A Need for Biblical Perspective in Business with Steve Dulin: Today we have Steve Dulin on to discuss the need for biblical perspective in business. Steve’s construction company has experienced supernatural success by using God’s principles in the business. He brings this to the table as an example of how applying God’s principles can lead to a successful business. We discuss curriculum and conferences that are made available to business owners who want to put God at the forefront of their business.

Air Date: 5/15/2023

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green and Tim Barton

Guest: Steve Dulin

Gateway Business Leaders

Transcript:

Rick Green
This is the intersection of faith and the culture, it’s WallBuilders. Thanks for joining us today I’m Rick Green, America’s constitution coach and a former Texas legislator, here with David and Tim Barton. David is of course, America’s premier historian, I think knows more about the founding fathers than any person alive today, definitely has read more of the founders writings and original documents than anyone alive today. And just thrilled to be able to serve alongside him here. Also Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. Both these guys you need to get them in to speak at your church, your business conference, your homeschool conference, whatever it might be, check out WallBuilders.com Today, to get them in, I’m telling you, it’ll inspire you equip you, give you hope for the future, and give you solutions for all the things that we’re facing right now. And of course, we bring you that here on the radio program as well. And if you go to WallBuilders.com , you can actually make a donation that helps us to expand this program to reach more people. So we appreciate you doing that. It can be one time or monthly. But thank you very much for being a part of our team and really part of the solution. The more we can get truth in people’s hands and the more we can inspire them to stand for that truth and fight for that truth and defend that truth, the better chance we have of turning this nation around and you know who who can… who knows whether or not we will, I can’t promise you we’re going to save America. But I can promise you that we can do everything in our… at our fingertips. We have all the peaceful means we needed our fingertips. And if we will do those things, I think we do have a very good chance of saving the country. We’re, blessed, we’re blessed to have the tools we need to save America. And it’s not only the political stuff, it’s every area of the culture with a biblical infusion will do better. Alright David and Tim, Steve Dulin will be with us a little later in the program, great friend of the Barton’s and the Green’s. Kiddos came to Patriot Academy back in the olden days when they were young, and a great business leader as well. And, you know, we’re always talking about biblical application to everything. I mean, our main focus tends to be government in the political realm. But obviously the exact same in the business realm. And a respect for free enterprise really does require that biblical worldview is, as, as Benjamin Franklin said, it’s a free market under God. And so having those biblical values applied to business is a really good thing we’ll be talking about today.

David Barton
Yeah you know, Steve is one of the first guys that really got our attention on the business aspect. We know the Bible applies to every aspect of life. But Steve took Bible verses into concepts that most people are not familiar with. And I really love the fact that what he did a Gateway, he is one of the top ministers at Gateway right under Robert Morris. And they’ve got this huge network of churches, etc, and Gateway is a very large church in the metroplex Fort Worth, Dallas area. And what they did was started in ministry to businesses, and they had about 1500 local businesses participate in that. And I love the way they did it, was really a discipleship kind of thing. Instead of having just business seminars, per se, they took the 1500 guys, and if you’re a guy with 1000 employees, then you can help train the guy that has 750 employees. And if you got 750, you can help train the guy with 250. And said they broke them down into five tiers and really worked on discipleship, and helping guys understand business principles, step by step, to grow their business larger, was a great, phenomenal approach they had.

Tim Barton
Well, and Dad, as you’re mentioning the number of businesses they have, we’ve actually been able to be a part of a couple conferences over the last many years. I’ve attended. And just was so encouraged by some of the things we learned along the way, as you mentioned, they really encourage a mentorship program. And some of this, I mean, we’ve known Steve for a lot of years, I mean great friends with their family. And we have I’ve heard him unfold some of these thoughts before that, for everybody listening, we’ve all had those pastors, we’ve had those mentors and moments in our life where somebody said something and you know, the light bulb kind of goes off for you. Oh man, and some of the best teachers maybe some of the best moments are when somebody says something that is so fundamentally true. You almost feel dumb for not having known some of it before, and you’re like, okay, that was so obvious. I’m a dummy for not having known that, but yes, it’s totally true. And when he started explaining what they did in their business, and why they ran their business the way they did, and even their philosophy of business where, you know, he’s not afraid of making money, and there’s sometimes people that were thinking, you know, the most Godly you can do is have nothing. Rght? Be broke and give it all away. And he went a very different direction, right? That God’s not against wealth and God, actually, the Bible talks about the wealth of the wicked being stored up for the righteous and he starts going through Some of these things and unfolding how it works, but ultimately, in his business, they’re blessing and benefiting so many people and the workman’s worthy is higher, so you can make money for that. And he starts going through some of this value and profit and work exchange. And he’s opening up eyes on some of these thoughts. I remember one of the things that he told me contrary to what a lot of people say, I know as we say this, there’s going to be people… I’m going to say this statement, and people are going to [say] wait a second. I don’t think that’s right. And that’s how I felt when I first heard it. And then he explained it to me. And I went, oh, that makes so much sense. So we’ve heard many pastors and ministers say, well, you can’t outgive God. Right? And usually, they’re talking about tithe and offering and helping support missionaries, whatever it is. Well, you can’t outgive God. That’s been a statement that many people have heard for a long time. And he said, Tim, can you outgive God? And I thought, you know, the obvious answer, the Christian answer is, well, no, you can’t outgive God because God has the cattle on a thousand hill and he can provide, he can bless, he can give back to you good measure, pressed down and shaken together, running over. And so I said, No, you can’t outgive God. He said, that’s totally wrong. And I was like, okay, yeah right, you’re going to have to defend that one. That seems like a crazy position. He said, you can’t outgive God if God told you to give it. But if God didn’t tell you to do it, he said, you take your savings account right now. And you go down to the street, and you just randomly start giving all of your money away. Is God’s going to bless that? And I thought for a second. He said, God blesses obedience. And if God’s told you to do something, God will bless you for doing what he’s told you to do. And so this idea of you can’t outgive God will know if God’s told you to do… like a tithe. And if God tells you, which all of us, we’re supposed to give a tie, God will bless you being obedient to what he’s told you to do. And therefore you can’t outgive God in that obedience. But if you’re doing things God has not told you to do, or if you’re doing things God has told you don’t do specifically, then you’re putting yourself in a place that you won’t have God’s blessing, because you’re disobeying, not obeying what God’s told you to do. But these are the kinds of things he starts talking about, and explaining you go, okay, this makes so much sense. And these are the kinds of thoughts that at their business conference, that they have all kinds of incredible communicators come. And they just give these practical nuggets along the way, and really challenge you not just even as a business owner, but as a Christian, as a leader with such practical thoughts and application. And it’s something that… and we saw there was another conference coming up, we thought that this is a conference that we would encourage all kinds of people, maybe not even just business owners, but especially if you are a business owner, this is a time that you can go and be encouraged, but also gain some practical insight to understand the Bible lays out principles of God’s standards, of God’s ways, of God’s philosophy of doing business and things that God will bless for doing it his way. And so often, people don’t read the Bible thinking that way. And Steve is a guy who has read the Bible literally for decades thinking that way. And so he has some insight that would be so valuable. And again, as so many incredible speakers and teachers come in and give such practical insight and wisdom. We thought, first of all, let’s have him on to talk with us a little bit about some of these thoughts and principles. But certainly we want to make people aware of this conference, because this is something that certainly can help individuals, businesses, and even families as a whole if they’re able to make it.

David Barton
Yeah, let me throw in that when I was talking earlier, I mentioned businesses, 750 employees, 500 employees, between 80% and 90% of businesses in America have under 20 employees. And that’s where most businesses are small businesses are family owned businesses. And those are the people who need to hear this, not just the big business I was talking about, but the small businesses of 20 or less.

Rick Green
Well, you guys talk about the blessings, it’s a blessing to the community as well. I mean, this is good for everybody. When biblical principles get applied. We say that all the time in the political realm. It’s the exact same in the business realm. So excited to hear from Steve Dulin. Stay with us, folks, we’ll be right back on WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. In 1963, the United States Supreme Court decided that voluntary Bible reading could no longer be part of the school day. Founding Father Benjamin Rush, known as the “Father of Public Schools” under the Constitution, pointedly warned that the Bible should be read in schools in reference to all other books. He specifically warned that if America ever ceased promoting biblical principles in schools, then we would waste so much time and money and punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them. He was right. We now have 7 million Americans in prison on probation or on parole, and the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Sadly, this was unnecessary but is the result of no longer teaching the morals of the Bible in schools. For more information about the Founding Fathers views on the positive impact of the Bible in schools, go to WallBuilders.com .

Rick Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Steve Dulin back with us, our good friend and great family and the best Governor Patriot Academy ever had was his daughter, Cassie, who’s doing well, and I love you, brother. Thanks for coming on, man.

Steve Dulin
Hey, Rick, thank you for having me.

Rick Green
Hey, I saw the conference coming up and thought, man, this is… we need to be telling people about this. You and I were on I don’t know, a year ago, two years ago, just talking about the need to have a biblical perspective in business, just like we talk about here on WallBuilders all the time, biblical perspective and government and how we form our society, well business and its impact on individuals and families, obviously, massive, and you’ve been doing this for a long time, first successful in business yourself. And now through Gateway Church, reaching tons of business owners, and really equipping them to really make their business a ministry. So I saw the conference and said, man here’s another great opportunity to talk about equipping people in the business world. So before we get into the conference, just a few words on that in and of itself, and why you really went from being, you know, in business full time, to saying, hey, we need to be teaching other businesses these principles so that they can also be a blessing to their employees.

Steve Dulin
Yeah, we just had really supernatural success. We had things happen, like, we were a construction company. We did interior finish out commercial work, and we had 2500 projects that we never missed a schedule 2500 projects, 22 years in business and we never had a reportable accident on a project. We never had a job that lost money. We never had a job that didn’t make full profit. And we just… the only way I can explain that is that we followed God’s principles in His Word. And so you know, after the season of just, you know, 20 something years, of just God bless our business, we were able to retire when I was 50. And, said, hey, let’s try and help other people with these principles. And so we started the program at Gateway Church, we now have 1500 business owners involved in the program. We have groups of business owners, we’re now doing the program at other churches. And but really, it was just a desire to, to tell business people and business leaders, hey God’s principles work. God’s ways work in every situation, including business. And we’ve just seen that demonstrated over and over and over with all the testimonies and responses that we’ve heard to people in business, applying God’s principles. And we’ve written that curriculum now. We have 70 lessons from many business leaders all across United States, David Green of Hobby Lobby, John Maxwell, Tony Jerry, different people like that. And it’s just been a blessing to be able to serve the body of Christ.

Rick Green
1500 businesses. I mean, that’s a mega church in and of itself, you got 1500 business leaders, just in this particular ministry, within the church. And you mentioned David Green, he’s going to be at your conference, Accelerate is the name of the conference. Accelerate 2023, May 18. That’s Thursday, May 18. And it’s all day 9:30 to 4:00, David Green, your Lead Pastor Robert Morris is going to be there. You’re obviously going to be doing training their. Bill High who, you know, major… really, I don’t know, partner of David Green, maybe not the right word, but travels around with David doing a lot of cool speaking. And Kelly Shackleford. I mean, you got a star studded lineup for the full day. It’s going to be a good day,

Steve Dulin
Henry Cloud is going to be speaking on trust and how to develop trust and why it’s so important. If people don’t trust you, you will not succeed in business. And he’s got these… this amazing teaching on building trust, building trust with your employees, with your clients, and being a person that people can trust. So, yeah, it’s going to be an amazing event. And we’ve made it extremely inexpensive. Our earlybird rate right now $69, because we’re a church, we’re not trying to make money off the event. We’re just trying to get the word out and help people. So it’s going to be an amazing event.

Rick Green
It’s an equipping.

Steve Dulin
Amazing equipping event. We have a time for questions where people can text in questions, and hopefully get their questions answered. And, we’ve even made it where starts at 9:30AM, Rick, so that you can miss traffic coming, and it ends at 3:30PM. You can miss traffic going, and we’ll have it at our main campus in Southlake.

Rick Green
GatewayBusinessLeaders.com is the website, folks. GatewayBusinessLeaders.com . And then you just click on Events, and it’ll pop up right there at the top. Steve, what about… and you and I talked about this, if I remember right, last time you were on, you know, the curriculum and all the programs you guys are doing. It’s not just for those 1500 business leaders in the church, their at Gateway. Y’all are ministering to business leaders and churches all over the country. And so folks can still go to the website, access these resources… Can they access the conference at all? Are you going to be streaming that or is there an online…

Steve Dulin
We are not going to be streaming In the conference this year. As a matter of fact, next year, we’re having John Maxwell and Dan Cathy. We’ll be streaming that one. But now at this point, you have to come to the conference. And we want people there to really soak in the experience and really have a up close listening that we’re expecting probably 1500 to 2000 people coming. And this will be amazing conference. We also do have resources on our website, though, where you can just click on Resources, and we have about 25 lessons loaded for people to just advance their success in business, to accelerate their success in business.

Rick Green
Love it. Accelerate conference. Alright, this is May 18, 9:30 to 4:00. It’s at the main Gateway campus, you could travel… It’s easy to travel into Dallas. So coming in from all over the country. And let me, just I get your idea Steve, I mean, you’ve done a lot of this sort of thing. What’s the… what would you say you want people driving away with. What’s what’s the number one goal?

Steve Dulin
We always want to drive away, leave with, with takeaways, simple points, things that we can immediately apply. So we’re asking all of our people teaching, I want to teach on something Rick that I’ve never heard taught on. And I’ve been a Christian for 40 years, I’ve never heard this taught on. And it’s one of the keys to success. It’s one of the few things that Jesus said the world does better than Christians. And it’s… I’m really… I’ve never taught on it before, never heard a teaching on it before. And I’m really excited about it. And of course, you know, David Green, just all the things that he does, he wrote a book recently, Business Not by the Book, he didn’t mean business not by the Bible, but just doing things differently than other people do it. He’s going to share some of those things that we can turn around and apply in our career in our business immediately. And that’s what we’re trying to do, is we’re asking everyone to talk about something that is a great takeaway that you can go apply today in your business.

Rick Green
Before I let you go, Steve, we… you and I’ve talked about this before, but you know, a lot of people tend to think ministry is only if you’re, you know, full time at the church, or you go off and do a mission trip around the world, or whatever it might be, and business is a ministry. And we’ve got to shift our thinking to saying, you know, the Earth is the Lord’s, the fullness thereof, it’s all His. Every area of our life is His and people spend, you know, I mean, really the majority of their waking hours at work, so that’s an environment that needs to be reflecting God’s principles and values. And that’s what you guys are teaching. That’s a shift for a lot of people today that don’t think like a Steve Dulin or a David Green. Are you seeing as you minister to these people, these other business leaders, are you seeing them be able to make that shift? And then tell us a little bit about what happens in their businesses after that?

Steve Dulin
Oh, it’s amazing. And one thing we don’t realize, Rick, is that average church staff in America is one staff person to every 100 people attending. And so the odds are 1%. I’m not talking about senior pastor, I’m talking about staff members, you know, so if a church has 300 people attending, it probably has a senior pastor and a worship leader and a youth pastor or something or an admin or something. It’s one per 100. So that tells you that the chance of being in ministry, for every person in America or in the world is 1%. And so 99% of the people are going to be in the business world. And what we’ve seen just over and over and over again, as people apply biblical principles, in their career, and their businesses, obviously, this conference is not just for business owners, for every business leader, every person in business. There are principles that we can apply, that will absolutely accelerate our success. And it’ll give us favor with God and favor with man. And these principles work. Every principle that works in business has a biblical basis to it. And we may not hear that, but I don’t think you could give me a principle in business that works that I can’t tell you where it is in the Bible, either in a scripture or story or analogy, or some verse. Everything that works, God designed things to work well, And everything that works, really is based on his word.

Rick Green
Yeah, and I know you’ve probably talked about this some in your conferences, my buddy Diego Rodriguez, we were doing a conference back in January. And he was like, he’s like, hey, you homeschool moms, you’re running a business. You know, you folks that are, you know, in ministry, you’re running a business. So these principles that you’re talking about, actually, honestly can be applied anywhere. I mean, it does apply to ministry, to running the house, to running, you know, whatever it might be. I mean, honestly, in politics, you know, everything yeah.

Steve Dulin
In politics, every area of life, absolutely.

Rick Green
I mean, a campaign is a business you run for office, it’s literally you’re running a business. You got… if you’re state rep your office there at the capitol, it’s like running… So anyway, these… I just want to reiterate that, like you said, it’s not just for business leaders. I mean, you’re just getting gold. You’re just getting good, godly, biblical principles and applying them to every area of life. So God bless you, man. Y’all keep it up. And looking forward to you having a great conference and a great report afterwards. Folks that want to know more can go to GatewayBusinessLeaders.com. Again, not just for the conference coming up on May 18, Accelerate David Green, a lot of others as well, but also for the resources you can tap into right away, Steve, appreciate you, brother. Thanks for coming on.

Steve Dulin
Thank you, Rick. Thank you for having me. And God bless you for everything that you’re doing.

Rick Green
Stay with us, folks, we’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Tim Barton
Hey, this is Tim Barton with WallBuilders. And as you’ve had the opportunity to listen to WallBuilders Live, you’ve probably heard the wealth of information about our nation, about our spiritual heritage, about the religious liberties, about all the things that makes America exceptional. And you might be thinking, as incredible as this information is, I wish there was a way that I could get one of the WallBuilders guys to come to my area and share with my group, whether it be a church, whether it be a Christian school, or public school, or some political event or activity. If you’re interested in having a WallBuilders speaker come to your area, you can get on our website www.WallBuilders.com. And there’s a tab for scheduling. And if you’ll click on that tab, you’ll notice there’s a list of information, from speakers BIOS, to events that are already going on. And there’s a section where you can request an event. To bring this information about who we are, where we came from, our religious liberties and freedoms, go to the WallBuilders website and bring a speaker to your area.

Rick Green
We’re back here on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. And thanks to Steve Dulin, for joining us web links in our website today, for the conference and for the materials. If you can’t attend the conference, you can still benefit from the things that Steve was talking about. And back with David and Tim. And, you know, guys, I mean, we know the American economy doesn’t turn without those small businesses, like you said earlier in the program, especially those, those small ones of 10, 12, 15 employees. And so love the fact that just like we’re restoring constitutional principles, we’re also restoring biblical principles that can make America strong,

David Barton
You know, and Steve mentioned the fact they’ve got 25 or so business lessons on the website that can be downloaded. And that’s a good starting place. But let me also add that if you’ve been to university in the last 100 years, which we all have, if you’ve been University at all. In the last 100 years, it’s really been affected with progressive ideas. And that includes even in the business departments. And so, so many approaches are the secular kind of progressive way to look at business. And this is a really different way of going back to Biblical basics, going down back to foundational stuff. I happen to and last week, I was up in Massachusetts, and actually visited the place where the free market system started Nantucket Massachusetts 1627. And it was interesting that they acknowledged that that is the beginning of both domestic and foreign free market stuff. And it was just a simple little business. So there’s a lot that can be learned no matter what size your business, but just because you know some business doesn’t mean you know, the right approach to business.

Tim Barton
And Dad too as you were mentioning, even the Nantucket trading post up in Massachusetts, that opened at 1627. There’s definitely some more history behind that where, when the Pilgrims came to America, they had a loan and part of the conditions of their loan was they’re supposed to repay a certain percentage of their profits every year going back toward that loan. And they end up when they go to a free market system, individual responsibility, when they go to that system, it for themselves, and all of a sudden, instead of having a community field where they’re all growing crops together, they’re all going to individually now their own families have their own fields, and they’re going to grow their own corn and they become incredibly more productive over the next year or two. I think it’s seven times more corn, they grew over the next couple of years than they had that first year. And they were growing enough that at this point, they went back to renegotiate their contract and they said hey, we were you know, going to give you 30% of the corn, whatever that number was, based on having this amount of corn now we’re doing so much more corn, can we give you extra bushels whatever that number is to pay off this loan early? They did. And they’re able to open up a trading post that’s not under the king. It’s not from loan from somebody else. But what’s interesting even about this journey with the free market system coming to America is they were learning both from the Bible and from their own failures with the socialism experiment, which was both tried in Jamestown and Plymouth, didn’t work in either place. Nonetheless, what’s interesting is, is you actually can go back to the journals of Bradford, who says we thought we were wiser than God doing something God told us a different direction. He said that every man must provide for his own family. And even Bradford pointed to the Bible as the revelation that led them out of socialism that led them to individual responsibility that caused them to be so productive. And we are now in a place where so many businesses, they’re having a hard time just finding people to show up to work, they’re having a hard time making a profit in that bottom line. And this is, in my mind, one of the best and most important times and say Okay, in the midst of craziness, we know that that craziness is not bigger than God. And if we can do things God’s way and enjoy God’s blessings, we can still prosper in the midst of a financial crisis, in the midst of inflation in the midst of issues, there are still principles that we can do that we can enjoy God’s blessing in our business, in our families, whatever that case is. And so… And Dad, as you mentioned, even before the interview with Steve, most businesses in America have less than 20 employees, which really just means it’s a good homeschool family. So whether you are just a individual family, and you want to come gain some biblical insight, or whether you are a business leader, this is a conference you want to be a part of.

Rick Green
You know, and like we said earlier, this is good for everybody. This is another… you know, right along the themes of always saying listen, salt and light is not just in the political realm, it’s in business it’s in every area of the culture and we need more of this in business bringing ethical business that benefits and blesses the church in the long run and blesses the community and think if your business listener out there right now, just think about this, the stronger you are in business and the better you do, the better your family is going to be the better your church is going to be the better your community is going to be. You’re going to be able to help candidates you’re going to be a help causes help WallBuilders, I mean, all the different things that you can donate do out there, the more successful you are so great opportunity really encourage everybody to attend. Sure appreciate you listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders.