257 Five Keys to Integrate Faith into Everyday Life & Business with Mike Henry Sr.

SJ: Welcome to another episode of the Christian Women in Business podcast show. It’s me, so incredibly exciting to have you here. Now we are counting down to our next Thrive quarterly reset which is going to be on the 14th of November. So make sure if you haven’t already booked in that you go and find that out.

We are going to be sharing about all things HR in our mini workshop. Then we’re going to be doing some God time and reflecting on the year and then going into our goal setting session So if you want to join in you can buy just a one off ticket or apply to become a member And we’d love to have you on board now today.

We are joined by a special gentleman who’s on the other side of the world. His biggest mission through his business is to build an on client, online community, to engage marketplace Christians to integrate their faith and work. And his favorite thing to do on the weekend is to spend time with his family and friends.

So welcome to the podcast, Mike Henry senior from follower of one.

Mike: Thanks, Sarah Jane. I appreciate it.

SJ: So you’ve got a really interesting mission and what you’re kind of doing out there in the world. So I’m not going to share too much on that. I’m going to let you share your story. But Mike and I met through a connection accidentally, and then we met up. We’re talking about automations and marketing and stuff and then we’re like, hey, why don’t you come on the podcast and share with our audience what it is you do and how they can get involved.

So I’ll hand it over to you if you want to share your story and share with us all about Follower of One and how it works and how it came about. Would love to hear it.

Mike: So certainly, yeah, I it’s actually, it sounds like this is going to, story’s going to take forever. Hopefully I can make it very short. I first

SJ: Okay.

Mike: to check out church for my wife and I spent about three months or four months really as a willing participant trying to figure out what was going on in church. But my plan was is that if it didn’t work for me, I was just going to tell her, no, I’m not going back. And during that season, they had a man who came to work to our church and did a workshop on how you could know for a fact that you were going to heaven or show someone else how they could know for a fact that they were going to heaven. And up until that moment in time, I thought you had to do good things to get to heaven. I used to, I still joke with people about how I thought That my goal in life was to be the third to last guy into heaven. I didn’t want to be last or next to last, but I was aiming for about third to last. I didn’t want to have to do any more good works than I had to do to get into heaven. I just wanted to do the minimum acceptable. And so here I am now at this workshop and I hear and I learn about salvation being simply Jesus’s work. It’s not as a result of work so that no one may boast, which is from Ephesians 2, 8, 9. And that totally blew up my whole mental model. Because I thought you had to do good things to get to heaven. And so the next day I had a great day at church. It was a Saturday when I learned all this on Sunday. I had a great day at church, but Sunday afternoon I got this pit in my stomach because I had to go back to the job. I really didn’t like. And so I started begging God to put me into ministry. I use air quotes often when I say that what I felt like Jesus was telling me for the first several years was, okay, you’re a minister.

Now get back to work. And I struggled for many years trying to figure out how I could be a full time minister

SJ: There will be a discussion and I’m glad that we have a chance to take part in this event this year. But you have to be here to make this happen. You can’t be here to do a lecture. You have to be here to make a difference. That’s a big point. everybody for watching.

Mike: a daily basis regardless of what my job is. And about seven years ago, I started an online community so that we can help one another kind of live that out without leaving our jobs. Because I believe that’s the next thing Jesus needs is he needs his people to be following him in whatever their occupation is. And so that’s where follower one was born.

SJ: That’s awesome. And story? it’s enough of your story. Before I get in with sharing and asking more questions, share with us what is follower of one? Like, what is the community? What is it about? And what is it that you do? Because I know that our stories are similar, that we both roughly about seven years ago, found a gap in the market and was questioning how it was that We could fill it, like we could fill that gap.

Mike: Correct. so follower one is an online community. I accidentally started an online community in 2009. was brand new and I had just gotten laid off as a lot of people got let go or laid off financial downturn of 2008, 2009. And many people started becoming leadership coaches or writing about leadership. And so I started getting on Twitter and I would write a blog about leadership. I didn’t want to just do another job thing, but also I felt like if I promoted other people’s content about leadership, that would help. Because I was just trying to solve the problem of bad leadership. I used to joke that my enemy was bad leadership.

And so if that was your enemy too, then we were friends. And what I discovered when Twitter was new, this, and it was fun because you were interacting with people and not bots all the time. When I would promote someone else’s blog post about leadership, it didn’t take them very long to start thinking I was a pretty smart guy because I was promoting their content. Promoting content that was about being a better leader. And so I started connecting with those people on LinkedIn and the union between meeting people on Twitter and connecting them with on LinkedIn created this kind of online community, this group in LinkedIn that had, Five or 600 people in it that were all excited about doing something about leadership. And, we hadn’t been particularly Christian in our approach to that effort, but it was so exciting and so fun to connect with people all over the globe who are passionate about the same things.

And I really got excited about the idea of building this kind of concept of an online community where we help each other be better leaders.

But I never could figure out how to make a living doing that the 2009 through 2012 timeframe using this secular leadership community. our

Mike: followed anyone. after we got off that call that day, it was like the Holy spirit prompted me and said there is this one guy you follow. And I started really thinking about what it would be like to have a online community from Christians to help them live out their faith, whether they work for a believer or not, whatever they’re doing, we can all live out our faith. Yeah. step into the calling that Jesus has for us in whatever our job situation is today We don’t have to change jobs or change locations or any of those things And so in 2014, I gave that whole thing away The, it was called the lead change group and it’s still around but it’s not very active. I gave that away and I was working a full time job. I took our job as a vice president for a technology company here in the, my area of the world, which is Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I began praying about what did God want me to do with this whole idea of a community for Christians. And slowly but surely technology started catching up with this whole idea.

We found some online community software. I formed a 501c3 in 2017, which is a tax exempt, that’s the tax exempt certificate in the U. S. And And so we became a nonprofit organization in 2017 and it was like my side hustle. And then three weeks after we got approved with the nonprofit there was a reduction at my company. music stopped and there was no chair for me. And so I was now in transition trying to figure out what did Jesus want me to do next? I started working on this and did some consulting and contract work. I’ve always been in the software development world but, over the last three or four years, I’ve gone to working on follower of one full time and we use Software products online and we created an online community with about 2000 people in it.

We continue to grow it where we’re challenging people to live out their faith on a daily basis regardless of what their job is And so that’s what follower one is and how it got started.

SJ: that’s awesome. And so how do you go about teaching people how to do that? Because you gave a special name for it. That’s kind of mission field based. Did you want to share a bit about that?

Mike: Certainly. So actually two things happened. The first thing was I felt like I was always for most of the 30 years of my journey, it’s been over 30 years now. I felt like whenever I would ask my church leadership what I was supposed to do with my faith, In my work situation, the answer began with leaving work that when I said, okay, pastor, what should I do next?

It was come out here to the class or go to the church and do this or go to a homeless shelter or go overseas. It was always going someplace other than where I worked. And I wanted to be able to, I wanted to come up with things that I could do while I was making my living and doing my job. And we came up with what we call our five daily habits.

Okay. Now I believe anyone can do any day in any job that puts us on mission that kind of lines us up with God. We can pray, we can appreciate others. We know what we believe. We have a responsibility to be able to talk about our faith. serve others. And then the fifth one is when we do get a chance to talk, that we speak for ourselves, that we use I and me statements. And those five daily habits became what I wanted to start promoting in the community. used to tell people a story And I told this young man this story one day years ago I had lunch with my pastor and my pastor was actually trying to get me to go on an overseas mission trip Our church used to that church still does send people to mexico every year to help building Out this church to help people with projects on their houses and things like that.

It’s a it’s called a mission trip in the states Basically, we go to some other place to try and build relationships with people, helping them out and serving them and trying to share the gospel or tell them a little bit more about Jesus, then it’s called a mission trip. this pastor in that conversation that day, asked me, would you go to this Mexico mission trip? When people go, and these were his words, when people go on a mission trip, that’s when they get it. get excited about their faith. And I either said this or I thought this. He and I have talked about this for years now. don’t remember exactly what happened, but either I said or I thought I think I already get it and I drive 30 miles to go to work. How is that not a mission trip? And I would tell people that story and complain about this challenge that the church had of constantly trying to get me to do something other than my job. to glorify Jesus. I told a young man that story after I’d started follower of one and he said, why don’t you do a virtual mission trip? I thought that was just a tremendous idea. And so we’ve turned that into what we now call the marketplace mission trip, is a two week exercise where we challenge people to go to their own job, like they’re going on an overseas mission trip. basically for two weeks, we have daily devotionals that help us practice those five daily habits. In our workplace and we’ve done that with 47 different groups of people 1100 and 25 or 1100 and 30 people have done it all from all of the globe we’ve been out started also doing them with churches where we help churches organize these marketplace mission trips for members in their congregation to do together. To help us be much more intentional about how we live our faith at work. that’s what we do now is we challenge people to get started on this whole concept using the marketplace mission trip. And we invite them into the community and our longterm goal in the community is to connect people by occupation or by industry to where they can help each other live out their faith every day. And fortunately it all fits on a mobile app. so people don’t even have to be working for a Christian to be able to hang out with other Christians in the marketplace and figure out how they can make their faith, make a difference in what they’re doing every day.

SJ: That’s so good. That’s awesome. I love this story and I love the concept of you workplace mission trip and in CWIB, I’m often talking about how is it so our businesses that we can be doing that? How can we be reaching our communities? How can we be influencing our team members if they’re not necessarily Christian as well.

So if to all of our women who are running businesses all over the world with the concepts that you’ve just shared, what are your five tips then that you’d want them to know or to share with the context of where you’re coming from with your background and what you do at FollowOverOne so that they can either get involved with what you’re doing.

Doing and invite their team members to do the same or just that they can apply in their businesses to start that mission on their own.

Mike: Certainly. And even if your business is like a side hustle still, and you have a regular day job where you work for someone else, I think the five points that I would make for us line up with those five daily habits begin by prayer. The first prayer that we talk about is from Isaiah chapter six, where Isaiah says, here I am, send me. He’s talking he’s actually having this dream or this experience where he’s in the presence of the Lord and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, you’re talking about who will we send. Isaiah says, here I am, send me those five words, put us

SJ: Okay, I’ll go to the next page. Okay. There’s the and Okay. So Transcripts that I just sent. Okay. I’ll go back to the Press the enter key. Okay. So Transcripts that I just sent.

Mike: that, It’s all Jesus’s problem. I work for him. And and that’s my goal is to remind myself on a regular basis, to just do what he says. And if he tells me to pay attention to a friend or to go out of my way to bless someone or to give someone a gift, then I do that because I never know what he’s up to. I just can, respond to the things he gives me. So my first tip is to pray. second one is to appreciate others. It’s interesting because I think it’s so

for us to get goal focused task focused, especially when we’re trying to build a business or trying to grow a business.

It’s so easy to become task focused. And Jesus tells us over and over in scripture that we don’t have to worry about that. The tasks. All we have

SJ: Okay.

Mike: The third one, I would say, know what you believe. Let’s think a little bit about our faith. Why do

SJ: Okay. But if you’re doing a creative process, And I know that is quite a long time. But I think it’s great, because there’s a lot of people that are trying to wave your hand back and say, yeah, we want to do this. But I want to know, how do you do it? what people are talking about, how do you help? And that’s really interesting.

I’ll talk about it, too, but I haven’t

Mike: and so we even I encourage people to in their quiet time or when they’re with other christian friends

To

SJ: Okay.

Mike: That’s my job. If Jesus, ideally my ultimate proper place in the world is with Christ in heaven forever. But we’re

SJ: Okay.

Mike: remind myself that fourth the fourth

SJ: Yeah.

Mike: one is to just speak for myself.

I don’t need to be fixing other people or telling other people what to do. want to be present

SJ: Okay. Persons. Okay. for holding. It’s a pleasure to have you all here.

Mike: all the time. But those are my five habits kind of line up with the five daily habits [00:21:00] for follower of one. But I think we can all be much more present the people that we interact with every day. And God uses that forever. much money we make won’t necessarily matter forever, but the difference that we make in the lives of other people will count forever.

SJ: they’re awesome, and I couldn’t agree with you more. We always talk about Jesus isn’t interested in your success. He’s interested in who you are.

Mike: Yeah.

SJ: your day with prayer. Number two, appreciate others. It’s so easy for us to focus on the task instead of the people.

Number three, know what you believe. And understand yourself why you’re doing this. And this kind of relates back to what we covered in the miniseries as well about bringing God, I got God and our businesses together and that personal mission, which is beyond your business mission. Like what is, what is your personal mission and why are you doing this?

So I love that you mentioned that because it’s kind of reiterated what we’ve been going through. Number five, speak for yourself. So, not telling others what they should do, not picking out their specs in their eyes, but sharing testimonies.

Mike: much.

SJ: just the sharing of stories of how God has worked in our businesses. And that’s why we run the podcast is to share stories about how God’s worked in our businesses to help encourage others.

Only you have your own story to tell, like no one else can, share your story, your testimonies and how God’s worked in your business and in your life. And I know so many business owners that

how God’s pulled through and the amazing resources that have been pulled together.

Mike: Hi, everyone.

SJ: God into your business. So can you share with us, or your mission should I say, can you share with us your Bible verse for this season and why?

Mike: Yeah, and there are there are a number of them, but the one that came to mind when we were talking about this is Mark 10:45. In that passage, Jesus says, even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. We’re not called to give our lives as a ransom for other people like Jesus was, but we’ve been called to serve, not to be served. I think that’s the calling that we all fail to understand that Greek word that’s translated serve in that passage is also often translated minister. We think that, doing something in the church is ministry and doing something everywhere else is something else, but it’s just serving other people.

Our job is to live out our faith in such a way that other people go, Oh, wow. I can do that and I can enjoy life the way they do. that’s our goal with everything we do at follower of one. We hope everyone comes away with the, Oh, I can do that. Because that’s what we want to do is just, I can always serve somebody else.

I can always go one extra step and Jesus makes it all work out. It’s his problem. It’s his problem, not mine. That’s way above my pay [00:25:00] grade.

SJ: That’s funny. So if our listeners wanted to get involved with follower of one, what do they need to do and where can they find you?

Mike: Absolutely. You can go to followerofone. org and one is spelled out O N E. So followerofone. org. I’m also available on LinkedIn and I’m on many social media platforms as Mike Ideally on follower of one dot org, there’s a take action page you can sign up for and try our next marketplace mission trip.

We don’t charge for membership in our community, nor do we charge people to take the marketplace mission trip. But I do caution everyone as believers, especially we understand that you only get what you put in to anything that you do. And so if you want to actually faith to impact your everyday life, then you have to basically sidetrack your everyday life. to include your relationship with Christ. And that’s what the marketplace mission trip in the online community of follower one are designed to help us do is using our mobile devices or whatever, build the habits to where we’re thinking about our faith every day. Not just on Sunday. I used to think that my job was to stay out of trouble until Sunday. Because I had a regular secular job, really our jobs are to be difference makers for the Lord everything that we do, whatever that job is.

SJ: Yeah, totally. Couldn’t agree more. being a follower of Jesus is an everyday thing, not just a Sunday thing.

Mike: Exactly.

SJ: and as business owners and as leaders, it’s even more important. We’ve got an even bigger calling on our lives. Not that it makes us any better, but because we’re out there as an influence and we’re leading people, I think it’s even more important that we do be good stewards of that and really understand the calling that God’s Put on your heart and put on your life.

Well, it’s been an absolute pleasure to interview you today, Mike. Thank you so much for sharing with our listeners what it is you do and the amazing things that you’re up to and how you’re making influence and pushing forward for the kingdom. That’s so good. Is there anything else you wanted to share with our listeners today before we hang up?

Mike: I’m just excited to see what Jesus is doing in the world. It was, it’s been a pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much for having me on here. This has been a, this has been a blast and a blessing.

SJ: Awesome. Well, you’re listening to the Christian Women in Business podcast and we’ll catch you next time.