Donna Partow

For nearly 20 years, I have been a leader in promoting home business for women. I have spoken on the topic of  women’s entrepreneurship around the country, including at three conferences hosted by Senator John McCain and twice at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Whether you are looking to mind your own business, start an at home business, lauching into an internet home business opportunities or exploring online home business options, this series of blogs on home business is for you.

I believe there are at least three very good reasons why every Christian should have a home business:

1. To have more control over our time, thereby enabling you to seek first the Kingdom rather than seeking first to please your employer.

   When you work for an employer, you are required to work when, where and how they require. When you have your own home business, you have more control over when, where and how you work. Of course, you are still responsible to your customers. But there is much more time flexibility when you are your own boss. This time flexibility provides more opportunities for you to volunteer at church, to travel on mission trips and just to be involved in your children’s lives. If your child has a school play in the middle of the afternoon, you can be there. You don’t need anyone’s permission. If your church is organizing an outreach to a hurricane-devastated region of the country, you can sign up. 

2. It’s Biblical to mind your own business.  Believe it or not, the Bible does have something to say about working from home. I believe the Bible makes a strong case for working from home. In addition to the example of the Proverbs 31 woman, who was clearly a home-based business woman, consider this passage from the Bible: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody” (1 Thes. 4:11-12).

   Those words were my inspiration almost twenty years ago when I walked away from a steady paycheck and decided to explore what it meant to mind my own business so I would not have to be dependent on anybody. At the time, the work- from-home phenomenon had not yet begun. In fact, working from home meant you were unemployed, unstable or otherwise dysfunctional. But I was one of countless women who had gotten fed up with the corporate greed of the 1980s. I had no desire to spend my life bumping up against glass ceilings, exhausting myself to make someone else rich.

   I also experienced corporate downsizing firsthand. In 1989, my entire investment banking department was eliminated one morning without notice. I vividly remember wandering the streets of downtown Philadelphia in shock, overwhelmed with helplessness. I never wanted to feel so dependent on anybody again. So I made a decision, somewhere between my former office and the train ride home, to launch out on my own.

   My first business was marketing communications: writing press releases, brochures and ad campaigns. It was hard to get people to take me seriously as I tried to compete with the big city advertising agencies. But I had a talent for writing and fresh motivation in the form of my first daughter, Leah, born in March 1990. I landed my largest client when I walked into his office wearing a dark pin-striped business suit, pushing my newborn in her stroller. He said he was impressed with my determination and touched by my priorities. I’ve been self-employed from home every since.

3. Because we are called to be wise. Proverbs 24:3 says, “By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established.” Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, advised: Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again. Give portions to seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.”Ecclesiastes 11:1-2In today’s society, where job security is a thing of the distant past, it is unwise to put all your eggs in one basket or all your hope in one paycheck. Obviously, as Christians, our hope is in God but God expects us to use wise financial judgment (read the Parable of the Talents). Every Christian should have multiple sources of income, not just one.