October 19, 2026
By Mark Rowan
What is your business actually for?
Profit matters. Growth matters. Serving customers well matters. But for a Christian in business, there is another question underneath all of those things:
What has God entrusted this business to you to accomplish?
That question came up again and again in my conversation with Gary Gradley on the 2000 Cubit Rule.
Gary is a Christian Kingdom business builder, coach, and author who has spent more than 25 years working with businesses, teams, and individuals. His background includes several years working alongside personal development expert Bob Proctor, but the direction of Gary's work today is rooted in something deeper than business performance.
He believes God has called him to help Christian businesses grow so they can have greater Kingdom and social impact.
And as we talked, one phrase kept surfacing:
Press in.
Gary's own story didn't begin with a business strategy.
Years ago, he was in a struggling marriage and preparing to leave when he attended a Promise Keepers event. During an altar call, he brought what he was carrying to God and experienced what he describes as an overwhelming encounter with the love and presence of the Holy Spirit.
Something changed.
The resentment he had been carrying was broken. His perspective changed. His marriage was saved.
That experience became an important marker in his life because it wasn't simply something he understood intellectually. He experienced the reality of God personally.
Years later, while praying, Gary sensed another clear direction from God: help transform Christian businesses so they can grow and create greater Kingdom and social impact.
That became the intersection of decades of business experience and his faith.
For those of us building something, that's an important place to start.
Before asking, "How do I grow this?" perhaps we need to ask, "Father, what did You create this for?"
One of Gary's central ideas is that purpose should affect the way the entire business operates.
A mission statement hanging on the wall isn't enough.
People need to understand where the business is going, why it exists, and how what they do contributes to that purpose.
That's where vision begins to affect culture.
When someone understands that their work is contributing to something bigger than completing tasks and collecting a paycheck, it can change the way they approach what they do.
It also means paying attention to the people God has placed around you.
Gary talked about identifying people's gifts and putting them in positions where those gifts can flourish. That's not only good management. There is stewardship involved.
God didn't make everybody the same.
A healthy business recognizes that and creates room for people to contribute from the strengths God has placed in them.
Gary shared what he calls his Wisdom System, a framework designed to help businesses connect purpose with performance.
It begins with clarity around vision and mission.
Where are you going?
What is the purpose God has given the business?
What are you actually trying to accomplish?
From there, the focus moves toward developing engaged, purpose-driven people, creating a higher-performing culture, increasing business performance, and ultimately using the resulting resources for greater Kingdom and social impact.
That last piece matters.
Growth isn't necessarily the destination.
Growth increases what you have available to steward.
More revenue can mean more generosity. A larger team can create more influence. Greater reach can open opportunities to serve people you could not reach before.
Business becomes a vehicle for impact rather than an end in itself.
We also talked about transformation, something particularly close to what we do at SheepFeast through the Metamorphoo Method.
Businesses can transform, but businesses are made up of people.
That means organizational transformation eventually comes down to individual transformation.
Romans 12:2 speaks of being transformed by the renewing of the mind. Gary's experience working with Bob Proctor gave him years of exposure to principles surrounding mindset, repetition, beliefs, and personal development.
But he also pointed to another kind of transformation, the kind that can happen when someone genuinely encounters God.
Both of us shared experiences during the conversation where the reality of the Holy Spirit moved beyond something we believed conceptually into something we experienced.
That's why "press in" became such a recurring theme.
We can spend enormous amounts of energy striving to make something happen, while God may be inviting us to spend more time with Him.
Another part of our conversation turned toward transition.
Gary knows something about that too.
During the 2009 economic downturn, his corporate training business was hit hard. He shared that he went an entire year without income and accumulated approximately $50,000 in credit card debt.
Eventually, he found himself dealing with hopelessness.
Then something shifted.
Gary began intentionally connecting with other believers who had walked through their own difficult circumstances. He listened to their stories and saw evidence of God's faithfulness in their lives.
Hope began to return.
Within the next couple of years, Gary said he was able to pay off the debt.
His phrase for what he learned is simple:
Trusting through the transition.
Business rarely moves in a straight line.
There are seasons when everything seems to be working and seasons when the thing God told you to build suddenly looks very different than you expected.
Those moments reveal where our trust is actually resting.
Faith doesn't mean we know exactly how the situation will resolve. Hebrews 11 reminds us that faith deals with what we hope for even when we cannot yet see it.
Sometimes the next business strategy starts with trusting God enough to take the next step He gives you.
Gary's story also reinforced something that became very clear during our conversation:
Hopelessness thrives in isolation.
When things are going badly, one of the easiest things to do is retreat.
We sit with our own thoughts. We replay the failure. We imagine the worst possible outcome. Before long, our perspective becomes shaped entirely by what we can currently see.
Gary did the opposite.
He found people who had gone through the fire and discovered that God was faithful on the other side.
That's one reason Kingdom relationships matter so much.
We need people who will pray with us, encourage us, challenge our thinking, and sometimes simply remind us of what God has already said.
You weren't designed to build alone.
Near the end of our conversation, Gary challenged Christian business owners to recognize the resources already entrusted to them.
A business may have finances, employees, expertise, relationships, technology, property, influence, or access to people that others simply don't have.
The question becomes:
What does God want you to do with it?
Maybe the next step isn't immediately growing bigger.
Maybe it's getting clearer.
Maybe your message needs to become more focused. Maybe your team needs to understand the vision. Maybe you've accumulated resources but haven't identified how they connect to your Kingdom assignment.
Or maybe you're in transition and God is simply asking you to trust Him before you can see what comes next.
Wherever you are, Gary's encouragement from our conversation is a good place to begin:
Press in. Press into Jesus. Ask what He is doing. Listen. Then build from there.
Book your Appointment with Purpose
Book your ‘Appt with Purpose' Alignment Call (30 min) to explore if we can help you and your
business by understanding your top 3 business challenges, then we share some solutions to them.
Select your preferred time Appointment with Purpose - 30 min here:
https://calendly.com/garygradley/awp
Kingdom Business Principles Book Interview
If you are a Christian business owner/leader with a team of employees and you live by Kingdom
Business Principles / Christian Values (ie; servant leadership, integrity, 'people over profit',
stewardship, etc.) that you are leading your employees, customers and stakeholders with, then you
should definitely have a brief call with Gary.
God has Called Gary to interview 25 Christian Business Leaders to capture their Kingdom Business
Principles and their positive impact and assemble them into his second book 'Kingdom Business
Principles" for optimal business Success, Kingdom & Social Impact.
I encourage you to book a 15 min Pre-Interview Call with Gary to see if it is a fit for you and him. You
will certainly have an inspiring ‘Kingdom Conversation,’ like I did.
You can select your preferred time for a Kingdom Pre-Interview - 15 min
here: https://calendly.com/garygradley/kingdom-business-pre-interview -
Clarity & Purpose Assessment
Want greater Clarity about yours and your Business’s Purpose and effectiveness for Business and
Kingdom Impact, then please take 5 mins to complete this short strategic Self-Assessment,
www.Bit.ly/purpose-clarity .
It will give you more awareness and clarity on your effectiveness in the fundamentally key areas of
your Business, your Leadership, your Personal & Team Effectiveness, your People, and your
Kingdom Impact.
The more honest you are, the more valuable will be our suggestions and as a thank you, please enjoy
watching a short, inspiring Video presentation on the proven ‘Power of Purpose’!
Please complete your short Self-Assessment her: www.Bit.ly/purpose-clarity
The Metamorphoo Method is a 5-step process designed to help you clarify your message, turn it into something people can understand and act on, and multiply its impact.
Start with the free assessment at metamorphoomethod.com and see where you are in the process.
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Gary Gradley, Purpose Driven
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