Kingdom Leadership Workshop | April 2025
Description
What if your business isn’t just a means to make a living—but a platform to advance God’s Kingdom? In this powerful and relatable message, Brad Nelson, Betenbough Companies Board Member, invites leaders to reconsider what “calling” really means. With humor, vulnerability, and deep biblical truth, Brad shares how his own journey—from tech-minded introvert to Kingdom-minded leader—revealed a higher spiritual calling in the marketplace.
man I am so excited to be kicking this
off
today and you know kingdom at work right
and there’s probably a couple types of
people in the room today and there’s
probably one type where we had you at
the word
kingdom you were like “Yeah I’m going to
go to a kingdom business conference i’m
going to learn about God and what he
wants to do in my business.”
Then there might be another type of
person in here who is maybe more
like I don’t know about that really i’m
just here because my boss asked me to be
here or maybe I’m just here because my
brother’s uncle’s best friends said you
should go to this kingdom at work thing
and I just want to before we kick this
off I just want to say no matter who you
are what your background is why you’re
here you are welcome here
and I think the Lord has something he
wants to do in your life through your
business through whatever role it is and
so come learn be yourself be yourself
don’t feel like you have to be anything
that you
aren’t so I gave this talk last year and
I really felt like I wanted to refresh
the content a little bit and so I was
like asking the Lord I was like you know
what Lord what do I what am I supposed
to do here and what am I supposed to
talk about and he was like “Yeah you
know what you should do is you should uh
give your testimony.” I was like “Wow
testimony Lord what are you even talking
about i don’t have a testimony.” You
know you you know what I mean testimony
it’s such a big thing right and we all
have those people who have a colorful
testimony right anybody know it’s like
“I was smoking crack in a back alley and
the Lord found me there right
any anybody that’s their testimony okay
no don’t raise your
hands and it’s such a it’s such an
integral thing i remember one time I was
at an industry event in Las Vegas we
were at the Bellagio Casino and the
company was about to get an award and
there was a guy there um who was a
ministry partner of ours and I had never
met him before but he he came over and
introduced himself to me and he said “Hi
my name is Bob and how did you come to
the Lord?” And I was like “Whoa
that escalated really
fast i felt like one of he wanted one of
two things he wanted that colorful
testimony or he wanted this very moment
to be the colorful testimony it was like
I was in a Bellagio casino gambling away
my kids savings and then this guy came
over to me and introduced me to the
Lord but the truth for me is really
boring you know I grew up in the church
my parents raised me my dad has a
colorful testimony but because of that
colorful testimony I was just born this
way i don’t remember a time when I
didn’t know
Jesus and it’s always been awkward when
people ask me that question i’ve always
been like man I don’t know what to tell
you i just knew i just always knew and
there’s been times when I’ve been
farther or closer to the Lord over the
years but it’s always just been there
and I’ve always just grown up that
way and growing up in the church is kind
of an interesting thing right you know
uh as a four-year-old try explaining
complex theological concepts right so I
remember my dad one time trying to
explain the concept of the resurrection
on
Easter and he’s like “Okay so what
happens is we all die and because Jesus
was resurrected we all get to be
resurrected too.” And that’s really cool
because you know like you get to see
grandma again you remember grandma yeah
you can go see her again and I was like
“Wait what like like tomorrow we’re all
going to die and we’re going to like
paint eggs and see a giant
anthropomorphic bunny and zombie grandma
it’s like man that really messed with my
head back then i’ll just I’ll just tell
you but you know being raised in the
church has other problems too i think uh
my main expression of my faith growing
up was that I was just going to go to
church on
Sundays go to an occasional youth group
meeting and you know for me my faith had
saved me but now it’s just uh you know
my point the point in my life was just
to sit around wait try not to sin too
much maybe do some praise and worship
and then die and get
saved and that was that was it for me
and I have no idea where we got this
idea from right you know a long time ago
in the company we did this thing where
we read through the Bible together and I
remember uh it was that was tough uh man
the first like 80% is there’s a lot of
lot of prophecy stuff in there but you
get to the Gospels right and it I had
never read the Gospels cover to cover
before and it was really mindblowing to
me to read it and it almost actually
like caused a crisis of faith because
you know I I had lived my entire life
thinking that my faith was about going
to church and Jesus never talked about
that not ever he used the word church
maybe a handful of times and really even
then it was not talking about going to
the local church it was about the body
of believers right i think we all know
that you know what he spent most of his
time talking about was the kingdom
kingdom of God or uh the kingdom of
heaven
sometimes but like he talked about the
kingdom literally all the time that was
pretty much all he talked about and you
see it at the beginning of his
ministry
um and he went throughout all Galilee
teaching in their synagogues and
proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom
and healing every disease and every
affliction among the people if you had
to pick a verse that really summed up
the gospels I think this would be it
it’s that Jesus was bringing the gospel
of the kingdom to the people and also
healing the effects of sin on the
world so what does this whole kingdom
thing even mean you know I I thought
that that when I was growing up that
this was like the ultimate salvation
this was me going to heaven and that
that’s what the kingdom meant and maybe
sometimes we tend to think of the
kingdom in terms of like a castle right
with a king and you know maybe there’s
some knights and squires and peasants
and uh you know one way to maybe think
about a kingdom is anywhere a king
reigns
right and so maybe one way of thinking
of that is that maybe a king has a rule
right maybe he says no pointy hats on
Thursdays
and if you go and you see okay nobody
it’s Thursday and nobody’s wearing
pointy hats around here maybe that means
that this is where the king reigns right
and if you go over there and there’s a
bunch of people wearing pointy hats well
that’s probably not the kingdom’s
territory right that’s not part of the
kingdom because the king’s not reigning
there he’s his rule is not in effect
there and you know another way of
putting that would
be the emerging order of God in the
affairs of
mankind maybe is a way to think about
the kingdom of God
or where God
rules so it’s really not about
necessarily God’s authority being
present in the
world but
wait is God’s authority not present in
the world is it present in the
world you know we we rejected God’s
authority as part of the fall right and
so it’s not that God’s authority is or
isn’t present in the world it’s emerging
that’s why we use the word emerging
because believers are called to bring it
into the
world you know that’s why we were cast
out of the garden is because we rejected
it right and the entire story of the
Bible has been about getting back to uh
that original state of being as God
created it and this lack of God’s
authority in our life has caused all
manners of harms to fall on us you know
like sickness hunger sadness and then
ultimately death has been the penalty
for
sin and God wants to establish his
authority first in our hearts but also
in the way the world works on a
day-to-day basis
and it’s easy to get confused about this
right uh even the apostles were confused
you know at the end of Jesus ministry
um in
Acts you see that they’re asking God
they’re asking Jesus they’re like “Hey
you know now now that you’re back from
the dead and you’ve come now maybe now
we’ll restore the kingdom.” And they
they even thought even after spending
three years with Jesus learning about
the kingdom of God they still thought
that this was going to be a physical
kingdom on earth where Jesus was going
to come he was going to kick out all the
Romans um and that that was going to be
the way of things but Jesus was
constantly having to push back on this
and even in that moment he pushed back
on it you know it wasn’t just about like
teaching people to think differently or
bringing them to faith
it was about you know you see this in
him feeding the 5000 was hunger a
representation of God’s authority in the
world that people are starving to death
is that how God designed it to be
no what about like healing people with
sickness one of those things that was
representing God’s authority in the
world so Jesus healed
people his entire ministry was about
reestablishing God’s authority in the
world and curing these scars that were
left behind by
sin and if that was Jesus’ purpose
shouldn’t that be ours
too if he was here to set the rights or
set set right the wrongs caused by sin
in the world shouldn’t we set ourselves
about doing the exact same things when
we see someone hungry shouldn’t we feed
them and we when we see someone naked
shouldn’t we clothe them
should we care for the widowed and the
fatherless you know James says that’s
true religion in the sight of God that’s
the true practice of our faith is care
for the widowed and the
fatherless and it’s not just about going
to church every Sunday but believing
that the wrongs of the world need to be
writed and that that work happens every
single day every minute every hour of
our day should be about writing those
wrongs and that includes our business
that’s not just something that happens
inside the walls of a local church that
that happens inside the walls of a
business too and especially our
businesses now you might be saying to
yourself “Well wait a second are you
saying that the local church isn’t
really that important if it’s just one
day a week?” And the answer to that is
definitely no that’s not what I’m saying
the local church is still very very very
important but let me be really clear
the local church fits within the kingdom
the kingdom does not fit within the
church right uh and I think a lot of
times we get confused about
that and you might be asking yourself
too you know this all seems very
abstract and Jesus really had this
tendency of talking in parables and like
not super clear and so maybe this is
just something that’s mysterious and
that we don’t really need to understand
fully today and you know I don’t think
that’s true at all and we’re going to
spend really the next few days kind of
unpacking what this looks like in your
business and what it looks like in our
business and uh I don’t really want to
spoil that so we’re not really going to
talk about
it okay maybe not i’ll give you a little
bit of a teaser one of the ways I really
see this play out on a day-to-day basis
is with something that I call an
abundance mentality
you know when you if you think about the
way God created the world to be and you
think about the garden and the original
uh way that we were created was that we
had every single thing we needed there
was nothing that we needed that we
didn’t
have and after the fall that was no
longer the case right i mean we had to I
mean scarcity was kicking in in a big
way and by the sweat of our face we
would eat right is what the Bible says
but that wasn’t God’s plan for us from
the beginning and if we want to advance
God’s authority into every area of our
lives including our business maybe we
need to adopt an an abundance
mindset this is about the belief that we
will always have what we need and that
God is our provider and that we don’t
need to worry about having enough of
anything now I got to be honest and tell
you that I struggle with this big time
big time you know I am a financial guy
and I think about my job in finance as
being about like making sure we have
enough right making sure we have enough
cash working capital all of these things
do we have enough oh my gosh we don’t
have enough is basically like my
world and I had this one time I remember
in the company when we almost ran out of
cash and I was looking around thinking
everybody has lost their minds nobody is
worried about this and why is that
and it’s because they all had an
abundance mindset they knew it didn’t
actually matter whether we ran out of
cash or not because we would always have
what we needed the Lord would make sure
we had it and we did run out of cash but
you know what we still had what we
needed it’s not always what we thought
we
wanted you’ll hear lots of stories about
that over the next couple
days and so we an abundance mindset is
about looking at what we have today and
choosing to be content with it
not chasing the next big thing you know
sometimes this means that we have to
look at our relationships in the
marketplace differently as well you know
you know when we’re negotiating a deal
for
something in the world in a scarcity
mindset we tend to look at negotiations
as an opportunity to extract as much
value as we possibly can out of people
out of products and out of situations
and if you have that scarcity mindset
that’s the only way you think about
negotiations but if you have an
abundance mindset it turns that up
upside down completely instead of
looking for ways to extract as much
value out of people you look for ways to
add value to people to take the value
that you have partner with them and make
it more make it more make it better you
know one of the things that I think we
do a lot is we will look at somebody
maybe a trade partner and say you know
what you’re not actually making enough
money we’re going to pay you more than
what we’re paying you today even though
you’re not coming to us and asking for a
raise we just see that this isn’t a
workable thing long term for you you
need to be paid more and we’ll do the
same with customers you know sometimes
we’ll we’ll look at our uh profit
margins and say you know we’re making
too much money we need to extend a
discount to people who are already under
contract that is a crazy thing to do in
the building industry by the way you
don’t change you don’t give somebody a
discount after they’ve signed a contract
with you and they have no obligation to
pay you less money that’s a that’s a
really crazy thing to
do and I remember you know one of the
things that I I remember people
struggling with a lot with this
especially when it comes to abundance is
prosperity abundance is not the same as
prosperity remember this is a mentality
the kingdom of God is still emerging in
the world it’s not perfect yet uh
prosperity would exist if we were still
in the garden and and the Bible clearly
says that the Lord sends his reign on
the righteous and the
unrighteous so we could totally find
ourselves in a time when we don’t have
enough of something that could totally
happen and it doesn’t mean God’s not God
it just means that we live in a fallen
world
and abundance isn’t also some light
switch that you turn on you know like
I’ve said I’ve really struggled with it
and if I’m being completely vulnerable
man this last week has been a real
example of how I’ve struggled with this
uh like Carrie said I I helped start a
building supply company a while back and
I he really painted a great picture of
that but it was not all rainbows and
unicorns in the beginning um you know we
had this idea that we were going to make
our supply chains more efficient and and
that was awesome but it didn’t really
work actually that the original idea
wasn’t a very good one and we eventually
had to pivot and pivot and pivot again
and pivot some more and we landed on
imports as the business model and we
found a lot of success in that in
importing building supplies uh from
places like China to basically reduce
the cost and make home ownership more
affordable to everyone
and if you’ve not been living in a
cave and you’ve been following the news
over the past few weeks you know that
imports are a really uncomfortable place
to be and I wish I could stand up here
and tell you that everything is has
worked out and God brought the provision
and he and he laid it at our feet
and no that’s not what’s happened today
i woke up with almost crippling anxiety
over what was going to happen
and my mind is constantly going back to
will I have enough will my friends that
I’ve hired to come work here have enough
will we be able to continue this thing
and the answer is an unqualified yes it
is the answer to that question is yes we
will have enough now I don’t know what
that’s going to look like and that
scares the heck out of me if I’m being
honest it really does but I will have
enough you know you you saw that video
with the kids earlier talking uh man
what a what a cool video that is you
know another funny thing about growing
up in the church and you have that kind
of church mentality of like sacred and
secular and I remember this guy coming
and talking to me to a big group of
people when I was at church when I was a
kid and he was telling us about uh
missionaries and he was raising money
for missionaries and he was telling us
there’s two types of people in the
world there are people who are called to
full-time ministry and then there are
people who are called to fund a
full-time
ministry
yeah I think I’m in good company when I
say “Wow that’s that’s not what we’re
talking about
right?” But man is that a common opinion
in the world isn’t it it’s like he’s not
the only one out there who’s thinking
that
and you know if you’re not and basically
what he was saying is like if you’re not
called to spiritual work you’re
basically just called to live as moral a
life as you can be and give money to
ministries and just wait around till you
die right i mean essentially that’s what
he’s
saying but if we have a kingdom mindset
we literally cannot view life this way
right god wants to establish his
authority over all things and what that
means is that all things are spiritual
not a single thing is not spiritual and
even when you look in the Bible there’s
this word
avoda and it’s a really cool word
because it just kind of goes to the the
idea that there is no separation and
avoid
really in a couple examples from
scripture the Lord God took the man and
put him in the garden of Eden to work
avoa it and take care of it
this is what the Lord says let my people
go so that they may worship
avo and but as for me and my household
we will serve the Lord the word again
Avoda avoa they don’t they did not see a
difference in secular and sacred and I
fall into this trap all the time right
i’m like “Oh that’s a secular thing.”
And it’s like there is no such thing
there’s no such thing as secular it’s
all spiritual
one of the one of my favorite uh stories
of this is a guy uh well his name’s Norm
and Norm was born before the Great
Depression he was born at kind of a
funny time in human history where he was
uh son of Norwegian
immigrants and he grew up where in Iowa
and everybody was a farmer back then and
during the great dep when the great
depression hit uh hunger was a big deal
and at the time hunger was a big deal
around the world too and Norm was raised
in faith by his parents he was a
believer from a young age just like me
but maybe unlike me he saw that his
faith and that that God’s kingdom was a
solution to the problems of the world
and he recounts this story of his
grandfather coming to him when he was a
kid saying you know uh you’ll never have
a full belly if you don’t have a full
mind and so he took that seriously and
he went to college and he eventually uh
worked his way through college and got a
PhD in genetics so pretty smart guy
and he when World War II broke out he
tried to enlist and they wouldn’t let
him because he had a PhD they were like
“We’re not going to lose this guy.” And
so he actually had to go work on uh
building adhesives for the Navy to glue
things to ships for or something like
that and after the war he he just felt
this calling he looked out at the world
and he felt this calling to go solve the
issue of hunger you remember like we
used to say “I’m going to go solve world
hunger.” like it’s this big impossible
thing like you could never solve it it’s
such a big problem well he was like one
of those guys who was like “You know
what i might give it that a try might
try to solve world hunger.” So what he
did was he moved to
Mexico mexico at the time had this real
problem with hunger there was not enough
food being grown in Mexico to feed the
people there and so in Mexico Norm he’s
got this degree in genetics he starts
working on wheat hybrids there were two
problems with growing wheat in Mexico
one was that there was tons of crop
disease that would just wipe out crops
and the other one was that the soils
weren’t fertile enough to grow wheat and
so he spent years and years just growing
wheat hybrids trying
to basically build a wheat that would
grow in Mexico and by the time he was
done Mexico was actually a net exporter
of wheat that’s a big deal everybody in
Mexico had enough to
eat and then he then he went and moved
to Pakistan and India he did the exact
same thing there develop new weed
hybrids that would work for those
environments
and when he when Norman Borlo won the
Nobel Prize Peace Prize in
1970 it was really interesting it it
said that he had saved over a billion
lives that’s billion with a B
a billion people didn’t die because
Norman Borlo had this kingdom vision
that he was gonna save people from
hunger and advance God’s kingdom into
the world and and when you get the Nobel
Peace Prize they have you give a lecture
which is really interesting you know his
lecture was filled with biblical
references and him talking about how he
wanted to see the world get back to what
it was before the fall and essentially
advance God’s authority into the world i
would have loved to be a fly on the wall
in that room wouldn’t you that man that
would be crazy hearing a guy talk about
scripture and all of that in the Nobel
Prize
ceremony and in spite of the occasional
Norman Borlo somewhere in the last 2,000
years we lost sight of this idea and the
work of the pastor became the most
important
thing in the world and you know the work
of the world became just a means to an
end of salvation right
and I can tell you today that that is
not true that the work that you’re doing
is in your business is just as important
and critical to God’s kingdom as the
work that happens in the local church
your business is a ministry and you are
called to care for the people around you
and advance God’s kingdom into the areas
for which you have
authority now one thing I want to add to
this
some of you may be thinking to yourself
right now that you know I run my
business with Christian ethics and
principles and I give money away too and
that’s awesome give yourself a big pat
on the back we do that too but that’s
not what we’re talking about this
week we are talking about repurposing
your business to be an intentional
ministry to care for God’s people the
people that are in your business and to
reveal his love to them and that starts
with your own
employees you know I didn’t always do
this well i remember uh the time when I
had to decide what I was going to do
with my life and I was growing up and my
brother of all people he had discerned
that he had a call for full-time
ministry that he was going to be a
pastor
um he was one of those guys who had this
pretty natural ability to connect with
people and he felt that calling from a
from a very young age that he was gonna
go and be God’s warrior in the world and
I kind of felt something similar i was
like I know that I’m supposed to do
something for God but I just don’t know
what it is because God didn’t make me
good at
people he made me good at talking to
machines my dad was a software developer
and I always loved working with
computers from a very young age i was
like “Oh man this computer thing is
great.”
And so while my brother went off to
college knowing that he was going to
become a pastor I really went off to
college thinking that’s just God didn’t
wire me for this so I must not be that
guy i must not be the guy who’s going to
do this and it’s funny my brother still
today uh continues this calling he’s got
a renewed calling actually he’s going to
go plant churches in
Germany he’s moving his entire family
over there in June uh including seven
children yeah please pray for that
i can’t even imagine that plane
ride yeah and so I really considered
whether this full-time ministry thing
was for me i I loved church right i was
a big fan of church and you know but if
I’m being honest I was just living that
gospel of salvation right biting my time
until the day that it became relevant
and so I went to college studied as a
computer science guy came here worked
for Beatenbo as a software developer uh
didn’t really know what I was like what
does this kingdom business thing mean i
don’t even know like this is
weird and I had a really very skewed
view of my own role in the church too i
was like man uh still struggling with
this idea that going to church was about
just having just deepening my faith
right and deepening my relationship with
God and maybe not sinning so
much and here it was different here
nobody saw me as that guy who couldn’t
work with people even though I didn’t
want to even though I didn’t think that
I was very good at it and to be honest
with you I still
struggled but nobody saw me that way
here they saw me as a child of God who
had authority who could actually advance
God’s kingdom in the world and that
happened through people not through
computers although a little bit through
computers spreadsheets are still awesome
right but they saw that they called it
out in me they had the uncomfortable
conversations with me over the years um
saying “No this is that that thing you
did over there where you didn’t work
with people well that wasn’t you that
was that was something that wasn’t
good.” And and the the highest calling
you have in life is to lead people and
to lead in God’s kingdom and I’ll tell
you if God can use a stubborn
introverted guy like me to do this like
imagine what he’s going to be able to do
through
you and so my prayer for you today is
that you feel that L that the Lord’s
calling in your
life and that you feel his calling to
make your business a place of kingdom
advancement and to adopt the spiritual
calling to which you have been perfectly
called thank you
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