Business executives driven by faith

The word vocation often conjures images of a call to the priesthood, diaconate, consecrated life, or marriage. Yet there’s another sense of vocation as discerning a higher purpose within professional life, whether one’s line of work has explicit apostolic aims or not.

Here, briefly, are stories of a few Legates who embrace their professional roles as a calling from God.  

Ascending to CEO

Ascension Press has a clear Catholic mission: to “to present the truth and beauty of the Catholic Faith as the path to a fulfilled life and authentic happiness” through resources, media, and communitybuilding that help teach and transform lives through the Gospel. So recently, when Philadaelphia Legate and company founder Matthew Pinto decided to leave Ascension, COO Jonathan Strate saw an opportunity to take ownership of one of the nation’s leading Catholic publishers.

Securing a Small Business Administration loan, Strate – also a Philadelphia Legate – negotiated a deal, purchased Ascension, and became CEO. The transaction was completed in February.

For Strate, who had been in youth and young adult ministry for years, coming to Ascension and eventually assuming ownership were the continuation of a divine calling.

“Participating in and giving back to the Catholic community was always a part of my life,” he said. “When it was offered to me to come work at Ascension in 2014, it felt like the right time to offer my professional skill set to a mission-based organization. When the opportunity came to transition ownership of the company, it was something my wife and I prayed about. We felt we already were part of the good work being done at Ascension, and God had put us in the best position to continue shepherding this work forward as our continued vocation.”

Catholic publishing faces challenges resulting from the Church’s own struggles: with Mass attendance and Catholic school enrollment declining, for example, parishes and educational administrators are seeking better, more engaging content in catechetical materials, said Strate.

But since as COO he oversaw a rebranding and launched a number of new products, including the popular podcast The Bible in a Year with Fr. Mike Schmitz, featuring Jeff Cavins, “the changes I bring [as CEO] will feel more like continued, organic growth,” he said.

“That’s what we’re challenged with,” Strate added, “and I feel blessed to be called to continue the work in the service of God’s people as my vocation.”

Perseverance under pressure

Hugh Blane of the Seattle Chapter, president of Claris Consulting, came to view his business and his professional life as a God-given vocation the hard way. As an entrepreneur who had bought out one of his partners just prior to the 2008 financial crisis, he endured the year-long loss of another partner who was battling cancer, and the embezzlement of a substantial sum before the bank called his company’s line of credit.

“I did everything I knew to address the issues at hand and realized that there were red flags along the way,” Blane said in retrospect. “Had I been paying attention, I wouldn’t have experienced these hardships as I did. I was overly focused on money and financial success, and living my professional life aligned with biblical principles was not on my radar screen.”

As these tribulations raged, reading Christ’s words about the “first and greatest commandment” (see Matt 22:36-40) inspired him.

“Amidst this financial reversal, what I came to want most was to create a flourishing business — flourishing for others first, and then for me,” Blane said. “I wanted flourishing customers and flourishing employees. That’s when my Catholic faith started to become real.”

His role as a Catholic businessman “became to help people rise up and live abundantly, and doing that for customers and employees is what I now see as the true entrepreneurial calling,” he explained. “That’s what I learned in 2009.”

In his 2017 book 7 Principles of Transformational Leadership, Blane presents an essential concept for overcoming business obstacles he calls “the Perseverance Principle.” One of the key ideas — one that relates to the Catholic faith — is that finding strength requires admitting weakness.

“Ignatius of Loyola recommended that all members of his community complete an examination of conscience once or twice per day,” he said. “In my Ignatian practice there is a question I ask that goes, ‘Where did I not live the absolute best version of myself today?’ For me, that absolute best version of myself is when I am loving God, loving others, and living the Gospel. When I take a sincere look at my day and look for ways that I have not lived in alignment with God‘s love, that is the jumping off point for seeing where I am living off the mark of my faith.”

Perseverance, he concluded, “falls into three buckets for me: loving deeply, learning daily, and living boldly.”

Faith in the Nix of time

Matthew Nix grew up working in the family business headquartered in Poseyville, IN, originally founded as a blacksmith shop by his great-great-grandfather in 1902. When he started full time in 2004 at the age of 19, it was still a momand- pop welding repair business, but in the years that followed Matthew helped expand the business through acquisitions to include powder coatings and painting, fabrication, and farm equipment sales and service — and even the construction of two steel yachts. He and his brother Adam bought majority control of Nix Companies in 2012; Matthew’s wife, Lindsey, came on board around then and presently serves as strategic account manager and director of public relations.

“In the past decade, we have grown and evolved from a smalltown welding repair shop with four family members to a diversified regional business with 100-plus team members focusing on metal fabrication and specialty trades contracting,” Mathew explained.

As the business grew under his entrepreneurial spirit, so also did his interior sense of a calling from God.

“In the beginning, I think I was like a lot of people, it was growth for growth’s sake, and some ego was involved as well. I wanted to prove myself,” he admitted. “But at some point, I started asking myself some deeper questions. Why am I doing what I’m doing? Is it all worth it?”

For a few years, he went through intense discernment, reading, and prayer: why keep growing the business if we had a good thing going and a comfortable middle-class lifestyle? His father and grandfather had kept things simple, weren’t driven like he was, and were happy. Matthew came to realize his “talent” was “of the entrepreneurial kind,” and his God-given talents should be put to good use.

One Sunday morning he had an insight, almost as of a voice speaking to him: “Why are you making it so complicated? It’s about the people!” Taking that as God’s call, he developed a vision statement, which today affirms that Nix Companies strives “to create world-class employment opportunities and be recognized as a leader in the metal fabrication and specialty trades industries.”

Matthew describes the Nix company culture in two parts: “people and values based,” and “progressive and competitive.”

“Those might seem at odds with each other, but I can assure you they are not,” he explained. “We have grown our business nearly a hundredfold while still focusing on our people and our values. Not only do we want to be profitable and grow; we need to be profitable and grow, and we don’t apologize for it.”

His job as president and CEO, Matthew said, “is to set the vision and constantly help everyone in the company connect what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they measure success, to this vision and purpose,” Matthew said. “We don’t always get this right, but if we can keep coming back to this as our North Star, I believe we will be a much stronger organization.

“Meanwhile, I’ll be doing what I was called to do.”

GERALD KORSON, editorial consultant for Legatus magazine, is based in Indiana. 


The motivation of a Christian business leader 

“Christian business leaders are men and women of action who have demonstrated an authentic entrepreneurial spirit, one that recognizes the God-given responsibility to accept the vocation of business generously and faithfully. These leaders are motivated by much more than financial success, enlightened self-interest, or an abstract social contract as often prescribed by economic literature and management textbooks. Faith enables Christian business leaders to see a much larger world, a world in which God is at work, and where their individual interests and desires are not the sole driving force. The Church’s teachings inspire business leaders to view God as being at work throughout His creation and their own vocation as a call to directly and respectfully contribute to this creation.”

• Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Vocation of a Business Leader: A Reflection, 2018 English Edition, 65)