From Success to Surrender: Mark Beebe on The Crucible Project Podcast

In a powerful interview on The Crucible Project Podcast, Mark Beebe—our very own COO of Enterprise Stewardship—shares his deeply personal journey of faith, failure, and transformation.

From a quarter-life crisis to leading with purpose in the marketplace, Mark explores what it truly means to move from success to surrender and steward leadership with humility.

He unpacks how business can be a force for good—economically, socially, and spiritually—and how God uses moments of brokenness to bring deeper impact.

Whether you’re a leader wrestling with doubt or just longing to align your work with your faith, this conversation will challenge and inspire you.

Listening not your thing? Read a transcription of the entire episode:

Intro [Mark Beebe speaking]

A lot of times we think I'm in a Christian business, I'm leading a church, whatever role I'm in, and we wanna see all the spiritual fruit while ignoring our heart as leaders, our integrity as leaders, you may try to cover those things up, but your flaws are only gonna be more exposed. How do you move from what we call a life of success to a life of surrender a life that's about me to a life that's about honoring God?

And that leads to a very different principle...

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Welcome to The Crucible Project Podcast. The Crucible Project is a nonprofit organization committed to creating a world of men and women who live with integrity, grace, and courage, helping them to fulfill their God-given purpose. This podcast will discuss important and sometimes difficult topics while delivering practical life applications with men and women who are currently practicing this work. We are igniting Christ-like change in men and women through experiences of radical honesty and grace.

Martin Booker

Well, welcome to The Crucible Project Podcast. I'm Martin. I'm one of your hosts, and I'm delighted to have here. Mark Beebe, who has spent the last decade in the faith and work movement, inspiring Christian business owners, CEOs and executives.

He's currently serving as the chief operations officer at an organization called Enterprise Stewardship, where he oversees strategic operations lead initiatives to drive performance, also brand integrity, and cultivating strategic partnerships and managing the community engagement. So Mark, welcome to the Crucible Project Podcast. Great to have you here.

Mark Beebe

Thanks Martin. Good to be here.

Martin Booker

Yeah. So Mark, uh, how did he get to that place? What's the short version? The Mark Beebe story?

Mark Beebe

Yeah. I'll give you a couple minute version of it here. Um, but basically grew up in a, a great Christian home, youngest of four kids. Uh, my dad ran Christian schools for 40 plus years, and I grew up in one of those Christian schools.

I did my undergrad up in the Boston area to a Christian college. That was, that was my upbringing and my worldview. So faith was always important to me. But it was really interesting because as I got into my career, I had what some people would call a, a quarter life crisis. Well, it's too young to be a midlife crisis, but I started questioning what is the purpose?

All of all of this. I go to work every day. I come home, we eat dinner, go to bed, do it all over again. And what's the purpose? And do I really wanna do this? Over the next 40 to 50 years of my life, I started asking a lot of questions, seeking counsel, but it really came to a head for me. I was in church, I was sitting by myself, and I finally admitted to myself that much that I believed.

I said I believed to be true about Christianity, about the Bible. Uh, I didn't. I was not living a life that actually reflected that I believed those things were to be true. So there was an integrity gap and, and a fairly big one. Uh, I wasn't nefarious, I wasn't evil, uh, but I certainly didn't live in a way that aligned with what I said I believed in terms of my belief in Jesus Christ and the implications for my life. But that really started a lot of questions and conversation, and long story short, really was a turning point for me in my life and understanding, okay, wow. If Jesus is real, then my life is not my own. He has bigger plans for me, that includes work.

And it was, even though I grew up in the church, it was really the first time that I realized my work was part of my faith. Um, and that started to change things around. And so long story short. Ended up at a organization called C12, uh, which they do a lot of work forming Christian peer advisory groups of CEOs and Christian business owners.

And that started my professional career in the faith and workspace and really started to get a masterclass and what it meant to integrate faith and work. Uh, and then how do we serve others and teach others how to do that. Several years into that, I heard of this organization called Enterprise Stewardship.

And, uh, they were starting up a, a new way of meeting some of those needs of Christian business owners and Christian organizations, uh, through a faith-based operating system. Really one thing led to another and joined forces with our founder here. And, uh, we've been off and running over the last year bringing this to more and more organizations.

Martin Booker

So what does the faith-based work organization look like or do? Where does it touch the marketplace? And, you know, as part of the great commission, we're called to be in the marketplace and in the real world. So I'm fascinated to hear more about that.

Mark Beebe

Yeah. Well I think it starts whether you're leading a faith-based organization or you are a Christ follower in any organization, it starts with the understanding that God does not call any part-time disciples. So if we are believers in Christ and we wanna follow him, we don't get to pick and choose where that happens. It doesn't just happen on churches on Sunday or at home. It happens throughout all of our lives.

And so for a faith-based organization, if you're leading one, if you're an owner, a CEO on the leadership team. It really starts with the recognition that the business is a gift. It's in God's possession, that he's allowed us to steward that platform of business, and so if it belongs to him and it doesn't actually belong to us and we're there to steward it, then a faith-based organization would be marked with the outcomes that would honor him.

And so if Jesus came back and said, "Martin, what have you done with the business that I gave you to honor me? What kind of outcomes have you seen?" Well, that goes far beyond the economic performance of a business. You know, how do we impact people? How do we impact communities around us? How do we use our business as a platform to promote Christ and to do that well?

Part of the, the reason we call our company Enterprise Stewardship is because an enterprise is not specific to companies or specifically for profit companies. An enterprise is a bold initiative made for impact. So say I'm an enterprise, you're an enterprise. We're all mini enterprises running around and our organizations are as well.

So whether it's for-profit, non-profit, your family were made for impact, um, and impact to the the honors God.

Martin Booker

Yeah. In our conversation earlier, we were. Talking about the work that Enterprise Stewardship is doing now, but like it's got a really interesting backstory. I'd love for you to share with our audience, uh, a little bit of that backstory and, and, uh, move then to work the work you're doing now.

Mark Beebe

Yeah, so Enterprise Stewardship itself is a, is a fairly new company, but it has deep roots and so our founder gentleman named Pete Ochs, he's a 40+ year entrepreneur, business leader in the community here in Kansas, and he started an investment banking company called Capital III. Uh, you'll hear me use that language a lot, the three capitals of economic, social, spiritual capital.

But they started investing in businesses to say, how do we promote three capitals? And then through the businesses that, that we buy, and back in the, around 2008, 2009 timeframe, one of those businesses, they, they bought up and they started running and uh, they had a quickly growing business with a labor shortage.

So they ended up starting with a work release program through a maximum security prison in the area, using inmates to work in their manufacturing organization. And as they did that, they quickly needed more. When they went back to the prison, the warden said, "Hey, we, we can't give you more. In fact, we, we need to end this, but we have a lot of space inside the prison, and if you're willing to move your manufacturing plant inside the prison, you can have all the labor that you need to to run the plant."

So within 60 days later, they had a manufacturing floor up and running inside a maximum security prison using inmates to train them and get them going. And it's a really interesting story.

The reality is, even though Capital III, the purpose of the organization was there to create economic, social, spiritual capital. At the time the inmates were, were really seen as a tool to say, you know what? They've done bad things. We can work them. We can kind of punish 'em in a way and we can profit through that process.

And within weeks they started to see, oh my goodness. The only difference between these people and us is they got caught for their crimes. But I got just as much evil in my heart as they had in theirs, and that was a big turning point to say, okay, how do we look at this business differently? How do we start to see them as people, not as inmates?

How do we look to see 'em as children of God, not as what they did to get in inside a prison. And that was a huge turning point. Um, and so today it's a, it's a flourishing business and we got stories after story of flourishing individuals in a place that most people would not think of. A flourishing environment.

Martin Booker

When you share that, Mark, I get, I get goosebumps because it, it's the heart of of God. It's the grace that we talk about. It's the grace that we talk about in the, in The Crucible Project as well, and seeing people as people and not coming from a place of judgment, but coming from a place of grace towards them. That's super powerful.

Mark Beebe

We talk about this a lot, but the reality is they could not have a transformed business with transformed inmates without a transformed leader. And Pete would, he has his own story. Right. That he can share around all of that. But God had him on a journey of what does it mean to be a steward?

What does it mean to, to run a business that isn't his, but is meant to glorify God? And even in that, in that first part, I, I mentioned where initially it was cheap labor, right? That was kind of the goal. And, and now it's something completely different. Than that. But it was a journey of, that couldn't happen until God got ahold of, of Pete's heart,.That continued to get ahold of other leaders' hearts in the organization.

And so a lot of times we think of, I'm in a Christian business, I'm leading a church, I'm whatever role I'm in, and we wanna see all the spiritual fruit while ignoring our heart as leaders, our integrity as leaders, and I'm a big believer in, in the fact that, look, if, if you enter higher and higher levels of leadership, you may try to cover those things up, but your flaws are only gonna be more exposed than they were before.

And so right now we, we do a lot of business coaching, uh, but we do a lot of culture work and we do a lot of individual work around how do you move from what we call a life of success to a life of surrender. A life that's about me to a life that's about honoring God. And that leads to very different principles, uh, and passions that we get to live with.

Martin Booker

Yeah. So the, the project, I guess with the prison, what are some of the outcomes that you've seen as a result of that shift in posture towards grace?

Mark Beebe

Well, there's, there's a number of of stories with that. So it started with casting a vision for the inmates, right? Because when you go into a maximum security prison, most of 'em aren't really thinking about how soon they're gonna get out or the life change that they, it's, it's survival.

And it started with casting a vision to say, we wanna make this the best run prison in America. And that was received with laughter. But you know, in any organization there's, there's early adopters, there's those change agents, and so there was a prisoner by the name of Louis Gutierrez that started to be an early adopter as the leadership team really started to build in and invest in the inmates, as people said, okay, we, I, I can invest back, but I'll believe in them and respond.

And so he wrote a manifesto that says, well, what does it mean to be the best inmate? In, in America. So this is a guy who was in prison for life, and long story short, he, he ends up getting out of prison and put in a large part due the support he had and the investment he had from, from the organization.

But he gets out and he opened his own business, uh, right there in town. And he's a great artist. So he opened a, a tattoo shop and it's called Redemption Ink. And so he gets to bring in other folks who have made mistakes in their lives, have, uh, tattoos or maybe other ink on their bodies that is, is less than honoring of God.

And he gets to do coverups and redeem their artwork while he talks to them about a redemption story. And so this is a guy that you know is in for life because of the work with. Uh, with Capital III now knows Jesus and it's now spreading Jesus. And so that's, that's one fun story. But, um, I would say broadly speaking, um, inmates who work for the organization and then exit, they actually get released from prison.

Their recidivism rates are about 7%, uh, compared to other averages that are north of 80%. Um, and it starts with. Yes. They know Jesus, most of them by the time they get out, which is huge. Right. And a lot of us would say that's the ultimate goal and that's, that's great. But we believe it also starts with economic and social capital.

So they get paid fair market wages when they work for Capital III in the prison, and so they're able to save up money. They're able to take care of themselves when they leave. They have a resume. They've had a good job. They know how to work with people. They've taken fathering classes, they've taken Financial Peace University.

They've gone through discipleship classes. So they've been invested in all these ways. They have income now and they know Jesus. So those are the three capitals, right? They have economic capital to play with. They have social capital. And they have spiritual capital, and so when they come out, they're in a flourishing mindset.

And that greatly reduces the desire or the need to go back to a life that is less an honor in God that would put them back in prison. So that's just a, a, a couple quick examples, but there's story after story that we could share of, of the life change.

Martin Booker

Yeah. It's that personal transformation, isn't it?

Because in all of that, they actually face the thing that perhaps was driving them to the behavior that led to committing the crime and the imprisonment. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. You, uh, indicated earlier you've had your own sort of personal journey and as sort of as a, as a, as a Christian and as as in an executive in business.

I'd love to hear more about that too.

Mark Beebe

Yeah, I, I mentioned early on the, the quarter life crisis and really wrestling with. What's the purpose of work? What's the purpose of my life at this point? I was married now for 11 years. We have three kids, a fourth on the way. I was, I was married once prior to that, right outta college, and that marriage was falling apart.

And I was, I was going to church. I was gonna church by myself. And so I was sitting there and, and the church seats started making a deal with God of coming to the realization of number one, I confess I have not lived a life that that truly honors God. There's been a, a great disconnect of, of what I say I believe and how I live.

And two, realizing that I actually had serious doubts about if God was real. And so I found myself saying, God, here's, here's the deal. I wanna be all in. And if you'll show yourself faithful, then I'll know you're real. And if not, then I at least gave it a shot. And I can be honest with myself that I don't actually believe this is real.

So that started a process, uh, through that timeframe. My marriage did end shortly after that my sister, who's the oldest of our family, she was pregnant with her fourth child and she got news that she had stage four brain cancer. And it was just a very weird season where I felt more alone than ever.

All my family had moved away. I'm living in an empty apartment. My marriage has fallen apart. I'm losing my sister. And for the first time, I just felt alone. I've never felt. That before and yet spiritually I felt very much alive and I felt God's presence and I was hungry for him. And he, he met me where I was.

And so that, that really was a, a hinge point in my life to say, okay, I actually do believe God is real. I've experienced him in very real ways. And, um, one, one quick note I should share because I usually get the question. My sister now is completely healed in a miraculous way. Her daughter, uh, is. Uh, 12 years old, I think now, and we get to celebrate her and it's just a really cool story.

But at the time it, it was not. So through that process, that was the first hinge point. And I think I fell into the trap that I thought I made it like, yes, I'm living with more integrity. I believe God is real. Then fast forward later in my career and I'm in this faith work movement, I started to get promotions and I was on the leadership team all of a sudden.

And when I got invited into that role, I really thought I was getting more money and a little bit more responsibility and more fun job that would look great on my resume. I didn't know what I was fully signing up for, and what I was signing up for was a role of spiritual leadership in an organization.

And I wasn't ready for it, but I, I thought I was good. And what it resulted in was for the first time in my life really experiencing anxiety. I used to not understand what it was. When people would say they had anxiety internally, I'd kind of roll my eyes 'cause I just didn't get it. But there was one moment in particular where I, along with my boss, we were gonna be leading a, a pretty important meeting. It was an all day meeting, and, uh, about 30 minutes before it started, he comes in my office and he goes, Hey, how you feeling? And I just had one of those, those breaking points where I said, I'm not good. It's not good. And uh, he, I don't, I don't think he had ever really heard me talk like that before.

So he's, he kind of was taken back a little bit and he goes, okay, do you need anything? And I, I just said, look, I, I'll be fine. I'll get through the meeting, but I'm not, okay. I don't know why. And I don't know what to do about it. So, uh, okay, let's get through the day. And we did, but that was kind of my next lesson in terms of.

Okay. This is probably what happens when you take a role that you're not ready for based on character instead of competence. You know, if you're not ready from a competence standpoint, you can grow pretty quickly. You can be invested in, et cetera when you're not ready from a character standpoint, um, that's really hard to admit, number one, right?

But it's also, there's less of a clear path in terms of how do you, how do you get there? And so luckily, you know, it was a very gracious organization and they helped provide some resources for me to start to figure some things out, but for me, the lesson was, transformation is not a destination.

You know, and I, I've made plenty of mistakes since then as well. But it's, it's the consistent work around, okay, am I living the life that aligns with what I say I believe, and do I, do I still believe that those things to be true.

Martin Booker

Mark, I wanna honor you for sharing that, uh, here on the podcast. Uh, that certainly aligns with, uh, what the work of the Crucible Project is about, um, helping people as a, as a resource to, um. Get back to the character God created them at with. If it's a support of an organization like The Crucible Project, that can actually help men and women sort of, uh, respond to that nudge that comes when I go, actually, I haven't got it all sorted if I need some support and help.

Mark Beebe

Well, hopefully this is encouraging to folks, but if we would've gone back to that time period, I think everyone would've thought my character was the one thing that was good enough. So, so externally, there was a confidence in, okay, maybe he's a little young or inexperienced, but we believe in his character and who he is and et cetera. And in a weird way, that was the thing that was probably in the worst shape. And that's not anyone's fault at all, right?

This is, this is my fault, but, those are kind of the contexts that make it really difficult or challenging or scary to actually raise your hand and say, I don't know what to do about this. Because it was the one thing that people didn't know that I didn't want people to know. And you know, how do you move forward in in a situation like that?

It's pretty difficult.

Martin Booker

Yeah. My experience is that, um. God cracks us open when we need it to be open to that. And um, and I think it's, uh, been open hard and mind to. What's in front of us and the resources and also responding to that nudge call, whatever it might be, uh, that moment to know that there is a different path.

And actually, and we open up ourselves to that and we talk about it in, uh, in the Crucible project. A lot about big grace comes from big honesty. And when we're really honest with ourselves, we get to step into huge grace. And, and, and that can come. From places we didn't even imagine or hadn't even had a thought about.

So Mark, um, what's it like working in an organization with that focus in the, in the marketplace and faith work and uh, and also being in a place where you, you know, you continue to do on your own personal journey?

Mark Beebe

It is a great place to work. We love it. I think what you realize is you, you come across a lot of really cool people trying to do really, really great things.

I mean, working with CEOs and owners is incredible. It's, it's a previous boss, mine would refer to it as kind of serving modern day kings and queens, and it's a, it's a special place to be, but it's also realizing that we're all the same. We all got our own issues. Everyone's on their journey. I think one of the, the most special parts about what we do is you get to meet people on their journey of understanding stewardship within the business context.

There's a lot of people you'll meet that say, yes, I'm a Christian business owner. But how they would define that might be very different than how I would define that right now. Or maybe they're not quite ready to admit that the business that I started out in my garage is actually belongs to God and not me.

And that's okay. Right? That's, it's the opportunity where we get to work with them to share our story, to share our system and our practices. And you, when you see light bulbs turn on, when you see the ahas, when you see real fruit. From the system and the coaching that works. That's just really encouraging and we've had leaders from teams that we work with that probably would've said they were believers before come to faith and working with us.

We've had just incredible fruit through through other businesses that we've got to deal with because people are people and we all have people issues. Interpersonally. I mean, every business has people issues. It's just, it's the, the one common denominator. So you get to work in a way that influences people.

You get to see 'em as God's children, the way they were created, and it's just, it's special. Special to be a part of.

Martin Booker

Yeah, it, um, that there's always an opportunity to go deeper in our faith and also an opportunity to go deeper in the work that we are doing that, that aligns with God's plans and purposes.

Mark Beebe

Yeah, I think the hard part for some is like, even when we share the prison story and we'll host people, they'll come through, we'll, we'll show 'em the, the prison, they can see kind of the transformation and hear some stories firsthand. And you know, one of the challenges with it is people walk away and they can feel like, well, I can never do that.

And it's helping folks realize, well, they didn't plan on doing that. Oh, this is a day by day, year by year journey of just trying to say, okay, God, what do you have for us? And what does it look like to honor you in business? So most people are not gonna put their organizations inside a maximum security prison.

That's not the point. The point is, we all have our unique context where we have this platform of business that we've been given, and I think it has more weight than we realize in communities and with people when you're leading the business, it, it matters. And so the question isn't how do I match what another organization did or how do I get there as quickly as possible?

The question really becomes, how do I be faithful today? Um, and do we have our purpose clearly defined? And we do, what do we have? Principles that are clearly defined that we can live by day in, day out, that actually honor God and what we do. And when people get sold on that, that's when you start to see little changes over time turn into big impact.

And that, that's what's exciting for us.

Martin Booker

Yeah. I think one of the things that's come out of our conversation today is, is the being open to hearing God's voice. What would you say to people about that and from your own experience?

Mark Beebe

I would say I, you know, I have, um. Felt like I heard directly from God one time in my life, and that's part of the reason I'm, I'm here in this organization.

And so I wouldn't put pressure on yourself to say, okay, I, I must hear, I must hear, I must hear. I do think God speaks to us in a variety of ways, but even from a business standpoint, I would, I would give two tips. And one of them I learned, uh, from my time at C12, uh from their founder, said that, you know, most important thing you can do.

It starts with being a transform leader and spend your first hour with God every day. Um, and then the second thing is have, have a framework for how you're gonna make decisions as a business. And so one of the tools that we offer is a Decision Matrix, for example, that follows through our four principles.

So we just ask ourselves four primary questions every time there's a big decision to be made. Number one, does it honor God now? Prayer helps with that, but also knowing scripture and understanding what, what does it mean to honor God helps. Number two, does it serve people? Number three, can we do it with excellence?

This is where a lot of ideas die, right? Because yes, it honors God. Yes, it serves people, but we can't actually do that well. Um, and then number four, does it steward capital? When we say Steward Capital, yes. Again, we're talking, this is good for us financially. Is it, uh, proper for us to do it financially, but also is it gonna have an impact socially or spiritually through the organization.

And so when you get to say yes to all four of those questions, that's a great way to say honors. God, it serves people. We can do it really well and it stewards the capital that we were able to put at risk. And so that's a real practical way, uh, that people can start putting that into place and say, okay, how do we make good decisions And, and start listening for God in, in the middle of our day to day.

Martin Booker

Yeah. Well, Mark, thank you for blessing me and also the audience that listen to this podcast with, uh, your story and, and for the, the faith work that Capital III and Enterprise Stewardship is doing. It's been an absolute pleasure and um, I. Also feel inspired with, with so much of what you've said today.

So again, thank you for giving your time up today.

Mark Beebe

Absolutely. Thanks, Martin. It's been a pleasure.

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Ready to take the next step in aligning your leadership with your faith?

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