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New Churches

Business and spirituality appear to be words from distant realms that don’t have much to do with one another. Spirituality is about the meaning of life; business is about making money. Or so it seems.

I first saw the two words together at a Spirit in Business Conference in San Francisco in 2003. I was expecting to meet business people who’d discovered the importance of spirituality in their personal lives and were eager to share their attempts to keep it alive within the harsh reality of their working environments. In other words: I thought the conference would be about spirituality, not so much about business. Much to my surprise, I listened to presentations and was part of workshops in which business was very much the central theme. The conference provided early morning yoga sessions, but other than that, business was the focus of the conversations. Yet the way in which we spoke about the subject was fresh and inspiring. I soon realized that spirituality and business have much to do with each other. And that the connection isn’t about finding the time to meditate regularly at your desk. Spirituality in business means a broad, holistic approach to business and work.

More and more CEOs talk about stakeholders—a group that includes personnel, clients and vendors—in an attempt to show that these firms serve a broader audience than just shareholders. The focus on spirituality in business goes one major step further. It makes the connection between your business or work and you.

I’ve always wondered how we managed to create a world in which people serve different values in their offices than at home. As CEOs, men (yes, mostly men) do things all the time that they would never do as fathers. They lead dangerously disconnected lives, something that causes much harm to the world.

Bringing spirituality to business can overcome that strange disconnection. It introduces questions like, Why do we operate the way we do in our professional lives? What contributions do we want to make? Which values do we serve? What can we do at work to give meaning to how we live? In the end, there isn’t much “spirituality” about all this; it’s just common sense. There’s no other way for us to feel really fulfilled.

In this month’s cover story, we explore many examples of companies and people leading the way to a more integrative approach toward business. It’s a hopeful and much-needed development that’s no longer championed by a small circle of idealists alone. The world of business is being transformed. And since corporations today have the influence churches had in the past, that’s very good news.

P.S.: This month we’re introducing a marketplace at odemagazine.com. This is a unique initiative to present a growing selection of products to make your life greener, healthier, more fun and more sustainable.