Doug Hunter has been CEO of:
FCCI – Fellowship of Companies for Christ International
BPI – Business Partners International
WCCL – Whitfield Center for Christian Leadership
He’s also held leadership positions with: BSF (Bible Study Fellowship, men’s classes), RZIM (Ravi Zacharias International Ministries), Media Asia, Lausanne Workplace Network, Global Think Tank on Business As Mission, Partners International, Call2Business and the National Faith & Work Association.
Doug began his business career in 1971 with the Carter Elevator Company and rose to become President and CEO in 1987. As a Christian CEO, he got involved with FCCI. “The first FCCI conference my wife Janet and I attended was in Denver,” Doug remembers. “Larry Burkett was one of the primary speakers. As we got in the car for the drive home, her first question to me was, ‘Are we doing anything right?’ From the outset she’s been engaged with me in this journey, and we just celebrated our 49th anniversary. In fact, she’s the one responsible for my relationship with Christ. Her sister led her to Christ and the change in her life is what God used to draw me to Him in 1972.”
While at Carter Elevator, Doug attended seminary to prepare for going into ministry. Then God called him back to the marketplace. “I’ve been focused on how God is operating in the marketplace ever since he called me out of seminary in 1980,” Doug says. He kept his day job but also became a teacher for men’s Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) and served on the boards of a major denomination, a regional bank, and the seminary he attended.
His commitment to the marketplace took Doug to Atlanta in 1994 to work with FCCI, an organization he would eventually run as President and CEO. He saw God expand its ministry across the US and around the world to more than 30 countries. He helped with ministry start-ups in Mongolia and Vietnam and was the founding CEO of Media Asia, which used sports television in China as a platform to share the gospel.
Doug also joined the staff of Perimeter Church in Atlanta to develop Business Partners International (BPI) to facilitate the kingdom impact men and women could have through their business skills and passions, “building on the belief that Business IS Ministry and Business IS Mission.”
In 2013 Doug was named the first Executive Director of the Whitfield Center for Christian Leadership (WCCL) at Charleston Southern University, which meant a move to Charleston. “I had worked with business leaders from around the world and the big question was always, ‘Where are the new ones? Who’s going to replace us?’ So when I got an opportunity to help create a model for doing that, I jumped at it. Our goal at WCCL was to equip university students for potential leadership wherever God took them after graduation. We wanted them to understand he had a purpose for them being there.”
Budget issues at the university put the center on hiatus in 2017 and Doug launched Doug Hunter, LLC (https://doughunter.org) to utilize his leadership experience and global networks. He coaches leaders and organizations to more effectively impact the world for Christ through the marketplace.
The marketplace has been the center of Doug’s life and ministry, but it’s not the circumference. “God clearly gave me a call to business as a platform for ministry,” Doug says, “but there’s so much more to the culture than business. That realization is what drew me to Pinnacle Forum.
“I got involved with Pinnacle Forum through my relationship with Guy Rodgers. We met here in Charleston. I watched him as he moved into Pinnacle Forum. It seemed that under his leadership the emphasis shifted to a broader cultural impact and away from just the business environment. This really struck a chord with me.
“I was part of a virtual Forum out of Austin, Texas, but there were a lot of guys in Charleston that I wanted to sit around a table with, so I started a Pinnacle Forum group. We have 10 members and we’re getting ready to start a second group. We just went through John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle’s book, A Practical Guide to Culture. Now we’re working on our individual cultural impact plans using the tool* Guy developed. We’re having a great time walking each other through what we sense God has for us to do in the wider cultural context.”
Currently, Doug is one of the leaders of the 2019 Lausanne Global Workplace Forum (GWF) to be held in Manila to “bring together a diverse range of influencers in order to mobilize the whole church—in every corner of the workplace—as bearers of the gospel.” “GWF has only recently acknowledged the value of the workplace in expanding the kingdom,” Doug says. “I’m pretty excited about that. I’ll be speaking and I’m also overseeing about 100 workshops covering a great list of topics.”
The essential initials in Doug’s life these days are PFA – Pinnacle Forum America. Why?
“Because Pinnacle Forum is unique in its focus on impacting the culture,” Doug answers. “Most other groups emphasize one particular area like business or athletics or music or medicine. But Pinnacle Forum gets leaders together to talk more broadly than just about the arena they’re engaged in. And we get to help each other think more expansively than we might if we’re only connected to people in our specific fields of interest. This larger scope is what I love about Pinnacle Forum.”
* Learn more about the cultural impact tool HERE.
