The Words of the Edgerly Family
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The Words of the Edgerly Family |
James Edgerly is the HSA State Pastor in Massachusetts. He was blessed in marriage to Kinuyo Iwamoto in 1982. They have four children and a dog, and live in Lexington, Massachusetts. Jim tries to ski 20 days each winter.
Question: How were you able to successfully combine your spiritual life and your professional life?
The most important point is that I was blessed in marriage to one of God's own daughters. Her name is Kinuyo. We were introduced to each other in 1979 and were blessed in marriage in 1982. I am looking forward to spending the remainder of eternity together with her. The joy and strength I receive from being her spouse fills me with energy. The basis of our relationship is that we have been growing together studying God's words and praying together EVERY day for very many years.
I have always thought of my life in terms of developing three interrelated spheres: Spiritual/Religious Life -- Family Life -- Economic Life. I have always sought continuous development in each of these three areas. As a Libra, I need balance in my life. If one of these spheres starts to slide, I can't really relax until I give it the attention it needs. During recent years I have been trying hard to incorporate a fourth sphere: Sports and Physical Fitness.
To maintain a healthy spiritual life, I have always sought to create unity with my wife and my church pastor.
Finally, I would add that I have learned to totally keep my economic life separated from my family life and spiritual life. I don't let business matters interfere or detract from my family life or my spiritual life. The purpose of my business career is to support my family life and spiritual life. I avoid sacrificing my family because of business obligations. God has been able to bless my business endeavors because He knows my first loyalty is to our Heavenly Parent and my family.
Question: What are your largest professional accomplishments?
I spent twenty years in the area of restructuring troubled industrial companies. My first eight years were spent at a leading management consulting firm. Then, in 1990 I started my own consulting firm, called Industrial Restructuring Corporation (IRC). Starting from scratch, I developed a practice restructuring large, distressed, industrial companies in Central Europe after the fall of communism. My business was merged into a leading turnaround management company (The Recovery Group, Boston) where I was a Managing Partner.
My consulting practice grew to become the leader in industrial restructuring in Central Europe and at its peak employed 160 professionals, working on major projects in seven countries. In 1996, we were awarded a contract by the US government to manage the industrial rehabilitation of Bosnia following the Dayton Peace Accords. The team I created in Central Europe is still in place and is now managing a large private investment fund.
In 2002, I organized an investment group to acquire the liquidating assets of a bankrupt cordage manufacturing company (Crowe Rope Industries) in Maine. With the support of an excellent board of directors, I restarted the company under a new name, assuming the role of CEO. We developed the company over a three-year period to the point where it became profitable. We sold the company to a competitor in 2005, earning a good return for our investors. In the years since, the company has grown to become the largest three-strand rope manufacturer in the United States.
Recently, a partner and I acquired a small, underperforming specialty chemical company. It took me a total of four years to identify, negotiate, finance, and close on this very difficult transaction. I did this while serving as the Assistant Regional Director and then as State Leader for the Unification church in Massachusetts. I expect that my partner and I will develop this business over the next eight to ten years.
I am very proud of the fact that many of my employees, to whom I gave large opportunities, have gone on to successful careers in business, finance and politics. Furthermore, both my business restructuring practice in Central Europe and my cordage manufacturing company in Maine continue to prosper to this day.
Question: Can you tell us about your professional course/journey?
Before entering college, I spent three years as a missionary focusing on spiritual activities with the Unification Church, including being a founding member of the New Hope Singers and the First Global Team. The spiritual training I received during those three years was the foundation for everything that followed in my life. Dr. Bo Hi Pak then urged me to go to college. I worked hard to receive a good education, while keeping my spiritual life strong. During my years in college and in graduate school, I developed a focus and passion for the field of economic development which led to a specialization in restructuring distressed industrial companies. I chose this field because I believed I could help True Parents advance God's providence by bringing prosperity to poor countries that were threatened by communism.
Based upon this training and passion, I developed a unique expertise that led to professional opportunities fixing up severely distressed industrial companies all over the world. Finally, my career has allowed me to set up my current business within a short bicycle ride from my house.
My wife has been an incredible support throughout my professional career.
Question: What drove you to become successful?
Except for when I graduated from school, I have never looked for a job or for someone else to provide me with an opportunity, and I have never emphasized earning a lot of money. I created every opportunity by taking huge risks and putting myself in situations where I absolutely could not afford to fail. At the time I quit my consulting job to start IRC, my wife was pregnant with our fourth child and we were paying two mortgages. We lived with severe financial uncertainty for a long time.
When I left The Recovery Group to buy the assets of Crowe Rope, I said goodbye to a huge salary in order to take over a company that my partners said was way too sick and deteriorated to survive. I put every penny I could afford, and then some, into that company in order to bring it back to life. After selling the rope company, I went for five years on almost no salary before finally closing on the business that I now own and operate. I came close to financial ruin before I finally got that deal done.
I think the reason I have been willing to repeatedly go to the brink is because I know God is involved with everything that I do. People around me also believe that is the case. My faith in God and True Parents and the Divine Principle and God's Providence has never changed.
Question: What difficulties have you encountered on this journey?
A My twenty years of work in thirty different countries in areas of development economics and business restructuring was all motivated by the guidance that I received from Father's words in the 1970's. Father told us that Americans should share God's blessings with the rest of the world. That is what I did from 1983 (when I finished graduate school) until 2002 when I finally stopped until 2002 when I finally stopped working overseas and bought the manufacturing company in Maine. During those twenty years, I spent a lot of time away from my wife and children. I found that to be very difficult. Spending time traveling away from your family is not healthy spiritually, period. As a reaction to that suffering, I located my present company so close to our home that I can ride my bicycle to work and even come home to have lunch with my wife! I will never travel without my family again.
Question: What words of advice would you give to young adults struggling between their pursuits for professional success and maintaining a healthy spiritual life?
My advice would be: do not be confused and think there is a conflict between your professional success and maintaining a healthy spiritual life. If you are struggling between the two, then you should first focus on establishing a clear spiritual life.
My observation has been that those who think that they must avoid serving God and True Parents so that they can focus on their career are simply making an excuse. I have known so many brothers who have thought: "I'll focus on success in my life now and make my offering to God later." It's not either/or. We need balance in our lives.
Live your life exactly as True Father and Reverend In Jin Moon have been teaching us: make the conditions in your life now so that God can bless you and your family in the future. Align yourself with God and True Parents, love your spouse, protect your internal purity, be humble and grateful and serve others, maintain the traditions of daily study of God's word and offer prayers that comfort God. Offer your tithe to Heaven. Do all those things and God will fill your daily life with inspiration, guidance, and blessing. Our professional career cannot flourish and be sustained unless it is inspired by a robust "blessed family" life. I don't know how we can live an inspired spiritual life without daily study of God's word, listening to our Senior Pastor on Sunday, and getting plenty of exercise!
When I sit down at my computer, I never just start working on my own business. I always first do something that will help God and our True Parents by sending out an announcement, or offering some support to one of our ministries. Once I feel I have made an offering, then I will proceed with my own work.
I have absolutely no doubt that the customers, partners and investors who were most critical to whatever success I have had, have been sent to me by God, because God is rooting for me. What we did with the company in Maine, to turn it from a lifeless corpse into a leader in the cordage industry, could never have been done without God's blessing. I give our Heavenly Parent full credit. But God's blessing could not have come if the right conditions of purity and unity and service and sacrifice had not been made.
When I bought that company back in 2003, I remember saying to myself: absolutely everything needs to go our way for this investment to work out. But in business, the opposite is generally true: everything usually goes the wrong way. And for about a year and a half, that is what happened. One night in the middle of the turnaround, I made absolute determination before God that I could not, and would not, allow the company to fail. Within a year the company was profitable and was sold to an outstanding investment and management team. I did not find that buyer; God sent that buyer to me.
Just this year at my new company, we fell so far behind our 12-month revenue plan that I told myself there is simply no way we will meet our goal without God's help. Within two months we were on a path to easily surpass our plan by the end of the fiscal year. I feel that God set up this dramatic reversal of fortune just to demonstrate that He is involved.
The point of these stories is to illustrate that if we want abundance in our life, we should live exactly as Father has been teaching rather than trying to compartmentalize our life or foolishly trying to live a double life.
Nothing is better for our professional development than continuously deepening our heart of love for God, Jesus Christ, and True Parents. As we develop our Shim Jung and leave behind our fallen nature, we naturally become responsible, empathetic, trustworthy people that God can use, and that employers want to hire.