"Entrepreneur, do you love me?"

Christians urged to re-imagine their businesses

By Frank Stirk  |  Friday, November 20, 2009

VANCOUVER, BC—Economist Michael Hodson wants Christian businesspeople to try to imagine what their enterprises would look like if they were grounded in living out the gospel as opposed to making as much money as possible.

"As Jesus asked Peter, He might well ask us, 'Entrepreneur, do you love me?'" says Hodson, a visiting professional-in-residence at Regent College's Marketplace Institute.

"Maybe for the Christian entrepreneur that means, amongst other things, creating an environment where others can express their love of God and their care for others, too."

The business model that Hodson is challenging them to adopt is called "Christian social enterprise." Like any other business, it produces goods and services that it offers for sale with the goal of making a profit. But instead of seeking only to maximize the return on investment, its primary motivation is to be socially redemptive—or more-than-profit.

"We are saying something very radical," says institute director Paul Williams, "which is that if we want to really understand the integration of Christian faith with business… we have to look at how do we re-imagine the enterprise theologically from the ground up."

That means rethinking "not just what we do with money after we've made it, but also the way we make it, the kinds of goals we have, the way in which we work with people, suppliers and distributors, customers, our local community, and so forth," Williams says.

It also means rethinking the workplace environment.

"One objection to the profit-maximizing firm," Hodson says, "has been that it treats the human being as having one dimension. But human beings have many dimensions, many of which actually require the workplace in order to be fulfilled. And therefore, we ought to have firms that fulfill the human beings within the firm in what they are doing there."

Charity not enough

Companies that give part of their profits to charity or embrace "corporate social responsibility"—supporting an overseas aid project, for example—may be doing some commendable things, but it is not enough. As Williams says, they are still conducting "business as usual" and still fixated on maximizing profits.

"I think there's something fallen structurally in that form," he says. "So therefore part of the response we need to make as a Christian community is not simply to critique or try to change things from the inside, although we should do those things, but also to create something else that people can see is different."

The impulse behind Christian social enterprise is as old as Jesus' command to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves, and to be good stewards of God's creation. It has found expression in Catholic social teachings, the Reformation, and Christian Socialism.

"It's not a new concept, but…there's been a new recognition that this is a model and an approach that makes sense, not just for faith-based organizations but across the board," says David Holcumb, program director of JustWork Economic Initiative.

Based out of Grandview Calvary Baptist Church in East Vancouver, JustWork operates four small social enterprises—landscape gardening, pottery-making, catering, and building maintenance and minor renovations. Most of its workforce is on disability.

"JustWork exists," says Holcumb, "to help provide that kind of work opportunity for people who need it to supplement the basic [disability] support that they would receive from the government."

To date, the social enterprise model accounts for a very small percentage of the Canadian economy. But it has become a large enough worldwide movement that "it gives space for this Christian redesigning to take place," says Williams.

"What we're trying to do in the Marketplace Institute is incubate these businesses and train people who want to start them up or develop them…. We want to accelerate the creation of these enterprises."

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