Executive Influence: Impacting Your Workplace for Christ [Hardcover]

Christopher A. Crane (Author), Mike Hamel (Author), Kenneth H. Blanchard (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2003

It’s hard for pastors to tell businesspeople how to express their faith at work. Those who are called to the same vocations are better suited to this task. In Executive Influence, fifteen high-profile executives candidly share how they are finding ways to be salt and light in today’s world. Their stories are inspiring and their insights are summarized in 45 Guidelines for Sharing Your Faith at Work. Thirty other marketplace Christians offer anecdotes that will give readers all sorts of new ideas for opening up conversations about Christ.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Christian executives must take care not to overstep their bounds as business leaders, unduly influencing those under their authority with their personal religious beliefs. Somewhere in the middle between timidity and overly aggressive evangelism fall the majority of Christian executives who have discovered ways to share their convictions without making their subordinates feel harassed or manipulated. Crane (businessman and former owner of COMPS.COM) and Hamel (former pastor and author The Women's Ministry Handbook and The Entrepreneur's Creed) discuss the management styles and faith-sharing tactics of more than 50 successful CEOs and businessmen and women. Included are such well-known Christians as Bill Pollard of ServiceMaster; Dr. David Parsons, former Air Force "Top Gun" and pediatric surgeon; Merrill Oster of Oster Communications; and Anne Beiler, CEO of Auntie Anne's Pretzels. Crane and Hamel have organized the text nicely, helping busy readers find their way around with short introductory paragraphs to each of the 15 chapters. They share insights on using business as a stewardship vehicle, accepting others who have different religious beliefs, navigating the ups and downs of operating family-owned businesses and managing high-tech corporations with integrity. Evangelical Christian businesspeople will find solid recommendations in this resource, but most of this information has already been expounded upon elsewhere. While many professionals will make use of this compilation of tried and true ideas, others will be disappointed by the lack of fresh insight.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

Most Christians are called to the marketplace as their sphere of service. Even in Jesus’ day, only a few disciples were told to give up their jobs and make their living from the gospel. The vast majority of believers, then and now, are to dispense salt and light in daily doses while earning a living in the work-a-day world.

It’s hard for pastors to tell businesspeople how to express their faith at work. Those who are called to the same vocations are better suited to this task. In Executive Influence, fifteen high-profile executives reveal how they are sharing their faith without abusing their management or leadership positions.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 185 pages
• Publisher: Navpress Publishing Group (January 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576833739
• ISBN-13: 978-1576833735
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,327,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Each contributor relates how they kept their faith, April 7, 2003

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Executive Influence: Impacting Your Workplace for Christ (Hardcover)

Compiled and edited by Christopher Crane and Mike Hamel, Executive Influence: Impacting Your Workplace For Christ offers testimony from fifteen high-profile business executives who are also devout Christians. Each contributor relates how they kept their faith, sharing their love of Jesus Christ proudly without abusing the trust and responsibility of their business roles and responsibilities. A moving and deeply spiritual testimonial compendium of balancing one's spiritual calling with the duty of daily work, Executive Influence is highly recommended reading for any Christian with corporate management responsibilities.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Teaching by Example, July 8, 2003

By 

Phil Wade (Georgia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Executive Influence: Impacting Your Workplace for Christ (Hardcover)

In this light, accessible book, Authors Crane and Hamel give us fifteen stories of unique Christian professionals who understand that their business practices can bear a stronger testimony to their faith than their words. Some of them formed their businesses with these convictions; others learned how to apply their faith in the middle of their careers. Each of them have zealously pursued serving God in business and community. Like Merrill Oster says, they now consider it "normal to serve God in every situation."

The book opens quoting Dallas Willard's The Spirit of the Disciplines. "Possession and direction of the forces of wealth are as legitimate an expression of the redemptive rule of God in human life as is Bible teaching or a prayer meeting." On that premise, Crane and Hamel offer fairly uncritical descriptions of Christian executives striving to honor the Lord through business policy and personal leadership. If concepts like this are better taught by example, then this book hopes to give its readers ample exposure to several examples of God-honoring professionalism.

Those examples often follow a theme of respecting people--employees, vendors, and customers--as valuable in themselves, not as means to profit or self-glory. The people in a company, whatever their role, are to be loved as neighbors who bear the image of God, even if they are uninterested or hostile to the gospel. One example focuses on deliberately building a diverse work force in order to live Christianly in front of those on the other side of our natural dividers, that is, of different ethnicity, education, or social understanding. Another example describes an assisted living community started out of love for senior citizens by a couple who "had seen the dark side of eldercare." Though some admit to overzealous witnessing and personal failures, the majority of those interviewed relate their successes, both big and small, over the years.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Christian Management ideas, December 1, 2009

By 

DJ (Oklahoma) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Executive Influence: Impacting Your Workplace for Christ (Hardcover)

A well-compiled, easy to read book of Christian leaders and business owners who make a difference in their companies and workplaces. Great, thoughtful ideas on how to live and conduct your personal life and treat everyone, regardless of their beliefs, with integrity.