#6: Being a Kingdom Driven Farmer, Interview with Shae Bynes

What does it look like to do business God's way? To make our relationship with God an integral part of our daily work on the farm? In Episode 6 of the Redeeming the Dirt Podcast I share part 1 of my interview with Shae Bynes of Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur. Even though she is not a farmer, she has a lot of insights from her work encouraging Christians in business. I believe you will find this episode helpful, encouraging, and challenging whether you have a farming business or just grow food for yourself. 

You can learn more about her and the Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur team at her website.

Support the Show: https://www.patreon.com/redeemingthedirt

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Redeeming the Dirt Academy:
If you are interested in farming to the glory of God (or gardening or homesteading), check out Redeeming the Dirt Academy! 

Redeeming the Dirt Academy is an online educational mentorship experience featuring video courses, interactive community and live coaching designed for Christian gardeners, homesteaders, and market farmers. Topics range from making compost and simple soil science, to homestead design and marketing options for farm businesses. Also included are pressing topics like balancing farm work and family, making disciples as farmers, and being prepared for suffering. 

If you want to jump-start your faith and farming and join our growing community go to www.redeemingthedirtacademy.com to start your free, 1-week trial today!

Transcript

Noah Sanders: 0:01

Shae Bynes, welcome to the Redeeming the Dirt Podcast!

Shae Bynes: 4:22

Thanks Noah. I absolutely love the name of your podcast. Thanks for having h oney. You're welcome. Well, why don't you just start with introducing yourself to our listeners? Sure. My name is S hea b ines and I am the founder and chief f ire i gniter of Kingdom driven entrepreneur. And I am a mom. I'm a wife o f celebrating 20 years. I'm married to my high school sweetheart in August and we have three beautiful girls ranging f rom, from toddler to college age and u h, that makes for very interesting family dynamics. And I'm a born and raised Floridian, but what I do day to day and Kingdom driven entrepreneur is really inspire, teach t hem mentor leavers in business to do business and partnership with t hat, you know, to be led by him and what they do so they can experience h is best and have a greater kingdom impact t hrough t he work that they do. And so I absolutely love that work and we're about seven years into it right now. And so having the time of my life. That's awesome. So you're not a farmer then? No. And so at first you so graciously invited me, I said to myself, he knows I'm not and I saw you're a podcast listener. I'm like, okay, he knows the school. So this should just be a fun chat and a, and I'm looking forward to it. Yes. Well, uh, you know, not, not everybody is doing that. That is an agriculture is doing it as a business. But I think even when you're doing it for yourself and like my wife does a lot of kind of homesteading and gardening around our house and the amount of that she saves

Speaker 5: 5:58

us through. I mean, just last night she was canning green beans and then we're eating, you know, stuff that would cost a fortune to be able to buy at the store. And so even just if somebody has their own backyard garden, you know, be able to think like an entrepreneur is a very important element of that. And I really was excited when I came across your podcast. I have actually, I'm 30 years old now, but I have always been an entrepreneur. A, I haven't actually really ever had a legitimate job. I, one of the things, I was homeschooled and I was really a mentor by my father and one of the things I remember him coming to me one time was he said, I really want you to just take some time to study what entrepreneurship is. And he actually had me create, uh, interview questions and find all these people we knew that were entrepreneurs and interviewed them about what entrepreneurism was. And so I started out with a blacksmithing business and then I did musical instrument repair and then just got to let me in farming. And it's, it's neat every once in a while, you know, I have a lot of friends that are in and that have jobs and you hear about some of their struggles in just terms of what their job and then you hear about some of the things that can't relate because I'm looking at our financial like Wu up and down and all these, you know, the ways you have to trust God as an entrepreneur and listening to some of the stories on your podcast of it's been so encouraging and be like, yes, there are other people out there, you know,

Shae Bynes: 7:22

they understand me. And uh, I believe entrepreneurship is the most extraordinary faith journey. You want to get to know the character of God. You become an entrepreneur. Yeah.

Speaker 5: 7:33

Do you also kind of start wondering whether you're crazy sometimes or

Shae Bynes: 7:37

you got to be a little bit crazy though? Like you gotta have a little bit of crazy and you, and I say that's a good kind of crazy. It's not like certify crazy, but it's like you've got to just enough good, kind of great. It takes a little bit of that really for just the adventure of entrepreneurship and to, you know, in the adventure with God in it. But it's, it's, it's fun. It's crazy. It's wild. But it's also amazing.

Speaker 5: 7:59

Yeah. Well, one of my actually main motivations about becoming an entrepreneur was I have these vivid memories of always sitting in the window at my house when I was little waving to my dad, driving away, uh, you know, to work and just being like, I wish that, you know, I could, he was doing something that I could do, you know, and be involved in your, and so w he and I were able to have, you know, lots of great interactions. The rest of the time he wasn't at work, but as, especially as I get older, um, he did more computer software stuff that wasn't things that I can be as involved in. And, uh, I was like, man, if I could do something that my kids and my family could be involved in then and my heart, I got saved at a young age and I really had a passion to say I just want to serve the Lord, you know, like that, that is my starting point. And when I saw the flexibility that entrepreneurship would give me and, and I'm wasn't interested in making a ton of money, I just wanted to live the way God wanted me to live. Um, that, that faith element motivated me, I think in my desire to do entrepreneurship. So it's, yes, but I haven't, I hadn't heard tons about how do you connect that faith and entrepreneurship element and hear yeah, this kingdom driven, you know, entrepreneurs stuff that you're starting. So I'd love to hear a little bit about the story behind Kingdom driven entrepreneur and how that came about.

Shae Bynes: 9:24

Yeah, absolutely. So this was in 2012 at the time, like I, I grew up in like the corporate space. So I did work a job and so I was moving up the ranks in corporate America and it wasn't until 2010 after I'd been there for almost 11 years, uh, at a college that the Lord called me out and I didn't know what I was being called out to do. I just knew I was supposed to stop doing that and I was supposed to be a full time entrepreneur and at the time I was doing real estate investing. Uh, I was doing some like online, you know, some online like blogging and some affiliate marketing, stuff like that at the time. But, but income wise, did it make any sense for me to leave? But I just knew that like the Lord is very clear that it was time for me to leave. And a couple of years after that, one of my real estate friends connected me to a woman who is just said, I just really feel like I'm supposed to connect you with this person. It was kind of like a series of divine introductions that led me to meeting Antony Anna Geer who's the Co founder of Kingdom driven entrepreneur. And the funny thing about it though is that at the time that the Lord spoke to us about the reason that we came together being to do this thing called Kingdom driven entrepreneur. Neither of us, neither of us had been kingdom driven entrepreneurs before. We had been believers. We'd grow, we'd have grown up in the church. We, we love God, we've been in business for some years but we weren't kingdom driven, kingdom minded, kinda motivated. We were just Christians doing business, you know? And so when the Lord had that phrase and it was like okay, we had to really explore Kay Lord, what is that like? What does that look like? What does that really mean? Cause obviously each of those words are very intentional, right? You didn't say do Christian business owner, you said do kingdom driven entrepreneur. And so it was the beginning of an exploration for us as individuals and business owners and then became a community and a movement where we were able to share as he was teaching, as we were walking things out, and being able to share that, you know, as we go. And here it is like you know, seven years later. But when we talk about being a kingdom driven entrepreneur, we don't have to talk about entrepreneur, we get that word. But when you talk about what you're driven by, it's like, well, what's motivating you and what's propelling you forward? And in this case we're saying that is the Kingdom of God. So we are motivated by seeing an advancement of the Kingdom of God on earth. We're advancing to seeing his glory revealed on the earth and we're propelled forward by seeking first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. So we're snap you six, three motivated, right? That's how we're propelled board. And that can look very, very different than someone and look very different from me, from being someone who operates my business and I love Jesus. But I've got my business here and I love Jesus. But there was, they weren't really, there was no kind of connection there. I wasn't seeking first the kingdom concerning my business. And I wasn't even concerning myself about an advancement of the Kingdom of God through what I was doing in business. Those were not my thoughts at all. I could still, I was operating in integrity, you know, I, you know, all of those things, but all those other aspects of how God truly desires to be intimately involved and what we do and that all the things that we do, everything that we do should be motivated by seeing his glory revealed on the earth. Right. And so those were shifts that he made and my mind and Antonietta cofounder and her mind and our hearts that then allowed us to kind of live from that, work from that and share that adventure with other people and kind of, you know, grow together, you know? And so it's been, it's been an extraordinary seven years. But I'll tell you in the beginning it was like, what is this? I've never been one of those. You want me to do what? What is that driven entrepreneur thing? You know? But that's, I mean, I am truly a testimony of God qualifies the call. It's just not, not, not that you have to be qualified when you start, you know, in terms of what y'all do through kingdom driven entrepreneur. What do those look like? Yeah. So everything that we do kind of falls onto her inspire, teach and mentor. So from the inside, from the inspire side, we have media. So we have our podcasts. You know, we have, we've just started doing short films as well to really show these testimonies of what it looks like to really do business in partnership with an awesome and limitless God. You know, what does that look like? So we have kind of the inspire side and I believe that that's like the invitation that says, Hey, you know, God's interested, you could have a really awesome adventure with God in this thing. Do you want it? You know? And then we had the teaching aspects, which we do through our course through our books. And then we also have mentoring programs as well. So we kind of, so we have like community and then we have the teaching and we have inspiring people to even walk this journey in the first place. Right. And so we kind of pull those things together and um, it's been amazing. It's a, it's a global community and so we've got folks from all over the world. You have people in our mentoring program and our mentoring community from all over the world, uh, twenties through sixties, male, female, you know, multiple countries around the world. And what ties us all together is just a mindset and our heart, a desire to have a mindset and a heart that's posture, that's aligned with God and just seeing what that looks like to do business with him, not just for him and not just in his name, but you know, what does it look like to do it with them? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's something I'd like to, to flush out a little more. Yeah. That idea

Speaker 5: 14:52

of how does our faith in Jesus impact our business. And I always like, how does my faith impact my farming? And I kind of say, I don't want to just be a farmer who's a Christian. I want to be a Christian Farmer. You know, somebody who's defined by my identity in Christ because we tend to always have our identity and like our career, what we do. But as a Christian, like our identity should be Christ. Everything else should be an overflow of that. A lot of people today talk about, you know, because I always say we want to farm to the glory of God. Yes. I, I tend to see some people today being like, you know, just encouraging people, trying to encourage people by saying it doesn't really matter what you're doing as long as you do to the glory of God, you know, then it's worthwhile. But there's a danger, I feel like in that where it's, it's, it's not really you walking in obedience. It's, it's, you know, it's, you kind of doing what you want to do and describing it. Like for me as a farmer, just having a, you know, a farm for Jesus bumper sticker on my truck doesn't necessarily mean that now I'm good to go. Or even just being, like you said, having integrity in what I do. Like I thought that's kind of what it looked like at first. It's like I'm going to be the best farmer I can and just do it with integrity and you know, we'll see. Excellent, excellent. And those things are important, right? Yes. But I think I heard, um, you've talked about those different postures towards God and I'd love for you to go into those a little bit because they're really helpful to think about what, how do I view the relationship between my business and God?

Shae Bynes: 16:27

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's really good. I find that I'm going to focus in on ones that are most common that I most commonly see and the most, one of the most common things that I see among entrepreneurs is this whole thing around doing something for God. Like I'm doing this business for God. And so they're very kind of mission driven. So it's like, okay, well God's put this, this mission on my heart and so I want to bring glory to him. And so I'm going out there and I'm doing this thing for him. You know, and driven by the mission. But the thing is, and the thing is that that one's easy because you'll get so many pats on the backs from others cause it looks really good. It looks like that that's how it should be. But what's missing from that is that true intimacy of doing something with God, right? So if you're, if you're driven by the mission, then you can actually do that apart from him. Real talk. I mean, ministers do it. Ministers of the Gospel do it all the time, right? I mean like you can run a church. Yeah. But you can do all that. You can do these things for the glory of God auto mission, but with no intimacy with God. So the root of all this stuff, when we talk about doing business with God, it's all centered around intimacy with him. One, recognizing that he actually desires to be involved, not just, I mean he will give you insight, he'll give you strategy, he'll give you ideas like he actually wants to be involved with you. And that's actually an advantage for us because God has insights that we don't. He sees things that we don't see. He knows what's going on and we don't have a clue. Right? And so when we have business with God that's centered, rooted in intimacy with him, then that means that it's just an ongoing conversation with God as learning how to flow, how to work in his rest, how to work in His grace. And that's a completely different experience. I know because I've done multiple things in business. I've had different business postures in my life, but it looks way different and the fruit is different and the impact is different. When you're doing something, when you're doing things in your business or whatever it is that God's called you to, and you're doing that with him and partnership with him, understanding that you are both led and empowered by him and you can't be led by God or empowered by God if you don't have intimacy with God. If you don't know him, you can't say like, I'm kingdom minded, but you don't really know the king. Like you don't have relationship with the king. Right. Can't really be led by him, motivated by him as fired by him, empowered by him. If, if we don't, if we're not rooted in relationship and if we don't embrace just the power and the presence of Holy Spirit in our lives, it's just we miss out on his best. We really do. If we contain him too. Okay. I read my Bible this morning for a couple minutes and I pray. I sent up a quick prayer and I rolled out and that's the extent, well, I put, I put my time in, I put my personal time in with the Lord in, and then I just would've had it and just did life and we're missing out on his best, but yet it happens all the time. Even when you're saying like, I'm doing this for God.

Speaker 5: 19:38

So you said you've never had a garden before, but theoretically to related to some of our listeners. Yeah. What would it, what would it maybe look like in your life? I contrast the difference. Like, if you were going to plant a garden for your family and you were going to do it for God or the new, you're going to do it with you. And what's, what might the difference look like to, so some people can think about like what, how am I being, you know, how am I approaching that?

Shae Bynes: 20:03

Yeah. So I, I want to say that anyone who's doing farming, gardening, things in nature like that, you ha, I mean when you talk about intimacy with God, the opportunity you have to get insight to hear from Ghana to get insight from God about his character or about his work is actually really rather extraordinary. And I was sharing this with you before we hit record. I have a mentee, um, his name is Eckhart and he owns a vineyard and he has the most extraordinary conversations. I mean I have the most extraordinary conversations with him because it's like God speaks to him through his work, through the nature, through what he's doing, what he's putting his hands to. So instead of him just being, oh, did the do, this is what I do cause this is how farming works. This is how it works in the vineyard. This is what I do. And I'm just kind grinded it out. You know, doing what I gotta do, he takes the time to be aware of the presence of God in his work. So it's like, it's like an ongoing conversation with the Lord while he's working, you know? And, and I think that when those who actually work with their hands and nature, I believe I, I don't really want that, but in my, you know, but in my head I'm like, that would be amazing because I feel like the, the opportunity that you have to really connect with God and engage with God through that type of thing is very powerful. It's very powerful. So it's not like taking those things like knowing what, well, these are just the things that do in gardening. So I'm going to go at it. It's like I could actually do this in his dress. I could actually be having kind of like an ongoing, you know, conversation with the Lord as I'm doing what I'm doing. You know? And I also think that, and I think this applies to any type of business and it's that he will also give, like you may have specific ideas around how you think something should get done or there may be decisions that you need to make about certain things in farming, you know, in gardening and all of those things or certain decisions that you're going to need to make. And there's certain decisions that you think are always the right ones to make because you think you understand the process and that's just the way it is. But yet god can lead in a completely other direction. And there could be times where you think something is dead, but God says, nope, there's life there. Don't go do that yet. There's life there. Let that sit. He'll like, he gives you insight. I was, one of the things Eckart shared with his vineyard is he had a situation where it's like he thought that man, that this was just over for this whole particular area. He was just like, I think we just screwed this up and we're just going to lose thousands of dollars. God said, Nope, nope. I'm redeeming that space. Like, and he, they went out and they prayed over this thing. I mean like he's expecting a miracle because God spoke over what he's gonna do in that space. You know, I've heard some really awesome stories from people who were just like willing to not just lean on their own understanding of what they do, but are willing to hear just that, that sometimes that quiet for some, sometimes that not so quiet, Holy Spirit, you know, to give you insight and strategy and understanding about what it is that you're doing as you're doing it. So that's why I said it's actually an advantage to us. We're missing out on his vest when we're not engaging with God through the work that we're doing. And I just feel like, I feel like you guys have a really amazing opportunity to do that. I really do. Just to, just to really kind of tap into that relationship with God in a completely different way in nature like that, it's amazing. And you can also bring such revelation to his word. Oh my gosh. You know, I just think it's powerful and I, I don't think it should be looked at like this is the grind, you know, this is just what I need to do. I need to go out here and be out in the heat work for this many hours. And that's just it. You know? It's not that, right. It's like if I do this with God, the experience should actually look actually look different, you know? And so that's what I feel like you guys have an opportunity with as as farmers. And I think that's pretty awesome. And if you also look at it beyond the thing that you're doing, okay, I'm farming here for what end result? Like who is this impacting? What does this look like? Who are the people that I am engaging with through this work. It's just not me in this on this farm, but there's people that, this is also a people business too. There's people that you have to interact with as a part of the business and there's people who are on the other side on the receipt, on the receiving end of what it is that you're doing as a business owner, you know, are you praying for them? Are you seeing God's heart concerning them? What's on his heart concerning the thing that you're doing to have an impact for them? You know what? What my Hedy speaking to you, that's going to have an impact in your industry as a whole. What is it that you're learning in your industry that's just not of God, that is not kingdom at all, but he'll give you an insight in how to do it in a way that's honoring to the head. All of these things, not just leaning on our own or understanding or being led by experts, you know, and all of those things and being led by Holy Spirit instead just really makes make such a difference in the day to day operations of what we do in business. Yeah. I think

Speaker 5: 25:10

something I've been learning the last several years, it's just that importance of listening. I mean, if I want to follow Jesus, Jesus said, you know, he only did what he saw his father doing and only say what he's heard his father's saying. And if they're not listening or watching him, it's really hard to be, you know, do knowing what it is you're supposed to be doing. And I liked that burst of trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your pads. And a few years ago, I'm not a Hebrew expert at all, but somebody shared with me that that, that in all your ways acknowledge him. It's not just so much like, Hey god, you're there. I'm acknowledging you. And like this is for you, not for me. Um, but it actually means it'd be maybe another way to translate it would be in all your ways. Seek to know me more and then I will direct your path. And the no is actually like lately different picture, slightly different picture of our engagement with him. And it's actually like to know it's actually like a husband and wife know each other. Like that type of intimacy is what he wants. So when you think about that's my job as a farmer every day is to go out and seek to know him more than he will direct my path. Well that's just completely different. Completely

Shae Bynes: 26:20

different. And I want people to understand that it's not just an, I'm not say I never talked about it, about getting in your where we all need to be in our world. You know, we all need to be in the word of God and all of those things. I just don't to look at our relationship and intimacy with God and just saying that it's only when I'm sitting and you know, sitting in my chair off in my room with my Bible or my Bible app, you know, doing my devotional and doing that and that, that's the end because it's not, it's not. And when you, and when you see that said, I love that you brought that up because that really gives such a powerful picture of what this thing can look like, what intimacy looks like and the importance of it. And so I just want a break. I want to break people's boxes of what they believe intimacy looks like with God. Because it is, it is the foundation of all things can driven is intimacy.

Speaker 1: 27:13

Got It. Got to get that part. Because where do we, we only get our identity through our intimacy with God. You only get proper identity through our intimacy with God. So that helps cut through all a lot of, a lot of the junk and you know a lot of the outs, the external stuff that we're experiencing is because of internal stuff that's going on and so we need, we need God to like work through that stuff with us. We have to have proper identity in him and I, it's a, it's a, it's a journey, it's a process, right? But if we don't have intimacy with him and then we can't re get proper identity, then we also don't experience true freedom and it's like so we want that at the core. Everything starts with that. Otherwise, you know, we're just out here doing stuff and saying this but the glory. Well I hope you enjoyed this first part of my interview with Shay Vines. Join us next week for the remainder of the interview. In the meantime, you can connect with me@redeemingthedirt.com. We have contact page there and you can feel free to shoot me any questions you have or suggestions for the show and also find me on Facebook redeeming the dirt

Speaker 3: 28:25

and on Instagram at that are also love to hear from some of you. Appreciate your support of the show. If you'd like to support us financially, you can go to our patrion page which is also under the name of redeeming the dirt and till next time be grateful, be faithful and keep redeeming the dirt.

Speaker 6: 28:49

All right. Before I can get back out to the garden, I've got to tell you about my new project redeeming the dirt academy. I started it last fall and it is an online educational mentorship experience featuring video courses, interactive community and life coaching designed for Christian gardeners, homesteaders and market farmers. We've had a lot of live events at our farm in conferences in the past, but not everybody can make them and make it to them cause we're busy with our farms and I can't afford to put them on all at the time because I'm trying to do what I'm encouraging others to do, which is farm to the glory of God and that takes time and so does my family. So this is a great way for us as Christian farmers to be able to interact with each other. It's a great way for me to be able to share things that I've learned, topics that we have on there. Range from making compost and simple soil science to homestead design, marketing and marketing options for farm businesses. I'm also included our pressing topics like balancing farm work and family and making disciples as farmers and being prepared for suffering. If you're listening, you're probably one of the growing number of Christians today who feel called to serve God through agriculture, whether that be with a small garden homestead or a market farm. Can We desire to live a lifestyle of tending the land, working with our families, serving our communities with good food and letting our gardens, homesteads and farms shine the light of Christ to those around us. I feel a strong desire to see Christians equipped to be leaders in the realm of agriculture. And it isn't just about having pre farms. We need to be bringing hope to the last, the least and lost and sharing the love of Jesus with the poor around us. So if you share the same heart and want to be equipped to be part of this movement, then redeeming the dirt academy may be part of what can help you. You offer resources and a support community to help you get started. So if you're interested, go to redeeming the dirt academy.com. Just start your free one week trial today and I look forward to seeing you there.

Speaker 3: 30:53

Well, I hope you enjoyed part one of my interview with Shea Bynes. Join us next time as we complete the interview and uh, hope you tune in. And I don't know if this is really exactly the way I want to say this.