By Jeff Brink, January 2, 2024

Happy New Year! As the world celebrates the end of another year and the hopes and dreams the new year will bring, many set goals and make resolutions to do something different or better in the new year. It’s like pushing the reset button, starting with a fresh sheet of paper, or if you are a golfer – taking a mulligan.

Christians often set resolutions connected with their faith, such as new stewarding goals, spending more time in the Word, increasing daily devotion time, and growing in their relationship with Jesus Christ. These are all outstanding resolutions that Christians should prioritize as we kick off the new year of 2024. In addition to these worthy intentions, I suggest adding godly professional networking to your resolution list.

Since we spend nearly half of our waking hours working in our professions and interacting with others, professional networking provides significant opportunities to be Kingdom ambassadors and to serve others. “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us…” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

We plan to cover a number of practical networking topics over the coming weeks, but today, our focus is defining your network and what it is to be distinctly present within it.

First, let’s define what a network is (and is not). Essentially, professional networking refers to building and maintaining professional relationships that, ideally, benefit both parties through a mutual exchange of professional advice, referrals, career opportunities, and more.

As such, professional networking aims to create a strong network of a wide variety of professionals and industry experts that can help you achieve your professional goals and vice versa. As Christians, we should place a greater emphasis on helping or serving others first. Romans 12:10 – “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.”

Your network goes way beyond your LinkedIn connections. It consists of family, friends, colleagues, professional acquaintances, those you meet at church, the gym, and really anyone whom others connect to you. For most, your network is a sizable group of people and likely represents your largest sphere of influence. This sphere is an amazing platform to serve God and advance His kingdom.

Near the beginning of His earthly ministry, Jesus gave the greatest sermon ever preached, a sermon we refer to as the Sermon on the Mount. The focus of His message was correcting some misunderstandings of Old Testament teachings and giving clear, practical guidance for how people of the kingdom of God ought to live.

About midway through his sermon in Matthew 6:8, Jesus said, “Do not be like them;” the “them” refers to the unbelievers in the world. We see through the teaching of Jesus that the life of a Christ-follower is to be distinctively different from, not similar to, the world. That’s what being “Christian” is all about. We are distinctively different from the world, yet we are present in the world. This means we are to avoid giving in to the temptations of either assimilating into the secular world or separating from it within our Christian circles, but rather to be distinctly present. We need to remember our dual citizenship, with the primary being the kingdom of God.

As it relates to work and networking, this can be a difficult concept, as many feel like they need to play by the secular world’s rules to succeed. Not true. We can learn much about how Joseph was distinctly present in Egypt while gaining success working for the Pharoh. In Genesis 41:38-41,  Pharaoh asked, “Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the spirit of God?”

Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise as you. You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you.”

Remaining true to our Christian values and being distinctly different in our professional relationships and workplace is a way for Christians to glorify God and redeem culture.

In this new year, let’s resolve to engage and expand our networks in godly ways. Let’s commit together to be distinctly present in all our relationships.

New year, new you, new approach to networking – connect with God’s plan!