New CBMC president Lee Truax sat down for a lengthy newspaper interview shortly after the new year. The refreshing exchange was insightful and wonderfully written.  Bet you didn’t know that Lee is a classical organist.  Enjoy this revealing article as filed by Clint Cooper of the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

By Clint Cooper, Chattanooga Times-Free Press

Lee Truax said there may never be more need for Chattanooga-based Christian Business Men's Connection than there is today.

"Our ministry started in 1930 in Chicago in the midst of the Great Depression," the new president of the organization team said, "and some folks have called this a depressionary kind of scenario. So we think the message of hope is as relevant today as it was when the ministry started."

CBMC, according to the ministry's Web site, has a mission to present Christian teaching to business and professional men and to develop faithful businessmen to carry out the Great Commission.

Its new president served as a volunteer with the organization in the Boston area for about 15 years when he was a senior business development executive and systems engineer in the information technology field.

Sensing a need for improved ways in which men could apply their faith in the workplace, Mr. Truax, 45, felt led to seek the CBMC job when former president Patrick O'Neal stepped down.

Q. Will things change at Christian Business Men's Connection with you on board?

A. The good news is that the ministry had already embraced a lot of the technology we see in the 21st-century workplace. So things like Web conferencing, webinars, doing training over the Internet -- those have already been embraced.

Q. How will you bring your corporate technology background to fore as president?

A. I think what the previous executive director, Pat O'Neal, said ... was, "I had a passion for this stuff. But I didn't totally understand how to get it done." (He came out of real-estate development). He said, "Lee is going to take us to the place where we implement and develop some of the passion I've had."

Q. What do people not know about CBMC?

A. I've kind of complained when I got there, I said, "Guys, we're not going to do any more stealth marketing." This April, we'll launch a branding initiative around "Get Connected." And that branding initiative will be basically: There are really a lot of like-mind Christian businessmen in the workforce and in the marketplace, but in many cases they're isolated and don't even know about each other. So our deal is, we're going to provide a clearinghouse, if you will, of relationships for these guys to get connected, start encouraging one another, start coaching each other.

Q. How can men most benefit from CBMC?

A. I would tell you from where I'm sitting, what this world needs is the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And so, when you look at the root of man's problems, it is a broken relationship with our Creator. And so as we, as men in the marketplace, live that out, we bring hope to places like they did in 1930 where guys, frankly, were jumping out windows, saying, "I don't sense any meaning to life." And so it is a message of hope. It's a very positive message.