07.09.21 — Marcus Pennington Interview Reflection
Reflection over interview with Marcus Pennington — Director, Carlson Capital
This past year, I was a member of an organization at Texas A&M University called the Business Fellows. In this program, I had the opportunity to grow in my leadership and team development skills through a wide array of intensive case projects, retreats and relationship building. In addition to these elements of the program, I also had the privilege to interact with and listen to a series of renowned individuals across a variety of industries speak over particular topics. Marcus Pennington (and his wife, Morgan) was one of those speakers.
Out of all of the speaker we heard from, Marcus stuck out to me the most. I think that it was the fact that I saw a lot of myself in him. He was man of God, who valued being a present and faithful husband and father to his family, while also having an excitement for accomplishment within his work. He had struck a balance between his work, family, and faith that few before him have. From that night when I got to hear from him on, I knew that I wanted to sit down with him and pick his brain. What follows is what we discussed over lunch at Jack Allen’s Kitchen (which had a wonderful Chicken Fried Chicken, by the way).
How did God lead you here? How did you learn to discern His will along the way?
Marcus graduated from Texas A&M in 2009, which was pretty inopportune timing considering that he was entering the workforce right in the middle of a recession. “God had squashed any plans I had of doing what I wanted to do,” he told me with a bit of a chuckle. This is what set him more down the path of investing than he had previously anticipated. He told me that early on in his career, this event had crushed his idolatry of needing to have control of his own destiny. He brought up the example of how once God had delivered the Israelites from Egypt in the book of Exodus, they were in the desert for 400 years! God’s timing follows no human logic and is impossible to understand, so losing the idol of control has been helpful for Marcus. Investing was not plan A for Marcus’s life. Due to a Sovereign God’s will for his life, he was forced to call an audible. When reflecting on this surprise that hit him in 2009, Marcus said “option ‘B’ is not always going to be better than option ‘A’.” This was an alarming thought for me to process. Sometimes, at face value, God’s plan for your life does not seem to be as good as what you had initially thought you would be doing. “It was less of me learning to discern God’s will for my life and more of Him exerting His will on my life.” There were a lot fewer jobs and paths available than he thought there would be, and so he had to learn what surrender and blind faith looked like. Along the road of God’s plan, Marcus told me that there would be a lot of pain and frustration. So, he taught me to distinguish between the goal of trying hard vs. winning. The reason for this is because when you adopt a mentality that constantly seeks to win, failure is a very real and likely possibility, but you can’t fail from trying hard.
Marcus then told me about a mentor of his, Britt Harris. Britt had shaped a lot of Marcus’ work, but more importantly his life. Brit taught him that working hard and being excellent at your job is what builds credibility with people you work with at your job. “Only successful people tell you to follow your passions,” Marcus said with a bit of a laugh. He learned to be ok with just being excellent at the tasks placed in front of him and allowing God to advance him in work through the opportunities that emerge from his toil. While Britt was a very influential person who God used to steer Marcus, he told me to remain open-minded when listening to people. Be humble enough to hear what they are saying and learn, but remain vigilant in examining their words with a magnifying glass, taking everything with a grain of salt. On the other end of the spectrum, he told me to not drink my own Kool-Aid, either. Recognize the bounds to my wisdom and knowledge, and gravitate towards those who can supplement what you don’t have on your own.
How well have you balanced the demands of work, family and faith? What would you have done differently? What did your relationship with God look like in the workplace?
Marcus started by telling me that “when there’s a lot going on at work, it makes me somewhat of a miserable person to be around.” This is likely a product of caring deeply for the work he does and the standard at which he performs it. But bringing home the stress of work has been something that he has battled over certain moments of his professional life. He told me that he often addressed the stress of work by working more, which contributed to furthering the cycle. Marcus has two younger daughters and a wife at home that he loves and serves faithfully. Bringing the stress of work home for them to witness would be dishonoring to those he loves the most, so he fights his hardest to be fully present with his family when he is at home with them.
As for the balance of faith in the workplace, Marcus told me that no one just stops following the Lord once they walk through the office doors at work. The work-faith dilemma is really not all that it is made out to be, in his opinion. He believes that an individual can be fully engaged in all spheres of his/her life (spiritual, family, work, etc.), while not having them always overlap. “Some people try to force the faith element over all facets of their job… sometimes work is just work.” And that’s ok. There is no need to have conviction about your lack of sharing the Gospel with your coworkers while you are sitting down doing spreadsheet work. Over the years, Hollywood has created a view of business the bad guys. They’ve made up the idea that you can either be committed to your family/faith OR your job, but this is really a non-issue. Think about Surgeons or members of the Armed Forces. We want these people to be fully committed and present to their jobs, and we actually celebrate this when they perform with excellence. Why can’t pursuing business and your family/faith be a both/and rather than an either/or?
Marcus’s evangelism to his colleagues has often taken the form of meeting them where they are, and being present for them consistently. He told me that people can all too often make the mistake of going to jobs with the view that their first priority is not their work. This leads to many expectations that are not met and confusion about why people are not driven or passionate about their “calling” later down the line. At work, people can make two separate statements about you: 1) “___ is the best person I’ve worked with” and/or 2) “___ is a great guy.” Sometimes going to work, being excellent at your job, and simply doing life with these people is the best way to share God’s good news while also being a good steward of the gifts and opportunities you’ve been provided with. At the end of the day, to honor God in the workplace, Marcus told me that you should take all of your goals/thoughts through the lens of being a granular part of God’s plan, and therefore being where your feet are and faithful to your daily calling.
A Personal Note to Marcus
Marcus, I thoroughly enjoyed the time that we got to spend together. Thank you for sacrificing your time to sit down with me and answering the some of the harder questions I could muster. I’ve got plenty of more that we didn’t get a chance to discuss up my sleeve and would love to continue the discussion in the future.
I admire the love you have for your wife and kids, and the Lord. I can tell that you are a man of God, after His own heart, and that is why I think that you are someone I have a great deal to learn from. I appreciate the investment that you made in me through this conversation, your words will not soon be lost on me. God Bless you and your family!