God’s project manager - Nehemiah  

The second in the series What might a Kingdom business look like? highlights the example of Nehemiah who prayed and planned ahead - and shows what godly project management could look like

 

 
An unusual character to surface in Jesus’ parables is the tower builder (Luke 14:20-30). He is unusual because not many people would have required a tower in Bible times. Kings, of course, would have commissioned civil projects, such as Hezekiah's tunnel (e.g.: 2 Kings 20:20), but even by Jesus’ time, civil engineers would not have been a common profession.
 
Still, Jesus uses this niche profession in a parable about deciding to follow him. Most people’s subsistence at the time would have depended heavily upon the seasons and the weather, so detailed planning ahead wouldn’t have been a common wisdom.
 
Nehemiah, one of the most famous builders in the Bible, was a government official in the court of King Artaxerxes. We don't know how good he was with design or materials, but he was smart with planning and with people.
 
Because of his closeness to the King, we guess that he had an excellent view of the way in which large engineering projects were conducted and he must have met most of the notable builders of the day. As we'll see shortly, he mastered the art of forward planning, and he also managed to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem using voluntary rather than slave labour.
 
Before that, however, he improvised with something that was very unconventional, something that Daniel also integrated into his method: he prayed. In fact, about half of Nehemiah 1 is his prayer about Jerusalem’s ruined situation. Nehemiah 2, by contrast, contains one of the shorter prayers in his life, which he fits in between the King's question and providing an answer.
 
Praying about work is certainly not in most of the business best practice guides, but it's an important habit. If you haven't started to pray regularly as part of your working day, we'd encourage you to start simply and talk to God about the decisions you have to make that day, about the orders that need to come in that day, about the things you need to pay for that day, and for wisdom in all you do. As you grow in confidence in praying for your ‘daily bread,’ and as you see God responding, you can try praying further ahead.
 
Nehemiah prays and prepares for months so that he can pray and respond in the moment. When the moment comes (Nehemiah 2:4), he can summarise his request in a sentence; answer the King's question with estimates about how long and how much: and request all the critical paperwork to accomplish his mission.
 
After settling in for a few days at Jerusalem, we can see him planning again, as he sets out quietly by night to scope the project he has taken on (Nehemiah 2:11-16). Interestingly, he does this before he has even told people what his mission is. The point of this midnight excursion isn’t about keeping the workforce in the dark, it’s because good project managers need as much information as they can get before they start articulating a plan.
 
It's the topic of planning ahead that pins Nehemiah 's story directly to Jesus’ parable, But Nehemiah is an example in so many other ways of what godly project management could look like.
 
If your working day involves running projects, costing up proposals, or operational management with a workforce, Nehemiah merits much closer study. In his less diplomatic moments, he reminds us how focused good project managers are on getting the job done; and in solving problems quickly and implementing practical solutions, he epitomises key qualities of good management.
 
The tower builder may have been a marginal character in Jesus’ time, but our world is knee-deep in project managers, operational managers, team leaders, and the like. You may be one yourself, and if so, this is a parable with your name on it.
 
The world in which the gospel first took root was very different from ours. The wealth creating focus of an industrialised economy was still a long way off, while most people's working days were exceptionally tiring and yielded limited returns. Because of this, it's tempting to identify the few roles that read directly across from that world to ours as being the most important for the extension of God's Kingdom: the preacher, the teacher, the pastor, the evangelist.
 
While those roles are clearly important, as authors, we believe that Jesus has also sprinkled his parables with characters who may not have made much of an impact at the time but who have come to mean much more since then.
 
Our aim is not to undermine church structures or those who offer themselves full-time in sacrificial service. However, our hope in this series is to suggest that the transformation from subsistence level agrarian economies to wealth creating economies in which most of our working lives bear no resemblance to the working lives of the first Christians, may not have come as a complete surprise to God.
 
We believe that Jesus has elevated some unexpected roles as he provides the sparkling perspectives and shocks that make the parables work. That people such as a Merchant or Tower Builder may be important to the Kingdom of Heaven is hardly preached today, possibly because those tasked with teaching are often insulated from a world teeming with salespeople and engineers.
 
We hope that this set of reflections will help to redress the balance by alerting those who fulfil the traditional roles of preaching and teaching to some of the surprises lurking in Jesus’ teaching. Should you be a manager of any sort, we trust this may help you to realise you have something important to offer, too.


Image | Kuan Fang | Unsplash


 

This blog is part of a series that links Bible characters with people in parables to see if their stories fill in a picture of what a ‘Kingdom Business’ might look like. The series is looking for fresh insights for business leaders who want to see Kingdom outcomes as well as sustainable business success.

Details of all five blogs are below.
 

• What might a Kingdom business look like? - business at the heart of mission through the example of Lydia (publishes 29 January)
• God’s project manager - Nehemiah who prayed and planned ahead - and is an example of what godly project management could look like (publishes 31 January)
• A business empire that loses its way - Solomon’s narrative goes to the heart of a vital tension in Kingdom business, which is how we balance economic outcomes with evangelistic progress (publishes 2 February)
• Employing the whole person - How the vineyard owner and David were ahead of their time in looking beyond the work done (publishes 5 February)
• What might a Kingdom business look like? A discussion - The final part of the series offers two ways to reflect on Lydia, Nehemiah, Solomon and David as exemplars in business (publishes 7 February)

Phil Hanson is an engineer by profession. For the latter part of a 30 year career in IBM, he was Lead Principal for IBM’s Manufacturing Industry Consulting Practice. Since IBM, he has been Principal Industrial Fellow at the Institute for Manufacturing at Cambridge University and a Special Advisor to UNIDO for supply chain projects in Africa. He is ordained in the Church of England.

Terry Young is a missionary kid who read science and engineering. After a PhD in lasers, he worked in R&D before becoming a professor, when he taught project management, information systems and e-business, while leading research in healthcare. He set up Datchet Consulting to have fun with both faith and work and worshipped at Baptist churches in Slough for 19 years before moving to the New Forest.

Terry and Phil's new book How to Merge Kingdom and Business -The Most Excellent Way has just been published by Grove Books

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