After 38 years at IBM, I am now a nonprofit entrepreneur. As Executive Director for STEPS Ministries, I’m responsible for most of what gets done. But I’m not the boss.
In the Bible Belt, it rolls off the tongue to talk about discerning God’s direction. But it has been an ongoing journey to become intentional about trying to run the ministry by doing just that.
Hopefully, those experiences may suggest ideas for your company or organization, or for you.
In a Truth at Work business roundtable last week, we were asked to identify BHAGs (“Big, Hairy, Audacious, God-sized Goals”) for our organization. I shared these goals for STEPS Ministries:
- Achieve a personal faith and trust in God that has no limits.
- Expand the scope of our impact from hundreds of people to thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.
- Have “Prevention of Addiction” become a movement that grows, becomes self-perpetuating, and eventually goes viral.
Big, hairy, and audacious? Yes. God-sized? Absolutely, because those goals are so big that without God being in them, they are surely doomed to failure.
Keeping Our Roles Clear
I think of God as the Chairman of STEPS Ministries, and that role seems to match how he has chosen to operate. Like the Chairman of any company, God’s responsibilities include:
- Establish organization priorities and values.
- Ensure an effective strategic planning process.
- Provide guidance to the Executive Director and Board.
I don’t know how it works with other organizations, but God does not normally send me a memo telling me exactly what he wants me to do. On a day-to-day basis, I find myself needing to make lots of decisions and handle the tasks to get the work done.
But I never forget that another of the Chairman’s roles is to monitor the performance of the Executive Director, and that I am ultimately accountable to him.
STEPS Ministries’ operational goals are to serve people by helping them improve their lives, prevent addiction, and grow closer to God. We do that by delivering training and content that integrates principles from recovery and that is Biblically sound.
But it takes an intentional effort to involve God in a literal—not just theological—sense. How do I go about discerning God’s direction for STEPS Ministries? By allowing God, over a period of years and also day-to-day, to help shape our strategy and guide our direction.
Shaping Our Strategy
God has been involved in the strategy for STEPS Ministries by:
- Forming my calling – I have felt a slowly growing call to ministry for almost 20 years. During that time, I specifically identified—wrote down and told people—5 areas of calling related to recovery, STEPS, business, my church, and urban ministry. STEPS Ministries addresses 4 of those 5 areas now. And I won’t be surprised when God finds a way to make it 5 for 5.
- Providing skills and experience – I can see how God used the gifts and talents he gave me plus learning at Georgia Tech and IBM to provide skills and experience I would need at STEPS Ministries. He also led me to him, gave me a heart for ministry, and used the tough times my family faced with addiction to add tools to accomplish what he already had in mind.
- Changing my location – If you had asked my wife or me 4 years ago where we would retire, we would have answered: “Atlanta.” We put our house on the market to downsize, and it sold quickly. About that time, my Mom developed an illness that seemed serious at the time, so we came to Birmingham to visit. A few months later, we discerned that our ministry future was supposed to happen in Birmingham. With only that direction, we moved.
- Directing circumstances – Over the last few years, I did volunteer consulting for 3 ministries here in Birmingham. In each case, I considered the possibility that the organization could be a key part of my ministry future. God closed the door all 3 times, repeatedly influencing me toward the direction he had in mind all along. And each of those situations provided relationships and experiences that have directly aided our ministry today.
- Providing resources – When STEPS Ministries was born a few months ago, the staff was (you guessed it) me! By next week, the team working on the ministry will also include a website contractor, one for bookkeeping, 2 college interns, an accounting firm, and (yet to be finalized) a digital marketing agency. All of those people have skills I don’t have but which are necessary to achieve the impact and meet the goals God has in mind.
Are all these events related to discerning God’s direction mere coincidences? I think not.
Guiding Our Direction
God has been involved in guiding the direction for STEPS Ministries through these mechanisms:
- Advisors and accountability – STEPS Ministries has a Board of Directors and a Board of Advisors. Each member is strong spiritually, has wisdom, and provides accountability. There are also a number of mentors who have provided Godly direction along the way.
- Divine appointments – I am intentional about following through with people God connects me to, and there are dozens he has done that with over the last 6 months. This has happened by people I know introducing me to others and by simply sitting next to someone at an event. It’s incredibly exciting to watch how God works by bringing people into my life.
- Experiencing God – I first studied the spiritual disciplines of this book by Henry Blackaby more than 20 years ago, and I apply them in how we operate STEPS Ministries. They include looking for where God is at work and obeying his invitations to get involved in that work. There are several projects I am involved in now which came about in that manner.
- Prayer and meditation – I pray and meditate about STEPS Ministries every day and work to surrender the outcomes and circumstances of the ministry to God, over and over and over. God also uses things I read in the Bible, books, and other material to provide ideas and input.
- Daily guidance – The spiritual disciplines from recovery provide excellent tools God uses to guide our ministry. The 5 STEPS of Surrender, Transformation, Empathy, Progress, and Service are a great vehicle to keep me on track. The Serenity Prayer helps me call on God’s wisdom to have the serenity to accept some things (to wait, contrary to my nature) and the courage to change what I can. And to keep doing that one day at a time.
Do you want to achieve audacious goals for your company, group, family, or yourself? If you do, discerning God’s direction is the only way to get there.
For STEPS Ministries, it’s an exciting and humbling journey. Will you join us?
Question: What ways of discerning God’s direction do you use in your company or organization?
Action: Contact me at stevecward@lifeimprovementsteps.com to learn about STEPS Ministries.
Photo by 23am.com 
Photo by Walt Stoneburner
