Jack Alexander (Founder of Rali Software)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week I host a conversation with the Christian who's pursuing world class mastery of their vocation. We talk about their path, path to mastery, their habits, and how the Gospel of Jesus Christ influences their work. Today's guest is my friend, Jack Alexander. He is one of the most accomplished entrepreneurs I know. He's built multiple businesses with thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. But as he says on the podcast, he did that very much in his own weakness. The Lord produced those results through Jack. He's one of the most humble leaders I've ever known. Oh, yeah. Jack's also a prolific writer on topics such as how the Gospel influences our perspectives on race and money. Jack and I sat down and had one of my favorite conversations on the podcast in a long time. We talked about why it's critical that we understand the difference between the quote unquote two chapter gospel and the actual biblical four or five chapter gospel of the kingdom and why that's so important for our work. We talked about the danger in outsourcing compassion and we talked about how Christians ought to think differently about mercy in the workplace. I think you guys are gonna love this wide ranging conversation with my friend Jack Outsit. Hey, Jack, it's an honor to have you here. Thanks for joining us.

Great to be with you, Jordan.

So we got to hang out recently in Atlanta with our mutual friend Chris Carneel, who is our guest on episode number 80 of the Call to Mastery. So for those listening who haven't listened to Chris's episode yet, why should they?

What?

What makes Chris such a special founder in your view?

Well, I know you're really into Mastery and he's a mastery of enthusiasm. Yeah, in a way. He's also a master of gathering wisdom from other people and putting it to work. So. Which is one of the most unique traits I've ever seen in anybody.

He is good at that. I got an email from him, I think it was November of last year. He's like, hey, here's One question for you to think about. Write back to me with your answer. Wrote it back. And he compiled all this wisdom from all these crazy impressive people. Way more impressive than me. And, like, send it out to everybody. I just. That really stood out to me. Yeah, Chris is very good at what he does. Go listen to episode 80 if you haven't already. So, Jack, your story is really interesting to me. You came to faith later in life than most, right? You were in your 20s.

Well, I was 26. Yeah, I think that's. That's later. But I worked for a big four accounting firm, and they sent me to Australia, and I thought that I'd play a lot of tennis and have fun over there. And it was the winter, and I got invited to go to a church, and I heard the gospel for the first time in a poor Pentecostal church in Melbourne, Australia, and my life changed forever.

Wow. So you never heard it before, and that was it. What was going on in your life at the time that you think the Lord was using to make the gospel winsome to you?

Well, my dad died when I was real young, so I just was in a. I'm going to just compete in academics. I'm going to compete in athletics. And I think by the time I was 26, I was just a competitive, angry, unstable person. I really had no spiritual or emotional foundation in my life. And so Jesus, in his mercy and compassion, isolated me in a community of loving people, and it was transformative.

So you're already in your career at this point, right? You're working for one of the big four accounting firms. How did your salvation change your relationship to your work?

Well, God not only changed my life, but he gave me the opportunity to witness and see other people's lives change. So it's almost like taking a drug, where it's like, there's nothing more exciting than being a Christian and serving the Lord. And it's almost like I didn't want to be a business person anymore. And I think God made it clear to me that he called me to be excellent in business. It was really a struggle for me because I was trying to. This whole thing that you're so good at integrating faith at work and work. I didn't really know how to do that.

So what did that journey look like for you? Like, when did. When did that integration happen? Like, take us. Just take us through the rest of your professional journey. Right. So you're at this big four accounting firm. How did the rest of the story unfold for you?

My work started being Blessed incredibly, after I became a Christian. So they in the Atlanta office assigned me to the largest company as a manager in the office. And everybody who got that account became partner. And the CFO of that company knew me before I was a Christian, didn't like me. So he called up a managing partner and said, I want Alexandra off the job. And they put out a memo to like 700 people that I had gotten this account. And so then they put out another one that somebody else got it. So I remember going home to my wife and said, I know God wants us to be humble, but I didn't know he wants to humiliate us. Right. Geez, Jordan. They gave me this tiny little. On my time report or my schedule, gave me this tiny little account that nobody had ever heard of. And I tried to say, I can't go from the largest account in the office to this tiny little account nobody had ever heard of. And it turned out it was this billionaire in Europe who ended up hiring me two years later. So. And then that accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, which was actually number one in the country at that time, ended up going out of business. I had a 20 year career with a billionaire. He had about a billion dollars in real estate that. I was number two over in the United States when I was 32, and then I did that for about six years, but when I was 36, so I was still working in the real estate. He said, I want to go into the service industry, and so go find me a service company to buy. So he and I bought together a small travel agency in Atlanta that had about 50 people. And over the next 15 years, that grew to be the number two company in the country. To American Express. Right now it's BCD Travel. It's number three in the world. Along the way, I bought a technology company for $90,000 that had four programmers. And it grew to over a thousand employees and $100 million in revenue. Wow. So anyway, when I turned 50, my company, I started getting awards and things were going great. So the billionaire, I think we were on a trip together, and we were actually watching, like, the final four together in a room. And he tells me how he wants me to go to India and China and all over the world to build a global company. I said, I really don't think I can do that. And he handed me a. And he said, just write everything you want on it. And I ended up resigning four or five months later. I remember getting on my knees and saying a prayer to the Lord. Lord, I want more of you. And more of your kingdom. So I was like 50 years old. Everything started going haywire. I led this guy to Christ and I was in a small group of people, like seven guys, and then two months later he committed suicide. And then I sort of went into a depression because if you're discipling somebody, then they commit suicide. That's pretty rough. And I started mentoring his sons. And then another kid came into my life whose father had abandoned him. And I started meeting with him and my wife got sick for the next five years. And basically the bottom line, Jordan, is God was saying that I didn't know hardly anything about humility or servanthood. And Jesus was going to teach me how to be a servant. So the next 18 years, everything I've done has been helping somebody to improve their state. And I did start one sort of nonprofit and one software company during that time. So that's the trouble having older guests because you get a longer story. So that's it.

It's not the trouble at all. I love it. So over this 18 year period, what has the Lord taught you about what it means to be humble yet ambitious, if we can use that word in business? Like, how do you manage that tension?

Well, see, it's almost like when I prayed that prayer. I read this book that I was going to. Later you say to recommend books, but this book by E. Stanley Jones and the Kingdom of God. And he talked about orienting your whole life around the kingdom of God. And I think I read this book like four times in a row. And I was just. I'd read Matthew 6. 33, and it says, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. But if anybody had said to me, what is the kingdom of God? How do you seek it first, I would know nothing. So I went into. I started a nonprofit. I just started reading everything I could on the kingdom of God. I wrote a book called the Mystery of the Kingdom. And basically, if I just boiled it down, Jordan, as a Christian, I was really working, trying to reach my potential and be all I could be. But see, the kingdom word is capacity, the potential. My potential is all about Jack. What can Jack become? But my capacity is what happens when Jack's life intersects the kingdom of God. Because God cares about his kingdom and the ripple effects that he can create in his kingdom. Like if you look at a Joni Eareckson tada, she was a tremendous athlete and who knows what her potential was, but she became paralyzed. And her capacity for the kingdom, her writing and her art and her speaking and how she energized and motivates people. It's something that, it's something to behold when you understand what Jesus called the Gospel of the Kingdom. So that's probably too long to talk about now.

Let's go there. Let's go there. I like being practical and giving definitions. You wrote a book on the mystery of the kingdom. We talk about the kingdom a lot on the podcast. Let's define it really. Crystal, clearly. What is the Gospel of the Kingdom?

Well, see, the gospel belongs to the kingdom. And see, the church's role is to bring the kingdom to earth. But most of our conservative churches are church centric instead of kingdom centric. So the kingdom is all about fixing what's broken and restore. It's all about restoration. When you look at the Beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed when you're persecuted. It's very core to unless a seed falls into the ground and dies. The Christian life is really about embracing our weaknesses. For example, like I love the verse that Paul says, I glory in my weakness because when I'm weak, Christ is strong or God's power is made perfect in our weaknesses. And I think as a Christian, you need to know your weaknesses, lean into your weaknesses. You need to know your strengths, lean into your strengths because Jesus can use both of those in your life. So this kingdom mentality is I'm meant to serve others. Earlier I told you about this company, but that a guy called me up and said, I've been in business for 12 years, we've never made money. And I go to work with this guy, we sell the company for 340 million bucks. He and the two people I was serving each ended up with $100 million. They're buying Bibles in Iran, they're doing make a wish trips for kids. They're pouring that money. They asked me to work for $9 an hour plus health insurance. And here I give my life away for two and a half years. But then all these derivative impacts on the kingdom, the intersection of the kingdom of God with who you really are, embracing humility and servanthood will transform your life and your fruit.

Yeah, that's well said. Now, I mean, Paul talks so much about his weaknesses and boasting in those things. And one, that forces us to rely on the church, right. On other people that we're to build relationships with and work together with for the kingdom. But two, it also ensures that we don't get the glory if and when God produces results through our Labor.

Right.

If, if I'm boasting of my weaknesses, then really I'm boasting in the Lord for producing those results. Right. Hey, so you touched on this a minute ago. I want to go back to it. You and I have spoken previously about the quote unquote, two chapter gospel. Right. The church's focus nearly exclusively for the last 200 years on fall of the individual and redemption. And you and I have talked about how this is really at the root of some of our poor theology of work. Can you share your perspective on this for our listeners?

Yeah, it's two, three or four. I hired Barna and I, I did a paper called Gospel Confusion because it basically has five prongs. And like you said there, you can take the two prong approach, where I'm a sinner, Jesus died for me, sort of the Billy Graham approach is the four prong gospel, where creation, fall, redemption, but life is tough, but Jesus is coming back. And then you've got the Tim Keller sort of five prong gospel, which is creation, fall, redemption, restoration, consummation. And Keller says we're not saved by restoring things, but the purpose of the gospel is saved to restore. And so I think that basically you've got a vertical gospel and a horizontal gospel. And the conservative church has embraced the vertical gospel, sometimes to the exclusion of the horizontal. And the liberal church is more apt to embrace the horizontal gospel. And so I really do think there's a lot of confusion around the gospel. And so a lot of my work that I'm involved in is to embrace a strong vertical gospel, which is where the power comes from, that is Jesus rescue mission. He saved me when I was dead in my sins, period. But when we realize that he laid his life down for us and we're to lay our lives down for one another, we need to liberally allow the waves of grace to lap into the horizontal gospel.

Yeah, the way I think about it, and I'm probably borrowing Keller language here because he's influenced me so much on this, but our individual salvation is so that we are justified, so that we are put right, so that we can get to work in putting the rest of the world back to rights through the spirit's power, working through us. Right. Is that how you see this?

Yeah, exactly. And that's why if you just focus on being excellent in your work and you focus on profits and margins and you're not thinking about like I had dinner two nights ago with a very wealthy group and a, or family, rather, in a mansion, and they were talking about how their laborers took care of this three acre piece of property, got paid 80 bucks a week. At some level, like James, where it says, the wages of the workers in the field are crying out against you. This failure to have a horizontal gospel, realizing that these people are in my life, I need to be kind and generous to them. Yeah.

I'm curious of what other ways that bigger picture of the gospel, this five chapter gospel, horizontal and vertical, has impacted your work. So paying fair wages is an obvious one. In what other ways do you see your work as living out that horizontal gospel?

Well, God sort of called me to write this book, the God Impulse, the Power of Mercy in an Unmerciful World. Hi, Barna. Barna did some work, Jordan, and It said that 89% of Christians in America think showing mercy is not their personal responsibility. And in the book, I called it the Outsourcing of Compassion, did a bunch of radio interviews on it, and basically where I'm hiring somebody to mow my grass, do my taxes, and care about people. So this explosion of 1.6 million nonprofits in the United States added to the distinction that generosity is really about money instead of giving your life away, has created a world where so many people are outsourcing their compassion. And if you look at Matthew 25, Jesus said, when did you visit me? When did you clothe me? When did you feed me? When did you let me in? So I think that a lot of my call right now, Jordan, is to sort of blow up this outsourcing of compassion.

What does that look like for us as we go to work? Can we be compassionate within the four walls of the offices in which our listeners are working? And if so, what does that look like?

Yeah, I think that there's all sorts of opportunities to, like I was saying, invite people into the process of work. I remember a woman who I worked on with early in my career when I worked with that billionaire, and she just didn't like me and was critical to others. And she was underneath me. And I just would just get angrier and angrier. And I'm driving to work one day and I'm thinking, like, I'm going to fire her. And it's like the Holy Spirit just says, you can't fire her. I'm not going to let you. And it just convicted me that I wasn't praying for her. And so we had this big project at work and I called her, you know, we met and just said, I'd really like your help. I need your help on this project. And she opened her wallet and took out a picture of herself when she probably weighed 100 pounds more. And she said, this is me. And just that single act of kindness of inviting her in. And when I think that for months I was angry at her because she was a threat to me. There are so many chances to be redemptive. I met with a business owner previously. He's a Christian. And I said, how do you make decisions to get rid of people? And he says, three strikes and you're out. And I think Jesus 70 times seven, challenges us to think more deeply about what it means to love, what it means to show mercy and compassion to people, for sure.

And so for you, how have you thought about firing people? I mean, you. You've built companies with lots of people, really practical expression of redemptive work. Where is that line for you? Where does mercy extend? How does this. How do you think through those decisions?

Well, I mean, I would just say that there's this tension between justice and mercy. There's a tension between truth and mercy. Like Psalm 25:10 says, all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth. Psalm 85:10 says, when mercy and truth meet, justice and righteousness kiss. So what we're looking for as leaders is this integration of mercy and truth, and God can do it perfectly. But Barna, in its work, found that the conservative church really put truth on a pedestal, and it really belongs on a pedestal. But mercy was at a much, much lower level. So I think I would just ask people, who in your life have you given forgiveness to, who didn't deserve it? What enemy do you have that you turn the cheek to and that you're praying for? So I think that there's a. Barna called it an underweighting to mercy and compassion in our culture.

That's well said. So it's a good segue. You've written about mercy. You've also written a lot about race and are doing a lot of work on this topic. Back in. Was it 2019 that the Atlanta Journal Constitution ran that piece on you, is that right?

I think it was 2018. Yeah.

But it's basically featuring men and women doing the most for racial reconciliation in Atlanta. And you, if you don't mind me saying so, an older white guy are one of these five people featured, which is kind of jarring. So, yeah, Leads to the obvious question, like, what led you to become so active in this fight against racism?

Yeah, it's really interesting because I was asked to speak at Chip Ingram Church in California, and I just went online to think I Want to listen to some other guest speakers? And I heard Claude Alexander talk about the 400 years from 1619 to 2019. And he was the most gracious professional, excellent communicator on this topic. And he talked about the Homestead act and how slaves initially were supposed to receive 40 acres and a mule. And then Lincoln got killed and Johnson took over. And he's giving the whole history of the GI Bill and how my dad goes to war in World War II. He could get a loan, but the black soldiers. And he just. I heard that and it just struck me in such a way that I ended up calling up Claude Alexander, going to Charlotte, meeting with him. In the meantime, I was reading books. I came across Ezekiel 9 that says to grieve and lament and even wail over injustices and abominations in the city. And I'm sitting there with Claude talking about the injustices of 400 years. I'm talking about the abominations. I was reading like the 1850 census that showed the degree to which there were mixed race people in America and the huge percentage of people that were mixed rest race primarily because of masters and slave women. She wasn't just something a switch flipped in me. And Claude was friends with this reporter at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. And she said, I'm picking five people in Atlanta who are making a difference. And he says, well, you got to go interview Jack Alexander. And so then this group called One Race asked me to join its board. God, literally, I've been a Christian for 43 years. I won't say he's spoken to me very often, but I was reflecting on 2017 when people were celebrating the Reformation and literally the spirit of God. When I reflected back on that, just spoke to my heart and said my church can't celebrate the Reformation without grieving and lamenting the 400 years that paralleled that. And so One Race. We put on this conference in 2019 at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and 915 people came up, came from all over the country to grieve and lament over what had happened. We did it as unto the Lord. It was amazing.

I love it. We talked about One Race before we started recording. One Race is providing resources, tools to both churches. And part of the vision is to businesses to participate in racial reconciliation. What can we be doing as business leaders to lead this charge in racial reconciliation? What can that look like?

Well, it's gotten so politicized and the money in this area has gone to the fringes. And so, for example, my book, the God impulse. I had a guy named Walter Brueggeman, a professor who's very liberal, through the foreword of the book, and in it he criticizes liberals. And Barna takes conservative Christians to task. It's just a bigger topic, Jordan, because you've got to. If you don't embrace a horizontal gospel at one race, we have three stories to know the story, own the story and change the story. And basically, if you're in a business or a ministry or even in your home, if you don't know the story, like, if you came to me and said, jack, I had some really painful things happen to me when I was young and I'd really like to share with you about them. And I said, jordan, I'm really not interested. I really like what you're doing now and want to hear what you want to do in the future. It would put a ceiling on our relationship. People know, like, if I go to you and Jordan and say, jordan, let's go to lunch. I want to hear about your upbringing. I want to hear about that pain you suffered, the trauma. How's that affecting you now? Our relationship would go down multiple levels. But the minute the white church. If I give a test on what happened during the last 400 years, most evangelical Christians would get an F. And yet, if we were to say, what are five issues in America that we need to deal with? Race would be one of them. The whole economic side of things, like our living wages. If you're a Christian and you're a billionaire, should that affect how you pay your people? I think that this whole idea of the horizontal gospel. I think there's been a reformation of the vertical gospel, but in my opinion, there has not been a reformation of the horizontal gospel where we hear about what it means to love your neighbor as yourself, where literally you're waking up in the morning, you're orienting yourself around the kingdom of God and the people you're meeting in your life, and you're asking God. I ask God to just open my eyes, see things, see people, how he sees them. And what does it mean to treat an employee? What does it mean to treat a neighbor and not just treat them like you treat yourself, love them like you love yourself.

I want to make eye contact with the listeners who are not in positions of leadership, of organizations. How can they love their co workers as themselves? What does that look like, practically?

Yeah, I think all the time people are late to work, they miss work, they get divorced, they might have financial problems. It's like, who do you. I mean, We've been in Covid where you can't get with anybody, but who do you go to lunch with? And I think part of it is this faith at work element that we talked about, Jordan, that Jesus says he's the sower and we're the good sons of the kingdom. So you've been sovereignly planted where you are, whether you're an accounts payable clerk or whether you're a CFO or a CEO. And do we ask the question, lord, I consecrate this position to you, where I am right now, open my eyes to see people lead people into my life. I think people look at work as something they've got to do as opposed to we're part of the scattered church, that Jesus has planted us there for a purpose and we need to discover what that purpose is.

Very well said, Jack. You know, I believe wholeheartedly that part of our response to the horizontal gospel is just pursuing excellence in our craft so that we can love our coworkers as ourselves, so we can love our employers as ourselves. You're clearly an exceptional entrepreneur leader. You built these big businesses. I'm curious, you talk to people who share this craft, who are founders, leaders of organizations. What do you think world class founders do differently? Like, what's the difference between good and great?

I think vision is a gift. But I think the kingdom allows these ripple effects that when you embrace servanthood, when you embrace humility, Jesus opens up opportunities for you that he wouldn't have otherwise. And you allow this rippling effect, the thirty fold, sixty fold, hundredfold that the Bible talks about from the seed. That parable isn't special people. I think that can relate to anybody. And I think oftentimes we want to see the reward from what we do. And oftentimes in the kingdom, we do something simple. We give somebody a kind word, we give somebody a gift, we pay somebody's rent, we go visit them when they're sick. And there's this ripple effect in the kingdom that we don't see. And I'm convinced that when we get to heaven and see Jesus, he'll reveal to us all these ripples from things that we've done in our life when we thought we were just being kind. I think that oftentimes we want to see the result. And I think in the kingdom you've got to realize that if we're doing the right things and we're seeking the Lord, consecrating ourselves, asking him to just lead us, be our shepherd, be our guide, that he allows things to Happen that. I mean, my wife and I have been very involved. There's an epidemic of suicides in India that's been going on for years. And we started 13 years ago taking care of 3,000 widows that their husbands all committed suicide, and it kept them from being trafficked. We've had like 1800 of them become Christians. Their kids have become Christians. And one night I had a dream that I died. I went to heaven, and I met this Indian, and he had been an evangelist in India, and he was the son of one of these women. And I woke up and I was just stunned. But I think it's a picture of we invest in the Kingdom and there's fruit happening all the time that we don't see, that we're part of, that we'll get to see one day. It's very hopeful.

In your mind, is investing in the Kingdom synonymous with investing in people?

I think very much so, Jordan. And I think that one of the things I've been on the warpath for, sort of against this financial generosity movement, because the Bible says God so loved the world that he gave. And relationships provide a context for living that provide context for giving. It provides a context for financial gifts and generosity. Ministries need to focus on teaching people how to love. If we know how to love, if we understand the kingdom, the gospel of the Kingdom, then we'll know how to give. And we'll know how to give relationally, we'll know how to give financially. But these books wouldn't be written like toxic charity. When helping hurts dead aid that say how people, communities, and even nations have been crushed through financial giving. One of my dear friends is very wealthy. He said to me, how come everybody I give money to ends up hating me? I think that Christian people will, or Christian financial people will say, well, God talks about money more than he talks about love. I'm convinced he talks about money more than love because money means so much to us, not because it means so much to him. He mocked money. He took his taxes out of the mouth of a fish. He called it unrighteous mammon. He insulted money. So I think that this role of money and our culture is so out of whack, and oftentimes we manage through budgets. We look at discrepancies. So I think that Christians have so much of an opportunity to live an incarnational life in the business world. But I think this horizontal gospel and this kingdom theology is so necessary.

You're going back to something we talked about a few minutes ago. I want to go a level deeper so this problem of outsourcing, compassion is related to this topic, right? Like, why is this such a problem and how do we, how do we solve it? If the problem is simply donating money to nonprofits, charities, what's the alternative look like, Jack?

Yeah, well, when you take three things and add them together, if you say people are in a hurry and don't have enough time, we're taught that generosity is really about money. And there's 1.6 million nonprofits marketing to us, including 350,000 churches. You add those things together and you can understand where the outsourcing of compassion comes from. We're so focused on our families, our jobs. And if your kid plays on a baseball team, do you notice that there's a kid down the street who might need a ride? I think it's really this reformation of the horizontal gospel. If you don't. If you look at verses like Matthew 23:23, where Jesus said, you tithe and mend, cummin and dill, but you neglect the weightier provisions of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness, all those are horizontal. Matthew 5:24, Leave your gift at the altar. Go and be reconciled to your brother. How many churches in the world have pastors? They'll fence the table for communion and say, don't take communion if this, this and this. But how many of them say, you shouldn't give right now an offering right now. If you've got anybody who has something against you. Jordan Barna found a third of millennials have somebody. Christians who they have somebody who can't forgive. 25% of all Christians in America have somebody they can't forgive. And the Lord's Prayer says that we'll be forgiven as we forgive others. Christianity is a forgiveness religion. And so we say we're Bible believing Christians. But I've never seen a church say, don't give money. Jesus wasn't saying, don't give it. He says, don't give it now. So I think that Christians have to look at the Good Samaritan where Jesus says, go and do likewise. That was an enemy who was beaten. He spent the night with someone he didn't know. He changed his schedule. He says, go and do likewise. The generosity verse of The Bible is first. John 3:16. It says, and this is what love is. It's the only time love is defined in the Bible. It says, jesus Christ laid his life down for you, and you are to lay your life down for your brothers and sisters. And I would just say to Christians, where are you showing mercy? Where Are you laying your life down? What initiatives does your family have of mercy and justice? What enemies are you praying for? I think we could have a revolution and maybe even a revival in the church if we took the horizontal gospel as seriously as Jesus does. Micah 6, 8. What does the Lord require of you to do justice, love, mercy, walk humbly with your God? Two of those things have to do with people. One has to do with God, the ten Commandments. Six of the things have to do with people. Four of the things have to do with God. I think God is so humble. He says, I desire mercy rather than sacrifice. I would rather you be merciful to Joe than to sacrifice something to me. God is so humble. But we as a church. When you look at the racial situation over 400 years, how well has the church loved African Americans? I'm reading a book right now about how we've treated Jewish people. And yet we're a people that Jesus says they'll know you by your love. So I really, obviously totally invested in this and excited what God might do.

I think part of this, part of the ability to love people, this sacrificially comes down to hurry. I'm glad you brought that up and made. Made that connection. Right. Because if we are. And listen, I love discipline. Paul celebrated discipline, self discipline and everything. Right. But if we're too married to our routines, we can miss out on the people that the Lord is putting in our path to love sacrificially. Can you talk a little bit about your experience with that issue with hurry and how it's connected to mercy?

Well, hurry and there's been a lot of studies on this is the number one reason why people don't, I think, why they outsource their compassion. And a seminary was doing a teaching on the Good Samaritan they actually set up as a prop. Somebody was wounded, like outside the classroom.

I've heard this. This is great. Yeah, keep telling us.

Yeah. And people in the class, they were late to class. They walked in to hear talk on the Good Samaritan, walked by somebody who was laying down injured. When I look at my life and different people who've intersected my path, I mean, sometimes God just plops somebody in your life and sometimes it's non sequential. You hear somebody who's getting divorced. We've got a woman in our cul de sac and we hadn't seen her husband. Lisa and I each went over to her when she was walking the neighborhood and we said, patty, are you. Where's Tim? Well, Tim's Left the other day. We called her up. She loves to swim, and we asked her to go swimming with us. My wife put together some projects for her kids to do. I think things are glaringly obvious when we're not focused on ourselves.

I think that's right. It's just slowing down enough to be able to see it. So I am curious what a typical day looks like for you from sun up to sundown. What does a typical day in the life of Jack look like?

Yeah, I think because in terms of my responsibilities, I'm chairman of one race right now, so I take that seriously. I probably spend a day, a week on that. I'm chairman of the Reimagine Group where we write these books. We did 45 videos around this whole area of generosity, and they're on right now. Media. So we create content. I take that seriously. I'm chairman of the software company that takes probably a day a week. My wife and I take regular walks and we do stuff together. We've got some grandchildren in town that we hang out with. But I think a lot of my life is not knowing what God's doing and just asking him to open my eyes.

I'm curious what your time in the ward looks like. What's your routine there?

Yeah, I have utterly failed over 43 years of this exegetical, verse by verse, book by book approach to the Bible. What I just charges me up is to take a topic like the kingdom of God, or a topic like mercy or God's provision, or like this horizontal gospel area that we've talked about and just dive into it. Because I'm a big picture intuitive person. When I get a topic that I feel like God puts on my heart, I just love to read. I love to memorize scriptures around them. I love to. But if somebody said, go read the Book of John chapter by chapter, I just don't do as well.

That's so fascinating to me. I love that method of study. Just being attuned to what the Lord's putting on your heart and going deep. Jack, you know, we end every podcast episode asking three questions. So, number one, which books do you tend to recommend most frequently to others? You mentioned one a while back that I want you to highlight again. What's the one you read four times in a row?

Well, the first one, it's a short book called Humility by Andrew Murray. I bet you I've read that eight or ten times.

Wow.

It basically grounds us in that we were created by God and God's the subject, and we're the object, you know, it just says, you know, we are created by him for him. I would encourage everybody, every Christian to read that book because to me, the kingdom starts with that. And if you need to understand that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. So Humility by Andrew Murray. The Unshakable Kingdom by E. Stanley Jones is the one I mentioned that it just goes on and on about the kingdom. But if you don't know much about the kingdom, maybe you'll be like me. So Humility, I've wrote eight or ten times the Unshakable Kingdom by East Stanley Jones.

And as always, you guys can find Those books@jordanraynor.com bookshelf Jack, who would you most like to hear on this podcast talking about how the gospel influences their work?

Yeah, I would probably say David Almany is a good friend of mine. He and I have been in a small group that's Kingdom oriented, about 7 of US business people. But we get together once a month and we challenge each other on what we're doing in the kingdom. But David, he's one of the biggest real estate developers in Atlanta. He adopted Nicaragua like 16 years ago, and he's helping over a thousand farmers there. He's involved in affordable housing in Atlanta. He's a humble guy and just a very effective guy.

That's a great answer. Hey, Jack, looking back on this short conversation we've had together, what's one thing before we sign off that you want to reiterate or highlight for our listeners?

Yeah. Yeah. In my book, the God Guarantee, I talk about the importance of consecration, how every sacrifice was consecrated to the Lord. And, you know, it sort of talks about how to live a sacramental life. And I would really ask people if they ever consecrated themselves and their work and just look at it from a standpoint of an offering of Lord Jesus. Make. Make this part of my life holy. I surrender to you. I ask for your guidance. But I think that's very important.

Very, very well said. Hey, Jack, I just want to thank you for the incredible redemptive work you're doing in the world and working hard as unto the Lord to make it more like the kingdom. And on personal note, by the way, I just want to say thank you for your tremendous encouragement of me, of my work. Hey, Jack, where's the best place for people to learn more about you and your work? Can you rattle off some websites that people can find you at?

Yeah, the reimaginegroup.com is probably the main one. It lists a lot of the products right now. Media has a lot of our video work on there that we've had a lot of people review in small groups on personal study.

That's great, Jack. Can't thank you enough for doing this. Thanks for being here today.

Okay, thanks, Jordan. God bless.

I usually take a page of notes during these conversations. I filled up about two on that episode and I'm gonna have to go back and really meditate on a lot of this stuff. A lot of convicting words from Jack, but so appreciate his Christ centered approach to business, to work, and just his humble Christ like spirit. Guys, I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did. Hey, if you're loving the call to mastery, go tell your friends about it. Who needs who in their life needs to hear Jack's words today? Text them an episode. Text them a link to this episode. And while you're at it, if you don't mind, go rate the podcasts on Apple Podcasts so that other people searching for these answers can find this content. Hey, thank you guys so much for tuning in this week. I'll see you next time.