Episode 158 - The Search for God and Guinness with Stephen Mansfield
For those of you who are new, we know that it’s tempting to think that this show is onto something novel, that we’re breaking new ground in the faith and work conversation. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, and with you, we’re really not. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants who have come before us.
Today, we’re going to hear the origin story of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur from the mid 1700s. Stephen Mansfield, author of The Search for God and Guinness, is taking us to a time when the water in Ireland, and really all of Europe was famously undrinkable, and the gin and whiskey that took its place devastated civil society.
It was a disease ridden, starvation-plagued, alcoholic age, and Christians like Arthur Guinness—as well as monks and even evangelical churches—brewed beer that provided a healthier alternative to the poisonous waters and liquors of the times. Let’s listen in to hear about the Christian faith that spurred the beginnings of what is now a global brand producing one of the most consumed beverages in the world...
Episode Transcript
*Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDE movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
Stephen Mansfield: But I want to say to your listeners, because I assume most of them are in business, that I'm actually very, very excited about what can happen through Christians in the marketplace. The studies indicate recent surveys and studies indicate that people in the near future will be more shaped by the values they absorb through their work and their workplace to the companies they work for than they will be through churches.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Good morning, William. Good morning, Rusty.
Speaker 3: Good morning. Good morning.
Henry Kaestner: We are going on a trip to old town Alexandria. We're talking before we went live with Stephen Mansfield, who's with us and talk about our shared love of crab cakes. And Stephen, great to have you on the program. Thank you for your time for a listener that is coming in, because we get a chance to go all around the country and we recently went to Cambodia. What is unique and what drives you to this place that you call home? Oldtown. Alexander?
Stephen Mansfield: Well, Alexander used to be the port town for Washington, D.C., so there's a main drag Bay Street called King Street, much of it still. Cobblestoned got some of the best restaurants in the world. But, you know, you walk down the street, there's Robert Lee's house. There was where Lincoln stayed. You know, it's just a lot of history, a lot of civil war history, a lot of revolutionary history. Of course, I'm a historian, my doctorates in history. And so I just love living here for the food, the beauty and of course, the access to D.C. And I can leave my house and go for about a 30 minute, 20, 30 minute walk. And I'm standing by the edge of the Potomac, looking out, watching the planes land at Reagan National and, you know, just couldn't be more beautiful. So I really love living here.
Henry Kaestner: It's a great spot. And most people go to D.C. won't make it to old town Alexandria, but you should even take a boat ride right on down. We've done that. It's awesome. OK, so is cool. At some point in time, I want to do a travel podcast. This is not it. This, however, is a podcast focused on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur. And one of the things that I think is important is that while I do think the guy is doing a mighty work in the marketplace and that there is a resurgence of faith driven entrepreneurs, there is actually, of course, a long legacy of people endeavoring to bring their faith into the marketplace. And it's it's been going on a long time. At one level, Rodney Starkel, to talk about the rise of Christianity and how Christ followers in the marketplace were different than others. And and that's one of the reasons why the church grew. And you go through to the Moravians and then you go into the late 80s and early 90s, hundreds, even as he just mentioned, as an historian. And he's chronicled some of these stories. And he's a great author. He's written some really, really cool books, a book on manly men. Maybe we'll even get into that. But this story that I want to start off with is the story of the Guinness family. And you've really talked about in your books about the faith of leaders. You've talked about that with Lincoln, you've talked about that with Churchill. But the overlap with our listener base is that of the Guinness family. So there's a lot more behind this awesome beverage that has given up so many great vintage posters that my sister collects on an interesting aside, but tell us a little bit about what drove you into these books and into the story and the story particularly of Guinness, please.
Stephen Mansfield: Well, what got me to Guinness was my love of church history. My daughter is not in church history, but I study church history. And I obviously very fascinated with the Wesley's and Whitfield and the Great Awakening and how its influence on America. And by studying Wesley, I arrived at the A story, so I came at it a different way. A lot of your listeners maybe have read about Arthur Guinness and the history of the Guinness Company, but I found out about him because I was studying Wesley and Wesley. That movement, that whole Wesley and movement basically began in England as an outreach to the poor, as a as a they visited prisons. They worked with the poor. They raised funds for the poor. And so Wesley began to say to the wealthy, to the upper classes, Look, Maikol, you can save all you can give all you can to the glory of God. Well, it sounds simple that our generation and probably to a lot of your listeners, but at that time most of the quote on quote to use the term we would use today is that you just use Christian businessmen. They would have been told what they were doing was secular, that spiritual work was what was happening among the clergy and in the church. And so they should just do their work and then come to church and behave themselves. But Wesley said, hey, this work you're doing, not only the impact you're having on your workers, but the wealth that you generate. These are godly tools. And so make all you can save, all you can give, all you can to the glory of God. This is a holy work. Even said this is a form of ministry. You were in a ministry business. I mean, yes, that was one of the first guys to say this and to lift people in quote on quote secular work from a second class citizen status in the kingdom of God. So that's how I came to the story and that's how I decided I wanted to follow up on it because I wanted to see me having great interest in businessmen in the marketplace this generation. I wanted to see how Wesley impacted it, what transformation it produced. And of course, it was stunning. And Arthur Guinness is perhaps his greatest trophy, so to speak.
Henry Kaestner: So that's really interesting. So, you know, I hadn't known about the story of. Wesley and that he put a light on this, we've heard about Luthor talking about a cobbler and things like that, but it seemed that there wasn't a lot with the original church founders. And you ended up coming up with this thought that if you really wanted to honor God and of course, then you had to become a pastor. And some of that even continues to this day. But you're saying that Wesley lean in to the fact and recognize that are a bunch of people in the marketplace, most people were in the marketplace and that they needed to see their vocation as a holy ambition and how God could be glorified through it. And so in studying that, by the way, Tigard, this force or just help us understand what period of history we're talking about when John Wesley started to lean in to faith in the workplace?
Stephen Mansfield: Well, basically, you think about it in terms of American history. I assume most of your audience is American about the time the founding fathers are creating this country. That's when Wesley's coming to the end of his life. He dies just in the first years of the eighteen hundreds. And so his ministry is happening in the last half, basically of the seventeen hundreds, about the time our founding fathers would be growing up as young men and then eventually creating this country. Of course he was in England and so pretty, pretty profound influence, profound influence on Wilbur Wilberforce, who was so critical in abolishing slavery in England at eighteen thirty three and a profound influence on this issue of the marketplace. I mean, he I had been saying something I don't know if you know that for 20 years I was a pastor. And then I now for the last 20 years, I've been doing what I do now. And when I was a pastor, as I stood the pulpit, I'd say there are very few of us called to do what I'm doing, majority of your call to do what you're doing out there in the world. And I'm speaking I was the pastor of a huge church in Nashville. So I was saying, you guys who are sound engineers, you guys who are guitar players, you guys who are musicians, you guys who are lawyers and doctors and all the things that you are, there's far more of you. You'll have far more effect on the direction of the kingdom that I will. I'm here to train you to go do the kingdom work. Well, later I read Wesley saying exactly that. I didn't know he had said it. But I mean, it's obvious mathematical kind of comparison to make because, you know, how many pastors do you suppose, for example, me sitting here on the edge of DC at can't be but a thousand pastors in this entire city, maybe two, but that's in a city of millions. And so all that to say it's an obvious comparison, but one that I circled back to and found that Wesley had said and that really moved me. And of course, I repeated as much as possible, especially given the platform that the book I've written, the search for God and Goodness has given me.
Rusty Rueff: You know, I'm fascinated by at that time, especially about the Guinness family, which I want you to start us with that whole story and take us through. But, you know, it was pretty courageous, right? Because there were things that had to be controversial, including the Guinness family right there, brewing beer. I mean, growing up Southern Baptist, you know, in the middle of this country, the Guinness family probably wouldn't have been welcomed in to come and give their testimony on a Sunday because that was bad. You know, you can't drink. And the use of alcohol and in many places still today. So as you tell us again, is a story sort of weave in all of the cultural things that they had to go through.
Stephen Mansfield: Yeah, it's actually interesting, it's a little bit different than you describe it, what you've said is exactly what we usually understand, but the fact is that there had been in the 16 hundreds in England a thing called the gin craze. Parliament had unwisely forbidden the import of liquors. So people began to distill it on their own. And the thing they most easily distilled was gin. And so the nation in 16 hundreds became ruined by gin. I mean, it was just called the gin craze. And it's stunning the devastation that happened in England. I won't quote it all now, but the famous bishop said the gin made the British people what they never wear before, harsh and cruel and etc. So people who wanted to help fix that gin craze started brewing beer. They didn't understand all of its chemical properties, but they did know that while it gave a little bit of a refreshment and a little bit of the impact of alcohol, people got healthier. Of course, part of that was the B vitamins that they would've understood yet. So brewers, beer brewers were actually seen as people doing social good. They were not only esteemed for the quality of their beer, but they were pristine because they were answering this scourge in the society. So Arthur Guinness grew up as a young boy on the estate of an archbishop, and his father was known as an amazing brewer of beer for this archbishop. His father was the estate manager. And so this archbishop encouraged him and said, look, this is God's raised. You have to do this, God's raised. You have to brew this beer and to answer the scourge of our age. And so do it to the glory of God. Well, young Arthur took this seriously, learned the craft for himself, perfected it. And in one of the great moves in business history early in his life, he moved to Dublin, started a brewery right there on the main river. And in one of the most stunning business acts I've ever read about, he signed a nine thousand year lease. This is true. I did I didn't just misspeak a nine thousand year lease buy a copy of which, by the way, you can buy at the Guinness Brewery in Dublin. And that's the beginning of the Guinness Brewery. Well, before long,
Henry Kaestner: I took an interest in negotiation, by the way.
Stephen Mansfield: Yeah, yeah. I think about that, really. We want to hold out for twelve thousand seventy one. You have to I mean, they're still living on that lease. If you can imagine. Just to wrap the whole thing up, what Arthur Guinness became very good at was brewing a kind of beer called Porter Stout. It was the dark beer that we know of. Now, if you drink Guinness or you've seen it, then you know, it's a darker beer. And they did this by just modifying the brewing process a little bit. And it was richer. It was some people have called it a beer milkshake. It's richer, it has more nutrients. It has a stronger taste. And in time, this became so popular that Arthur decided not to brew any other kind of beer that his Guinness brewery in Dublin, he brewed this dark stout and it just exploded in popularity. And so the next the next big issue, we want to talk about it and I'll pause to take your questions. But what did Arthur do with his astonishing wealth? Because he moves from being the son of an estate manager to being one of the wealthiest guys in Dublin, part of the upper class, the aristocrats. And that's where the story really starts to take off.
Rusty Rueff: So we definitely want to go there and I want you to go there next. But before we do, can you just dove into a little bit about how Arthur felt a calling? All right. Did he feel a
Stephen Mansfield: calling to do this? Yeah. The archbishop for whom his father worked, basically discipled and mentored young Arthur just in the way of just impacting the young man who was on his estate for 18, 20 years. And when he saw his skill in brewing, just like if you were mentoring some young man and he had an amazing skill at playing guitar or painting or doing accounting, you would say clearly this is a gift from God. Clearly this is a mandate for your life. And that's what the archbishop told young Arthur. And so Arthur went out in the world wanting to be a man of means and wanting to be a success. But always having in the back of his mind what the archbishop had said, which is a specific and defining talent, is clearly a gift from God. You didn't create this. This didn't just stumble into your life. You know, if I can play guitar like Segovia, clearly this is a gift from God. And our father had a facility with languages or law or whatever it is I might be gifted for. And that's how Arthur went out into the world, what language he would have used. We don't know because he did write about it. But there's no question he spoke in terms of mandates. He spoke in terms of having a commitment from God. And that's why he was really prime when he crossed paths with Wesley, which happened a little bit later after he'd begun to make money because he knew he had this commission or God, he was brewing beer. He was successful, but he didn't see any Kingdome impact coming from it yet. It took Wesley showing up in Dublin and speaking at St Patrick's Cathedral and beginning to talk to him about MAIKOL. You can save all you can give all you can to the glory of God that this connection really happened to produce the unbelievable benevolence of the Guinness Company.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah. I think that's fantastic because one of the marks that we have of Faith driven entrepreneurs we have it on our website is this idea of called to create. And I really love the way you explain that these gifts that we have, that that is part of the calling. Right. That if the gifts that we've been given, whether it's any of the things that you mentioned or it's just, you know, a strategic mind or ability to communicate, or if you don't recognize that as part of the calling, you may just be walking away from what God wants you to do. And we've got to recognize that
Stephen Mansfield: I think that's unbelievably important, and I want to say very quickly that in our generation, a lot of the young and a lot of Christians believe that this recognition, this becoming aware of your calling or gifting or destiny happens in dramatic supernatural experiences. And that could happen. I mean, we certainly know that Paul was met on the Damascus road and told what he was meant to do, the apostle Paul in scripture. However, for most of us, it's about these gifts emerging over time. It's not a dramatic angel appearing in our bedroom. It is these gifts emerge. I now know that I have a facility with words and I have a facility to coach leaders. I know that because that emerged over time. At no time did I have an angelic voice or any kind of supernatural experience. I believe in a calling and over time I began to find out that I had a facility with words and a facility also in the field of history. Well, again, it never came in a dramatic moment. So I think we need to encourage people that it's not like Arthur, just suddenly an angel appeared. I keep on saying that, but I'm trying to use that as a metaphor for supernatural, instantaneous experiences for most of us. We do whatever our hand finds to do and our gifts emerge. And then we go, OK, if I've got that kind of pronounced gift in this certain field, clearly it is the work of God. It's something I could have created or my parents could have forced on me or just my combination of experience has produced. So hopefully that's an encouragement to some of your listeners.
Henry Kaestner: It's definitely an encouragement. I think you're right on with that.
William Norvell: So we did jump ahead a little bit. Just said, you know, you have a facility with words and ability to coach leaders. Obviously, we I think we talked about your authorship. Could you give us maybe a two minute flyover of what else sort of you do and kind of what your day job is with the leaders and things like that?
Stephen Mansfield: I am best known as The New York Times best selling author. I've been very fortunate. I've written a couple of dozen books and two or three, maybe four of them have been New York Times best sellers.
Henry Kaestner: Which ones? Tell us. Give us an
Stephen Mansfield: overview. I wrote the faith of George W. Bush years ago, which is massive. I'm not bragging. I'm just saying it's the one that repositioned me. I co-wrote a book with Tom DeLay, who was then the speaker of the House. No retreat. No surrender is what it's called, God and Goodness, and also wrote a book on Churchill. And so all of those books sold very well. I've got others that have sold very well that haven't been on the New York Times bestseller list because of what they're about. All my books for Men, for example, are very strong sellers, but they sell kind of at a networking level in the Christian market and they haven't been on the New York Times bestseller list. So that repositioning me, I'm a regular commentator on faith issues, faith and culture issues for Fox and CNN. It's one of the reasons I'm in DC. I have two firms. One creates and manages literary projects, and my wife is the CEO of that one and the other is the Mansfield Group. And what we do is we consult and guide leaders specifically focused on their speaking ability, but it ranges into their leadership as a whole and sometimes into consulting on policy. So in DC, every congressman wants to be a senator. Every senator wants to run for president. Every general wants to go into the private sector. And all of them need to be able to speak better because our schools don't, for the most part, teach public speaking and oral communication classes anymore. So we do a huge amount of coaching, high level leaders and then we get drawn into policy and what have you. So if you're living in my house, it can it can seem like I'm some kind of front line security expert. If a bunch of people invade the capital, for example, my phone starts.
Henry Kaestner: That'll never happen.
Stephen Mansfield: It'll never happen. My phone starts ringing from Fox and CNN because I'm supposed to comment on it. And then the other phone also starts ringing because I'm the policy advisor to a whole bunch of people who are up on the Hill. And so that's that. And then I have my international work. I am an outspoken advocate and a global advocate for the Kurds. It's a great deal to work with the Kurds, advocate for them. I'm not an official lobbyist for anyone, but I did a TED talk and wrote a book about the Kurds and then they said, will you please help us? They were in crisis. And so I testified before Congress and urged people to advise congressional leaders, even the White House, on Kurdish policy, which means the last four years have been difficult. But nevertheless, nevertheless, I do all of that and then a huge amount of speaking, a huge amount of showing up at this fundraiser, that church, this university, etc.. So that's that's an overview of what I do.
Henry Kaestner: So some chance that the guys who don't have it wrong, that indeed you are the most interesting man in the world.
Stephen Mansfield: Well, anyway, I'm not sure anybody else is, but I am.
Henry Kaestner: I'm fascinated by it. So let me just circle back to something I think that you brought up that is very, very profound, is really important, and maybe it's obvious. But let's look into a little bit more, which is that a Faith Driven Entrepreneur Arthur Guinness or somebody listening to this in twenty, twenty one doesn't necessarily need to have a Damascus road moment. It's the very reality of the fact that they have any type of gifts and talents and interest. Those in and of themselves had been created by God and are a coin unto themselves. And it's a desire to know God and honor him with all that we have. That allows us to have this reflection that, oh, my goodness, of course, I've been called to this space and of course I can use it to honor God. Tell us more about the formation of that, maybe through Wesley, maybe through others and maybe through Guinness. And just as an author, just reflect on that a little bit more about the integrating faith into this story. Just riff on that a little bit, because that was a really important point.
Stephen Mansfield: Yeah. This through your personal faith and your personal experience with God. And for us Christians, that's through Jesus Christ. But then there is the power of a biblical worldview, a powerful of the framing of the world, the lens through which you view the world. And some of the people I've written about and admire in history are deeply devoted Christians, people who are on their face before God, their leadership springs out of that personal fountain, so to speak, with God. But others have been so mentored in a distinctly biblical worldview that they view the world through that lens. That's distinctly Christian lens, even if they have it, for whatever reason, come to an intensely transforming personal experience. It's the way they understand the world. And most leaders fall into one of those two categories unless they're off completely other faiths where they weren't impacted by Christianity at all. And so a person, a leader, you know, a lot of leadership is about values. A lot of leadership is about vision. A lot of leadership is about a sense of purpose. Whether you want to we're going to call that in Christian terms, predestination or destiny. There's still a sense of purpose involved in leadership. And Christianity can frame that for a person without them necessarily having a personally transforming experience with Jesus Christ. I'm not commending it. I'm in that first category. A devoted Christian, happy to bear the language born again. That's a biblical and deeply committed to the person of Jesus. But in leadership in general, it is possible for a person to view the world through a biblical worldview lens and sense that the biblical worldview is so powerful is the truth. This can produce great leadership, and many of our great leaders in history, certainly in American history, were strong people of broad biblical faith viewing the world again through a broad lens. But I can't be sure. I can't say to you I'm not 100 percent sure I'll see George Patton in heaven. But I 100 percent believe he was disciple in the Christian faith and understood his role and the role of the U.S. in World War Two and distinctly Christian terms. That's just how it is. And so we'd have to go through history and talk about these different figures. But but I think that's a profoundly important issue. And the more you have a Christian culture, England, America, other countries that have been at certain periods in their history strongly Christian, the more you might have people who have been tutored and schooled in a biblical worldview without necessarily having come into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And I'm not saying that's enough. I'm just saying it can produce amazing leaderships. And so much of what leadership is about is drawn from the kinds of things the Christian world view produce.
Henry Kaestner: So it strikes me now, though, that 50 years on, six years on from a World War two generation in which Eisenhower and Patton and MacArthur and Churchill and others that might not be thought of this as a Billy Graham type of of a figure, all acknowledge that there is a that we're one nation under God and that that that that faith was something that really helped to define culture. That doesn't seem to be the case so much now. Do you have any reflections on leadership and where we're going is in American culture now?
Stephen Mansfield: Yeah, we are we have a far less of a Christian consensus on American culture now, but I want to say to your listeners, because I assume most of them are in business, that I'm actually very, very excited about what could happen through Christians in the marketplace. These studies indicate recent surveys and studies indicate that people in the near future will be more shaped by the values they absorb through their work and their workplace to the companies they work for than they will be through churches. Now, I'm not an anti church guy. Trust me, I'm a member of two churches, Nashville and in D.C. and so I'm definitely going to heaven. That's a joke. I'm not I'm not basing my salvation on. I don't want to do. However, church is declining a bit and influence. Church attendance is declining a bit. But where people are absorbing their values to use the broad term is in their workplace. So the big companies and the smaller ones are far more formulative in the lives of people. So I have tremendous hopes for the future of Christians in the marketplace and leading companies like Guinness. It's one of the main reasons I wrote the book Leading Transforming companies like Guinness that can end up changing not just the lives of those who work for them, but entire nation. And I think I believe the Guinness has. So I'm very excited about that. And I also trust for our return of the strength of the church. But it's the faith. It's the values. It's the connection to Jesus that is most important to me. And I think Christian businesses are actually without being inappropriate or violating the First Amendment or anything of that nature, are going to draw people into a Christian life because of the power of what people see as they work.
Rusty Rueff: It's a perfect circle back to Vick and his family. So, you know, as you wrote in your book, there's really three pieces or three parts of that family, the Berring part, the religious missionary, and then also banking. So using what you did through that lens of basically the impact of work, if you will, in marketplace, in the faith, how did you see their faith affecting all of those groups?
Stephen Mansfield: Well, that's actually a great question, because it's the beauty of what Wesley taught them that made them feel comfortable. And not only brewing beer, which, as you said earlier, many people consider secular even to this day, but being in banking, et cetera. So, yes, some of them went on to missions, work, and they were connected to Hudson Taylor. But the genesis have been in fashion. They've been in banking. They've been in higher finance, they've been in brewing. They've been in real estate, et cetera. And all of them, at least in the early days, felt like this was a divine calling, that that's what they were made to do. It's like a pastor friend of mine who's got five kids and one of them went into the pastorate. The other ones went on to law, medicine and real estate. And all of them would say, yeah, I was called to this is my dad is to the ministry. And that's exactly how it happened. And the Guinness Company, one branch stayed in the brewing area, thank God, because they generated most of the wealth. But others went off into other areas, including ministry, without any of them thinking that they were doing secular work or spiritual work that was separate from all other endeavors. They believed that all work is sanctified and ordained of God and used by God.
William Norvell: That's great. And one of the things I'd love to ask, we love, obviously, what we love doing this podcast is hearing stories and not that every entrepreneur is going to listen and take, you know, exactly that story and make it their own. But pieces, right. Wisdom over generations and taking these pieces of stories and and hearing how that translates into what God is doing in their business is something we love. And we just see it all the time. And I'd love to ask the same of the Guinness family. So as you think about the company as you researched it, how did they think about, you know, we used the phrase spiritual integration at the company, whether it's with employees, whether it's the company as a whole, whether it's the community in which they're involved, how do they see that as a positive force for good? And what maybe could some of our entrepreneurs learn?
Stephen Mansfield: Well, the genesis, because they were living in a strongly Christian Ireland at the time, they didn't see it to be so much their role as to actually preach the gospel on the floor of the faculty, although they had chapels and they welcomed local pastors in to do that work, the way they saw themselves living out the gospel was to make a difference in people's lives. Along the lines of the the words are overused these days, but the social impact that Jesus called people to have, caring for the poor, alleviating poverty, ministering to the sick, helping prisoners, Arthur Guinness started a hospital for the poor. He worked against Duling, which was a big social issue at the time. He rebuked his own social class for their excesses and callousness towards the poor. In England, a man named Robert Rake's started the Sunday school movement. But in Ireland, a man named Arthur Guinness started the Sunday school movement. He started the entire Sunday school movement for the entire country and et cetera. And as you go on down through history, it's stunning what the Guinness is did. In fact, they started a thing called the IB trust. When they became aristocrats, they became the Lords Ivy and the Ivy Trust at times in Irish history. Has given more money to the poor than the actual welfare system in Ireland. It's actually been able to imagine imagine somebody of the US being able to say that.
Henry Kaestner: Oh, my goodness. So this big scale there. Did you just say so that this this trust, this foundation they set up from their personal wealth, from the from what had happened in the business? The profits of business eclipses that of the government aid.
Stephen Mansfield: It has at times in some years, yes, it has actually eclipsed the amount of government aid in the same year. That could be because of economic depressions or whatever. I don't know the exact circumstances, but there's no question the Ivy trust Ivy, the Ivy Trust was so well funded by the goodness's you know, they might be having success and astonishing success in a year when the Irish government was having trouble raising funds through taxes and whatever other fees and so on. And so in those years, the Ivy Trust would give more than the Irish government. So that's the kind of impact they've had. In fact, when I do my talks on the as I start with nineteen twenty eight, I say if you had worked for the Guinness is a nineteen twenty eight you would have. And I go through a long list of benefits. I mean you can't believe it. The things they provided, burial services and banking services and nurses who would visit your home to help your family be healthy on and on and on. And of course, two pints of the good stuff every day. And it was absolutely transforming. Women told their daughters, our mothers told their daughters, make sure you marry against man. And all of that came about because the Guinness has said, look, we can model the gospel in practical ways. Let the church teach people about scripture. We believe in it. We'll welcome pastors for everything on the floor. But what we'll do is we'll transform poverty in our generation. And they did it. They did it. And I could go on and on about the stories of how they tore down entire neighborhoods and rebuilt them for the poor, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They literally transformed Ireland with their wealth and largesse.
William Norvell: Wow, what an amazing story. Is there a way and I know it's a long history, so maybe pick a moment in time could be today. Is there a way to put any numbers on the size and scale? I don't know. Revenues of the company, employees of the company. I mean, this just sounds quite large. I'm just interested if you could put any numbers to anything for us to give.
Stephen Mansfield: It's a little hard to do because they went so international. But bear in mind that in the middle of the eighteen hundreds, there were more than 2000 employees just at the Dublin brewery now. By contrast, I don't think there's ever I'm not an expert on beer and brewing, but I've been told by people who should know that there's never been a brewery in the United States that employed more than two thousand people. I mean, that makes sense to me. I mean, five hundred people is a huge amount of people working at a brewery. So at one point, the Guinness Brewery had over a couple of thousand working there. And then, of course, they went international. I mean, one of the funny moments I had when I was writing this book is that I was meeting with some Nigerian businessmen. Guinness is brewed in Nigeria and their commercials, which are world famous. The commercials in Nigeria are all done by a Nigerian actor. So I had to actually argue with these men to tell them, you know, Guinness is actually, you know, was founded in Ireland. Oh, no, no. I tell you, it's not true. And they thought it
Henry Kaestner: was a Nigerian beer.
Stephen Mansfield: They thought it was Nigerian because Guinness does such a good job of embracing the culture in which they brew. So it's a little hard to get statistics because, you know, Nigeria is not sending us their business model, their numbers. But all that I can say is it was massive. In fact, the Guinness in 1880, six Guinness went public. And so you can buy stock and the Guinness just became the wealthiest people in the entire British Isles. So the scale of this thing is massive. And again, it's still Guinness to this day is one of the most famous brands in the world that's. See, just all of your listeners go on YouTube and just look at some of the Guinness commercials. But I do my keynote presentation about this and make speeches to business groups and so on. I play a couple of the Guinness commercials and people are weeping. People are in tears because they still build on the old values. They still build on the ideas of character and devotion to work and serving society. And I'm telling you, I've spoken to massive gatherings of business people and I look up and people are crying, wiping tears away from their eyes based on the beer commercials, of all things. And that's because the Guinness values breathe through.
William Norvell: That seems starkly different than the Bud Light marketing campaigns.
Stephen Mansfield: Yeah, really? Yeah. I'm I'm happy to laugh at frogs going a bit, but the Guinness commercials really are like sermons on themselves. It's pretty amazing
William Norvell: what a redeeming I mean, just like you speak. I'm just thinking about, you know, what we talk about on this podcast all the time. Right. Are there places that we can redeem in the workplace, in the market with our Christian world view, with the lens of Jesus on and just even the simple? Is that right? We all know what other beer commercials look like. The fact that I mean, I can't wait to watch them, that it's a sermonette in thirty seconds based on values and devotion to work. I mean, that's not simple, but it's simple, but it's profound.
Stephen Mansfield: Yeah. You're saying something that I really moved by. I drink alcohol. I hate the question. Do you drink? Because it sounds like somebody is asking me if alcohol is my hobby. Do you drink? I drink a glass of wine with my wife every evening for dinner or whatever. Or else I drank and I'm aware that a lot of Christians believe, some Christians believe that alcohol is forbidden. It's biblically not forbidden. In fact, Jesus made the stuff. But I'm not taking that fight right now. Drink, don't drink. I don't care. What I love, though, is that when God decided to use the genesis, he put them in something in a profession, in a production that many people would consider to be secular from the start. OK, so that's fine. Consider beer secular. It's fine with me. You can't consider it evil. I mean, it's just water and rain, but still consider it secular. So God used the genesis who were brewing beer to change the world, literally to make a massive difference. And the world. I like that he did that. I mean, whether he wants to do with guns or fudge, I don't care. Whatever you produce, do it. But my point is that I like the picture. I like the story of this being a secular thing and God being able to use these people to change lives with something that other folks wouldn't touch because it's so quote on quote tainted. Now, I'm not saying you can change the world through prostitution or something that just outright sin, but I do believe strongly that God can use secular and very common things to transform societies by the wise use of them.
Henry Kaestner: So as you reflect on the last hundred years or so of much lying in that, of course, because they went public in nineteen eighty six, I'm just fascinated by, again, by their foundation that they set up being able to do more in some years to impact the lives of the poor than the actual government did. And I'm wondering, as you are talked to by Fox and CNN and all those folks right now and you're in D.C., so you get a function of what the government does and doesn't do and should or shouldn't do. And you don't need to necessarily talking about your personal beliefs on that here. But I do wonder what your thoughts are, the lessons that you see from that as it applies to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur this listen to this in twenty twenty one, as they are called to do something with excellence and use all their gifts for the glory of God. What does it look like for them to love their neighbor? You know, it sees it. Maybe this is leading you to much, but it seems that, gosh, you know, we're going to do our business software as a service or whatever. The business is as good as we can. To the extent that we make money on this, then we'll go ahead and of course, we'll tithe and maybe we'll give generously. But you're talking about an entire company going ahead and saying we want to use this platform to bless others. What does that look like now? Twenty, twenty one?
Stephen Mansfield: Well, in the back of my book, I've got five pillars of Genesis success. And one of them that I really admire is their strong belief. And these are their exact words. You cannot make money from people unless you are willing for them to make money from you. And so in their business dealings, they did not have a scorched earth policy. They did not see themselves, as I have it, one unless the other guys impoverished. They believe that a rising tide lifts all ships, that a good business transaction was one in which both sides prosper. So this is an example of the kinds of things they did and they transformed brewing of every kind, many, many of the brewers that Ireland, for example, their rise from the moment the Guinness decided to become large and to bless other people. The other thing is that they very strongly believed that their job was to invest in their employees. Their employees were not just people who signed a piece of paper and went to work for them. Their employees were people who had been given them a sacred trust. And so that's why they transformed their lives. I mean, even down to the you would work for Guinness in nineteen twenty eight and you were single. Guinness would have paid every year for you to go out in the country and get some fresh air and they had a dating service for the single young men. It would have been all been working on the floor and they made sure that the young man had a young woman to take out into the country for a day, and they paid all the expenses. They were that concerned about the welfare of their employees. And so to use the actual employment as an opportunity for uplift, a word that's overused these days but very powerful, an opportunity to transform poverty and opportunity to invest and to teach and to train. Quite frankly, Guinness by the nineteen twenties was doing more than what we now celebrate and Microsoft and Apple and so on. These amazing benefits these people tend to have for their time. Guinness was off the charts with all of that, including like massages and libraries and sports, all kinds of things. So I think those are two principles that are really, really important. But the one they really talked about the most is one that your your listeners can take away this third one. And it was based on something that Prince Albert had said. And they said, find out what God is doing in your generation and get involved in it. Find out what God is doing in your generation and get involved in it. And so that's a little bit a matter of discernment, not as specific as perhaps some might want. But what is God doing today? I mean, for those of us who believe in God, look at the society we're living in. God is trying to bring people together. Of course, he's always trying to get his truth into people's lives and and get his son their focus, but. Oddest reaching across lines, God is calling us to be healers and reconciler, as God is calling us to unify for Christian people is specifically to build. The cross-line society can't seem to build across racial lines, socioeconomic lines, political lines. So that was one of the things they did. They would they would literally get in a board meeting, look around and say, all right, what do we think God's doing in our generation? And within a few weeks, they had put money time, something there to be part of what they felt like God was doing,
William Norvell: Amen, Amen, Amen, and gives me a chance. We're going to come to a close on repeat one thing from a prior podcast guy named Don Flo. And I hear the story is similar in the Guinness story. He said When someone entrust their scarce labor capital to me, it is a burden upon me to steward it well. And I hear that so well. And it is just such a great idea that, you know, it's not a you know, they're not just working for me. Right. This is something that they've been given from God. It's a gift that they have and it's upon the entrepreneur to steward that well. And as we do come to a close, the last thing we love to ask is trying to figure out where God has you specifically in his word these days. We love to see how that transcends our listeners and our guests. And so we'd invite you, if you wouldn't mind sharing it could be something to God shared with you today as you opened your Bible or a story you've been meditating on for a season of your life or your entire life even. Just where does God have you in his scripture during this time?
Stephen Mansfield: Well, I have been recently engaged in a renewed effort at memorizing scripture, and it has really impacted me. I mean, I've been a student of scripture for years, have degrees in biblical studies. But when you actually memorize scripture and allow it to cycle in you constantly, it's transforming. And so I decided to memorize the twenty third psalm, which many people have memorized. That's not a big achievement. Fortunately for me, I read Greek and Hebrew and so I read it in the original Hebrew, broke out the words a little bit and memorized it in an English version of the Hebrew. And it just I got to tell you, it's just melted. It's just unbelievable, you know. And so that's the twenty third psalm is where I have been living. I've now got to memorize Psalm 91. It says it says talks a lot about pestilence and plagues, but also other promises that were given. But if you're asking just up to the very minute up to this morning where I am in the word and I am in a recitation, I'm memorizing a deep reading and praying back the twenty third psalm and the things it says in there, he guides me and the right ways for his namesake. He prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemies, you know, all those kinds of things. And of course, when you break out a little bit of the Hebrew, for example, at the very end of that chapter, we know the famous words, your goodness and love. Follow me all the days of my life with the Hebrew word really pursue. And so the idea is that goodness and love are chasing us. God's goodness and love are actually chasing us and our lives. That's what the Hebrew says. Well, that's transforming rather than just following us. You know, following us is what your little brother did when he irritated you when you were walking off to play with your friends. But chasing you now, that's what that good looking girl did in high school. It's a whole different thing with the love of God chases. That's the goodness of God chases us. And so anyway, I'm finding all of that to be extremely transforming.
William Norvell: Amen Amen, amen. What a beautiful picture to end our time together with. And just so, so grateful that you would spend some time with us, that you would share some of the stories that God has gifted you with with us and our audience.
Stephen Mansfield: Hey, it's great to be with you. What a privilege. Thanks so much, guys.