Scott Sonju (Managing Director of TrailRunner International)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes. But first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back.

Guarantee on this book.

I'm so confident you're gonna love this book that if I'm wrong, if you pre order the book, you don't love it, I'm gonna send you a $20Amazon gift card as a money back guarantee. Why?

Two reasons.

One, this is a different book for me, right. I know this is a very different biography. What is Jordan Rayner doing? And I know it's risky, so I'm going to de risk it for you. Because listen, in my other books, Redeeming youg Time, the Sacredness of Secular Work, Master of One, etc, etc, I am telling you and me how we can glorify God in our work, but in five Mere Christians, I'm doing something very different. I'm showing you what that looks like practically through these unforgettable life stories of five Mere Christians from history. These are the top men and women that I would love to have on this podcast today if, you know, they weren't dead, right?

So that's the first reason this is.

A risk and I'm gonna de risk.

This book for you.

Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended. End quote. But here's the thing. In order to qualify for this money back guarantee, you got to do two things. Step one, pre order five Mere Christians in any format, hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever. And then step two, go to 5meerchristians.com and fill out the form on that page and that's it. But you got to do it by midnight Eastern Time on May 9. By filling out that form, you'll also get all the pre order bonuses listed on 5merechristians.com and be entered to win this crazy, epic trip for two to Europe. So visit 5merechristians.com right now to sign up. Now, please enjoy today's episode.

Hey friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor.

How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians?

Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as lab technicians Engravers and retail managers. That's the question we explore every week.

And today I'm posing it to Scott.

Sanju, a crazy impressive executive in the sports industry. Today, Scott serves as managing director of Trail Runner International. Before that, Scott spent about a decade as president and co owner of the Frisco Rough Riders, an affiliate of Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers, where he was named Texas Executive of the Year. Scott and I recently sat down to discuss why viewing sports as trivial, or even entertainment as trivial, diminishes, inadvertently, the sovereignty of God.

We talked about why you and I.

Are tempted to assign assign priority to things where God does not, and how.

We Christians should embrace free enterprise, but.

Also reject it in a lot of ways and think differently about it because of our apprenticeship to Jesus Christ. I think you guys are gonna love this conversation with my new friend, Scott Sanchez. Scott, Sanji, welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

Thank you so much. Great to be with you.

Hey, so in the introduction to this episode, I shared your crazy, long, crazy impressive history in sports management. I'm curious, what was your first job in sports like? Did this start really, really early in your career?

It did start early. My first job in sports was right out of college, and I was working entry level for the Dallas Mavericks in the kind of ticket sales and services area. What were you doing?

Literally picking up the phone and selling tickets to groups. Is that what that job is?

That was part of it. It was being very proactive, making a lot of outbound calls to potential groups that would come out, as well as with potential season ticket holders, trying to renew season ticket holders. And then during the games, we had a lot of responsibilities for customer service, things visiting things every time out when there's some activity going on the court. We were some of the ones organizing those types of activities. It was a great experience early on in my career.

It's a hard job, though. But you loved it.

It is a hard job because there's a high supply also of labor, limited supply of jobs, and so wages are quite compressed as you start off your career in sports. And so you just have to kind of persevere and get over the hump with it. But I make great friends. In my case, Jordan was a little bit unique, too. I'll just take a minute to share this by way of background. So my father, Norm, was the founding president and general manager of the Dallas Mavericks. And so that was the family business growing up. And so when you are the boss's son and you come to work at the club, no one really likes you at. It's one thing when you're a little kid in junior high, high school running around the stadium, you're not a threat. And all of a sudden now there's some nepotism. And so my intention was never to stay real long, but it was a great experience getting in there and I had to outwork everybody and earn their respect. And it took a few months to do that. I became the top salesperson during my two years there and really did win over a lot of folks who are still dear friends to this day. And what I found though, is that the other folks who were there, even entry level jobs, everyone had some way that a door got open to them. Then you got to perform. Might have been their father was fraternity brothers with a coach or something, you got an interview some. So mine was certainly not unique in that sense. But it was really important then to establish your own reputation once you're in.

Yeah, I had no idea that that was your backstory. That's super, super interesting.

Tell us a little bit about the.

Work you're doing today. So skip way ahead to the end of the story. You recently took on a new role at Trail Runner. Tell us about that.

Yes, about eight months ago. Started with Trailrunner International, which is a global strategic advisory firm and communications firm. Works with a ton of Fortune 500 companies on things from litigation, communication support to position positioning, reputational issues, financial comms, all these different types of things. But we had several sports clients and the thought was we wanted to really build out the sports practice. And so I was brought on with a couple others to help launch what's called Trail Runner Sports. And that was a joint venture with Legends. Legends is a major sports consulting firm that was started by the Cowboys and the Yankees. And so that's been just a fun project as we launched in December. And really going out there, we work with a lot of universities, all types of sports teams and leagues, helping them with a lot of tricky challenges and problems. A lot of Mercury communications focused or strategy focused, public private partnerships. There's a whole variety of areas. And sometimes you could describe it too, as when there's a really delicate or difficult thing that comes up, a lot of times we're the one who will get the call.

I love it. Hey, so in your pre interview prior to us setting this up, I really resonate with something you were talking about. You were lamenting that, man, most Christians only see what I call the instrumental value of their work. Meaning. Okay, yeah, I get it. My work matters because I can use my job in sports or business or the trades, whatever, to fund the real work of ministry that other people do at admissions agencies or the local pastor, whatever.

And you were lamenting that more Christians.

Don'T see the intrinsic value of their work in your words, quote, that the work in and of itself is meaningful to God, end quote. So just thinking about your industry of sports, how is sports in and of itself meaningful to God from your perspective? SCOTT sure.

Let me answer that, Jordan in a few different ways. One, is that what I see, what we do in sports, and I'm speaking from the perspective of say an operator, someone who's running a sports team, is that you're creating an opportunity to bring people together. You're creating these events, you're throwing these, you know, in baseball, Minor league baseball, 70 parties a year essentially for folks to come out and families to come out, businesses to come out. And you're creating this unique opportunities that people can rally around and be together. You're creating memories for families who come out to your games. You're providing opportunities for folks to earn a living, a higher profile industry than most. And so it gives you a platform and ability to really serve the local community and to be very involved in civic things and the local nonprofits and churches, ministries, all these different things in that community, all these different stakeholders. A sports team has a chance to really make a difference and an impact in all those ways there then it's just the nature of running a business or any business. You know, with the Miami baseball team I ran, we had 55 full time year round employees. That's excluding the players that they were all actually contracted to the major league club. And so I looked at it as I had 55 people to love on, build into, to help them succeed professionally and personally to pastor in a way, to pastor, to minister. And it's not that it was all Christians who worked there, there were several Christians, but it was not a majority certainly. And that wasn't a requirement. I was trying to find the best folks we could for these things and then really try to build into them while they're there. And sometimes there is opportunities as you build a relationship with folks that you may have a chance to go into the personal plan of salvation part of the gospel, but I was defining the gospel more broadly. So many Christians have a truncated view of the gospel where it's just the personal plan of salvation, where the gospel has ramifications for all of life, all of our decisions, for our culture and the culture building we're supposed to be doing and whatnot so I think really any industry can lend itself to these things and bring glory to God, but sports, I think, does some unique things because of its chance for high impact.

Yeah, it's so good. And I'm so glad you brought up what I call the abridged gospel, this idea that the gospel is just good news for my soul. It's like, no, like Jesus is king of all.

You.

You actually said something in this. In a exchange we had before, you said, quote, if God is sovereign overall, then therefore all things would be meaningful and have meaning within them. End quote. I thought that was so well said, because I think that's what's at stake when we say that spiritual things like evangelism and prayer matter to God, but not earthly thing like playing sports and writing novels.

Right.

I think it's an inadvertent attack on God's sovereignty to say that he only cares about souls. Does that make any sense to you?

It makes a lot of sense. It's something I've certainly heard a lot over the years. It's something that I bought into many, many years ago. Yeah, me too. As time went on and some folks challenged me on some of that truncated thinking there because it sounds so spiritual that it's got to be evangelism missions. Those are. The things matter, and they do matter. But that's not all the things that do matter. God made the material world Jesus incarnate. That means there is a. There's a meaning to physicality. There's a meaning to the material world.

With that, to the baseball diamond.

Yes. It's not just that God's, you know, that we're questioning inadvertently his sovereignty. If we're trying to say only these certain things matter. We're also telling God how to prioritize. God gave Adam work to do before the fall. He was tasked with, you know, naming the animals, tasked with working the garden and cultivating it and whatnot. Jesus was trained. He was a carpenter. And I bet he took it pretty seriously when he was focused on that part of his life. And that for us to say that only certain things matter when that's not what scripture says at all, that we don't need to be kind of prioritizing for God what we think should be the top things, God did, prioritize it for us in general, it's to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, how do you love your neighbor? By serving them. And a lot of times, that's by serving your neighbor through the marketplace.

Why do you think we love to assign priority to things God never does?

Boy, that's a good question.

Because we're obsessed with it. Like, I see it everywhere. I don't know why we do this. I don't have an answer, by the way.

Yeah, I was about to turn it back on you. That's what you. That's the Public Speaking 101. And when you're asked a question, you're not quite sure.

That's right. Yeah, that's right.

You turn it. What do you think?

I'll take a stab.

What's your thought?

I don't know. I've been noodling on this a little bit. I just think we're all Pharisees at heart. Like, we want everything to be black and white. Because if everything is black and white, then there's no need for me to commune with the Father and ask about the gray.

Does that make sense?

Right? Like, if I have a list of priorities and I know exactly what to do, I have no need to go to my heavenly Father and ask for wisdom, right? Because I got my checklist, like, and I could just go do that thing. And I think what our Father wants Moses to be with us. And part of what draws us to him and to being with him is that lack of uncertainty about priorities. Is that existence of gray matter, if you will, when things aren't black and white in terms of priorities and hierarchy. Am I making any sense at all? I don't know. I'm just talking out loud for the first time.

I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that, you know, we want a lot of clarity on certain things because then less faith is required there. And there are some things that are clear, but there's other things that are not clear that we need to pray for discernment and that God would impress on us a growing peace, a growing unrest, getting feedback from other folks and whatnot. I think part of also so on this prioritizing at one level, sure. There are things in your life you have to prioritize. You know, there and there are general priorities in life, and that's normal and whatnot. But sometimes I think we get in the place of we also like to. We like to be God a little bit and kind of how, if I were God, how I'd rule the world. When I was younger, I used to think that I'd be a pretty good God. As I got older, I realized I'd be awful. So when you let God be God there and not make things into Absolutes that he has not made into absolutes. That's good.

Yeah.

And because there's no real priority of spiritual material because Jesus is king of heaven and king of earth, then as you said, my work with the earth, building a rugby field or repairing a truck or writing a novel must matter in and of itself. A while back we had NFL veteran Sam Acho on the podcast.

I know Sam. Yep.

Yeah, I love Sam. Oh yeah, he's in Texas with you. Yeah. And I loved his answer to the question of like, why does sports matter to God? He essentially said, hey, my work in sports matters to God because I matter to God.

Well said. I think that's, that's very, very true.

Yeah.

Hey, I'm curious, if you ever get.

Pushback, do you ever get pushback from believers who say, all right, Scott, fine, you're working sports matters, but man, if you really love Jesus, go back to priorities, man. You wouldn't be doing, you wouldn't be using your considerable management skills in sports.

Right.

You would do something more important, more useful with those skills. You'd go work at an NGO or a, I don't know, non profit, not necessarily ministry, but a non profit working to solve one of the greatest challeng of our time.

Have you heard pushback like this? And I'm curious if you have or.

Even if you haven't, just imagine somebody telling you that. How would you respond to that pushback that says, well, sports is relatively useless, so why waste our time?

Sure. Well, I certainly don't have to imagine it and had those conversations and I've been on the wrong side of those types of assumptions. Back in my early 20s, I remember with conversations with other folks kind of, you know, if you really love Jesus, as you're coming out of college, you're going to go on staff with crew, you know, you're going to do this or that at cringe a little bit of my thinking on those things. And so I think the response I would have is several fold in that one. I would say, you know, there's a misperception too, by the way, that that say a nonprofit is better than a, or purer than a for profit entity. I would say that, you know, it's free market and profit incentives is what solves so many more issues and problems and alleviates so much pain for so many folks around the world. It's interesting, I was talking to a philanthropist, Christian philanthropist, who gave a lot of money in Africa for certain nonprofit, under a nonprofit, for certain functions to take place. He went and visited A year or two later and the way it was deployed and inefficiencies he saw and just how poorly it was executed. He made the decision then that he will never give money to another. In his case, he's not going to give money to another nonprofit doing poverty relief work essentially. And that he wanted to fund a whole bunch of for profit entities for that because they were so much. The incentives are different and it just was much more effective with that. But also when it comes to that sentiment there, that if you really love Jesus, you know you'll use your skills for building the kingdom. Well, let's define what that is, because I agree. Because is the kingdom, the gospel, the kingdom? That's what Jesus keeps saying. We don't hear about the gospel so much as the gospel of the kingdom.

Not the gospel of individual salvation.

Exactly. That's a part of getting people into the kingdom. That's a part of it is the personal plan of salvation. But the gospel, the kingdom is much more encompassing than that. But you look at, you know, 1 Corinthians 10:31, whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Colossians 3:23. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart. Is working for the Lord, not for human masters. It is the Lord Christ you are serv. You look at how God has used folks in scripture like Joseph in the Old Testament there at Pharaoh's court, and how God used him to preserve Israel essentially. You know, Daniel serving Nebuchadnezzar in the role that he played. David was a politician, you know, he was a king administrator. All these things. You look at all in Hebrews and the hall of faith and function of so many different people. We're not, quote unquote, full time vocational ministry there. I just don't love that expression per se, in that I think we're all called to be Christians all the time and to love the Lord, love others and serve him in different ways. I think I haven't had a chance, Jordan, to read your latest book. And the title I thought was interesting and I'm curious and I'm assuming we'd agree on a lot of this, but I don't see in Scripture a secular sacred divide there. That's right. I think it was Eusebius or one of the early church fathers who I think was wrong on that. But so many of us have been raised, you know, with that thinking. Whereas. No, no, no, everything is sacred because everything's under the hand of God. God is sovereign over all. He owns all things, including Us, therefore, everything's be wrought with meaning as we serve him.

That's exactly right. That's spot on. It is. What makes the work sacred is not what we do, but who we do it with and who is empowering us as we do the work. And because Christ is sovereign overall, in the words of Charles Spurgeon, nothing is sacred. Nothing is secular. Sorry. Everything is sacred that we're working with. All right, so, hey, Scott, we've been talking about how your face shapes what you're doing day in, day out, vocationally.

Let's talk about how your faith is.

Shaping how you do what you do vocationally. In your pre interview, you said, quote, one of the things that should be different about how Christians approach work is seeing a redemptive nature to it. End quote. I wholeheartedly agree. I think all Christ followers are called to partner with Jesus in the renewal of all things. But in order to do that, right, before you can even discuss strategies for renewal, we first got to get clarity on what the heck is broken in our particular industries in need of redemption and renewal. So as you look at your industry of sports, Right. What do you perceive to be broken in that world? What's in need of redemption and renewal in the world of athletics and sports?

Sure. Well, let me start that answer with a very overarching answer, and that's easy. What's broken in the world of sports? People. What's in need of redemption, renewal?

People, it's me.

Hi.

I'm the problem. It's me.

Yeah, it's like GK Chesterton. What was wrong with the world is he sent his response in. You know, I am sincerely GK Chesterton, but it's people, because people are fallen. And therefore, whether it's sports or any industry, of course that would be the answer there. But we're getting into more specifics on it as far as things that are broken in the sports world, sports industry, things in need of redemption, renewal. You know, 60 or 70 years, there was a glaring one that was a lot easier to answer in the U.S. you know, and that was certainly the segregation in sports there. That was. Had no biblical basis and it was evil. And it was brave folks who stop that, you know, including with Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey. Branch Rickey was a very devout Methodist, and part of his worldview was driving that as he integrated baseball. Today. I would say one of the issues, which is a political hot button, of course, is that we're watching our culture in a lot of different types of sports, at different levels of sports, allowing confused Males to dominate women's sports and compete against women. You know and like at some point where the men going to stand up and say no, no, no, no, you're not going to be competing against my daughter on this and taking scholarships away from young women and these different things. And to me it's in the majority of people see this and realize this is crazy town. But are the cultural elites in the dominant voices are not necessarily there in the HR departments of every major company. They're all, you know, skew a certain way there that people are scared to speak up. And I'll be curious if that pendulum swings back as time goes on. Certainly the sports industry can lend itself to some level of idolatry there and things that need to be. Whether it's the hero worship or just how we put certain folks on pedestals in ways that aren't healthy for them and with the attitude that does, you know, for them and greed, we can say that's, that's a human heart issue. That's could be in any industry. I would say something that was not uncommon in sports industry. It's not as common today and I think a lot of places are doing much better is that it was kind of on the business side of it, kind of a good old boys network. There was some level of sexual harassment, sexual impropriety, just crassness, you know, just different things that were allowed, not very professional at certain teams. It all goes to the leadership of a certain business. Are they going to allow it or not? What do they model and whatnot there? And so now there's some structural and problematic things in college sports and there's a lot of other items that think about more on the theological implications of those things. But in a nutshell, you know what's broken industry, it's people, it's relationships. And as Christians, you know, we are to be after the renewal of all things. God's making all things new and we should have a redemptive mindset as we go into our responsibilities.

That's really good, man. We could go deep on all those. But I want to select one of these things out that I think is interesting and probably, probably a pretty good case study for our listeners. Let's go to the issue of idolatry in hero worship in sports. This is super interesting, right? Because on the one hand, let's take your previous role as president and co general partner of the Frisco Roughers, this minor league baseball team. In some ways you want to lean into your stars, right? They're marketing asset to be crass.

Right.

They're much more than that. They're people. Right.

But how have you thought historically, like, go back to that time.

How did you think about, okay, how do we market these people and not lead people in the temptation of idolizing these players? How have you thought about that historically?

Yeah. Or the temptation of. Of emboldening the players to idolize themselves. You know, there's both things going on there because, you know, when you're a great athlete, our culture celebrates that. And so these. Some of these folks since 8th grade have been kind of hero worshipped in a sense or. Or have been received so much praise and adulation beyond what they are just because of a skill set. And so a couple of things to that now. One, I'm taking a little easy way out. So, you know, the minor league baseball side, you know, a lot of the athletes are not household names yet. They're trying to make it, and a handful of them will make it much easier. In the minor league baseball context, it's much easier. It's a. It's a lower temptation there. And so, like, for us marketing our club, a lot of our emphasis was marketing our, like our mascot, you know, and stuff. Things that. No one's going to treat that in an idolatrous way, but it's fun, it's family. And, you know, your players don't stay with you real long. They're real good. They're going to get promoted into the major league club and stuff. And so we wanted more continuity with that. But, you know, with. I think in general, if I was running or if I was running a team at a higher level with much higher profile athletes, there are ways of how you present them, how you do your communications, your marketing, whatnot. That's celebrating the athletic exploits without deifying a person. You know, just the language you use or how you position things, I think that can be appropriate. And at clubs, too, there's ministries to athletes there that, like in baseball, Baseball chapel is a ministry. It's been around for decades. Every team has a chaplain. It's voluntary. Of course, if players wouldn't be involved with it. And those are some of the topics and issues that might come up sometimes that challenge folks on these things because fame and money have a way of corrupting there. And a lot of times we think, gosh, I would just handle that so much better. And I'm like, would I really? If I had all that? I don't want that temptation. There's things they face that, you know, you got to extend grace to Folks because they're. There's challenges and temptations they face that we don't relate to. Exactly. But I don't know if I'm giving you a great answer on that that I've had enough probably direct experience on that particular one. Let me, I guess answer it this way as well. It's not just say it's sports and athletes and that type of thing. When I read Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller. Not sure if you've read that. It rocked my world just seeing how good things, when we make them into ultimate things, become idols even though they're good in and of themselves. Meaning how I want my kids to turn out my marriage, my family, that I can become idolatrous in this I'd never thought of. I read that book and as I was going through that book, realizing every chapter, I felt convicted and thinking, oh my goodness, Augustine's right. My heart is an idol factory. And so I don't want to point the finger too much at certain types of more glaring things when I realize all of us have such capacity to get caught up in idols.

Have you struggled with we talk so much on this podcast, right, about work being a good thing. Have you struggled with turning it into a God like thing, an idolatrous thing? And if so, what's kept you on the right side of that Divine.

Yeah, you know, it's tricky to answer that because it sounds like someone's saying, well, let me tell you how humble I am.

Yeah, yeah, right, Exactly.

I think I've generally done personally, you know, fairly well on that. And I think part of it was being very grounded and had a great model, my father and my parents, the way they taught us and taught us to think biblically on these things and to hold your career loosely because it's in God's hands. You want to be faithful, but you may or may not be a big quote unquote success viewed by others, you know, there. And so you hold that loosely and say, am I being faithful? Am I serving God correctly? Am I loving people, people correctly, being faithful to my employer, to our team, to our stakeholders, our fans, all these different types of things. I think it's helpful too is having accountability, not just being involved in a local church body and those things. But I do have other professionals in my industry who are believers, who I talk to regularly. It's a great encouragement. We can be to each other and kind of keep tabs on each other. And I also have some dear friends who are from college. We get together every year for a three Day going through life, kind of weekend type thing. And we talk every quarter on the phone because we're all scattered throughout the country and we've done this since college. All really solid believers. I'm the only one who's in the sports industry. But it's that type of people going through life with you who know you well, who don't mind calling you out or challenging you, asking something. You need people in your life to do that. And having a great wife, a wife who, she can certainly help me come back to reality if I start getting too big. There's times I've been really excited about certain things. And she's like, Scott, you just have, you have dollar signs in your eyes. Stop. And it's just helpful to hear that. I don't, I don't necessarily think it's helpful at the exact moment I should say it is helpful. I don't like it, you know, necessarily when you're being challenged or convicted on something and then as you reflect and the spirit works in your heart, you realize, yeah, this is starting to become too much of a focus or too much of a budding idol and I need to nip this.

Yeah, it's really good. That's really good. Hey, so you mentioned something else in your pre interview I thought was really interesting. You talked, you mentioned it kind of in passing Satan and breeze right past it. You said that the idea of free enterprise and free markets is a very Christian idea. And we just talked about the temptation to turn money in idle and greed. Of course there's temptations with everything. But how in your, from your perspective is this idea of free enterprise and what you're building with these sports teams, how is that a very Christian idea? Explain that.

Sure, as I understand scripture. Let's start high level. Here we come to the, you know, one of the big ten, the eighth commandment that shall not steal. Well, that presupposes there's such a thing as private property. And so right from the get go that rules out strict socialism or communism, everything state owned, because the Bible recognizes private property, otherwise there'd be no prohibition against stealing. You know, the 10th Commandment's all about not coveting your neighbors, this, that and the other. Well, socialism is built on envying other people's stuff. And so I think that's not a healthy direction to go with this. And by the way, there's well meaning Christians who disagree in some of the things I'm going to say and I think it's because they don't understand. I think the Scriptures, human nature, how the world actually works that God made. And because they're getting caught up in the rhetoric of certain things that sound so good. But you have to see what is the reality of what economic system has. So private property is recognized in Scripture and with free markets, free enterprise, all that means it's a recognition of property rights and the freedom to trade with other people. And we want people to be free to enter into voluntary exchanges with other folks. No one enters into a voluntary exchange unless they're going to be better off. After that exchange. They won't transact unless both parties are better off. And that we want there to be freedom for people to be able to live their lives and earn a living in those things within, you know, certainly within non sinful ways. And that I'd go one step further too. I've heard it said that we're commanded of course in a few places in scripture, but Matthew 7:12, we're commanded to do unto others as we have them do unto us. Well, I want to have the freedom to be able to make voluntary economic decisions and decisions in the marketplace and how to utilize my time, my labor, how I want to deploy it. I want other people therefore to have that freedom as well. And when a third party comes in a regulatory environment, a state or whatnot, to diminish my freedom or someone else's freedom for those things, I'd say that that's not consistent with what Scripture has taught us. Israel as a nation, God's chosen nation, at that time, it received its civil law directly from God through Moses. And we find that the law it left the citizens of Israel, they are free to sell and buy and sell as they wished. And that was also understated, underscored again in the New Testament. Nowhere are we told not to do that. In fact, we're told in Proverbs 2 that it's better you're blessed is the person who sells the grain than the one who hoards it. And you go through all these different scriptures and you look also at Jesus parables, majority, I think it's been said almost 2/3 of his parables are in a marketplace context or settled setting.

Yeah, it's about right.

And so when you have that much emphasis that Jesus gives on marketplace settings, the private property aspect, and you look through all the different proverbs and all these different things about how to treat people, how to do things, how to buy and sell what's appropriate, it screams to me, free enterprise, free markets. And let me say this too. Some people will say well, capitalism is built on greed, you know, and I'd say, well, the human heart is greedy. That is a sin, temptation, every systemic structure is. Exactly, yeah.

And exploited.

Moving that that greedy heart under a socialist system does not remove the greed. It just makes it now where it's easier to exploit, you know, or certain folks and really exploit others. And that what does capitalism do for you to meet your needs? You have to meet the needs of other. When you have the rule of law, you have to have a rule of law which you know, the Bible teaches you need that rule of law, private property to meet your needs, you meet the needs of others, you can be as greedy as you want. But if you want to be able to buy that car, that house, well, you better provide a good or a service that's attractive enough for someone else to voluntarily part with their money for that good or service. So then you're better off, they're better off, you're meeting their needs so you can meet your own needs. So capitalism, free enterprise, it harnesses self interest, it harnesses greed for good. And self interest does not mean selfishness, by the way. It's self interest to comb your hair and brush your teeth. You know, that's not wrong. That's.

It's not selfish, right?

It's not selfish.

This is super good.

But I do think it's interesting, like.

You also told me before, that Christians should approach this topic with a bit of nuance that's to stick distinct from our non Christian counterparts in the free markets. What's that nuance in your opinion? Like talk about your own experience. How have you thought about free enterprise? Do you think differently because of your apprenticeship to Jesus?

Sure. I think where this comes out is in priorities, in the sense of the chief end of commerce. The chief end of free enterprise is not profit. Milton Friedman was asked that question, you know, famous Chicago economists there, that he's a libertarian. What's the main purpose of a business? You know, it's to make a return a profit to its shareholders. You know, that's a purpose for a Christian, it's not the purpose. So having your focus on people changes things a little bit. And that people are marked in the imago dei, they're made in the image of God. Therefore on your employees, your customers, your suppliers, vendors, all these things you have to be looking at, these are people made in the image of God. How do I serve them, how do I love them? That means being honest means being fair. It means, means instead of trying to pay your employees as little as possible and keep them, which would be a economic trying to maximize profit motive. You think, how can I pay as much as I can in a way that still protects the enterprise and our growing concern and is fair to shareholders and helps us attract and retain great people. You know, you want to look at. You might look differently at folks when you're making decisions on if you haven't let someone go. That's very much an important part of business. How do you treat them with dignity and, and give them a soft landing? How do you help them transition onto another opportunity? Those things. And so when I say a little bit of nuance, I agree with so much with a lot of say, libertarian economists. I love reading a lot. Thomas Sowell I've learned a lot. But what's lacking in some of those is a Christian understanding that it's people are the priority and we love God by loving others and serving them. And I think that's going to affect us a little bit differently how we make decisions and how we weigh things. And that sometimes will be an economic cost or consequence that as a Christian I may need to absorb because it's the right thing to do to be of help to that other person. But you also have to weigh the needs of all the other people who are counting on you. If you're the boss or you own a company that you can't be irresponsible, where you end up going into bankruptcy or having to lay off a lot of people because of being not as thought through. And now you're trying to help other folks. And so there's constant tension of having to weigh all those things. But if I had to sum it up, the nuance I would say is that yes, scripture teaches on buying and selling private property, freedom to interact, but also how do we serve and think of the other. Yeah.

And have a posture towards blessing the other. My friends at Praxis Labs, this great accelerator for Christian led for profit and nonprofit ventures, has a really, really simple but really helpful framework I think about a lot. They call it the redemptive frame, where you've got three types of businesses, right. You have the exploitative business, right. That's just trying to take. You have the ethical business that is doing things by the letter of the law. Right. But then you have the redemptive business that is going beyond that ethical edge is really pushing towards the redemptive and not just saying, okay, how do I get by with adherence to the law and the letter of the law, but how do I proactively seek to bless those around Me. You talked about pay as an example of that. In what other ways do you see your role as a business leader being able to proactively bless people? What shapes has that taken for you in your history and business in the sports industry?

Scott sure, Jordan, I say this as someone who certainly has done this imperfectly over the years, but one of the ways I try to approach things is seeing seeing the people God's put in my life, seeing the folks who are say on our team, people working for, they're working in my business, seeing them as an end in and of themselves. They're not a means to an end. They are an end because they're made in the imago day.

I hate that. Can I, I don't think I've ever said this here. Can I just say I'm, I'm growing increasingly hateful of the term human resources? They're not resources. People are not resources. They are people. They're image birds. And that's what you're saying.

Exactly. And so with that, it's making sure, you know, you want them to be able to give them the tool and coaching and resources to be successful and then helping when they're struggling. How do you provide coaching? How do you help them overcome things? How do you I've always been at small businesses, Jordan, where you really get to know folks and you get to know people's significant other, spouses, kids. And we try to be thoughtful on things, too. One of the things we did, for example, when I was running the Rough Riders, is I'd find out everyone, because we had people, staff from all over, you know, the country, who their favorite teams were with their friends from one guy from Boston, he was a huge Boston Celtics fan. And so when the Celtics came through to play the Mavericks, I called in a favor. A friend of mine, the Mavericks, and I got a couple seats and I went by this guy's desk and I just put him on his desk. This is before everything went to digital tickets, of course, and just said, hey, this Saturday I thought you might enjoy going to see the Celtics play the Mavericks. It's little things like that that are thoughtful, that really show people that you care and that you, that you're for them and you earn trust with people as well. So I mentioned the example of trying to, you know, compensate people well, but it's also trying to give them pathways to get more experience, to help them cultivate their gifts and when they outgrow what you can do for them, helping them get their next opportunity. I've made many Reference calls. I've done many things to help people get that next job, that next opportunity when they're ready to leave us, you know. And so I think that's part of looking at that person holistically. And it's, it's, it's working with folks kind of in a sense weeping with those who weep. As people go through tough things in life and people go through exciting things. We have people going through because the ages they're with us that might be getting engaged, marriage, first child, buying a first house. I negotiated different car loans with my staff. So I'm helping them do this or helping I kind of because so many more young staff in parento locus, you know, however you say that I was, you know, kind of a father figure, you know, for them, trying to be of help for folks. So I think as Christians, you with the people under your charge were told scripture to always understand the condition of your flock, understand what people are going through, where they're at, how are they handling stress, making sure they're taking vacation days, modeling things for them correctly. Part of how you're disciplining that, discipling them and loving them is disciplining. It is having to confront things when behavior is not good. There's a tendency, you see, sometimes we see it everywhere. We see it in ministry sometimes too with Christians, I think it's that it's not Christian to have to confront someone or chew them out or whatever it is or let someone go. And you can do those things with dignity and respect. But sometimes that is the most Christian thing to do. That someone needs a wake up call. Sometimes it sets a proverb. Sometimes mere words are not enough. Discipline is needed. And that's the most loving thing to do. To withhold that is an act of, not an act of Christian charity. I think it's an act of hatred is what it says in proverbs.

Yeah, better is open rebuke than hidden love. Hey, one more question before we get to our final three. We wrap up every episode we with. You mentioned this word a few minutes ago, faithfulness, that I've been journaling a lot about lately in this context. Right. And you're in a super competitive industry. I mean, you're in sports. Everything is about winning, right? This is about winning the game, winning the championship, being the best.

And I, man, I gotta imagine it's.

A struggle for you to not let that thinking seep into your own psyche is you're managing your own personal workload. And I just don't see a lot of evidences I don't see any evidence in scripting scripture that God commands us to be the best, right? You look at the parable, the talents. He didn't tell the 5 talent servant to win. He told the 5 talent servant to be faithful, right? To be a faithful steward of what God. It's why the five talented, the two.

Talent servant get the exact same blessing, right? At the end of the day, the five talent servant was clearly the quote.

Unquote winner by the world standards. He had the most toys, but the.

Five and the two talent guy got the same blessing because God, God's definition of success, I think, is not about.

Winning but about faithful stewardship with what he's put in our hands, right?

So, like, as you think about your.

Own craft, how do you maintain that perspective, assuming you agree with that perspective that you're called to be faithful, right. And trust the fruit to God, how do you maintain that perspective in an industry that's so obsessed with winning?

First of all, Jordan, completely agree with you that it's faithfulness that God calls us to. Whatever he's entrusted us with with, we need to be faithful with it. In that we want to be the servant who hears, you know, well done, good and faithful servant. And if he's entrusted us with five and gives us five more, gives us one, gives us, you know, two. We don't want to be the one who buries the talent. We don't want to be the one who didn't put it out there. Faithfulness is the criteria, not worldly success. Now, oftentimes, when people are faithful and they live Christianly and they apply the proverbs, the general truths of proverbs, to how they live their lives, how they run their business, how they make decisions on balance, oftentimes, as folks will do well, I can economically and whatnot. But it's not an automatic. It's. It's not. If you do this, then this for sure, these are general patterns of the world God made. But you might be very faithful and God frustrates your plans for different reasons, for part of someone's growth that we don't understand. And that's a question to ask him in heaven. But you can take the way I always tell our staff too, when we get really, when there's pressured stress on, say on the business side, if we're not driving the revenues that we need for the business or different things, if I know we're doing the correct input and we're working hard and we're being wise, how we do this, we're treating folks correctly. I can sleep at night. It's when I'm not. If our company's not, I'm personally not doing the correct inputs, not putting in the actual work effort that's needed, not planting. When it's time to plant all those things, well, then it's more stressful, it's more difficult to sleep. You know, you can't expect God just to bless that if we're not putting in the correct inputs. And so, and it's sports too, because it's high profile. And you have folks, for example, who, who I've had, people who worked for me, who I was able to build into, helped me get launched and gone on to some really kind of neat careers and things that would be, quote, unquote, bigger jobs than what I've chosen to do, the path I've done. And it's easy if I focus on that to kind of, I don't know, to get kind of immature thought patterns of, should I have gone that direction? Or I'm sharper than that person. Why am I not in that high profile thing? And that's not healthy, you know, not healthy thinking. I need to, you know, repent of those, confess those as those things happen. And some friends, they use that word a lot too, that have been kind of challenging me, Jordan. And we challenge each other that it's faithfulness. That's what we're after, is let's be faithful to where God has us bloom, where we're planted. And then, you know, God can bless us in certain ways however he sees fit. But I kind of think of, I was reading this the other day here, but when you have Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, when King Nebuchadnezzar is quite upset that they won't bow to the idol he made and he tells them that, you know, they're going to be. He gives them another chance, which was unusual. Says, okay, when the music plays, if you want to bow now, we'll let it go. And they won't. And he said, we're throwing, you know, in the fiery furnace. And the response is, our God can save us, but even if he doesn't, we're not going to bow to your idol. I just, I love that that's. I want to be faithful. My God can prosper my hand. He can prosper the business, but whether he does or doesn't, I'm going to be faithful. Because in his own wisdom, it could be that things are very difficult. I don't understand why. Maybe some of those will make sense as time goes on. Some of them won't make sense until we'll get to find out in the next set of Eternity, at which point it won't matter. We won't care. We'll be so happy basking in his glory. But faithfulness is what we need to do.

Yeah, that's so good. He's got three questions we wrap up every show with. Number one, which books do you find yourself gifting most frequently to others?

You know, in different areas of my life, it's probably been different ones, but let me tell you some of the most common ones. One is Fault Lines by Voddie Bauckham, which that was just outstanding. Just as far as the culture that we live in today and the tendency towards folks getting caught up in so a lot of Christians getting caught up in so many woke things and CRT things and stuff that maybe seems okay on the surface or the sounds correct, but they don't really understand what these things are and what the Bible says about these things. I thought his book was really, really good on that fact Default lines, the Tech Wise Family, which is Andy Crouch, I thought was outstanding. I had my kids as they got to be, you know, teenagers read that as well. I didn't necessarily agree with everything in it, but I thought it swung the pendulum for me to be much more thoughtful in our use of technology and whatnot. Money, Greed and God by Jay Richards, I thought was really, really good. It's a defense of free markets, essentially from a theological standpoint, but also practical. I give a lot of people the Prodigal God by Tim Keller. That helped me see that I was the elder brother and really legalistic for a lot of my life. I thought that was a great book. And then in the topic we were talking about earlier, too, folks who want to understand economics from a Christian perspective, I would just go with Christian Economics in One Lesson by Gary north, which was a take on economics in one lesson, Henry Hazlett's book the 1940s, which is great, but this is putting a Christian perspective, understanding these things and how the world works. I love books, but those are probably some of the ones towards the top of my list.

It's really good.

I like that.

That's a killer list.

Oh, and of course. And Anything by Jordan Rayner.

No, stop, stop. This is the risk of asking this question. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. This is not an obligatory answer. Hey, Scott, who would you want to hear on this podcast talking about how the gospel shapes the work they're doing in the world.

As I thought about that, Jordan, I'm actually going to mention three names I think would be really interesting friends of mine. One's Jack Hollis, who's the president of Toyota Motor Sales. He's based here in the Dallas area. He's just such a solid believer, so joyful. He's got a, you know, big time job at Toyota. He'll probably end up being the next CEO for North America. And he really integrates his faith with how he lives his life and how he runs the area he's responsible for. It's a Jack House, I think would be really good. Another friend, Baxter Underwood, he's the CEO of Safe Harbor Marinas and he's a venture capitalist. He's invested in a lot of things. He's a fascinating person. He's based in Dallas as well. I was with him recently and we were talking about some the of of these things and just how you integrate your walk with Christ with how you run your enterprise. And I think he's very thought through on that and would be an interesting person. Kent Legrand would be another one, CEO of InTouch Credit Union, which is headquartered here in actually in Plano, a Dallas suburb. Kent, he's one of my investors in the Frisco Rough Riders and just a wonderful man and kind of been a mentor. I've learned a lot from him. He's one who's just again, very serious about his faith and lives a holistic, integrated life and, and how it affects the decisions he makes within his company and how he treats people, how he these would all be really good ones. I actually am blessed, Jordan. I live in a part of the country. There's actually quite a few believers and quite a few believers in the marketplace. And there's a lot of believers in name only and cultural Christians do. But there's a lot of serious followers of Christ here who are in meaningful positions. But those are three that I would mention and I'm happy to introduce you to any of them.

Yeah, that'd be great. Hey Scott, what's one thing from our conversation you want to reiterate to our listeners before we sign off?

As I think about it, Jordan, I'm going to actually iterate instead of reiterate something I don't think I've said yet, but I think sums this up well and that is coming up with a definition of work. What does that mean? And I may be paraphrasing because I haven't been able to source this quote exactly, but it's attributed to Dorothy Sayers. And it's something to the effect of this work is the generous expression of our creative abilities in the service of others. Work. It's the generous expression, the expression, outpouring of our creative abilities in the service of others. And when you have that mindset of what work is and that you're working for the benefit of others using the creativity that God's given you. We are image bearers. Therefore we should be creative. Christians should be the best artists, we should be the best musicians, we should be the best carpenters, architects, sports executives, all these things there as we reflect God on that. But we serve the Lord and we serve him by serving others. But I love that that definition by Dorothy Sayers.

You got the Sayers code pretty good. That was almost verbatim. I'm very impressed.

I have had trouble finding exactly where that quote is.

Oh, I'll send it to you.

I got you. Okay, Please. Because I use it when I speak at certain things and I attribute it to it, but I never know if I have it quite right.

I'll look it up.

I'm pretty sure it's in her little pamphlet called why Work? Which is hard to find by the way, but you can find, you can find copies of it online here and there. Man. Scott, I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I just want to commend you for the exceptional work you do in Dallas around the world. For the glory of God and the good of others. For reminding us today that our work, even work the world sees as useless sometimes, like sports and rugby and baseball, whatever matters deeply to God because we matter to God and matter matters to God. And thank you for giving us a picture of how to go about our work in a God honoring way.

Scott, if there's people in our audience.

Who want to learn more about you and your work, where's the best place for them to do that?

Sure, if they want to reach out on any type of personal level, I'm happy to give out. Scott scottsonju.com it's my personal email and I know it sounds vain, but it's easy to remember. So Scott scottsonju.com Hey, I own jordanrayner.com so yeah. Yes. So I bought that domain a long time ago. And then Trailrunner int.com is the company that I'm with and there's a sports page there. All of our bio are on the page and I'll have some information on that as well. My page is also on. I'm an adjunct professor at SMU as well and there's stuff there but happy to interact with with folks on these things. I think these are important topics and I love Jordan what you're doing. I got introduced to you by my daughter several years ago with might have been your first book you wrote.

Oh that's awesome.

She's a real artistic, creative person and we read that together and I love Christians who think about these things and try to really integrate following Christ, you know, in the worldview with all that they do.

It is a joy to be able to do the work and I love that your daughter got you into this Jordan Rayner universe. Scott man, really appreciate your time. Thanks for hanging out with us today.

Hey, thanks so much for having me. Blessings.

I love that episode. I hope you guys did as well. Hey, if you've got somebody you want to hear on the show, let me know@jordanrayner.com contact thank you guys so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week.

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