Dr. Joshua Chatraw has been named director of New City Fellows (NCF) in Raleigh, NC effective July 1, 2018. NCF, a pioneering and intensive program that equips young professionals for meaningful and sustainable integration of faith and work, was launched in 2016 by Holy Trinity Anglican Church and two downtown church partners – Christ the King and Vintage. Dr. Chatraw…
Author: The Green Room
Mobile Jesus: The Ascension and Daily Work
by Fletcher Lowe Ascension, Salvador Dali, 1958 Earlier this week the church marked the Feast of Christ’s Ascension. I’m thinking about Ascension Day, as I hold my mobile phone. The phone is a real gift with all it can do to provide so many services for me. But sometimes it gives me a “no connection” or a “searching” message –…
Economics and Work on the Margins: Remembering the Poor and Powerless: A Video from the 2014 Boston Faith@Work Summit
The purpose of the Faith@Work Summit is to gather active participants and leaders in the faith at work movement from every industry sector to learn from each other and work together to extend Christ’s transforming presence in workplaces around the world. The 2018 Faith at Work Summit, held in Chicago at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare on October 11th-13th, is now open for registration! The early bird pricing for registration is now available at $179 per ticket, so be sure to purchase soon.
The economic machine that is America continues to move forward but too often leaves many behind. While the Dow roars towards unprecedented heights, the poor and powerless reach new lows. But there is a solution that is both obvious and obscure: business. Business has changed lives of the less fortunate in the here and now when leaders and shareholders look beyond their own pocket. The principles and the experiences of the Greyston Bakery social enterprise in Yonkers exemplify this power of business to change the lives of individuals, families and the neighborhood itself. Deuteronomy 10:18 tells us that God “administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing.” The people of God are called to do the same.
Julius Walls (BS, Concordia) is the pastor of Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church in Yonkers NY and the President of Greater Centennial Community Development Corp, the non-profit arm of a 5000+ member church. Rev. Walls has worked in business, academia, and the church, serving, in addition to the previously mentioned positions, as Chief of Staff of Greater Centennial Church, CEO of Greyston Bakery, a $7 million social enterprise, as VP for a $23 million chocolate manufacturing company, as an adjunct professor at the business graduate schools at NYU and BGI and serves on several local and national non-profit and government boards. He is the co-author, with Kevin Lynch, of Mission, Inc. The Practitioner’s Guide to Social Enterprise.
Reflect/Respond
Can an unethical for-profit business yield a God-desired result?
Can a “Double Bottom Line” (financial and social) enterprise really work? Is it sustainable?
Resources
William Eggers, The Solution Revolution: How Business, Government, and Social Enterprises Are Teaming Up to Solve Society’s Toughest Problems (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013)
Marc J. Lane, Social Enterprise: Empowering Mission-Driven Entrepreneurs (ABA, 2012)
Social Enterprise Alliance https://socialenterprise.us/
Julius Walls, Jr., and Kevin Lynch, Mission Inc.: A Practitioner’s Guide to Social Enterprise (Berrett-Koehler, 2009)
Thomas K. Ray (1934-2018): Start Being the Church
by Edward L. Lee, reprinted from Living God’s Mission Tom and Brenda Ray Little notice has been made in The Episcopal Church of the death of Tom Ray on February 6, preceded just three days earlier by that of his wife Brenda. Tom was the bishop of the Diocese of Northern Michigan from 1982 to 1999. Both died quickly after…
The Servant from ServiceMaster: Al Erisman Tribute to Bill Pollard at 2016 Dallas Faith@Work Summit
The purpose of the Faith@Work Summit is to gather active participants and leaders in the faith at work movement from every industry sector to learn from each other and work together to extend Christ’s transforming presence in workplaces around the world. The next Summit will be in Chicago on Oct. 11-13, 2018. Go to fwsummit.org to sign up for updates and to learn more about the Summit. Register for the Summit here!
William “Bill” Pollard joined ServiceMaster in 1977 and has served not once but twice as its chief executive officer. During his leadership of the company, ServiceMaster was recognized by Fortune magazine as the No.1 service company among the Fortune 500, and also was included in its list of most admired companies and achieved market leadership in each of its markets and substantial growth in shareholder value.
He is the author of several books including: The Soul of the Firm, The Heart of a Business Ethic and Serving Two Masters? Reflections on God and Profit. In April 2004, he received the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Business Ethics at Notre Dame.
Albert M. (Al) Erisman is the Executive in Residence and the past Director for the Center for Integrity in Business in the School of Business and Economics at Seattle Pacific University. He teaches business ethics and business and technology both at the undergraduate and the graduate level. He is also executive editor of Ethix magazine. In April 2001, Dr. Erisman completed a 32 year career at The Boeing Company.
Faith@Work Summit Call for Papers
This is reprinted and adapted from the Oikonomia Network website, but anyone is welcome to submit papers. The Faith at Work Summit is a gathering of over 500 Christian leaders from the marketplace, the church, academy, and faith/work movement organizations who come together to learn from each other and positively impact workplaces around the world. Register now to get early bird…
Martin Lloyd-Jones on the Everyday Church
By Tim Chester, reprinted from his blog under a Creative Commons 3.0 license. I’ve just been reading a draft of Jason Meyer’s forthcoming book, Lloyd-Jones on the Christian Life (Crossway). I was struck afresh by many things including how Lloyd-Jones anticipated some of our emphases in Everyday Church (that anticipated in the sense of got there ahead of us rather than saw us coming!). Here are three…
