Kingdom economy (How our ministry dressed up as a business)

Posted by Gertjan Goldschmeding in Business | 0 comments

God has always led me to preach and teach a very down to earth message on financial prosperity and freedom. I have taken my assignment to help people to discover financial freedom very serious and started three organizations with the sheer purpose of creating an environment to launch entrepreneurs in their full potential.

The first is a coaching company called Ladder of Success, that operates in 8 countries to help people realize their entrepreneurial dream. From Sri Lanka to England, from Holland to Belgium, we are taking people through a very intuitive, yet comprehensive approach to develop a business model that works fort hem. The program is different in that is focuses on you working out of your passion, not out of a business idea. The second element that distinguishes this approach from many others is that we do not want the entrepreneur to become an expert in every area of business, but to focus on his strengths and learn to build a team to complement his skills.

The second initiative provides housing for starting business owners. This helps them to have professional housing at a low cost and work synergetic with other business owners. We recently had an open house where eight business owners presented their businesses to the visitors from all over Holland and even Belgium.

The third initiative is a business club that provides teaching, empowerment, networking opportunities to those aspiring to excel in business. At times we have meetings with business clubs from others churches to increase our network and learn from one another.

A by product of these initiatives is that it makes the church independent of the worlds economy. When people are laid of and the economy goes down, these business owners, who followed their heart and passion, excel because the are fulfilling their destiny instead of merely making a living!

Report Mission Trip Sri Lanka 2012

Posted by Gertjan Goldschmeding in Business, Missions | 0 comments

Watch the video report Mission Trip Sri Lanka 2012

Ladder of Success is writing history in Sri Lanka

Posted by Gertjan Goldschmeding in Business, News | 0 comments

Today is a historic day for the Ladder of Success coaching program, as Bethany Business School in Colombo signed the agreement to translate and promote the program in Sinhalees. In the presence of the three other board members (Jude Perera, Bertram Paul, Dishan da Silva) the agreement was signed by Adrian Ferdinands and the first participants are enrolling. ‘Crucial will be the support from the head office in the Netherlands, but there is a unique opportunity as such coaching is not available in Sri Lanka’, one of the boardmembers said.

The slogan of us at the Ladder of Success coaching company is, we are committed to your success. Bethany Business School, we are committed to your success!

Do you know where you’re going to?

Posted by Gertjan Goldschmeding in Business, Spiritual | 0 comments

The reason most of us do not reach our goals, is because we never took time to find them out and get them clear enough so we could see and communicate them. The vast majority of the people just live their lives by responding as best as they can to the opportunities (and threats) that come their way. The best way to describe the lives of most people, is like somebody going on a journey without determining the final destination. At every cross-road they he has to take time to think which way is best. At the same time these people wonder why they are never satisfied and why they feel they are not making any progress.

We should all learn to be like God. He thought everything through before He started the earth and before He created man. He even made a back up plan in case mankind would fail. The Bible tells us that God works backward; He starts at the end and calculates backwards. This is the best way to understand how vital your part in history is. Understanding that God needed you for the final outcome of His plans and purposes, realizing that that is the reason of your existence today, should liberate you from all thoughts of inferiority.

You too should live your life by calculating backwards. Start by determining your final destination, your ultimate goal. It is the key for making the right choices today. Michael Porter’s definition of strategy is “knowing what not to do”. When you know your ultimate goal and destination, it is easy to say no to the things that don’t contribute to you reaching your goal. Your life won’t be hard at every intersection; most of the choices are already made at the beginning of the journey.

It is time for you to become more strategic. Even if you know which way you want to go, take time to think things through. To be a doer of God’s Word doesn’t mean you should not take time to think things trough. God does not want you to just know what to do, but also to know why, how and to what purpose. This is not hard, it just takes slowing down your pace. But trust me, you will reach your destiny a lot faster!

True leaders have no followers!

Posted by Gertjan Goldschmeding in Business, Spiritual | 0 comments

Last week the pastor of the Amersfoort Church (Ben Schmidt) and I took a short mission trip to the Ukraine. Pastor Ben preached the second service in Kiev Good News Church (founded by Rick Renner, pastored by a wonderful Ukrainian pastor David) and I preached the first service. Prior to Kiev we flew to Odessa where the people were so excited and hungry that the pastor announced a spontaneous meeting for all leaders the following morning. Since I did not have time to prepare anything I just started to share about empowering leadership from my heart. I noticed what I shared made a lot of sense to the pastor but some of the Ukranian leaders openly rejected the message a first. During this time of confrontation God showed me how the Kingdom of God is directly opposite of the system of Communism. Unfortunately the so called democratic systems of government in the west are not in line with the Kingdom of God either. But since communism takes away the initiative from the people, it also takes away the responsibility from the people and people slowly die, while remaining alive. When you want to restore the initiative with the people they oppose it at first because the are afraid of the responsibility. When God allowed Adam to name all the animals he did not only give Adam tremendous freedom and room for creative expression, he also gave him an awesome responsibility.

Much of the Church world, including all the new charismatic movements, have had insecure leadership that led to a system where all the initiative and control remained with the leadership. Leaders needed to be respected, honored and submitted to. While all of of that is true and essential in a church, the heart of a true leader should be to give room and responsibility to those he leads. Jesus is not a king of subjects, but a king of kings. We should not be a leader over followers, but a leader over leaders. We should desire, empower and allow our leaders to go beyond where we have gone, to take things to a higher level. Just like God empowered Adam and Jesus empowered His disciples. Remember Jesus told us that we will do greater works than He did? Most leaders are afraid that people under them will do greater works than they. It’s time for the Church to get serious about servant leadership. It is time to really adopt the leadership system of the Kingdom of God! It will require much of leaders and those following leaders. But there is no alternative! His Kingdom will advance, whether you cooperate or not! Become a true leader today, become a leader of leaders!

View a short video of our trip to Ukraine here: