What if work isn't just something to escape from, but something you were created for?

God created us to be zealous for good works—not for relaxation or pleasure, but for work itself. That's a different perspective.

Today I'm talking with Christian Staller from Tennessee Business Coaching about an ancient Hebrew word that will transform how you see your daily work: Avodah.

Twenty years ago at a faith and work conference, God told Christian: "This is what I want you to do—but not yet." Two decades passed as Christian became a CEO, started companies, failed, succeeded, and learned everything the hard way.

When he finally moved to Tennessee, Christian discovered something stunning: Avodah doesn't just mean work. It means work, worship, and service—all wrapped into one.

Your daily work isn't separate from your spiritual life. It IS your spiritual life.

Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:

How can we honor God in our business?

Understand that work, worship, and service are inseparable. Recognize God as the true provider, not yourself. Don't fall into the Deuteronomy 8 trap of thinking your wealth and success where all your own doing. God gives you the power to create wealth.

One challenge from today:

Start every day with gratitude before checking your phone or diving into problems. Learn to truly listen—not just for information, but for what's being said and what's NOT being said. Let the Holy Spirit speak in your conversations.

Process every business decision through work, worship, and service. How you fire, hire, and lead in difficult seasons will make you a light in dark places.

More about Christian Staller

Website: tnbusinesscoaching.com

Avodah: Work, Worship and Service

chris@tnbusinesscoaching.com

More About David Schmidt

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Newsletter also comes with Bible verses for business success for you to read, apply, and be inspired by.

Website: redeemingbusinesstoday.com

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What God Says About Business

Leadership GPS: Christian Business Coaching

Are you looking to integrate your faith and business but don't know where to start, book a time to discover if Christian business coaching and training might be right for you. If you are dissatisfied with your current rate of improvement, desire a clearer vision of what God says about business, or even what those first steps may look like, let's talk.

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So work is an interesting concept if you ever stop and think about it because it's essential to survival, but everyone wants to escape from it. And yet work is foundational to your happiness and honoring God. You see, God created us for good works, to be zealous for good works. He didn't say, I've created you to be zealous for relaxation or you're zealous to be relaxation for fun or pleasure, but for good works. to be lights in this world, we're to be lights by doing good works.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

And so that's a very interesting concept and a different look at work. Today I brought on Christian Stoller from NT Business Coaching to talk about work, which I know you all love. And also an interesting Hebrew word that he has found that will give you a new perspective on work called Avada. And so Christian, welcome. And to start off, I'd like you to tell our audience, what is one way that you have found to honor God in your business?

Mm-hmm.

multiple ways, right? But the and I will talk about a short more depth, but that Aveda was exactly what I was missing because I was found out of my honoring God every day. And I thought, what does it really mean to honor God in my daily work with my customers? And the Aveda mindset came to me and it's a longer story. But am I working to the fullness that God created in me?

Am I finding opportunities to worship God in the work that I do? And am I able to find the opportunities to be a servant leader in the work I do? Those are the three elements that pull together the concept of Aveda and how I coach.

Okay, and that's how you honor God in your business?

It is. So if every day I could sit down and say, whether it's with a client or developing some new curriculum or content or whatever, have the work that I put into it in the full excellence that I could produce, right? In my full ability in which how God has created me to write or to have insight or whatever it may be. And then in the process, and especially this is true when I'm working with a coaching client.

where I'll look and say, okay, well, how are we worshiping in this? How are you celebrating your sales? How are you celebrating productivity? How do you celebrate, maybe a tough word to use, but when things don't go the right way, right? When maybe the business isn't growing to the best of your ability. And if I can do that and serve my clients and my clients can serve their employees and serve their customers.

that I think we honor God in the whole concept of work, which precludes the fall. And, you know, it is how God created us. mean, the Amago day is that element of creation. In the beginning, God created. Well, that's pretty important. his work starts from the beginning, and that's what we need to do. We can honor that. We can honor that.

All right, very good. So give us a little background of your business, of your life, and how has God led you to the business you have today coaching?

Yeah, uh, so 20 years ago, literally almost exactly 20 years ago, 20 years ago, this March 2005 we were living in Southern California and I got invited to a conference that was being put on by Concordia university. And at that time, uh, the person that was starting the program, uh, was, was going to call it the center of faith and work. And it was a very new concept and I, and I got invited. I was in, you know, it was my late.

early forties, it was just saying, seems like it goes by way too quick. But, I went to this conference. It was all about how, you know, the whole marketplace concept that we see today. And, and, and I, and I remember saying to myself, wow, I want to do this. I'm going to dedicate myself church customers, how I'm serving and all that. And I literally can remember saying to God, this is what I want to do. And God said, yeah.

That's what I want you to do, but not yet. Oh, right. So you get that feeling and you know, it's that, you know, it's, it's the kingdom exists, but not yet here. Right. We live in that tension and a God who doesn't have a watch on right. That is all for his timing and so forth. anyway, 20 some years later go by and thank God they did because we raised a family. We, I learned so much in business. was CEO, CMO, you know, I started companies.

Hmm, not yet.

I failed, I succeeded, all the troubles, all the successes to go along with it. And shaped for who I was fast forward 20 years later, we moved to Tennessee and somebody had prophetically prayed over us that we were going to be moving. But again, when, so when we did move and it was my children, my oldest daughter and son-in-law just got married and they said, you know, we can't afford to live in Southern California anymore, which is no, you can't. And,

They said, we're going to look at moving and they started looking at different areas and Nashville area was, was high on their list. said, okay, that's good. So they moved out here, got a great mortgage. You're not going to run out and follow a 27 year olds at every women where they're going to want to live. But once they bought a house and it was a good rate and a good area. And about a year after I was, okay, you guys are going to be here for awhile. We decided to follow them. And that is literally when I felt God, and I was still working as a CEO for Southern California company.

and loving it, but I was traveling two to three weeks of every month. It was starting to really grind. And I just felt like God say, okay, now, what do mean now? Now. And we were fortunate that we were able to take what we did. We were able to buy our house and able to set it. And God basically set up that runway for me to go from being the corporate life to now operating in the marketplace.

That was the time.

That's where I wanted to take that experience you spent the last 20 years on and share it, but share it from my perspective. And what does that really mean? And I wanted to come up with this incredibly brilliant name. I've been a brand manager and I've had agencies and all that stuff. I'm going to go with this brilliant name. And I remember I said, well, what's the Bible call work? so I found Aveda. So I was like, OK, that's interesting.

Yes.

I reached out to a bunch of friends and what do you think about this name for a company? Like, ah, it's too complicated. Nobody's going to understand it. How do you put a Hebrew word? What's the graphic? Fine. So I came up with the brilliant name of a business, Tennessee business coaching. Okay. So I was here nine months into it, you know, and you're in the Bible belt here and you start talking about it and interacting with our church leaders and so forth. I started talking about, I'm a faith based business coach, trying to differentiate it it resonated.

And that's when I heard God say, Hey, remember that name of the company? Why don't you go back and look that word up again? And I started studying it more, doing more of the research, the Hebrew research, and you know, in both noun and verb form, it shows up about 430, 460 times in the Old Testament. And then I realized, Oh, it doesn't just mean work that we, what we generate or what we do for a living or what we produce, but it also means how we worship and then how are we stewards and serve and so forth.

Then the light bulb went off and that's been my focus. And that's what I've been focused on for the last almost two years now of just developing this coaching mindset of helping owners, not only from a functional aspect, your marketing, your operations, all the things that I've learned over last 20 years, but then how do we do it from God's perspective? And it always, it always resonates because I always end up going, not just solving a problem in terms of operationally or market, whatever it may be, but we,

always end up going way deeper about, geez, I got to these people off or I want to open up a new business and, or I don't think I'm supposed to be running this company. think I need to sell it. All of these other questions started coming up, which was, you know, uniquely, I became uniquely qualified to speak on not only academically, but from a spiritual point of view. And it's just been fantastic. I love it. It's taken, you know, I could be angry with God. He loves a good wrestling match, but

20 years, he was right, not yet, but now it is the time to do that. So I'm blessed.

Yeah, I can kind of resonate with that. I always feel like I don't want to put the work in. I just want to start today. I don't want to put all this work in that all these people always seem like to put the work in. And I look back, it's like, yep, I put the work in. I'm still getting there.

Go

yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And it's a never ending process, right? You know, and

Yeah. that's, yep.

sometimes you got to go through that, especially a new business. I'm not from this area. I don't have the accent, but I love the people. I love the heart. I love what I see God doing here in the middle Tennessee area. I'm based outside of Nashville, but it's amazing to see what God is doing. and yeah, it's been hard. It's not been easy. know, it kind of, I, you know, I left, walked away from a very successful

and very lucrative CEO salary and role and all that. no, I'm going to, this is what I'm going to do. I heard you got, and there's been great success in that, but there's also been a lot of struggle and, you know, trying to figure out what that means and be discerning of that and getting a chance to talk about what I love to do.

Sure. So you talk about avada. It's a Hebrew word, explain just what's a really brief definition of that to start off with. What is the definition of avada?

Mm-hmm.

Avada is how God describes work in not only the product of work, but how we worship through our work and how do we provide service and serve our fellow members and community and so forth. I'm really hyper-focused on the community. I started a small group here where I'm based out of here in Lebanon. And we just focus on the community, kingdom-minded leaders impacting their community.

What is community? It's my neighbor across the street. How am I helping them to my local church? Right. and that's really where God is leading me now is to bring this message into church and helping pastors understand the importance of work. You know, how are you pray? How are you caring for everybody that's leaves on Sunday? You get up for two hours.

But where do they spend the next 40 to 60 hours is really important. And how do you administer to them, especially in this economy? And over the next five to 25 years, we're going to be entering into a post-labor market where automation and AI and all these things are threatened, changing the world in some capacity, right? But it's an unknown. It's an unknown. So I think this is an incredible opportunity.

Yeah.

for the church to take an active role and be even more active. And I love the pastoral heart and it's close to me. I love teaching and preaching on this topic quite a bit. And it's just, great to see it enter into that. But the simple definition is work, worship and service.

Okay, so avada means work, but it's also your work is your service to and your work is your worship. Is that what you said? Okay. So if I am in a manufacturing environment, how do I view that as worship?

That is correct. that is correct. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. So that's great. Cause we just actually had a, I just did a podcast with my local church, my pastor, and that's exactly the of the three elements. That's what he wanted the talk about. The first thing is, let's just say you're, and I'm actually going to use a good example. So we just had an HVAC unit that went out right at beginning of winter. The thing was 17 year old. It me everything it could give me, but we had to replace it. And I wasn't looking forward to that expense, but the gentleman that came in was starting a new HVAC company.

And he was from a local church here and it was a referral and a guy starting his company out. So when he came in, he was very conscious about the work product that he was giving me the price he was giving me. Right. Yes. He probably could have charged a lot more for the service that he gave me, but he wanted to honor the opportunity in his community to a building his business, providing a great value for me.

And a great service on the product. So his work response, his work ethic, how he installed that machine, the whole thing was at the end of the day, he was proud of that. He was able to say, yeah, God gave me these two. I he literally used that. God gave me these two hands and a strong back to do this work. And I've been educated in this and this is what I do. And I give my success and I give the opportunity to God. That's a worship, right? That's not saying he's productive.

Right? In fact, could even make the argument, are you really the provider? We get framed into the mindset of you're the provider of your family. You're the provider, your productivity. If we start looking at people as productivity based on what they produce, we've missed the whole God element. We're not. We are valuable as image bearers of Christ, of God. That is our real value.

And when he, this guy recognized that he's an image bearer, he's a representative and how he served, you know, no cursing, no smoking, how he was treating the, he had a, a, a kind of a junior guy that he was helping to, to, to build up in the business, how he treated this guy was fantastic. Working with him, showing him, I wasn't going to charge anything extra for it was part of how he was doing it because that's how he's going to expand his business.

Right. So that becomes the business as ministry, his missions concept, you know, bam, business as mission. You know, we've heard a lot of that, those, those types of things, but that's actually worship. That's active worship when he's able to say that. And at the end, it's like, you know, Hey, let's pray over this machine. When was the last time you had a plumber come and say, let's pray over the work I just did. You know, that's giving it. And it blew my mind because it was, and then I explained to him the concept of Ava Dava and what he's doing.

and how he's serving me as a client or how he serves the apprentice that he has working with him. And then in that, how he gives it all back to God and that he's able to do this and provide for his family, but more importantly, provide what God's the provider and he's just actually just implementing it. So it's a great example of worship in a trade capacity.

Sure, and that's a great idea, great illustration. Reminds me of Deuteronomy 8, when Moses said, when you guys come into the land of Israel, the land of Canaan, and you're prosperous, beware you don't forget about God. And

Exactly.

then he talks a lot about it says, because you forget about God and say, my might and my power has gotten me this wealth. He's like, don't do that. He's like, you shall remember the Lord your God. Is he that gives you power to make wealth, to create wealth. And that's the whole thing. It's like,

Exactly.

He's

given you the creativity, like you said, the good back, the mental capacity to do this work. And that's where you got to give God the credit.

You absolutely do. And

that's worship. That is a worship, right? And also what he gets back now, he's able to tithe or do something for a mission. I think he wanted to go on some mission trip or whatever. That's stewardship. And we've heard that how many times. Good stewardship is an act of joyful worship, know, not of obligation, right? So it all comes back to that. When you tie it together, just gives you, you know, we feel better about our work product. When I walk in and say,

Hey, thank God for that. You know, and when I, when I start worrying or operating from a point of fear, geez, do I have enough clients this next month? What's the cashflow going to look like? And I start trying to solve that problem versus going to prayer first, going to ask God and, and, and relying on him as the provider makes a big difference.

yeah, yeah. So what are some simple practical steps we can take to have this attitude? Because I mean, obviously the workers worship work, you're supposed to work and all that, but sometimes we are distracted by the pressures of work that we need to get things done. So is there some simple practical mindsets or questions to ask or anything to keep that mindset?

Yeah, there's lots of examples here.

Yeah, lots of examples. The first thing I tell people, especially when working with a leader or a group or an owner, is always you kind of have to start from a gratitude mindset. Right? The beginning of the day, are you thanking God for fact that you have the beginning of a day? And what's it going to do? That mindset is huge. Now, I was working for a private equity company and, you know, good and bad private equities, right? I was working for a really good one.

And one of the, the leader of it who I'm not even, I don't think he was a Christian or whatever, always signed his emails with kindness, comma name of the person. And I asked him that one day, said, why do you sign your emails that way? mean, this is a very successful guy. doesn't, you know, whatever he said, because if without kindness, if I don't start with kindness or end without no matter what the email, but it could be positive. It could be negative. If I don't end with kindness, I've ended it on the wrong note.

And I thought, wow. So now my emails all say be blessed and kind regards. Right. So it puts the blessing in and all, but it's an easy thing to do is start with gratitude. The second thing I always recommend is now, and it's just not that I'm just a coach, but I do believe the leadership mindset. In fact, I have a client I'm working through this right now with is the leadership mindset of today. I'm a big servant leadership, Ken Blanchard, all that stuff's great. But one of the things I try to put through is

Coaching is that mindset now of leadership. And it's not that you're trying to make everybody happy and feel good and all that, but the foundation of coaching is good listening. I could listen for information. Well, time of day, it? What's the weather like outside? But I can also listen to what you're saying to me, but I also listen to what you're not saying, right? And that's the experience side of things. And last, as a Christian, letting the Holy Spirit into conversation.

So that's another practical things. You know, when I'm listening to somebody, if I'm listening to a client, if I'm listening to a problem, customer service, product development, right? I have another client who's his employee, one his top developers just kind of went off the deep end and it's a Christian group. the guy just started operating from a point of fear. Right? So he started listing, where's that fear coming from? then

you find out there's either a sickness or there's financial trouble or whatever it may be, but just listening to what your employees are. That doesn't mean your company has to become just a caregiving organization. It should be, but I mean, you're not out there for just simply charity. You're trying to a business and our profits good. There's nothing wrong with that. But how you listen, how you coach, starting the day with gratitude and prayer is the number one thing I tell people. then the last thing I leave for executives,

Do some huddles once a week, once every other week, huddle everybody together, talk about what's on each other plate. Cause it's amazing what Johnny and Susan dove, no idea what each one's working on or doing and share success and share failure. And if you do it from a humility point of view, cause most people will look at you as the boss, but don't maybe don't understand your path and how you got there. So the humility thing is huge that that wraps into the generosity and the kindness.

Sure. Yep. Those are all great things and yep, that's good to start. So you've worked with a number of leaders and you've obviously worked in business and all that. What are some common mistakes that people have concerning work that is going to detract from this Avada mindset?

that it's all on them. Number one, everybody puts, and it's happening even more and more with the threat of people get so scared of AI and they're scared of everything. And you look at our economy now, it's everybody is wearing, bearing everything on their shoulders. The stress with executives that I talk to is palpable. I've never seen it before. I mean, I can remember being in those roles.

But I don't ever remember feeling as threatened as people do today. And I don't know if it's just the hyperbole around the politics of our world, our division of our country, whatever it may be, but it creeps into it and there's uncertainty. And most people are putting it all on their shoulders. They're not surrendering it. And the other thing is people don't ask for help. And that goes back to the humility side of things. I've seen incredible responses when

For example, somebody's maybe not selling something or they're not meeting a sales number or whatever, and the director of sales, business development, whatever is driving so hard. Well, have you talked to the person why they're not selling? Because maybe it's not them, maybe it's you, maybe it's your product. Maybe it's the expectation you have, right? Did you involve them in the conversation, set clear expectations? It's so much on leaders.

own shoulders that they are so stressed at a level I've never seen. I've never seen that.

Hmm,

it's interesting you're talking about somebody have sales goals and sales goals not being met and all that. I think it's a tricky line because sometimes the leader actually does see things that the people under them don't. And sometimes it's the opposite where the people underneath see things that the leader doesn't and it's like, that's not gonna work. And so that's where that trust and that communication to...

absolutely.

That's right.

back and forth between leader and follower to say, hey, either I'm not seeing this or I don't think this is going to work and just open up between them for that communication. And then both of you can pour into, it's kind of like brainstorming together, like what you said.

Well,

that's where the coaching side I mentioned where we're truly listening, right? I put together a group of slides and I actually worked with one client. The only coaching thing I did was just teaching them how to be a better listener for exactly that reason. So we use the word communication. I like to use the word listening because listening implies that somebody's speaking. And then I also want the person who is speaking to learn how to listen when I speak back because you're right.

One may have a whole set of experiences that are just not communicating of what they want done or what their expectation is. Or maybe that's that CEO or the business development or whatever just hasn't has done a really poor job of training that person to overcome an objection or to properly sell the product or training them in that respect. And then the other side is that, Hey, you know, we're not having success because every time we come up with a product,

it's changing or you know, it's not really ready for the real world and they, it's all yes, communication, but I like to say it's better in listening. If you can learn how to properly listen and you know, information, what's said, what's not said, and then let the Holy spirit speak to you and say, huh, this is really maybe what going on and let that, let, let that happen. It can, it can break down a little. can have huge success.

yeah.

Oh yeah, that reminds me of Franklin Covey's book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Seek first to understand, to be understood. And that's exactly what you're talking about in that listening and communication. Very good. So we're gonna wrap things up here a little bit, but before we do, what are some final thoughts? Do you have any final words of inspiration for my, or challenge for my audience today around this topic?

Yeah, sitting right up there. That's right. That's right. That's exactly. Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

So my challenge to everybody, right? When I sit down with a brand new client, I explain the concept of what Aveda is. And I said, what we're going to do here, what I'm going to be able to do to help you, isn't going to be successful unless we tackle the quality of your work, where work originates. And as Christians, there is no sacred and secular divide. Work is God ordained. So understanding work and then understand how we worship in that and how we serve in that.

When you think of work in those three constructs, it puts you in a different mindset. It just does. So my challenge would be when you fire someone, how are you serving that person in the firing process? They may deserve it, but how you do that when you're hiring somebody, how are you bringing them into the right team? they putting them into the right seat on the buses? I like to say, are they being, are their capabilities set up so they can succeed?

Right? What are you doing with your profitability? What are you, how are you looking at your margins? How are you looking at your community? How are you taking care of when somebody is sick on the line? And I have one, a good friend of mine, she's a very successful HR manager, private equity owned. They're now going to go through a large riff within the company. How you manage that. It's, terrible in it, but it's reality and it's going to happen. But how her and her role.

as the head of HR for her particular plan, how she communicates this, how she feeds back to ownership, how she guides in this can be a very, she can be a light in a very dark environment in a dark place. But I, my first thing I said, look, are you looking at your work as work worship and service? And if you kind of process that through the other thing I tell people, and I wish I had it, David, God, I wish I had this 20 years ago, 30 years ago when I was starting up.

find a coach and that's not a pitch for me. Find somebody that can, no, seriously, find somebody that you can talk to, that you can learn, that can mentor you, whose only objective, whose only outcome of this is to help you and impart that wisdom and experience. If people would do that, it's amazing how much we could break down these barriers because too much of the world wants to make it all on your shoulders and you better know how to do it or we're going to find somebody else who can. And that's terrible.

Sure.

Absolutely,

and personality matters. Make sure you match up personalities and match up your faith too. Going to coaching from a faith base is much better than secular base, not coaching faith base. So very good. That's right. Yep. Christian, thank you very much for your time encouragement today, your expertise around avada and the work and how we need to view work. And so friends, your next steps is to put into practice what you heard.

Absolutely. Yep.

Absolutely, but it's all God's work. It's all God's work, secular or not.

My honor.

Check out the show notes, because we're going to have links and sites and how you can learn more about Christian's work and contact him and learn more about him. And then sign up for our newsletter to receive Bible verses for business success, delivered right to your inbox that you can read and be inspired by. And finally, remember your