The Search for God and Guinness by Stephen Mansfield

I have signed up to be a blogger book reviewer for Thomas Nelson publishers. I get books for free, and all I have to do is read and review them!

The Search for God and Guinness is more than a history of the brewery, although it includes that. It is more than a history of the Guinness family, too, although it also includes that. It is the story of how the brewery and the family have been guided in both business and life by their Christian faith. The Guinnesses are not people who go to church on Sunday and don’t think about God again until the next Sunday, but are those rare people who put faith into concrete, meaningful action in their lives.

I didn’t expect to be interested in the history of a brewery in a foreign country. But the history of the Guinness company is fascinating even to people not interested in brewing, and it is the Guinness family who make the company’s history so fascinating. I was amazed by the acts of helping the poor and Christian evangelism that continued from generation to generation.

The history of Guinness paints a portrait of how a company can be run in a Christian way. Management and labor work cooperatively rather than adversarially, because the corporate culture is one of genuine caring for the well-being of the employees. Then the employees in turn care deeply about the welfare of the company. This is Christianity in action, and this is how Guinness was run for 250 years.