Unleash the Power of Faith in Your Venture

May 9

Meet David DeWolf

The SENT Team was thrilled to have David DeWolf, the founder and former CEO of 3Pillar Global, speak at the SENT Summit in April.

Read on for a recap of his outstanding talk entitled “Faith as Fuel for Your Secular Business Success.”

With over 1K employees, 3Pillar Global is a software product development company that specializes in mobile and SaaS solutions. 3Pillar has been recognized by Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and Fortune.

But before David led the company's growth as a prominent provider of digital product development services in one of the fastest-growing sectors in the technology industry, he was an independent consultant in DC writing code.

But when he started to employ other people, he began to ask some bigger questions about his purpose and calling.

He took 30 days to delve deeply in prayer into his past experiences and strengths. He knew that he was an excellent motivator and community builder. He also recognized that he had the talent to enable others to do things beyond what they imagine for themselves

He knew that God was calling him to something more, and that this calling would be deeply tied to his work.

So, David began a journey of integration. And over the course of 15 years, he’s condensed this integration into 3 transformative steps that have the potential to supercharge your journey as a faith-driven entrepreneur or business leader.

1. Make your venture your call.

What does that look like to care for the work of creation and make it profitable? It looks like creating value for the common good, in collaboration with others. All of us are called to this. That’s just part of what it means to be human.

But there are some of us who are called to our work in a more visceral way. For some, God calls us to undertake the arduous, and, at times, downright painful journey of building something new..

For David, that meant becoming a living testimony to Christ while simultaneously building 3Pillar Global. .

He felt that God was saying to him: “Your job to serve me is to go live your faith, not to preach your faith…I've built you to go show by example what it means to be a Christian.”

So that’s what he did. He built a company with the goal of living out his Christianity in the workplace as a call.

And throughout his 15 years as CEO, people noticed something different.

When David decided to step down as CEO last December. He started to get phone calls. One of them was a high performing middle manager. David had never talked about faith with him directly.

The employee told him, “David, I want you to know before you leave that you've had a profound impact on my life. I've come back to the Catholic Church because of you.” The manager said that witnessing David be so incredibly driven and yet deeply dedicated to his faith was so attractive, that he started going back to Church.

That’s the power of making your venture your calling.

2. Make your venture your prayer.

“How did the Israelites go into battle? What tribe led from the front? The tribe of Judah. What does Judah mean? It means praise. Their praise led the way into battle. Our work, our battle.”

DeWolf made his calling as a business leader a continual return to prayer, so that prayer guided all major decisions and led the way in the business.

In 2020 in the midst of the Covid pandemic, he faced a lot of pressure from a new financial sponsor to slash his workforce. So he took it to prayer and began a two month battle at the start of a new relationship with a private equity sponsor.

“It was stressful. It was hard. I had just taken a bunch of money and I was required to drive a return, and the economy was tanking and everybody else was cutting everybody and laying off people. And I went to my team and I said, ‘Listen, our mission is to save every single job and we're going to let everybody know.’”

David prayed that the financial sponsor would change his mind. Pretty soon, they were breaking monthly records, month after month. His financial sponsor called him. “You know what, David? You were right.”

David knows that he didn’t have the foresight or the knowledge to predict the outcome. But he made a decision rooted in prayer.

When you make your venture your prayer, God blesses your work.

3. Make it your way of life.

Rather than preach the “work-life” balance philosophy, David refuses to accept that work and life are pitted against each other. In fact, he advocates that trying to keep two different aspects of life separate can cause unnecessary stress.

“I am a father, and if I'm in the boardroom, I am still a father. But in the exact same way, I am a CEO. And if I am tucking my son or my daughter into bed at night, and I get an SOS call from an employee, from a customer, you better believe I'm still a CEO. You can't separate those two things, and I began to live that way.”

He illustrated this principle by sharing how he once closed a major deal over headphones while coaching third base at his son’s baseball game. When his daughter was interested in Indian culture, he brought her to India with him on a business trip.

This is just one approach to integrating work and family life. Prayer and discernment are necessary to integrate these elements of life as each of us is called to do.

But one thing that’s certain is that living your calling at work means letting that call shape your life. If it’s your calling, you need to live it.

Tying it Together

DeWolf closed his presentation at the SENT Summit:

“If you transform this venture to be your calling, to be your prayer and to be your way of life, God will do unimaginable things because you are open and docile to His Spirit, because you are doing His work, not your work, and there is nothing that will be bigger fuel to your business.”

When it comes to integrating work, prayer, and family, several different approaches can result from prayerful discernment and applying the principles of the faith.

The call to marriage is a sacramental vocation, while the call to work is a common calling, not a sacramental one. We encourage our readers to take these principles and discern with the Holy Spirit how to apply them to your life.