were so valuable. And ultimately, whenever we sold that small community bank, as I was praying about what was next, god made it clear to me that you keep asking the question why isn't anybody doing this? Guess what you need to go do. 07:40 - Speaker 3 That really resonates with me, Rick, because I felt a similar stirring right before I started Faithfully and that led me on this journey. So as I've dived into Unconventional Business Network and the resources you have, the events that you offer, I have picked up on a real heart for the small business owner. You have all kinds of business professionals and leaders who are part of your network, but the small business owner seems to be at the center of it. Is that because of your own journey and your own experience? 08:12 - Speaker 1 I would say a great deal. Yes, I mean, I've been around the entrepreneurial world. Even in banking I had the opportunity. They would keep asking me well, why don't you come down to the big bank? You can deal with bigger loans and credits and all of that stuff. But I always just had a heart for being a community banker and so I would always navigate towards that, which meant I got to work with small mom and pop businesses day in and day out, loved being able to help support them and encourage them, because I just remembered how hard it was when I tried to start my first business. 08:52 And then since that time, I mean that really kind of helped me swear off ever wanting to be an entrepreneur again. But you know, you tell God your plans and he gets a good laugh out of that. But you know, you tell God your plans and he gets a good laugh out of that. And so he, you know, whenever he called me to go start this ministry from scratch, I remember thinking, lord, you got the wrong guy. I don't want to do this. And the amazing thing is is since that time I've been a part of helping start or found seven to eight different organizations, and so I've always had a heart for that, that small entrepreneur that's just trying to follow the call that they have, and just they need support and encouragement. 09:36 - Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. Well, so the big picture, the macro problem you're helping them to solve, is how to bring their faith into their work, like that's the answer, but oftentimes in their day-to-day that's not necessarily the practical challenge that they're dealing with, right? So can you speak to some of the practical challenges that they're facing? 09:57 - Speaker 1 Oh sure, yeah, In business, every day there's a problem. You know there's always a challenge that you need to fix. Sometimes it may be cash flow, sometimes it may be, you know, strategic. Oftentimes it's conflict related, because anytime there's people, there's going to be problems. 10:18 And I just am a firm believer in my experiences over the years that God's Word has very practical principles to teach about all of that. And so if we can help people just dig into God's Word and realize, hey, here is a passage that maybe Jesus modeled, or here's something you know that a proverb teaches that have you ever considered applying this to your circumstance or situation? And so the practical day-to-day challenges I believe can be resolved by turning to God's Word, looking at the principles and thinking about okay, how might that apply to my situation today? And so we really try and help be as practical as possible. There's a lot of faith at work organizations. I would say a lot of them get theoretical or academic and there's a place for that and it's important. But for us, because we do have a heart for that entrepreneur and those small business people, you can't talk about theology very long before they're going to zone out on you if you can't make it real practical, real quick. And so that's our heart is let's take God's Word and let's make it practical. 11:41 - Speaker 3 That's so good. Yeah, I think. Especially as a small business owner myself, I can relate to that. Those everyday problems are existential, and if the Bible can't speak to that, then I don't know that the leaders are going to. I don't know that you'll get them all the way there. So that's so good. Now, having done this for 20 years, I'm sure you have a thousand examples of businesses and business leaders whose lives have been transformed. Can you give us just maybe one example, one that's really stuck with you over the years? 12:12 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I would say one that really comes to mind is many years ago. We were hosting one of our very first events, actually, and a landscaping guy that I had known and had actually done some business with he invited a couple of tables worth of his people to come to this event and we actually had a person that was part of the training department at Chick-fil-A come and speak and the next day the CEO of this landscaping company calls me and he said Rick, that's a huge company and they're putting God first in the middle of what they're doing, and their mission statement even talks about that. He said I'm much smaller, more fleet of foot. Why can't I do something like that? I said, larry, there's no reason why you can't. And he said well then you need to drive over here right now and let's work this out. 13:12 And so I ended up going and working with Larry and he ended up ultimately changing his mission statement to glorifying God was front and center in the middle of his mission statement and we talked through a strategy and a plan as to how he could start changing the culture of his company, helping his employees start to embrace that. 13:35 Hey, we want to be about really glorifying God in the way that we conduct business and at that time he probably had about 150 employees. 13:45 Well, I've watched as he's now grown to be really the largest in the Midwest, you know, with I don't know. He's probably pushing close to a thousand employees now and I've watched as he has been very forthright and faithful in who he is as a company, what their culture is about and who they're there to serve who they're there to serve and it's really been amazing to see the impact he's had on the employees but also on the customers, and at first he was nervous. He said you know, am I going to lose customers from this? And he said, you know, I lost a couple of customers here and there. But he said I gained a whole lot more of people that just realized who we were and they embraced it and said, wow, we want to be a part of this as well, and so it's been fun just to watch him unpack this over the years, to walk it out in faith and to see God is faithful, to be able to help him navigate that. 14:46 - Speaker 3 That's a really cool story, thank you. So you mentioned driving over to him. I mean, this is a really hands-on ministry. You guys are in it together, you're doing it together. So can you talk a little bit about your footprint? Where are you based, rick, and where are some of your hubs? 15:03 - Speaker 1 Yeah, so we are based in Kansas City. Now, on the conferences and events side, we have tried to build a local community of Christian business leaders that can come together on a regular basis because we've seen that that becomes a catalyst to the entire community events a year here that will bring in top Christian CEOs and authors and different speakers to speak to that audience. And we encourage our sponsors to view it as part of their ministry to invite different people each time to the event. So we keep expanding the net beyond just the local base. So Kansas City has always been a presence for us. 15:50 We also have a strong presence in Des Moines, iowa. We've been there for probably seven or eight years now. We had a presence for many years in St Louis, we've been in Tulsa, we've been in Dallas, but right now kind of our primary event hubs is Kansas City and in Des Moines. But we also have our community groups and those can be done anywhere, and so we have groups that are meeting in Uganda and in Canada, but also in cities all over America as well, and so there's just a way for people to plug in and start something almost anywhere, because we've made it very scalable. 16:37 - Speaker 3 That's really interesting, rick, and I got that sense from you the last time we talked, because you were really excited about big corporations finally starting to resource Christians at work. So in a lot of ways you've proliferated beyond, just like your central hubs, to these workplaces across the country. Can you talk about that? Can you talk about some of the companies that you've been working with and how they've implemented some of your resources? 17:02 - Speaker 1 Yeah. 17:03 So what we've kind of discovered is, in the early years, whenever I got started, boy, if I'd go call on an HR department in a large company, they'd just laugh at me and shut the door and say, go away, we can't talk about that stuff around here. 17:18 But over the last four or five years I've seen just a groundswell of big companies, that many companies have employee resource groups that are basically affinity groups, and so once they do that and they open the door legally, they have to open the door for Christian resource groups as well, and so we're seeing just a tide of people wanting to start Christian resource groups in these large companies. 17:51 And so I think our first one there was a large shipping company in Jacksonville, florida, that called and said, hey, we're getting ready to start a Christian resource group, but we don't have any content, and we wondered if we could talk with you about that and use that. Well, when they announced it and rolled it out, they had like a couple of hundred people the very first day sign up for this group, wow. And so all of a sudden our kind of eyes lit up and we're like, wow, we had never really considered this as a space that we should serve, and so we started seeing others. And so, like there's a subsidiary of Shell Oil that started a group here with us in the Kansas City area earlier this year, we're in talks right now with starting something with Abbott Laboratories, and so there's a number of organizations that we're seeing great opportunities to be able to take this content that we have and just give them a platform to be able to use in a large organization. 18:55 - Speaker 3 Now for our listeners who may be getting a bit of a stirring, maybe getting a little bit excited for what might be possible for them. Do they have to be in senior management to bring this to their company? Do they have to be in HR? They can just be an employee of the company, someone who has a heart for doing this, and they can bring you to that company, right? Is that how it works? 19:17 - Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly, we've seen as people that may not be, you know, all that high up in leadership. You know they'll just go to HR and ask permission, can I do this? And they'll find out the ground rules. And some of them have been surprised, like the group at Shell Oil. Their HR department got behind it so much that they said, hey, anybody from our company that wants to go to the Unconventional Business Network National Conference will pay for it. And so it's been cool to see that there is some budget in some of these companies to be able to help these things actually flourish. 19:55 - Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, that's great. And if I could just add a little bit of added tidbit from my own experience to encourage folks. So I worked at Goldman Sachs for almost 20 years and there was a Christian group within Goldman Sachs. I think most people would think of that as one of the most secular spaces. There was a Christian group there and I heard from a friend recently that they just launched Alpha within Goldman Sachs, so hopefully that serves as encouragement to someone who thinks no, my company would never go for it. Rick, to your point, you just have to ask, right? 20:29 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and like I said earlier, if they're allowing other affinity groups, the law is really on your side. They really can't say no to you. If they're allowing it in other ways, now they may shape it uniquely. I've seen some that say well, yeah, we'll allow a faith group, but we're not going to make it Christian, you know. But you know at least they're trying to allow, you know, things like this to happen. 20:55 - Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, all right. So, Rick, not everyone wants to start something new in their company, or they may not work at a big company with the kinds of resources to support something like this, but if we have listeners who are maybe thinking well, I want to minister in my secular workplace. I don't know that I can start a group, but what are the things that one can do in that situation? 21:19 - Speaker 1 Sure, yeah, I mean, I think anybody can be a catalyst to see some transformative workplaces. It's just starting right where God's planted you and realize that you have influence right where you are, and so that may well be that you know, maybe you just see somebody in need and you ask if you can pray for them. I mean, it can be as simple as that to kind of get started. You can start maybe a Bible study group or a prayer group get permission to do that, can start maybe a Bible study group or a prayer group get permission to do that. Many companies will allow that. So there's things that you can do. 21:55 But actually just living out your faith, you know right where you are, and so sometimes that means applying the Bible to situations and the principles from God's Word, sometimes even sharing with you. Know, maybe it's an employee that works for you or whatever sharing with them. Hey, this is how I'm trying to lead and this is, you know, the faith culture that I'm coming from doesn't mean you have to buy or believe what I do, but this is what drives me and motivates me, and I believe it's a firm foundation to have an ethical framework to be doing business. 22:34 - Speaker 3 Yeah, it's just no longer compartmentalizing your life, right? Faith here and work here. It's as simple as that, right Rick? 22:41 - Speaker 1 Yes, yeah, the compartmentalization is the biggest hurdle for most Christians. You know, Barna Research did a study on Christians at work back in 2018, and they had basically three different buckets that they put Christians in. One they called compartmentalizers, one was onlookers and one was integrators and, sadly, what they discovered was only 28% of Christians are actually integrating their faith into their work life. So that means 72% of believers that are out in the marketplace. The people around them don't even know they're believers because they've compartmentalized their life in such a way that nobody really even knows who they are. 23:29 - Speaker 3 Right right, there can be no doubt that the work, the ministry that you're doing, is very, very important, Rick. Now let me ask you this People are getting involved. Even big companies are getting involved. What is the role of the local church? What should the church be doing in all of this? 23:49 - Speaker 1 Yes, you know that's a great question. From the earliest of the years in our ministry, we wanted to serve the local church. However, what we discovered was many pastors come right out of seminary. They go into being a pastor. They've not really experienced the workplace and many of them have this flawed view that the only true calling is if you're a pastor or a missionary. 24:18 But God has a calling for every single person that's in the workplace and that there is a vocational calling and pastors need to learn to encourage that. And I think that if they catch the vision that God wants them to be a pastor to their community, not just to the four walls that they have in their church, they'll start realizing that they have oftentimes people in their congregation that may actually have a lot more influence than the pastor does. You know there's leaders that are leading thousands of employees at times that are sitting in the pews of church, that if they use and leverage their platform as a ministry, they have a much bigger impact. And so when we see pastors catch that vision, it's so powerful because now they realize well, my job as a pastor needs to be encouraging and equipping that business leader to actually go back into the marketplace and realize that's their mission field and let's support them in that mission field. And when they do, it's so powerful. 25:31 - Speaker 3 Yeah, what I hear in what you're saying, Rick, is that pastors are in a really pivotal place, that if they can serve the business leaders in their church, that there is a really powerful multiplying effect in that service. 25:44 - Speaker 1 Absolutely. 25:46 - Speaker 3 Well, so let's get really practical. For the pastor and for the local church leader, how can they start integrating some of these principles into their leadership at the church? 25:58 - Speaker 1 Sure, you know, I would say some simple steps I would recommend for pastors to begin with is I've heard personally from lots of pastors that a lot of them have a deep-seated fear of their business leaders. They have a tendency to think you know, boy, that business leader, he really knows how to run an organization. If he ever found out that I was never really trained to run an organization, they might not have much respect for me, and so sometimes they build a wall and they distance themselves. Well, I would encourage you that God has put that business leader in your congregation for a reason and they may be able to actually support and encourage you as the pastor in how to lead the organization more effectively. But you need to first get to know them, and so I often encourage pastors hey, one day a month, pick someone in your congregation and just call and ask hey, can I come to your workplace and see what you do and learn a little more about your workplace and take you to lunch. And they'll be thrilled that you have an interest in even coming and learning about their work and I guarantee most of them will be just very happy to let you come and you will start to learn and see that some of them are doing things in the marketplace that you never dreamed possible. Some of them are bold, some of them are living out their faith in a way that would be very encouraging, and so I encourage pastors to do that as one step to step out. 27:41 But we also have a tool as Unconditional Business Network that we have our forum groups. 27:48 They're scalable, they're high-quality video training content with great business leaders delivering great messages every month, and so maybe you have a business leader that has expressed interest in well, how can I better live out my faith in my workplace? 28:09 Ask them if they'd be willing to start a forum group in your church and start inviting some of your business leaders to attend a monthly meeting with other Christian business leaders to go through this forum content, with other Christian business leaders to go through this forum content. 28:26 And I know I started one at my church and the pastors have been amazed, because business leaders are gatherers of people, and so they start inviting people that may not even go to your church, and business leaders start to come in, they start to learn and grow and realize that God's Word has something to say, and grow and realize that God's Word has something to say about their work and it has just an amazing impact, not only on that business leader, but it starts to have an impact on the church as they begin to connect and resonate with their business leaders. And those business people start to realize, wow, maybe my church does care about what I'm doing and maybe they have something to speak into the way that I can live out my faith in my marketplace and have an impact right where God planted me. 29:15 - Speaker 3 That's a really interesting idea, Rick. I think most churches have a women's group and a men's group and a married's group and a single's group. I don't know that a lot of churches have a forum group that is tailored to the needs of, you know, a business leader, a business owner. So if someone wants to start one and they're not sure, well, I need curriculum, I need ideas, I need some kind of a framework for this. Can they come to your website and find that? How can they get in touch with you to tap into everything you've already created? 29:50 - Speaker 1 Sure, yeah, they can go to unconventionalbusinessorg. That's unconventionalbusinessorg and we have on the homepage there there's a tab for groups and so all the groups are listed, there's information on how to start a group, and so there's plenty of insight there and our team is happy to talk with them and just coach them and help them know what it takes to get a group started. Like I said, we made it very scalable, very easy, so groups have popped up, you know, practically overnight, in almost any place in the world because it's just been made easy for them. 30:30 - Speaker 3 I mean, it doesn't get any easier than that, right, Rick? You've made it very, very accessible. All right, let me ask you one more personal question. So you've been leading this ministry for 20 years. How has your faith either been deepened or been challenged by this ministry that you've led? 30:49 - Speaker 1 Oh sure. 30:50 Well, certainly over the years it's been challenging to, in essence, be a pioneer in an industry that really didn't exist hardly at all when I started, and so that was very challenging to try and get something off the ground from scratch, wondering how you know, how are we going to pay the bills, how are we going to support my family, all those things. 31:15 And so I have watched and my faith has been stretched as I've watched God show up time and time again that there's been times when I don't know how payroll is going to be covered, especially in the early years. I don't know how things are going to happen and pray, we watch, and God shows up in miraculous ways to stretch our faith. And so sometimes you know, it may be small at first, and then that stretches your faith enough that you're saying, okay, I can take a bigger step next time. And so I've just watched as God has done incredible things. That stretches my faith, which gives me the courage to go out and encourage business leaders that, hey, you're having a cash flow problem. Have you talked to God about it? You know, have you got a plan that you've tried to pray through with God and to see how he wants you to live this out and be able to watch other people just have their face stretched as well. 32:17 - Speaker 3 Yeah, so what I'm hearing you say is that you're living this out real time along with the people in your network, because, especially in the beginning, this was a brand new thing, right, and you were facing the same moments that I think we all face when we're starting something new. Now this is also a family business, right, rick, or a family ministry Rather. You do this alongside your wife. 32:43 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, kathy was a registered nurse most of her career and she left nursing and I saw that she had some organizational skills and so at first she tried to help us some on the event side of things that she was good at just rallying people and getting them excited, all of that. 33:06 But her heart is really on the prayer side and so over time she's kind of morphed to where she's been in the development side of helping raise money. But she doesn't do anything like most people. She does it solely through prayer, where she will call people that have engaged with our ministry and she will ask them on a regular basis do you have anything going on that our team can pray about? And every Tuesday we gather as a team with a long list of people that she's contacted with their prayer request and she will lead us in praying for these people and then we all sign prayer cards that we mail out to them so that they see who all prayed for them, and it's a huge encouragement to those people and so it's been fun to watch her embrace this prayer ministry and it's really been just a godsend for so many people in our network. 34:07 - Speaker 3 Wow, I hope all the development people, all the development teams are listening into this. She's doing development through prayer. I love that. Now, that's unconventional. 34:19 - Speaker 1 Yes. 34:20 - Speaker 3 Rick, if you could leave one more thought, one more encouragement with our listeners, what would it be? 34:27 - Speaker 1 marketplace to be a missionary or pastor. 34:31 God wants you right where you're at, to be planted there to be used by him. 34:47 But the second thought is is I believe that God's Word is the best business book you'll ever find. It's the best-selling book. It's a book that is oftentimes overlooked and not very many people read it through the lens of a business person. But when you do, you start to see the principles, the wisdom and the insight. And when you start to apply that to your day-to-day problems and situations in your workplace, I think you'll be refreshed to know that God's already thought this out, he's already got it, and that you can follow his word and begin applying it in practical ways, and you will not only see your problems and issues resolved. I think you will also start to see the people around you and their lives impacted, as they see, just like that bank president that impacted me, as I saw the way that he was leading it impacted my life in a profound way that has led to launching a ministry that has, you know, touched the lives of millions of people. So it's just incredible what God can do. 35:59 - Speaker 3 Yeah, wow. Well, thank you, rick, for sharing your story and sharing your 20 years and counting journey with faith and work. It's really been a pleasure to get to know you and to share more about what you're doing with our listeners. So thank you, rick. 36:15 - Speaker 1 Well, thank you, alicia, this has been great fun for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. 36:21 - Speaker 2 We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. 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