I have been in the Lloyd’s of London insurance market for 50 years, holding many senior executive positions worldwide. I’ve been chairman of one of the Lloyd’s broking houses, and chairman of various insurance entities in Australia and Europe.
My father worked in the insurance market for 60 years. While I was still at school, I met a senior insurance guy, and felt 20 tons fall on me that I should — incredibly — throw over my plans to go into motor racing and work for him, even though initially he couldn’t hire me directly. As time proved, the Lord had a plan.
Frankly, it’s as if God cashed in, positioning me to be used, both through my business experience, training, and familiarity with public speaking, plus relationships and market positioning. That led to me being able to reach out with the Word (via the 11 booklets of The Word One to One) to my peer group — when senior execs are so notoriously difficult to reach. My position means I’m accepted to speak to other industry groupings of senior executives around the world as one of them. We’re trained in business to read contracts: look at the sentence; what is it telling us? Move to the next sentence.
Word One to One is simply the books of John and Acts, broken down sentence by sentence, with helpful notes, questions, and, crucially, answers, enabling a walk through without embarrassing anyone about their lack of knowledge. It’s designed for any Christian above the age of about 12 to share the gospel with their friends and contacts without any meaningful training or deep Bible knowledge.
All the passages they might need from both the New and Old Testament are included within the series of booklets that allow a fascinating journey through the good news of Jesus to unfold in a series of episodes, each between about 15 to 25 minutes long.
It’s written in accessible English, so that it offers a very broad understanding even when English is not the reader’s first language. We find it used in 90 countries now.
I felt the call of the Lord to start it, having seen a very senior businessman blown away by what the Gospel actually said when my friend Professor John Lennox ran through the first 18 sentences of John’s Gospel. It wasn’t the professor he was listening to: it was John, whose Spirit-filled, God-given word was deeply impacting him.
Just take a look at what John says in chapter 20, verses 30-31. It reveals that God always had a plan for Jesus: his life and death and resurrection were no quirk of fate. Constantly Jesus says: “My hour has not yet come,” until chapter 12, verse 23. He’s never out of control. Business people read the book and it looks like a business plan. It starts with an executive summary, and then highlights that there was always a plan.
I totally disagree about the complexity of John’s Gospel and people’s lack of interest in the written word. When you look at the Gospel line by line, it’s like a steam train chugging from point to point. One man said he realises his own questions were peripheral and, “All the answers are in the text.” With the help of the Holy Spirit, the Word speaks.
The power’s in the word. Be Bible sharers, not teachers. We deliberately make the booklets very thin so that it’s not an off-putting process.
You walk in with your Bible and talk about what it says in Isaiah: they don’t know if Isaiah’s a bird or a plane — you’ve just proved to them that you do know all about the Bible, and they never will.
Instead, offer to share a cup of coffee and the opening 18 sentences of John, and ask, “Did you enjoy that?” (Not, “What did you make of it?”) “Would you like to see what comes next?”
We get emails from all round the world, Ukrainians and Chinese learning English, Glasgow prisoners. . . We’re giving the Word of God, broken down, and here are the notes that help you understand it as you go, and they love it. You can download it for free.
There’s a gap which has opened up underneath the courses — Alpha, Christianity Explored — because under-40s don’t know anything about Jesus. If you haven’t met Jesus, why would you look at Christianity? Someone has got to relationally introduce Jesus, one to one, or in groups, and it’s crucial.
The most enjoyable thing is seeing the Lord daily provide an answer to my prayer: “Lord — what are you up to today in my circle of contacts and influence? Please may I have a part to play?”
I used to go to church for a spiritual charge: great worship, great teaching, having survived another week. Now I arrive, saying: please teach me more, because I’ve had a phenomenal week, and these people have come with me.
It’s surprised me how very active the Lord’s been in preparing so many senior men to have a hunger for God’s word. The world looks at them and thinks they have all life’s answers because they are materially successful and powerful, yet the reality is that, if you achieved what the world suggests is success, you find it’s empty.
Have I ever found it difficult being a Christian in my career? Two answers. No, when I’ve been walking closely with my Saviour, because he has adopted me into his family, and that makes me for eternity the richest man among those competing for only worldly riches. Yes, when my faith’s been less strong because I haven’t been nurturing my relationship with the Lord. Then career pressures quickly upset the balance.
There’s no clash between insurance and faith. Insurance provides the very means for so much of what we rely on to happen. Take doctors and hospitals for example. They couldn’t or wouldn’t function if insurance didn’t provide the economic safety net to pay for when things can and do go wrong. Very, very few drivers could afford to pay the costs of their car wiping out a bus queue when they crashed into it from a tyre bursting. A plane couldn’t take off if the lives of the passengers were not insured. And so on.
I was already a Christian, and actually in a Christian rock choir talking to people about faith every weekend, when I arrived in the City; so I was immediately labelled and held accountable as a Christian from day one.
My success rate in sharing the word of God is zero. God’s living word on the other hand is quite simply staggering. People don’t remember what I say — they are fixated by what the living, Spirit-filled word says. The word works.
I grew up in a church-going family, yet I remember not one word of a sermon. It was classic “churchianity”, man-centric religiosity. In contrast, my sister’s church taught the Bible, and she encouraged me to go to a church near my home where I heard the gospel clearly explained in the youth group. The Word changed my life.
The gospel message is fundamentally not about being good. The relief is that Christ saves me from my utter inability to stand in my own merit in his presence. One of the biggest shocks when people read John is the clarity of chapter 5, verses 22-24. It’s all about our relationship to Christ, not what we’ve done. What a relief!
After 50 years in business, I can assure you that nothing the world has to offer comes anywhere close to the peace and eternal assurance knowing I’ve been adopted into God’s family. It is as real to me as breathing.
Man’s inhumanity to man makes me angry.
I’m happiest when I’m seeing God at work, changing lives through His risen Son, and transforming lives through the work of His Holy Spirit.
My Saviour lives! He’s being increasingly active in the face of a rebellious mankind, and that gives me hope.
I pray most that my friends, contacts, and my family will be convicted of their sin and turn to their loving heavenly Father for forgiveness
I’d accept whoever the Lord gave me to be locked in a church with, because he knows best.
Richard Borgonon was talking to Terence Handley MacMath.
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