Over the next few days, we’ll be sharing first hand accounts of people we know who are seeking the Kingdom in business in some way. Here’s the first of that series.
Mark’s Story:
My story is one of discovering latent giftings for the marketplace that I never knew I had. Growing up, I never had any interest in business and majored in English Literature for my undergraduate degree at UCLA and later got a MA in Marriage and Family Counseling from Fuller Seminary. I had initially planned to work on staff at a church but later decided against it after interning at my church and becoming disillusioned with the inner workings of a church institution. I decided to pursue secular employment in a field like human resources, where I felt that my graduate degree could assist me in procuring work.
As God in His severe mercy will do at times in our lives, He brought me into a season of extreme wilderness where every door to normal employment was shut to me for nearly two years. I ended up working as a bottom of the rung laborer on a construction site, working alongside some truly scary people. Despite all my efforts at obtaining white collar work, no doors were opened and I was forced to work for many about a year and a half as a day laborer, without any security of long term employment. At one point, I even worked with illegal Central American refugees. As hard as it was, the nearly two years of
wilderness brought forth some very good fruit in my life, especially in releasing me from the fear of risk and failure. I learned that even though I was only making $500 a month, that God was still sustaining
me. The things I felt I needed, economic security and a good job, now began to lose their influence on my life. I learned to be content with daily bread and not a cupboard full of bread.
But, every season comes to an end and God brought mine to a quick conclusion in May of 1987. Within a year of May 1987, I launched out and started my own general contracting firm, (after working for 9 months as a project engineer with a small general contractor). Through many leaps of faith and hard business lessons, God allowed me to lead this fledging company to a place of prosperity and success. Within three years of starting the company in May 1988, I was working part time in my business and making an excess of over 100.000 a year. God had literally taught me how to run a business since I had no practical experience nor educational training. This company ended up completing nearly 30 million dollars of construction projects from 1988-1996.
The ensuing years have seen many ups and downs and a ton of more life learning, including planting and pastoring an institutional church full time for nearly a dozen years. In 2005, our institutional church
transitioned into a house church network and I went back into construction. The road has not been easy after being out of the industry for such a long time and God saw fit to walk my wife and I through another rigorous wilderness season in several areas of our lives. Yet, even in the midst of the difficult journey, God has not only sustained us but given both vision and opportunity for the future. Leaving Egypt is never easy but a destiny of frutifulness in the land of the Lord’s Promise is worth it!
