Christian Chamber's Summit again offers encouragement to business, ministry

  
By JOHN FORTMEYER
CNNW publisher
     PORTLAND — Sound ad-vice and encouragement for those involved in business or ministry flowed freely Friday, May 6 as the Christian Chamber of Commerce of the Northwest held its third annual Marketplace Summit.
    The event at the DoubleTree Hotel Lloyd Center was co-presented by Christ@Work, Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellow-ship in America, Serving Our Neighbors and Nehemiah Project International Ministries, and supported by dozens of local firms and agencies. About 160 people attended the seven-hour event and enjoyed fellowship during two meals, a choice of eight workshops, and a chance to sit in on the taping of a local radio show.
     Keynote speakers were Daniel Harkavy of Lake Oswego-based business coaching firm Building Champions, and Ford Taylor, a Cincinnati, Ohio consultant who offers a program titled Transformational Leadership.
     Harkavy emphasized that Christians should see work as ministry. “Your vocation is your primary ministry outside your family,” he said.
Yet all work and business must be secondary to one’s personal relationship with God, which must be strengthened by daily prayer and an intentional focus if Christian business people are to walk with integrity in a fallen world, Harkavy said.
    “Self-leadership precedes team leadership ... If you want to lead a really great team, your own personal conduct is the great differentiator,” he said.
    Taylor, who openly addressed the critical lessons learned in his own past failings while trying to live a life of integrity, outlined how lasting transformation begins as God works through willing individuals, who then influence others.
     The key, he said, is a deliberate focus on Jesus Christ.
   “God wants us to come together in unity in Jesus, not uniformity of theology,” Taylor said.
    Also important is that each follower of Christ be accountable to trusted, supportive, believing friends, said Taylor. He said everyone needs “bumper people” who will “love you enough to bump you back on track” and “bump you if your heart is wandering.”
    He said statistics show it only takes 3 to 8 percent of a population to change a culture, so if even a relatively small number pursue personal transformation, it can also transform a city, he said.
   “It only takes 3 to 8 percent of churches here, of businesses here, to pull the rope to change Portland,” he said. “I look around the room, and you’ve got a pretty good start here.”
    Later in the day, Kevin Palau, president of the Luis Palau Association, was interviewed during a taping of the Kingdom Business Forum program broadcast locally on KKPZ radio. He outlined how the annual Season of Service community service projects organized by the Palau team through local churches are getting national notice, including a Christianity Today cover story on Portland coming in November. He said the churches’ acts of kindness “live out Kingdom values” and open doors to win people to Christ.
    “We are now becoming known for what we are for, rather than what we are against,” he said.