First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: Genesis 1:27-31, I Timothy 6:17-19
January 11, 1998
Introductory Note: This sermon was introduced by my Steeple Notes column which was mailed to the congregation during the preceeding week. It gave helpful background for the sermon and prompted congregational conversation. Since printed copies of the sermon are circulated to persons with no on-going connection to First Church and its sanctuary, I thought it might be helpful to include these remarks here.
Dear First Church Friends:
Last November I was privileged to participate in a top-level seminar on Business Ethics, held at the MSU Continuing Education Center and keynoted by Bob Eaton of Chrysler Corporation. This program targeted a regional cadre of clergy and business leaders and was hosted by our church, in conjunction with the Ethics Center of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University. My role was to deliver a response to Mr. Eaton’s address and then join him on a panel that included Ken Vaux and Tony Brown, a pair of professorial types from Garrett-Evangelical and Duke University. All told, it was a “heady morning” amidst some wonderful company.
I have given much thought to the matter of “business ethics,” both before and after the November event. I confess, however, to a lack of clarity as to how my calling and this subject overlay. Certainly, the word “ethics” is part of my domain. I have studied it, preached it, and sought to practice it. But the word “business” feels slightly foreign. Is the church a business? And, if so, does that make me a businessman?
Bishop Edsel Ammons (my denominational leader, twice removed) was fond of calling himself “a servant of the servants of God.” Which sounded good when he said it. And felt good when I heard it. But he was also the chief executive of an ecclesiastical corporation, with tangible assets running into the millions.
I understand the vocational schizophrenia that produces. For I, too, am “a servant of the servants of God.” But, as one of you recently reminded me: “Ritter, you are also the CEO of a rather significant corporation, and we expect that you will not only understand that role, but fill it.” This reality was further confirmed by the recent campaign report that indicates a 1998 pledge base (Operating Fund and Home Fires) in excess of $1.5 million. Which is neither small change….nor a small enterprise.
I submit that there has been a quietly smoldering antipathy between some clergy and the business community for a number of years. Furthermore, I am in possession of some documentation that both supports and explains it. Personally speaking, I do not share that antipathy. But I understand it. I know that many business folk think that clergy are clueless as to how it goes in their world. And I know that clergy feel similarly misunderstood in ours. Threaded through the misunderstanding is the suspicion that some clergy are, at the core, “closet socialists,” seeking to link the Kingdom of God with a radical redistribution of wealth, while dismantling what was once called “the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.”
Sound heavy? It needn’t be. And given the appearance of a Business Ethics class in this year’s University of Life line-up, perhaps this is a “ripe” moment for a sermon on the subject. So I’ll preach it Sunday under the title “Healing the Business-Clergy Rift.” My promise is to build more bridges than I burn. I’ll begin with Big Al’s Hubcap City and his search for a chaplain. But I won’t rest until I have also ranged from Genesis to Timothy, in hopes of stimulating more than I provoke and inspiring more than I confound.
The Sermon
Big Al is into hubcaps. Thousands of them. They stand like stacks of glittering chrome pancakes in the lot behind Big Al’s office. Fords to the left. Chevys to the right. Volvos, Saabs, Hondas, and all those other foreign jobs in the middle. With “mags,” “wires” and “baby moons” out back. The makeshift sign hanging slightly askew over the door reads: “Hubcap Heaven.” “It’s a good business to be in,” says Al, sucking on a Marlboro. “But I guess I’m gonna have to hire me a chaplain. Because everybody who comes through the door wants to tell me a story about how they lost their missing hubcap.”
Assuming that Big Al is serious, I might just apply for the job. Not because I am “into hubcaps,” but because a chaplaincy role would give me the opportunity to enter a foreign world (business and industry), without having to surrender a familiar identity (church and clergy). Except that Big Al might not want me, once he got me. Because the chaplaincy of Hubcap Heaven really wouldn’t interest me unless I could impact some of Al’s business decisions as well as his religious ones. For in addition to being a counselor to Al’s customers (and a lunch-time Bible study leader for Al’s employees), I’d want to talk about the matter of acquisitions….how Big Al acquires hubcaps in the first place….given my suspicion that a whole lot of used hubcaps are “hot” hubcaps.
What prompts all of this? It could be the Auto Show. It could be the Business Ethics Conference I was privileged to address last November. Or it could be the Business Ethics Seminar several of us are going to lead in this year’s University of Life. But it could also be a Wall Street Journal article entitled, “God and Mammon: Viewing the Business-Clergy Rift” over which I have ruminated for some time now.
This particular story concerned a Hamline University ethics professor named Walter Benjamin. The story interested me, given that I’ve met Walter Benjamin (and quietly admire him). Walt believes that business leaders and clergypersons in the United States have seldom been more at odds philosophically. To plumb that gulf, he mailed a detailed questionnaire to 100 chief executive officers of Minnesota corporations and 100 leading Protestant clergy of Minnesota congregations. He got replies from 75 percent of both groups….a most remarkable return. Following up the questionnaire, he invited the respondents to a forum entitled “The Boardroom and the Pulpit,” held at Hamline’s St. Paul campus.
Walter Benjamin was surprised, once people began talking honestly, to discover how little either group knew of the other group’s world. He also tapped a pool of antipathy and anger that surfaced in each group’s conversation about the other. To be sure, both groups acknowledged that their views were stereotypes which they were uncomfortable applying across the board. Most business persons, while distrusting clergy in general, liked their pastor. And most pastors, while speaking with disdain about business people in general, felt a need to exempt the fine, upstanding business types in their local churches. But such things are typical. After all, most people who think that the health care industry is a “rip off,” nonetheless love their family doctor. And all of us know that the terrible things people say about lawyers are certainly not true of the wonderful attorneys who worship at First Church.
But Walter is right. There are a lot of stereotypes that overlay the business-clergy dialogue. Many of them are far from healthy. And more than a few of them involve issues of “turf protection.”
Clergy often start with the assumption that business people do not know what ministers do….and do not understand what ministry is. Therefore, business people ought not be allowed to impose dollars-and-cents thinking upon the “work” of the church. Such clergy argue that “church work” has little in common with other work….ought not to be handled like other work….can never be measured like other work….and should never be entrusted (ultimately) to people who do other work. The bottom line of this stereotype reads: “Don’t let accountants anywhere near the altar.”
Clergy also claim a posture of moral superiority, when they look at business people and utter accusations like: “You’re only concern is with the bottom line.” But there’s a reason for that. It concerns the fact that clergy don’t like being held accountable for “bottom lines.” If the end-of-year report shows a “bottom line” of members lost, attendance down, and finances in the red, clergy would prefer to be judged on “spiritual criteria” that are harder to define and impossible to measure. And the inflection given to the words “bottom line” suggest that clergy….as servants of God…. see themselves as guardians of some vaguely defined “top line,” several rungs up the Kingdom ladder, where few business folk have ever climbed (or even wanted to).
By contrast, business folk often look at clergy and view us as naïve….or, in some cases, just plain dumb. They doubt we understand how the world really works. Time and again, I hear people ask of clergy in general: “What, if anything, do they teach you in seminary about running a church? Are there any courses in budgets or buildings…..leadership or management?” And the tone of the question implies that the expected answer is “No.” Which, sad to say, is the correct answer. So it is assumed that, where the church’s business is concerned (or where any business is concerned), we clergy know nothing….we want to know nothing….and we need to be protected against learning too much of anything, lest we be shocked, corrupted or exposed for the ignorant and idealistic dolts we really are.
Mind you, all of these are stereotypes. If I did not feel that you and I were already beyond them, I wouldn’t be comfortable raising them. But such stereotypes are out there. And there is more truth in them than any of us know.
As a clergy type, I take pride in some small understanding of how the world works. But as a Birmingham clergy type, I also take a bit of “heat” from colleagues who fear that my proximity to you has gotten me a little too “cozy” with how the world works. Some colleagues suggest, without actually saying it, that by coming to work in Birmingham I have “joined the enemy.” Which is neither true nor helpful.
Strangely enough, when I attended the first of these business ethics seminars at Northwestern University (20 company presidents and 20 senior ministers), we wrestled with some weighty cases involving downsizing and corporate relocation. But it was the company presidents who were optimistic that such matters could be addressed ethically, while the majority of pastors were terribly pessimistic that “moral talk” could ever hold its own in the arena with “money talk.”
That pessimism bothered me then. And it bothers me now. Which is why I need to stay, for a moment, with a group I know best….namely, the clergy….to see what needs to happen from our side, if better bridges are to be built.
Therefore, I begin with a confession. I didn’t think it up by myself. It emerged from the seminar at Hamline. But I’m willing to give it a wider audience. It concerns compensation. One of the reasons that clergy mistrust the leaders of an economic system that delivers so much material abundance, is because most clergy do not share in that abundance. That’s a fancy way of saying that clergy distance themselves (philosophically) from people with money, to the degree that they don’t have very much of it. Personally, I don’t feel the weight of that argument. But, then, I make a great deal of money. Still, I understand the issue. And I think it is more central to the business-clergy rift than anybody is willing to acknowledge. It stands to reason that if you live in a society that rewards performance with money….and if you aren’t making very much money…. it becomes easier to criticize the values of that society than to question your own performance, or admit that the normal reward systems of the world do not apply to you.
Second, let me also confess a woeful ignorance on the part of my profession, as concerns issues relative to the world of business. Most clergy know less about business than business leaders know about the church. Walter Benjamin’s on-going survey results suggest that only 20 percent of us have ever taken a course in economics.
Third, moving from confession to bewilderment, I find it strange that clergy are becoming increasingly critical of the business world at a time when many corporations are becoming more, rather than less, socially conscious. To be sure, much corporate improvement is self-serving, especially in the light of increasing government regulation. But it can be argued that never, in its history, has the business community taken a greater concern for the welfare of its employees….. the welfare of its communities….the welfare of its environment….and the principles by which it manufactures and markets its goods.
To be sure, horror stories abound. And bad guys (along with bad girls) exist. But where discovered, they are admonished rather than admired and excised (from the marketplace) rather than excused. More than ever, there is an attitude in the business world that ethical is successful….that integrity increases the likelihood of superiority….and that the phrase “good business” is no longer a spiritual oxymoron.
Still, corporations cannot afford to “give away the store.” Especially public corporations. Bob Eaton said as much in our business ethics seminar last November. As a CEO of a public corporation, Bob noted that stockholders in Chrysler Corporation expect to make money on their investment. And a lot of clergy find that hard to understand. Which is why a closer look at money (and the making of it) would seem to be in order.
“You cannot serve God and mammon,” said Jesus. He also said that it would be easier to slip a camel through the night depository slot of Comerica Bank than it would be to slip a rich man into the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus is clearly pointing to the corrupting potential of wealth. But Jesus is also talking about the way wealth ought to fit into our priorities….as servant rather than master….rather than whether a Christian ought to have any (wealth) in the first place. At a stewardship conference some years ago, a prominent executive sat through several hours of discussion in stony silence. Then he blurted out: “Why do you preachers always give me the feeling that the only decision I could make that could remotely be called ‘Christian’ would be to sell my business and divide the proceeds among the poor?”
But if we believe that, aren’t we saying that a business is always a spiritual liability? I certainly don’t agree with that. Isn’t “business” one potential way of expressing the creativity that God has placed within us? “Be fruitful,” said God. It was among God’s last words on the subject of creation. “Take this creative energy that has gone into your making….this creative energy that is contained within your very nature….and extend it….expand it….reflect it….multiply it. Honor creation by re-creating.”
But how do we do that? Some ways are more obvious than others. If we make babies, we assume that God smiles and says: “Yes, that’s it.” If we make music, art and poetry, we assume that God smiles and says: “Yes, that’s it.” And if we make scientific discoveries, achieve medical breakthroughs, establish great universities and erect great libraries, we assume that God smiles and says: “Yes, that’s it.” But do we ever consider the possibility that divine creativity can be reflected in the creation of a steel mill, a bank, or a chain of car washes, causing to God to similarly smile and say: “Yes, that’s it.”
But such forms of creativity are important in the economy of the Kingdom. Consider the beneficial role that even one good business can play in the life of a needy community. More to the point, consider the city of Albion. I spent four years there as a student, along with 16 additional years as a trustee. All told, I have been surveying the Albion landscape since 1958. I have lamented the city’s decline. And I have watched its struggling attempts at restoration and renewal. The demise of heavy manufacturing has stripped the city of Albion of a foundry, a factory, a glassworks and a mill, swelling the welfare rolls, and creating an underclass of the unskilled, many of whom come from that category often identified as “persons of color.”
Albion College is vitally concerned about the economic ethos of its community. And while small steps are being taken, I think it could be fairly said that one progressive corporation, hiring at all levels of the skill spectrum, would be a greater gift of God to the city of Albion than five new churches. Were an Albion citizen to suddenly hit the lottery to the tune of $50 million dollars and share with his minister the thought that God was laying it on his heart divide that money among Albion’s poor, I hope his pastor would raise the possibility that God might be laying it on his heart to start a corporation instead.
To be sure, one rich man in the Bible was told to “give it all away,” leaving us to assume that, for him, radical surgery was the only way to cure a radical disease. But not every wallet is sick unto death. And not every treatment plan needs to begin with radical surgery (as in “giving it all away”). Some “wallet woes” can be cured by a rather simple change in focus. Which is why this letter to Timothy advises the rich to “depend on God….do good deeds….be liberal….be generous” rather than mandating voluntary poverty.
Finally, I think that those of us in the clergy ought to send a message to our business colleagues that we are prepared to take seriously what life in the corporate trenches is like, the better that we might offer informed counsel to Christians who are trying to make a go of it in that arena.
Bill Muehl, the seminary professor who taught me what little I know of preaching, shares a telling anecdote. Arriving early for a preaching assignment in an Episcopal church on the outskirts of New York City, he accepted the rector’s invitation to join him in an adult education class prior to the 11:00 service. The class consisted of a dozen or so men….most of them prominent in their fields….gathered for the purpose of discussing ethics in business. Which discussion, Muehl reported, was remarkably dull. The ethical dilemmas raised were of the dimestore variety, with the hour largely devoted to one man’s concern about what he should do about a couple of employees who were “up to no good in the stockroom.”
Muehl sat through this charade, preached his sermon and drove back to Yale. The following week, he received a note from one of the men who had been present at the ethics class. One line stood out. “I’d hate to have you think that these men are as stupid as they must have sounded in the rector’s class. But the truth is, if we ever told that nice little man the real ethical dilemmas we face every day at the office, it would break his heart.”
To whatever degree that is true, we clergy need to send a message that such honesty will not cause cardiac arrest. Then, if people in business still will not trust us with the truth, we need to discover it for ourselves.
* * * * *
My friends, it’s been an interesting 33 years (from Dearborn to Birmingham) living on the “hemline” of corporate America. During that time, I’ve seen business-types and preacher-types who adored the Lord, as well as some who ignored the Lord. And I’ve seen business-types and preacher-types who served the people, as well as some who shafted the people.
I’ve seen sellers of insurance who genuinely (and, I think, correctly) believed they were doing ministry. And I’ve seen peddlers of other products who quit and went elsewhere because, in that sub-section of the soul that kept them awake at 3:00 in the morning, they realized they could no longer live with the product they were living off.
Just last Friday night, I broke bread with a skyrocketing female executive, whose first-year company fell just three units short of meeting its lofty objectives. Concerning that miniscule shortfall, she said: “As a new company, we decided not to fudge the figures, because the first compromise you make with integrity is always the hardest.”
But I close with none of those people. Instead, I would tell of another….a man whose unique talent consists of his ability to turn around struggling businesses, making them profitable again. He has done it repeatedly. And he has done it well. Concerning his talent, he says (with a shrug of his shoulders): “I guess it’s my calling.” He’s right, you know. It is. It’s what he is “called” to do. In more ways than he knows, I think. Yes, in more ways than he knows.
