Yesterday morning, I attended the first meeting held by Centre of Christian Entrepreneurship with TC. Breakfast was served at 7.30 am and the session on "Making money in the marketplace -reflecting on loving God and pursuing profits was the topic of the day. Greeted and spoke briefly to Rev David Wong who was one of the three speaker for the day. The other two were Mr Adrian Loi of Yakun International and Dr Tan Jing Hee. The whole room was filled with participants and the majority were men with a handful of ladies. Rev David started the session with a point that spiritualising poverty is not biblical.Even Jesus who need to borrow a boat, donkey and tomb got them from people who had owned them. It is not wrong to get wealth but we are not to allow it to become an idol in our lives.He cited the examples of the Israelites in Ex 12 and 32 who plundered the Egyptians and later used the gold to fashion it into a calf for worship. Next he used the parable of the talents (Matt 25:14-30) and the parable of the minas (Lk 19:11-27) to teach us that God expects faithful and effective stewardship from all of us. One talent which is 60 minas is equivalent to 18 months' wages. One thought dawned upon me; have I made significant percentages/multiples of returns with the resources that God has entrusted to me? Have I been exercising faithful and effective stewardship? Rev David closed his session with some questions:

1. Is it possible to love God and make money? 2. Are some people gifted by God to make money? 3. Why is God's work always short of money and limited by lack of funds? 4. How can we ensure God's work gets done with the money it needs? Answers to questions 1 and 2 are YES. If God's people are obedient and faithful, God's work will not be in lack.

Adrian Loi shared his view of profit-making and I was impressed with his humility and openness to share about his weaknesses. Dr Tan Jing Hee was the last speaker and he spoke on wealth creation and the love of God. He used Lk 14 :27-35 where he shared on the good stewardship of business; mission acheivement (v28), strategic effectiveness (v31) and operational efficiency (v34). Above all the greatest service we can offer is servant leadership (Matt 23:11) Is our business merely profit-making or wealth creation? By his definition, wealth creation products/services is to make people healthier, wealthier, freer and wiser by servant leadership. Our profits become a concrete demonstration of love of God through good stewardship, servant leadership and wealth creation. Felt these were really good nuggets for me to gnaw on when I think about our business in PW.

I had a blessed morning and that gave a right start to a busy Friday. Thank you God for creating this opportunity for me.