A Rising Tide in the Marketplace – Mission Minded Leaders – with Krystal Parker – [Ep. 276]

Linda J. Hansen:  Thank you for tuning in today. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host of the Prosperity 101® Podcast, where we seek to unleash the power of employers to reclaim and preserve America by Connecting Boardroom to Breakroom® and policy to paycheck. Employers educating employees about public policy issues that affect their jobs can lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement, and retention, and to an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. 

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Thank you so much for joining with us today. It is just such a pleasure. This is actually the first podcast of the new year, 2026. There's been a little delay because I took some much needed time off. It is great to be back. For my first guest of the new year, I decided to start out with a bang and have my dear good friend, Crystal Parker.

Krystal Parker is the founder and president of the U.S. Christian Chamber of Commerce, that is an organization that you would love to be a part of. So we'll be telling you in this podcast about the U.S. Christian Chamber of Commerce, how you can be involved and why you should be involved, but also why you need to put a special date this spring on your calendar. But in addition, why do we even have a U.S. Christian Chamber of Commerce? Why do we choose to work together to promote and elevate others who are serving Christ in the marketplace? Why do we do that?

So with me to discuss all of this and so much more is my dear friend, Krystal Parker. Thank you, Krystal, for being the first guest of 2026.

Krystal Parker: I am so honored and I applaud you for pulling back so that you could go forward. Sometimes we just go, go, go, and we don't have anything left by the time we get where we're supposed to go. I just really applaud that for you.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, thank you. I'm really thankful to be back in this new year. And like I said, I wanted to start the year out with a bang.

So I'm so excited that you are the first guest of 2026. But first, for the people who haven't heard you before on my podcast, which you have been a previous guest, but for those who know nothing about you or the U.S. Christian Chamber of Commerce, could you give us a brief update about your own history? And then also, why you decided to start the chamber and the whole mission of the chamber?

Krystal Parker: Okay, well, so my background is in oil and gas. I unfortunately dropped out of college with 21 hours left, but the Lord had different plans for me. I started stocking shelves in a truck parts store, happened to be a subsidiary of a Fortune 200 oil and gas company, 12 years fast forward, a lot of moves, a lot of job changes, a lot of hard work and hustle.

I became the youngest officer. My area that I was responsible for was 47 cities on the west side of Texas, and all of customer service for Texas. At the time, I was 34 years old, and I was the youngest officers, one of five women out of 60 officers for this multi-billion dollar company.

I was responsible for construction and engineering and pressure control and maintenance and service, everything from that meter all the way into the house, and then even from the compressor station, we were doing that with the gas. And that was just a blast. I cut my teeth in business in a Fortune 200 company.

I fell in love with business. I went and got my undergrad in psychology, my master's in marketing. They sent me to Harvard Business School, so now I have the work experience, I have the educational experience.

I've got lots of zeros in my bank account. I've got the big house, the white picket fence, the perfect family, Scrooge, and everything changed, because that was all what's going on the outside, but there was a longing on the inside. I was emotionally and morally bankrupt.

I was a Sunday Christian, so I was at church checking that box every Sunday, thought I was a Christian. I didn't even know what it meant to be a follower of Jesus Christ. I just thought that's what Christians did. They went to church, and they left it at the church. So I went through my career this way. I thought that I was responsible for that success, and unfortunately I had a lot of personal failure along the way.

Even though I had a lot of things from the outside looking in, it looked great, there was inside longing for something. I didn't know what that was. Fast forward, I end up getting to Florida and finally surrendering my life to Jesus Christ fully.

He met me right there. I just had this sense that He was like, finally, she's finally come home fully. So once I surrendered my life to Christ, everything changes, including friends and people and circumstances.

I had somebody in my life that said, you should check out the Christian Chamber of Commerce. Whoa, was I blown away. The first board I ever served on, I was 34 in El Paso for a Chamber of Commerce.

I knew the power of Chambers of Commerce. I knew what they did. But when they said Christian Chamber, I was blown away because I thought Christ and work had to be separate.

I couldn't believe that somebody had figured out that a Christian Chamber was a good idea. So I was all in. I became the president pretty soon after of the Christian Chamber in Central Florida.

It was two months after COVID. So if you can remember where we were as a nation, what was happening to Christians under that administration and during that time. 

There was a real need for community, for Christians in business, for social capital, social power almost for Christians, because at that time we were being debanked. We were being fired. We were being jailed. We were being defunded, deplatformed because of us openly saying we're Christian. Even today, in larger corporations, there still is this very, very open hatred towards Christians. It is even today. However, there are more protections.

But then it was the Wild West when it came to Christians. There's this divide. Christians were being pushed out of Chambers of Commerce, siloed in the shadows.

Well, Chambers are powerful tools for doing business. And if Christians were being pushed aside and people do business with people they know, like and trust, how are the Christians going to do business with the other Christians? They don't even know where they're at.

They don't know who's a Christian because everybody went into hiding, hiding their light under a bowl. And so it was just a really interesting time in our nation. So this Christian Chamber movement that God led me to, we started to get requests to help other Christians start Chambers in their cities.

And I specifically asked the Lord after the second request, who's supposed to help these people? Well, when you ask the Lord that question, oftentimes God was just waiting for you to ask that question. And so it was me.

And so we launched the U.S. Christian Chamber of Commerce. That was about two and a half years ago. And we helped start and launch Christian Chambers around the U.S. We're right around 30 with Christian Chambers that have launched or those we've helped coalesce into a coalition. And we serve Christian businesses who maybe don't have a chamber locally, or they have a chamber locally, but they also want to serve in their business nationally. And what we're doing in essence is we're reconstructing the financial network for Christian businesses so that we can create a rising tide to lift all ships. At the heart of what we do at the end of the day, nothing else matters other than the fact that we are using our businesses to advance the kingdom of God through the marketplace.

And it's a very strategic system for kingdom advancement everywhere we go, empowering Christians to steward their business for kingdom advancement. That's what we do. That's my story, Linda and I'm sticking to it.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, I know you're sticking to it because I've heard it several times and it's always just great. You exemplify what so many people have felt in their lives is that, they worked, they did, they had all these goals, but they may even reach the top, but they were empty. And you realized you were empty.

Haven't you said, I used to worship work. Now I use work as worship. And we can, it just changes our focus. It's like, what are we doing? If our goal is, as scripture says, do all things unto the glory of the Lord or whatever you do, work at it with all your heart working for the Lord and not for men. As it says in Colossians, we would definitely want to have our businesses honor the Lord.

We've all been guilty of being too quiet because we've thought, oh, we can't talk about that. We can't talk about that. And then pretty soon it's like, no, people need to hear about that.

I mean, sometimes that's exactly what they need to hear. And we don't know whose life we might change because we were open about sharing the gospel, someone whose heart is hurting and we're open to sharing the gospel. But not only that, we have wonderful people in the U.S. Christian chamber and I'm so honored to be part of the President's Advisory Council on the U.S. Christian Chamber of Commerce. It's just such a great organization and we see the leadership and we see the unity and we see businesses making a difference. Like you were talking about, the water rises and all the boats rise, we really can't fund government. We can't fund families.

We can't fund charities. We can't fund anything without healthy businesses. And so to have these healthy businesses, but then to have them run and operated by people who have a heart for people, we don't do our businesses, at least I don't and I know you don't.. we don't do it to make money. Yes, that's part of it, but that's not the purpose of it. It's to fulfill a calling and to fulfill a ministry and to be able to serve people.

We all have ways we serve and just like in the body of Christ that we all have different gifts and abilities. When you put together Christian businesses and everybody has something to offer and it's just an amazing thing. One thing people don't realize is that Jesus, His public ministry, whenever He was speaking in public, He did it most often in the marketplace. So that is where we need to live out our faith, live out the values we believe in and really serve in our businesses and in our communities.

So one of the ways that you serve is these states, the state coalitions are popping up. I've been with you since the very beginning, have been a part of this growth and watched it come together, and now there's so many state coalitions.

So tell people what's happening around the nation in terms of the statewide chambers that they can be a part of.

Krystal Parker: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you gave me an infomercial with all the things you shared, but there's a need for this in our nation. I'll just give you three very brief examples of three chambers that we helped them launch.

And when I tell you why they launched, you'll start to understand what God's doing and why God's bringing this model into fruition. The first chamber we ever helped launch was out of Lima, Ohio. Pastor Roz reached out to us.

He had a very thriving thrift store, large thrift store, and through his community outreach thrift store, he did mobile baptisms. He was also feeding people as well with the outreach. So he had been a member of his chamber, his local chamber of commerce for many, many, many years, even got his insurance through there.

But through the years, as it evolved, it began to look more like the world. And as it began to look more like the world, at their events they would have alcohol. He didn't like that, he didn't feel comfortable doing those events.

Their annual event was casino night. He doesn't want to be around people betting, that wasn't part of his values. They took out prayer from the chamber.

And the final straw for him was when he went to update his listing in the directory. Right next to his business was a brand new business in town, Adam and Eve's Porn Shop. When he looked and did the research to see what did my chamber, who I pay dues to, do for this business in town, they rolled out the red carpet, did a ribbon cutting, did advertising marketing.

So when he reached out to the leadership, he said, is this the kind of business that we want to bring into our communities and then put in our chamber to help them grow? And they said they paid their dues, there's nothing we can do about it. And he was bothered by that.

Needless to say, West Ohio Christian Chamber of Commerce was born. The next one we helped launch was Northeast Florida. They had the one chamber for many, many years.

Many Christian business owners were part of that chamber. And the chamber began publicly supporting candidates that did not share our values. And with the members money, they used their influence and advocacy to support candidates who hate everything about what we believe in.

And they said, we have to do something different. They were bothered by it. And then the last example to help you understand why this is so important.

We had our conference SWC 2024, which Linda was there with Prosperity 101® with a booth. And after that conference, there was a young woman that came in from California, San Diego. Her name is Eve Nasby. She's a business owner. She came just at the last minute to that conference. After she left, she was on fire.

She says, I'm going to do business with Christians. I want my dollar to circulate in kingdom companies and not go to fund the enemy who obviously does not value the things we value. So she goes back to San Diego.

She gets into Google and other places to search for Christian businesses. And she found one plumber that was Christian something plumbing. And she said, how am I supposed to do business with Christians if I don't know where they are?

So she started the Christian chamber there in San Diego. And one would think that, well, what was that experience, right? Well, let's put it this way. They just had their gala for Christmas. They had a 150 person waiting list… waiting list. They had to shut down their whole website, and were dragging in tables when they launched. And now the California Christian chamber is on the rise. Orange County and Northern California are starting to develop there. So there is a movement from sea to shining sea. There's story upon story, why upon why. This is needed in communities around this nation. 

Then lastly, futuristically looking out into a different administration, administration that maybe doesn't have our values like we've seen in the past. We need to create an infrastructure so that we never get to a point where we're bullied, deplatformed, fired, put in jail because of our values in the nation built on biblical values.And so it's time for us to rise up. It's time for us to strategically put a network in place. It's time for us to take back. 

We own over 50% of the world's wealth. Trillions of dollars belong to Christians, but the dollar is only circulating one to two times in the Christian community. And then the dollar goes out into the world. We have to create an infrastructure to keep the dollars in the community so that we can create that rising tide, lift all ships. We can transform cities, transform states, transform communities, transform hearts, transform lives, and ultimately transform our nation back to a nation that bows their knee to the name of Jesus Christ. If not, bow the knee, have reverence for God in our nation because we are one nation under God.

Linda J. Hansen: Absolutely, absolutely. I love how you talk about the dollar circulating. So often people are frustrated with what our tax dollars are funding. I mean, we've just seen a lot of fraud come out right now. Billions of dollars of fraud and people are very upset with it. DOGE did all of its deep dives into things in this last year, especially, and people have been enraged at what our tax dollars are spending.

Well, this is really indicative of what we as Christians too need to do. We need to steward our resources well. I look at being part of a Christian business environment as part of stewarding my resources well. And the encouragement and blessing I get as compared to when I was more heavily involved in secular chambers. There's no comparison. There's absolutely no comparison.

I know we've got a lot to cover before we have to close the interview, but I want to make sure people know that they can reach out to you to find out if there is a chamber in their state. I mean, the coalitions are there on the website. It's so exciting.

But also, how do they sign up for this year's conference? And yes, I will be there again. In fact, Prosperity 101® was the first one, the first booth. She said, OK, registration's open. And I'm like, I'm in. And so it'll be great. So I'll be there. And it's an exciting time. We want to make sure that you are there and part of this exciting movement that's happening.

And for my listeners, for my audience, I have so often just wanted to help employers educate their employees about the policy issues that affect their jobs. I mean, we're talking about how what goes on in policy affects the business, the marketplace, whatever. My goal is to help employers really become unleashed, and be able to be unleashed to share their faith if they so desire in the workplace, be able to share simple policy issues that help people understand these Judeo-Christian values that you mentioned that made our nation great.

It's not like we have to have every workplace become a church, but we need to have every workplace be free and every person. Our goal is to make sure that not only can people have freedom in terms of policy and government policy and things like that, but ultimately our goal as believers is that we can help people have freedom in their hearts through Jesus Christ. That's where true freedom is.

And as we serve people in the marketplace, hopefully we can touch lives for Christ as well. So, it's just a win-win all the way around. So how do people sign up for the conference? What's the information? And just give them one point of why they should be there.

Krystal Parker: Okay, well, I mean, if we didn't sell it already saying that Linda is going to be there with Prosperity 101®, that alone is enough to me. But think about those businesses, Christian businesses that you see are going to be there. We're expecting over 750 Christian businesses to be there. This is our second event as the U.S. Christian Chamber. There's over 60 exhibitors. We've sold out.

We're one away from selling out completely our exhibit and sponsorships four months before this event. So this is what is happening in our nation. There's an excitement.

There's an opportunity to connect and network. This has been strategically designed to help you grow your network in the Christian business community. But if I had to go to one, if I say this is what's different, this is why I would go, I would go for this reason personally.

This is an immersive conference experience. What do you mean by that? We're doing something that you don't see in conferences of this size. We have think tanks. We want to know from you. We have subject matter experts that are leading think tanks around five key issues, AI and innovation. But this isn't a breakout session. We aren't even allowing PowerPoints in these rooms. This is a think tank.

So what are the issues impacting Christian businesses? What are the solutions to those issues? And if we get this right, what's our big opportunity for Christian business in five core areas? AI and innovations, one. Policy, which I know Linda's going to be all over that. Policy. Currency. There's so much right now on AI or on Bitcoin, digital, gold, and the great wealth transfer, and the dollar moving within the Christian. So what are we going to talk about there? Another one that is really popular is faith at work. How do we carry our faith into work and do it well? What's our big opportunity?

And then the last one, which I just wrote an article on, is on unity. That conversation is about how do we take political differences, denominational differences, racial differences, geography, socioeconomic differences. Because let me just say, there are so many things that people can create differences about that creates divisive language between the body of Christ.

We have got to figure out how to unify the believers as one voice and come together as the body of Christ. And so this room, this lab, it's a leadership lab. This lab is designed to get to the heart of that from a Christian business perspective.

And you can only pick two of those labs. And then on Friday, we're doing lab results from stage. So everybody's going to get to hear what were those issues and solutions and opportunities.

And then we're going to transcribe this. It's going to create content, messaging, and everything that will pour into all the chambers around the U.S. Because we want to move the needle and we want to make a big impact.

Linda J. Hansen: It's just so exciting. And I know that it really will move the needle because iron sharpens iron, I always say. But as we go and we learn, I mean, I wish we could go to all five of them because I sure want to.

But before we do have to close, there's one other thing that I really think is so important for people to understand with the U.S. Christian Chamber. And that is, we'll have to just give them information so they can search for it themselves. But if they're looking for a really great option for health insurance, or they are looking for legal protection, there are things here that there are alliances and partnerships with organizations and companies that are helping to provide that to U.S. Christian Chamber members. And this is so valuable. So audience, your membership in the U.S. Christian Chamber of Commerce is so valuable for you. And so Krystal, before we close, just to share a little bit about those two points.

Krystal Parker: Yeah, well, we have made some strategic partnerships with the help of your host here, who has really helped breathe life into a lot of this for us. But these partnerships are strategically designed to support the Christian business of any size. But we've got to compete.

We've got to have the best talent and protection in our businesses. So we have four big strategic partnerships, health insurance with major medical, all the way down to the single employer and 1099s, one of a kind. Also value aligned. Aligned in terms of board of patients and gender transition surgeries are not in this plan. So you can rest assured, employers. Number two, 401k, all down to the single employer.

So we want you to compete with the best of the best. But your investment options can be Christian, one of a kind, first of its kind. And we have the fourth largest provider offering this through Voya for our Christian businesses, which is phenomenal.

A partnership with Red Balloon, value based hiring. We want you to get the best of the best employees. We want your job to be posted in a national database. And we have people coming into our website, our applicant tracking system all the time saying, I want to work with a Christian employer, put my resume in there. And then last but not least is a partnership, strategic partnership with Christian Employers Alliance offering legal protections for any of our members that go through that partnership with CEA at no additional cost. And this is a phenomenal outreach into that DC, into that political lane, to government protection.

And so we're really thinking, how do we strengthen and solidify Christian businesses? And we're doing it through some really core key partnership efforts. Again, Body of Christ. We aren't all the eye. We aren't all the nose. We aren't all the ear. We're together, we're one and we're leading the way.

Linda J. Hansen: It's so exciting. And for my audience, you can hear more about some of these organizations and companies because I also partner with them. And so you can go check my podcast library or just look at their links on the website.

You can also go to my website at prosperity101.com, use the link that is there to become a member of the U.S. Christian Chamber of Commerce. And that helps both of our organizations. So we'd love for you to do that, become a member.

It's not expensive and it's so valuable. And as you can see, you definitely also want to come to the conference this spring. And could you give people the date so they can mark their calendars and start planning?

Krystal Parker: April 22nd through the 24th, we wrap up at 12:30 on Friday in Orlando, Florida. So you can take the whole weekend, bring your family, go to uschristianchamber.com, go to Linda's website. You can find us there, just use that link. And we want to serve you. We'd love to see you in April.

Linda J. Hansen: That's wonderful. And people can reach you through that website as well. 

Krystal Parker: Yes.

Linda J. Hansen: Okay, do you have any closing comments? Also something that you would tell employers that they need to tell their employees about why this is important.

Krystal Parker: Well, I'm going to steal your words because I love what you say, Linda. And it's that people are voting themselves out of jobs and it's because of their lack of awareness. I remember being an employee in a corporation and it would have been wonderful.

They talked to us about retirement benefits and investing in your 401k and these things, but they never talked to us about the impact of helping our industry in oil and gas from a political lens. And there's a really neat way to do that.

It's not about one side or the other, it's about it's about awareness and education and so I would just really encourage business owners to really get engaged and if you don't know what the best way to do that is is reach out to Linda because that's what she does and you start there and then really share that but you know we need all of us, we need all of us at the ballot box, we need all of us showing up, we need all of us educated, we need to know what's going on. 

It was a time that business there we were aware but then as we started to get separated into silos everybody started to build their bigger storehouses and focus only on self and that hurt us, it hurt our movement, it hurt our ability to protect the values and the things that we need and we believe in from a biblical perspective so we've got to look up and when you do if you're listening to this podcast you're aware and when you're aware now what next step do I take? Join us at US Christian Chamber, be part of the movement, get in touch with Linda, find out what can I do to engage my workforce because you plus your employees have a significant impact because those employees have family and vice versa so let's influence in the right way.

Linda J. Hansen: Let's do it in the right way and that's a wonderful thing and you know everybody rises when we bring forth really positive values to society and to our businesses, to society, and to our nation. So thank you again Krystal, I can't wait to have you back again and we look forward to growing the membership of the US Christian Chamber of Commerce and to seeing many people in our audience at the conference. 

So again audience you can contact me at prosperity101.com and please go there and sign our new Employers Unleashed™ pledge, be part of the group of unleashed employers who are not afraid to speak about issues in their own business but also join our community where we have a monthly call discussing how to take back mountains of culture, our mountains of culture here and to really promote positive values in our mountains of culture. So before we sign off you can go to uschristianchamber.com and of course prosperity101.com and thank you so much for joining with us. 

Thank you again for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101 podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please, subscribe, share, and give us a great review. Don’t forget to visit Prosperity101.com to sign our Employers Unleashed™ pledge, to access our entire podcast library, or to discover resources for use in your workplace. Let us know how we can serve you. Contact us today at Prosperity101.com.