January 13, 2003
Houston pastor spies spiritual warning in Enron's downfall
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___HOUSTON--Enron became the "poster child for a capitalism run amok," according to Houston pastor Chris Seay.
___And that should be a warning to Americans--including Christians and their churches--about the road they too are following, Seay writes in his new book, "The Tao of Enron: Spiritual Lessons from a Fortune 500 Fallout."
___"When affluence and material prosperity become our all-consuming goal, greed takes the wheel and drives the whole speeding convoy over a cliff," he surmises.
___Seay is pastor of Ecclesia, an innovative congregation that combines art, music and film in its expressions of worship and study. He was founding pastor of University Baptist Church in Waco and is a frequent speaker at conferences on innovative churches.
___In "The Tao of Enron," he weaves together interview
s with former Enron employees with prophetic warnings from Scripture about morality, integrity and greed. With help from contributing author Chris Bryan, he paints a picture of the corporate culture that led Enron to the height of envy and the depth of shame.
___Bryan, interim administrator for Baptist Mission Centers in Houston, is a Truett Seminary graduate who previously was vice president of administration and human resources for Enron Oil and Gas Co.
___The book features an interview with former Enron CEO and President Kenneth Lay as well as insight from whistleblower Sherron Watkins.
___Seay knew he had to write the book, he said, after witnessing a bizarre encounter at his neighborhood gas station that illustrated the fallout in Houston from Enron's demise.
___A homeless man who frequently solicits money from drivers of luxury cars at the gas station one day approached a solemn man wearing a luxury suit. Seay heard the well-dressed man berate the beggar: "You want to take something from me? They have already taken everything. I have nothing left; soon they will take my car. So back the hell up!"
___What Seay noticed about his hometown was that "everybody was flippin' out around here," he said. In this moment, the pastor saw an opportunity to connect the spiritual and cultural landscape into one portrait.
___He also was fascinated because Lay, like him, had grown up the son of a Baptist pastor. "I wondered, 'What's gone awry here that the son of a Baptist pastor has come to be in this place, is at the center of this scandal?'"
___Seay spent about two months interviewing sources for the book, including several meetings with Lay, and then wrote the manuscript in about two months in order to get the book to market in a timely fashion.
___Alternating between a feature interview style and sermonizing, Seay repeatedly draws spiritual lessons from Enron's rubble.
___"The catastrophe of Enron shows that it is past time for America to examine the motives behind its unyielding quest for wealth," he writes. "Our frenzy to accumulate money and power harms not only the poor of America and the rest of the world's underprivileged, but also the very ones who get trapped in a never-ending thirst for more."
___"The ultimate lesson of Enron," he concludes, "is this: Wealth can never satisfy."
___While not condemning Lay as an intentional perpetrator of evil, Seay does ponder the contrast between what Enron became and the public face of Christian piety Lay wore.
___"It doesn't take a master theologian to notice the obvious disconnect between the massive harm inflicted on others for selfish gain and the serve-others-first message of Christ. ... Can anyone live a genuine faith without that faith guiding and coloring everything one does, including one's activities in the business world?"
___In critiquing the so-called "rank and yank" system of cut-throat personnel evaluation employed at Enron, Seay finds a culture that breeds untruth as a means of survival.
___The irony, he adds, is that "integrity" was listed as one of Enron's four core beliefs.
___"A select group of Enron executives embraced a philosophy so far from traditional ethics that they ended up adopting a lifestyle completely contrary to their company's stated beliefs on integrity," Seay writes.
___But he adds that all humans "have a frightening ability to declare our belief in one thing while simultaneously acting in a manner 180 degrees in opposition to it."
___He quotes a longtime friend and coworker of Lay describing Lay's own faith as "schizophrenic."
___"Take heed, lest we share the same indictment," Seay warns the reader. "At Enron, many workers found their Monday selves in desperate conflict with the selves they had taken to church only a day before. In fact, the culture at Enron encouraged many employees to leave their moral compasses at the front security desk and embrace 'the Enron way.'"
___Seay's harshest critiques fall not on Lay, however, but on top executives Jeff Skilling, Rebecca Mark and Andrew Fawstow, as well as the Enron board of directors.
___Inside the shady business deals and alleged bookkeeping irregularities at Enron, Seay finds lessons not only on the dangers of greed but of impatience.
___"Many of the top executives at Enron serve as poster children for impatience--and not only because they heard the siren call of big money," he writes. "With Enron's live-for-today accounting, they really felt as though if they didn't cash in right away, it would be too late."
___The problem, he concludes, is that "when impatience ascends the throne, integrity goes into exile."
___In Sherron Watkins, former Enron vice president for corporate development, Seay finds a rare example of courage and integrity stirred by Christian faith.
___"Sherron Watkins' behavior--her acted-out faith--represents a refreshing change from today's widespread corporate culture of greed and irresponsibility," he concludes.
___Seay encourages Christians to live more like Watkins and less like other Enron executives and executive-wannabes.
___"Until we Americans re-envision the role of business and wealth, we are doomed to repeat a series of disasters like what happened at Enron," he concludes. "And the fallout for most of us will not come in the form of the collapse of the seventh-largest company in the United States of America; it will take shape in the collapse of marriages, families and communities, and the suffering of children and other helpless victims across the planet--all because of our selfish choices."
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