CHARLES J. COATE and MARK C. MITSCHOW BUSINESS ETHICS, BUSINESS PRACTICES, AND THE POWER OF THE PARABLE ABSTRACT. Business practitioners and academics are constantly seeking guidelines for improving ethical business practices. In this paper we attempt to explain how the New Testament parables can be used to provide insight into this topic. A number of parables deal directly with business topics such as wealth (money and property rights) and stewardship (servants). While admittedly the primary purpose of these parables is not to offer business guidance, we believe that a number of parables can help guide business professionals in making ethical and effective business and personal decisions. Furthermore, while neither author is a trained theologian, we believe that the laity can offer valuable insights on applying the Scriptures to their professional lives. In our paper, we first examine the ethics of business as it relates to the fundamental issue of wealth and wealth accumulation. The question being “Is wealth evil in and of itself?” While we conclude that wealth is not evil in and of itself, the possession of wealth may lead to potential ethical pitfalls. A number of parables concern wealth and list explicit virtues or traits to be emulated as well as traits to be avoided. Thus the parables provide guidance for the use of riches and avoidance of pitfalls. Parables also help with the issue of stewardship, critical in business practice. While the parables provide support for a number of modern day business practices, the parables also hold warnings for business managers. The manager owes a responsibility to the owner of the wealth, but all wealth and gifts are ultimately those of the Creator, God. We are reminded that while the ways of earthly wealth may be complex, the way the heavenly wealth is simple. INTRODUCTION Business practitioners as well as academics are constantly searching for guidelines to improve business ethics and business practices. As teachers communicating new material we often rely first on lecture and then on examples or analogies to “bring home” or re-enforce our points. Often we find the analogies are more insightful and more favorably received by students. In this paper we examine the parables of the New Testament to illustrate key issues related to business ethics. In examining these parables we interpret them in a direct, business like manner. We do this not to discount the lessons gleamed from parables by philosophers and theologians but rather to focus on the basic, straight forward content of the parable. Consequently we use the Good News Bible (1976). This version is translated “to set forth the Biblical content Teaching Business Ethics 6: 127–135, 2002. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.