I was in Wales last weekend, for a mixture of business and pleasure.
Flying down on Friday morning, I spent the day in the company of my boss and some clients as we did the commercial side of things. Wearing my banking hat, I thought it was a really encouraging time. Obviously, I can’t mention any details about the customers, but we were very impressed with their plans and contingencies to deal with the current, difficult, economic climate.
They were due to host us (me, my boss, my boss’ wife) at the Millennium Stadium for Wales v Scotland in the Six Nations, so an overnight stay was required. At Celtic Manor, venue of the 2010 Ryder Cup and more than easily qualifying for the tag of ‘quite nice’. In the evening, the client’s company chairman and his wife came to the hotel for dinner.
Now, my boss had mentioned previously that this chairman bloke and his wife “had found the church late in life” – they are in their late 50s/early 60s. The evening that followed has been the single most encouraging event I have experienced in work, where business and faith collided.
My boss, who I’ve learnt so much from and has been really fantastic to me, is not, as far as I can tell, a man of God. However, I am aware that his wife is a church-goer and his youngest son (aged 18) is also a Christian. For an entire evening, he was exposed to the conversation of 4 people (me, his wife, the chairman and the chairman’s wife) that was almost exclusively about church, faith, God and living out His Word in the place we find ourselves.
You have to understand that this NEVER happens in my line of work. Excluding the chats I had with my old boss, who has an amazing lady who came to faith recently through the Catholic church, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have had an indepth conversation about faith in a work/business context. To spend an entire evening doing so, in the presence of a non-Christian, was an incredibly encouraging and humbling experience.
I heard a lot of amazing things about these people who have used their (relative) wealth in later life to do good in the Lord’s name. They are sponsoring projects in Rwanda and Fuji which have so many similarities to what my church is doing in East Africa. To cap it all, as I was stood in an executive box in the stadium, awaiting Scotland’s horrible capitulation to the Welsh, we had another chat in which the chairman bloke expressed the thought that God had let him do what he did in business for so many years, but when the time was right, He called him to put those experiences and resources to work for the purpose of the Kingdom of God.
This made me think once again about why I am a banker. I believe so very strongly that this is something that the Lord brought me into. How I got a job in the bank to start with, every step I have taken on the promotion ladder, I have always felt His hand. There are two specific occasions when I have very nearly turned my back on my career – coming back from a Uganda trip in 2003, I was ready to chuck it in there and then to work for MAF (that’s another story) and, 2005, when I thought God was calling me to go to bible college in Canada – but, fundamentally, I stayed. Various things stopped me and know I am very happy in what I am doing. I really like my job, I like the people I work with and I am being very thoroughly blessed with success.
But I’ve always wondered what I am being trained for. Yes, I am supposed to be here, but what is the final destiny. Part of me believes that that it is part of a process to get me full of skills and experience that He can use long-term in Africa, and keeps my hand in with that – by resourcing me for trips – in the meantime.
Whatever happens, that evening in Wales reminded me that He uses the things we do, the times we have. The joy, the pain, the skills we learn and the knowledge we gain. We cannot understand His purposes when we are going through the things we need to learn from.
There is a right time, a right place and a right thing for us.
