 Hello everyone welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania with Kevin Breckbill Which I think we interviewed you last season and today we're going to be talking some about using business for the kingdom So why don't you tell us some about some of your business endeavors? so I grew up on a farm is where where I started and my dad had a side business of hauling livestock and Out of that we all started haul trailers and pulled a lot of livestock trailers and that kind of thing besides that I I started a lot of small businesses that didn't work. Well, so, you know, that's on what entrepreneurs do They start and fail a couple times before they get gone. So I was definitely one of those but out of that is I saw the need to service trailers and sell trailers and that's what we got into Selling trailers and we now have Breckbill trailers and there's 14 people employed there and We have fun selling trailers. So okay, so we go from something very practical You know selling a product to someone who needs it to how do we use that to serve God's kingdom? the first thought like when I started my business I was primarily interested in Providing a living for my family. I was young. I had a growing family We have eight children four four sons and so my my goal Really when I started was simply to provide a living for myself and for my son's growing up. That was my dream I didn't know if I could pull it off, but that that was my dream. It started to grow and then It really took off You know COVID actually helped me not hurt me and I think probably a fair amount of businesses that that that that happened to and so with that You know when I think of How can this businesses? Christian men that are running running businesses How can they contribute to the kingdom so I probably start maybe at a different place in some people and where I started with that I Seen the value of Focusing in on employees. I think I think the scripture has things to say about how you How you take care of your employees Number one we try to give them a very healthy environment to work in and The second thing that a lot of people don't like to talk about is How you pay your employees? Do you pay them? Well, do you pay them better than average? I? Worked for my brother Noah when I was 15 and he started a construction company He was very poor struggled a lot when he started and his business grew and became relatively successful and He was known in the area that if you work for him You were going to get well taken care of it was a good place to work And so when I was 15, I thought if I ever have that opportunity I want to do as good of that or better and Now the beautiful thing about this What that does to a church in a community is you can't buy that if you take care of your employees from the ground up and You pay them better than everybody else or as well as you can within the market that you have maybe a reward that You need to pay them as well as you can Within the market you're on and when the employees are well taken care of Then the atmosphere and the environment within the within the business is is is healthy and you're you're you're there's a team effort and there's a The quality just goes way up. So people coming in from You know customers coming in from the community they see They're impressed they're like like and you that that ripple starts to go out And you know some of the people that work for me is is in our church and I try to Pay them well enough that they can contribute like it's not it's because of them that our business is successful Not just because of me. So when you have that team spirit And you take care of your employees. I think every business owner they need to start there and Like I don't think I think it would be Wrong and appropriate for me to be giving and Helping someone else if I wasn't taking care of my employees like I actually think that would be held against Me I think God would judge me for that in a bad way So I think that should be that's priority. That should be number one. So Outlining that bit of your story and how you've gotten to where you are today What would you say motivated your ambition that you currently have so when I think about Ambition I think of the heart our heart and our treasure and Matthew 621 says where your treasure is there? Your heart will be also and It's interesting when you hear a lot of people Explain that verse. They'll say where your heart is there where your treasure be And the Jesus actually says something the opposite. He said where your treasure is there will be your heart So what I get from that is move your treasure And your heart will move And I find it interesting I've had people come to me and they say and they really want to have a heart for the poor They want to have a heart for mission work or they want to have a heart for reaching out And my answer to them is put your treasure there And then you'll have your heart will follow And I think it's very specific if you look at what Jesus says So to me, it's a very beautiful thing. It makes it very simplistic move your treasure and your heart will follow That's a great point. And you and you can't uh, and neither do I think you can have it two ways You can't you know, you can give a little bit to mission work But if I mean your majority of your treasures over here, that's where your heart's gonna be so it That's a true statement. Uh, Jesus actually did mean what he said there. I believe so anyways a little practical, um Life advice there for people. I I don't know if I've ever thought about it quite like that and how we get it backwards Yeah So you're talking about running a business Well, and he talked about some of your story up to that point What would you say is the motive really for running a business? I guess you could say a little differently than maybe the rest of society where it's all about how much money can I make? Looks like you're going a lot deeper than that. What's motivating you? I think for me that has evolved like I've I I don't really know of any christian man that doesn't want to contribute like it When you're a christian you want to help. I don't know that I can say That when I started I knew I would be sitting here today but as it grew I realized the responsibility that I have and when I read the scripture it doesn't give a lot of room to be indulging in pleasures and materialism and Buying things you don't need and going places you don't need to go I had a passion to help the kingdom in any way that I could So that's what motivates me and to to learn to contribute and learn how to contribute So we're talking about motive these ambitions you have Where do you contribute these giftings these opportunities? What what does that look like so one of the things that I think about when it comes to advancing the kingdom I think people Or at least I I think people should think and spend a lot of time Into thinking where to give their money and how to contribute what I've noticed is it's it's a very common thing to do Is when people want to say they give to the kingdom they give towards humanitarian aid and that's very important and There's a lot of people help by you and the bible says that we should Help the poor like that's but there's more than that There's more ways to contribute one of the things that I look I look for I look for What is long-term investments in the kingdom? What does that look like? One way that I have chosen is I look for people that are gifted and talented in two ways Can they write books? That's I mean people have been influenced by books Probably More than any other given thing I would guess We need to be contributing to men that are writing men women that are writing books and look for those gifted men The other current thing is that I personally see is The internet platforms that we have to work with whether it's youtube and all the you know So I look for people that have digital media abilities that can create content and Get you know get that out onto the internet platforms I see that is The probably the second most important thing to do that we can actually actually reach people It's really interesting. So when we started ccf, which is our church. We moved into a small town thinking we were going to reach the people there and we started uh A couple things had went up one on youtube Didn't really pay that much to it much attention to it since that happened Five years later We have a total of uh five people that have come About one a year and what's interesting We were in town Trying to reach people Couldn't find them to reach very well Or couldn't make connection But a guy on youtube found this who was across from the other side of town emailed actually Dean and Dean Taylor Through followers of the way and found out that we actually lived in the same town that he did Wow The second man came from the second brother came from 30 minutes away um The third brother came from china Which and he's helping us film this right now and he's helping us film this right now His brother came from help me out georgia We just recently had a had a a brother that Just is on a new path of christianity He came from york, which is like an hour and 15 minutes away the impact of the media of of youtube and whatever other internet platforms Are massive and one of the questions we have Every one of them came when they shut up at our door They said we searched and searched and searched for kingdom christians. We couldn't find you So the we aren't out there very well. So that's another area that I think um, we need to Invest in people that are good at that that opens up massive opportunity, you know, we spend millions of dollars to do mission work and you know, one of the things I often think about is you know, we And I appreciate all the attempts, but I do sometimes see Attempts to do mission work and we've done it for 50 years and got very very little results church planning and mission work is difficult work But let's be willing to sit back and look maybe relook at things sometimes and I'm not saying that's for everyone. That's just Some of the ways that I look at it and and try to think what is the deep things that that that move thing moves things forward moves the kingdom forward and You actually impact people at a ground level that makes a lot of sense. So when we're thinking about business motive ways we can use these giftings for the kingdom How then do you resist the temptation to let business simply be self-serving versus a mechanism to give back to god and back to his people So for me personally, um, everyone has to go is going to have to answer that. Um I personally have put a fair amount of accountability into place I'm a man and if your successful temptations come with that potentially Um, I have a cap on my income. I get paid just like all the other employees and we annually sit down and We have a plan in place of where the access is going to go and I actually have a An accountant a bookkeeper that that does that and I do that on purpose I don't really see that happening. I mean we make the decision And my I turn from that and the rest of the year I spend How can I advance the kingdom through my business? How can I scale the company? How can I create better environment for for, you know, the employees there? So that's what I spend my time doing. I think businesses need to be built around people Not around profit And and I think that's really really important. So, um That's just some of the things that that I do People are scared to talk about this subject because When you open yourself up About your business that you you get it's transparency It's accountability and I have no problem with that. Um, you can go to any one of my employees ask them How they're being taken care of and It's you know, we try to have an open book and and and be and me personally, I'm very accountable to to the team Not that I guess this American idea we have of the solo entrepreneur who's out there just doing it and making all the money himself and it sounds like that's Very much what you're trying to avoid. I I am I keep hearing you use things like the team and mentioning other people that are That hold these levels of accountability. So it's not just you making some of these decisions. That's interesting That didn't just happen overnight. Was it like was there a certain thing? Where you said, okay, I got to have this in place or was or did you think that from the start? I would say it was always in the back of my crawl a little bit, but when you see people fail morally and materialistically You want to prevent that if you care about your own soul and if you care about the kingdom like it's just And I care about it You can do this in a very small scale or a very large scale. You can fail if you're not accountable and I do think the bigger a business grows you need to have tighter and tighter accountability And a lot of people are scared of that. I'm not in fact, I I encourage it So it actually gets it gets harder to maintain as the business grows. Is that correct or not harder to maintain but yet to Make it more and more rigid in some ways the accountability I wouldn't say it's harder to maintain if you have good things put in place. Um, but just make sure that Um, accountability ability is on all levels that there's no no open doors for To squirrel around something. Um, there's there's no there shouldn't be any secrets That's that's what I think that's how I feel Well, thank you for taking the time to share some of these lessons you've learned and I hope this is Engaging with our audience and things they can take and apply into their own lives So we should do a follow-up episode based on what people say So if you all have comments or questions for kevin about the things he's involved in Be sure to leave those down below and as always you can find all our material over on our website at anbaptistperspectives.org Thank you so much for watching or listening and we'll catch you in the next episode Thank you for joining us for this episode and thanks to our donors and partners for making this possible We publish essays on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org We also release these essays in narrated form as their own podcast called essays for king jesus