A redemptive approach to wheat and marketing
How to serve AND be served in your marketing, Hayden Flour Mills’s redemptive approach to wheat, and the simplest way your work matters to God.
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[00:00:05] JR: Hey, friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I’m Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren’t pastors, or religious professionals, but who work as nurse practitioners, diesel mechanics, and city planners. That's the question we explore every week. Today, I'm posing it to Debbie La Bell. She's the Director of Marketing for Hayden Flour Mills out in Arizona.
Debbie and I recently had a terrific conversation about how to serve and be served in your marketing communications. We talked about Hayden Flour Mills’ redemptive approach to wheat production, and the simplest way that your work matters to God. You guys are going to love this episode with my new friend, Debbie La Bell.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:03] JR: Hey, Debbie, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.
[00:01:05] DLB: Thank you, Jordan. It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:08] JR: It says on the Hayden Flour Mills website, it says, “Our mission is to take you from lackluster, over-processed wheat into a world alive with flavor, texture, aroma, and nutrients through heritage grains and the art of stone milling.” Debbie, you're going to have to educate me on this because I'm really ignorant on this topic. What's wrong with the wheat that I typically consumed before I started using Hayden Flour Mills inside my house?
[00:01:36] DLB: Yes. In short, that pure fluffy white flour that creates the likes of Wonder Bread is a problem. Wheat is made up of three parts. The endosperm, the bran, and the germ. Most of the flour that Americans consume today only contains one of these three components, the endosperm, which is the least nutritious, least flavorful part of the wheat.
What's happening is because, when flour is milled and all the nutrients are stripped, all we're left with is not a lot to give our body the nutrients it needs. So, what happens is nutrients are added back into the flour in the form of chemical enrichments. Over time, it actually creates health issues with people. These chemicals are creating stomach aches and achy joints and things like that, and they're blaming the wheat when it's not the wheat itself. It's the milling process and the enrichments that are added to it.
[00:02:37] JR: Interesting. How did this problem occur? I'm assuming this isn't a brand-new problem. This has been going on for decades, maybe centuries. What happened here?
[00:02:46] DLB: Yes. I kind of say that it's the age-old story of the discontentment of man. When God created us, he told us to tend the earth. But sometimes we get a little carried away.
[00:03:01] JR: In a Genesis 3 world, yes, that's the through line.
[00:03:04] DLB: Yes. So, I think man started with intentions to make improvements to lower costs, to make this white flour more accessible to the masses, and those are not bad things, in and of themselves. But when we get lost in that maze and get addicted to success, the craze sets in and we quickly lose sight of what's best and what's important.
[00:03:24] JR: It's greed?
[00:03:25] DLB: In a nutshell, I think, yes. I think it's the beginning of starting to try to make things better, but getting lost in the greed. Up until the late 19th century, wheat was primarily stone melt, like what we did today at Hayden Flour Mills. Then, it was sifted afterwards to leave behind a fine flour. Even the Bible talks about when making bread using the finest flour. It's talking about a highly sifted flour that makes bread rise really well, helps the proteins and the gluten develop. But this was a very time-consuming process. Because it took so much time, it was expensive and often only the wealthy could afford the highly sifted whiter flour.
A more modern method called roller milling was invented, that efficiently shaved off the germ and the bran, which was the least desirable part of the wheat for people who liked the white flour and it left behind the endosperm which is milled into flour. A side benefit that they found by removing all this oily germ and bran is that shelf life was extended, so it makes it more affordable for the end consumer. The mill and the stores are making more money because the shelf life is longer. So, all of this was kind of chasing this accessibility, more profit, but not really paying attention to how is that affecting our health? How is that affecting our bodies?
[00:04:48] JR: I love this. Okay, so you guys are solving this problem through the art of stone milling. You're making our flour more nutritious, more flavorful. What is stone milling? I have city hands, Debbie. I would be a terrible farmer. You got to explain this to me like I'm five. What is stone milling?
[00:05:06] DLB: Absolutely. Stone milling is literally dropping the entire wheat berry. So not shaving any precious. You’re dropping the entire wheat berry into these two spinning stones that are running on a machine motor. What happens is that wheat then is burst into and ground down into flour. What we do is we just sift off the most coarse parts of the wheat that affect the performance when you're trying to bake. What's left in our flour is all components. It's a whole grain flour, all components of the wheat, the germ, the bran, and the endosperm. Basically, you get a very flavorful flour that represents the whole flavor of the wheat, not just one part.
[00:05:52] JR: By the way, I don't think I told you this. My eight-year-old and I made the pancake mix from Hayden Flour Mills. It was next level. There was a noticeable difference from I don't know what we typically use, This Quick, is that a thing? I have no idea.
[00:06:06] DLB: You know what, I've even gone when I'm on vacation, I don't have access to our pancake mix, because it's a family favorite of myself as well. I will go get the most expensive pancake mix I can find the grocery store thinking, “Okay, this might be close to it”, and it does not compare. What you're tasting is, it's not ingredients we’re adding. It's the flavor of the wheat. When I first started working for Hayden Flour Mills, I never knew there was so much to wheat. I never knew there were different wheat varieties with all these different personalities and flavor profiles and uses in the kitchen. It just totally opened up my eyes to the whole, all these crops that we have at our fingertips.
[00:06:46] JR: Yes. You guys sell these products now direct to consumer, B2B, how are you guys distributing the products in the world?
[00:06:53] DLB: Yes. We have over 50 different products that we create from our heritage wheats, and customers, they’re are living in the US, they can go to our website and shop any of these items and have it shipped direct from the mill to their home. We don't use distributors. We don't use third-party distributors at all. We just ship direct from the mill. Then, we also sell in places like Whole Foods, small mom-and-pop shops around the country. Then, there's the whole food service side of our business, and that ranges from small cottage food businesses who sell in farmer's market, anything from tortillas and fresh made pasta using our flours, to James Beard award-winning chefs and bakers who source our flowers for their restaurants, bakeries, pizzerias.
[00:07:39] JR: That's great. Hey, you emailed me a while back, and you said, “God commands His followers to care for the earth, our bodies and for one another, and Hayden Flour Mills is leading the way.” I love this. I want you to go deeper. We already touched on Genesis 1, but how do you see the work of a flour mill connecting to the mission that God has given us?
[00:08:00] DLB: I think it starts with the wheat crops that we use. We use a heritage wheat crop that predates the 1950s Green Revolution, which took place in America, when everyone kind of freaked out that we're not going to have enough wheat. So, it was hybridized, and they were created to be shorter so that they can produce more wheat per plant. We use a heritage crop that predates all of that.
Our wheat crops are very tall. They grow up to six feet tall. Usually, what you see above the ground is mirrored below the ground. So, they're deep-rooted plants. They're drought tolerant, because we'd actually – this is surprising for many people. But wheat it originated in the Fertile Crescent, which is the Middle East. It is a drought-tolerant desert plant that we grow. It thrives here in Arizona, where we grow all of our wheat varieties out. We only have to water them a few times a year. They're carbon-negative. So, the wheat itself, just by planting it in the ground is caring for the soil. It's renewing the soil as we – even year after year, as we harvest, it’s rotation crop as well.
[00:09:02] JR: I'm combating this in the book I'm working on right now. I know a lot of Christians who look at work like this, work with the material world and agriculture, for example, that, “Yes, listen, this is great.” We can enjoy great pancakes right now. But like in the grand scheme of things, this doesn't matter, because it's all going to burn up anyways. And we know better, right? God promises to renew and redeem the material world, not destroy it. I know you know that. I'm curious, though, like, does that help you find connection to God as you do the work? Does that help you see the eternal significance in the work that you all do at Hayden Flour Mills, this idea that God's going to redeem and restore the material world?
[00:09:43] DLB: Yes. I think that sometimes we get caught up in, well, God, why should I obey your commands? Instead, he calls us to have the faith of a child and obey simply because he told us to. Even if there wasn't a promise that there's eternal significance in what we're doing, which there is and he's so gracious to allow us to have that kind of longevity in the work that we do, I think sometimes it's just becoming simple like a child, he tells us to care for the earth, and because he tells us to care for the earth, we should and we should trust him with the results of that.
[00:10:16] JR: That's it. It's as simple as that. God told us to care for the earth. Just do it, regardless of what the eternal consequences of that are.
[00:10:24] DLB: Yes. Like I said, I mean, he's good to us, and that there are eternal consequences. But at the end of the day, sometimes we don't get to see the next step. We only see what's right before us and what he's telling us to do it in this day, and in this time. We don't get to see how it plays out for eternity. So, we should just be obedient and trust his heart, that he knows what's good for us. He knows what's good for humanity.
[00:10:48] JR: Yes, that’s really good. It's really good. We talked about this before. But when we look at some of the prophetic literature of the New Earth, right? Isaiah 51 says, “In the New Earth, the Lord will make her deserts like Eden.” You guys are offering a glimpse of that, a taste of that, right now, right?
[00:11:06] DLB: I mean, it's beautiful to walk in the fields that we plant, and we work with local farmers. We don't actually plant ourselves. We've chosen to just be the miller, but we get to visit the farmers and the farms, and just to hear the wheat rustling through the breeze, and to see the birds that find their shade, and the heat of the summer in these wheat crops, it's really beautiful. It makes the desert come alive. And he says he'll do that as well. He's going to make the deserts come to life. And when you see these wheat varieties standing on these fields, it's really beautiful, and to know this is going to feed a lot of people.
[00:11:40] JR: If you're playing the Mere Christians Podcast bingo at home, look for that Isaiah 65 square, because I bring this up on every other episode, it feels like. Now, I think about this passage a lot about work on the New Earth, and Isaiah says in chapter 65, “We will plant vineyards and eat their fruit, and long enjoy the work of our hands. We will not labor in vain.” Have you thought about this passage? Have you thought about the idea that what you guys are doing at Hayden Flour Mills is a glimpse of our eternal vocation?
[00:12:14] DLB: Yes, I mean, right now, we face a lot of frustrations and interruptions in our work. So, when I think about being able to do work in his ultimate kingdom, I get excited, because I enjoy working very much. It's the frustrations that bring the pain. But when I read that passage in Isaiah 65, it really speaks to me of contentment. Input will equal output. What you put in, you get out. We don't always get that here in this world, especially when you're we're talking about parts of the world that are not as poor, than where America is. They don't always get the input equaling their output. And that's where a lot of the poverty mindset comes from.
And we're going to be able to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Sometimes we're just keeping our nose to the grindstone, by the way, that's a wheat saying. But in fairness to the grindstone –
[00:13:07] JR: I’ve never thought about that before.
[00:13:08] DLB: Yes, there's so many rules of thumb, there's so many different wheat idioms we have. But anyhow, we don't get to enjoy the fruits of our labor, we don't get to sit down and share a meal with those we love, and really spend quality time with our kids. I meet a lot of people in my line of work and we always say our customers are just the nicest people on the planet. Because someone who does the research to find who we are and wants to make a purchase from us, they're very mindful. They're very intentional about how they live. And those who I find most joyful are the ones who have drawn a line around what it means to be content, and they're generous, and they're hospitable. They take pleasure in the small things in life.
I think sometimes we miss that. When we're out in the rat race and we're so achievement-oriented, that just like the folks who develop the modern milling system, they lose sight of what's important, and they lose sight of what's good.
[00:14:03] JR: So, how do you, I mean, you're the director of marketing for this business that's growing very quickly, it seems like from the outside. How do you stay focused on what is good and true and noble, as Paul says? How do you stay focused on what matters most as you do this work?
[00:14:17] DLB: Yes. I think about Philippians where it says in chapter two, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility. Value others above yourself, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others.” Especially right now, especially me as a marketer, I am living in a workspace, in a culture of self-promotion. Our culture says "love yourself first,” and then out of the resources of your self-love, you'll have the capacity to love those around you. Whereas Jesus tells us to love one another and trust him to provide what we need.
So, I think it's important to consider the needs wherever you are, in whatever vacation, or wherever your day takes you, consider the needs of the person across the table from you first, and out of the outflow of generosity, our God who owns the cattle on 1,000 hills will care for us.
So, when I'm creating my marketing messaging, I'm aiming to make it very customer-centric. Each one of our customers is made in the image of God, and therefore has dignity and eternal values, so I try to treat them as such. I take the time to get to know them. And as a small business, something that's great as I get to interact directly with our customers every day. When they speak, I try to really tune in and listen to them and just take them where they're at. So, when it's my turn to talk, and I believe, in order to have the privilege to talk, you have to listen first. I can really speak into their situation, instead of just talking over their head.
I don't always do this perfectly. But in our messaging, I try to avoid the self-promotion mantra of, “Look at us, look at the cool stuff we're doing.” Instead, I try to feed the imagination of the person who's reading and use aspirational language with them as the hero in the kitchen. Try to talk about making food memories, passing on food traditions from one generation to next, and just create this beautiful picture of what life could be like if we just slow down a little bit.
[00:16:24] JR: That's a really beautiful picture of how the gospel can help us think differently about marketing. Yes, we have business results we have to hear, but we're going to trust Jesus’s way, that if we seek to serve, rather than be served, we will also be served ourselves. It sounds like that's what you're saying. It's like putting the other image up front and center in this brand. Create content that first serves them before it serves the brand. Is that what you're saying?
[00:16:49] DLB: Yes. What's interesting is when we do that, God grants us success. We've seen great success, because people stop and pause when they see that messaging. They're not used to being treated like that. Just small examples, like when we make mistakes on an order, which we're human, we're a small business, we do. We apologize first. Start with an email. “I am so sorry this happened to you and this created an interruption in your day.” People aren't used to being treated like that today.
[00:17:24] JR: I'm curious if you could think of an example of where doing things God's way in the work didn't lead to success, at least the way the world defines success. Can you think of an example of that?
[00:17:38] DLB: Oh, so many examples. I mean, as a business, we've worked with a lot of different vendors and a lot of different customers, and sometimes that means you're taken advantage of. Sometimes people don't take you seriously, because you're being kind about what you do. But I think the long and short of it, again, is when we're doing the work that we're doing, we have to keep – as believers, we have to keep what is God's mission for me in my life and mine first. It doesn't necessarily mean we're going to have as much success as the business next door. But God's going to provide for what we need. Not always what we want, but he's going to provide for what we need.
[00:18:21] JR: Yes. This is why I brought this up, because I knew you were going to knock that question out of the park. Because yes, listen, sometimes, when we mark it per Philippians 2, God blesses those efforts. But sometimes when we do things God's way, it doesn't lead to success, the way the world defines it. And yet, our obedience matters. God will not forget. He is not unjust, Hebrews 6:10 says, “He will not forget the good work that we did for him in accordance with His commands.” Amen?
[00:18:55] DLB: I mean, for me, when the day is done, and I stand up to face my Savior, the thing that will say, “Yes, I did what He created me to do.” Is when he says, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” That's not going to be numbers on a profit sheet. That's going to be what did I do to invest in eternity.
[00:19:17] JR: That's good. Hey, how else do you think your faith shapes the work you do as a marketer day in, day out? We've talked about how it shapes the type of content you create, per Philippians 2. We've talked about how it shapes your obedience, even if it doesn't accompany immediate success. How else does your face shape how you do your work?
[00:19:34] DLB: When I create social media reels or videos, so many times it drives me nuts, but it's very loud and there's a lot of motion and just kind of makes you go crazy. I tried to just slow things down and calm things down a little bit. Make it fun and uplifting. When I'm writing emails out to our audience, I really try to think about the customer and what they're doing in their day when this email ends in their inbox, and I don't want to take a lot of their time. I try to keep my messaging short and to the point. I don't stuff our customer’s inboxes with daily emails. And when I do land in their inbox, I want it to be something that's valuable and worthwhile to their day, something that will elevate and inspire them to cook and bake and share.
For example, at the bottom of every one of our recipes, and email me if you find a recipe that doesn't have the statement. But at the bottom of each of our recipes, we always say, “Share and enjoy.” Every bread recipe we make yields two loaves. One to keep them on to share. So, we try to just encourage our customers to think about ways that they can be intentional in their lives, even if it's in those small, very minute ways.
[00:20:50] JR: That's so good. As I was prepping for the episode, I was thinking about in farming. I got to imagine that you've got to have an inordinate amount of trust. It forces you to have an inordinate amount of trusting God. You're relying on, “Mother Nature read God”, to provide rain and sunlight that these farmers need to grow their crops, which you guys then mill. Have you seen how working in agriculture, how God has used that to strengthen your trust and faith in Him to provide for your needs?
[00:21:23] DLB: Absolutely. I want to say really quickly, that trust in God is something that is built over time. When we first become believers, when I first became a believer, I would trust him in small things. He would be faithful in those small things. So then, I could trust him in bigger things. The stories that I'm about to tell are things that I've been able to trust God with, after a lifetime of trusting him with so many other things.
One of my favorite examples of having to really trust God is every October, we have to give the farmers the plans of what we want to grow. It will be planted in December and harvested in June, and it needs to last to the following harvest. So, we have to plan pretty far out, and we know that crops sometimes fail and that sort of thing. Sometimes there's been years that we've over-planned or over-exert ourselves in terms of how much grain we might need. And this particular situation happened right before the pandemic.
So, it was like January, February, we started to worry about how we were going to pay off this large grain bill that was going to be due in June. We had way over-exerted ourselves in terms of how much grain that we thought we would need for the year and there was no way we were going to sell it all. At the time, I was the general manager managing the whole business. So, I was just praying, “God just provide. I don't know how we're going to do this. The numbers aren't going to match up.” Well, then the pandemic hit in March and we ended up consuming every pound of that grain and we needed it to be able to meet this huge demand. Our website went up 400%. People panicked when they didn't find flour or bread in the grocery store. So, they took to the Internet and they discovered us, and we're placing these huge orders.
Our message to the customer at the time was, “Don't worry, we have the grain in our barn, steps from where we are. It's just a matter of time before we can mill it and get it to you. So, the delay is not because we don't have the grain. The delay is because we're just a small mill, trying to get all this this out.” At the end of that summer, when the demand kind of died down and things went back to a new normal, we just praise God, because he provided. We had no idea. Nobody knew this was going to happen. Nobody knew how it was going to affect the economy and the grain supply and all of that.
[00:23:54] JR: You had to trust major. But you had been practicing working out your trust muscles before it sounds like, right? It was like recognizing God's faithfulness in the little things. I'm curious, do you have a spiritual practice doing this? Do you consistently journal about how the Lord has been faithful to you?
[00:24:12] DLB: I wish I was a good journaler, but I’m not.
[00:24:15] JR: I’m not. Like not at all.
[00:24:18] DLB: But I'm a good talker. So, the Bible talks a lot about like declaring the works of the Lord and speaking of His goodness and His faithfulness, right? So, that is definitely a practice that I have. But I grew up on the mission field in the Philippines and just living there, you're kind of more exposed to life. We had robbers come through and steal my camera that I got for my birthday. Gunshots broke out in the marketplace because there was a coup underway, things like that, that just, I was raised in that kind of environment. When I went to boarding school as a 14-year-old, it was just simply, I was missing my dad, and I remember lying in bed that first night crying myself to sleep because I miss my dad so much. And I just asked Jesus, “Can you just show up as a father to me right now? Because I'm feeling so lonely.” I could feel the presence of him just envelop me that night and then fell asleep.
That was kind of a first moment for me of really having to step out in my own faith, not my parents’ faith anymore, and trust him to feel that emotional need that I had. Then, later on in life, my husband and I got the opportunity to go live in Israel. I remember when he called me, he said, “Hey, I got this opportunity. Do you want to go do that?” I was like, “Nope, no interest whatsoever. I do not want to get blown up in Israel.”
[00:25:51] JR: Somewhere else, maybe, but not in Israel.
[00:25:54] DLB: Yes, somewhere else. The opportunity kept surfacing over and over again, and my husband said, “I think we really need to pray about this.” We did. I remember recognizing that my safety is not in where I am, but my safety is ultimately in him. And I can more easily get killed on a freeway in Arizona driving, than by a bomb in Israel, like logically speaking, right? But when we moved there, it was just really putting that trust into play to say, “Okay, Lord, I'm giving you my whole life. I'm going here, because I feel like you're calling us. It does not mean I'm going to be safe. It doesn't mean I'm going to come back at one piece. But I'd much rather die over there doing what I feel like you're calling us to do in this season than die here in Arizona.”
There's just been times in my life where I've really had to trust God with very tangible things. As a result, I've seen miracles and it's a beautiful thing. Those are the things that build on my trust that I go, “Okay, if God could do that, then I don't see how the future is going to play out. But I know I can trust him.”
[00:27:06] JR: I think it's a lot easier to trust him when you can point to experiences of His love, not just an intellectual knowledge of His love. But as a 14-year-old girl, lying on a bed and feeling the presence of the Father. How do you keep the Father's love for you top of mind as you go about your work, Debbie?
[00:27:24] DLB: I think it starts with how I wake up every morning, filling my mind with the scriptures. I love the Bible app, because it can read the Bible to me. So, I'm a busy working mom, and I don't always have time to sit down and spend time in the world as much as I would love to do that. So, I play a devotional, that's like a 30-minute long devotional with different parts of the Bible read, and a pastor getting on to speak about the word I just read. But yes, it's kind of starting out my day and committing my day to the Lord after I read the Scripture to say, “Okay, Lord, here I am. I'm just going about my day, just work through me.”
When I'm sitting down and getting ready to write my marketing messages, or lay out my plan, it's just really, I've now been like, painted with the word of the Lord, that helps me make decisions or small decisions in the day. Otherwise, it's very easy to get caught up in the numbers game and the sales, and wanting to strive in my own human ambition to see success, and know that it's at my own hands. “Oh, look at that email I sent in how much revenue generated.” I can get caught up very easily in that. But starting the day off with the Lord helps keep me grounded.
[00:28:41] JR: That's good. That's really good. Hey, you glossed over this detail before, I want to circle back to it. You voluntarily stepped down, if I recall correctly, from running the whole business as General Manager to this role as Director of Marketing. Why make that transition?
[00:28:55] DLB: For me, it was a personal decision for my family, being able to be more emotionally available to my children at the end of the day. They are – God is my number one relationship. My husband is my number two, and my kids are number three. So, if I'm coming home after a stressful day at work, managing people, it can take a lot out of you. It was difficult to manage all of that. And so, I decided, you know what, there's the side of the business that I'm really passionate about anyways, which is the direct consumers that we serve. I think I can grow this part and still be able to kind of be emotionally available for my children.
[00:29:33] JR: I love that. So, it’s a commitment to excellence at all your callings and just recognizing the emotional energy it was taking from one to the next.
[00:29:43] DLB: Yes. It was hard. I loved my job. I loved what I did. I just had to recognize it's not the season for that maybe right now.
[00:29:52] JR: That's good. I love that. Debbie, you know the drill. Three questions we wrap up every episode with. Number one, which books do you find yourself gifting most frequently to others?
[00:30:00] DLB: Well, in my line of work, I'm usually recommending cookbooks.
[00:30:04] JR: Yes, let's go. I love it. I got an eight-year-old who wants to be a chef. Give me all the cookbooks.
[00:30:08] DLB: Oh, my gosh. Okay, perfect. These are going to round out her whole kitchen experience here. So, I love The Perfect Loaf by Maurizio Leo. I love his story because he was a computer engineer who worked from home, looking for a way to have to get up every day, get out of his chair, and do something in his home just to keep from getting too stiff. He got into sourdough baking. Then, of course, as a computer engineer, he's like, “I'm going to start a blog and blog about my start of baking journey.” Now, the sourdough baking has kind of taken over his life. He's quit his engineering job, and he just does that full time and he wrote a cookbook.
So, he's got a blog called The Perfect Loaf. You don't have to buy the book to get into his teachings. But it's like a textbook to help you understand the science of sourdough baking. Then, there's recipes to get started in sourdough. So, I love it because it kind of educated me on the whole spectrum.
[00:31:04] JR: That's awesome.
[00:31:05] DLB: Then there's another one called Chiles and Smoke by Brad Prose, and he's also a brother in Christ, which makes the book even better. But his recipes take time. But he is a master of the barbecue and the flavor combinations. He draws Middle Eastern, Asian, Mexican influences into his recipes, and they're absolutely amazing. He's got a smoked meatloaf, which I never even knew you could smoke meatloaf.
[00:31:33] JR: Yes, that sounds bizarre.
[00:31:35] DLB: Yes, that just makes me crazy. So, it's good. Then, I love The Miller’s Daughter that was written by our owner, Emma Zimmerman. She's so creative and the ways that she's great in the kitchen, and yeah, great cookie recipes, grain salad recipes, which a lot of people don't even know about grain salad. You can boil the whole berry and mix it with nuts and fruit and cheese and mix these really amazing salads.
[00:32:02] JR: I love it. That's so great. Taking my daughters up to hang out with Kendall Vanderslice. Do you know Kendall by chance?
[00:32:08] DLB: No.
[00:32:09] JR: Kendall is a baker and theologian. She has her MDiv – actually, I think she has her PhD from Duke Divinity School.
[00:32:15] DLB: I heard the podcast. Love it.
[00:32:17] JR: Yes, so we're going to Kendall’s kitchen in Raleigh, North Carolina in a couple of days to bake with her and she's got some great recipes up on edible theology. You've got to check out this children's book. I just came across it. It's out of print, it's very hard to find, but I'll make sure you get a copy. It's called Seven Loaves of Brea, and it's about these two sisters, one of whom works really hard, and the other one who doesn't want to work hard at all. It's a story about seeing the goodness in work and seeing the goodness in hard work. But it's all centered around the baking of bread, and it's all about how they bake seven loaves of bread every day so that they can have some for themselves, but they also have plenty to give to their neighbors. It's like this great story. It was like published in the early nineties. But I'll make sure you get a copy.
[00:33:07] DLB: Oh, beautiful.
[00:33:07] JR: Hey, Debbie, who would you want to hear on this podcast talking about how the gospel is shaping the work they do in the world?
[00:33:14] DLB: Yes. One set of folks is Chip and Joanna Gaines. Most of their interviews that I've seen are centered around how they create beautiful spaces, and where they get their inspiration from. But they've created this empire that, to me, far exceeds their own personal capabilities, and I'd love to hear how they run their business, how they manage this team of people that are doing all these wonderful things in the world, balance family and marriage. Because to me, from the outside looking in, it looks like they're doing an amazing job.
[00:33:44] JR: Yes, it's good. We got a solid connection to Chip and Joanna. I got to reach out.
[00:33:48] DLB: Perfect. I'd love to hear them. And then another person is Patrick Gelsinger. My husband works for Intel. He has been with them for over 20 years, and Patrick is now the current CEO of Intel, and he's an outspoken Christian. He's leading the company right now through a very challenging time, basically trying to turn the Titanic, and I'm sure he's very busy. But I would love to hear from him now when he's in the thick of it and doesn't quite know how it's all going to turn out, and how his faith helps him make his daily decisions.
[00:34:20] JR: That’s good. That's good. We got to reach out to Pat. That's great. All right. Hey, Debbie, you're talking to this global audience of mere Christians who are doing a lot of different things vocationally. Some of them are janitors, some of them are farmers, some of them are Fortune 500 CEOs, what's one thing you want to leave them with before we turn off the recording?
[00:34:38] DLB: I would say learn contentment. Out of that, you can keep your desires in check. You can be more mindful about the decisions that you're making, how you're investing your money, your time, your treasure on a personal level, where your corporation is heading. Just drawing a line around that contentment. What does that look like?
[00:34:58] JR: That's good. Hey, Debbie, I want to commend you for the exceptional work that you and the team at Hayden Flour Mills do every day, for the glory of God and the good of others, for reminding us of Jesus's call to join him in the renewal of all things, including flour and wheat, and for reminding us that, hey, this is part of our vocation for eternity on the New Earth. Hey, you guys can learn more about Debbie and the team at Hayden Flour Mills at haydenflourmills.com. Debbie, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a joy.
[00:35:32] DLB: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
[OUTRO]
[00:35:35] JR: I really enjoyed that episode. I hope you guys did, too. Hey, if you're joining the Mere Christians Podcast, do me a favor, go leave a review of the show wherever you're listening. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week.
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