By Sam Aitchison
The Church is Alive!
I did not expect my Strategic Management business class to influence my faith life. As the capstone course in my business curriculum, it focuses on how organizations decide what services to offer, where to invest limited resources, and how to sustain a competitive advantage. Much of our work involves distinguishing between strategy (what we intend to prioritize) and implementation (how we actually live that out).
In class, we often analyze how a company’s stated goals only matter if they are supported by concrete action. A firm may say it values customer service, but that commitment only becomes real when it hires sufficient staff and responds promptly to concerns. The clarity and discipline of that framework have challenged me more than I expected.
As I was reflecting on how I could grow in faith through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving during Lent, my mind kept going back to this framework. I knew that I wanted to grow closer to Christ and be a better version of myself for others. It hit me that if I said I believed the single most important thing in my life is my Catholic faith, then shouldn’t the structure of my days align with that? If my primary goal in life (my central “strategy,” to use business lingo) is to have an authentic and rich relationship with the Creator, then I need to enact initiatives or practices to help me enrich this relationship.
This Lent, I’ve committed to spending the first 10 minutes of every day in prayer. I’m trying to make the most important thing in my life the first thing I attend to each day. Anything else —whether work, school, or personal — is not as important as spiritual time.
Our culture often construes Lent as a second stab at New Year’s Resolutions. I think this definitely misses the point. But the structure of Lent offers an opportunity to enact practices or abstain from things with the goal of orienting us towards Christ. My Strategic Management class helped me to better align my North star (Christ) with my daily practices and habits.
Although the aims of business strategies and Christianity are different, the business framework of strategy and implementation has helped remind me to prioritize what is truly valuable. With this experience, I’m reflecting on other ways the world and God’s creation can point me towards Him, the source and summit of all things. As we continue this season of Lent, how might we work to continually align our joys, hopes, sufferings, and desires to Christ?
(Sam Aitchison is a senior at Saint Louis University studying business and theology. He can be reached at samaitchison6@ gmail.com.)
