Your Conference Room: An Overlooked Hub For Ministry

By Scott Beebe

Jason (not his real name) runs a $10 million dollar construction company and he is not even 35 years old.  Jason and his wife look like movie stars have two sweet, young kids and no immediate physical needs or external pains.

This was Jason’s email to me late one night:

I know it’s late and I don’t pay you for this, but Haleigh and I would like some more spirituality in our life, however, as I’m sure you can imagine, I’m a little bit different in that area. Was wondering if you know of any “non traditional” type worship places that Haleigh, and the kids and I can go. Not so much ramming the bible down your throat, but simply a roadmap for how to be a good person. Let me know what you think. Thanks in advance,

-Jason

Each day our Business On Purpose team wakes up with a focus on liberating Small Business Owners from the CHAOS of working IN their business.  We coach Small Business Owners through a very specific framework that walks an Owner through articulating and developing a Vision story (usually 2-5 pages), a Mission declaration, a set of unique Core Values, and then we coach them through embedding the systems, structures, and processes they need to spend time working ON their business and making time for what matters most.

Since a child, Sunday mornings for me have been a very familiar routine and setting: large building, relatively large gathering of people, music, teaching, giving, in and out, up and down.  We have had swings of hyper involvement and swings of confusion and disengagement.

Our Church experience looks very similar today to what it was 30 years ago.  That is my fault.

It is my fault that I have not seen non-Church sanctioned activities as gospel opportunities.

It is my fault that I have not seen Monday through Friday as a stage for the gospel wisdom and engagement.

A few years ago we made a significant shift in how we lived out the Kingdom of God.

Now, multiple times per week, I walk into a different sanctuary.

The conference rooms of small businesses have become a place LOADED with discussion, insight, strategy, perspective, thought, wisdom, implementation and…worship?

My friend Allen Ward, Principle of Ward Edwards Engineering tells me, “my work is my art”.

Another friend articulates the same sentiment by saying, “my work is my worship”.

Inside the small business conference room you find the depths of a man or woman’s soul.  It is here they are confessing the reality of their…

  • Marriage relationships – “My wife and I don’t talk about anything…what do you and your wife do?”
  • Financial position – “We’ve got a 17% profit margin that we have to distribute…where does it go?”
  • Relationships – “He is wrestling more than I’ve ever seen with his depression and I don’t know how to respond”
  • Employees – “When I hired her she was awesome, now she just complains about having no time and I don’t know what to do!”

These are all real questions and statements that we have heard inside the quiet sanctuary of the conference room.

Some of our clients walk with Jesus regularly, some do not.

Regardless, both use the conference room as a safe place to talk about the reality of their “spirituality” typically after we have manuevered through the hurdles of business strategy.

In the conference room I have personally seen a sobriety of faith from both the “faith-ful” and the “faith-less” that cues me into the reality that we all have a bent to wanting to walk with God, yet many do not know how to find him or express it with sincerity.

The “faith-ful” express their sobriety of faith with the predictable standards they see displayed from the religious gathering of their experience…heads bowed, eyes closed, hands high.

The “faith-less” express their sobriety of faith with raw words of confusion and uncertain buy-in…spirituality, higher power, man upstairs, etc.

Whether you are “faith-ful” or “faith-less”, you have a need and urging, like my client, to go get God.

The conference room is where you will find reality.

The conference room is where you will find a sober people asking sober questions.

The conference room is where people already are.

The conference room is a powerful stage for the thoughtful wisdom of Jesus…

Even Jesus himself.

This is not a call to Pastors to forego the Church and take up the profession of a business coach.

This is not a call to Business Owners to host Bible studies in their conference room.

This is a call to awareness.

Awareness that Jesus is always with you and that he wants to be involved… even in your meetings.

Jesus spent most of his time on earth outside of the institution and inside place of both intoxication and sobriety; inside the place where people confer.

The conference room of Small Business Owners is my stage to live out the wisdom of the gospel.

I genuinely believe that the re-forming of the Church will be rooted in the modern spaces people confer in the same way the Church continually engaged the ancient spaces where people would confer.

Maybe you will assume that same conviction for whatever your stage might look like.

As a coach, it is natural to my DNA to present an accountable set of next steps.

Step 1 – if you lack wisdom for what to do next, ask God (James 1:5)

Step 2 – write out a vision for what you see because we know that without it, people (including us) scatter (Provers 29:18) and have nowhere to run (Habakkuk 2:2)

Step 3 – get supplied on Sunday and then wake up on Monday morning ready to live out your mission with with a focus on base hits and not home runs.

Our mission is concise: liberate Small Business Owners from the CHAOS of working IN their business.

What is yours?

p.s. – Special note to Pastors: I hope this relieves you of the pressure of feeling like we want you have to produce a show on Sunday.  We are asking you to supply the trucks and trailers of our life with the wisdom of God’s word that I can use in the conference rooms I sit in from Monday through Friday and that my friends can use on their unique stage.  Thank you for serving us in that way.


Scott Beebe is the Founder and Head Coach of the Business On Purpose platform which liberates Small Business Owners from the CHAOS of working IN their business.  Business On Purpose coaches Small Business Owners using the world-class Four Steps To Business Freedom framework.  Scott is a graduate of both the University Of South Carolina and Southwestern Theological Seminary, and worked for two global mega-corporations, two Churches, one Global Non-Governmental Organization, and now liberates Small Business Owners with the Business On Purpose team.