A search was conducted to find a new manager to expand the leadership team of an organization. The senior leader, who was also one of the founders, led the search.

The new manager believed that God created him for a purpose and was searching to find and fulfill his purpose. Part of his decision to accept the job was a conviction that this work assignment was congruent with God’s purpose for his life.

During the interview process, the senior leader did not explore the new manager’s calling, even though the senior leader believed in divinely ordained individual purpose.

Shortly after joining the organization, the manager shared with the senior leader what he had discovered about his individual purpose over the years as he searched out his workplace calling. The senior leader listened politely. When the manager finished sharing, the senior leader kindly thanked the manager but then stated that individual purpose really didn’t matter—the purpose of the organization was more important. In other words, for the senior leader the organization's purpose trumped the individual's purpose.

Does organizational purpose come before individual purpose?

If you believe, as I do, that God is the creator of everything, including people and organizations,¹ then God creates with purpose and intent; furthermore, he is strategic about his sovereign rule over his creation.²

In the account of Creation recorded in Genesis 1, God stated that he made individuals as the highest order of beings and charged them with the responsibility of ruling his creation. This is commonly referred to as the Creation Mandate or the Cultural Mandate.³ Therefore, if people exist as agents of the sovereign, intentional, and strategic Creator to rule his creation, then individual purpose must be specific and connected to the Creation Mandate.

David Kotter, dean and professor of New Testament studies at Colorado Christian University, seems to agree with my perspective. Note this quote attributed to him: "The key to finding a calling is to link your life to the mandate God gave to Adam and Eve, and, by extension, the whole human race, in Genesis 1:28."⁴

Individual purpose then must be connected to God's personal call for individuals to perform specific work assignments. In other words, God assigns each person to a specific role to play in ruling God’s universe.

Given the size and complexity of the physical universe, the role of ruling will require—many times, if not most times—people working together in organizations. My definition of an organization is two or more people who have come together to accomplish a mission. The only valid missions are those aligned with mankind’s role of ruling God’s universe. This intimates that organizations exist as vehicles to facilitate the purpose of God in individuals. Accordingly, it implies that organizational purpose should flow from individual purpose. In other words, organizational purpose should not trump individual purpose. Rather, organizations should provide a context for individuals to do what they are created and called by God to do. Then as the individuals of an organization fulfill their purposes, the organization fulfills its purpose. I call this the principle of congruency.

Interestingly, secular researcher Jim Collins seems to concur with this perspective. One of the key principles in his book Good to Great is expressed by the concept of getting the right people in the right seats on the bus.⁵ By this he means that before organizations decide exactly what to do, they must first have the right people in the right positions. Therefore, individual purpose precedes organizational purpose.

When organizational purpose has priority over individual purpose, it is easy for organizational leaders to ignore God's purpose for people and attempt to use them simply to advance the purpose of the organization. In this scenario, workers will be asked—probably required—to perform work they were not designed or called by God to do and consequently can never do well.

If God is strategic and intentional, God designs each person so that he or she can perform the tasks required by his or her calling. It is arrogant of leaders to presume that people can successfully perform tasks they were not designed to do. Furthermore, if God ordains organizations to perform certain tasks, he will send the right people who can perform the right tasks for the right reasons that will produce the right results. Then through the principle of congruency the collective results of the individuals of an organization yields the results that the organization is called to produce.

Why then did the senior leader in the opening story believe that organizational purpose trumped individual purpose? Clearly, he didn’t understand the principle of congruency, but why?

Sadly, this appears to be systemic among organizational leaders today. It is the exceptional leader who understands congruency. Among organizational leaders, it seems pedestrian to view people simply as pawns to accomplish the organizations' agendas. This is dysfunctional leadership.

In her book Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey attributes the propensity to use workers as pawns to pride and narcissism in the hearts of the leaders. Such leaders, many times, want to use their organizations to build a celebrity image for themselves. She says unhealthy organizations are typically "marked by controlling, domineering leaders who drive people to perform in order to build a celebrity image."⁶ Her view suggests that, at least in part, leaders, who assume that organizational purpose trumps individual purpose, are building organizations to serve themselves and their personal agendas.

Nancy also uses an Old Testament metaphor from Ezekiel 34 to support her point. In this text, the shepherds of Israel (the leaders) were chastised by the Lord for failing to properly care for the sheep (the individuals). She says: “Bad shepherds are those who exploit other people’s gifts and talents to meet their own needs and advance their own agendas, instead of asking what is good for the sheep themselves.”⁷

Celebrity leaders don’t value individual purpose and therefore don’t operate on the principle of congruency. As in the example above, celebrity leaders are only concerned about their will. They fail to see the will of God in creating individuals with intent and purpose. And they fail to recognize that organizational purpose is best fulfilled by the right people in the right positions each doing what God created them to do.

The best way to build excellent organizations is to value individual purpose and build on the principle of congruency. Note Nancy’s comments on this point: “The best organizations regard the nurturing of their own employees as a spiritual mandate.”⁸

The organizations that perform best will be those who have the right people in the right positions, doing the right things for the right reasons. Leaders and managers will then nurture God's purpose in each individual and set a context to help each person succeed, knowing that if the workers in the organization fulfill their individual purposes, then the organization will fulfill its purpose. This is the epitome of a win-win!

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1 Genesis 1:1.
2 Isaiah 46:8–11.
3 Genesis 1:26–28.
4 https://tifwe.org/insight-into-finding-your-calling/.
5 Jim Collins, Good to Great  (New York: HarperBusiness, 2001), chapter 3.
6 Nancy R. Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, Study Guide Edition (Crossway Books, Kindle Edition), 370. 
7 Ibid., 373.
8 Ibid., 370.

Biblical Economics