6000 Congregants Flocks Menlo Park Church To Seek Higher Power: 2 Reasons A Founder Should Tap Into This
Most people in the universe agree that there must be a higher power somewhere that can be held accountable for things that we cant explain through logic. Conversely, there is increasingly an overwhelming number of people who think that all the fuss about religion and faith is a sham. This could be a result of the unexplainable things happening around the globe like kids dying from hunger or loved ones dying from cancer despite prayers.
This is heightened in the tech space where religion like Christianity seems outdated. This led to Skip Vaccarello establishing a resource for Christians in Silicon Valley through his book Finding God In Silicon Valley. The founding journey can be lonely sometimes as we strive to push the needle in an effort that often feels like pushing a heavy trolley uphill. Despite the many questions that founders like myself have regarding religion
1. Aknowldeging a higher power than yourself empowers you to do your best and leave the rest to the higher power
This is essentially the foundation of religion. Faith. The very definition of faith is absolute trust or confidence in something or someone. For Christians like myself, faith goes deeper than that. Faith empowers you to show up every day and do your best with the surety that some higher power will put the remaining pieces of the puzzle together. This helps in two ways. Firstly, you get to shake off the burden of doing it your own, because you know that someone else is helping you carry the load. Secondly, when things are not making sense at all, you’ve got someone else to rely on for guidance. This may explain why the attendance for Menlo Park Church in San Francisco has more than 6,000 attendants in their service.
2. The reassurance that a higher power got your back gives you more confidence to plunge into the unknown
When you watch a group of children playing on a playground for a while you’ll probably observe a very interesting pattern. The kids would go venture out with other kids but every so often will go back to where their parents are before they go back and join the kids for more play. The same applies to founders like myself who rely on faith to plunge into murky waters.
When you know that someone’s got your back, you feel safe enough to get your feet wet and hands dirty because you are not afraid. For early-stage founders faced with uncertainties from every angle of their business from traction to product-market fit, having someone in our corner helps even if it’s a man on the clouds.
Nothing in the Founder’s bible states that we must have religion or faith for us to succeed in our ventures. However, it helps to rely on a higher power and knowing that someone’s got your back. Stars like Tom Hanks and even leaders like Arnold Shwazneger have come to this realization. It just makes the journey a little more bearable.
