Gordon Hickson: When Faith and Business Work Together

What a lifetime across business, mission and leadership taught Gordon about partnership, prayer and seeing what God is doing

What happens when you stop treating faith as one part of life and business as another?

For Gordon Hickson, that question has been worked out over decades rather than answered in theory. His journey has taken him from ten years in the British Army into international business, followed by mission and church leadership. More recently he has worked with Betel and alongside his wife Rachel Hickson. At Rediscover Business & Leadership 2025, Gordon drew on those experiences to explore what it can look like when prayer becomes part of how we make decisions and Kingdom purpose begins to shape what we build.

His stories are anything but neat. Gordon spoke about starting a company only to find himself facing a High Court case and learning the painful consequences of what he described as doing things “my way”. He remembered laying business bills on a desk and praying over them, seeing unexpected finance arrive for new ventures and later watching partnerships open doors into cities and nations he could never have reached alone.

Through it all, one lesson kept resurfacing. Gifting and ambition are not enough if we run ahead of God.

There is a practical challenge here for anybody building or leading something. Gordon argues that Christian business should not simply mean running an ordinary company and attaching Christian language to it. If God really is involved, prayer affects decisions and people matter more than transactions. The people we partner with matter too, particularly when the vision is bigger than anything we could accomplish by ourselves.

God as the senior partner

One of Gordon’s earliest lessons in business came from working alongside a leader who treated prayer as an ordinary part of the working day. Bills would be laid out on the desk and prayed over. Vacancies for overseas construction projects became subjects for prayer too. Gordon describes that period as formative because the spiritual and practical were not placed into separate boxes. They belonged together.

That did not mean ignoring sound business practice. Gordon was clear that skills and education matter, but his point was that they are not the whole story. For a Christian in business, the deeper question is whether we are genuinely listening to God or simply asking Him to bless a plan we have already decided to pursue.

That distinction became painfully personal when Gordon launched his own venture. Finance arrived in an extraordinary way, yet he admits that he then made the mistake of pushing ahead on his own terms. What followed included a High Court battle that lasted two years. Looking back, Gordon describes it as a lesson in learning to listen, particularly when the advice God is giving may not be the advice we want to hear.

Prayer subsequently became an increasingly important part of the way Gordon approached both business and mission. His experiences took him from Prayer Mountain in Korea to work across Africa and Southeast Asia, but the principle he describes is remarkably relevant to somebody running a business in Devon today. Before charging ahead with a good idea, learn to recognise whether it is actually yours to pursue.

Look for the fingerprints of God

Gordon uses a memorable phrase for this: look for the “fingerprints of God”.

During his years in mission, that sometimes meant travelling into a country simply to discover whether there was any sign that God was opening a door. One such search took him to Kuala Lumpur after Rachel encouraged him to go there. He arrived at a church to discover its leader was in the process of writing a letter asking for somebody from Reinhard Bonnke’s ministry to come to Malaysia. For Gordon, it was an unmistakable confirmation.

The circumstances may be very different in business, but his question remains useful. Where are the relationships beginning to form? Which opportunities keep appearing? Where is there something in front of us that we may have overlooked because we were waiting for an answer to arrive in a different form?

Gordon illustrated this with a story attributed to Charles Spurgeon about an impoverished woman who had a document hanging on her wall without understanding its value. Whether considering a new business opportunity or wondering where the next stage of growth will come from, Gordon’s challenge is to learn to see what is already in front of us.

Partnership changes what is possible

Another thread running through Gordon’s talk was partnership. He repeatedly returned to the Biblical picture of one chasing a thousand and two chasing ten thousand, using it to describe the multiplication he has seen when people work together around a shared Kingdom purpose.

That matters because partnership can be harder than independence. It requires patience and humility. It can mean relinquishing control or recognising that another person brings something we do not have ourselves. Gordon warned particularly about ambition, speed and competition because even good Christian initiatives can become unhealthy when they begin to revolve around one person building their own empire.

His alternative is collaboration. During his mission years, he saw what could happen when churches across a city worked together rather than protecting their own territory. Later, he saw business people provide finance that allowed work on the ground to happen at a scale that would otherwise have been impossible. Different people carried different parts of the vision, but the impact came through their willingness to work together.

That same principle eventually shaped Gordon’s approach to fundraising too. While working with Betel, he describes moving away from conventional fundraising towards what the team called “friend raising”. Rather than beginning with a request for money, they would sit with people and share the vision. Relationships came first, with financial partnership growing from genuine connection.

For anyone leading a business, that might be one of the most useful questions to take away from Gordon’s session: are we simply looking for what people can do for our vision, or are we taking the time to build relationships with them?

Watch Gordon Hickson at Rediscover Business & Leadership 2025

Gordon Hickson’s Rediscover Business & Leadership 2025 talk

The transcript below follows the original spoken wording. We have only corrected obvious transcription errors and misheard phrases where the intended wording is clear, with punctuation and paragraph breaks added for readability.

An introduction to Gordon Hickson

Conference introduction: Phil, I’m delighted in this session, session two, we’ve got Gordon. Gordon is speaking, Rachel’s lovely husband. And it’s going to be about the same topic, really, about transformation of cities and towns. And also, Gordon was, well, is an amazing leader, a strategic consultant and coworker with Rachel for Heartcry for Change.

What I want you to do on this session is to really listen to the way Gordon can strategise and just open up what God has got for us. Because even though we’re down here in South Devon, we still can have a far reaching effect upon nations and countries. And the thing is, you’ve got to decide if you’re going to be local, regional or national or international. There’s different parts that we can focus on. And believe me, over the years in business, I’ve had the privilege of speaking in different countries of the world.

Would I believe that would have happened? Not a chance. I was always told I was dyslexic at school. And the thing was, is that if you take on board where people say to you, you can’t do something, just shake that off. Let God speak into your life. Like I said, you know the life that you’re living is composed of the choices that you make, constructed by the words that you speak and you let other people speak into your life, and so often they will speak too small.

I remember my parents used to sort of say, “Oh no, you can’t talk about money,” or, “No, you know, you’ll never do anything.” And I remember, I know, I remember an art teacher saying to me, “Whitmoor, probably you’ll never achieve anything in your life.” And I said, “Mr Pastor, one day I’m going to come back and I’m going to drive through your office window in a Rolls Royce. And when I go through the back window and through the back wall, you’ll know it’s me.”

And I was very, very arrogant as a young child because I would not be put down because I knew I had a bigger calling on my life. The thing is, is that don’t limit yourself when you’re listening to Gordon. Let the strategies and let the heart of what God can do with you emanate inside of you. It’s so important. Can we just join together and welcome Gordon Hickson.

Bringing the spiritual and natural together

Gordon Hickson: Thank you. Well, come on. God, we want to thank You for this time. Thank You for just the grace of the Spirit to enlarge spirits, to keep us awake and to grab hold of our spirits. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

So I’m the great guy who is the baby snatcher and grabbed hold of Rachel. I’m ten years older than her, so vintage 1951. So I was the guy, older and wiser, but not telling her what to do.

But we’re going to continue on with the same theme that Rachel started with, which is the prophetic in business, transforming cities and communities. And what I’m going to, I’m going to share a lot of my life journey, really lessons learned over that life journey, but particularly looking at some of the Kingdom partnerships, recognising really the Biblical truth that one will chase a thousand, two will chase 10,000.

There is a multiplication when you get partnership, but it needs to be a Kingdom partnership. So we’re going to be looking at that where it’s not just about personal trade, but it’s about where we, as we can get involved with community transformation. And that’s really what I’m going to be looking at and focusing particularly on the place of prayer and faith and just the breakthrough that comes in the marketplace in these times.

So how do we in the market, how do we in the business world bring the spiritual and the natural together? How do we bring these two things together so that we are really flowing in a place where the finance can be released for God? And how do we also see the combination of the church, the commerce and the community together?

Because it’s when you fuse these together, something happens and change, transformation is what the outflow comes from that. And that’s really what Rachel began to pick up a few years ago.

Now I’ve worked in all of those. Started off life as an army officer, ten years in the British Army, and did so much in various committees. I was in the whole Northern Ireland, very, very painful time, but several times, three times in Northern Ireland, just watching the meltdown of community. Ten years in the army, then my time in business, when I talk through, and then time as a missionary, time as a pastor, many, many years as a pastor, then as a mission director and then recently working with Betel as a fundraiser and in that particular world.

God gives the ability to produce wealth

As business people, we’ve got to remember this. I mean, we all know Deuteronomy 8:18. Come on, we’ve got to remember it. He said, “Remember God, remember God. It’s He who gives you the ability to produce wealth.” It is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth.

We’ve got to grab that in our spirits. Something’s got to be on the inside of us. That’s how He confirms His covenant. And if He wants to generate this good business and this ability to attain business goals, then you, it doesn’t depend on your education. It doesn’t depend on your skills. It doesn’t depend on all of these business practices and other things that we can talk about.

Yes, they are important, but fundamentally it’s God. It’s God who gives you the ability to create, get wealth and, above all, is your connection with God. We’ve got to grab hold of that and just know it. I know that I’m seeking God. Seek first the Kingdom of God. Amen.

So that’s really where we’re headed for, to recognise the spiritual in our natural, knowing that the spiritual and the natural have got to be combined together. There is no separation between the secular and the sacred. It is all bound together.

Now the big thing is, if God is involved, guess who else is also involved? We got the devil and we’ve got to be aware of that. My Bible says we are not unaware of the devil’s strategies, not unaware of what he’s doing. But many, many business people don’t recognise that if you’re a businessman outside of the Kingdom, you don’t have the same as a businessman within the Kingdom.

If you are stepping into a Kingdom business, you will have direct opposition, direct pushback. And so that’s what we’ve got to recognise and learn how to fight through all these financial and business things to get to breakthrough.

Learning to make God the senior partner

So I spent time in the Army, that leadership, and then I came into business. I didn’t know anything about business. I went into a company I mentioned earlier, Executive Resorts International. But the guy I worked for, we were running the construction division of that company. He was so God minded that I knew from day one that I walked in that God is a senior partner. Everything is done by prayer.

And we were obviously recruiting around the world for different construction projects. But it was a natural thing every single day to say, “God, You’re the senior partner.” We’d lay out all the bills on the desk. “These are Your bills.” And we would just trust Him that everything we needed would just be provided by God.

Day by day we would say, “Father, these are the positions we’ve got to fill in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the Gulf,” and we would literally pray for those people. Supernaturally, we would get people applying for those jobs. It wasn’t the days of internet and all that. We were literally having to seek and find.

So we were literally pushing through and eventually we saw our little department produce 50% of the wealth of that entire area. It was extraordinary, but it simply because we were rooted into God and we were pushing through day after day and just knowing that it was a God thing.

Now, for us, it was also really important to put people first. And many people don’t put people first. We cannot put numbers and contracts and agreements ahead of people and God’s purpose. We’ve got to recognise people in all of this. We cannot use people.

And I learned so much from my precious friend John Greenlees that that’s who we are. It’s who we are that gets imparted in all of these business relationships as we establish that trust and that sense of loyalty and that influence. Immediately doors opened and we began to open up contracts that other people just wouldn’t open simply because we gave them time. We gave the individuals time.

Picking up the dream

We really felt somehow we’ve got to switch from just being in the business world to funding something in the Kingdom world. And so John and I began to start dreaming about how we could streamline our finance into funding a Christian school. Rachel’s father had started this King’s School in Hemel Hempstead and so, bit by bit, we began to start dreaming about how we could start our own company and begin to start developing this fund for the school.

Suddenly my friend John died, dropped dead, had a heart test one day and he just dropped dead in that test. And I was landed in this position where I had to pick up the dream, pick up the whole mantle of leadership in this. And for me, I didn’t even know where to start.

So for me, it was back to basics. You go back to God. He is the senior partner. You ask for orders, you get direct instructions and He is the provider.

I just prayed that God would fund this startup supernaturally. A guy called me and he was from the Kuwait Planning Company. I met him in a little coffee shop and saw a Christian little fish on his lapel. And I began to share this vision. And as I shared the vision about the school and about the funding, instantly the vision grabbed hold of him and he immediately said, “I’m putting forward all the money you need for startup. God is your accountant. I don’t need any accounting back to me.” And then he just disappeared. Never seen him again.

Released immediately into business. But my problem was I did it, this is Frank Sinatra, I did it my way. And this is one of the key things we’ve got to learn as businessmen. You may have so much gifting, so much entrepreneurial skills, but if you step out and do it your way, you are headed for a major catastrophe and you have to go through the training camp.

“I did it my way”

This guy introduced me to a company in Saudi, in Kuwait, in Korea, and the guy was actually one of the leaders in the church, a young guy. He was a big construction director. So I flew to Korea to see him and organise everything. And as I did that, I was taken to the High Court by my last company.

I was sued for everything I owned, which was £21 at the time. I was 31. And literally I was sued in the High Court. Yeah, better for worse, richer for poorer. So suddenly it was on our wedding anniversary. So I thought, “What do I do? God, this is crazy.” And I just felt God say, “Well, you did it your way.”

You see, I didn’t listen to my prophetic wife who told me to do it a very different way. And I thought, “I’m going to do it my way.” And so I’ve learned that I need to listen to this woman. That’s why she has saved me a lot of times over.

Anyway, long story short, I ended up going to my next business meeting that day and I crossed over the road and saw this group of nuns. They were from Darmstadt in Germany. They turned to me and they said, “We have the Word of God for you.” And they gave me this little Bible marker and it said on the top, “I know the trouble you are entering today. Stand firm and persevere. I have already decided the time when I will come to your aid.”

I thought, “Whew, how did God do that?” And suddenly I was there, knowing that God was in this. He was going to arrange it.

I was then taken up to Prayer Mountain, 10,000 people praying in Prayer Mountain. I was locked in a grotto, just praying. And as I entered prayer, the spirit of prayer just came on me. I just prayed all night. Never prayed like that before.

God spoke three things to me. Number one, you win the court case. Number two, the other company will go bankrupt. And number three, your enemy will become your friend. It took two years to win that court case. Then I think it’s seven years later, the other company closed down. Eighth year I became his friend again.

So we’ve got to learn. We can’t do it. We’ve got to learn He’s the boss. We’ve got to learn, yes, we may have a lot of gifting, but listen to Him. Listen to Him. Don’t rush ahead.

Faith as the engine

And so I got immersed in prayer and I ended up having an amazing time with contacts all around the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the Gulf. But the main lesson I learned over those years of business was the engine that drives all of this has got to be faith.

You’ve got to understand faith is, business is a platform for the Kingdom. It’s the perfect platform for the Kingdom. But if we don’t understand that the engine is faith, then we mistake it. We just think we can get these big ideas.

But my Bible says Hebrews 11:6 that faith is the substance of things hoped for, is the evidence of things not seen. And so we’ve got to realise, like substance is like that, probably like that title deed you’ve got of a building. You haven’t even got into it or seen it, but you’ve got that title deed. You know that you’ve got that building.

Evidence, it’s probably a bit like the baby scan. You know, you haven’t seen the baby born, but you know that it’s there. You’ve seen it on that scan and that is the substance, the evidence.

You see, this is not flaky. You know that you know in your spirit there is something there. And that is why you’ve got to be super glued to God. It’s going to be a fight and it’s going to be a fight of faith. But it’s always one we win if we don’t give up, and there are going to be massive fights as we head for business things that are linked to the Kingdom.

If it is just business, don’t worry, but if it is Kingdom focused business, you will get a pushback. It will come back at you and that is why we get super glued to God and we really hold on to that Kingdom faith in our hearts.

Learning to see what God is doing

If we get revelation, it’s got to be revelation that has come from the Spirit of God. You see, faith is, you hear God and you see God, you know in your knower this is a God thing. It’s not just a bright idea.

And somehow that just goes into this, like your spirit is the womb of God. He sows that vision and He throws that seed of a thought in. And as you know that it’s a God thing, it goes in and it just grows and grows inside you. And yes, it will have all sorts of things coming against it, but you just know you’ve got to hold on to this and eventually it will be birthed.

The problem, as Kingdom business people often, is that we just do not see. And that is why we’ve got to enter the realm of prayer and faith and understanding these things.

Spurgeon talked about this and said that there are many people who don’t see what is right in front of them. He was astonished that he went to an old woman, a really impoverished old woman. She died and he went to clean up her effects. He was astonished on her wall to find a last will and testament guaranteeing this woman millions. But she couldn’t read. She had no idea. Right in front of her was the very thing that would release her.

And many of us are like that. Right under our nose we’ve got somebody or something which is exactly the thing. And we’re waiting and waiting and waiting because it’s right there. It’s right there, it’s right there.

So when we pray, believe that God’s going to answer. He’s going to start releasing it to you. You know, faith comes by hearing, but also by seeing. And that’s why Paul, writing to the Ephesians, had, “Come on, I’m praying for you all the time that you get your spiritual eyes open because you’re so blind.”

You’ve got to get these eyes open. And that’s why all the way through the Bible, the prophets are saying, “Come on, what do you see?” Well, God’s saying, “What do you see, Amos? What do you see, Jeremiah?” And often He’s saying, “Come on, you’re looking at this with totally human eyes.”

And as Kingdom business people, we’ve got to train ourselves to look in the spirit realm. Only those who see in the spiritual realm begin to start doing things that are impossible. You see it, you know it’s there and you step into it because you know that you know it’s there. It’s a reality, and you’re going to have to push through everything to make this thing happen. And that is the linking between the secular and the spiritual. We go together.

Do not lose your faith

Now, why is it so essential? The lesson you learn from Abraham in the Bible is that what you see in the spirit is what you will enter and what you will possess. The lesson from David in the Bible is that what you see is what you’re going to be able to build. The lesson from Jesus is what you see is what you’re going to harvest.

And so as business leaders, what you see is what you are going to be able to release, to develop and release. And that is God. It’s got to be linked in the spiritual realm. It’s not just going at it because you’re a Christian and you’re calling it a Christian business. There has got to be that Holy Spirit dimension to it.

So what is the essential purpose? What is the Kingdom purpose? It’s not just about money. It’s about what is the purpose. Why are you doing this?

Because often as you step into these things, you will find that it’s Satan who will blind you to a Kingdom purpose. He’ll probably disappoint you with different things. And also there’ll be fear that all hell is coming against you.

You’ve got to be ready and waiting and at peace that if He’s the senior partner and He’s called you to something, no matter what comes against you, you can walk through that. The wave of opposition will come. Don’t go under the wave. Learn how to surf it. Learn how to go higher, go further and that will push you.

And my Bible also says in 1 Peter 1:6 that your faith is very definitely going to be tested to see if it’s genuine. So during that time when everything else goes wrong, don’t get offended with God. Just tuck in and say, “God, You’ve got a plan. You’ve got a plan. I don’t understand this, but I know that I know You’re going to take me through this.”

You may well lose the object of your faith, but for goodness sake, don’t lose your faith because stuff will go wrong. Stuff will not go the way you want it. Just say, “Okay, God, I’m going to trust You through this.”

And bit by bit you will step into prosperity. My Bible says that a generous person will prosper. We’ve got to believe that in our hearts. We are going to sow, we are going to be generous and we are going to prosper, and we’re going to be a channel and a river to give to many people. So we’re being called into business partnerships, Kingdom partnerships.

From business into mission

Now, sometimes God will take you beyond that. And for me, God took me beyond the business into the mission. So I began to step from one into the other.

We went out to Harare, Zimbabwe. I was a businessman and we went out to watch Reinhard Bonnke’s campaign there, and in a businessmen’s meeting I was literally challenged by the Holy Spirit and said, “This is what you’ve done. This is what you’re going to do.”

And God literally just confronted my stubbornness and my fear of stepping out into the unknown. And I remember Reinhard picked up his Bible and he was reading about Jesus going to send the disciples to pick up the donkey, and he just picked up his Bible and he said, “Loose this, as the Lord has need of him. Loose this, as the Lord has need of him.”

And I just felt God speaking straight at me. I just said, “You are the stubborn donkey. If only you will give up your plans, all your goals, then you will see Kingdom transformation. You will see cities changed.”

It’s a long story, but God grabbed hold of me. He gripped hold of me. And eventually, I won’t tell you the whole story, but I eventually joined Reinhard Bonnke on a total faith venture. We didn’t have any funding, but after a week he called me into his study and he said, “Look, God has spoken to me. You must be my crusade director.”

And I said, “I haven’t got a clue what to do. What do you do?” And he said, “Oh, this is so easy. You just do what the Holy Spirit tells you to do. Now go to Malawi.”

And so he sent me off. I hadn’t got a clue, but we had, in that business time, I had learned in business all the lessons I needed for Kingdom work in the mission field. Every lesson of faith I needed, I learned in business.

Some of the greatest attacks come before breakthrough

I learned that as I stepped into a nation, if it was a Kingdom calling, all hell would break loose against me. And again and again, first of all, I stepped into Malawi. I began to gather the partnership, all churches together, and suddenly, by gathering the collaboration, all hell broke loose.

You see, if I’d just gone in by myself, nothing would have shifted. But I literally mobilised the entire body of Christ in that city of Blantyre. All hell broke loose. Summoned to the capital by the Inspector General of Police, told I was going to leave the country, never to come back. But supernaturally, as I met him, God just touched the man. He knelt down, gave his life to Christ and opened the whole nation up to us.

We had what we call the Malawi miracle, where thousands and thousands of people came to Christ. But then we went on to Kenya, and I was actually kicked out by the government in Kenya and sent off to the Philippines.

When you step into a place of breakthrough, sometimes you have to move because all hell breaks loose. We moved very briefly to the Philippines and came back in a different mode, said, “Now this is the call of God.” The whole of Kenya opened up. The president himself called us into the palace and said, “I want this over the whole nation.”

Two hundred thousand people showed up and he said, “I want to film everything every single day and put it right across the whole nation.”

Some of your greatest attacks will be just before some of your greatest breakthroughs. Don’t let it intimidate you. Push through it, push through it. But you’ve got to know that you know in your spirit and with all your counsellors. Know that you’re with a group of people who really are with you hearing prophetically.

So who are your prophetic people? Who are your prayer team? That’s got to be that weekly, if not daily, prayer saying, “Come on, God, we’re the junior partners. We’ve got to be given places to go.”

Looking for the fingerprints of God

So I did many, many years with Reinhard Bonnke, place to place, learning lessons of faith. But we began to realise that we needed to also go sniffing, and Reinhard Bonnke started getting me to travel around different nations.

He sent me to Southeast Asia saying, “I want you to look for the fingerprints of God.” And as business people, sometimes you have to go look for the fingerprints of God.

Now, very Biblical. They went, they sent out the spies to see where they, what’s going to happen. Sometimes sending out spies, sending out feelers, looking where is God wanting to move, that opens up extraordinary doors.

And went all around Southeast Asia, couldn’t find any fingerprints of God. So I rang my prophetic wife. I said, “Darling, where do I go?” She said, “Well, I just felt God say get to Kuala Lumpur.”

I said, “You’re crazy. They were thrown in prison last year when they handed out literature in the main street of Kuala Lumpur.” She said, “Just go to Kuala Lumpur.”

So I had great faith and I took a flight in at lunchtime to go out at teatime. But I went to the biggest church in Kuala Lumpur and I said, “Can I see the senior pastor?”

As I walked into his office, he said, “How on earth did you get here?” And I said, “Well, I flew.”

He said, “Now look on my desk.” On his desk he was signing a letter, “Dear Reinhard Bonnke, the Holy Spirit has told us now is God’s time for Malaysia. Could you send your representative to see me?”

And I walked through the door. Now that is the fingerprints of God. Once we knew that, we knew that that was a God thing.

All hell broke loose to try and stop us going. That’s an Islamic country. But God did, because we stood with it and pushed through with it, would not give up that engine of faith. We would not be pushed back.

And that’s when Rachel actually got anointed by the Spirit. Malaysia was the first time the Spirit of God came on her. She began to move in that anointing and suddenly we saw a whole Islamic nation turning. We were given the national stadium to preach about Jesus from the heart of an Islamic city.

Long story. But look for the fingerprints of God. Get involved with exploration and make sure you’ve got a group of people who are willing to, and yourself be spies for you, for the future.

Kingdom partnerships that change cities

Now this, Kingdom partnerships to change the world. So one will chase a thousand, but two will chase 10,000. There’s always going to be a multiplication if you begin to gather people together.

So the mission field, my job was to go into a city and to develop the collaboration. I got every church in the city to collaborate together to push through, and we always got a breakthrough again and again. It was that collaboration, that partnership which changed city after city.

But God puts people, projects and visions together, people, projects and visions together. And we’re called not to dominate, but just to come in as a ministry to serve.

And in the business world, we’re coming in not to dominate with that sort of business empire spirit, but just to be there to serve people and to meet the needs and the Kingdom purposes that are on people’s hearts.

Now as you step into things which are the secular or sacred, things cost money. Things need money. Money’s got to be a servant, as Rachel said. But we’ve also got to realise that there are people who are going across the boundary.

Reinhard Bonnke had a California businessman who had an incredible missional heart, big construction company. We began to pray for breakthrough. Small breakthroughs came, but we were struggling and struggling in Africa to pay for some of the crusades we did.

And then suddenly one year, we were praying for a mega breakthrough, and suddenly it cracked. And that year that guy poured millions through into Africa. We found quite a number of people who became close friends, who were able to partner with us so that the business and the Christian world were completely synchronised, and they were able to step into project after project.

Collaboration, humility and patience

So Proverbs 13 verse 22 says that a good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children, but the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. I believe it still has time. There is so much wealth stored up for the Kingdom. It’s stored up for us. We’ve got to be willing to partner with people to believe for that.

I don’t know if you know Brian Souter, but sometimes the partnerships are made within marriages. Brian Souter, on the Inspired podcast a few weeks ago, said, “We have the perfect Kingdom partnership.” He said, “I love to make millions.” He said, “My wife loves to give away millions.” He said, “We’ve given away 150 million already,” and what a partnership they are.

But he’s also surrounded by a team of Kingdom minded people who are pushing through lots of obstacles to release the funding that is out there.

So we’ve got to step into the place where there’s collaboration, there’s humility, there’s patience and we’re pushing through it because we know that we know inside we’ve got a vision. And it’s those things of ambition and speed and competition that often make us very dangerous, even though we’re Christian.

Don’t become that. Allow that thing of partnership and collaboration. That means you’ve got to have a humility and a patience for things to finally open up.

From £5 on a table to a prayer movement

I was then taken from that world. I spent many years organising his campaigns, but I was taken from there to Oxford and asked to lead this, to be the parish vicar of the big student church.

But God said, as I prayed, He said, “This is not about Oxford. This is about birthing a prayer movement that’s going to touch the whole Muslim world.” But He said, “This is prayer for Muslims.”

We started the Love Network and we began it in the church early mornings Tuesday. And it spread rapidly. And eventually it was so significant in Oxford that God said, “You’ve got to take it nationally and internationally.”

I hadn’t got a clue what to do. So I said to my friends in my prayer group, “What do we do? God said go national, international. I’ve got no money for this.” I was just a parish vicar.

And they said, “Oh, it’s easy. £5 on the table.” £5 on the table, each one giving a pound. “Lay your hands on it. If it’s God, it will multiply.”

Lay that £5 on the table. “Father, if this is You, show us.”

Next meeting. That day I was given £50. That evening I was given £500. Next morning I woke up with a cheque for £5,000 from somebody I hadn’t seen for ten years. I was then sent a cheque for $50,000, £50,000 from America, and we began to start the movement.

Over the next few years, about half a million came in. It literally began to multiply. And finally I left after seven years of just watching the hand of God multiply right across England into about 75 cities and then across into Europe and other nations.

Friend raising, not fundraising

And then when I left it, God said, “Now go and work in the community with Betel.” Rachel’s a trustee, working with alcoholics and drug addicts.

They said, “We want to build a £10 million building, headquarters for the whole of Betel.” So we gathered the whole leadership together for a weekend and we just prayed and said, “Okay, which way do we go? The human way of fundraising or the God way?”

At the end of the weekend, we all closed our eyes. “Who believes we should do this with proper fundraisers?” Not one hand went up. “Who believes this is going to be an act of faith?” Every single hand went up.

And as it went up, God said, “Now you’re stepping up to the next level. £5 million. I’m going to give you £5 million.” And the money just flowed in.

But it was during that time God taught us to friend raise, not fundraise. Fundraising is so impersonal, but friend raising is sitting down with people, looking them in the eye and just explaining and imparting the vision. And that vision grabs hold of people and suddenly they are totally committed.

We’ve got several millionaires, some who are not even Christians, who are totally given to the ministry of Betel, totally given to what God is going to do.

Now I’ve run out of time, but I want to pray for you, and I’m going to get Rachel to come up and pray, because we’ve got to somehow break some of the insecurity we feel in the area of finance, some of the sense of holding back.

As Rachel said, dream big or you limit God. We’ve got to break the poverty mentality, break the fear of money, break some of the guilt even of money. And before the next session, I’m just going to get Rachel to come. Can you come down here and just pray? Because I think I’ve run out of time.

Rachel and Gordon pray for the room

Rachel Hickson: Why should we stand? Shake down that much and you haven’t run out of time. So come on.

Father, we want to welcome You. I want you to welcome Holy Spirit to be your senior partner.

Gordon says all the time, “I didn’t have a clue what You’re doing.” How many? We know that’s not exactly true. He is a very competent, trained leader. But in all his competencies, he learned to lean into God.

And I don’t know, what are the obstacles? What are those wrestle things that you’ve got in front of you? I want you just even as you stand, I want you to take a stance and lean back. Say, “God, I trust You to catch me. I trust that You’ve got me.”

Because so often we stance forwards to prove we can do it. But come on, lean back into the goodness of God. “God, I trust You. You’ve got me. You’ve got the money, You’ve got the strategy. You’ve got the people, You’ve got the buildings, You’ve got the contracts.”

God, come on. All those things that keep you, well, You reconfigure. Come on, put them in the hands of God. I want you to put them in the hands of God.

God, we ask You to now enter our world and to reconfigure stuff that has got stuck. We really felt, as Gordon and I prayed, we felt there were real strongholds and we felt they were just things that had got knotted and tight, and God just says, “Now I want to release.”

In Jesus’ name. So Father, right now we ask release. Can you do that? Just pray with me. Come on, pray like you would sing if we were worshipping.

Come on, just speak to those things that are not in the Father right now. In Jesus’ name, get off my mindset. Get off my finances. Get off my relationship. Father, we just pray that we would know the God of breakthrough.

Gordon Hickson: Yes, yes.

Rachel Hickson: The God who comes to our rescue.

Gordon Hickson: Yeah.

Rachel Hickson: Yeah. It’s true. I ended up 21 years old in the High Court, and they thought that they could bring out an injunction and completely shut our company down, because Gordon was in Korea and there was no person, they thought, of legal executive power. But I was the company secretary and they hadn’t checked that.

And we stopped it in Jesus’ name. And every curse was reversed. And sometimes, and God, just come on, you need to let go and let God. There are things that have happened to you that have betrayed you, that don’t mean. Come on. Just say, “Okay, God, I’m gonna let go. I’m gonna let go.”

There is betrayals, there’s stuff, and we want to just pray into that.

Gordon Hickson: Yeah.

Rachel Hickson: Break the power of offence and betrayal. And Father, I pray, give clear vision.

Gordon Hickson: Yes, Father. Let Your Kingdom come. Yeah, Father. Let there be an invasion of Your Kingdom mindset into every person.

Come on. We break fear. We break intimidation. Yes. Everything that has been a demonic pushback, we say, “No, stop now.” Every demonic strategy, just put a stop sign. We say, “No, stop now,” in the name of Jesus.

And we pray, Lord, the release of Your Spirit into each of these Kingdom initiatives. Lord, we loose every single person here. We loose them from those schemes and intimidation. We break the fear, the anxiety. In Jesus’ name.

Rachel Hickson: Amen. Then I just want to say, if you can just turn to each other, just pair up, maybe, and I want you to just put your hands on each other’s hands.

Come on. You’re used to going to the gym or pressing through, and I want you to pray for that breakthrough in people’s lives. And I particularly want you to pray for every stranglehold. You can do it as three if you need a three, but just pray for a new anointing in that business to see a breakthrough, to see the cash flow.

That was another thing. Come on, just pray for each other.

Father, we’re praying for absolutely incredible breakthroughs right now in Jesus’ name. Even as we push against every resistance of the enemy, we thank You that we’re going to see cash flow released. We’re going to see strategy released. We’re going to see new wisdom to handle money.

And Father, we, and this is what I finally want you, we’ve released a storehouse anointing. This is storehouse time. We release storehouse anointing and we push through the opposition. Let Your storehouses be released. Be released in Jesus’ name.

Okay. You got any movement? Be released. And everyone said Amen.

What are you building with God?

Gordon’s talk does not offer a formula for an easy business life. In fact, much of his story suggests the opposite. He talks openly about opposition, mistakes and seasons when the outcome was far from obvious. Yet those experiences have left him convinced that business can become a place where faith is formed rather than simply something we ask God to bless from a distance.

There is also a strong challenge here for those of us who naturally want to move quickly. Gordon’s experience repeatedly brought him back to listening, prayer and partnership. Some opportunities needed perseverance, while others required him to stop pursuing his own plan. Knowing the difference meant staying close enough to God to recognise His direction.

Perhaps that is the question worth carrying away from this session. Not simply, “How can I make this business succeed?” but, “God, what are You doing here, and how can I be part of it?”

Continue the conversation at Rediscover Business & Leadership 2026

Rediscover Business & Leadership brings together Christians who want their faith to shape the way they work, lead and build. The 2026 conference takes place at the Mercure Exeter Southgate Hotel from Friday 13 to Saturday 14 November, creating space to step away from the pressure of everyday work and think more deeply about what God may be doing through it.

Whether you are running a company or working as part of one, you are welcome. You may be carrying a new idea, navigating a difficult season or simply wanting to meet other Christians who understand the opportunities and pressures of working life.

Rediscover Business & Leadership is for people building something of their own, leading within an organisation or simply wanting to think more intentionally about the influence God has given them through their work. Book now to attend Rediscover Business & Leadership 2026.

Book your place for Rediscover Business & Leadership 2026 now.