Developing a Community Impact Plan

Biblical Principle: Investing in the Right Places in Your Communities

Investing in the right places in your business can sometimes be all-consuming as you give all that you have to make the business operate. To live out the orderly life, you want to live before God; you must invest in areas of life outside of your work. When thinking about those areas in terms of “community,” consider how you can invest in your social, faith, and family communities.

Reflection Question:

On a scale of 1-10, consider where you invest your time and money. What ranking would you give yourself on temporal versus eternal investing?

in the everlasting kingdom to come. At least two eternal things come to mind: God’s Word and the souls of people. By investing in God’s Word, your love for Him grows into a life of worship, built on personal sacrifices on behalf of others and helping them know and follow God’s will. Out of your love for God, you engage in loving others by demonstrating and promoting such things as compassion, justice, gratitude, honesty, forgiveness, perseverance, patience, humility, courage, generosity, respect, and prudence. These values are evidence of your spirit in fellowship with God’s Spirit. They are kingdom values, exemplified by the Savior and King, and lived out by His people, who are citizens of His everlasting kingdom.

YOUR SOCIAL COMMUNITY: Too often your relationship to your social community suffers because you don’t have the energy or the incentive to do much more than what you are already doing. 12 You find yourselves believing you can either be engaged in your family, your work, or your church, but when it comes to your social community, you are out of capacity. When faced with what appears as “either/or” scenarios, it’s best to look for ways to invest in more than one community setting at a time, seeking “both/and” options.

1. Volunteer: When volunteering, see it as an investment in a cause you can embrace. Think of ways you can engage your family and employees in the opportunity, allowing you to spend time with your family while engaging your local community. Top off the idea with volunteering through your church, and you’ll maximize your time by investing in your family, your faith community, your employees, and your social community. Want to go for the big win? Invite your employees and their families to join you, and you’ll pull your business community, faith community, and family into one activity that engages your social community in a cause or issue which you have great passion.

2. Be a Good Neighbor: God’s given you a business, and it’s a great tool in which you have a potential to engage your community. 13 You certainly want to be a good neighbor with the products or services you provide. You also want your company to provide an attractive setting, so neighbors can be proud of having your business nearby. However, there are other ways you might engage your community. Why not offer something as simple as a neighborhood block party on your parking lot? Alternatively, an open house at your business? Invite neighbors to enjoy a light lunch with their families, hear a good word while being there, and have your team serve them in some way. Another alternative is to publicly celebrate the holidays as a reminder to others of the things that bring “unity” to the idea of community.

YOUR FAITH COMMUNITY: It’s only natural that business leaders find themselves drawn into leadership positions within the church. These are great opportunities worthy of pursuing. However, aside from leading a ministry or a church initiative, there are other ways to engage your faith community that may yield higher returns.

1. Become an Angel Investor of Time: Many younger professionals may attend your church and would benefit significantly from having a Christian mentor. Just meeting for coffee to learn from one another can ease the tensions they feel balancing the demands of work, faith, and community, especially their closest community of family. Building a relationship with a younger professional can keep him or her from falling into the many traps that are set for those who want to travel the narrow road of faith. Experience is a great teacher. Consider sharing your own story and the mistakes that you wish you would have avoided.

2. Mentoring Those in Ministry: Church leaders have the responsibility of managing all the moving parts of a difficult organization, including things like volunteer management, event planning, and the ministering to the needs people at all times including those that happen outside of the window of 9 and 5. Rick Warren, senior pastor of Southern California’s nationally-known Saddleback Church, encourages every pastor to find a mentor. He writes that “we learn best when we have people who can speak into our lives and ministry. Proverbs 19:20 says, ‘Get all the advice you can and be wise the rest of your life.’ I will always need a coach—no matter how old I get or how successful I become.” 14

YOUR FAMILY COMMUNITY: The Bible compels the Christian to invest all of themselves in God, and to take the dividends from that investment and apply them to others. That principle is the essence of God’s first and second commandments, to love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love others as yourself (Mark 12:30-31). Applying this truth in your families can sometimes be difficult. Busyness can lead the executive toward the natural tendency to think family is always there and they will always have the opportunity to invest in them at a

1. Make a Plan and Execute It: There are parallels in how you lead your business and your role in the family. Leading a business without a plan is difficult. The same is true for your family. Strategic planning in business often requires identifying financial, customer, operational, and personnel development goals. Those goals are agreed to as a team, with everyone buying into the plan and holding one another accountable for its execution. The same thing may work in your family. Spend time with your partner dreaming about the big goals you’d love to accomplish together. Agree on your budget with financial goals for the year and then move on to other areas.

2. Put People First: Just like in business, when you focus on people, everything else seems to take care of itself. The same is true with families. When you focus on those closest to you, your priorities begin to change as your hearts turn toward those you love because you want the very best for them. The difficulty comes in realizing that that’s not you. Instead, God is the very best, and you want Him for them. To accomplish that, you must first strive to be filled up with God, working hard to become the very best version of yourself for those you love. Secondly, you must want the same for them—that they be filled to the full with God.