PEO 0013 - Faith & Co: Serving Customers

Course Description

This continuing education professional development course re-imagines how business ought to serve customers by applying the lens of Christian faith. The course builds upon the SPU-produced Faith & Co film series with a focus on the Season 3: Serving Customers film stories. These are evocative short film stories of practitioners and companies who have thought deeply about and have wrestled with the practicalities of implementing faith-based practices in and through their companies. It also uses interviews with executives and other subject matter experts. Students will be challenged to rethink some of the taken-for-granted assumptions that are built into normal business practices and to “de-/re-construct” business models.

Course Outline

• Welcome, Introduction/Overview & Instructions/Providing Good Goods – The Canlis Story
• Providing Good Goods – The X-Gym Story
• Justice & Provisioning the Poor, Marginalized, & Underserved – The PICSA Story
• The Ethic of Relational Love - The McCoy’s Building Supply Story
• The Ethic of Relational Love - The Guardian Bank Story
• Building Trust – The Flow Automotive Story
• Celebrating True Beauty - The Magpies Girl Story
• Celebrating Crafted Beauty-The Saddleback Leather Story

Learner Outcomes

After completing this course, students will be enabled to bring a Christian faith-informed mindset to the practice of business and marketing in hopes of better contributing to the flourishing of customers; to more fully live integrated lives as faithful professionals in business.

• Explore the implications of Christian faith and theology for business, specifically for serving customers, developing, and maintaining customer relationships, and marketing practices.
• Provide practical examples of how faith-based values can be expressed in business and marketing.
• Develop the integration and synthesis of business experience and theological concepts.
• Encourage and equip students to make meaningful and practical connections between faith and the practice of business and marketing.
• Provide opportunities for discussion, self-reflection, and the development of practical action plans.

Notes

Each week’s module will “unlock” on Monday morning at 12:01am (00:01 Pacific Time) in the order listed in the Schedule. Students must log on to the Canvas® course site and click “Modules” on the left navigation bar.

All learners should complete the professional and personal development activities for each week’s module by midnight (23:59 Pacific Time) the following Sunday evening. Each module should take 60-90 minutes to view/read the content and an additional 60-90 minutes to engage in thoughtful discussion of and reflection on the topics.