For decades, God and profits seemed to mix well in a potent alchemy that transformed the small Midwestern concern into a $6 billion Fortune 500 company that did well by doing good on everything from Merry Maids house cleaning to Terminix pest control and TruGreen lawn care.

 An 11-foot statue of Jesus washing the feet of a disciple sits outside the headquarters here in suburban Chicago. Inside, employees often gather for Bible studies. The motto "We Serve" has decidedly divine implications, annual reports are peppered with Scripture, and stockholder meetings begin with prayer.

 The distinct culture does not stop there. Offices are enclosed in glass to create a sense of openness, and a John Philip Sousa march is regularly piped through the building after a big sale.

 Background:

Marion loved to play baseball with his friends.  While in school, he organized a baseball league with his friends.  He took the stars of the league and together they formed a minor league team.  They excelled as a team, yet lost the last game of the series.  Marion later served as a fill-in for other minor league teams…always trying to make it to the pros. 

Eventually, after getting married, he realized baseball would not provide a steady income.  So with the enthusiasm which he pursued baseball, he turned his energy towards sales – life insurance sales.  He would visit men on their lunch breaks in the factories…trying to setup appointments.  He made some sales, but they were slim.

One day, a friend encouraged him to pursue a new career…selling pots and pans, by means of home demonstrations.  A prospective customer was asked to invite several of her friends to her home for a free lunch---to be provided, cooked, and served by the salesman in her own kitchen.  Immediately, recognized this as a great idea, with real potential for growth.  What better way was there to prove your claims for a product than by putting it to the test before its severest critics—housewives?  After enjoying a lunch they didn’t have to prepare or cleanup after, the women were open tot he sales pitch, and each in turn became a prospective customer who had the privilege of inviting other friends to her home for a demonstration, and a free lunch.  For me, this technique solved the whole problem of appointments in the selling business. 

            I was sure I could sell the line…  The market was opening so fast that the company couldn’t find enough men with selling experience.  The man who tried to break me in had been driving a cab two weeks before.  With four years of insurance selling behind me, I felt I could handle that side of the business.  What I had to learn was how to give the demonstration.  At this point of my life, I couldn’t even boil an egg, so it wasn’t surprising that on my first demonstration I burned all the food.  When I got home that night, I told Lil that I was taking over the kitchen for a while, which she didn’t mind at all.  When after two or three more bad tries, I finally got the thing down, I gave the kitchen back to her.  For some reason, she didn’t mind that either.

Selling pots and pans was a lucrative business until the manufacturer decided to market the product both in stores and home demonstrations.  When people saw they could get a better price through the stores, home demonstration sales dried up.  Again, Marion was looking for work.

He found one position with a moth-proofing business and agreed to sell on straight-commission.  He said…In order to know what I was talking about, I found out all I could about moths and our product, and I found out that the moths didn’t have much to worry about.  There wasn’t in fact, a single product on the market that could do more than a superficial job on moth eggs and larvae, which were the real problems, and most of them were effective only against those moth flies who wanted to commit suicide by wallowing in a puddle of the stuff.  Repeatedly prospective customers complained that the previous mothproofing had been effective only for a short time, if at all, and many expressed the opinion that mothproofing really didn’t work.  I couldn’t blame the prospects for being reluctant.  It was, after all, a matter of “buyer beware” and with the depression in its first months, people were being very careful with their money.  I therefore worked out a plan whereby the company would guarantee its work for a specific period. 

However, the company folded and Marion went out on his own.  He thought it was strange that nobody had done enough scientific research on moths do develop a substance which would do a thorough job of killing them.  He was given access to the laboritories at Northwestern University.  He said…For a period of several months, I was at the laboratory practically every day, studying generation after generation of moths and trying to find some way to destroy them in the egg and larva stages.  I know that killing the eggs would be difficult because often they are deposited in crevices and under the woodwork where fumes don’t penetrate.  The larvae presented a problem, too.  The moth larvae breathes through pores.  When disturbed in any way, the larva closes the pores, curls up into a tight ball and can remain this way for hours without apparently taking in any air at all.  And during the cocoon stage, a moth is as safe as if he were in a Sherman tank.  After experimenting with dozens of different materials, I was finally able to develop a substance that when heated gave off a heavy, toxic gas which, as pressure was created through accumulation in a sealed area, could not only penetrate the deep hiding places where the moth thought she had safely laid her eggs but also had a staying power longer than any larva could hold its breath, longer than any pupa could remain in its cocoon.  I called hte substance Fumakill, and for many years it paid my rent.  Then the day came when it almost killed me.

It was a morning in 1944.  I was mothproofing a closet in a Wheaton, Illinois home when the chemicals exploded in my face.  Most of the next year I spent in hospitals, and that year gave me time to think.  All I could think of at first was that I was lucky to be alive, lucky even though the doctors believed I would probably lose my vision.  I figured that in the future I could solicit new business by telephone and have a co-worker go out and do it.  Then the doctors discovered that I would not be blind.  More months of bandages and inactivity were ahead but eventually, the doctors said, I would be myself again.  I survived an accident that should have killed me.  And not only had I survived, but I had come out of it in pretty good shape.  I had the doctors to thank for this, but I also knew it was God who supplied the doctors.

 Testimony:

It happened in 1930.  I was married, had two children, and, in the first months of the Depression, was struggling to put a business on its feet.  My mother was getting along in years, so as a filial gesture I accompanied her to church on Sunday nights.  Dr. Harry Ironside was the pastor of Moody Church and Mother loved to her him.  I enjoyed being with her, but I had so many problems on my mind that I didn’t get much out of the sermons myself.  The business I started was a moth-proofing service; with the Depression on, few people had enough money to buy anything that moths might eat.  So I was worried about how my own family was going to eat.

            Sitting there next to Mother in Moody Church one Sunday evening, I was brooding about where to turn for work.  I was scarcely aware of Pastor Ironside’s voice, let alone his words.  But worrying about yourself can be an exhausting experience, so it was mostly out of fatigue that my attention gradually drifted form my problems to the pulpit.

            Dr. Ironside was talking about the Bible, sternly criticizing the people who ignored it.  As I listened, I developed the disturbing feeling that he was preaching right at me and nobody else.  I had, I realized, neglected the Bible.  We had a Bible at home.  My mother read it regularly, but I rarely looked at it, and not since my boyhood days in Sunday School had I given it any serious attention.  Sitting there I knew in my heart that I was one of the people Dr. Ironside was talking about.

            He then began to stress the Divine authority of the Bible, explaining that as the Word of God it was the Rule of God, the rules for our lives, recorded by men who were inspired by Him as they wrote, and that as such every Christian to follow these rules.  Up to this point of my life, I had never given the Bible a thought as the God-written authority over me.  But now that I did think about it I recognized that this must be true.  Scant as was my knowledge of the Bible, my adverse experiences in dealing with men assured me that mere men could not have written the Bible because mere men were incapable of the selfless and noble ideas in it.  Unquestionably, God had to be its source.  I squirmed as I became more aware of my neglect of God’s Word. 

            As he concluded his message, Dr. Ironside pleaded with the congregation to love the Bible more, to read it more often, and to follow it more closely.  He then asked those who were ready to make these commitments, to repent of their sins and accept Christ as their personal Savior. 

            As I listened, I asked God to forgive the sins of my life.  I gave my heart and my life to Christ, and, according to God’s Word, I was reborn that moment.  I became a son of God.  I became a Christian.

            I don’t know what I expected to happen.  I don’t recall any tremendous amount of emotion at the moment, and yet there was a realization in my heart that something was going on.  I was like the man who having seen the flash of lightning in a storm was waiting expectantly for the thunder.  A cataclysmic change had occurred in me, I knew that.  But I had no idea what to do about it.

            Under Dr. Ironside’s exhortation and Mother’s encouragement, I began to read the Bible.  Because of my lack of experience with the Bible, there were times when I felt I was reading it in a foreign language.  But I kept at it.  When I discovered that Paul, that great servant of the Lord, had to spend thirteen years learnign the faith before he felt qualified to go out and do the Lord’s work, I figured ther emight be som hop;e for me, and so I struggled on Meanwhile, I tried to move more in what I considered the circle of the Lord.  Eventually, I conducted Bible classes for a group of boys, and I coached the church’s baseball team.  AT home, daily Bible reading and discussion were becoming a family custom.

            And I kept waiting for the thunder.  I had yet to realize that the thunder was supposed to come form me, not the Lord.  Ahead of me was the discovery that until I gave myself to the Lord as wholeheartedly as I did to baseball and my business, I couldn’t expect to be much aware of His real presence in my life.  After I made both the discovery and commitment, I was able to look back over my life and perceive that this was exactly what the Lord had been wanting me to do all along.

 Work Ethic:

            Two verses began to stand out to Marion, “Set your affection on things above, not on the things of the earth,” and “Whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.”  He said..that’s the long-range view, and its the only attitude that matters.

            When a man commits himself to the Lord, there is no longer any room in his life for creeping indifference because he ins constantly aware of God’s vitalizing presence.  The excitement in living for the Lord is tremendous.  I know He is with em every minute, watching me, guiding me.  Whenever a problem of any kind comes up, I consult with Him through prayer, meditation and the Bible.  The decision is my own and I am responsible for it, but as long as I make it on His terms I know I have nothing to worry about.  I know, too, that over the years people have been amused that among the things I turned over to God was a company that was in the business of killing moths, as though this were something odd to offer Him.  Some years ago I ran across an apt poem in this regard; I don’t know who the author is but he certainly knew what he was talking about when he wrote:

 Every mason in the quarry, every builder on the shores,

Every chopper in the forest, every raftsman at the oar,

Hewing wood and drawing water, splitting stones and cleaving sod,

All the dusty ranks of labor in the regiments of God

March together toward His triumph, do the tasks His hands prepare.

Honest toil is holy service.  Faithful work is praise and prayer.

 That’s about as neatly as it can be put.  Moreover, if the Lord Himself was willing to dignify hard labor by working as a carpenter, any one of us can bring dignity to our job, whatever it is, by dedicating our efforts to His glory.  Commitment is an opportunity open to all men at any level in any kind of work.

 Servant Leadership:

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Though I be free form all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all.”  For the man, then, who is seeking guidance on how to run a  business based on Christian ethics and principles, there it is.  We must become servants, servants first of all of the Lord and then, in His Name, servants unto all.  We must serve.  We must give service.  Serving the Lord, we must give Him the only things He wants of us: our love and obedience.  And we bear witness to this love and obedience by the type of service we give others.  In business, the other are our stockholders, our boards, our staffs, our fellow businessmen, our competition and most of all, our customers.  It must be the full-throttle effort or the deal is off, for once we begin fudging on our service to others we’re ineluctably fudging on our service to God—and God we cannot deceive.  So if we want to be Christian businessmen, if we ever hope to be able to recognize the guidance with which God has filled the Bible, we must decide here and now that we are going to be good and faithful servants and, like Paul, ask Him: “Master, what would you have me to do?” The answer will come in terms of what we must do for others, toward others and with others, and the answers are all in the Bible.  Thus the cross of the vertical and horizontal aspects of the Bible become the Cross of Christianity which we should carry not as a burden but as a banner.

 Profits and the Bible

            In Luke 12, Jesus tells about a farmer who had such a bumper crop one year that he didn’t know what to do with it all.  Instead of sharing the harvest with the less fortunate farmers, he decided to build bigger barns to store his crop, and he said to himself, “I will say to my soul ‘Soul thou hast much good laid up for many years; take thin ease, eat, drink and be merry.’”   Then God said to him, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall these things be which thou has provided?”

            In telling this parable, Jesus said, “Take heed and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.”

            For the businessman, this is one of the most significant passages of the Bible.  Naturally, we all want our companies to make a profit.  We have an obligation to the stockholders to keep the company in the black.  We have a responsibility to our employees to keep the money coming in so they can get paid.  But if profits are all we care about, bigger and bigger profits every year, then we run the risk of losing our spiritual perspective.  Jesus asked, “What shall it all profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

            I’ve heard men who admittedly turned their businesses over to the Lord in the expectation that this was the surest and swiftest road to riches. IN effect they were saying, “God is incapable of failure, so now my company should really take off.”  I wonder how many such men run one of the 15,000 companies that will go out of business this year.  The Lord never offered to take over a man’s life to such an extent.  To each of us He gave a free will, and even the man who had made himself completely dependent on the Lord has to make his own decisions and be responsible for them.  But the Lord has provided the basis for right decisions in the Bible and am man can’t ask for much more than that.  To use the Bible for guidance, you must become so familiar with the Bible that thinking in terms of it is part of your nature. 

 Creed:

To Honor God In All We Do
To Help People Develop
To Pursue Excellence
To Grow Profitably

To Honor God In All We Do

Our first objective has an impact on every aspect of our business--from the way we serve customers to the relationships we have with other ServiceMaster associates. We believe that every person--regardless of personal beliefs or differences--has been created in the image and likeness of God. We seek to recognize the dignity, worth and potential of each individual and believe that everyone from service worker to company president has intrinsic worth and value.

This objective challenges us to have commitment to truth and to deliver what we promise. It provides the basis for our belief in servant leadership. It is not an expression of a particular religious belief, or a basis for exclusion. Rather, it is a mandate for inclusion, and a constant reminder for us to do the right thing in the right way.

 To Pursue Excellence

The purpose of our business is to create and keep customers. This can be accomplished only by delivering superior quality. We continually seek better methods of delivering service and believe that every time we touch a customer's life, we should provide added value for that customer. Our third objective reinforces the importance of viewing quality not as something to attain, but as a journey and continuous process. We may be pleased, but never satisfied with our service delivery. Pursuing excellence requires us to continue to ask ourselves whether we are delivering on our promise of value to our customers each and every time we serve them. Pursuing excellence means that we must know our customers, understand their needs and expectations, regularly listen to them, and adjust our processes and procedures to more effectively serve them. It is only when our customers feel that they have received service that is worth what they have paid--and more--that we have made a difference and provided excellence in value.

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