When Dennis Bakke started a new electrical generation business in the late 1980s, he asked the question: "As a Christian, I am called to demonstrate the Kingdom, which sounds a lot like the Garden of Eden or the New Jerusalem—but placed within a fallen world. So, as a new Adam, how would my business look if I had built it in the Garden?" By the late 1990s, his business had become the largest independent producer of electricity in the world, with a $40 billion market capitalization. It was the first global company to address environmental issues with large-scale carbon offsets. The company's radical distributed decision-making model is still studied in case studies at Harvard and Stanford. Dennis wrote the New York Times bestseller Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job to tell the story. I traveled with Dennis and co-hosted conferences with him for several years. The question "What would this look like if we were building it in the Garden?" came up often whenever a new challenge arose.
Today everyone is talking about AI—the opportunities, the challenges, the hopes, and the fears. It might be time to dust off the question: "If AI had been invented in the Garden, how would Adam and Eve use it?" Bryan Long, a BGU graduate and business leader in Singapore, is thinking about AI in exactly this way. Bryan founded Unaverage, a venture dedicated to helping companies, startups, and individuals innovate in new categories and generate new revenue streams. He has experience guiding nearly a thousand startup teams from idea testing to launch.
For Bryan, Adam and Eve would not have looked to AI simply to make work more efficient or to gain a competitive edge. Instead, the question would have been: "How does AI deepen intimacy in relationships and improve our stewardship of the resources God has given us?" Putting the relationship question first and foremost—which is exactly what Dennis did—opens the door to a different path for using AI to develop innovative solutions.
Bryan is working with a team of like-minded entrepreneurs to explore how this translates into practical business applications. He is also applying his insights to help BGU reinvent itself, as all universities must. And since we are Adams and Eves living in a fallen world, Bryan, like Dennis, is also wrestling with the practical checks and balances that must be in place in the Kingdom—ones that Adam and Eve did not have to consider before the fall and curse of Genesis 3. This is not merely theoretical; it must be applied in a world that measures revenue, costs, and holistic human health in the workplace.
Disciplined reflection on biblical truth, applied in practical ways to real-world problems, is where business theologians excel. They typically don't call themselves theologians, nor do they spend much time quoting historical writers or inventing complicated jargon. But they are doing honest biblical reflection that will influence this generation and beyond. BGU Regent Chairman Willy Kotiuga, who had an expansive career as a hydroelectric engineer, has also crossed into the realm of practical innovation through biblical reflection. His recently published book, Stranger in the Theologian's Den: Shaping My Soul, recounts his story as a businessman who spent extended time with professional theologians. The lines are being blurred, and biblically driven innovation is thriving.
This month marks BGU's fiscal year end, and we are graduating 45 master's and doctoral students, many of whom have written dissertations at the intersection of traditional theology and innovative business solutions. It is part of BGU's original 2003 vision of three colleges—Christian Theology, Business, and Urban Studies—studying together. Would you prayerfully consider a fiscal year-end donation to BGU at https://bgu.edu/giving? Your gift enables us to equip those called by God to create innovative stewardship solutions across six continents—solutions that display the Kingdom in ways that make people ask, "How did you do that?" Our answer is the gospel.
Thank you.
Brad Smith
Chancellor
Bakke Graduate University