As depicted in the Bible, Jesus was an entrepreneur, a carpenter to be exact. Jesus, the businessman, is the perfect example of how we can build God honoring businesses. We recognized Jesus’ entrepreneurship in the first blog in the Illuminate series, and today we will dig into his role as a carpenter.

In first century Palestine, it was not uncommon for everyone to learn a handicraft; Paul was a tentmaker the disciples were fisherman, and Jesus was a carpenter. The closer you look, the more you realize that there were entrepreneurs sprinkled all throughout the bible. There is so much that we can learn from these examples, especially about how we can have a ministry in our businesses today. But that is a blog for another day!

During his two-decade working career as a carpenter, we don’t really have enough information to understand what exactly Jesus did in his every day role. He could have been a very skilled carpenter that produced beautiful products that everyone raved about, or he could have been more on the logistical side of the business, managing other carpenters and working on the back end of their business. Unfortunately we don’t really know his exact role, but we do know that He likely built farming equipment including yokes and plows.

Scripture references allude to the fact that Jesus started out as the apprentice to the carpenter (His father), but was later referred to the “Carpenter” himself. He likely took over the family business and grew and evolved in his role as his career developed.

This is interesting to keep in mind because as entrepreneurs, we feel like we need to have our businesses figured out right from the beginning, when in fact, our roles in the business (and the business) will change as the years progress. One role is not better than another. We’ve all been given specific gifts, and with time, the Lord will reveal the areas in which he’s calling you to.

Over the years Jesus would have been flexible, responsible, humble, disciplined, generous, kind and so much more. These are just a few of the characteristics of Jesus that we can aspire to model after him within our businesses. Over the next few weeks, we’ll start to unpack some of these characteristics and learn how to apply them to our businesses today.