Walking the Narrow Road: Weekly Marketing and Spiritual Devotionals for Christians in Buisness

By Josh Kilen

Life’s not easy being a Christian, holding on to Christ's ideals, and still running a profitable business.

In fact, as Christians we are held to higher standards and hamstrung in ways that our secular counterparts would never understand. Where they can cheat a little, the Spirit inside of us will accept only honesty. Where they can bend the rules, we must walk the straight and narrow. Where they can feel justified in closing a lop-sided deal, we must love our neighbors as ourselves.

We’re handicapped in getting ahead.

Or are we?

Business is changing. The old ways of tricking and making people feel a certain way through psychological manipulation are over. If you watch carefully, the tides are turning, as people become more informed, more savvy, and fed-up with with businesses broken and lame promises. The future belongs to those people who can form relationships, exceed customer expectations, connect, and tell relevant stories.

In short, the future belongs to the Christian Business Owner.

This is not your typical business book. Not only is it directed at Christians in business (a rarity due to prejudices in the church) but it’s also structured as devotionals rather than as chapters. It’s my firm belief that you will be better served by reading one section every week than by reading the whole thing at one sitting.

So read one entry, put it down, then meditate on it for a while. Read, reflect, re-read, then put it into action. If you are looking for quick answers or easy solutions, Jesus never promised that and neither do I. But if you dedicate yourself to change then I guarantee you will find success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Josh Kilen
• Release date: Aug 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465935304

Josh Kilen

Josh began writing books at age 8 and hasn't stopped telling stories. He has written more than 30 books across several genres, from children's books to business non-fiction.  

Book preview

The Lonely Life of a Christian in Business

Life’s not easy being a Christian, holding on to those ideals, and still running a profitable business. In fact, as Christians we are held to higher standards and hamstrung in ways that our secular counterparts would never understand. Where they can cheat a little, the Spirit inside of us will accept only honesty. Where they can bend the rules, we must walk the straight and narrow. Where they can feel justified in closing a lop-sided deal, we must love our neighbors as ourselves.

We’re handicapped in getting ahead.

Or are we?

Business is changing. The old ways of tricking and making people feel a certain way through psychological manipulation are over. If you watch carefully, the tides are turning, as people become more informed, more savvy, and fed-up with with businesses broken and lame promises. The future belongs to those people who can form relationships, exceed customer expectations, connect, and tell relevant stories.

In short, the future belongs to the Christian Business Owner.

We have a model for all those things, the man we claim to follow, Jesus himself. He valued and maintained quality relationships above everything (with his relationship to His Father being the most important), He consistently exceeded his followers expectations on things that mattered, and He communicated mainly in story through parables.

As Christians, or literally followers of Christ, we are called to emulate these traits, to walk in his steps as Peter says in his second epistle. If you do, then as a Christian Businessperson you are in prime shape to outlast your secular competition and grow your business for the Kingdom.

Because our faith and our commercial lives cannot be separate, we can’t have a serious discussion about business without also addressing our relationship with God and His people. The spiritual life connects deeply to the rest of our actions, and we need to feed that part of us in addition to learning new ways of doing business.

This is not your typical business book. Not only is it directed at Christians in Business (a rarity due to prejudices in the church) but it’s also structured as devotionals rather than as chapters. It’s my firm belief that you will be better served by reading one section every week than by reading the whole thing at one sitting.

So read one entry, put it down, then meditate on it for a while. Read, reflect, re-read, then put it into action. If you are looking for quick answers or easy solutions, Jesus never promised that and neither do I. But if you dedicate yourself to change then I guarantee you will succeed.

You’ve already taken the first step by purchasing this book, I believe you can make it the rest of the way.

Part One: Business and Marketing

Introduction to a New Way of Thinking About Your Business

There’s something coming on the horizon, a revolution. A battle between those who do business for the transaction and those who do business for relationships. Only one side can win.

Business as it has been conducted relies on four pillars:

1. Thinking about people as numbers and transactions

2. Giving customers and employees the absolute minimum required, finding their expectations and delivering just enough to not disappoint

3. Talking about your own interests, incessantly, in order to make people listen

4. Since no one listens when you talk about yourself, you have to rely on psychological tricks and manipulations tactics in order to make people hear you.

Regardless of the industry or the business, I see these ideas being the basis for almost every business decision made.

As hurtful as it is, it has worked for over a hundred years.

Your conscience knows there’s a different way. Most of us know what it is but we don’t have the words for it. We don’t want to treat people in-humanly, but we can’t think of what else to do.

Do you think your customers are immune to the way you run your business? Do you think that they want to be treated like transactions? Do you think that they care? All signs point to yes and as the field for choice opens up even more (mostly because of the internet), your customers will make the best choice they can. They will choose relationships.

How do we save ourselves?

You cannot just get by anymore, you can't just treat your customers as means to an end. Instead you have to think of your customers as an end. Cultivate quality relationships with them.

In order for your business to survive, you will have to give your customers more than they expected, every time.

And, if you want to just tell them what you think is important, only talking about your interests and values, you'll turn them off and won't be as effective as connecting and bonding through shared values.

Finally, persuasion and psychological tricks won't make a significant difference in the future. Instead, you will have to tell stories and more importantly, stories that make the customers want to share in the story that you are telling.

But it all begins with thinking of and treating people like people, and not numbers.

The following devotional style articles will point you in the direction of a new way to think about business and customer relationships.

More About Relationships and Transactions

You hate marketing and I want to tell you that’s okay.

You don’t trust business anymore, and I think that’s great.

You have this pain in your gut when you make a deal and it bothers you when you sell a contract.

That pain is wonderful

Those feelings are signs that you're still alive, that you're human and breathing.

That you want to live.

The acts of marketing, business, and signing contracts aren’t inherently bad or evil. In fact they are some of the most beautiful and complicated human relationships we engage in.

The problems come when we think about relationships as transactions

Please be honest with yourself. Anyone in business who has sold anything has a moment where they hated themselves. At least once. And the reason you hated yourself? Because you focused on the transaction instead of the relationship. It grates against our souls and if we give in to the temptation once, the next comes so much more easily.

People in general do not trust businesses

The lack of trust isn’t caused by MCI or Enron or Lehman Brothers, people don’t trust because businesses don’t treat them like people. They feel like transactions made to serve the corporate interests.

Now, the corporations don’t see it that way, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. We live in a world where the transaction trumps the relationship, only because most businesses are not designed to cultivate relationships, only to streamline transactions. We make sure that the transaction costs less and less, keeping the price the same. This practice, while monetarily beneficial to the corporation, has the added problem of devaluing the relationship with the client over time. And the relationship is all the client cares about.

And relationships are becoming everything

Can’t you feel deep down that business needs to change? Maybe you’ve written about it, or spoke with a friend, or just felt it in your gut. You have to see things are changing. This is how. Much as been made of relationships in business during the past 20 years. But I think that they all miss three vital points:

The first is that this is a battle, a war between ideologies. The fight is between those who want to blank out, cut costs, treat people like numbers, and just run their business and those who understand that with so many choices in the marketplace, people are looking for companies that are willing to give them a relationship. Clients recognize that a relationship is an asset, that it’s difficult to provide. They will reward you for that.

This is a war, between businesses that simply want to sell stuff and those that value and cultivate relationships

The second vital point that this movement for relationships has not latched on to in any meaningful way, is that the human need for relationships is natural and rational. It makes a lot of sense. But rarely do we delve into the psychology that underlies our basic motivations and ideals. I think it’s knowable, you can understand it, and it will make the bigger picture so much clearer. And clarity makes the details shine. I think that this has been generally ignored in the past because it’s pretty difficult to talk about, and not at all easy to illustrate.

A third vital point missed, mostly because the underlying causes were unknown or ignored, is the impact of storytelling on communication. We tell stories, to ourselves as expectations of things to come or past, and to others in order to