The Goodness of Equal Exchange...

One of the blessings of doing ministry through social enterprise is that an ethically performed exchange of goods and services places the "giver" and the recipient on equal footing. I received this note from a customer a few weeks ago and was elated to receive it. We had provided a high quality and prompt service. In this case the customer was overjoyed to have snow removed from their driveway after a solid snow storm and ice storm. I was able to spend several hours working with my students which was relational time well spent. We talked about life, a bit about faith, and a good amount about hard work. I get to do ministry, the customer has a service provided that also impacts their local community, the student grows and develops in faith and life. It is an equal exchange.

This way of doing things seems so much more preferable to the unequal exchanges in many of our charitable works in our community. In many of those systems, Group A has all the power, dollars, and say-so and often does something "good" that the recipient doesn't even want or necessarily need. The recipient is often further incentivized to keep their mouth shut because they don't want to appear rude to the giver and they may be able to make use of SOME part of what the giver is peddling. But, the exchange is always unequal. One party controls the whole situation. I think many of us know this is how we do charity work and it makes the giver feel wonderful, but often steals dignity from the recipient. It is unhealthy and the same unequal exchange can be seen in other areas of the church's life as well.

In our church ministries, youth and adult, we often disempower those we serve unintentionally. One group has all the cards. They are the minister, or the discipler, or something else. There is very little mutuality. The recipient is often supposed to sit and receive what is being taught.  This, not surprisingly, can create environments where people don't feel motivated to pursue their faith for themselves. They become dependent on the model or the individual providing the spiritual good and services (for lack of a better term). We can do better.

My point is that we need to find ways to even our exchanges a bit more. We need ministries and spaces where giver and recipient are on more equal footing.  Our social enterprise (The Columbia Future Forge and Mowtown Teen Lawn Care) empowers students who are involved, robs little dignity from the person buying the services, and brings adults (as mentors or crew bosses) and students together as co-workers rather than as givers and receivers. It's pretty cool.

Last, one of the best things about engaging economics and faith is that I am discovering that to provide a good or service that is high quality and prompt is a kind of service. It blesses the customer when they pull in their driveway.  That is important ministry and one that the church needs to validate more frequently. Ministry and Business need not be two seperate categories all the time.

"Soft Skills", Jobs Programs, and Human Beings Fully Alive

A few weeks ago I received three calls in the same week from different folks who had read or heard about The Columbia Future Forge program and Mowtown Teen Lawn Care.  One of them had found a brochure on his desk when he took his new job. Another wasn't even sure how he knew about us, but he did....which was odd.  But, all of them were interested in us because our program was offering something that the schools are not. And it isn't vocational skills.

Our programs do offer vocational skills. The Forge, which offers trainings and mentoring, trains kids in professionalism, goal setting, personal finance, and a personality/gifts assessment. The object is to impart some useful professional and life skills. Many of our schools do little of this. I am not the Junior Mike Rowe and I don't believe that trades are necessarily the future. In fact, I worry that many of our trades will be gone in the next 50 years due to automation. But, we do need more of them in schools.  Schools are slowly starting to re-gather themselves from the college craze. They are starting to talk about bringing trade skills and professional training again which is great because many students don't want the college ideal that has been foisted on them.  But, even though I agree that there is a skills gap and too much college craze, that isn't why we created our program.

You can have all the professionalism you want. You can manage your money like Warren Buffet. You can have the greatest goals in the world. You can know exactly what jobs you might be good at and have the skills for them. And you can still be...a really crappy human being.

The people who called me were interested in this last bit.  The human being bit. The idea that you could teach human skills and job skills at the same time. The idea that students don't need another program. They need a human being to mentor them. That sounded worthwhile to them.

Even if our schools can get back to some vocational training and life skills training they will not be able to teach us how to be full human beings.  We need another human to do that. At least that is what the incarnation seems to argue for. Traditionally those "human being" skills are what we might call "soft skills". They are the hardest to teach.  I was recently reading a post by Seth Godin on this. It's superb and it's a 5 minute read. He argues that soft skills are what make most companies endure, innovate, and flourish. You can teach the other skills, but soft skills are what allow for innovation and a lack of them can destroy company culture. Soft skills, human skills, are almost never taught and are one of the most essential features of good employees, good co-workers, and good family members. They also happen to be at the heart of the gospel.

So, when a student came up to me a few weeks ago asking about our program I felt confused by some of his questions.  He was dancing around something but I couldn't tell what. He was asking questions related to college, the military, and our mentors.  It finally dawned on me that his expectation was that we were either trying to get him into college or trying to get him a job.  What I had to explain was that while we would be delighted if he went to college or into the military (his current goal), we were more interested in who he was going to be when he got there. We don't need more soldiers and we don't really need more debt saddled college grads. We have enough of those. What we need is people who have a sense of who they are and what life is about when they get to those kinds of places. We want the most fully developed human beings serving in our military and we want a fully alive compassionate and rational human being studying physics in our collegiate laboratories. Our objective is human beings flourishing AS human beings wherever God has them. Period.  

Seth Godin is right. They aren't "soft skills". They are essential skills for life in the individual and in any organization or society. Our ecclesial job is not to crank out successful people, or nice people, or even religious people. That smacks of a factory. If that is the best we can do we might as well automate everything now. Our job is to do the redemptive ditch digging of forging fully alive human beings, full bearers of the image of God. That is work worth doing. As Irenaeus was reported to have said, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive." In that case, Soli Deo Gloria.

Innovators Guest Post #8- "Go Fish" and Rev. Matt McNelly

About a year ago, I received a call from Matt McNelly who pastors at 1st Presbyterian Church in Pullman, Wa. Matt called to let me know that he had been reading about some of the ministry I was doing through my online postings here and some other articles that had come out. He was considering launching his own social enterprise based ministry and also considering going to the Hatchathon at Princeton.  I have been asking Matt to work up a post on his ministry that is built around fishing and the Rule of St. Benedict for some time. In the end I shot him some interview questions to give us a flavor of how he is doing youth work.  This is a really cool ministry and one that is both risky and innovative. Very cool!

Name: Rev. Matthew McNelly

Church: Pullman Presbyterian Church

Position at Church: Senior Pastor and Captain of the F/V Suzy Q

Number of Years at the Church: 11

Name of Social Enterprise: "Go Fish"

1. What do you call this new ministry and how did it get started?

Our new ministry here at Pullman Presbyterian Church is called “Go Fish!” The basic idea of the ministry is that we use a program sponsored by the State of Washington called the Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Program as a vehicle for doing youth ministry. This program, which runs from May 1 through August 31, pays anglers from $5 to $8 a fish to catch and remove approximately 10%-20% of the Pikeminnow population each summer.

The Northern Pikeminnow is a native fish of the Columbia and Snake River systems that aggressively feeds on juvenile salmon and steelhead. When the dams were installed on these rivers it created the perfect environment for the Pikeminnow populations (previously known as the Squawfish) to explode in numbers. State biologists report the Northern Pikeminnow consumes millions of salmon smolts a year, significantly reducing returning salmon populations. So essentially the youth involved in our program become piscine bounty hunters.

Go Fish! equips kids between the ages of 10-15 years old with everything necessary to participate in this fishery. Through a combination of grants and generosity from church families we were able to purchase fishing rods and reels, tackle, lifejackets, boating electronics, and most importantly; a 24ft pontoon boat we dubbed the “Suzy Q” (named after one of our supporters). Twice a week during the summer months myself and other mature Christian adult volunteers from the congregation take kids out on the “Suzy Q” for day-long fishing trips on the Snake River in search of Northern Pikeminnow. Whatever regulation size Pikeminnows the students catch they turn in to the check station and receive the monetary reward.

2. What made you or your church decide to do this?

My wife and I both serve on staff as pastors of our church and it became apparent that the leadership of the church needed to reduce personnel costs. Because we are located in a college town, all of our programming for the year happens when Washington State University is in session. Taking into consideration that our summers are so low-key I volunteered to move from full-time to ¾ time, only working one day a week at the church when school was out of session in the summer. With my schedule suddenly opened up and needing to earn a little extra cash I had decided to try this bounty-fishing program myself.

Then it hit me. I could take kids from the church fishing WITH me on this crazy adventure! The idea of Go Fish! Ministries took off. Instead of structured, time-limited weekly programming with our youth, we are inviting them to do faith and life out on the river in the pursuit of fish.

The “theme” verse for this endeavor comes from Matthew 4:19, “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” What if in following Jesus to fish for people we are being invited to get back in the boat and fish…for fish?

3. What is the overall goal of what you are doing and do you feel you are accomplishing that so far?

The goal of our program simply put is to get kids “hooked on Jesus.” We want youth captured by Christ’s love and become His disciples; and then become fishers of people themselves. We accomplish that through a multi-faceted approach. We don’t simply want to tell kids about the grace and love of Jesus, we want them to receive and experience it through relationship mature Christian adults. The fishing activity is simply a framework for the hours of conversation and incarnational witness as adults and youth do life together. As followers of Jesus how do we deal with disappointment? Success? Conflict? Adversity? If you have ever spent time fishing, you know that there are countless opportunities to navigate all these scenarios!

To help guide our communal life we actually look to the Rule of St. Benedict. There are so many parallels between living in a monastic community and being part of the crew of a boat. In both situations order is necessary for the safety and well-being of the members of the community. Particularly on a boat, safety is paramount. And like a monastic community there is a hierarchy in place to keep order and the members all on task. A boat is not a democracy; the captain is in charge. Period. The role of the Father or Mother of an intentional faith community operates in much the same way. We seek to have two adults on the boat at a time for the maximum of 5 kids per day. Throughout the day we have times of prayer and scripture reading, a simplified form of praying “The Hours.”

This summer of 2016 was a pilot season for the program. We took out kids 3 separate days and the initial results are very promising. The kids who went on our fishing trips had an overwhelming positive response. We caught a lot of fish (only 3 keeper money fish) and the kids were engaged. There is great anticipation for this coming summer when we will offer fishing trips twice a week for 8 weeks.

4. Risk is a part of gospel faithfulness and a necessary part of doing anything missional. Where have you seen God’s faithfulness in this journey and where have you had to radically trust God?

When we started this journey we had no money, no boat, no fishing experience, and no model to draw from in launching this ministry. The entire venture has been one of risk without the possibility of reward. And there were many days when I was fishing out on the river by myself trying to get the hang of it and simply failing. And failing hard. As in, spending the whole day on the river, costing gas, time away from family, bait, and catching one $5 fish. My wife at times was starting to get very anxious because I was supposed to be making all this money catching fish and we were losing money.

But there were a number of instances when it became apparent that God and the people of our church were heavily invested. The congregation paid for me to attend the Hatch-A-Thon put on by the Princeton Institute of Youth Ministry. I was able to learn so much about how to get started with entrepreneurial ministry endeavors. I came away from that experience with a boatload of ideas (pun intended). Our Presbytery gave us a grant of $5,000 to purchase equipment for this missional initiative! A couple families from our church donated the money to purchase a used pontoon boat for $4,000. This pontoon boat has a great story behind it. The boat was used the previous season by a local fisherman in our community who made $21,000 with this boat the summer of 2015. Meeting this fisherman was also very much a “God thing.” He showed me the ropes of fishing and saved me hundreds of hours of frustration (beyond what I was already experiencing).

5. What kind of folks are accompanying you on this journey? Who have you had in the room helping you plan and envision where this is all headed?

We are so blessed to have a number of people supporting this endeavor. First we have men in the congregation who have volunteered their time to be on the boat ministering to the kids. Guys are taking days off of work to join kids on the river. We have the families that have donated the money towards the purchase of the boat. We have a farmer in our congregation who has donated space on his property for us to store the boat during the winter months to save money on moorage costs. We are so fortunate to have folks in marketing and advertising that are helping us put together a website, logo, and branding so we can get the word out on the ministry. And of course all the parents and congregants who have supported this ministry through their prayers.

6. What would you say to others who are trying to envision different ways to do youth ministry? How can they begin a process of trying something different?

Start by asking yourself what you are passionate about. What do you love to do? How might you invite youth into some endeavor you have been itching to try personally. What are the needs of your community? We have a number of kids whose parents both work but cannot afford the day camps available during the summer. Most of these kids end up wandering the local streets and or spending all day in the library on the computer. We are able to provide an opportunity to get out into creation, make some money, and encounter God’s love.

7.) What are some things you are learning through all of this project and what about it is life giving?

I am learning that you cannot be afraid to fail. A lot. I don’t think it was an accident that Jesus chose a group of fishermen as his first disciples. Fishing is full of disappointment and failure. And to make money at it you have to really be able to navigate the failure and continue to pursue the prize even when it is really hard. Discipleship is an exercise of the will, a decision to follow Jesus even when you don’t feel a deep connection or emotional/spiritual high.

I am an aspiring mystic and simply cannot get enough of witnessing the wonders of God’s creation. Fishing on a daily basis gets you to marvel at the genius of God’s created order. Having the chance to introduce others to this way of seeing the world is a gift. I love to fish and I love a challenge. I love to build things and this endeavor has fed all those elements of my person. Most importantly, I love Jesus and was blessed during my adolescence with significant adult mentors and spiritual fathers who left a lasting impression. I want to pass on that to the youth of our community; starting with my own four kids.

Why Christian Social Enterprise #5- Patient Incarnation vs. Impact

One of the theological strengths of rightly practiced Christianity is a kind of "patient incarnation". As I have been reading various books on social enterprise there is a heavy emphasis on measurable impacts.  And generally speaking this is a wonderful thing that the church could learn a great deal from. The vast majority of churches rarely get to a place where they can name their values let alone their vision. As a result they often don't know what to measure in terms of whether or not they are achieving their goals.  But, the desire to measure impact carries a certain burden with it that the church has a long history with.  The desire to make a measurable impact on anyone can lead us to turn them into a kind of commodity.  When we push too heavily toward measurable impacts we often end up seeing people, communities, and even whole countries as cogs in a plan that we (the benefactors) have developed.  That kind of agency can be tone deaf and often blind to what the object of its assistance would desire for themselves.  I would propose that Christianity offers a healthy alternative when one thinks about the life and ministry of Jesus.

In Christ, God is sent and comes into the world and there are multiple attributes of this self sending that are can redemptively temper the desire for "impact".

1. The Act of Being Sent- There is a remarkable kind of patience in the simple fact that God does not choose to do things instantaneously. Instead God chooses a methodology of social impact in which thousands of physical steps are taken, meals are eaten, breaths are taken, etc. In Jesus, impact is intimate.

2. The Act of Being Sent to a Particular Place- The fact that God's mission has a locus is worthy of attention. In coming into the world Christ does not enact change remotely on other places. He moves into a particular context and enacts his ministry relatively locally. He engages a finite language and culture.  In Jesus, impact is local.

3. God Honors Autonomy- Throughout his ministry Jesus is approached by others (Luke 9-14) and approaches others who claim they wish to engage what he offers, but then they back down. Jesus does not force his way into their lives or push them any further. In other words there is a kind of objective distance in his desire to impact the world. Jesus doesn't make sure he gets the win in every conversation. He is sovereign while maintaining the autonomy of the created creature who he loves. In Jesus, impact honors the autonomy of the other.

4. He is Sent to Individuals- A dramatic feature of Jesus' incarnational ministry is that he seems to heal people one at a time. His desire to impact the world and the lives of others is not superceded by mass impact. There is something intrinsically good about small batches of good work within the heart of God. In Jesus, impact is large, but primarily done on an individual scale.

5. He Often Listens- A hallmark of the way that God enters the world in Christ is that he asks lots of questions and listens. Many of Jesus' conversations see him asking questions of friends and enemies about what they want, their willingness to engage his way of life, and about how they understand God's teachings. These aren't exactly listening circles as Jesus clearly inhabits a prophetic role, but neither do we see Jesus only dictating to others. In Jesus, impact values the voice of the other.

6. He has an Eternal Timeline- Jesus clearly has an urgency about his mission, yet he is not obsessed with efficiency. The way that he scales things seems to take a long view of ministry even while he knows that ministry will be short lived. His concept of time seems to be more cyclical than linear. This produces a man who has an urgent mission yet goes about it rather patiently. In Jesus, impact must be patient.

One of the perplexing parts about Western culture is that it has been shaped by a religion that believes that we are eternal creatures, but it's concepts of time are remarkably finite. We are obsessed with impact as that is the pinnacle of Western self actualization. When you combine the desire for self actualization with the sense that time is scarce then you end up with a drive to maximize everything in the short term.  Time becomes a kind of measurable commodity that is therefore scarce. This way of thinking is dangerous to the heart of social enterprise because once you can commoditize time, it is a short walk down the hill to commoditizing people too.

The danger of desiring to make an impact on my neighbor is that it may cause me to diminish their own autonomy, will, and actual needs within my desire to self actualize.  Christians have a useful voice in the social enterprise world in that we have an incarnational story that pushes back on such a drive.  We also have a long black history of being participants in forcing "progress" on our neighbors. We need to keep this black history at the forefront of our colleauges' minds.  Social Enterprise needs a model that encourages us to be patient. We need to honor autonomy, listen well, and often work on an individual scale. As long as we temper our desire for impact with these virtues we should be able to serve the greater good.  

Why I Get Up...

Multiple times over the past couple of years, people have asked me when exactly I sleep. It's a valid question.  As I have looked back over the last 2-3 years it has been pretty amazing. I have written a bunch of articles, dozens of blog posts, launched 2 websites, built a small landscaping business for teens, assembled a teen mentoring program and advisory board, and managed to secure some grant funds along the way.  I think I have honored my family during that time and my "day job" as a minister pretty well, but it hasn't been easy.  There are many days that I wish I could have more sleep. I usually go to bed at about 9:30-10:00 and am up at 4:00 to get started with a workout.

Initially I thought I would burn out if I didn't reach a certain funding level within the first year.  And I might burn out! I am open to that possibility. A friend asked me when, "How are you going to do all this?" I told him that I felt like I had discovered a 5th gear that I didn't know I had.  The only way I can explain it is to say that somehow I found something worth doing. Something that is worth laying my life down for. I want to see teenagers come alive and be ready for life here and now and the hereafter.

For the first 9 years of my ministry I had great difficulty inhabiting my role as minister. I enjoyed what I was doing and it had meaning but, we also lost a home in that time and I struggled to feel at home as a pastor.  Certain parts of the role did not seem to fit me that well. To some degree that is normal for most young ministers.  Over time I made some peace with that and youth ministry always felt right. But, the biggest nagging sensation that I had was that I had fallen in love with missional theology in seminary. I had the chance to learn from one of the people who invented the term and ate up the content. It was like a breath of fresh air. So much so that all I wanted to do was get back out into the church. But, when I got into the church all I had time to do was do church ministry. And much of that was good, but I struggled to figure out what my missional calling was. I was trying to propel others out into the world and I couldn't name where I was called to engage the world. I served on some county boards and created community forums on drugs and gangs, but nothing really felt like home. Nothing felt like the right use of my particular gifts and talents. Nothing propelled me out of bed or kept me awake at night with fascination until I sort of tripped over teens, faith, jobs, and youth ministry 3 years ago. It was a like a bunch of tributaries of my life suddenly slammed together in a massive confluence of baptismal waters.

There was about a 4 month period where I think my wife and I worried about my mental health because I was lost in constant thought. I had staggered into a new kind of idea and didn't know what to do, but every time I sat still I was flooded with thinking and the need to write things down. There was an urgency that was kind of terrifying.  I started carrying a notepad around because I  couldn't contain it all. It was really weird. There were actually a couple of times where I wondered if I was having a kind of manic episode. It was the closest encounter with ecstatic mysticism or revelation that I have ever had.

What began to emerge was a profound new awareness about the previous chapters of my life that kind of makes me sad.  Many friends kept asking me if I was taking time to rest. I felt guilty about my pursuit at times because I had done so many prayer retreats that made me wonder if what I was doing was wrong. So many had lifted up the virtues of silence and reflection that  I wondered if what I was doing was just reckeless and stupid. Was I ignoring the voice of God or following it?  Should I have been reflecting more? Maybe.  Was there too much doing, doing, doing? Certainly there is too much doing in our culture, but there came a point where those voices began to sound like there own kind of fundamentalism. I started to get the sense that for a season of life I had found something that I HAD to pursue with everything. I have learned to rest in different ways and I have had to be much more intentional about my family time since I started.  But, I couldn't escape the fact that even while I asked those reflective questions and was worried about my pace...I was FILLED with joy.  I had never ever enjoyed any professional season of my life more. I had never found the work of my hands and mind so meaningful. Just last week I was sweeping out the yard of an old rental property with 3 of my crew members. It was cold and I was already sore. But, I felt like weeping with thankful joy. It was odd. The only time I have ever felt that tide of thanks was for my wife and when our children were born. So what do I think I learned?

I think my sad discovery was that I had spent a significant amount of time during the first 30 years of my life...bored.

When I think back, I look at all the time I spent in school, playing video games, or watching sports and see a lot of listlessness.  I worked hard at what I did in life and I was faithful to my call when I became a minister. And generally I was quite content.  But, I was trying to fill my life with forms of entertainment that often felt fine, but didn't really add anything transcendent to me and didn't transform my world in any particular way. Going to school was always interesting to me, but it never required enough of me. It was like running a 400 when you are built for 5K's.  I have come to learn about myself that I need something new to pursue. I like exploration that is filled with challenge more than anything else. I need new ideas and new places, but more than anything I need something to lay my life down for.  Jesus' words in Luke 9 have become the truest and deepest words I know. "For he who wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it." I think what I had really been longing for wasn't just a missional calling, or a new adventure, but something worth every bit of my blood, sweat, and tears. I needed a way to bless my neighbor that crushed me and wrung me out.

What I think I have found was a calling that combined my love for teens, my love for God, the desire to use my body, my ability to persuade through vision, and something that allows me to expand constantly into new areas.  And so as I look at so many of my teens who have a kind of spiritual malaise or anxiety about them I wonder much of what I see in the teens and adults is a kind of spiritual boredom. I don't mean religious boredom when I say 'spiritual' either. I mean a kind of gnawing boredom at the core of the human spirit. We have not afforded people the opportunity to find the things that light their God given bulbs. We have not engaged them in opportunities to discover things worth dying for. Their time is full. Their schedules are packed. Their education (in some cases) is robust.  But, what they have not had is the chance to discover who they are enough to discover something worth everything. I hope what I am doing can help students and fellow ministers find something that approximates that in their own way. I have a sense that so much of our sources of entertainment and pursuits of happiness are simply efforts to fill that void.

The video above struck me because when the guy said, "This has consumed my life because I let it. Because I enjoy it." I knew exactly what he meant.  

That is ministry worth pursuing.

Social Enterprise: The Most Faithful Vehicle for Evangelism I Have Ever Encountered

 A little over a month ago I was invited to present The Columbia Future Forge's jobs and training program to students at one of our local high schools.  It was one of the coolest things I have ever had the chance to do and in an hour and a half I learned a ton about myself, my community, and about the American church and what social enterprise might be able to bring to that church.

It's not that I hadn't been on a high school campus before. I have been on lots of high school and middle school campuses to meet with teachers or principals, to take lunch to a single student or multiple students, to attend an event, or even to speak at a local Christian club.  I have done all these things many times. The problem is that I have always had this nagging sense of, "What am I here for?"  It's awkward to come on campus with the gospel. I always feel a bit deceptive based on how I understand the rules of the church v. state game and I value my personal integrity. It's often been shocking to me over the years how many evangelicals will do all sorts of deceptive things to share the gospel, but are willing to pretend that they aren't deceptions. It's weird. My mom was a school teacher for many many years, my sister is, and so is my wife.  I was always taught that our faith was something that we did not jettison at the door of the school, but I was also taught that it wasn't something that we tried to shove awkwardly into a space in which it is not entirely welcome. I still feel that way. My faith is the most sacred thing I have in my life. I love the chance to share about it and yet it is something intimate. I tend to be careful about bringing intimate things out in the open too quickly. I think most boundaried people do too.  My faith is so sacred to me that there when I have been asked or required to share it awkwardly I have felt that its goodness and sacredness have been diminished. It took me a while to learn that I didn't need to do that because a campus leader or minister told me that I did.

So, when I stepped on campus a few weeks ago in the midst of a flurry of snow I anticipated that similar feeling. "Am I here to share the gospel? Am I here just for a certain kind of student? Am I welcome here?" But, in the hour in which I presented our program to students I was greeted by a different feeling. Because our social enterprise offers something of obvious value to the students on campus, they showed up in a room willingly to hear what we had to say. I was offering something that they would perceive as worthwhile.  They could feel free to reject me because I am a minister or to reject the gospel on its own merit, but when it comes to the perceived value of developing them for a full adult life we were on equal terms. I told them who I was from the get go (a minister), but they didn't care because what I was talking about actually mattered to their day to day lives and to their future.

When we finished our presentation I was floored. I had 5 of the best student conversations I have ever had when walking on a campus. I think that was because it was obvious to the students and to me that there was a perfectly valid reason that I was there. I happen to believe that being on campus just as a minister is a perfectly valid reason, but I am not sure that students always think that way.  One student had been looking for a church for a while, another was having trouble assimilating culturally and needed a job, and another wanted to go into the trades and felt confined by school.  One student came up and quietly sort of confessed that he wanted to go into the military, but that his folks didn't want him to. He asked us if when we paired him with a mentor in our program, what sort of college would they want him to go to and what kind of college stuff he would do. It took me a second to realize what he was asking and what was going on.  He was so used to his public school lifting up college as an ideal that he just assumed that was our ideal goal as well. I told him that his mentor would be interested in him developing as a human being. Period. If he wanted to talk about the military or buying his first car then that is what his mentor would talk to him about. But, the conversation didn't end with the students.

I met two career student counselors while I was there. I have no idea (and to a degree don't care) if they were people of faith. They were interested in what we were doing. We talked about college pressures and the performance culture of the modern 21st century high school. It was great. No one was guessing why I was there. My fellow team member was excited because we were presenting at his former high school. He has spent years in Tech sales and helping with youth ministry at our church and I think he was just excited to have the chance to engage youth ministry and his local community in a very different way.  Each time I am on campus or talking with teachers, superintendents, or admins, I am learning something about how our schools work and don't work. I am learning how they connect with larger district entities and with the local community. But, I am also learning where the "gospel gaps" are. I am learning where the schools need help. I am learning the pressure points at which the scope of the responsibility is way beyond their means. They feel a massive burden to meet every educational, societal, and moral need.  We have a lot to offer that problem if we can figure out how to do it.  I left that school that day over the moon and I cannot wait to be back at multiple schools next Fall with various members of our team to find the right students for our program.

My point is that doing missional entrepreneurship or social enterprise (or whatever you want to call it) has opened up a massive door for evangelism for me. I think it could for many churches. But, doing evangelism is as much about listening as it is about speaking. You can't figure out how to bring healing, hope, joy, and reconciliation if you don't know where the aches, wounds, and needs are. Social enterprise gives me a vehicle for the sustained relationships, sustained listening, eventual speaking, and intentional planned action that I have never encountered in any other model of sharing my faith. It gives us a legitimate and non-awkward reason to be on any campus. We didn't figure out how to get on campus. We didn't weasel our way to a Christian club starting. We didn't wedge ourselves into a coaching position for a sport we know nothing about so that we could share the gospel. We built a jobs and life skills program to bless students for the rest of their lives and we were INVITED on campus. That's good news for everyone and I am still floored by it.

Why Christian Social Enterprise? #4- Compassion Instead of Empathy or Rationalism

Over the last few years there has been a lot of talk about the need for empathy in our world. Empathy is generally defined as an emotional understanding of the suffering of another. It's emotionally connecting with the feelings and thoughts of another person.  If you want a tutorial you can watch Brene Brown's video on empathy here. It went viral last year.

And while empathy is good, I think it also has some huge weaknesses. Empathy is all about feeling the "feels" of somebody else.  If you watch the Brown video you will see that a heavy part of the theme of empathy is actually not taking action.  To attempt to take action, in this way of thinking, is to avoid actually connecting with the emotions of the other. Attempting solutions is just as avoidant and emotionally disconnected in this view, as offering a spiritual platitude like, "Everything happens for a reason."  There is some truth here of course. Many folks in our world rush in with solutions without a clear sense of the plight of our neighbor. Often we bring little help. In many situations the better alternative would be to practice some active and empathetic listening.

But, we might contrast Brown's version of the world with Yale professor and psychologist Paul Bloom. Watch his 2 minute clip here. Bloom argues that all the feelings based emphasis of empathy is actually bad.  Bloom thinks empathy does more harm than good in that it engages our emotions too heavily.  In Bloom's view empathy often causes us to rush into impassioned action that is based on emotion rather than rationality.  Empathy might be good when you are dealing with a friend one on one, but when you attempt to approach real world problem solving (hunger or homelessness) with empathy what you end up with is a whole bunch of feelings that lead to actions that can be really destructive.  Essentially he thinks that empathy actually fuels moralism.  Bloom argues for us to stop it with the whole empathy train and instead focus on the rational side of our brains when it comes to real world problem solving.

So who is right and what the heck does this have to do with social enterprise? The truth is that they are both right and wrong. I tend to side with Brown a good deal more than with Bloom, but I distrust the fact that her model seems to be fine tuned to small scale intimate relationships. There comes a point when action is needed and is often needed on a larger scale. I suspect that Brown would acknowledge this.  What we need in social enterprise is a third way.  

We need a methodology for bring about the good that we hope to see in our world that slows us down enough that we seek first the understanding of our neighbor rather than rushing in with unhelpful actions or emotionless advice. Yet, we also need at times a proper distance emotionally from a series of problems so that we can create rational solutions that are not based solely on our emotions. At some point action will be needed. I think the concept of Christian compassion and the story it is rooted in gets us to this 3rd place. Let's look at what Christian compassion is and then turn to what it might offer social enterprise.

Compassion is the desire to not only feel the suffering of another, but to enter into that suffering in a meaningful way.  Compassion is the willful choice to actually suffer alongside one's neighbor.  It's being with rather than just feeling with.  We find this concept arrive at its fullness in the Christian story of the God who comes in Christ and enters into the muck and mire of our world.  God doesn't just emotionally feel our pain or empathetically understand the injustices of our world. He enters into them in ways that are shocking. He isn't as rationally framed as Dr. Bloom would idealize.  A focal point of this kind of intimate engagement is of course Christ's work on the cross.  It is there that Christ demonstrates the fullness of his love for the world, but also the fullness of his understanding of the suffering that this world has every day.  God doesn't just say, "I feel your suffering in my core." He suffers with us. We call this activity "Christ's Passion".  So, to have com-passion means that we enter into the suffering of others, not just emotionally, but physically. And yet, even in Jesus a kind of rational boundaried distance is maintained.

Jesus, while powerfully engaging the human experience exercises restraint. He doesn't heal everyone and he doesn't seem to get overwhelmed emotionally with the suffering of others. I wouldn't call him rationally "cool" in the way Bloom talks about it. Jesus is clearly a person of both passion and engaged emotion, but he seems boundaried. He reaches out with deep feeling to those who are hurting, but he takes action with those he can. He balances opposing the oppressor with helping the oppressed. He walks, touches, and heals but he also goes off to recharge and rest. It's a kind of emotionally engaged patient urgency.  Consider the rich young ruler. Jesus defines for the man the one thing that is barring him from entering the Jesus Way fully (the man's great wealth), but when the man cannot move forward and walks off, Jesus doesn't pursue him. Jesus understands the man's tension but doesn't get wrapped up in it.  He has boundaries. Empathy in the hands of a person without boundaries can be nearly as unhealthy as the cool rationalist who only wants to act without feeling or first seeking understanding.

Jesus also doesn't fall into the emotional trap of pretending he IS those he helps.  He doesn't seem to overly identify as one of the poor. You never hear him say that he is the blind man or the leper or the tax collector. But, he does listen to them, feast with them, and aid them with healing, pointed conversation, and meals. He identifies with the suffering of those he serves, but he also finds moments to rejoice greatly, attend feasts, and sit with children. His culminating act of compassion is of course his Passion and yet he doesn't get stuck there. He is not stuck on the cross forever.  Jesus refuses to allow us to dwell only in suffering because he is resurrected. There is a trajectory of future hope in his ministry as well. It doesn't just sit with us.  Christians are not permitted to wallow in the suffering of others or only called to empathize. They are called to enter that suffering, lovingly alleviate it where they can, but remain able to experience hope and joy. Jesus does indeed climb down emotionally into the hole of humanity, so to speak, but he is constantly pointing hopefully out of that hole.  He identifies with others in spectacular fashion but also seems to move them along in hope. There is a kind of distance here I think. If Jesus is truly human, then even He must need boundaries as all of us do.  Jesus maintains a sacred balance of emotional understanding and engagement alongside physical action and justice resolution. Social enterprise needs the voices that bear this story of this man who holds the center.

Social enterprise seeks to solve real world problems with solutions that are healthy and equitable both for those attempting to help and those who are recipients. Healthy social enterprise refuses to capitalize too heavily on its audience's emotions (think: videos of children running after aid trucks) but it also refuses to solve problems from places of such emotional distance that it fails to understand those it seeks to help. If Christians are going to engage social enterprise in a way that allows us to do it well we are going to need a way to balance empathy with cool rational action. We need endeavors that begin by actually seeking to patiently understand the experience of the other (empathy). Brown is right, there must be non-solution based resonance first. But, we also need action based experiments that seek to alleviate suffering when possible that are not driven solely by our emotions (rational action). It is in Christ that we see these things brought together in fullness. As is so often the case it is God (or the idea of God if you prefer) that allows us to hold two seemingly opposed strategies in a kind of sustainable tension. It is this sustainable tension that Christianity offers social enterprise.

Can a non-profit be considered a social enterprise?

When I first began my social enterprise I went through a few conversations to decide whether I wanted it to be a non-profit or a for-profit venture. In the end I started it as a for-profit entity. Mainly I did this for two reasons. First, people told me that non-profits were a beast to set up. Second, I wanted to maintain an incentivized system. I wanted my students to know that their venture had to turn a profit in order to survive.  I felt like an organization that was solely surviving on profit (rather than grants or giving) would be much more competitive and lean. Students would have to develop a better work ethic when working in the for profit world.

Recently, my team and I have been thinking about transitioning away from a for profit model. Our margins are pretty good, but because our social mission is so strong many people are trying to donate items to our venture. In our current designation if they do that we have to pay tax on the equipment and they get no write off.  It has also become much easier to set up a non-profit than it was 2+ years ago. The IRS has loosened its registration requirements for non-profits partially as a result of the Lois Lerner/IRS scandal. We believe we will still have to be competetive in this new 501c3 model (we haven't made the leap just yet) and that our students will be incentivized to work hard. But, as we have started to make the transition to a non-profit model I started to wonder whether or not a non-profit can really be considered a social enterprise?  I mean, was I really doing social entrepreneurship anymore, or had I just become a charity?

I was reading an article the other day in Forbes that was an interview with Atul Tandon who was the Senior V.P. of Donor Engagement with World Vision. Tandon thinks that social enterprise is just as present in the non-profit world as in the for profit. Particularly in his view the designation of an "enterprise" is just a tax designation. I tend to agree with this line of thinking. An enterprise after all is just a business or a new venture in anything. A social enterprise merely denotes that it simply seeks to make a social impact on the world.  We are both.  Changing our designation changes almost nothing about our company. We still do the same work, the same mentoring, and nothing has changed about our mission and vision.  both models had a team of advisers. In the for profit phase of our enterprise they just had no official role since they weren't invested in the company. As we become a non-profit some of them are now my board.  They simply were advising me as friends as to how to build the business and the mentoring.  The only major difference between the new model and the old is that I no longer own the company. I don't get to profit off of its sale at the end of my career if I can make this thing run that long. Investors also don't profit either.  I have no moral qualms with profit. I just never did this to make a ton of money and the advantages of starting these as non profit entities are numerous now that non profits are much easier to set up.

So at the end of the day, I no longer think it matters that much whether your enterprise is for-profit or non-profit. As long as it fully engages the marketplace, is a self sustaining economic engine, and still places its social/kingdom mission first it seems like its a social enterprise to me!