I am pleased to introduce you to a book that invites the church to a journey toward a more holistic method of mission and poverty alleviation. Laceye and Gaston Warner have written From Relief to Empowerment: How Your Church Can Cultivate Sustainable Mission. The Warners support the idea that mission flourishes when relationships are characterized by mutuality—a difficult, but important, balance to…
At Work on Purpose engages over 8,000 working Christians in Cincinnati, Ohio—across church homes, denominations, zip codes, and ministries. This presentation introduces the citywide marketplace ministry model of At Work on Purpose, a contemporary workplace expression of the 1st Century Ekklesia for post-Christian America. Learn about the identity, infrastructure, and initiatives that collectively form the foundation for citywide marketplace ministry…
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…
Read the first post in this series here. By Eddy Davila The pay at my new job was paltry, so I worked as efficiently and thoroughly as I could. I excelled in my duties but promotions and raises always escaped me. It took a long time for me to realize that I could ask for a raise and that this…
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)
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my experience of being a white participant in the faith and work movement. Since then, it struck me that this series should actually be a multi-author endeavor–the whole idea is that our faith and work community ought to learn from people with other racial identities. In that spirit, I’ve invited a few friends of great…
Over the years, I’ve often received the question How did you do that? That is, how did you start Denver Institute for Faith & Work? The founding of DIFW was a one part grace (both God’s and others’), one part luck, and one part perseverance. The great thing about our story is that we didn’t need anybody famous to make it work.…
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…
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…
I am excited to introduce you to a book that, while not a faith and work book, has serious implications for the future of the faith and work movement, John Seel’s The New Copernicans: Millennials and the Survival of the Church. I realize that is a strong statement; please read on. John is a cultural renewal entrepreneur and social impact consultant. He…
The Green Room 