Editor’s note: Jared Crooks is the editor of Business Reform Magazine. The latest issue deals with all aspects of how time impacts businesses. Sign up for a free trial issue and start reading the current issue online today!
Nietzsche once said, “Beggars should be abolished. It annoys one to give to them, and it annoys one not to give to them.” I can understand his frustration, especially when it comes to the greatest beggar of all – namely, time.
Nothing demands more of us, or as consistently. Time leaves no area of our life untouched, and although we continually desire more of it, by the very nature of things we have less and less. The clock, I think, is an inadequate symbol for how we in modernity view the role of time in our respective lives. Too mechanical, repetitive. A better example, I think, is the hourglass – the constant flow of an indeterminate number of grains of sand moving ever downward. And what’s worse, it’s all there, in plain view through the glass.
Utilizing what time we do have, then, is vital to both our work and faith. In the current issue of Business Reform, we address, from as many angles as we could manage, how time affects us throughout our daily – and eternal – routine. Verla Gillmor discusses how we should worry less about managing our time and, instead, place more emphasis on managing ourselves. Ken Blanchard, best-selling author and management guru, talks about starting one’s day slowly and in communication with God. Joe Johnson talks with both John C. Maxwell, leadership expert and best-selling author, and Kevin Small, president of Injoy, about legacy and its role within their organization’s vision of the long-term future. Mark Hamilton provides a fascinating look at how the human conception of time has changed throughout both western culture as a whole and Christendom itself. Rick Williams brings us another great example of a godly businessman in John Wanamaker, the mastermind behind the modern department store and an advocate for many customer service policies still in effect today.
Perhaps the most interesting feature in the issue, however, is our dual interview with Tommy Ice – who with Tim Lahaye co-founded the Pre-trib Research Center in Arlington, TX – and Gary DeMar – proliferate author and vocal critic of the rise of pre-tribulation theology in the last few decades. This dual interview – we asked each separately the same questions and printed them side by side – is an effort to bring the debate, which is widespread among theologians and academics across the country, into the business realm. And we did this for one main reason. We were curious how one’s particular eschatology – one’s view of the end times, whether Christ is coming back soon or not – affects how one does business. The more we thought about it, the more we were convinced that this question was integral to a discussion of time’s relation to business. This question, in fact – which we let the experts struggle with for a few pages – may be the overriding question for businesspeople concerning time’s practical application throughout all our lives.
Also, check out our regular contributors. In this issue, as always, we have Joseph Farah, Marc Leavy, Michael Q. Pink, Steve Marr, Dennis Peacocke, Ian Hodge, John C. Maxwell, and Larry Burkett. Also contributing to this issue is Phil Hodges.
So instead of abolishing the beggar – no matter how much we want to, we can’t get rid of time – let’s learn to view it as God does and utilize it to our advantage. With a little wisdom, our greatest annoyance and adversary can, in fact, become our greatest tool.
Sign up for a free trial issue and start reading the current issue online today!
