Category Archives: Faith

Business as Mission in Mongolia
BAM Think Tank Regional Group Report

The third report released by the Global Business-as-Mission Think Tank is available here.

“The purpose of the BAM Think Tank Mongolia Regional Group is to review the opportunities for BAM work in Mongolia and make projections regarding future possibilities, so that current and future BAM entrepreneurs and ventures may be more successful.”

– from the Introduction.

BAM and the End of Poverty: BAM at the Base of the Pyramid

The second report released by the Global Business-as-Mission Think Tank is available here.

“The Issue Group on Business as Mission at the Base of the Pyramid focused on the role of business in alleviating poverty, and the unique opportunity Christians in business have to address the needs and injustice of the 2.5 billion people who live on less than US$2.50 per day (the base of the pyramid or “BoP”).” – from the Executive Summary.

The Business as Mission Global Think Tank  has released its first report: 

“Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done… In Business:

Biblical Foundations for Business as Mission”

Click here for the downloadable report (in .pdf format)

I was honored to take part in this issue group and as a contributor to this paper. Please let me know your thoughts.

Other reports will be released over the coming weeks.

Last Friday (September 13, 2013), I presented a workshop at the annual national conference of the Christian Community Development Association entitled, “Will My Business Idea Work? – Contextual Small Business Development.” While, for me, that workshop was the focal point of my attending the conference, there were many things that transpired of greater or equal importance; mostly meeting new friends and the conversations we shared. But I walked away from the conference with one pressing line of thought.

The workshop I presented was included in the Economic Development track of the conference which included 124 workshop / seminar offerings, though a handful were core presentations offered more than once. On Friday, in the time slot I was assigned , one other Economic Workshop was taking place. I spoke with the presenters from that workshop afterward and between us, we had about 70 attendees of the roughly 3,000 conferees (if this year’s conference was consistent with attendance in recent years), or a little less than 2.5%.

There were 23 concurrent workshops in the same time slot as ours which included everything from Adult Learning and Financial Literacy to Families and Soul Care to Housing to Youth and Children. A flat distribution of attendees would have put an average of about 130 people in each room, or 260 in the two Economic Development workshops – nearly four times what we actually saw.

Lest I be misunderstood and before going further, I want to dispel any suspicion that I intend to detract from any of the other workshops’ content or importance. Community development is a complex, multifaceted undertaking and must be approached from a wide range of directions simultaneously. But I doubt that many, if any, of the workshops in a time slot more or less in the very middle of the conference saw 130 attendees in the room.

I do, however, want to speak specifically to the availability of the Economic Development workshops. The greatest practical cause (setting aside, if I may, the obvious dominance of  spiritual causality) of the multitudinous issues afflicting the poor is, by definition, poverty. The fastest track out of poverty is the creation of new wealth, i.e., economic development, as has been witnessed as globalization of the last fifty years has lifted more people from poverty in a shorter time than at any other in history. I applaud the CCDA Board of Directors as the last three conferences have included Business-as-Mission or Economic Development tracks, beginning in Indianapolis in 2011. There were seven economic development workshops (about five and a half percent of all) offered during the entire conference. This is an encouraging step in the right direction but illustrates that we have a long way yet to go in addressing the single most impactful aspect of poverty, the lack of productive opportunity.

Economic development is just that . . . development. It is to help move those in poverty out of poverty, that is, by creating jobs, which in turn creates a myriad of other opportunities including access to better systems of healthcare, education, and other economic amenities like readily-available transportation, retirement planning, etc. For too long, the global Church has predominantly adopted a relief approach to serving the poor. As before, my intent is not to detract from the necessity or importance of relief. Many would suffer far more than they do without it.. But recent missiological study has shown time and again that we do not quickly enough move from a relief model of charitable work to a developmental model to put communities on their own way to long term economic health and sustainability. Haiti has proven an illustrative case study where Christian mission groups continue to displace native workers in rebuilding efforts, offering free labor where aid funds could be used to pay local workers a reasonable wage to rebuild their own communities.

There are, I believe, two primary causes for maintaining the status quo of charity models, both of which actually hinder the economic and social development of indigenous populations. The first is an adherence to the tried and true, even when the trying has shown itself to create dependencies rather than local autonomy. This adherence may be due to a couple of problems. One is the lack of creativity brought on by tunnel vision. Many missions workers (which goes for social services administrations, local “helps” ministries, etc.) are simply so busy trying to alleviate human suffering that they miss the harmful side effects (unintended consequences) until those side effects create a seemingly irreparable pattern. Another cause is, sadly, a god complex among some relief / aid workers. They find their personal value in helping others and may be, even if subconsciously, afraid of working themselves out of a job which would then leave them without usefulness and relevance as a human being. Neither of these (sub-category) causes – tunnel vision or god complex – are in any way justifiable to not continually explore new means, and embrace them, of improving the lives of those we serve.

The second great cause is a general distrust of business as a just means of alleviating poverty. My experience, and that of many, many others who profess a belief that God would use business in redemptive ways, is that poverty is enormously exacerbated by the victimization of business as a necessary evil. That portrayal, however, is a fiction perpetuated by the false dichotomy of the sacred / secular divide. In Christian worship, there is no separation between the profession of faith and vocational profession.

As a Christian entrepreneur I wrestled with the notion of being called to business as a means of salvific grace, that is, as a ministry practice toward Kingdom building in the world. It was that internal conflict that led me to attend seminary and begin my research on the role of business in mission. I did not necessarily expect to find business in the creation narrative of Genesis 1-2 but find it I did.

There has been a great deal of literature written in the last couple of decades on theologies of work and of stewardship as pre-Fall legitimacy of those callings is established in Genesis 2:15 – “Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.” Notice that God does not just give Adam a job. He gives him two, both as a laborer and as a manager. What we often miss is that the next thing God gave Adam was a co-worker.

The division of labor is the foundation of a market economy and that Eve was to work with Adam implies that exchanges between them will occur. This discovery was the focal point of the marketplace theology I developed in my book, Eden’s Bridge: The Marketplace in Creation and Mission (Wipf & Stock, 2011). But further, exchange is the foundation of all sociality, whether of material goods or convenient services or what we would typically consider social goods, the building and maintenance of infrastructure by government agencies or the compassionate spiritual and social support extended to those in crisis.

Every organization, from families and households to universities, hospitals, churches and corporations, operate on the same foundational economic exchange model where income may be called donation or revenues, expenses appear to be universal, value propositions ensure sustainability, and communications result in outreach or marketing. The only differentiations are in the particular lingua franca of each institutional category and the definitions of the offerings.

There is a great more said in Eden’s Bridge about the ethics of business practice, the role of profit making, and so on, but I wanted here to only offer the very foundation – God’s intention in the division of labor – of the biblical evidence for business as a practice God created and is now working more apparently than ever to redeem as ministry to the world and for witness to His glory.

My hope here has been to challenge CCDA’ers and other missions-minded folk to dig into understanding that business, when done according to the nature, character, and will of God, is inherently good and vitally important to building the Kingdom in the here and now, toward the shalom of all people. In fact, the marketplace is a vital function in the created order of a loving God, a God on the move in the marketplace (I have identified twelve distinct marketplace ministry models) who is inviting us to get on board.

In many ways, since I am coming from a background of small business ownership and not specifically pastoral ministry or social services, I have felt like an outsider at the two CCDA conferences I have attended (Indianapolis and New Orleans). But again, I applaud the CCDA Board of Directors for their prophetic insight into the necessity of including economic development in the overarching community development conversation. I hope that I have created an opportunity for the mission-minded to move more freely toward economic development, small business incubation, and job creation as perhaps the most viable means of reaching one of their ultimate goals – the alleviation of poverty as ministry to the world for the glory of God.

Shalom,

Dave Doty

Eden’s Bridge

I wrote the following piece (Raphah) as a series of three devotionals but have thought about it increasingly while working through the process of planning for a new business launch. That process always calls for a great deal of thinking, data collection, working connections (especially setting up vendors), site scouting, playing with numbers, and, ultimately, finding investors (or digging thousands of dollars worth of change out of the sofa cushions).

As I have worked through this process over the last couple of months, as always, I have been most nervous about the last item: raising capital. I have watched incredulously as the other pieces have fallen quickly and easily into place – the emergence of a good working partner, the availability of desirable and affordable business locations, getting all six of our top targeted product vendors on board. But the money looms largest now, especially given we only have about a five month lead time until we want to open the doors.

And I continue to pray. If this is God’s will for us, the money will come. I want to be nervous about it. I want to doubt that we can get the final piece of the puzzle in place. At the same time, I know that if that piece does not come, this exercise, the time and energy invested, is all for naught. But throughout the process, Psalm 46:10a has been a constant whispering in my ear: Be still and know that I am God.

As the essay that follows will show “be still” means so much more than we might sometimes think it does. And in its depth, I think this very special verse in Scripture has a great deal to offer us as we face the challenges, the anticipations, the victories and defeats, and the never-ending work of professional life and of doing business in a fallen world.

Raphah

“Be still and know that I am God.” – Psalm 46:10a

Be still here is the Hebrew term raphah. It has several meanings which we will explore in three installments. I have tried to group twelve different nuances of raphah into subsets of four related meanings.

Raphah: Respite, Relax, Wait, Be Still

The central thrust of the verse above is toward the idea of resting. While it may pertain to both physical and mental activity, perhaps of greater importance is the release of anguish. We often think that a person who is grieving the loss of a loved one should “get some rest,” by which we mean, “go to sleep.” We know that deep rest rejuvenates the body. How often we set aside a problem until the morning and while the problem has not disappeared or diminished, when we are fresh and re-energized, we are more able to deal with it without the same levels of frustration or fear.

We are told of times when Jesus, feeling pressed by the crowds and the depth of their needs, slipped away, into the desert, across the water, or into a garden, to pray. He took a break to be rejuvenated by the Holy Spirit, and strengthened by an angel of God (Luke 22:43).

Western culture, and increasingly global culture, seems always to be speeding up but consistently we hear the sentiment of Psalm 46:10 reflected in Scripture but perhaps most importantly in Matthew 11:28-30:

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.”

When I reflect on my surrounding culture here in North Atlanta, which is one of the busiest commercial centers in the U.S., I am reminded of Thomas Gray’s description, in Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, of the busy-ness of modern society, even in 1751, as the madding crowd’s ignoble strife. The frenzy of life easily makes us anxious, harried, and tired but Jesus says “Come away, rest.” It is as if He in himself is a place of escape from the insanity of the striving world, even in its midst.

When we can “get away from it all,” whether to a sunny summer hillside, or an overstuffed chair in a quiet corner, or a favorite secluded chapel, it is there that we can be still, and in our stillness wait to hear the voice of God, not in the rending of the earth, the roaring wind, or raging fire, but coming in the quiet moment, as it did for Elijah (1 Kings 19:11-12).

We often recognize the intense tiredness that comes after a long day of solving work problems or interacting with others in troubled relationships. Our bodies respond to the weariness of our minds. Getting away to clear our heads, especially in prayer or reflecting on ministering passages of the Bible, or perhaps to listen to favorite worship songs, re-sets our agendas, restores weakening faith, encourages the heart and gives us the opportunity to begin again, re-focused on Christ and the importance of pressing “on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” – Philippians 3:14.

In stillness, forcing ourselves to set aside all the intrusions and worries that life throws our way, we can commune with God, knowing that “those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength” – Isaiah 40:31.

Raphah – Abandon, Cease, Let Go, Fall Limp

The second grouping of meanings in considering raphah leans toward reaching an end, especially of our own strength to accomplish something, or moving beyond performance expectations. Perhaps it is best summed up when Jesus says, “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it” – Matthew 16:25.

When Adam and Eve fell from grace it was essentially due to the sin of self-determination. But self-determination, which is a product of pride, has a deeper cause. They chose to disobey God because they questioned whether what God had told them about eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was true. In essence, they removed the authority from God to decide what was best for them, taking upon themselves the mantel of moral authority. But that action was merely symptomatic of their loss of faith in the integrity of God. They distrusted Him. They stopped believing God.

Ever since the Fall and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, humankind, in one way or another, has striven to “re-gain” the lost intimacy with God, or pursued a variety of panaceas to replace His presence, whether through wealth, power, alcohol, drugs, sex, or fame. All those, without a relationship with God, end in the desperation of trying to fill the void left by His absence from our lives. Often those pursuits will bring us to a crash, recognizing enough is never enough, whether it is in the diminishing psychological returns of increasing wealth or the dissatisfaction and emptiness wrought from deeper and deeper addictive behaviors.

Unfortunately, we sometimes also strive after religion, which is nothing more than trying to achieve righteousness by our own actions, as one of those panaceas. We get in our heads that if we can be good enough, to discipline ourselves to perform the right way every day, we will be good enough to go to heaven, good enough to earn God’s love that saves us.

Even if we have turned from overtly sinful behaviors, we often put on religion as a new addiction and find we are drawn toward legalism, following the checklist of God’s commands to justify ourselves. God proved by giving Israel the Ten Commandments that they were a fallen people. We seldom think about the fact that He gave Adam only one law . . . and Adam broke it!

Because we cannot atone for our own sin, that is, to make right the wrongs we have committed against God. Our striving after holiness outside of the finished work of Christ on the Cross will fall short. But until we come to the realization that we cannot save ourselves, we strive on and become increasingly anxious wondering if we are yet good enough to please God.

In a word, literally, raphah in Psalm 46:10 speaks to abandoning any notion of our own righteousness or our ability to attain in. Be still tells us to release our agendas or false notions of our own holiness. Here raphah also encourages us to release the anxiety that comes from falling short of the glory of God . . . and we all fall short (Romans 3:23). It is not until we fall limp in our inability, in our weakness, to become holy, that God can manifest and we begin to understand how the power of Christ is “perfected in our weakness” – 2 Corinthians 12:9.

You see, it is not until we come to our own end, recognizing our utter lack of righteousness and ability to save ourselves, that we come to the recognition of our need of a Savior, one other than us who is able to atone for sin, one perfectly holy and willing to sacrifice self completely, in the very character of God, for the sake of the one fallen. Only Christ can take that position in our lives and only as we collapse under the crush of our indebtedness to God and abandon our self-justifying ego. In that moment of our coming to terms with our brokenness, His strength comes into the middle of our relationship to God and is made perfect for our restoration into the Kingdom of God.

Raphah – Become Discouraged, Lose Courage, Fail, Become Helpless

By now, I hope that you are beginning to see the richness of the word raphah, and why I consider the first phrase of Psalm 46:10 as pivotal in our relationship to God. But the meaning is deeper still as we take this last look.

It may seem odd that we can “know that God is God” when we are discouraged, or back away from following Christ, seeing only the pressing and demoralizing circumstances of life or the depth of our weaknesses when we fail, stumbling in sin. Can we “know that God is God” when we become helpless?

In Western thought, we are driven by a sense of self-worth based in our ability to perform. Individualism and our standards of success compel us toward independently striving for success, pulling ourselves up “by the bootstraps,” so to speak, to be recognized by our peers, our families, and by society as worthy of acclaim and respect. Our economic system is geared toward working harder and smarter to carve out our place in the world. As the saying goes, “Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone” (from Solitude by Ella Wheeler Cox).

When we fail or find ourselves discouraged, we also often find ourselves alone. It is easy to think that we are the only one suffering in such ways, that others in the church are surely more holy than we, or the folk down the street do not have the same depth of financial, career, or marriage struggles we face every day. Isolation deepens the darkness of our despair.

But we are not alone. Foremost, God is with us. When Isaiah prophesied of the coming Messiah, he said that the One would be called Immanuel, meaning God with us (Isaiah 7:14). A major component of the incarnational – in the flesh – presence of God in Jesus Christ was God condescending to share human experience with us. He faced the trials, tribulations, and temptations we all face. Life is hard and God knows it . . . firsthand.

So, when we are discouraged, or failing God, or recognize our helplessness to be holy, how is it we can “know that God is God?” Though Christ ascended back to heaven after the Resurrection, He did not leave us without resources, especially resources for the moments of our deepest spiritual needs. First and foremost is the gift and presence of the Holy Spirit within us. It is by the presence of the Holy Spirit that God helps and teaches us (John 14:26). The literal translation of helper (parakletos) is comforter. When we think of the gentleness of God, it is in the moments that the Holy Spirit invites us to look to God for our salvation and help rather than to self in the midst of our daily madness that we can perceive the comforting voice of God’s presence, calling to us, inviting our return, so “Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need” – Hebrews 4:16.

God has also given us the Bible. There have been many verses that have been soothing to me over the years of my walk with God. One of my favorites in the times when I am mostly acutely aware of my sinfulness is 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” When I read this verse, I am encouraged to be honest with God and myself about my weakness and my stumbling. There are a lot of promises in the Bible that encourage, such as Philippians 1:6: “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” It reminds me to not try taking on God’s transformational work in my life and encourages me to reflect on times past when God has demonstrated His faithfulness in my life, even amidst my worst failings, and to think about His ability to save me when and where I am unable.

Finally, there is the church, which is instructed to “come alongside each other daily for encouragement” (Hebrews 3:13). There have been countless times that I have feared the vulnerability and possible rejection of revealing my true self to others. We are created to live in community and fear being put out of fellowship with others. But inevitably, if I confide in those I trust in Christ, I find encouragement, sometimes exhortation, prayer, restoration, and forgiveness, all by the power of God’s grace, present in His church.

When we are hard pressed by the world or our own weakness, we should be still before God and know Him as our loving, Heavenly Father.

–       David B. Doty (© 2013)

The Marketplace and Prosperity in the Creation Narrative

The earth itself, by its abundant production of plant and animal life by reproductive multiplication, and its mineral content, serves as the primary means of production. All the products we create are made from materials either already at hand or by manipulating them chemically and in form. The Old Testament is rife with discussions of land rights, that is, access to the means of production and the opportunities it presents to be productive to support life for all people.

The multiplication of animal and plant life points to the prosperity (increase or profit) designed into creation. This is one of the four prosperity functions of God’s intention in the created order. The other three involve Adam and the introduction of Eve. The woman is first identified as helpmate, or coworker in modern parlance, to facilitate Adam’s immediate material prosperity via the division of labor. Shared labor and the resulting specialization of workers are the foundations of market economics. That Adam and Eve would share (exchange) the fruit of their labors must be assumed, and the birth of their progeny would add to their communal productive capacity. Hence, Adam could prosper materially. But Eve, and their offspring, represents two other ways in which she enhanced Adam’s prosperity. She helped him grow intellectually by the exchanges of collaboration and she helped him grow spiritually as he could exercise righteousness, or holiness, only in relationship to an equal.

The Functions of Business in Creation

In the design of the created order, value exchange, whether of material goods, services, or information, and its contribution to increasing prosperity on all fronts of human life, is central to God’s intentions for how our world operates. Creation has increase designed in toward abundance via increasing economic and social complexities. The more highly developed a society and its economic system, the more prosperity can serve additional needs, even wants, beyond mere survival. Business has been proven to decrease the potential for war between trading partners as each gains greater prosperity from the economic relationship and reduces losses of human productivity by the inevitable attrition of life due to war. The fruits of increase within a complex society contribute to value-added social goods like education, sophisticated government agencies, and public education. Business, in effect, funds an upward spiral of social well-being, even toward the Hebrew concept of shalom, which means far more than the term peace might imply as the absence of conflict. Shalom implies not only a complete well-being of the individual but for the entire community as well.

Business serves the purpose of God blessing his creation temporally. Additionally, business provides the opportunity for all humankind to practice righteousness, that is, holiness, in denial of egocentrism. Holiness cannot be practiced in isolation and in exchanges, in the space between us, whether those exchanges be economic, or familial, or for whatever other reason, God provides us opportunity to live unto the loving Spirit of the divine, to be fully human, made in the image of God. Business is a significant means along the path to human holiness.

The human search for truth, meaning, and significance is universal. Work and the product of our work, wealth, provide opportunities to grasp these concepts only as they are subordinated to the Truth of Jesus Christ. Business, as a vital component of human well-being and the opportunity for both material and spiritual blessedness, and as defined by the mutuality of interdependence, plays a substantial role in human spirituality, the fount of truth, meaning, and significance. Created in the image of God, humankind was designed with work and stewardship as fundamental elements of the nature of being human. Note that before Adam’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden that God did not command Adam to work and tend to the Garden. Rather, God created Adam to work and tend it as co-creator in communion with God to fulfill the functionality and abundance of the rest of creation. Humankind finds fulfillment in Christ and in this life as work, stewardship, and exchange are carried out according to the nature, character, and will of God.

By the interaction of divine power, human productivity, and exchange, God provides the opportunity for abundant life in the present. When productivity and exchange are aligned with the character, nature, and will of God, the grace, or outpouring kindness, of God is shed abroad to the world. Business conducted according to the righteousness of God, like charity, emotional and physical healing, and other human practices, reveals God’s grace and glory.

Business serves these four functions – abundant provision, the practice of holiness, human meaning and fulfillment, and revealing grace (witness) – in the created order.

The Function(s) of Business in the Mission of God

The mission of God in the world, instituted before creation and fulfilled in the ministry of Jesus Christ, is the redemption of all creation, to deliver it once for all from the ravages of sin and the power of death. Business, as a means of revelatory grace (witness), like the other ministries of the church and mission agencies, continues to draw humankind toward God as the church reaches out to the whole world via the marketplace to make disciples according to Jesus’ charge to the church, the Great Commission.

Business, conducted according to godliness, participates in this redemptive process in two key ways. First, by providing jobs and income for the poor, business is truly Gospel witness, that is, good news to the poor. By serving the needs of the poor, both economically and in the influence of public policy and institutions, business helps bring about social transformation. It does so by the influence of Christians in the marketplace bringing transparency and the order of law to commerce over the last several centuries. That influence is spreading as the legal accountability necessary for open markets to function helps overcome corruption in many cultures. Business also transforms the world as its economic impact allows for the development of institutions like sophisticated governmental policy, public education, and the advances of modern healthcare. All the world’s bills are paid by the productivity of work, by the innovations for gained efficiency in processes, procedures, and business practices, and by the wealth created by increasing complexity and exchanges of vocational specialization. Business is changing the world, even if by small increments, for the better.

The accountability demanded by the rule of law and necessary for sophisticated economic development serves a second purpose in the created order. It prioritizes relationships and common justice over barbaric enslavement, forced labor, and unmitigated abusive business practices. In effect, business practiced in highly ordered economies undermines the egocentric sin of both individuals and systems, such as illegitimate regimes ruling over poor countries or scofflaws cheating customers, vendors, governments, and their communities.

When God gave Adam a help mate in Eve, that act established the division of labor as normative for human productivity. It allowed Adam to prosper beyond the limitations of his individual capacity. The division of labor fosters key outcomes – exchanges, collaboration, specialization, and innovation – all of which contribute to an upward spiral of prosperity materially, intellectually, and, by the practice of righteousness (holiness) in exchange, spiritually.

The marketplace has prospered through time, especially in league with the scientific and sociological development of products, manufacturing and distribution processes, and managerial practices over the past several hundred years. What Adam Smith could not specifically identify, but labeled the “invisible hand,” is nothing less than the design of increase within God’s ordered creation, the “multiply” commands of Genesis 1:22 and 28.

While the marketplace has embraced the increase mandate, though too often sadly as self-serving profit mongering, the world has fared increasingly well in the last century as globalization has brought trade to higher levels of complexity and connectedness. [Lest I be called out on this, I do not believe that profit is bad . . . just too often sought for the wrong purposes.] Unfortunately, much of the wisdom for producing increase has been lost on the evangelistic and charitable efforts of the church and the pursuit of social causes by other not-for-profits.

I often meet operators of not-for-profit agencies interested in engaging in the current movement of social enterprise or, in church parlance, marketplace ministries. And often they relate that though they would like to help their organization move in that direction to enhance their effectiveness and sustainability, they simultaneously confess their ministry or social services training has left them bereft of business knowledge or experience. They do not realize the organizations they run operate on the same business model as commercial enterprises. It is simply the language of the business, church, and charity cultures that differs.

One of the keys to modern market proliferation is the complex organization of organizations, a meta-level application of the division of labor. Where a shoemaker and a baker may trade goods on a personal level, corporations exchange value on an institutional level. Hence, the business world language calls those we buy from vendors, those businesses we sell to customers, those we work with partners or joint ventures or even subsidiaries. The level of relationship is simply taken to a corporate from an individual level as we transcend the low level trade of local markets, barter systems, and such on a personal level.

The reason businesses act this way is the same principle of trade that fosters worker specialization and the comparative advantage of corporations, nations, and even regional trading blocs, like the Eurozone, which trade effectively within while leveraging the economic advantages of unity in the broader, global market. Gained efficiency is the only source of newly created wealth. That is, on the income statement, even while increasing revenues, operators must control expenses to increase profitability. Such principles are standard fare of business classes and corporate offices but not so in churches and not for profits.

Churches and not-for-profits are not looking to make a profit. But they are looking to make a difference. Unfortunately, since 2000, the number of not-for-profits in the United States has more than doubled. Churches and not-for-profits operate on donated funds (including grants) but those clamoring for the pool of available funds has grown while the pool of donors and funds has not kept pace.

The point is, churches and other not-for-profits need to realize and live into the reality of their business model, especially on the front of forming strategic alliances for cooperation, collaboration, and leveraging each one’s comparative advantage. But, alas, the blinders of busyness more often than not disallow the forethought required to carry this off.

This last point is a critical needs gap that coalescing agencies can fill by building communities of not-for-profit agencies and help guide them through the processes of increasing their collective effectiveness. Such an agency may well be an outside force or can be constructed “from within” by leaders of the various agencies coming together on their own. Very often it appears, however, this catalytic energy must come from outside, applying light (rather than heat), to raise the bar of cooperative vision across a coalition of mission statements, skills, capacities, programs, and workers.

Perhaps a few illustrative thoughts will help. I lived for many years in Montgomery County, Indiana. At the time, there were about 125 churches in the countywide community of 34,000 people, or one church for each 272 people. Significant research has shown that only about twenty percent of U.S. residents attend church weekly. Being generous, let’s say that is twenty five percent. Those 125 churches in Montgomery County averaged weekly attendance of just 68 people. Census data tells us that about twenty five percent of the population is under the age of eighteen so each church hosts just 51 adults. In Indiana, the average household is 2.6 people with a median household income of nearly $53,000. Dividing the 68 attendees by households means that if every household tithes ten percent of their gross income, the church will see annual donations of about $138,000. Unfortunately, U.S. church members only give three percent so the annual donations drop to a reasonably sustainable annual budget of a bit over $41,000, less than the median income of a single household! That $41,000 pays facilities costs (including rents or mortgages, utilities, insurance, etc.), supplies, and in many cases multiple salaries. Obviously, there cannot be much left for actual charitable work, whether in giving financial support or investing in ministering programs.

Let’s look at the labor impact of each church. In volunteerism, Indiana ranks 24^th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Let’s allow that Indiana is very close to the national averages finding itself near the midpoint of the rankings. Nationally, each resident volunteers 29 hours per year. For each of those 125 churches in Montgomery County that multiplies out to be 1972 hours per year, or 37.9 weekly (less than one hour per week per adult attendee), less than one fulltime employee’s expected work schedule. That means the equivalent of less than 120 people are carrying out the annual ministry (including teaching Sunday school classes, conducting outreach programs, etc.) to the whole community of 34,000, or just one person for each 283 people, trying to know them, understand their needs (material and spiritual), formulating a plan for ministering to them, and executing that ministry. Each “active” participant has (using the forty hour week model) a little under nine minutes and three dollars ((($41,000 church income x 125)/34000), as if all of the budget of each church could be dedicated to ministry programming) a week to minister to each of their constituents. Nine minutes and three dollars a week for each man, woman, and child in the community. (This looks to be a good takeoff point for stewardship training!)

But let’s put those numbers into a collective view of the 125 churches: 6375 adults; 3269 households; 246,500 annual work hours; church giving (staying with the three percent) of $5.2 million. It is easy to imagine how impact could be increased if the efforts of all those churches and adults were coalesced and organized. Admittedly, it is an uphill battle but we must keep in mind that Jesus’ cross had to be carried up a hill to Golgotha.

There is no endeavor in the history or breadth of human experience more critical to this world than the cause of Christ, advancing God’s Kingdom. There is likely no worthwhile endeavor in that same experience more disjointed and disorganized as that same cause. God gave Adam a co-worker and a wife in the person of Eve. The role of wife, as co-creator of progeny, is a future, productive, hopeful role. The role of co-worker is for advancement in the present . . . today.

The church needs its leaders to step up, to lay down their agendas and egos and to embrace the cooperation, collaboration, and specialization God designed into creation if we are, as the church, to become the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We must remove our blinders and join forces and much of the organizational skill set needed is already in the church but relegated to pew sitting and check writing.

The army of God is in disarray and, on some fronts, even in retreat. Today, as on every day in history, there is a clarion call to pursue the unity of the church, to be one as Christ and his heavenly Father are one . . . unified in thought and deed, leveraging the wisdom available on humbled, bended knees, and rising that the world would see the church and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” (Deuteronomy 4:6).

Considering Faith is a collection of 21 essays designed to help readers “get under the surface” of the Bible. The author has been a business practitioner, a seminarian, and remains a lifelong learner. Considering Faith includes essays that are part devotional, part Bible study, part theological survey, and sometimes provocative. These are intended to be used as personal devotional materials, conversation starters for small groups, or sermon fodder.

Considering Faith is currently available only in Kindle format and can be ORDERED HERE: just $4.99 (100 pages)

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– Dave

The title above is a working title but I am compiling a short book (about 100 pages) of twenty essays that are an amalgamation of nearly fifty devotionals (most were two or three installations) written over the last year or so. These explore a range of topics – holiness, authority, God’s name, mercy, faith, hope, and love, empathy, justice and righteousness, and so on – in biblical and theological perspective. The first edition will be out shortly in Kindle version via Amazon. Let me know if you are interested in a print version.