A Family Integrated Business?

Nuts and Bolts of the Family Business Conference, July 20-21, 2012

Last week we went to an AME Conference (Apprentice, Mentor, Entrepreneur) called Nuts and Bolts of the Family Economy. The conference was geared toward equipping and encouraging families interested in establishing a family business.

In some of the a family businesses they worked together out of their homes. Fathers work at home leading their families while simultaneously mentoring their own children. The children learn a trade from the best teachers that they could ever have, their parents.

What a radical idea! Instead of sending our children off to college (where they can be brainwashed by secular professors), why not teach them while they’re young how to start their own businesses? Why not give them real world experience learning an actual trade and save thousands of dollars? One speaker proposed the idea that if children start working by the age of six, they will potentially be ready to start a business by sixteen. If a young man starts a business by sixteen he could, potentially, be ready for marriage by twenty-one because he will have a viable income. Actually, there were a few young men at the conference who did this. One started his first business at thirteen.

I found it interesting that every speaker that I saw quoted the same verse from the Shema:

“You shall teach them [the commandments of God] diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” – Deuteronomy 6:7

And most of the speakers backed up their points using the Torah. One speaker quoted Deuteronomy 5:13,14:

“Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God;”

His point was this: God gave us six days to work, not five. So, if we worked for six days, we would have more income and we could get ahead. Moreover, if we worked for six days, how much more would we appreciate the Sabbath?

Another speaker quoted the other half of Deuteronomy 5:14:

“…in it [Shabbat] you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.”

His point was this: Who’s doing the work? You (the papa and mama), the son, the daughter, the male and female servant, and the sojourner. Could this be a picture of a family business? Could a family business be Biblical? Could moving toward a multigenerational business be the next natural step after homeschooling and being part of a multigenerational community of faith?

Another great point that I took away from the conference was this:

“In a family business, don’t consider yourself a business owner only but a discipler of people!”

Your children and your employees will be your disciples. That is such a great idea and that's what it's all about anyway—right? Making disciples like the Master commanded us?

AME is somehow related to CHEC (Christian Home Educators of Colorado) so all the speakers are coming from a homeschooling perspective. The more I thought about it all, the more I realized that this ‘family economy’ movement was bound to happen. I see it like this—as home schooled children graduate high school, parents start to ask themselves "What’s next for my son or daughter? College or a Job?" Either way, they will be trained, taught, or mentored by someone else. So who are these teachers or employers? What beliefs do they have? What is their relationship to our God and Messiah? Yeshua said:

“A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.” - Luke 6:40

Has this been your experience? It was for me. In college, students began to mimic their favorite professors; they used their favorite phrases and adopted their philosophies. At a first job, employees try to emulate their bosses; they learn their tricks of the trade and start to use their terminology. It happens just like the Master said—the pupil will, inevitably, be like his teacher. Who is teaching your adult children?

I wanted to share this to challenge your thinking and remind and encourage you that, as disciples of Yeshua, we will be counter culture. The things that we do will not always look like the rest of the world; and that's okay. We should be okay with this. We should get used to this and help our children to get used to it too.



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