Let Us Now Pray ... for Accu-Fab
Three years ago Gregg Page and Dennis Zullig decided that spreading the glory of God -- not making money -- would be their company's top priority. They had no idea how deeply the experience would test their faith.
The Fellowship of Companies for Christ International aims higher than your basic business-networking organization. It's a group that supplies spiritual inspiration and guidance for born-again-Christian CEOs.
And it runs a Web site where company owners with business concerns can post requests asking other Fellowship members to offer their prayers. "Please pray for wisdom in time management during our busy spring season," a Christian-business owner named Kayla wrote in a typical posting last May. A CEO named Tom sent this message: "I am talking to a candidate to take over the helm of my company as part of an exit strategy. Please pray I make the right decision."
Sometimes the petitions are urgent -- such as the one posted late last spring on behalf of Gregg Page and Dennis Zullig, co-owners of Accu-Fab, a Raleigh, N.C., custom-metal-cabinet manufacturer caught in a bad financial crunch. The company was facing pending bankruptcy, and "their particular industry segment has been hit harder than any that I'm aware of," wrote Steve Campbell, a regional FCCI leader who's become a close adviser to Accu-Fab. "Please pray for God's intervention for a way out & for God's favor to be shown in the people that will be making some very tough decisions."
Page, 42, Accu-Fab's president and CEO, and Zullig, 55, its vice-president of operations, had seen the crisis coming, but with a customer base made up largely of ailing telecom companies, they hadn't been able to turn business around. By last May, Accu-Fab's bankers were threatening to cut off the company's line of credit. By late summer the threats had escalated further. Page and Zullig were facing a demand for immediate repayment of $4.2 million in loans.
Last September, as the pair headed out for a critical meeting with their bankers, Campbell sent FCCI members in Raleigh another prayer request: "Dennis, Gregg, and their attorney are on the way to Charlotte to try to work out something on their bank note, which was just called.... Please pray for God's intervention, that Gregg and Dennis might find favor with the Lord and with man on this financial matter. The business stakes couldn't be higher!"
BY THE BOOK: Dennis Zullig helped draft Accu-Fab's new mission statement.
Still, for Page and Zullig, it wasn't just about the potential death of what only three years earlier had been a fast-growing $11-million business. It wasn't even that if Accu-Fab were forced to liquidate, nearly 100 employees would lose their jobs. Page and Zullig, both devoted evangelical (or born-again) Christians, had committed themselves three years earlier to running Accu-Fab as a "Christ-centered business" -- one that would base its operation on biblical principles and, they hoped, spread their Christian faith. Yet the recent hits Accu-Fab had taken -- namely, the loss of some of its biggest telecom customers and a sudden spike in raw-material costs -- had been devastating. Although Page and Zullig were trying their best to keep Accu-Fab's Christian focus, sticking to their ideals was becoming tough. "We've had a lot of disappointments," says Page. "We've learned some lessons. There's been lots of days that have tested our faith."
This past September, Page, Zullig, their accountant, and two lawyers drove the three hours from Raleigh to Charlotte to meet with Accu-Fab's bankers in a bid to buy the company some time. Just before the meeting, they huddled next to their van in a drizzling rain. They bowed their heads, locked their arms together, and prayed.
Bibles and business plans
It's not as though Accu-Fab is the only U.S. company that's run into difficult times lately. And Page and Zullig certainly aren't the only Christian-business owners who are trying to mix commerce and faith. Open a local Christian-business directory, like the Shepherd's Guide or the Christian Yellow Pages, and you'll find listings for Christian carpenters and landscapers; Christian doctors, dentists, and weight-loss centers; and even Christian karate schools. And it's not just Main Street-type businesses that are proclaiming their faith. There are old-economy Christian steel companies and mining companies and industrial-cleaning companies, and new-economy Christian software companies, too.
When it comes to rallying those company owners, there's no question that evangelical Christians, particularly conservative evangelicals, have led the way. The FCCI -- founded in 1981 by six Atlanta-area CEOs -- now claims some 1,500 privately held Christian businesses as members in 150 chapters countrywide. In some areas where the FCCI has full-time organizers, such as the Rocky Mountain region, membership has quadrupled in the past five years. "A lot of company owners really feel the stirring of the Lord," says Larry Albertson, who heads the Rocky Mountain chapter. "There's no doubt about it -- they're being called."
The FCCI, in turn, has helped spawn numerous other Christian business groups -- such as the CEO Institute in Dallas and C12, a Christian-business support group based in Tampa. Indeed, an entire mini-industry of management consultants, business lecturers, and authors has risen up to offer advice to Christian CEOs. Back in the early 1980s, recalls FCCI vice-chairman Larry Burkett, there was only one book -- God Owns My Business -- that Christian-company owners could turn to for guidance. Now there are Christian-business videos and seminars and nearly two dozen Christian-business publications, such as The Leadership Lessons of Jesus, The Leadership Principles of Jesus, God Is My CEO, Business As a Calling, Beyond the Bottom Line, The Word on Management, and Business by The Book.
Of course, the rise in the number of companies that identify themselves as Christian reflects the growth in the number of evangelical Christians in the United States, now estimated at upwards of 80 million. Even Burkett suspects that some percentage of companies claiming to be Christian simply see it as a smart way to market themselves to all those Christian households. "There are certainly people who go around parading Christianity on their sleeves as a method of getting business," he says. However, Burkett and other FCCI leaders insist that for the vast majority of Christian CEOs the motivation runs much deeper, and that the company owners who go to Christian-business seminars and hold workplace Bible-study groups are genuinely trying to run companies that reflect their faith -- even if that means accepting lower profits, and even if it risks offending employees who don't share their beliefs. "The reason they're in business is to represent Jesus Christ," says FCCI president Kent Humphreys. "And they have their Bible in one hand and their business plan in another, and they're trying to integrate the two, and it's tough."
