Category Archives: Faith

–        Dave Doty (Adapted from Eden’s Bridge: The Marketplace in Creation and Mission)

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There is little question that markets are competitive on several levels. Job seekers vie for positions matching their skills and interests. Producers compete at both ends of the process for resources and market share, and in the middle trying to attract the right employees and innovating processes. Customers contend for products, driven by the real or hyped desirability of a product and compelled by its relative availability.

The idea of competing for scarce resources, though a common notion in economics, sounds scarier than it truly is. The reality of material con­straints (scarcity¹) requires that choices be made. Scarcity forces eco­nomic choices into the realm of moral philosophy where processes and outcomes can be weighed against the good or evil they may bring about. Market competition does, however, produce several positive results.

Competition for scarce resources in an open market² establishes value (price index), a largely self-regulating control in the distribution and use of resources. If the provider of a product or service decides to increase prices arbitrarily or cuts corners to save costs and quality drops, other providers may leverage market share away from the origi­nal provider. The hinge is value, decided in large part by the balance of price and quality no matter whether it is a product in a high-end niche market (such as yachts) or widely available, inexpensive products (such as printer paper). Discount pricing increases value so long as quality remains stable. The sale of poor quality products will be undermined by buyers seeking higher quality products at similar prices, or by producers stratifying markets at different value points through multi-tiered offer­ings, such as the automobile market.

Competition promotes product and technological development and stimulates increasing efficiencies in production, marketing, distri­bution, and service. Competition also stimulates economic growth as sophisticated markets—such as telecommunications and biotechnolo­gy—require increasingly complex products and processes and producers seek market advantage through innovation. Innovations in technologi­cal research, product development, production processes, and manage­ment recur in ongoing cycles. Competition in technological markets also motivates increased sophistication in public and private education, encouraging workers to not languish intellectually.

But open market economies are only marginally competitive. On the contrary, markets are essentially cooperative. Another insight in the Noam Chomsky essay mentioned earlier serves as a useful analogy. In children, the ability to acquire language is not determined by environ­ment.³ There is apparently a genetic predisposition to learn language and acquiring a particular language only is incidental to the culture/family of origin. The differentiation of languages is, in other words, only a marginal component in the whole of the human capacity of language.

The competitive aspect of markets only exists at the margins in a similar way. The Olympic Games offer a useful analogy. The Games are made up of numerous athletic events which are only marginally compet­itive. Let me explain. The Olympic Games are run by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), facilitated by numerous not-for-profit na­tional organizations, and funded by grants and donations from for-profit companies and individuals. Thousands of volunteers and athletes work together to stage the athletic events, raising funds, contracting for ven­ues, serving food, or acting as volunteers in countless different ways.

Though there are significant differences in the constructs of various games and events, each individual event is also built on a cooperative model. The athletes compete according to established rules and agree to predetermined locations and times for each particular event. The oppor­tunity for the athletes to compete is only made possible by a substantial amount of multi-level, far-reaching cooperative acts and agreements. The Olympic Games are essentially a cooperative endeavor providing a greater framework for the “marginal” competitiveness.

The marketplace operates the same way. It is built on the coopera­tive foundations of divided labor and specialization. These two aspects create the opportunity to grow wealth by improvements in products, services, and methods, such as in manufacturing or distribution. Wealth is increased as mutually-beneficial exchanges of value are carried out in increasingly efficient ways. The “competitive” marketplace is built on a much larger framework (foundation) of cooperation and would collapse without it.

Corporations are nothing more than cooperative human efforts seeking optimized profit (and perhaps pursuing other motives) through providing products or services to a willing market. Cooperation allows specialization to enhance efficiencies which in turn facilitate higher pro­duction rates. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, police, and produc­tion workers all offer the service of their time and expertise for a variety of motives (including their paycheck) and contribute to the overarching cooperative framework of the marketplace.

While companies or individual contracts may compete against others for market share, market functionality is inherently cooperative and universal, like the genetic predisposition of linguistic capacity, only differentiated by particular product or service niches, personal wants, and the constraints of local custom and law. Businesses consistently work with other businesses, such as vendors, subcontractors, and so on, to fill needs in more cost-effective ways. Some corporations pursue even greater market advantage by cooperating with those who might otherwise be viewed as competitors. From 1985 to 1988, for example, Toyota manufactured the Chevrolet Nova, a model Toyota marketed as the Sprinter. Toyota and Chevrolet are competitors but both companies gained economic advantage through this joint venture. Such symbiosis is mutually-beneficial as it fosters increased profitability by providing access to innovative and proprietary knowledge, and by lowering pro­duction costs through shared capacities.

Advanced economies host a high degree of specialization and hold enormous potential for increasing wealth, creature comfort, and physi­cal well being. Sophisticated medical capabilities available in wealthier countries do not exist in less developed economies. These economies do not generate the wealth necessary to support the symbiotic (coopera­tive) relationship of improved health care systems and further economic development. Cooperation is an upward spiral.

And cooperation brings about deepening relationships between market players as it encourages collaboration, the pursuit of optimizing collective intelligence. Collaboration has been a long standing practice in a wide variety of enterprises and across organizational levels, includ­ing research departments, planning and strategizing groups, hunting parties, sports teams, and so on.⁴ These groups recognize the advantage of sharing information and creative ideas, and talking through options or possibilities. Market players are collaborating increasingly across departmental lines and even between competitive companies, sharing technologies and methods that may enhance the efficiencies of their var­ious endeavors. Now collaboration has migrated to open systems, such as Linux, the computer operating system available free to anyone, which has given rise to software products like the Internet web browser Mozilla Firefox. Such free systems allow a broadening spectrum of commercial and personal uses without placing the burden of large investments in research and development or the expense of licensing agreements on a single firm.

Open collaboration offers the opportunity to take any number of endeavors to new levels of productivity unforeseen even one generation past. Human productivity has reached the point where enough wealth has been created to alleviate abject poverty, yet global unemployment still stands at 8.7 percent.⁵ The 281 million unemployed is a population roughly equal to 90 percent of the United States, the largest individual national economy in the world (the European Union is listed as one na­tional economy), and more than one and three quarters the size of the U.S. labor force.⁶

While the majority of the global unemployed represent a dispro­portional number of illiterate, semi-literate, or under-educated workers, the sheer strength of brain trust represented by 281 million people can hardly be ignored. If this population could produce at the global average of individual productive output (about $11,200 USD, slightly below the per capita GDP for Costa Rica, ranked 98th globally),⁷ it repre­sents about $3.15 trillion in additional annual global productive output, an increase of 4.2%.⁸ All the unemployed could be absorbed into the current global workforce, reducing workloads but dropping personal GDP and incomes by just 8.7 percent. But the increase of households with sustainable incomes would create new demand that would likely erase the reduction in workloads very quickly. . . a short term and marginal reduction in income that would come back with long term growth impact. Or new jobs could be created with the $6.5 trillion,⁹ invested in repairing and building infrastructure globally and in education, on-the-job training, and affordable housing in under-developed economies.

Like cooperation, collaboration is an upward spiral. Given recent advances in global electronic communications, collaboration encour­ages economic opportunity and equality across the divides of national­ity, race, gender, and economic class. The potential contribution of every worker can be empowered and valued through collaboration. Farmers in Asia can work with agronomists in Europe, manufacturers in Brazil can work with distributors in Africa, and the flow of ideas can travel through fiber optic trunk lines from continent to continent in seconds.

The advantages of sharing information, whether it is raw data or creative strategies, can help erase historically dividing boundaries. The inefficiency and associated costs of social and political division become increasingly apparent as the interconnectedness of those contributions deepen and homogenous thinking is undermined. More boats can rise more quickly as cooperation and collaboration suggest more effective methodologies and technologies in production and distribution. Greater gains in output per capita can be achieved as collaboration moves from the limitations of old-model homogeneity (brainstorming and group­think) to encouraging shared thinking from disparate points of view.¹⁰

Historically, predatory commerce, such as colonialism and slave trading, has committed enormous evil. But trade can foster peace as cooperative economic efforts seek to reach constructively across bound­aries of isolation. Thomas Friedman introduced “The Golden Arches

Theory of Conflict Prevention” in his seminal work on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree.¹¹ He pointed out that no two countries that hosted McDonald’s restaurants had been to war since they had each had those establishments open. His point was that as countries establish trade with one another they are more apt to find ways to resolve conflicts peacefully than to risk losing the economic advantages of their trade agreements.

The global church has always had a mandate to care for the margin­alized: widows, sojourners, orphans, and the poor. Business-as-mission practitioners, both business people and missions staffers working with non-government-organizations (NGOs), are attempting to fulfill that mandate by introducing economic development programs among the world’s poorest. Others are advocating for government and social reform where tyranny and cultural barriers result in economic oppression.

The church, as the people of God, has the opportunity to coordi­nate internal efforts toward greater cooperation and collaboration, not only to enhance effectiveness but witness as well. And a multitude of opportunities for the church exist to come along side those doing good in the world, whether in economic, social, political, or environmental reform and advancement. The collective brain trust of the church can be brought to bear to help resolve long-standing social ills, and has a moral obligation to do so. The marketplace is a critical venue in human society offering great opportunities to advance the mission of God in the world.

¹ Scarcity may be real (actual) or “false” (artificial) and can be affected by coer­cion, such as by monopolistic efforts or collusion to restrict product availability or fix prices to optimize profits.

² I prefer the phrase “open market” to “free market” because all markets are regu­lated to varying degrees by legal requirements and cultural norms. Prices and resource utilization in open markets are generally self-regulating. “Closed markets,” by contrast, are those where prices and resource utilization are subject to the top-down controls of common or public ownership and central planning (socialism and communism).

³ Chomsky, Noam. “New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind” in The Essential Chomsky, edited by Arnold Arnove, 285–99. New York: The New Press, 2008, 289.

⁴See Keith Sawyer, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (New York: Basic Books, 2007), on how collaboration can contribute substantially to most endeavors.

⁵ International Labor Organization, Global Employment Trends, January 2010, Geneva, Switzerland: International Labor Office, January, 2010, 9. Available online at: http://www.ilo.org

⁶ Central Intelligence Agency, Factbook. Available online at http://www.cia.gov.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ibid., $3.15 trillion divided into global GDP ($74.54 trillion).

⁹ 8.7% of $74.54 trillion.

¹⁰ Sawyer, “From Groupthink to Group Genius,” 59–72.

¹¹ Friedman, Thomas L. “The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention,” in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, 248–75. New York: Anchor Books, 2000.

Volume 2, Number 2 – June 2013

View / download Volume 2, Number 2 in .pdf format here.

Cover illustration

Table of Contents

From the Publisher’s Desk – Dave Doty

Feature Articles 

Competition versus Cooperation and Collaboration – Dave Doty

Developing the Entrepreneurial Mind of Christ – Paul Wilson, Jr.

Changing Chattanooga (in three parts) – Dave Doty

The Importance of Incremental Change – Steve Marr

Milt Kuyers Redefining Success – Timothy Stoner (from My Business, My Mission)

David Livingstone’s Vision Revisited: Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation in the 21^st Century – Dr Sas Conradie

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” – Matthew 5:6

“I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” – John 15:15

I tap (pun intended) a popular beer commercial because the words of the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World” campaign were, in effect, long ago uttered by Paul: “But as for you, man of God, shun [the temptations of the world]; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.” – Timothy 6:11. But rather than the focus of the Most Interesting Man on seeking self-satisfaction, Paul calls Christ-followers to know God deeply and live life accordingly in service to the world, as worship to God.

It is reasonable to think that Jesus chose his words intentionally for the starkness of their meaning. In Matthew 5:6 he equates righteousness to fundamental physical needs of the human body. Beyond the lack of air, physical trauma, or certain poisons, few things are more threatening to human survival than dehydration. Not as immediate but of equal importance to survival is nutrition. If you have ever been in a situation without access to water or food for an extended period, you know firsthand how desperately the mind fixates and searches for those resources to stay alive. Knowing the aridity of the region and the imminent danger when droughts occurred would have painted a blunt mental picture for Jesus’ audience. Hunger and thirst were more urgent concerns than they typically are for most of us today.

In recent weeks, I have been blessed and simultaneously afflicted by a series of events and reflections. I attended the Global Business-as-Mission Congress in Chiang Mai, Thailand and met many workers trying to leverage the power of the global marketplace to alleviate the suffering of the poor (a foundational biblical mandate), especially as witness to the glory of God. I was invited to take part in a six-part young entrepreneurs series at Metro Merge in South Atlanta where attendees from the neighborhood create a business plan and vie for small grants to start their own businesses. I spent two days in Chattanooga, Tennessee to hear about the more than two dozen small businesses launched in just two years by graduates from Launch Chattanooga’s entrepreneurial training program. Finally, I spent a day visiting ministries, including the Refugeee Sewing Society and re:loom, who minister to refugees and the homeless in and around Clarkston, Georgia on Atlanta’s far east side.

I was blessed by the energy, zeal, and commitment of all those carrying out these ministries but I was afflicted by the contrast of the needs juxtaposed to the marginal awareness and response from the church at-large.

North Atlanta is a bustling place. Their are many impressive affluent communities, including Vinings and Marietta on the northwest corner off I-75, through Roswell, Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Alpharetta, Johns Creek across the north, to Duluth and Cumming northeast up I-85. This area is also home to some of the largest churches in North America, some with multiple campuses and packing in tens of thousands of worshippers every Sunday morning.

A couple of years back, one of those churches raised an impressive sounding amount of money in a period of two weeks to give in support to various ministry and mission agencies locally, regionally, nationally, and around the world. I am sure the receiving ministries were very appreciative that this church had ramped up their giving over previous years and the money was put to great use. Many in the church were amazed at the big number and I am sure more than a few took pride in the accomplishment. At the same time, however, the total dollar amount only represented about $100.00 per weekly attendee, or roughly $300.00 per household where average annual household incomes are easily three, four, or five times the national poverty level. It is not unusual to see the parking lots of these churches on Sunday morning, resembling the bustle at major sporting or concert events, dotted with innumerable late-model luxury cars – Lexus, Mercedes, BMW, Cadillac, Porsche. A drive through the neighborhoods where many church attendees live reveals spacious homes that typically cost at least three times the national average.

The lack of giving is convicting. There are those who give and give generously. But the national average of church giving is less than three percent of gross income. One of the young men at the young entrepreneur’s program in South Atlanta is trying to get a $1,000.00 grant to start a small business. Many folk in North Atlanta will spend $1,000.00 for a golf or beach weekend, a new television, or set of tires . . . and it will have no significant impact on their lifestyle. For Kelvin, an inner city youth, $1,000 could prove to be a matter of lie and death.

Many in the church of the United States are also adamant about supporting the military. That institution obviously serves important, necessary purposes. But just for the sake of consideration: Abraham supported a “household” that could put 318 fighting men afield (Genesis 14:14). The U.S. military spends almost $7 billion annually to support about 2.7 million afield in all the combat, support, administrative, and strategic roles, or a little more than $250,000 per person. For Abraham, in today’s terms, that would be nearly $80 million dollars. His was no small household. Abraham was obviously an astute business practitioner to build the cash flow and amass the wealth necessary to support his household year in and year out.

We recognize Abraham as the father of faith for the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions, today representing well over half the world’s population. Why was Abraham chosen? Because he believed God. He acted in faith on the outrageous command of God to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. What was his promise from God to include? To be blessed to be a blessing to all nations.

Throughout the history of God’s people (for we see it actively believed among many of the religious elite throughout the Old Testament, in Jesus’ day, and in our own), many have believed that God’s blessing was a reward for their belief (which was counted unto Abraham as righteousness) or their living according to right doctrine. In other words, they believe that God is blessing them because he loves them . . . and he does. But the blessings ultimately are not ours (as all is gift from and still belongs to God) to keep or to lavish opulent lifestyle upon ourselves.

The Bible tells us over and over that creation glorifies God. Wealth is merely a component within creation: just one more aspect that points to the abundance, creativity, generosity, and, in effect, the character and nature of God. The use of wealth is supposed to reveal God’s glory all the more.

Israel was given the Mosaic Law to guide their religious and social life (which in their thinking would have been fully integrated). The result of living according to the law, which reveals a high correlation between righteousness and economic justice – as caring for the widow, the poor, the orphan, and the sojourner – was to result in witness to the nations surrounding Israel. “You must observe [God’s laws] diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’ For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?” – Deuteronomy 4:6-8.

The reflection that afflicts me most, in light of my recent exposures, is that the church, in many places today, does not appear to be a “wise and discerning people.” In fact, in too many places, especially in North America, we look (and live) just like the world around us. Please do not think I am only pointing an accusing finger. In this season, I am trying to discern how I can better leverage the resources I have to serve God’s purposes. But no matter how I serve, I hope I will remain afflicted knowing I can always do so much more.

My prayer is that we would be so bold as to trust God beyond our comfort levels and ask him to reveal his heart for those afflicted in the communities both near to and far from us; to reveal to us how we might invest ourselves and our resources in ministering to them. It takes no imagination to agree that the world is largely unjust and focused upon selfish evil.

Hunger and thirst are painful afflictions. Are you afflicted to see righteousness grow in the world? Are you ignorant of the suffering? Are you content to turn a blind eye to the poor, the starving, the prostitutes, the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the struggling single parents, the prisoners, the fatherless, the million of orphans and those enslaved by human trafficking?

Ours is a connected, global, communicative world. When we stand before God we will have no excuse of ignorance to plead our case for failing to stand up for the oppressed. The conditions around the world and in our own backyards should disturb us to the point of taking action such that righteousness would prevail, to the glory of God.

2 Corinthians 1:20 says that in Christ “every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen,’ to the glory of God.” God’s “Yes” is already given unto our salvation. But God’s promises extend to the redemption of all creation. We say, “Yes, Lord,” in intellectual and emotional assent to the revelation of God’s love for us. But our “Amen” is more than an assent. Amen means “so be it.” Yes, learning of the love of God extended for us in the sacrifice of Christ is the milk of the Gospel. This is what we learn when coming to first know Christ, that he is our Savior.

But Amen is our response to God’s call to action. Amen actualizes Christ’s Lordship in our lives. Amen does more than renew our minds, it transforms out behaviors. “So be it” is our response to put time, energy, and resources to work carrying Christ’s ministry to the world. The author of Hebrews writes: “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.” – Hebrews 5:12-14.

It is good to serve God, the church, and the world, to make the glory of God known by our good works (Matthew 5:16), and to baptize and teach others to carry out Jesus’ commands (Matthew 28:19-20). By contrast, it is evil to neglect ministering the heart of God to the lost and the suffering. The Gospel is a promise of action, by Christ and by our Amen.

Stay hungry. Stay thirsty. Stay afflicted in spirit. Act on behalf of Christ and the world.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 5:3.

This essay was originally posted at http://howardsnyder.seedbed.com/2013/05/31/its-all-about-economics/

Previously, I had written an essay, entitled “An Overview of Marketplace Ministry (MPM) Models,” offering a brief overview of eleven distinct but often highly integrated categories of marketplace ministry. Oddly enough, the one model category (now that I am up to twelve and others may very well yet emerge) that I neglected to include is the very one into which my own ministry (also named Eden’s Bridge) fits.

In 1997, a man from Pennsylvania laid hands upon me and prophesied that I was to become “deacon of deacons,” literally, servant of servants. As I understand my calling, I am to serve those serving Christ and the world in ministry, facilitating their ministries. The specific corner of the mission and ministry world of my work is in God’s movement in the marketplace. My main role is to provide information, whether raw data, such as statistical information or agency contact and profile information, or the explications of ideas, most especially in theological and biblical conversations concerning the marketplace, but also in conversations on marketplace ethics, strategic thinking, etc.,  and so on. From time to time, I also consult with small organizations in their start up or early development phases. In effect, my job is to provide whatsoever God might place in my hands and deem appropriate to share.

This plays well into my interest in being a writer but also my addiction to information. I once informed my spiritual mentor, a retired seminary professor, that one of my personal vexations was my desire to know everything. He laughed out loud and right to my face (oh!, the indignity) then assured me that that is, at least in my case, what eternity is for. And I was reassured and happy to hear it. But I digress.

Bridge ministries connect things, come in many forms, and may very well operate and remain in relative obscurity throughout their life cycle. And they provide a variety of vital services. In an army, bridge ministry equivalents would fulfill a spectrum of supply line duties. Or, in the case of a multinational corporation, bridge ministries would be similar to back office operations like accounting, tech support, or human resources. These ministries are vital to the success of the overarching enterprise (the mission of God) but will typically remain invisible to those being ministered to.

Where Eden’s Bridge has a more general information-based focus, other bridge ministries may provide consulting services for ministries moving into new geographies or forms of ministry in the field. Still others may provide organizational development or funding expertise and training, or help in connecting new or growing ministries with funding sources. As becomes quickly obvious, much like the semi-obscure world of business-to-business (B2B) enterprises, such as accounting or law firms and a myriad of other product and service vendors, bridge ministries play important and diverse roles in the overarching marketplace ministries movement.

Unfortunately, as bridge ministries emerge, they suffer misunderstanding by many Christians who may have a tenuous grasp (or no grasp at all) of God’s movement in the marketplace and the role of business in God’s Kingdom-advancing mission, the redemption of all creation. That suffering can manifest most harshly when trying to determine measurable impacts, and outcomes may be as vague as the entire notion of marketplace ministries to the uninformed.

As missiologists, missionaries, and marketplace Christians move forward in ministering through the auspices of the business community, and the variety and complexity of the multitude of emerging ministries grows, the role of bridge ministries will become increasingly specialized and increasingly necessary. Bridge ministries, like the army’s supply line, may benefit the most from educating the Church at-large to the prevalence of the business model on which all human institutions operate, including business functions obscured by not applying business terminology, such as seeing the budget constraints of households as accounting issues, fundraising outreach and grant writing efforts as the marketing arm of charitable organizations, and the volunteer  coordination in the local church as the business world would address human resources (including issues today of volunteer pre-screening and a variety of legal and liability issues!).

God created business – that is, exchange – when Eve was created as Adam’s co-worker, a pre-Fall acknowledgment of the “good” of the division of labor. Now, through the relationships and demonstration of God’s righteousness through marketplace ministries, the next great wave of Kingdom advancement is at hand. And I, and many other obscure workers, are honored to build bridges for the entire enterprise to move as smoothly forward as possible.

I will host the first of a four part webinar series tonight at 6 p.m. EST on AU Online (http://auonline.acton.org/course/view.php?id=19).

The series will continue Thursday evening, Jan. 24, and Tuesday and Thursday next week.

Sign up now!

David Doty, Founder and Executive Director of Eden’s Bridge, Inc., will present a four-part webinar series entitled “Building a Marketplace Theology: From Conception to Execution of an Evangelistic Marketplace Practicum” via the Acton Institute’s AU (Acton University) Online in late January (visit http://auonline.acton.org/course/view.php?id=19 for registration details). Anticipated beginning date is during week of January 21 with two lectures weekly for two weeks.

The series consists of four one hour interactive lectures following a construction analogy and is largely based on the speaker’s book, Eden’s Bridge: The Marketplace in Creation and Mission, and material developed subsequent to its publication.

The purpose of this course is to broaden and deepen the current theological discussion surrounding the role of the marketplace in the Kingdom of God and the redemptive process of God’s mission (missio Dei) in the world. We hope to move toward empowering and actualizing the whole Church for Kingdom advancement through marketplace mechanisms.

Lecture 1: Laying Foundations for Solid Footing

To include a review of key economic elements within the creation narrative of Genesis 1-2, exploring economic superstructures, and linking the overall topic to major theological themes (eschatology, teleology, soteriology, ecclesiology, and redemption).

Lecture 2: Framing Kingdom Walls

An exploration of key economic and biblical language and concepts as defining (and constraining) elements of the discussion, including the importance of economic language, how we define business and the marketplace, and the relevance of particular biblical Hebrew and Greek terms (radah, abad, shamar, ezer, shama, oikonomos, pais and diakonos, doulos, mishpat, tsedeq, and shalom).

Lecture 3: Finish Work for a Productive Environment

An additional exploration of relevant economic, biblical, and theological concepts including the glory and character of God, the meaning of sacrament, stewardship, the tension between competition and cooperation and collaboration, a redemptive view of the future, and the recovery of wealth gone awry.

Lecture 4: Occupancy and Getting Down to Work

Considerations of broadening the view of what it means to evangelize, understanding a “hierarchy of needs” in redeeming business (especially in business-as-mission outreach), how our works reveal (glorify) God, and a handful of undermining attitudes and practices to overcome.

I posted the following review for A Field Guide for the Hero’s Journey on Amazon this morning. Visit the book’s own website here.

As I read this smallish volume I pondered how best to convey its content and value. In so doing, I was met with mental images of readers, absorbed in its pages: a schoolgirl faced with the daunting challenges of entering a new school and her teenage years simultaneously; a college freshman wrestling with the classroom deconstruction of values of his familial culture, a young couple, not long married, with a small child on the knee and a fledgling business plan on the kitchen table, the middle-aged executive troubled by his incommunicative wife and children and the emptiness of his material gain; the widow (always widowed far too young) pondering the paperwork piled high on the abandoned desk down the hall; or, the octogenarian putting pen to paper writing legacy letters for great-grandchildren still far too young to read.

The point is, A Field Guide for the Hero’s Journey, by Jeff Sandefer and Rev. Robert Sirico, intelligently captures the core lessons of many lifetimes, the secrets not only to success but the true meaning of success, then offers them up in compelling, manageable, and memorable short bits, easy to read and inviting to be read time and time again. I do not know Mr. Sandefer but find an immediate common ground in our entrepreneurial careers. I have met Rev. Sirico on several occasions and see in this new book the man I met in person . . . intelligent, concerned, gentle, and joyful.

After insisting that no one who buys A Field Guide for the Hero’s Journey is likely to be disappointed, then I would encourage them to plan on buying several more copies as gifts for anyone whom they truly love. Putting my money where my mouth is, I have purchased three copies today, having just finished my first reading, for my wife and my two grown children. They are too important to me not to share the principles and themes of this book . . . but I have no intention of one of them wandering off with my copy.