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“Haven’t I commanded you? Strength! Courage! Don’t be timid; don’t get discouraged. God, your God, is with you every step you take.” Then Joshua gave orders to the people’s leaders: “Go through the camp and give this order to the people: ‘Pack your bags. In three days you will cross this Jordan River to enter and take the land God, your God, is giving you to possess’” (Joshua 1:8-11–The Message).

Dear Walk Show family,

Well, here’s the final chapter in a book that started out as a single article, Boom in Bust Times. We began with the “Five Foundation Stones” section before I realized I was “expecting” a book. That morphed into the “Seven Mentalities” section, and finally, our gestations produced the “Ten Methodologies” for building not just a booming business or ministry, but what I like to call a “business-ministry” in bust times. Here’s Methodology #10, which is where you actually launch your business-ministry.

A Spiritual Plan that Undergirds Ultimate Success

In Methodology #6: No Burnout with “Seven-Year Mastery Cycle,” I spoke of my now-just-concluded, “involuntary sabbatical,” in which this Boom in Bust Times book evolved. It took until just about the 365th day of my enforced sabbatical before the picture finally focused enough for me to discern that this book was unveiling not a conventional business or ministry plan, but a “spiritual plan” for undergirding the ultimate success of our envisioned business-ministries.

In other words, conventional “business or ministry plans,” as good and necessary as they might be, simply won’t cut it if all they contain is vision statements, mission statements, marketing and operations plans, budgets and proformas. They absolutely require key spiritual masonry, mentalities and methodologies undergirding them if the ultimate business-ministry ventures are to become successful in the eyes of our Creator. Accordingly, I have now added a subtitle to the Boom in Bust Times book: The Spiritual Plan that Undergirds Ultimate Success in Business-Ministry.

Yes, as I stated at the beginning, it’s almost a law: every time I have witnessed some sort of an upset in business or ministry dealings—whether a broken contract, a misuse of funds, or a sabotage of inter-personal relationships—a close scrutiny will reveal that one or more of the five foundation stones have been neglected. And, now we see the necessity of seven key mentalities and ten methodologies for ultimate success, as well. All of these elements are used by the Holy Spirit to transform the character of not only our business-ministries, but even more fundamentally, our own character.

A Sample Business-Ministry Startup

As this book has formed up, so also has the best possible example I can come up with for you as to what a business-ministry startup might look like—one that is built upon the five foundation stones, as well as modeled after the seven mentalities and ten methodologies outlined herein. In other words, our model startup would be built upon the foundation stones of:

(1) our God-given design;

(2) personal cleansing from past hurts;

(3) our exchanged life in Christ, wherein we learn how to allow Him to live His life through us;

(4) development of a Christ-centered worldview; and

(5) a proper relationship with the body of Christ both locally and universally.

In addition, the builders of our model will need to draw upon seven mentalities in designing our business-ministry startup, based upon the discernment that:

(1) business-ministry, to be successful, must be primarily viewed as spiritual;

(2) personal preparation and transformation must take precedent over business-ministry formation;

(3) we must learn how to effectively battle “our enemy, the system”;

(4) we can actually have faith for “even greater things” than Christ performed with His miracle-working power;

(5) there are growth principles which must be adhered to for success, like not getting yourself “unequally yoked” with even believers who operate by different foundations and mentalities than you do;

(6) we get more miles to the gallon by applying the gross business assets, and not just the net profits, to the work of the kingdom of God; and

(7) there are ways we can cooperate with the fine-tuning of our “spiritual DNA” for maximum effectiveness.

Our business-ministry startup has also been spawned by the ten methodologies which fit the need of this particular hour in human history. These are specific steps that can be taken to construct, in Biblical terms, “the new wineskins” that will hold the new wine/life/people after the old wineskins have started to split and leak out. These methodologies include:

(1) discover the meaning of “eating your own tithe,” which entails doing battle with the demonic spirit of Mammon, the source of much of the contemporary church’s polluted teachings on such subjects as tithing and “wealth transfer”;

(2) tap the invisible, or unseen Reality, to transform and supersede the visible, or seen unreality, all around us;

(3) confirm the consecration of your personal being as well as of your business-ministry;

(4) be willing to drink Christ’s cup alone, if necessary;

(5) blast the vestiges of humanism in your and your business-ministry’s modus operandi;

(6) avoid burnout by submitting to the Seven-Year Mastery Cycle consummating with a one-year sabbatical;

(7) discern the plethora of demonic doctrines in American Christianity’s business and ministry attempts;

(8) learn to combat “the big lie” (that you’re all alone) with “the bigger Truth” that Christ can become both in and through you;

(9) pre-launch your business-ministry; and

(10) launch your booming business-ministry in bust times.

What a Model Business-Ministry Might Look Like in Bust Times

I have noticed that the typical business-ministry often grows right out of the fabric of the founder’s life. Most regularly it is formed out of the identification of some great need, hurt, failure, etc., that needs redemption and restoration. It is a pattern of history that people’s greatest ministry often springs from their greatest area of suffering.  Although some of this suffering may have been self-imposed, a good deal of it comes as a shock and was often not a part of our original expectations as to what would happen with our lives. However, the resultant business-ministry does, if it is to be ultimately successful, conform to the Creator’s redemptive plan for our lives, businesses and ministries.

In my own case, I discovered our model “business-ministry” startup idea when my cardiovascular illness took me out of commission and off the air a year ago, forcing me into the involuntary “sabbatical” discussed in Methodology #6. There, in the midst of my pain, I was, I believe, divinely guided to the best-kept secret in American medicine: an effective, non-invasive, relatively inexpensive, FDA- and Medicare-approved out-patient therapy for sufferers of heart attacks, angina, heart failure, etc., that provides a break-through alternative to expensive, invasive, bypass surgery and angioplasty. By providing the body with a robust cardiovascular workout while the patient is in a resting state, the expanded oxygenation, nutrient delivery and detoxification not only facilitates the growth of an alternative network of blood vessels around arterial obstructions, it also results in dozens of ancillary benefits reported to be as far-ranging as to help with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and even erectile dysfunction!

As renowned nutritionist and author, Julian Whitaker, M.D., speaks of this break-through technology as providing  “a therapy that could replace most of the drugs and virtually all of the surgical procedures currently used to treat cardiovascular disease.”

I got my life (and my ability to work) back through that therapy, and Robin says, “I got my husband back!” The cost of the therapy was covered by my insurance at less than one-tenth the price of invasive bypass surgery or angioplasty! My theory is that the price just might have something to do with why this therapy is the best-kept secret in American medicine. With a few notable exceptions, the cardiologists tend not to recommend it to their patients—only to their own family members!

On top of that, my parents both died recently from cardiovascular-related causes, yet they were both deprived of the knowledge and use of this readily accessible, proven therapy. Statistically, they should both probably still be alive today, for I’m told the Chinese (who invented the therapy decades ago) have found it to extend lives by one to fifteen years while simultaneously improving the quality of those lives markedly. People on oxygen can often get off; others who couldn’t climb steps can now climb steps, walk miles, and travel again; and many patients who could not work can now work again.

So, you can see that bringing this therapy to market through the formation of a chain of “resurrection cardiovascular clinics” could become a billion-dollar business-ministry that perfectly matches up with my own personal history.  Drawing upon a lifetime of experience in talk radio, radio ad campaigns, seminars, and direct-sales marketing, I can already envision a one-of-a-kind marketing system for promoting this therapy not from the top-down through the stonewalling physicians (as in the past ill-fated attempts), but by speaking to the hearts of the final consumers who will demand it from the bottom up.

In inquiring into the technology/therapy, I found that it was available under five different names and that nobody had “branded” the therapy in the minds of the public. Should a team of us pursue the startup of a business-ministry providing this life-giving resource to the masses, I could envision myself as a “champion” (poster boy?) of this therapy, because I not only got my life back through it, but I suspect my parents lost their lives when they did for having been deprived of it! What a two-edged sword!

Yet, as I neared the end of my year’s book writing and due diligence on this therapy/technology, I was struck with three questions that changed forever how I would view the formation of such a model business-ministry startup:

1)    What if, instead of one team catalyzing the startup of a monolithic chain of “resurrection cardiovascular clinics” nationally, that a “starfish” network of teams was formed always with local participants and ownership, yet relationally interfacing with the entire network for purposes of fellowship, cooperation and promotion?

2)    What if, instead of one “champion” of such a revolutionary cardiovascular therapy, there were hundreds or thousands of them? In other words, instead of just me, there might be many prospective speakers, authors or talk show hosts who get their lives back through this therapy and who might wish to participate in championing/marketing the therapy as a part of their own business-ministry startups.

3)    What if, instead of looking at potential “resurrection cardiovascular clinics” as isolated businesses, we see them not just as business-ministries, but as a microcosm of the body of Christ herself?

Submerging the Model Business-Ministries into the Life of the Church

If all the foundation stones, mentalities and methodologies were to be summed up, I now believe that what the Lord has said to me through the progressive revelation of this book is: “In building your ‘business-ministry,’ what you are really doing is building a new expression of the church—nothing more, nothing less!”

As I have intimated earlier in this book, it is my considered opinion that the current “super-church model,” which exalts men, muzzles/incapacitates the body with a demonic mute/paralysis spirit, and builds heavily mortgaged monuments to the leaders, is doomed. The wineskins are splitting and the new life of the younger generation is quickly draining out. As Mike Bickle says in Passion for Jesus:

The day of the spiritual superstar is over. God isn’t interested in making men, ministries, or churches famous. He’s committed to spreading the fame of His Son throughout the nations. He’s looking for believers who are ablaze with passion and devotion to His Son and will say, “I have only a moment on earth. My citizenship is in heaven, and I want to spread Your fame. I want to capture the hearts of the people for You!” (p. 141)

If the above is so, then there are even further adjustments needed if we are to start seeing the networking of our business-ministries as actually one-in-the-same with Christ building His church—both locally and universally.

Fishing in a Well-Stocked Pond or the Bathtub?

Seeing the church as a fishing pond is perhaps one metaphor that can help us toward the new, proposed integration of various of our business-ministries. In doing so, we shall continue our illustration of the model “resurrection cardiovascular clinic” business-ministry startup.

First, let me tell you about a long-time-ago experience I had while interning for a year at a Christian marriage and family counseling service. There I discovered myself leading an average of one new person daily to the feet of Jesus, but after serving my internship, it was only a matter of months before it dawned upon me that I had not introduced anyone to Jesus of late! When I started struggling with false guilt over the matter, it was as if the Lord spoke to me: “Ken, I have been teaching you how to become a ‘fisher of men’ (cf., Matthew 4:19), and at the counseling service you learned how to employ the proper fishing bait and tackle, but there you were fishing in a well-stocked pond of people desperate for spiritual food! However, you went from fishing in the pond to fishing in your bathtub! It DOES matter, you know, where it is that you are fishing for men, so be on the lookout for your next well-stocked pond!”

Just a couple of years ago I encountered the idea for the best-stocked pond I have ever imagined. It all started out when a frequent guest on The Walk Show started talking to me about the possibility of Robin and I promoting a new type of “mini community centers” to more efficiently, effectively and economically allow the church a medium for mutual interaction, training, outreach, etc. Robin and I most certainly saw the need for something to replace the defective super-church model of “masses of [muzzled] people coming together in temporary [Teflon-like] emotional communities” that experience what can best be characterized as “‘intense moments of ecstasy, empathy, and affectual immediacy’ rather than genuine, settled community life” (Mike Featherstone, as quoted by Peter J. Leithart, in his Against Christianity, p. 82).

The very economic pressures that are putting a financial squeeze upon the pastors’ edifice complexes across the nation were squeezing veritably all donor-based ministries, including even a few non-profit mini community centers we had encountered. Absent an economic engine for the mini-community centers, I couldn’t see how I could promote a model that was already under great threat not just financially, but politically, as well. Then, along came the cardiovascular-therapy “economic engine”—a potential means for giving people their lives back, both physically and perhaps spiritually, as well.

Attaching an economic engine to mini-community centers made much sense, especially when the featured product/service was totally complementary to the life-saving spiritual objectives of “fishing for men” in a well-stocked pond. In essence, we had discovered what might well become a catalyst for the activation of local churches by freeing them to engage with the community once again instead of just admiring their Big-Fishermen Pastors as they did the fishing in their gold-plated bathtubs.

An Opportune Moment of Heightened Spiritual Sensitivity

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners (Jesus Christ—Mark 2:17).

Those who will acknowledge that they are hurting, weak, broken, sickly people are the ones Jesus came to touch, not those who fancy themselves to be well. That is precisely what stocks the pond so well! Please let me illustrate from my past experience:

Once a friend of ours got AIDS and, as a consequence, came out of the homosexual scene back to Jesus Christ and to us after seven years of what he termed, the “sad, driven lifestyle” common to all in that scene. I baptized the young man and discipled him through the year or two up through his death. This young man said two things to me that really stuck during that era:

(1) “In my seven years in the homosexual world, I did not find as many as one person who could be construed, by the farthest stretch of the imagination, to have been a homosexual from birth. They were all—to the man—misprocessing the pain of their childhood.” And,

(2) “Whenever a homosexual discovered he had AIDS, he would typically pass through a two- or three-month period of heightened spiritual sensitivity, during which time he would be open to spiritual inputs. After all, he had been hit in the face with the revelation that he had destroyed his own life, and that his philosophy of life was not reality-backed and had quite obviously let him down. Yet, absent those spiritual inputs, the man would typically revert to his homosexual mantras and die in a hardened-heart state.”

This past year those statements from my friend came back to me as I became the beneficiary of the above-mentioned cardiovascular therapy. As I pondered the one million Chinese who have benefitted from this therapy—being gifted with another one to fifteen years of higher-quality lifestyle and life expectancy—I began to ponder what would happen if the same thing occurred in America. A million beneficiaries of this therapy could be expected to create between one and fifteen million new man years as it were by resurrection! Why, that comes mighty close to Christ’s words that anyone who believes in Him would do “even greater things” than, for example, raising just one Lazarus from the dead! That’s also investing all of the assets of the venture, and not just the net profits, into the work of the kingdom of God!

Just as exciting is the likely heightened spiritual sensitivity of those who thought their lives were over and were likely to have been misprocessing their pain. Then they discover the hope that they can be cured from their pain and get their lives back! At this critical juncture, they may well re-evaluate what they have done with their lives, and whether their philosophy for living has let them down. Through the work of the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the body of Christ in the mini-community centers, they might respond to the challenge to get mobilized under the claims of the King and the kingdom of God on their lives.

An Emerging Network of Business-Ministry Teams

Can you imagine what would happen if the church came alive and decided to start fishing in a well-stocked pond like that instead of their bathtubs? Why, complementary business-ministries might surround the pond from all sides—both the ones formed by members of the local body, as well as by the new converts to the faith!

It takes 35 days, one hour a day, for a patient to go through the relaxing, efficacious cardiovascular therapy (or 18 days if the patient comes from out of town and doubles up on therapy sessions). This gives the church (whether paid staff, volunteers or networking business-ministry services) the perfect opportunity to love on these people, bond with them, lead some to Christ, challenge all to a renewed, resurrected life of service, and even attract some to make their permanent home in the host community and church.

Why, I could imagine bed-and-breakfast business-ministries springing up to support such an effort; nutritional, culinary and horticultural counseling business-ministries; perhaps a day-spa business-ministry; and even a tour business-ministry—to name a few! Our unique Walk Show ad agency services (which are capable of marketing all such products and services through a network of similar business-ministry ad agencies in which many will want to participate) can help draw people to these mini-community-centers from far and wide.

Such self-supporting mini-centers could well become responsible for launching an army of Baby Boomers to find and fulfill their design, purpose and life’s visions via new business-ministries. It might even single-handedly turn retirement centers into “refirement centers”! What’s more, should the economic-engine-driven mini-community-centers and other networked business-ministries be proven in a pilot launch, the entire concept is possible to be adopted by networked small and large teams around the nation.

Hudson Taylor did it in his time, as did John Wesley, the Moravians, C. T. Studd, William Booth, and a great host of witnesses each in their own time. They were Spirit-led into business-ministry models that worked to hold the new wine of each new era in church history. I believe that if we were to wake up, listen and obey, we, too, could embrace the divine business-ministry adventure with abandon in our time. And, I believe, that time is NOW!

“Yeah, But Where Are the ‘Fishers of Men’?”

“What a huge harvest! And how few the harvest hands. So on your knees; ask the God of the Harvest to send harvest hands.
“On your way! But be careful—this is hazardous work. You’re like lambs in a wolf pack” (Jesus in Luke 10:1-3–The Message).

When in my early years I fancied that I was engaged exclusively in “ministry” in the non-profit world, I found that the more Spirit-led and sanctified my initiatives became, the less support came from our constituent/donors. After a couple of decades of that, I put the donor-based, non-profit “ministry” thrust on the back burner and went into profit-making “business.” Eventually, I discovered that our businesses can become our ministries if we develop the foundations, mentalities and methodologies of the Spirit so as to form “business-ministries.”

It was in this embryonic business-ministry phase where I was to discover a similar phenomenon: my Baby Boomer audience appeared to be sound, sound, sound asleep:

“I’ve got something to say. Is anybody listening?
I’ve a warning to post. Will anyone notice?
It’s hopeless! Their ears are stuffed with wax—
deaf as a post, blind as a bat.
It’s hopeless! They’ve tuned out God.
They don’t want to hear from me
(Jeremiah 6:10-11—The Message).

Oh, yes, the audience did wake up from time to time, as at 9/11 briefly or when The Walk Show first came on the air. For a season, perhaps it was the “walk the talk” reality-orientation of the show that drew the largest audience in the history of the station, but it was, I believe, an audience of lookie-lews. They reminded me a lot of the Jews who sang Hosannas and spread out palm branches in the euphoria and novelty of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. We must recall that just days later they had all faded back into the living Deathstyle of their false foundations, mentalities, and methodologies.

The Walk Show’s mother corporation became the world’s largest distributor of three different company’s products, but I came to view marketing to the “consumers” as similar to “feeding the five thousand.” The audience faded after the novelty of our “life-giving” products somehow wore off. People appeared to gravitate back to their former Deathstyle products, like a dog returns to his vomit.

No wonder Jesus left us dangling with this question about the church of these last days:

When the Son of Man returns, will he find (the) faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8)

In his book, Taking America Back, Joseph Farah mentions the analogy of the frog in the pan of gradually heated water, suggested that the frog will jump out if adversarial forces get over-eager and turn up the heat a little too fast. Such few-and-far-between moments of wakefulness, says Farah, are perhaps our only opportunities to speak out to the culture and enculturated church with a clarion voice. That is, God willing, what The Walk Show team and I are pledged to do whenever the occasion arises.

God is Looking for Quality, Not Quantity, in Business-Ministry Builders

Having said that, I must admit that during the writing of this book via these e-letter chapters, I have probably received ten “REMOVE’s” for every “SUBCRIBE.” (So far, a few prisoners appear to be the most responsive to our message, but not many others, save the small, intimate team we started out with.) Yet, over the past year this “negative” has turned into a positive for me. The luke-warm or hostile Christians are gradually (on an accelerated curve) eliminating themselves, drawing us ever-closer to that “fiercely loyal minority” the Apostle Paul spoke of in Romans 11:5-6:

There’s a fiercely loyal minority still—not many, perhaps, but probably more than you think. They’re holding on, not because of what they think they’re going to get out of it, but because they’re convinced of God’s grace and purpose in choosing them. If they were only thinking of their own immediate self-interest, they would have left long ago (The Message).

So, the divine objective in this present attrition trend might well be quality instead of quantity. Maybe trying to communicate to the wrong demographic might constitute “casting pearls before swine.” Maybe we might just get used to the idea that Jesus has a “little flock” of “fiercely loyal” revolutionaries, and that we should make certain first and foremost that we are counted among their number and on the lookout for others of like mind and heart. Maybe God Himself is selective in his talent search, for the Scriptures said of Him:

Maybe we should be, like God, looking for world changers instead of world absorbers! The Scriptures tell us:

God is always on the alert, constantly on the lookout for people who are totally committed to Him (2 Chronicles 16:9).

So, my last big question at the end of this book is: Where are the “fishers of men” that Christ said He would make out of the willing (cf., Matthew 4:19)? To be honest with you, I’m not fully certain that the remnant is even large enough or yet transformed enough in foundations, mentalities, and methodologies to rise to such a business-ministry challenge as that presented by the mini-community-centers able to be established in communities nationwide should the concept be proven locally first. This presents a predicament explained by Mike Bickle in his book, Passion for Jesus:

I believe a great harvest of souls is coming. . . . I sometimes find myself praying, “God, don’t fully release the harvest until You release something in Your church that is worthy of imparting to the multitudes of new converts. Don’t allow another generation of easily offended Christians who lust for money, power, position and pleasure to be birthed. Please fill us with a more intimate knowledge of Your Son’s splendor and loveliness before You bring a multitude of new believers for us to train—until we all attain to unity, intimacy and maturity” (p. 141).

That’s what this book has been all about: pointing us all to Jesus Christ and His foundations, mentalities and methodologies if we are to be faithful, fruitful servants in our unique business-ministries that will, in combination, make up the emerging church. In The Walk Show’s pursuit of these objectives, we are at present concentrating upon solidifying the core team that may, in time, help spawn new business-ministries in a network of such teams.

Building the First Startup Team in a Network of Teams

Whether we initially pursue the cardiovascular-therapy startup we have used as our model, or we initially launch some other business-ministry, our foremost goals are relational–hopefully as a reflection of the relational model we have in the Trinity. As we concentrate upon praying for workers for the harvest and building the team relationally, we believe we will eventually witness the emergence of a network of such business-ministry teams tied together by bonds that cannot easily be broken.

In light of the dullness and darkness of American Christianity and the Western church in general, it is actually a comfort that Jesus acquaints us with our own powerlessness to recruit the workers needed in this great business-ministry harvest before us. Yes, it is only through our getting on our knees and asking the God of the Harvest to send harvest hands into the fields, that the workers for this harvest will awaken to the call.

Do yourself a favor. Drop everything. Get on your knees as Jesus implored His disciples. Plead to the Lord for specific guidance as to how you, too, can become a fulfilled, fruitful harvest worker. Ask Him if you are to either reposition now or to merely hunker down where you are for your booming business-ministry in the bust times already upon us.

Then, obey quickly—before such things as “the cares of this world”; further economic meltdown; civil unrest; Biblically prophesied food shortages, climate changes, wars or plagues; terrorist events, EMP’s, “The Fairness Doctrine,” a neo-Marxist political agenda and/or martial law intervene, distract and render you incapable of obeying the urgent today-word I believe you will receive if you ask with a predisposition to obey. And, if you are led to explore with us the options opening up to us in teamwork, please do not procrastinate if you are led to let me know. Whatever you might be prompted to in establishing your new business-ministry at this critical juncture in American history, I believe your options will narrow as The Day draws near.

On my knees with you,

Ken

Yes, when you get serious about finding Me and want it [Me] more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed. I’ll turn things around for you (Jeremiah 29:13-14).

The people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite spoke: “You’ll remember what God said to Moses the man of God concerning you and me back at Kadesh Barnea. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of God sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land. And I brought back an honest and accurate report. My companions who went with me discouraged the people, but I stuck to my guns, totally with God, my God. That was the day that Moses solemnly promised, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance, you and your children’s, forever. Yes, you have lived totally for God.’ Now look at me: God has kept me alive, as he promised. It is now forty-five years since God spoke this word to Moses, years in which Israel wandered in the wilderness. And here I am today, eighty-five years old! I’m as strong as I was the day Moses sent me out. I’m as strong as ever in battle, whether coming or going. So give me this hill country that God promised me. You yourself heard the report, that the Anakim [giants] were there with their great fortress cities. If God goes with me, I will drive them out, just as God said” (Caleb in Joshua 14:10-12—The Message).

June 11, 2009

Dear Walk Show family,

Ready for refirement?

I wouldn’t normally have told you, but Facebook already did, so today’s my 65th birthday! To celebrate, I took my daily bicycle ride, only to discover a group of teens sitting on their bikes at the bottom of a hill. I found myself blurting out to them: “You guys want to race up that hill?” They were dumfounded, but finally answered to me haltingly, “Why, why sure!”

“Three, two, one, GO!” and off we went up the hill! With his recent non-invasive, out-patient cardiovascular therapy behind him, this sexagenarian (who thought he might be dying one year ago) tore up the hill like an animal, and by the time I coasted the last 100 feet up across the finish line, all I could hear were the faint exclamations from down the street: “Not fair! That’s not fair!! That’s just not fair!!!” I turned around and coasted down to my newly attentive audience of 14-16-year-olds, giving them this sage advice: “Just keep exercising those legs (instead of your video games), and you’ll soon find yourselves winning races against 65-year-olds!”

An Urgent Message for My Fellow “Baby Boomers”

Most men don’t die of old age, they die of retirement. I read somewhere that half the men retiring in the state of New York die within two years. Save your life and you’ll lose it. Just like other drugs, other psychological addictions, retirement is a virulent disease, not a blessing . . .

Where in the Bible do they see [retirement]? Did Moses retire? Did Paul retire? Peter? John? Do military officers retire in the middle of a war? (Ralph Winter, “The Retirement Booby Trap,” Mission Frontiers 7, July, 1985, p. 25)

A top aerospace official confided in me: “Our company doesn’t want people to know this: their top executives are supposed to have nine more years’ life expectancy when they retire, but do you know what their real life expectancy is? Nine months!” Recently I commented to a retired union worker that he is probably living so long due to his unexpected privilege of raising his five great grandchildren! He remarked: “Absolutely! And don’t tell anyone how much fun I’m having!” Well into his “unretirement years,” he continued with: “I regularly read my union newspaper, and do you know how many monthly pension checks the average retiree in my union receives once he quits working? Between six and eight!”

So, here’s the message to you fellow Baby Boomers: Don’t retire; refire! You are right at the place in your life where you’re likely to be most useful, for you not only have the time to divert to new, creative purposes; you have the experience and wisdom to kick butt in just about any “business-ministry” venture you might wish to pursue. But, I’m getting ahead of myself! First, let’s take a brief look at the case for refirement, introduced by our friend, John Piper, in his helpful little booklet, Rethinking Retirement.

Rethinking Retirement

Most of the suggestions that this world offers us for our retirement years are bad ideas. They call us to live in a way that would make this world look like our treasure. And, when that happens, Jesus is belittled. . . . Finishing life to the glory of Christ means resolutely resisting the typical American dream of retirement. It means being so satisfied with all that God promises to be for us in Christ that we are set free from the cravings that create so much emptiness and uselessness in retirement. Instead, knowing that we have an infinitely satisfying and everlasting inheritance in God just over the horizon of life makes us zealous in our few remaining years here to spend ourselves in the sacrifices of love, not the accumulation of comforts. (Rethinking Retirement, by John Piper, p. 5-6)

John Piper has it right! Retire? Hell, no! Refire! Heavens, yes!

I’ve been beat to a pulp in my refining years. I’ve been cheated and then discovered ways in which I had cheated others. I’ve been stolen from and found subtle mentalities of theft in my own outlook. I’ve been propagandized and most certainly discerned that I was propagandizing others—lying with small-“t” truths. I’ve failed many times and succeeded a few. I’ve made some rotten choices and even some good ones. If I might suggest, so have you—whether or not you have yet the eyes to see the pattern or admit it yet. The resulting disillusionment in myself and others is a part of a wonderful, divine transformational process that ends us up exactly where John Piper says we need to go:

When our hearts find their rest in Christ, we stop using other people to meet our needs, and instead we make ourselves servants to meet their needs. This is so contrary to the unregenerate human heart that it stands out as something beautiful to be followed or something convicting to be crucified (Rethinking Retirement, p. 19).

Cramming for Finals!

Finishing life to the glory of Christ means finishing life in a way that makes Christ look glorious. It means living and dying in a way that shows Christ to be the all-satisfying Treasure that he is. . . . When . . .  you are not content in the glory of Christ now, you will seek the kind of retirement that the world seeks. But what a strange reward for a Christian to set his sights on! Twenty years of leisure (!) while living in the midst of the Last Days of infinite consequence for millions of people who need Christ. What a tragic way to finish the last mile before entering the presence of the King who finished his last mile so differently! (Rethinking Retirement, p. 27).

Don’t ask me why, but throughout my life I have had a re-occurring dream that I am walking down the halls of my college alma mater and some student comes up to me and reminds me that the final exam is about to be held for a course I had forgotten about and whose classes I had failed to attend for the past several weeks! Panic sets in, usually followed by a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom!  It wasn’t until today that it dawned upon me that my reoccurring dream is perhaps a parable—a pretty accurate picture of our own Baby Boomer generation! We’ve lived our lives forgetting not only the final exam ahead of us, but a long time ago we actually bailed out of the course of study!

A Eunuch Generation or Caleb’s and Joshua’s?

At lunch recently with one of the young bucks in whom I am investing, he told me that he had given up on the old farts that make up the Baby Boomer generation. He felt that we were a eunuch generation whose faith had been so corrupted we had totally sold out to the corrupt system that passes itself off as the American church. He expected to hear nothing more from us before we passed from the scene, and as far as he was concerned, it’s “Good riddance!”

Hey, believe me when I say that it was hard to defend you! Especially as I encounter the typical Baby Boomer attitude toward retirement—that of seeing how many $100 restaurant (or $1 Alpo) meals you can accumulate before you check off this planet!

What’s Next?—Mountains or Mole-Hills?

Having spent the young years of my life with my Savior marveling at my unbelief, followed by the past fifteen years or so of my marveling at my own unbelief, through a divine process I found myself in possession of a magnificent, glorious gift of faith, in which I now marvel at the unbelief of all those Baby Boomers around me who still want to go back to the “leeks and garlics” of Egypt along with their Egyptian crypts! Like the Caleb of old, I now find myself shouting, “I want that mountain!” Yes, I want ALL of my promises in God! I’m ready to rock with at least one more “Seven-Year Mastery Cycle” at the time my contemporaries are asking me, “What are you going to do when you retire?”

This has led me to some novel commitments:

1)    I will do everything in the Lord’s power to repair and strengthen the “Five Foundation Stones,” “Seven Mentalities” and “Ten Methodologies” necessary to life, business and ministry (what I like to call “business-ministry”) in these end times. I view these as “God’s list” of things to consider for my own immediate and constant attention and transformation.

2)    Since Christianity in our time has been subverted on all fronts, I commit myself to a relentless course of “subverting the subversion” by employing “the mind of Christ” to “speak the truth in love” and “doing only what I see the Father doing.” This, for me as a talk show host, might entail such things as boldness, empathy, insight, playfulness, righteous anger, and perhaps even needing to get my assets out of my name! As a contributor to The Truth Project stated it: “We are called to either confront culture, abandon it, or transform it.” For me, whether dealing with the culture or the enculturated church, it’s all three in a unique Spirit-authored mix.

3)    A team of us are about to launch a business ministry that, in turn, will launch many other new business-ministries.  Ours is to team with fellow Baby Boomers—like you?—in the formation of business-ministries uniquely matched to your own God-given design and purpose. In so doing we will seek to help one another rebuild the “Five Foundation Stones” of: (1) Understanding our personal design, identity or make-up; (2) Getting cleansed from past hurts; (3) Entering the exchanged, or abiding life; (4) Forming up a Christ-Centered World View; and (5) Properly connecting with the community of believers.

4)    These same Baby Boomers will then be equipped to start mentoring the emerging generation in the development of their own lives and business-ministries. Those who join with us will, we expect, have read, agreed with, and are wanting to be actively involved with the restoration of not just the business-ministry Five Foundation Stones, but the Seven Mentalities and Ten Methodologies imperfectly outlined in Building a Booming ‘Business-Ministry’ in Bust Times.

5)    Although our own initial business-ministry start-up could well produce some significant cash flow down the line, we find some inspiration from others who have gone before us in starting and running booming business-ministries. One of them was John Wesley, who developed foundation stones, mentalities, and quite obviously, methodologies, for his business-ministry. It is reported that the Wesleyan revivals were funded out of the sale of books from the saddle bags of Methodist missionaries, and that John Wesley sold tens of thousands of pounds worth of books (a lot of money in his time). Yet, when Wesley died, it is said that all he left behind was a cloak, a set of silver spoons, his Bible, and . . . the Methodist Church!

Whatever we are led to in terms of our foundations, mentalities, and methodologies, the key is to be able to say, “I have fought the good fight; I have run the good race!” (2 Timothy 4:7-8) when we exit this earth. In essence, we want to be able to say, “It is finished!” and to hear our Lord say to us, “Well done, you good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21-22).

As Mike Bickle says in his excellent Passion for Jesus book:

The Lord of indescribable splendor and glory is going to reveal Himself to the church. That revelation will awaken a deep response of absolute obedience and affection. We will never turn back to our compromise and passivity. The body of Christ will lay aside her shallow entertainment. She will have no need for the emptiness distracting her right now. She will reject the self-centered gospel she’s been fed. She will lose her energy for strife, petty arguments and hurts.

Let the Dove Land Near You!

In the chapter entitled, “Methodology #4: Drink Christ’s Cup Alone,” in our evolving book on Building a Booming ‘Business Ministry’ in Bust Times, I told the story of a white dove that landed two years ago today at my birthday party. As you may recall, it swooped into the midst of our group for the exact duration of my friend, Ric Landon’s, prayer of consecration for my life. As I have meditated on that event, I believe the Spirit recently drew my attention to the fact that the white dove did not land on me, as it did when the Father sent the dove down to Jesus. Had it landed on my shoulder, I’m afraid I might have been tempted to play a messiah of some sort and rally you all to drink my nice bowl of Kool-Aid!

Yet, the dove flew into the midst of our group, and the significance of that to me now is that God is wanting to do a new thing with teams of people. To be specific, I sincerely believe that the era of one-man shows is over! God will not much longer tolerate the manipulating, controlling, fleecing shepherds that think they are God’s one-man spiritual band and sole determiners of the direction the flock of God must take.

That means you are needed in order for the work of the kingdom to be effectively carried out in the challenging days immediately ahead. In order to meet that challenge, I am suggesting that you start by repenting, if necessary, from your American rugged individualism, your absorption by the culture and its retirement mandate, or any other departure from your God-given design and purpose! The very first word of Jesus’ and even John’s gospels was “Repent!” and the need is there ever so much today with the Baby Boomers.

Then, I would suggest that you re-visit the “Five Foundation Stones,” “Seven Mentalities,” and “Ten Methodologies” you are going to need in place if you are going to be adequately prepared for the great work of the kingdom ahead. This is God’s list, not just mine. Hopefully you will be dealing with God here, and certainly not Ken Talbott. I believe it’s a matter of life or death—yours and mine!

Ready to take that mountain with you,

Ken

Even in old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come (Psalm 71:8).

Your foundation in the Kingdom has been swept clean and purified. As I have revealed error and presumption, you have released those things to the fires of purification. Now is the time to build anew, and you will do this by building in righteousness, not allowing anything to alter or pervert the truth. Build according to My plans and purposes and not according to your own desires. Carry out My assignments, and let your construction be according to the pattern that I set before you, for I will surely lead you in this process, says the Lord. I say, arise and build, for this is the beginning of a season of recovery and restoration on all levels. (“Small Straws in a Soft Wind” for May 25, 2009, by Marsha Burns).

Dear Walk Show family,

There are many “family, friends, companions, or neighbors” around us in both ministry and business who presently still appear to be “vigorous and strong” (Psalm 38:11-22), but who will soon utterly crash and burn before our eyes because they have not attended to the foundation stones, mentalities and methodologies imperfectly sketched in this book. On the other hand, there are at least a few of us who have already crashed and burned in many redemptive ways and are now getting tuned to the Holy Spirit’s foundation stones, mentalities and methodologies for building booming “business-ministries” in bust times.

When I recently discovered Marsha Burns’ above quote, I marveled at how perfectly it captured the intent and vision behind the writing of what started as one article and has evolved into this book, Building a Booming ‘Business-Ministry’ in Bust Times. If her word resonates with you, you may wish to continue with me, as together we attend to last-minute details prior to the launch of yours and my respective start-up “business-ministries.”

My suffering [most of it self-imposed?] was good for me,
for it taught me to pay attention to your decrees (Psalm 119:71—New Living Translation).

The All-Important Pre-Launch Concept

In specializing in the start up of new businesses and ministries over a span of more than four decades, I have come to appreciate the many tasks that need to be accomplished during the invaluable “pre-launch” period of what I like to call a “business-ministry.” It’s like the final preparation of an engine prior to hitting the ignition for the first time—checking the oil level; making sure the engine is properly fueled; setting the choke, throttle and/or governor; etc. Slip-ups at this level can be embarrassing at best or disastrous at worst. I could tell stories.

This may sound strange, but it is a theme of this book that it’s neither the business nor the ministry side, but the personal side, of a business-ministry that counts the most. What do I mean here? It would probably save time if I just quoted from Mentality #7: Fine-Tune Your Spiritual DNA, as follows:

I take serious exception with the conventional wisdom that “Under-capitalization and poor planning or systems are the main cause of business failures.” To the contrary, the main cause of business failures are character flaws in the spiritual DNA of individual team members! Almost always! In fact, my experience would indicate that even under-capitalization, poor planning or systems normally are but symptoms of such character flaws.

So, let’s make it pre-launch priority to make certain our personal “oil level is checked; our fuel is the proper grade and amount, our personal chokes, throttles, and/or governors are set,” etc., as they can make all the difference when the business-ministry “engine” is fired up.

Pre-Launch Oil Check

Let’s just say that the “oil” for our business-ministry “engine” is proper planning. Once while interviewing a most-successful real estate developer, I asked him his secret to success. He said something that flew in the face of much conventional business wisdom:

I make no long-term plans. By that I mean that my business plans are extremely short-term and fluid. This is because reality has a habit of quickly moving out from underneath one’s business plan, so that blind adherence to the plan can quickly head you off course directly toward disaster. Therefore, minimally every six months or so I work out a completely new business plan!

Nowhere do I see unrealistic, unreliable planning more prevalent than in the capitalization for the pre-launch/launch phases. Again, the instability and reliability are often accentuated by matters of character. The younger generation of entrepreneurs, for instance, tends to view capitalization as a windfall. Consequently, the temporary, artificial, even-euphoric sense of well-being from capitalization, combined with Murphy’s and Parkinson’s laws squared, tends toward overspending, typically followed by the discovery that the venture is now under-capitalized. Most start-ups fail right at this point. Again, the cause of death is listed as “under-capitalization,” when the real problem is normally a combination of character deficiency and erroneous, presumptuous business-plan predictions of the unpredictable. That’s as ridiculous as listing the cause of death as “pneumonia,” when the original problem was cancer and the real cause of death was actually the immune-system-depressing cancer therapy!

One very successful venture capitalist friend of mine once confided, “We don’t tell the inventor we’re going to do this, but at the time of the start-up, we actually double the phase-one budget with no change in the contract terms with the inventor!” That was one wise old dude with millions of dollars of real-world results to show for his wisdom in what we might call “the ‘flexible planning oil check”!

Pre-Launch “Fuel” Check

So, with flexible planning seen as the oil, we can add the capitalization itself as the “gas” for the business-ministry “engine.” Getting the right fuel mixture, flow and reserve will be critical to the launch’s success.

At its core, the provision of “fuel,” or capitalization, is a simple form of teamwork. Perhaps it’s a plumber, musician, or Indian chief who fits, plays or smokes pipes, respectively, and wishes to enter into teamwork with the entrepreneur starting a new business-ministry “pipeline.” By investing or lending their money, they are merely, in effect, pooling their life’s energy (work exchanged into dollars) with the life energy of the operations and management people who wish to create the new business-ministry’s product or service. It’s a basic form of teamwork and should not be feared as long as we have properly attended to the foundation stones, mentalities and methodologies.

I would hope that in 40 years’ experience in start-ups and turn-arounds, I have come up with an improvement or two for the launch-capitalization model, and I suspect I have. It is simple, yet I believe it will help smooth out some of the difficulties of stage-one financing.

The necessity for such capitalization innovations is because no human I’ve met has been able to accurately predict the budget for crossing the desert, then the Jordan River, into the business-ministry Promised Land filled with giants and fortresses. All we can be assured of is that the Lord will go before us if, in the words of Marsha Burns at the top of this chapter, we build according to the Creator’s “plans and purposes and not according to your own desires”!

As “the winds of the Spirit blow where they will,” I have found that my job as a start-up consultant is not so much to nail down an iron-clad phase one budget, as it is to set up a financing package that provides extreme flexibility to make it into the Promised Land without later discovering the project is under- or even over-funded. (For what it’s worth, if it’s underfunded, the entire project is obviously jeopardized, but if it’s over-funded the business-ministry founder likely has left some of his equity on the table!)

My simple financing suggestions are designed to protect both the capital contributors and the business-ministry founders, for they incentivize the founders to spend as little of the start-up capital as possible, with equity in the project being proportioned to the actual cash drawn upon and not some artificially low or high budgetary number.

Like it or not, experience has taught that it is during the actual launch phase itself, not before, that we will more fully discover what the real budget needs to be. After the basic business-ministry DNA is more perfectly formed during the launch stage, every successive round of capitalization, if needed, hypothetically becomes all the easier to predict.

Setting the “Governor” during Pre-Launch of the Business-Ministry “Engine”

The governor on an engine is a means of controlling the maximum revolutions-per-minute (RPM’s) the engine can go, either so that it will not overtax the engine or so as to protect against out-of-control drivers like the six-year-old who froze at the wheel and permanently trashed my son’s go-cart by running it full throttle directly into a curb!

I personally think a “lifestyle-commitment governor” on our “business-ministry” is a great idea. Let’s assume success in your envisioned venture. With that success, what type of lifestyle are you anticipating? Will you, like millions of other Americans, allow your lifestyle “needs and wants” to expand and contract in direct proportion to your income and assets? Or, will you place some sort of a helpful “governor” upon your anticipated lifestyle from the beginning—even before the launch?

In Methodology #1: Start by “Eating Your Own Tithe,” I described Brother Andrew’s pre-launch of his Open Doors ministry, wherein he made a commitment to maintain a certain level and type of lifestyle that proved by its fruits to be a key to the effectiveness of his ministry to persecuted Christians worldwide. So should our personal commitments be, especially in this pre-launch phase where the DNA is being set for the years to come.

I offer no formula for what your level of “lifestyle commitment” should be, for I am a firm believer that “one person’s walk in the Spirit, if blindly imitated, can become the next person’s death march.” Discerning his own unique lifestyle commitment has led my friend, Brother Andrew, to live in the same modest house throughout the 42 years since the first publishing of his compelling biography, God’s Smuggler. It also led my friend, the late C. Davis (“Dave”) Weyerhaeuser, to steward a mansion, vacation home, and twin-engine plane that were perfectly matched with his God-given role of stewarding millions of dollars for the work of the kingdom as well as his friendships with the world’s rich and famous. In fact, Dave used these “tools” to carry out what he told me was his personal ministry: “I address their consciences, twisting their arms until they cough up the resources they know they should be giving.” Via this ministry, Dave freed up millions for the work of the kingdom of God, in addition to the millions he himself gave. Was a couple of nice houses and a twin-engine plane to much wealth to fit within such a strategically placed person’s governing “lifestyle commitment”?

The key was that both Brothers Andrew and Dave were, I believe, designed by the Creator for each of their life’s work, and both of them focused on the Lord and His authorship of their governing lifestyle commitments even in advance of the launch of those business-ministries.  I firmly believe none of us has the right to judge the size or shape of another’s lifestyle commitment, when the fruits would indicate that their business-ministry “engines” are being operated under a divine governor.

As the wise ones say, “The key is not how much the Lord is going to get to you; it is how much He is going to get through you!” I believe it to be of paramount importance that you and I seek the Lord and find His mind for our lifestyle commitments during the pre-launch stage, so as to set a “governor” on the business-ministry startup even before it is launched.

A Couple of My Uniquely Personal Pre-Launch Guidelines

I have already shared with you one of my unique, personal pre-launch guidelines, as described in “Mentality #6: Applying the Gross Business Assets to the Business-Ministry Task Instead of Just the Net Profits.” That was obviously a discretionary choice that I was personally led to. As in everything in this book, I would only refer it to you if you sensed a witness of the Spirit in its application to you in the formation of your own business-ministry. Here’s another one that you may be led to consider:

Granting Equity to Key Contributors from Failed “Business-Ministry” Ventures

A number of years ago a business consulting newsletter I subscribed to reported: “The average entrepreneur fails five times before he or she succeeds.” Some years later during the pre-launch period of a business-ministry venture, Robin and I got struck with these startling, almost un-American-sounding questions:

If it takes five failures to make a success, then wouldn’t each of those earlier failures have tangibly contributed to the latter success? If that is the case, then why shouldn’t the key contributors in the failed projects also share in the rewards of the successful one?

According to that though process, we were led during the next pre-launch to design our startup with equity ownership for investors in past ventures that had sputtered or failed. When Dr. Steve Crosby heard about this practice, he exclaimed, “That has the marks of the kingdom of God all over it!” For some, maybe, but not for all. Does the Holy Spirit say anything to you about the application of this unique, personal, pre-launch guideline to your business-ministry start-up?

“Transition from Business-Ministry Launcher to ‘Team Fosterer’”

In Part One’s “Five Foundation Stones,” I started off this book with the story of a key life’s transition my foremost business-ministry mentor, A. B. Walker, went through. By way of review, here’s what I said:

After decades as a successful building contractor and owner of a chain of retail stores with the highest volume of business of any such company West of the Mississippi, A. B. heard these words: “A. B., your days of just building buildings is over; it’s time for you to start building men!” And then along came Ken!

Well, 27 years later, it’s now my turn to make a similar declaration! Starting with my current start-up, instead of personally launching yet another business-ministry, I very definitely sense I hear the Lord telling me, “This time, Ken [He always uses my name], you are to take what I have taught you and transition as soon as practicable into the role of a mentor of others who will actually help start up, run and own the new business-ministries.” Some words that stand out is that I’m to become a “team fosterer,” a “point man,” a “champion” of the business-ministries of many others in “The Seven-Year Mastery Cycle” immediately ahead for our next business-ministry start-up.

What About Your Booming Business-Ministry in Bust Times?

Next week we shall conclude what has become a whole book on “Building a Booming ‘Business-Ministry’ in Bust Times” with the final chapter, entitled, “Methodology #10: Launch Your Business-Ministry.” Therein I will comment on the actual birth of that which may have been in gestation in your life, heart and vision for years or decades.

To read the concluding chapter, “Launch Your Business-Ministry,” click here.

Launching with you,

Ken

God’s economic success will cost you EVERYTHING you value more than Him (John Hanson)

The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn’t fight fair. But we don’t live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers [strongholds] erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity (2 Corinthians 10:4-5—The Message).

Dear Walk Show family,

Q. Why did Jesus come to earth? To give us a free bus token to heaven?
A. “. . . for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (John 18:37).

Q. What’s Satan doing on this earth? Running “Eternity Dramas” from his trap door to Hell?
A. “He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44—NLT).

Q. What are we supposed to be doing on this earth? Waiting to get raptured out of our Mercedes on the way to a Seahawks game?
A. We’re becoming a channel of either “The Big Lie” or “The Bigger Truth.”

Are We Channeling “The Big Lie” or “The Bigger Truth”?

As we pursue Building a Booming Business-Ministry in Bust Times, number seven of our “Ten Methodologies” concerns our channeling of either “The Big Lie” or “The Bigger Truth” in the expression of our lives on this earth.

Hopefully as children we were taught what we hopefully also teach our own children: “Tell the truth and never tell a lie!” Yet, a predicament of this generation of American Christians is that we are most regularly attempting to influence our offspring with our nice-sounding truths (with a small “t”) while demonstrating for them our almost total immersion in lies—in fact, even as it would seem, in “The Big Lie” (to be defined shortly). In our Mentality #7: Discern Demonic Doctrines chapter, we illustrated how deeply we can become immersed in lies. Especially in our building of our businesses or ministries, we regularly resort to what the Apostle Paul warned above as The Big Lie’s “tools of our trade”: “marketing or manipulation.”

“We’ve Got Them Acting Out ‘The Big Lie’”

About the time of our Bi-Centennial in 1976, I had one of my life’s three most vivid, 3-D, color dreams: I was doing a Walk-Show type of interview with a person billed as, “The minister of Satan on Planet Earth.” So vivid was my impression of his face that I have always worried lest someone who looks like him will run for national political office! And, I won’t say if he has.

I asked this minister, “What are Satan’s plans, especially as it relates to The United States?”

“We’ve had them thinking about ‘the Big Lie’ for some time now,” was his immediate reply. “Now they are starting to speak it out. Pretty soon they will be acting upon it. And, when that day comes true ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will no longer be tolerated. It’s not just that they will continue to be ignored; it’s that they will no longer be allowed to even open their mouths.”

What is “The Big Lie”?

After decades of thought since then, my considered opinion is that “The Big Lie” is simply this: “You are alone!” Yes, The Big Lie says, “It’s up to you to serve yourself, to save yourself, to grasp from others out of hurt, fear and/or greed, for no one else is truly dependable to be there to love you, protect you or provide for you! You are either ignorantly or rebelliously relegated to the status of the master of your own destiny; in essence, you are your own God.”

I hate to say this, but the evidence would suggest that altogether too many Christians in one degree or another are serving The Big Lie while claiming to be representatives of the Truth. This is particularly evident in the American church’s disintegrating “business-ministry” relationships. When, for example, we ignore the Five Foundation Stones of (1) finding our personal identity in Christ, (2) cleansing from past hurts, (3) living the exchanged life, (4) developing a Christ-centered world view and (5) forming a proper connection with the community of believers, we are feeding right into The Big Lie that we must go it alone in these areas even when we might have given lip service to forming a “Christian business or ministry.”

As I have often confessed both on the air and in the pages of this book, I myself have spent altogether too much of my life’s energies in this broken-down, dysfunctional, unfulfilled, ineffective, sometimes-even-deluded mode of going it alone. I have needed the Five Foundation Stones, the Seven Mentalities, and the Ten Methodologies as much as the other guy. That’s why I found myself writing this book!

What is “The Bigger Truth”?

I believe God’s Reality was designed to demonstrate to us The Bigger Truth: “It’s not about you; it’s about Jesus Christ living His life both in and through you!” In other words, you are not the coffee; you’re the cup! You’re not the water; you’re the PVC pipe! You are not the vine; you are the branch! And, in all these respects your life is designed to be only a channel of the life God Himself has sourced.

What this means is that yours is an exchanged life, in which you don’t own or even live your own life, but you allow Jesus Christ to live His life through you. You don’t originate your words and deeds; because you have “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), that you might know the thoughts of the Father. You become only a channel—but a glorious channel—through which the Father speaks and acts via the Spirit of Christ indwelling you. Your life is crucified in Christ; hidden in Christ; dead, buried and then resurrected in Christ Jesus. This Bigger Truth is all summed up in Galatians 2:20:

I have been crucified with Christ [in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ (the Messiah) lives in me; and the life I now live in the body I live by faith in (by adherence to and reliance on and complete trust in) the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me (Amplified Bible).

Discovering the Explosive Power in “The Bigger Truth”

The divine pattern seems to be that of God allowing Satan’s Big Lie to drive you and me into spiritual bankruptcy, so that we might find resurrection power in the receivership of The Bigger Truth: “Christ in us, the hope of true glory!”

This mystery has been kept in the dark for a long time, but now it’s out in the open. God wanted everyone, not just Jews, to know this rich and glorious secret inside and out, regardless of their background, regardless of their religious standing. The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you, so therefore you can look forward to sharing in God’s glory. It’s that simple. That is the substance of our Message. We preach Christ, warning people not to add to the Message. We teach in a spirit of profound common sense so that we can bring each person to maturity. To be mature is to be basic. Christ! No more, no less. That’s what I’m working so hard at day after day, year after year, doing my best with the energy God so generously gives me (Colossians 1:26-29—The Message).

Called “maturing in Christ,” during this bankruptcy/receivership process it gradually dawns upon us that, whereas there was no power but death and destruction in The Big Lie, there is immense, almost unlimited power for life in channeling The Bigger Truth. Yes, the very power of the universe backs the Truth in Christ, “the Word . . . through whom all things were created” (cf., John 1:3)!

Playing with “the Bigger Truth Gun” Can Be Dangerous!

Initially, your vital connection with The Bigger Truth may seem like the little kid who just happened upon a cocked and loaded six-shooter! If you (and others) survive the blast from playing with the gun, you may soon come to respect the unfathomable power you hold in your hands when your life becomes a channel of the truth—however inadvertently!
I remember one day as a young Naval Officer and the Youth Communications Officer for Armed Forces Radio & Television in Hollywood, how I tested out my Truth Colt 45 with perhaps the most powerful person in the world of television at that time. At “gunpoint” I forced this atheistic playboy to the conclusion of some of his own logical presuppositions in this way:

“You go on and on about how everything is relative, and how nobody has the right to put his morals on anyone else. And yet, you will also admit that there is no such thing as a ‘neutral communication,’ with media research showing us that everything we produce has some kind of impact on the audience. Then, tell me, why do you continue to produce media products which recommend change in people’s lives, when you claim no base of authority from which to say anything to anybody?”

While I was just innocently twirling the pistol in my hand, unexpectedly it went off with a boom! I kid you not: when he heard The Truth that was bigger than his Big Lie, my victim’s chair literally slammed backwards and threw his back up against the wall! Red-faced and looking like a caged tiger, my cornered victim shot back (with his pea shooter): “All right! That’s enough! I will have to admit that I have no logical reason for my work in the media!”

My next target practice was on the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, then the President of the United States in The White House family theater, and finally the governors of the fifty states and their wives. Each time in leadership circles I combated The Big Lie with The Bigger Truth, I learned a little more about gun control: that is, the necessity of using both hands, taking better aim, squeezing off the trigger steadily!

I put in for “combat pay” for my work in Hollywood and Washington, D. C., but all I got out of it was a tee-shirt and the some of the insights shared in this book’s “Mentality #3: Our Enemy, the System.” As I improved my Bigger-Truth marksmanship in dealing with Big-Lie bureaucrats, I also saw the gradual development of the winning strategies of my forthcoming book: Judo Politics: The Transformation of the Electorate that Throws Big Brother, which hopefully someday will become a resource in the coming Second American Revolution about to be launched.

How I Came to Sit, Not Stand, Before a King

One day I was reading the Bible and encountered Proverbs 22:29 in the Amplified Bible:

Do you see a man diligent and skillful in his business? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.

Unexplainably, the most outrageous thought welled up in my spirit: “Lord, I’d like that!” Through no initiatives of my own, exactly three weeks later I found myself sitting—not even standing—in a private audience with a king! Sometime later a single shot from my Bigger-Truth gun resulted in the king’s himself firing the second-most-powerful person in his entire kingdom—actually, the person often referred to as “the power behind the throne,” who set much of the agenda for the nation. Over and over again, I was discovering that The Big Truth I was learning to communicate was backed up with the power of the universe. It could even bring down false rulers and authorities.

How to Straighten Up an Inverted Church Structure

God evidently wished the “Very-Most-Right-Reverend-Senior-Pastor-Mogul” to quit playing “Moses Man” and take his seat among the elders. During the aberrant “Shepherding Movement” of the late ‘70’s, the Holy Spirit appeared to be growing tired of one-man spiritual bands seeking to consolidate control over the flock of God through the re-institution of the Old Covenant sacerdotal (priesthood) system, with its vertical authority structure that mocked Christ’s authority in the body, a “shadow sanctuary” that obscured our role as “living stones” in the true sanctuary, false rituals of tithing and service, and the monologues of one man usurping the function of the body in our meetings and throughout the week. Why, I do believe the Senior Pastor-turned-High Priest would have, if allowed to continue in his course, made himself not just the sole determiner of the vision of the church, but perhaps even our vicarious atonement!

The pastor appeared to be agitating for Christ being crucified over again in order to destroy once more a temple man made with human hands. Perhaps in response, the Most Holy One sent out into the battle a few little, weak, Kings Kids with massive, Bigger-Truth firepower. Among the most insignificant of them was a nobody named Ken. One day Ken in fear and trembling approached the one surviving “layman’s mike” in a Sunday-morning worship service to speak a few words about the glories of mutual submission in the flock of God. Wham! The Senior Pastor signaled the ushers, and up they rushed, grabbing me by the arm and ushering me out!

Six weeks later I was invited to a special late-night meeting with the elders of that flock. In that clandestine meeting they confessed that they had received unsolicited letters from a majority of the congregation’s families. In essence, the letters said: “What Ken said was, as it were, the oracles of God for our church family and its leadership.” The repentant elders laid hands on me and prayed a special blessing upon my life for being used of God to clarify for them a new authority structure for the local assembly. As a special gift, they even offered to send me to a conference I wished to attend.

Shortly after that Robin and I moved to another part of the country for a year’s sabbatical. (See Methodology #6: No Burnout with 7-Year Mastery Cycle.) Some time later I heard that the pastor had resisted taking his seat among the elders, choosing instead to leave with a third of the angels—er, congregation—with him.

Some years later one of the new pastors thanked me for the role my simple “speaking the truth in love” had played in liberating the congregation. By that time I was becoming thoroughly convinced that the power of “The Bigger Truth” was so immense as to be capable of changing human hearts both individually and corporately in the most-unexpected and marvelous ways.

How to Stop a Christian Terrorist Cell

One night around almost three decades ago an informant tipped me off as to the whereabouts of a terrorist cell of American church leaders who were planning on forming a hit squad to assassinate several federal judges who were rendering decisions thought to be unfavorable to the church of Jesus Christ in America. At my insistence, the informant arranged a meeting with myself and the leadership of the conspiracy. In that meeting, I exposed “The Big Lie” in the thinking of the group, while speaking out of “The Bigger Truth” as it applied to their situation.

Although the immediate response was emotionally explosive, to say the least, over time the battle was won in those men’s minds and hearts, with the group dissolving with nary a shot fired. In my opinion, the message—which was, I believe, sourced in the Spirit of Christ living in me and not in my independent self—likely averted a pre-mature backlash against the church in America and brought us another 30 years before we are now faced with the need for the very same message to be delivered soon to today’s church leaders. I assume you might be interested in knowing what I said to that terrorist cell, but for the moment we must stay on subject—that being the power backing the communicator of The Bigger Truth in the midst of a culture and church largely dedicated to The Big Lie.

The Pain in Plain Truth Telling

Did I fail to mention that “speaking the truth in love” normally carries with it suffering? Indeed, it appears one of our primary roles on this planet is, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “making up whatever is still lacking and remains to be completed [on our part] of Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of His body, which is the church” (Colossians 1:24-27—Amplified Bible).

When as a youth I imperfectly spoke the truth in my government days, I suffered a lot. I was dumped upon by Truth-resisters all up and down the military chain of command, as I was the “irritating lieutenant” wielding the Bigger-Truth gun at the very bottom of the chain. Yet, here and there from top to bottom, I saw key politicians, military leaders and even spiritual leaders bowing their knees to the Truth of which I was but a weak, unsure bearer. Bitter-sweet!

After leaving the meeting where the local-church elders asked forgiveness and blessed me for speaking the truth in love to the congregation, the recalcitrant pastor blocked the giving of their gift to me of the conference. (I doubt the elders ever found that out, but I flew there anyway at the expense of an unemployed brother who said, “God told me to pay for it.”) Then, the elders themselves failed to mention to the congregation that they had made things right with me. In fact today, some 30 years later, I still periodically run into people from that church family who all along have thought that I had been thrown out of that congregation. Hurts good!

In the nation where I delivered the Bigger Truth to the king, before being fired the number-two person completely sabotaged my initial business-ministry project there at great cost to me and my business-ministry team. However, after their removal from office, I was able to return to the kingdom as a part of a larger team, where we presented a comprehensive economic development program for the entire kingdom and not just a single business-ministry venture as before. Now, it only hurts when I smile!

It took two full years for the Christian terrorist cell to process my words and abandon their murderous plot. During that time I suffered under constant threat of being caught in the cross-hairs of their high-powered rifles, as I was likely the only person with knowledge of the initial conspiracy.

Two years later I received a call from the ring-leader. The last time I had seen him was when he had stomped out screaming and yelling because I had placed him in the sites of my own high-powered Bigger-Truth gun. He asked me if he could come by my house and take me for a ride in his car. Then he drove me to the top of a remote, big cliff overlooking the water. At a most-uncomfortable juncture, he turned off the ignition and began to softly weep. These were the best I can remember of his words:

Thank you, Ken. Thank you. Thank you!!! When we last spoke I was living in a state of delusion. I thought I knew the Truth, but I had been operating under a big lie. Then, you came along and spoke the truth in love to me–the very words the Holy Spirit was trying to get through to me. Man, was I ever full of rage toward you! So, please forgive me for vilifying you, and I thank you for hanging in there with me—obviously praying for me—and for relating to the Christ in me instead of to all of my hostile antics! You have probably saved my life!

The truth does that.  He lives in us and communicates Himself through us to the world. . . and when the light comes, the darkness splits!

The Painful Joy Set before Us as Truth-Tellers

“Jesus. . . who for the joy set before Him endured the cross. . .” (Hebrews 12:2).

I’ve made a painfully joyous discovery during my decades-long attempt to be a Bigger-Truth-teller in what the Apostle Paul called a “massively corrupt culture.” My discovery has been made in the non-profit ministry sector, the profit-making business sector, and the business-ministry hybrid of recent years. This is the discovery:

The more I receive the witness of the Spirit that my words and deeds are borne in Jesus Christ and His Bigger Truth, the less response I get from my supposed audience—even my Christian audience. I am here referring to quantitative, numerical, spiritual or financial responses. Simultaneously, however the qualitative response from a very small remnant has been overwhelming.

For example, when The Walk Show first went on the air, we soon built the largest weekend radio show in the history of our host station. In time, we did the unthinkable: as a weekend show we outstripped the station’s weekday drive-time audience! Then, the audience response—again, numerically, or quantitatively—dropped in a manner reminiscent of the drop from the time Christ entered Jerusalem on a donkey to the day of His crucifixion only a week later!

At first, I thought this was bad, but in time the Spirit showed me why I should embrace the bitter-sweet lesson He was teaching. After all, the crowds may have abandoned Jesus, but through His death, burial and resurrection, through a small band of insignificants just like you and me, He turned the world upside down (or, should I say, right-side up again?)! In other words, quantity was reduced for quality to come forth, and quality produced quantity once again. That’s a bitter-sweet, painfully joyous process!

For me, the bitter pain was in dawning awareness that our culture is disintegrating and the enculturated church is leading the way. As my friend, Brother Andrew (“God’s Smuggler,” that selfless servant of the suffering church worldwide), put it to me once:

The suffering that I see in the church worldwide—as nation after nation falls under the power of godless totalitarianism—is in large measure the unpaid debts of the church itself being called due. It is the church which has sinned by silence when it should have spoken out. It is the church which has refrained from being the salt and light in an age desperate for both.

The sweet joy is that, while the vast majority even in the church is fully embracing The Big Lie, there is a small remnant who are beginning to come alive in The Bigger Truth of who they are in Jesus Christ! Therefore, when ten people write “REMOVE” in the subject line for every one that writes, “Subscribe” to my weekly e-letter, I now rejoice, for that one “Subscribe” often represents a life who is likely to be a world-changing member of the remnant.

Recently I rejoiced when a couple of marketing gurus contacted me to help “market” The Walk Show’s goods and services. I rejoiced, that is, AFTER I asked them to read the Five Foundation Stones and they failed to ever call back! What a wonderful deliverance for me and our business-ministry projects!

When a couple of investors recently called and asked what business they should invest in, I could refer them to the same Five Foundation Stones and never hear from them again! Hallelujah! Not to say that those gentlemen were in this category, but in general, I’m so sick of Big-Lie Christian investors and some so-called “Marketplace Ministers” that I could scream out in joy when they leave our business-ministry projects alone!

The other day Robin asked me how I ever thought this book would pay for itself. I told her I would be most happy if only 12 people read it and fully connected with its message, for I’m not just selling books. I told her that I can now wholeheartedly say with Paul what we quoted him as saying at the beginning of this chapter:

The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers [strongholds] erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity (2 Corinthians 10:4-5—The Message).

Actually, I have concluded that all we need is a startup team of probably a dozen or fewer people and we can become the type of small, weak, insignificant remnant that God always seems to use in accomplishing His earth-changing works!

Also, I no longer fret about whether the people I work with have “arrived” at any particular place in their growth process. When it comes to the “Five Foundation Stones,” for example, all I have come to care about is the direction a person is heading and his or her level of commitment to The Bigger Truth of Jesus Christ’s life expressed in and through them.

Next, it’s about time for the Pre-Launch of your business-ministry start-up, the subject of our next e-letter/chapter. To link to “Methodology #9: Pre-Launch Your Business-Ministry,” click here.

Truth-Telling with you,

Ken

Without truth, there is only manipulation. –Oz Guinness