Christians who work in business often feel a quiet guilt they can’t quite name. Is profit okay? Is sales manipulative? Should faith really have anything to do with the daily grind of running a company? Troy Perkins — gemologist, serial entrepreneur, and owner of three Arizona businesses — has been working through these questions for decades, and his answers are concrete, theologically grounded, and practically useful.
This episode of Faith Ventures takes on the questions Christian entrepreneurs ask most.
Christian Entrepreneurship: The Questions Christians in Business Actually Ask
Is it possible to run a business honestly and still make a profit?
Yes — and the assumption that profit requires a victim is the root of most Christian discomfort with commerce. When a seller gets cash for a piece of jewelry they need to liquidate, a buyer adds value through expertise and repairs, a retailer reaches their local customer, and that customer gets what they wanted at a price they’re happy with, every person in the chain won. Voluntary exchange creates value rather than redistributing it. Christian entrepreneurship starts from this premise — and releasing the zero-sum guilt is what allows believers to serve people in the marketplace without apology.
Is sales manipulative? Can Christians be good at it without compromising their integrity?
Sales is only manipulative when it prioritizes closing over serving. The version Troy practices starts with listening: find out what the person in front of you actually needs before you say anything. Then become a genuine expert in what you’re offering — because expertise paired with real care for the other person is the most persuasive force in any conversation. Troy extends the logic to evangelism: if you know Scripture well and someone asks you about faith, you’re doing the same thing. Calling that manipulation misunderstands what’s actually happening. Christian entrepreneurs who sell honestly are practicing a form of discipleship, not deception.
How do you balance building a business with raising a family?
By recognizing what season you’re in and adjusting before the damage is done. Troy spent years traveling constantly — it was necessary for building the business. But when his kids hit school age, his wife told him plainly that something had to change. He didn’t treat that as a spiritual crisis. He treated it as information, made the pivot, and found that God provided the means to do it. COVID accelerated the shift to online sales and removed the travel entirely. The lesson isn’t that family always trumps work in any given moment. It’s that faithful Christian entrepreneurs pay attention to their seasons and are willing to restructure when a season ends.
Does God actually guide business decisions, or is that just religious language for doing what you already wanted?
It’s neither blind guidance nor a post-hoc rationalization — it’s an active prayer posture. Before major decisions, Troy prays one thing: Lord, if this is wrong, close the door fast, because I’m going to decide quickly. He moves forward unless God clearly says no. Sitting at home waiting indefinitely for a sign when there’s obvious work in front of you isn’t faithfulness — it’s avoidance. But charging ahead without asking for correction is arrogance. The open-door prayer holds both truths together: God directs, and you take responsibility for moving. Christian entrepreneurship requires both halves.
What’s the single most practical piece of advice for someone starting out?
Show up five minutes early and leave five minutes late. It sounds almost embarrassingly simple, but Troy argues it puts you in the top ten percent of employees almost automatically — and from there, everything compounds. Treat every job as getting paid to learn someone else’s business. Ask questions. Get good at what you do, then go help in a different department. Know what you’re not good at and find someone else to do it. These habits don’t make you rich overnight. They make you the kind of person that owners trust, promote, and eventually hand responsibility to — which is the whole foundation of Christian entrepreneurship from the employee side.
Why doesn’t the Bible talk about retirement?
Because the concept, in its modern form, wasn’t designed around human flourishing. Troy’s take is direct: the retirement script — college, job, accumulate, stop — was built around industrial labor needs, and it sold workers on the promise of eventual rest as a way to keep them productive in the meantime. God doesn’t call people to work hard and then give up. Most hard workers who do retire hate it within a month. The goal in Christian entrepreneurship isn’t to stop. It’s to find the work that lets you serve well at every stage — with more freedom, more wisdom, and more capacity to pour into others as you mature.
Conclusion: Christian Entrepreneurship — Hard Work and the Lord Provides
The episode’s final claim is its simplest: life is hard with or without God. Faith doesn’t make the road smooth. It gives you a reason to walk it and a confidence about where it ends. Saved by grace, with limited time on earth and real people to serve — that’s the frame Christian entrepreneurship operates inside.
Sales isn’t manipulation when it’s rooted in expertise and genuine care. Profit isn’t extraction when the exchange is voluntary and honest. Work isn’t a compromise with worldly reality — it’s one of the most concrete ways human beings love their neighbors. Hard work pays off. The Lord provides. Both things are true at the same time.
Norman Horn, Faith Seeking Freedom (LCI) — LCI’s flagship resource on Christian libertarian thought, including the ethics of free markets and honest commerce.
Civilly, individuals are prohibited from intiating aggression against others. Non-aggressive immorality may be addressed by non-civil entities such as the church.
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Christians aren't disobeying 1 Tim 6:10 so long as they aren't pursuing money as an end in itself. It's the love of money that's prohibited, not the mere accumulation of it.
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Christians aren't disobeying 1 Tim 6:10 so long as they aren't pursuing money as an end in itself. It's the love of money that's prohibited, not the mere accumulation of it.
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Historically libertarians have not been settled on the abortion issue, and we argue that abortion is a violation of the non-aggression principle and therefore anti-libertarian.
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God has provided people the tools that we need to face these challenges, starting with the first garments he fashioned for Adam and Eve from animal skins (Gen. 3:21)
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