Becoming a referral partner for God

Ken Gosnell Jan. 5, 2025

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Leaders are influencers. Leaders enjoy influencing others. They desire that their teams buy into their ideas, customers buy their products, and vendors buy the importance of their relationships. Leaders work diligently to enhance their influential powers to impact more people.

One of the most important areas in which a leader can influence others is their spiritual life. However, many spiritual leaders are hesitant to share their faith. They never, in a business sense, become a referral partner with God.

The Bible reminds all Christians of the importance of acknowledging Jesus before others. The book of Matthew records these powerful words, "Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven" (Matt. 10:32-33).

Business leaders often seek referrals from others. In fact, many small businesses are built on only word-of-mouth marketing. They understand the value of having others tell their family and friends about their products and services. Why shouldn't business leaders who know the value of referral become one of the best advocates for referring Jesus to everyone who works for them and for everyone they meet?

How leaders can share their faith with others

#1 Start with stories

Good businesses are built on good stories. A good customer service story is often one that can repeated and told again and again. One place that every Christian can start with in sharing their faith is their personal testimony. A personal testimony is the story of how a person came to become a Christian.

Mary Fairchild shares a powerful model for writing a personal testimony. She writes, "a three-point approach is very effective in communicating your personal testimony. This outline focuses on before you trusted Christ, how you surrendered to him, and the changes in your life since you began walking with him."

As a Christian leader, you can make the number of times you share your personal testimony your Kingdom Impact number to be tracked each year. In so doing, you will be fulfilling the Matthew 10 command of sharing Jesus in front of others.

#2 Be intentional about opportunities

Every leader has many opportunities to share their faith throughout the average day in business. These opportunities can come in the form of business conversations, decision-making principles, personal interactions, or strategic steps to communicate a biblical concept or idea. The problem of sharing your faith isn't from a lack of opportunity but rather from a lack of interest. Business leaders must make it a high priority to share their faith and to become referral leaders for God and His Kingdom.

#3 Pray for people first

Lifeway Resources completed a study of 2,930 Protestant churchgoers and concluded that praying for lost people is one of the most effective ways for believers to start sharing their faith. Ed Stetzer communicated that "praying more frequently for the status of people who are not professing Christians is the best indicator of more spiritual maturity in the entire Sharing Christ factor. In the study, 21 percent of churchgoers say that outside of church worship services, they pray every day for people they know who are not professing Christians. Twenty-six percent say they pray a few times a week. One-fifth (20 percent) say they rarely or never pray for the spiritual status of others." Stetzer makes this conclusion, "If you are going to be intentional about sharing your faith, praying for others is a great way to start. We often acknowledge the importance of prayer in people coming to faith in Christ, but we also found it has an impact on the person praying."

One more second-step comment:

When a leader looks at the spiritual side of the people that they interact with, how a leader sees the people will often change. It is imperative to make sharing their faith a top priority however they choose to do it. Pope Francis once wrote, "Jesus teaches us another way: Go out. Go out and share your testimony, go out and interact with your brothers, go out and share, go out and ask. Become the Word in body as well as spirit."

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Ken Gosnell is CEO and Servant Leader of CXP (CEO Experience). CXP is a premier coaching and executive roundtable business that serves Christian CEOs in Washington DC, Maryland and Florida. Ken serves leaders by helping them and their teams to have great experiences that both transform the leader and their organizations to go further faster. Learn More »

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