1KHO 827: Peace Before Productivity | Jordan Raynor, Redeeming Your Time

**Ginny Yurich** (0:00)
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All right, here we go. Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I have an incredibly accomplished guest today, Jordan Raynor, the author of eight books. The latest is called The Spirit in You, which is a book for kids. There's actually several beautiful kids' books, The Royal in You, The Creator in You. He also has a book called Redeeming Your Time. Isn't that what we want? And a new book coming out called Redeeming Your Goals. Jordan helps Christians respond to the radical biblical truth that your work matters for eternity. You also have your own podcast called Mere Christians.
This is a lot.

**Jordan Raynor** (1:53)
My wife would say exhausting.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:55)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a lot, a lot going on. So I'm excited to talk about all of these topics. What got you interested in the topic of connecting your work to your faith?

**Jordan Raynor** (2:04)
Yeah, so I spent about 10 years working full time as a tech entrepreneur and CEO. And about halfway through that journey, I was exiting my second company, trying to figure out what the heck am I going to do next professionally? And when you sell two companies, natural thing is to go start a third. And that's what I wanted to do. But frankly, I didn't feel permission to do that because I would go to church on Sundays and feel a guilt that I've learned over the years is very common for the people in the pews of, how dare I want to go to work on Monday and do the thing I think God created me to do, which is build this business or whatever it is for you. When there's a need for people to move to mud huts, 5000 miles away from home to make disciples or stay here and plant churches, whatever. Yeah, and so for a hot minute there, my wife and I were praying about two paths. Path A was to go start another business. Path B was to go plant a church.
And around this time, I had a godly mentor.

**Ginny Yurich** (2:55)
Yeah, I know.

**Jordan Raynor** (2:56)
Very different. Well, very different paths.

**Ginny Yurich** (2:58)
Yes, but also some similarities.

**Jordan Raynor** (3:02)
Oh, 100 percent. And that's why I was drawn to that, right? I was like, okay, this is similar and this would be more eternally significant, whatever. And so by God's grace, I had a godly mentor pull me aside after churches one Sunday. And he goes, hey, I heard you're thinking about planting a church.
And I'm thinking this guy is going to pat me on the back or maybe write a check to help get the church started. And he just looks at me dead in the eyes and goes, yeah, I got to be honest, this sounds pretty stupid for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, whoa, tell me more, Rick.

**Ginny Yurich** (3:31)
Very bold.

**Jordan Raynor** (3:32)
And he's like, listen, Jordan, you're a talented entrepreneur. You served your customers and investors and team with excellence. Why do you think you have to plan to church and do ministry? Don't you get that your work is ministry? And I said, oh, yeah, I get it, Rick. My job is my mission field. I'm going to work tomorrow so I can show the gospel with my coworkers.