Seeking a higher counsel

When an ambulance driver hurt his back, his boss, Andrew Kravchuk, assigned him to light duty as a dispatcher. The driver did so well that he stayed at the job. Lately though, there have been changes in his demeanor.

Kravchuk wondered: Could this valued employee now be addicted to the same prescription painkillers he took when he hurt his back?

What would Jesus do?

What should Kravchuk do?

"Let's pray for wisdom for Andrew," said Scott Walker, local chairman of Convene, a faith-based support group for business executives such as Kravchuk, owner of Ambulimo and MedStar EMS, a Northeast Philadelphia nonemergency transport service that employs about 30 people.

There is an old truism that it is lonely at the top, with top executives unable to turn anywhere for counsel - not to their C-suite direct reports, who may have their own agendas, not to former coworkers, not to their peers in competing companies.

But each month, Kravchuk and four or five other area business owners meet for a full day of prayer, devotions, and faith-based seminars on business issues, from marketing to human resources. Some have been in the group since it began four years ago.

"The group kind of keeps me in check," said Kravchuk, adding that trading insights with the other business owners helps him model the right behaviors in his business.

"It does provide a trusted group of confidants," said a four-year member, Jack Nelson, who heads a $400,000 nonprofit that funds 100 missionaries around the world.

Convene is a national organization, with groups around the country. It provides study guides and trains leaders such as Walker, who gets a cut of every fee. Those range from $700 to $900 a month, and Walker, who lives in Newtown, Delaware County, also meets with each man individually.

For Walker, this is a spiritually important sideline. His regular job is consulting with companies that want to outsource their information-technology departments, either abroad or to other companies in the United States.

At Convene sessions, each member takes a turn leading prayer on behalf of another member. On Thursday, Nelson prayed for Kravchuk.

"We want to pray for his employee, that his life would be clean, straight, and under your control," Nelson began, as the others bowed their heads.

"Give Andrew wisdom and insight," Nelson continued. "Protect them, Lord, from having some incident that will injure them."

Before the prayer, however, group members weighed in. One was Tom Whiteman, who has addiction expertise as the founder of Life Counseling Services Inc., a Paoli company with 200 employees, $15 million in revenue, and about two dozen offices, mostly in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

"At this point," Whiteman asked, "is he a danger to anyone?"

Kravchuk said no. "He's totally functional," he said, praising the employee for his enthusiasm in trying to improve the dispatch system. "He loves talking about that."

Nelson suggested broaching the issue like this: "Do you mind if I talk to you - not as a boss, but as a friend?"

Walker asked Whiteman whether someone could be addicted and not know it.

"Or he may not believe it," replied Whiteman.

He said that addiction would lead to a decline in performance, and that documenting it would be key.

"So I should just focus on performance," Kravchuk said, summarizing. "As soon as it starts to falter, deal with it on a performance basis."

Concerned that the evidence of addiction was rather sketchy, Walker chimed in, "Remember the biblical principle: 'Judge not, lest you be judged.' "

Kravchuk's problem was not the only one before the group.

Whiteman, for example, is beginning to hand off the business he founded to a new executive team. Nelson would be meeting with his board the next day, and he needed to discuss a sticky issue.

Steve Graves, who hosted the meeting at his business, Play-a-Round Golf in Malvern, led the group in a long discussion about how to attract more families - family togetherness had been a goal when he opened the business in November 2006, after being laid off in 2005.

Graves had long dreamed of owning his own company, but it had not happened, he told the group over coffee.

"I told the Lord, 'Lord, if you want me to do something, you'll have to hit me over the head with a 2-by-4.' "

That was the layoff.

Then it got worse.

"In the first 18 months, we burned through a million dollars. We were at rock bottom with nowhere to go, and I thought, 'Does God really love me?' "

At Thursday's session, the main educational component focused on marketing and sales.

"The biblical foundation for all God-honoring selling is serving," said the material Walker distributed. It also quoted from the Book of Galatians in the New Testament: "So then, as we have the opportunity, let us do good to everyone."

Walker noted that each member's business had grown, despite the recession.

"A lot of things have contributed to this," Walker said, "not the least of which is God's blessing."

Graves nodded.

"It's not because we are Christians and God blesses our work, so we can sit back and do nothing," he said. "It's following, almost blindly, in the dark where he's leading us and then, all of a sudden, you are in the light and you say, 'Wow, I came through the dark.' "