© 1996 by Nick B. Nicholaou, all rights reserved President, Ministry Business Services, Inc. Reprinted from MBS’ Website (www.mbsinc.com)
The beginning of Ministry Business Services (MBS) was prayer. At every step, God has been the One calling the shots. Let me tell you how it all began.
MBS’s founding President, Nick Nicholaou (that’s me) received Christ on September 4, 1975 after a long career in the hippie movement of Southern California. Over a period of two-to-three months, Nick finally made an agreement with God. “God, I keep hearing promises people say You’ve made, and they sound good. I’m willing to do the research and see just exactly what You’ve promised. And to the extent that you’re faithful to Your promises, to that extent You can have my life.”
Well, you can guess the rest of the story. God proved faithful at every turn, and continues to do so to this day. But it was a couple of months after Nick became a Christian that he became involved in a local church. Because he’d read in the Bible that every believer is given certain spiritual gifts, he began to explore what gifts God had given him. Through trying what seemed like an interest, and looking to see what fruit developed, Nick and his pastor identified that Nick’s primary gift was administration, followed by teaching, wisdom, and discernment. Folks at Nick’s church started suggesting he pursue vocational ministry and become a pastor.
This frightened Nick somewhat as he was aware that those in spiritual leadership have additional responsibilities that shouldn’t be taken lightly. So he set about to pray and fast for three days to see what the Lord had to say. Although he’s never heard God’s audible voice, he very definitely understood God to be saying that he should not accept an offered Christian College scholarship, but should instead pursue a degree in management theory to strengthen his administrative gift with good tools. He was to be a church administrator.
After completing his college work, Nick was hired into auto industry management and given the responsibility of consulting with dealerships to help with their profitability, customer satisfaction, etc. After working for Ford Motor Company for four years Nick was pirated by General Motors Corporation to do similar work.
It was at that time that he began praying that his new wife, Grace, would be given heavenly assistance in passing the CPA exam for which she was studying. Nick felt uncomfortable, however, finding a motivation on which to base his request. Nick and Grace were already making good money in their respective positions, so Nick felt almost like he was trying to bribe God by saying, “If Grace passes the exam, we’ll be able to make more money and can then contribute more to the Kingdom.”
Nick knew that God didn’t really need more money for Kingdom work. So he wrestled with his request in prayer for about two weeks. Then God answered very directly. He very clearly communicated to Nick, reminding him that He had called Nick to be a church administrator. The concept was to be enlarged, however, as Nick was not to be the administrator of one church, but of many churches and ministries. The concept was further developed by God to be one in which a corporation would be comprised of many team members, each having their own areas of expertise that would help ministries build the Kingdom. Thus, in a ministry-marriage of the CPA with the manager, Ministry Business Services was formed and incorporated.
Since then MBS has grown in size and scope. MBS’ team is made up of people with various degrees and letters after their names. The ministry of MBS is nationwide: from the Eastern Seaboard to California, the great Northwest to Texas. Headquartered in Southern California, Nick and his team travel around the country helping churches and ministries in every area of management and administration.
Former Wycliffe Bible Translator Controller/Treasurer Harold Beaty observed of MBS that God uses them to free those in ministry from business distractions. That remains MBS’ mission statement to this day.