Stewardship was thrilled to be the headline sponsor for this inaugural event, which saw over 250 entrepreneurs, business leaders, investors and creatives gathered at Saint Church, Hackney to explore the intersection between their faith and work.
Exploring faith and work at The Wonderful Summit
The crowd gathered to upskill, make new connections and learn from each other. The day was filled with inspiring content, good coffee, pearls of wisdom, new friendships, prayer and more. Watch the video below to get a flavour of the day:
Ange Pattico, one of our Trustees and Chief People Officer for MVF Global, gave one of the keynotes on workplace culture; she generously shared some of her wisdom and experience on what it looks like to be a Christian business leader and how to incorporate Kingdom values into your workplace.
“I love the Lord, and who I am at work is not a different person to who I am when I’m in church or outside. I just happen to be a Christian and a businesswoman. I happily wear both of those when I go into the workplace.” Ange Pattico
Ange suggested that Christian culture has two main elements; how we represent the heart of our leader, and how we respect the organisation that we represent. Faith is what we believe, but culture is how we interact and express ourselves.
In the Bible, Paul says in Philippians 4:9 to put into practice the good ways of doing things - the lovely, admirable, excellent ways of doing things. This is a good idea for those without a faith too, so why shouldn’t we aim to bring this culture into our workplace? Sometimes, bringing Kingdom culture to the workplace requires us to be controversial, just like Jesus was when he brought a new culture during His time on earth.
God is the ultimate CEO
The story of Creation shows God working in a specific, deliberate and orderly manner. This can be a really helpful example of a pattern we can follow as business leaders. So, when writing business plans and discussing strategy, we shouldn’t just focus on the normal things such as objectives and aims, but also being intentional about asking the question of what culture is being created. If culture is left to its own devices, it can be a really expensive liability.
“If you want to make sure that your business thrives, make culture an intentional priority and not an afterthought.”
Summit attendees were challenged to be present in the room; to resist distractions like checking emails or Slack, to meet three new contacts, and to decide on at least one action point to implement.
The importance of community
One of the major highlights of the day was seeing a new community form, something that we are passionate about at Stewardship.
One of the four elements of psychological safety is feeling connected and belonging to a community. An unfortunate side effect of being a business leader, entrepreneur or creative, is the feeling of loneliness and isolation, often due to not having a team to work with or not having peers that ‘get it’. Part of the vision of the Wonderful Summit was to create an environment where likeminded individuals could connect, not only for business purposes, but to relieve those feelings of loneliness.
The encouraging stories and testimonies continue to be reported back to the team involved.
“What an incredibly positive, productive and engaging day and how positive it was to see Stewardship as the main sponsor. I left with 10 people to contact this week, reconnections with some old friends, a head full of ideas and a heart full of love.” Wonderful Summit attendee
We are already looking forward to next year!
Find out about future events
Would you like to join our community of philanthropists to connect with and learn from each other? We run a range of events, either as sole hosts or in partnership with others, like Wonderful Leaders who organised The Wonderful Summit. Please get in touch with the Philanthropy Services team to register your interest.
Megan Wilcock
In her role as Relationship Manager, Megan works to engage, equip and support the next generation of philanthropists on their giving journey. Megan has been part of the Philanthropy Team since joining Stewardship in 2020, which has ignited her passion to see lives transformed through the power of generosity. She loves to be hospitable and uses this passion to create safe spaces for relationship and connections to flourish.
Megan lives in North West London with her husband Josh, where they attend a local church and lead a connect group together. Caring for God’s creation and bringing an end to modern day slavery are two areas that Megan is an ardent supporter of.
