Opportunities

HOPE connects Join with Cherry Hills @ Work leaders to discuss opportunities and learn from local and international Kingdom enterprise executives. We meet on the third Wednesday of each month, 7-8:30 a.m. in the Fireside Room 225 at Cherry Hills Community Church. You’re welcome anytime—just let us know you’re coming. Light breakfast is served. Contact Please send us a message to learn more or sign up for the Cherry Hills @ Work email list.

We believe that God is sovereign over everything, including business and the wealth of nations. Cherry Hills @ Work seeks to create connections and foster businesses that lead to the creation of wealth as a way to prosper and expand God’s Kingdom.

Cherry Hills Community Church supports more than 69 international missionaries that are messengers of HOPE in Christ, including some who are directly running businesses as a way to spread the Gospel. There’s literally a world of opportunity to for marketplace leaders to get involved in ventures that offer both business success and spiritual significance.

Abigail Bach: How God Works Through Experience and Opportunity

A calling to pursue Business as Mission can lead to many forms of opportunity. Some remain anchored in business with a strong ministry component. In my case, I made a transition to full-time ministry that leverages the experience of my career in finance.

A Scripture verse that’s important to me is Ephesians 2:10, which says:

“We are God’s workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Yet, I have often had questions for God: Am I where you want me? Do you really want me to leave business and move into ministry? Am I truly living out your purpose for me? I thought we should be headed to the right but we’re going to the left—and is that really what’s best?

As I have wrestled with these questions, I have been inspired by a quote I once heard: “God doesn’t need great men and women who do great things for him. He needs ordinary men and women who will allow God to do extraordinary things through them at just the right moment.”

Ordinary Me, Extraordinary God

I’m grateful to say that God has done some extraordinary things as I have followed his guidance for me. I started Joy House, a Christian home for abused women and children, and then an organization called Victory Ventures with another home called Victory House. My education and career provided a valuable foundation for these ministry opportunities.

My dream had always been to get married and have children. I never viewed myself as a full-time career woman. I actually thought I would be pretty good at it since I had a wonderfully loving and nurturing mother of my own. But God had other plans for this “ordinary person.”

Education was always very important in my family. I attended college at Princeton and then worked for three years on Wall Street before going back to business school at Wharton to get my MBA in finance. I would characterize my life at Wharton as one that focused on goals and accomplishments. I was concerned about career success and achieving the material blessings of this world, but felt like a gerbil running on a wheel and wondering what was the meaning of life and my purpose here on earth. I knew deep down that I lacked inner peace and desired it deeply.

Beginning My Journey With Christ

At this point in my life, a friend shared with me the familiar verse from the Bible, John 3:16:

“God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

She explained that if I asked God to forgive my sins and committed my life to Christ that I would receive the gift of eternal life. I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior in 1986.

After Wharton, I went to Wall Street and sold securities, then moved to Paris for three years to work for French financial firms and had a very stimulating and enriching experience. I moved back to New York City and then eventually to Colorado in 1994 and got a job in financial services. I love to ski and hike and wanted to get away from the materialism I experienced in New York.

It was in the 1990s when I was working for a financial firm in Denver that I felt God telling me to get out of my comfort zone and to start doing a work for him—a work that he had prepared in advance for me to do. I wasn’t passionate about the financial markets but thankful for a job to be able to provide for myself and to work with bright interesting people.

I had read the book, Halftime: From Success to Significance, by Bob Buford, which influenced my thinking about how I was spending my time and using my gifts. It emphasized thinking about how to move beyond worldly success to having a significant impact in life that was meaningful and purposeful.

The Work God Prepared for Me to Do

I had been volunteering in the community and spent time with SafeHouse Denver, the domestic violence shelter, to do activities with the kids while the moms were in a support group. While working there God gave me the vision of Joy House—a home where women and children coming from the shelter could stay for a longer period of time to focus on life skills, job training and counseling. They needed transition support in order to get a job to provide for themselves and their children and to achieve self-sufficiency. Through a series of connections and funding opportunities, God brought together all that was needed to make the dream a reality. Joy House officially opened in 2000 and is still running strong.

I continued working for the financial planning firm but I grew to love even more the non-profit work I was doing in my free time. My heart was deeply moved by seeing changed lives. I felt God might be calling me to be even more engaged in this type of work—especially a deep desire to serve poor women and children. A second vision was born: Victory Ventures. We needed to have a graduate house for the women coming out of Joy House. Many of them were making great progress, but still too big of a leap to go from Joy House to independent living. Victory House was the next step.

As an entrepreneur, I believe God was trying to show me that it was time to use my business skills and experiences full-time for his service and the building of his Kingdom. So I left my job in financial services and founded Victory Ventures. Again, with God’s provision, we raised the funds and engaged dedicated volunteers and opened Victory House in 2003.

Both Joy House and Victory House continue to impact the lives of the homeless and abused. We have purchased buildings for both Houses, which are being run by the Providence Network.

Opportunity Ahead

In 2006 I accepted the invitation to work with Opportunity International, the world’s largest Christian microfinance organization, which was looking for someone in Colorado to share the vision and do fundraising. I love working for this organization.

Looking back, I see how God prepared me for “times such as these” in a position that combines my business skills, international experiences and my heart to serve the poor. Although it has been scary at times to leave the security of for-profit work, especially as a single woman, I am thankful and blessed to have to stepped out in faith, taken the risk and trusted in God.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” —Ephesians 3:20-21

Contact

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Cherry Hills @ Work, Cherry Hills at Work, CH@W, Business as Mission