The Marketplace Magazine July/August 2015

July August 2015

Where Christian faith gets down to business

Sarasota entrepreneurs get a MEDA boost What if Paul had written this?

Working in that “other” kingdom New project targets women in Burma 1

The Marketplace July August 2015

Roadside stand

Marital bliss and ROI Want to increase your wealth? This may sound hopelessly old-fashioned, but some economists suggest getting married and then staying married.

A dramatic drop in the number of married households in the U.S. (from a high of 72 percent in 1960 to only 50.5 percent in 2012) is being seen as having gloomy fiscal implications.

“This trend has opened up a yawning economic divide,” writes Andrew Yarrow in The New York Times. “Studies have shown that married women and men tend to be much better off financially than those who are unmarried, and that those who have fewer assets and more debt early on are less likely to marry or have stable marriages than those who are more financially secure.”

A 2014 study found that marriage is as good a predictor of economic success as education. Conversely, a national decline in marital stability correlated with greater income inequality.

Experts can’t agree on why there seems to be a positive connection between marriage and higher net worth.

Are people who lack the inclination and means to work hard and stay out of debt less likely to find mates and maintain a stable marriage? Are married men more likely to work hard and less prone to engage in costly behaviors like impaired driving?

decided to “match & multiply” their gift — by a factor of a thousand.

Workplace advances. About a quarter of Canadians say they have personally experienced sexual harassment on the job, according to two recent polls. One of them, by Queen’s School of Business, found that incidents of harassment have declined slightly since 2012. The other,

by Angus Reid, found that 25% of those who reported sexual harassment said their managers dismissed their complaints. (CLAC Guide) Part-owners. Allowing employees to own a piece of the action can boost key business metrics such as productivity, profitability and retention, according to promoters of Employee Share Ownership Plans (ESOP). The ESOP Association of Canada, which recently held a national conference in Winnipeg, says that on average companies that include employees as owners enjoy the following impacts: • Five-year profit growth in ESOP companies has been 123 percent higher than in companies that don’t

Homeless mite. A friend of this magazine was touched when some homeless people around a downtown church he visited decided to pass the cup to help feed earthquake victims in Nepal. Broke as they were, they scratched together a total of $4.38.

Our friend was so moved by this “widow’s mite” generosity that he Cover photo of barber Ken Schwartz (giving a trim to author JB Miller) by Katie Troyer

The Marketplace July August 2015

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have ESOPs. • Net profit margin in such firms has been 95 percent higher.

• Productivity measured by revenue per employee was 24 percent higher.

• Return on average total equity was 92.3 percent higher.

• Return on capital was 65.5 percent higher. (Winnipeg Free Press) In the cards. In this digital age they may seem, well, so yesterday, but The Economist magazine believes business cards are here to stay because “there is much about business that is timeless.” One reason they endure is they engender trust. “The number of things that machines can do better than humans grows by the day,” the magazine declares. “But they cannot look people in the eye and decide what sort of person they are.” Much of business life “will always be about social bonds,” and cards “act as a physical reminder that you have actually met someone rather than just Googled them.... The ritual swapping of paper rectangles may be old-fashioned but on it will go.” — WK

In this issue

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Legacy of loans

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A sermon from the daily pulpit

The stranger at the sporting event wanted to know: “What good am I really doing for society?

What difference do I make?” Good question, for pastors and businesspeople. By Roger Shenk

Helping Burmese women regain lost ground. Page 16

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2 Roadside stand

4 Soul enterprise

Reviews 18 20 Soundbites 22 News

Volume 45, Issue 4 July August 2015

Editor: Wally Kroeker Design: Ray Dirks

Paul’s “love letter” for business

Imagine the Apostle Paul saying: “If I am a critical thinker, and understand all the mysteries of pro forma documents or balance sheets, but do not have love, I am nothing.” By Ken Byler

Departments

The Marketplace (ISSN 321-330) is published bi-monthly by Mennonite Economic Development Associates at 532 North Oliver Road, Newton, KS 67114. Periodicals postage paid at Newton, KS 67114. Lithographed in U.S.A. Copyright 2015 by MEDA.

In Sarasota, Fla., fledgling entrepreneurs are getting a boost from a revived program of loans and counsel begun after a beloved commercial pilot was killed in a horrendous aviation disaster.

Change of address should be sent to Mennonite Economic Development Associates, 1891 Santa Barbara Dr., Ste. 201, Lancaster, PA 17601-4106.

To e-mail an address change, subscription request or anything else relating to delivery of the magazine, please contact subscription@meda.org

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That “other kingdom”

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Fresh option in Burma

It can be a puzzling moral dilemma for Mennonites in business: Our theology tends to look askance at power, yet many of us are deeply enmeshed in power structures. By Jim Smucker

Once stuck in time, the mystical country of Burma (Myanmar) now has a chance to make up lost economic ground. MEDA wants to help 25,000 women seize new farming opportunities.

For editorial matters contact the editor at wkroeker@meda.org or call (204) 956-6436 Subscriptions: $25/year; $45/two years.

Postmaster: Send address changes to The Marketplace 1891 Santa Barbara Dr., Ste. 201 Lancaster, PA 17601-4106

Published by Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA), whose dual thrust is to encourage a Christian witness in business and to operate business-oriented programs of assistance to the poor. For more information about MEDA call 1-800-665-7026.

Web site www.meda.org

Visit our new online home at www.marketplacemagazine.org, where you can download past issues, read articles and discuss topics with others, all from your desktop or mobile device.

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The Marketplace July August 2015

Summer to-do list: build family muscle

Good eats, with a side of social mission She didn’t come to the U.S. to run a restaurant, but that’s what happened when Srirupa Dasgupta moved from India to attend college here. Her field was the high-tech industry, where she worked her way up from software engineer to manager of a healthcare firm. When the tech bubble burst in the late 1990s, she hit the re-set button and trained as an executive coach to business leaders.

But in 2008 she heard Muhammad Yunus, guru of the microfinance movement and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, speak about achieving social goals through for-profit businesses.

“I was really intrigued,” Dasgupta says. “I just couldn’t let it go.”

Today, she owns a small restaurant and catering service in Lancaster, Pa. Called Upohar (Bengali for “gift”), it began in 2010 as a catering business, then expanded last year into a restaurant. She hires refugees and others who have difficulty finding work, paying double the state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

Cuisine includes South Asian, African and Middle Eastern. Tulsha Chauwan, whose family fled Bhutan in South Asia, likes to cook eggplant tarkari, which she learned from her mother. Rachel Bunkete, who fled Congo in 2008, makes peanut stew.

Dasgupta was featured this year on a National Public Radio series by Jeff Brady about people who have reinvented themselves by starting businesses.

Her food has been served at MEDA events in Lancaster, and she spoke at a MEDA panel on female entrepreneurs around the world.

So far Dasgupta is still waiting to turn a profit.

For now, she is content to make a difference to her neighbors. “If it grows beyond that,” she says, “that’s wonderful.”

If your family has a business, chances are the business side gets a lopsided amount of energy and intensity. But families who succeed in life AND work pay attention to both, says Sally Derstine, managing partner of the Delaware Valley Family Business Center, Telford, Pa. “Multi-gen families who do well over the generations intentionally develop competencies which include compassion, collaboration, courage, and, yes, forgiveness,” she writes in a recent newsletter. An important task for them is to “support the development of high-functioning individuals who are passionately engaged in and contributing to meaningful relationships and in meaningful work.”

She sees family vacations as an opportunity to “build family muscle,” not only to enhance relationships but also to improve the odds of transitioning enterprises to future generations.

Derstine suggests committing structured time and space to these muscle-building exercises: 1. Invite each family member to share one or two accomplishments, goals and challenges, and ask how the family can support each other’s journey.

2. Share memories of family mentors or loved ones who have already passed and whose legacy and values you want to carry on.

3. Invite ideas for family “togetherness” (a new vacation spot or tradition; spending more time together).

4. Discuss a shared family passion for how to make a difference in your community (then do it together).

5. If you have teenage children or older, discuss “real conversation” versus “connecting via electronics.”

For more information contact sally@dvfbc.com

Less for me, more for you

By now most people have heard about Dan Price’s radical pay scheme at Gravity Payments, the creditcard processing company he founded. He announced to his 120 employees that he would raise the company’s minimum salary to $70,000 over the next three years, meaning 70 staff will get more than they do now and 30 will get double. His own wage, meanwhile, will plunge from nearly a million dollars a year to $70,000, in line with his belief that the growing wage abyss between typical CEOs and average workers is “absurd.” Nearly lost in the announcement was that Price is a graduate of Seattle Pacific University, a noted Christian school, and that one of his favorite books is Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ronald Sider.

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Thoroughly modern lilies Up here in Canada we have received a new federal budget, a prelude to this fall’s election. The budget had plenty of goodies for seniors, such as expanding a tax-free savings plan and relaxing rules for cashing in tax-sheltered investments. (There wasn’t much for younger folk, who, the argument goes, don’t vote anyway.) There has been lots of collateral talk about pensions and retirement finances.

That has irked some churchly folk who worry that we are preoccupied with financial planning. “Don’t be swept away by elder-life security,” they say. “Just trust God, like the lilies of the field and the birds of the air” (Matt. 6:26-28).

Some people on the cusp of retirement think that sidesteps Christian duty. They believe the plodding discipline of saving and investing is also a matter of faithfulness. Isn’t it better, they say, to prepare for old age rather than become a burden on the public purse? Won’t that leave more for the truly needy who don’t have pensions and can’t afford the economic instruments available to the rest?

It raises the question of whether there are more robust ways to trust God’s provision. For example, aren’t senior-care institutions a legitimate form of God’s care in action? When we support them, are we the hands and feet of God? Some understandings of biblical stewardship seem stuck in the first century, a time when kinship patterns cared for the elderly. Modern realities may call us to recalibrate our understanding of God’s providential care.

Is it a biblical stretch to think that public pension plans funded by our tax dollars are “us in action” and that paying taxes (at least some of them) is a sacred duty with spiritual impact? Maybe that’s how God would have us understand “lilies of the field” in today’s economy.

Of course, our civic duty is also to hold governments accountable for how they use our taxes. A strategic ally is the ballot box. Voting is a way to express deep values.

Maybe we need to teach our young people (the ones who my government has chosen to ignore in its latest budget) that voting is a spiritual obligation and a privilege of discipleship.

— Wally Kroeker

Colonel’s loss, opera’s gain We usually devote this space to stories about entrepreneurship and faith, but this time we’re happy someone didn’t go into business. We speak of world-renowned operatic tenor Ben Heppner, who is retiring after nearly a quarter-century on stage.

Heppner, a Wagnerian specialist who is sometimes called the “gentle giant” of Canadian opera, has a MEDA connection. As legend goes, he was “discovered” by a MEDA member who heard his magnificent voice and decided to help finance his musical studies. In later years, Heppner did MEDA a favor by performing at concerts on MEDA’s behalf.

What has not been as widely known is that Heppner turned down an opportunity to go into business at a pivotal time in his career. As he told the Globe & Mail, he was once offered a Kentucky Ben Heppner Fried Chicken franchise.

“At the time, my career was floating nowhere fast and my wife’s family friend had a number of outlets,” he recalled. “I feel so fortunate that I said no.”

Colonel Sander’s loss was the music world’s gain.

Heppner concluded his Globe & Mail interview with a comment on his Christian faith. “My relationship with God and my religion is one of those things where every day it’s there,” he said. “For me, it’s a regular routine for exercising that muscle that believes there’s a power outside of me and that I am not the be-all and end-all of the world.

There’s something beyond and I want to be part of something that’s bigger than me.”

Overheard:

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“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”

— Anne Lamott

The Marketplace July August 2015

Legacy of loans New entrepreneurs still benefit from a program born of tragedy

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itting in a barber’s chair in Sarasota, Fla., or a dentist’s chair anywhere else could bring you in touch with a loan program operated by the Sarasota MEDA Chapter to provide funds and business counsel to fledgling entrepreneurs. (See following articles for details.)

The original program started in 1998 when a young pilot in the area, Curtis Ross, sought help to develop an air courier business. He needed financing to support himself while he went through the process of making contacts and getting contracts. Two people who stepped forward were Roy and Bess Mullet, who spent winters in Sarasota and were members of the local MEDA chapter. After working out the legal requirements, the Mullets gave the chapter $20,000 to lend to Ross. The plan was for half of the repayments to stay with the local chapter to help other new businesses, with the rest going to MEDA’s international programs.

With that help, Ross formed Son Air Cargo, which operated successfully for many years. He described the link with MEDA in glowing terms. “As a first-time owner of a business, it’s a great way to get The Marketplace July August 2015

answers,” he said in a Marketplace interview. “I’d have to pay a lot of money to get access to the kinds of business expertise available from MEDA.” The local chapter oversaw the loan and provided advice and encouragement. Loans were made to other startups and were repaid and recycled. Chapter leaders enjoyed adapting MEDA’s credit principles to their own backyard. They wanted to charge competitive rates while targeting people (especially from the Mennonite community) who might not qualify for conventional loans. They began looking for additional funds to help other businesses.

Those funds did materialize, but as the result of a horrendous aviation tragedy that rocked the nation. In 1996 Trans World Airlines Flight 800 mysteriously exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean only 12 minutes after taking off from New York City, bound for Rome

Connecting with local owners is “a great way to get answers.”

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Betty Walls: “MEDA still a favorite”

with a stopover in Paris. All 230 people aboard were killed in the third-deadliest aviation accident in U.S. territory. (A four-year National Transportation Safety Board investigation concluded the probable cause was a fuel tank explosion sparked by a short circuit. Conspiracy theories existed but over time the Federal Bureau of Investigation would find no evidence of a criminal act and closed its investigation.)

One of the passengers on that ill-fated flight was Gid Miller of Sarasota, Fla., a TWA captain who was headed to Paris to bring back another aircraft. At 57, he was three years from retirement. Back home, he and his wife, Betty, were active MEDA members, and Betty was a member of the chapter board.

Betty decided she wanted to do something in her late husband’s memory that would benefit young people. She contributed $50,000 from

her husband’s settlement to the local chapter to start an affiliate of the ASSETS business training program which was then operated across the country by MEDA. When that didn’t materialize, she placed the money with the local chapter as a revolving loan fund for local entrepreneurs for business startups.

Several loans were made before the chapter lapsed into a period of inactivity. In 2013 the chapter and the loan program were revived. By then the fund had grown to $70,000.

Within a short period of time three loans were made. (Two are profiled in following pages.)

Jim Miller, head of the chapter and owner of DutchCrafters, the nation’s leading web-only retailer of Amish furniture, notes the importance of having strong systems of accountability and transparency. “As in business, there can be risk involved,” he says. “This work can be messy and fraught with conflict. It’s not always easy when doing it in the context of a church community.”

Betty Walls (she later married Ralph Walls, who passed away last year) still lives in the Sarasota area. She takes satisfaction in how her original investment — born in tragedy — continues as a legacy to benefit fledgling entrepreneurs.

She also maintains an interest in the work of MEDA and appreciates the way it gives needy people a leg up in their struggle to achieve sustainability.

“MEDA is still one of my favorite charities,” she says. ◆

Mid-life adventure Chapter loan helped launch online dental supply company

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hether you say “Amen” with reverence or open wide to say “Ahh,” Marco Guete is interested in you. He is in the unique position of being both a Mennonite conference minister and a supplier of dental clinics and lab products.

Guete received a Sarasota MEDA Chapter loan to get an online business up and running. Starting a business may not be a typical midlife move for a Mennonite conference minister, but for Guete it made sense.

When he immigrated to the U.S. from his native Colombia at the age of 19, he had been well-bred in business. His father was president of a bank, his mother operated retail stores, and he had siblings in business. He settled in New York City and established a women’s garment store.

In the early 1970s he felt a call to full-time church ministry and moved to Goshen, Ind., for training. After further graduate studies he became a pastor in Chicago, then took up denominational roles with the General Conference Mennonite Church. He returned to Colombia as a missionary and manager of religious bookstores.

He later held leadership positions in Kansas and Texas, culminating as Southeast Mennonite Conference minister based in Sarasota.

Last year, economic circumstances necessitated a change to half-time.

“That meant I had half-time free,” he says.

Business beckoned, and Guete decided to start a company to sell dental clinic and lab products online.

“I knew about MEDA’s loan program,” he says. “Jim Miller, head of the MEDA chapter, approached me and said I was welcome to apply.”

So, in 2014, Guete received a start-up loan of $15,000 to launch Dental USA Outlet to supply dental products to labs and clinics.

“The loan helped me increase inventory and open a new website,” he says.

The company sells a hundred different endodontic, orthodontic and 7

Marco Guete carries two cellphones in different pockets — one for the conference, one for the business.

lab products such as instruments, cheek retractors and cements.

“We sell all over the U.S., plus Europe, Africa and Asia,” Guete says.

Every week he fills and ships 30 to 50 orders. Most items are small so his garage and a compact storage unit is all the space he needs.

The Marketplace July August 2015

“It’s just me and my wife, Sandra,” Guete says. “When I travel on church business she takes care of the shipping.”

Since many of his wares are imported he needed to master the legal wrinkles of obtaining approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He also learned about customs intricacies, and took university workshops and evening courses.

“I learned by making mistakes,” he says. “It has been a real adventure.”

He also picked up tips from others in the Sarasota MEDA Chapter, like Jim Miller, who owns DutchCrafters, the country’s largest webonly retailer of Amish furniture.

“Jim has been a good mentor,” says Guete. “I was inspired by him.”

As conference minister

Guete relates to 28 congregations. In

“The level of stress in business is 20% of what it is in church work” that role he is responsible for issuing and maintaining ministerial credentials, the annual assembly, church planting initiatives and congregational issues that may arise.

“You never know what to expect when you receive an e-mail or a phone call,” he says.

He has learned to nimbly switch between the two halves of his work life.

“Business issues I can fix quite quickly,” he says. “If a dentist is not satisfied with an order, I can track the package, fix it or refund his

money. If there is a customs issue, the broker takes care of it. The level of stress in business is 20% of what it is in church work.”

He carries two cellphones, a conference phone in one pocket and a business phone in the other.

“I keep them separate,” he says.

“But I have passion for both.”

Actually, bi-vocational ministry can be a plus, says Guete. It gives him a chance to interact with two different worlds. “This is the future of the church.”

The loan from the MEDA chapter was “very important” to him.

“The money came at the right moment. It moved me from being a micro-business to a small business.”

He also values the informal assistance of MEDA members, Guete says.

“I felt the support of local businesspeople — people like Jim Miller and Noah Weiler.” ◆

A shop of his own “I bought this business, thanks to them”

by JB Miller

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henever I settle into my favorite barber’s chair, I immediately think of MEDA. This isn’t most people’s first thought when they go in for a trim, certainly.

But, connecting my haircuts with MEDA occurred when I moved to Sarasota a year ago. Not having located a barber, I mentioned the fact at a monthly meeting to Jim Miller, president of the local MEDA chapter.

“Do you know where I might find a good barber?”

“I go to Ken Schwartz at Cattlemen Barber Shop,” Jim said. “He’s a good barber and my uncle.”

I liked the recommendation and besides, Jim had a nice haircut; so several days later I stopped by for The Marketplace July August 2015

one. As Ken and I began chatting, I mentioned that Jim had referred me after a MEDA chapter meeting.

“Well,” he said, “I’m a MEDA member and I bought this business, thanks to them.” Ken went on to explain that the local MEDA chapter had a loan fund from which he received funds to purchase the business.

Coming from a family of barbers — father, two brothers and a cosmetologist sister — it was natural for Ken to enter the profession. Upon completing barber college in 1974, he 8

went to work in his father’s Sturgis, Michigan, shop. He loved the work but after an 11-year stint there, Ken was ready to pursue other business interests: operating restaurants and real estate for the next two decades.

However, as the economy turned sour, financial strains became increasingly difficult for many persons, who then turned to other careers, Ken Schwartz among them.

In 2008 he relocated to Sarasota, taking up his former profession as a barber; the switch was easy, no training needed and he loved the

Photo by Katie Troyer

Author JB Miller getting his regular trim from barber Ken Schwartz.

work. Initially he worked at a shop on Longboat Key, a popular destination for tourists and “snow birds,” but as most residents are only here during the winter months, summers are very slow. Consequently, four years ago Ken began working at Cattlemen Barber Shop located in an area with more year-round residents.

Adding a fourth chair created a job for another barber.

In 2013 the owner decided she wanted to sell and Ken was interested in owning his own shop.

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He knew, however, that it would be difficult getting a loan to buy a small business. When someone suggested that he contact the MEDA chapter, he took the advice. The timing was perfect; the local chapter had been dormant for a number of years but recently reenergized and the loan fund was available for small business loans.

Noah Weiler, a local MEDA board member, worked with Ken to process the loan request.

“I was impressed with Ken from the start,” says Noah. “He had a wealth of experience and had a following at the shop already; plus the seller was sticking around, so there wasn’t a high risk of losing a lot of customers.”

Noah also commented that Ken wanted to grow the business, which he’s done, adding a fourth chair, creating a job for another barber. New customers come primarily by word of mouth, while others find the shop through the internet via apps like Yelp and Google. Occasionally they have a customer who has pulled off the interstate three miles away, looking for the closest barber shop.

During spring training baseball season a professional baseball player finds his way to the shop as well.

Anyone who sits in Ken’s chair can sense he loves his work. He’s delighted that as he repays his loan it will make more funds available for another entrepreneur.

And every couple of weeks I ask for my MEDA cut. ◆ JB Miller recently retired to his hometown of Sarasota, Florida, after a 24-year career at Everence.

The Marketplace July August 2015

iStockPhoto: helencanada

Why the church needs businesspeople What sermons will you preach from your daily pulpit?

by Roger Shenk

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s a pastor with an entrepreneurial bent and a number of years of business experience, it’s not unusual for me to end up enthralled in conversation with people about their work. Several weeks ago I met a man about my age. We were standing in line at a sports event for our daughters, and I asked him what he does. His answer could have meant a lot of things: “I’m a real estate investor.”

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I also try to not be too quickly impressed. You just never know. So I listened slowly, but genuinely. And as we talked, he counted on his fingers: five restaurants, three bars, and a couple other similar businesses I don’t recall. I told him how Wendy and I had owned a coffee shop for a few years in Portland, Oregon. We also connected around the fact that he had purchased one of the local bars that I used to perform at during my gigging musician days, The Marketplace July August 2015

back in the early 1990s. It was an easy, transparent, and rewarding conversation.

As we talked, I learned that the biggest part of his business actually is commercial real estate. He was quite open about it. The conversation was fascinating to me, and the pieces of the puzzle began to fit together into a credible picture. He told me how he had just finished buying up one of the blocks on Main Street. He told me about another transaction that I knew to be somewhat high profile, but never paid attention to who it was. Then I did what many of us would do: I Googled him. And I found articles that refer to him as one of the area’s most prolific real estate investors. The man was legit.

I love to ask questions. I try to follow the wisdom of Proverbs 1:5, “Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance,” and Proverbs 18:15, “The heart of the discerning ac10

quires knowledge, for the ears of the wise seek it out.” So later that day I walked up to him with a smile and asked, “So, what makes you good at what you do?” I punctuated my question, “Teach me!”

He was appreciative of my interest. “Luck,” he said. “You can’t get away from the fact that part of it is just luck — being in the right place at the right time.” Then he said he also has the ability to assess and take risks. But for him, a big key to his success is that his word means something. He said that he does deals on a handshake. And even if he discovers afterward that it’s not as good a deal as he thought it was going to be, he goes through with it anyway because he’s a man of his word.

I just let him talk. I listened eagerly. I love to glean wisdom. I love to learn.

I doubt he knows I’m a pastor, and I’m not sure whether he relates personally to any faith. But as I lis-

tened, he veered off from answering my questions, and started talking about his own questions — questions of conscience and conviction — questions I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about myself. He said, “You know what I struggle with? When I was young it was clearly about me.

It was all about making the next deal and making a lot of money. But now that I’m older, I wonder if there’s more.” He continued, “I know how to create wealth for me, and my family, but what good am I really doing for society?”

He wasn’t asking me for answers; he was searching for his own: “I understand that when I’m successful, my family and I get to travel and eat out or whatever. I understand how that helps people in the service industry to earn a living. I get that.”

We exchanged a few thoughts about helping individuals, and he related a story about a time he spontaneously paid for someone’s gas, and the joy it gave him. “But what I’m really concerned about is, What difference am I making at a bigger level?”

He reiterated, “What difference am I making in society? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

Another guy walked up and the conversation switched to football.

That was fine. Maybe we’ll get to pick up the conversation again some other time.

“I know how to create

formed, and God will be honored.

wealth for me, and my

That’s the “difference” I’m trying to make. That conviction puts me in a “pulpit” every week. That conviction also puts me in spiritual conversation with individuals every week. But the odd thing is, that conviction also puts me in the lead position for a group of people who, 60 some years ago, organized themselves around their common love for Jesus, and their common desire to make a difference. And so I carry this odd sounding, ill fitting, strange hybrid of a title. I am the “Pastor and CEO” of a 501(c)(3) organization known as Bahia Vista Mennonite Church.

Some days it feels like we have a staff of 15 serving several hundred customers. Other days I would say we have a staff of several hundred volunteers serving Sarasota. That requires specialized wisdom — wisdom businesspeople have. I have daily conversations about budgets, programs, facilities, processes, organizational structure, etc. But for me it all originates with and continues to be driven by that one conviction: How can I really make a difference?

The intersection is profound: This man began with a love for negotiations, corporations, and resource management, and it eventually led him to the Question: “What difference can I make?” I began with the Question: “What difference can I make?” and it led me to organizational structures, programming, and resource management.

I believe this intersection exists all around us, all the time. So I prayerfully ask: What would the Spirit of God have us do together to really make a difference in this world? ◆

family,” he said, “but what good am I really doing for society?” societal transformation is personal spiritual transformation. That not only changes hearts, it changes actions, and lives.

I want to bring hope to the hopeless, answers to the confused, necessities to the poor, and deliverance to the oppressed. For me that begins with the Good News of Jesus Christ. If we confess our sins and put our faith in Jesus, he will forgive our guilt and reorient our hearts.

And if we allow his Holy Spirit to move us, he will strengthen us with his power. And if we trust Jesus enough to follow his teachings, he will transform our lives with his wisdom. If enough people do that, not only will our churches be transformed, our society will be trans-

Later, as I reflected on our

conversation it hit me: This businessman’s success has created a crisis of conviction and conscience that leads him to the very question that I, as a pastor, have devoted my life to! And coincidentally, it’s the same question that leads me to pursue the wisdom that he has devoted his life to as a businessman!

I felt called to ministry to change people’s lives. I can dream big dreams, but really, I’m not interested in building another church empire.

I really want to help people. I want to see Sarasota transformed by the love of Jesus and the wisdom of God. I believe the only hope of lasting

Roger Shenk, pastor of a “staff” of several hundred volunteers serving their city every day.

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Roger Shenk is pastor of Bahia Vista Mennonite Church in Sarasota, Florida, and the author of Counting the Cost of Faith: Straight talk about deciding to follow Jesus. Before he became a pastor he owned a business and worked as a manager of a machine and metal fabricating shop. His article is based on an address to the Sarasota MEDA Chapter earlier this year.

The Marketplace July August 2015

Leadership and the way of love A business version of Paul’s famous letter

by Ken Byler

L

ove is not a word that gets much airtime in today’s workplace environments.

One reason is the obvious sexualized quality that our American society has attached to the word; the notion that any reference to love in an office or factory setting implies inappropriate relationships and harassment.

Yet love is clearly also defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “to like or desire (something) very much: to take great pleasure in (something).” We can love our work and I believe also love the people we work with.

Paul of Tarsus, better known to most as the Apostle Paul, was inspired to write the prose I am about to adapt when he penned a letter to a church he had founded in the ancient city of Corinth. The young Christian community had its problems, including divisive factions that were at odds about a variety of issues. Near the end of his first letter to them, Paul includes his now famous hymn of love (1 Corinthians 13) where he makes the case that each of their gifts as a faith community shrinks in importance when practiced in the absence of love. What lessons might leaders find in this ancient text?

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If I speak in the language of business jargon and of MBA theory, but do not have love, I am just another insensitive manager or over-confident consultant. And if I have critical thinking skills, and understand all the mysteries of pro forma documents or balance sheets and income statements, and if I have all the research and data, so as to remove every potential business hurdle, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I share company profits with employees, and if I am generous with community involvement so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient (persistent against all odds); love is kind (genuinely caring about the needs of others); love is not envious (wishing I had the same salary as another executive) or boastful (proud of what I have accomplished) or arrogant (exaggerating my own importance as a leader) or rude (impolite in a deliberate way). It does not insist on its own way (as some leaders prefer); it is not irritable (hard to please or intolerant) or resentful (bitter about the promotion you didn’t get or the raise that never materialized); it does not rejoice in wrongdoing (when the competition fails or a colleague makes a mistake), but rejoices in the truth (especially the truth that other persons in the organization hold). It bears all things (accepting change and differing opinions), believes all things (trusts those you work with and

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“If I am a critical thinker, and understand all the mysteries of pro forma documents or balance sheets, but do not have love, I am nothing.”

serve), hopes all things (is optimistic and confident about the future), endures all things (tolerating the faults of others).

Love never ends. But as for product cycles, they will come to an end; as for marketing campaigns, they will cease; as for data mining, it will come to an end. For we know only in part (when we isolate ourselves from team members and potential partners), and we project cash flow and earnings reports only in part (because no one can predict the next market upheaval); but when a cooperative, sustainable approach becomes our new model for business, the partial efforts we now rely on will come to an end. When I was a new leader, I spoke like a rookie, I thought like an amateur, I reasoned like a classroom case study participant; when I matured as a leader, I put an end to my ego-centric ways and thoughtless behaviors. For now we leaders see ourselves in a mirror that lacks self-perception (and is thus quite dim), but eventually we will see face to face just how others view us. Now we seem incapable of seeing the whole picture; then, with some coaching and training, we will know fully who we are and how others may see us as well. And now faith (a leader’s conviction and belief), hope (a leader’s optimistic outlook), and love (a leader’s willingness to put others before him or herself) abide, these three gifts of leadership; and the greatest of these is love.

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As I researched and select-

ed the words I would use for this adaptive version of the hymn of love, I was struck by how much of a leader’s work is relational in nature. While I can’t state with certainty that today’s formal leadership education courses overlook this important element of effective leadership, anecdotally I can attest to the inadequate self-awareness of many leaders in the workplace. Perhaps that is why a reflection about love and the important influence it can have on leadership is so important.

My poetic attempt isn’t as eloquent or memorable as Paul’s original text (you won’t hear this read at someone’s wedding) but I hope they will inspire the leaders who read this to practice the way of love as they relate to bosses, colleagues, direct reports, customers and competitors. ◆

Ken Byler operates Higher Ground Consulting Group in Souderton, Pa. You can visit his website at www.highergroundcg.com

The Marketplace July August 2015

Working in that “other kingdom” Did he “move up” to a higher rung on the ladder?

by Jim Smucker

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bout six months ago I got this question: “So how has the transition been for you moving from for-profit to more kingdom-related work?” I was expecting this question since I made the move from the for-profit world to working at Eastern Mennonite University, and sure enough someone asked it.

An assumption behind the tone of this question is that working in the for-profit business world does not rank as high, in terms of kingdom work, as working for a church organization. This notion is a by-product of the way many in the Mennonite church of the past and even some in the present view the value and values of the for-profit world in building the kingdom of God. This viewpoint is partially based on a misunderstanding of the importance that good work plays in helping to build the kingdom of God. The more I have considered this question, and the more I have studied our history as a church, the more I understand how our history of two-kingdom theology has impacted this line of thinking.

The basic premise of two-kingdom theology is that there are two kingdoms in this world. As Mennonites we have lived in one world, historically our rural communities, separated from the other world, described by the Schleitheim Confession as a place of “evil and wickedness which the devil has planted in the world.” Our world is the pure one, The Marketplace July August 2015

the perfect one. The other world is impure. It lives outside of the perfection of Christ. While we certainly did not say it growing up in a Mennonite community, it was implied that those who lived in the world outside of ours were the lesser in God’s kingdom.

In essence, we rejected accountability and responsibility for the world beyond our close-knit communities. For example, it was clear that we should not be involved in government or similar unredeemed structures and actions that were part of the other kingdom. The why’s of these rules were less important and often not explained. The important thing was that we stayed within the boundaries of the community.

This has been and still is in many ways a defining story for us. Despite the fact that today we are fully acculturated, at times we still tell this story as a church. Herein lies a problem. We are to be meek, to be servants, to not want worldly power.

So we have a theology that makes no positive provision for the use of worldly power, but in reality, many of us, including our church leaders and those of us in business, are deeply involved in power structures.

We have become part of society’s system, and as a result, as J.L. Burkholder suggests, we share guilt and responsibility for corporate evil. We want to be obedient to Christ and be good Anabaptists but our experience in business is a world of ambiguity and paradox. When we were in our somewhat isolated rural commun14

ities, we could live with a minimum of worldly interaction and power. But the realities of today’s business world are that we cannot operate purely by the principles of the “love feast.”

In The Limits of Perfection: A

conversation with J. Lawrence Burkholder, (edited by Rodney Sawatsky and Scott Holland) Burkholder recalls being a 26-year-old MCC worker serving in China during World War II: “My radical idealism was especially shocked on an occasion during the evacuation of Shenyang, then called Mukden, Manchuria. The city was falling to the communists. Part of it was on fire. I was the co-pilot of one of General Claire Chennault’s DC-3s. For five days we had flown planeloads of refugees to Peking, returning with food for the people left in that ghost city. But on the last day of evacuations, after the U.S. Consul’s plane left, signaling the end, refugees panicked. Some nearly hysterical Chinese crowded into the plane and even on to the wings. The captain, a Flying Tiger, and I lost control of the situation. He dared not even start the engines. The ex-marine pilot ordered me to clear the cabin to a take-off load level. I tried to do so by persuasion, but the people would not budge. At that point the pilot handed me his pistol with which to force evacuation. This I could not do, so he held the gun at the heads of the Chinese while I literally pushed them out. One person whom I removed forcibly was an old Chinese

woman with bound feet. I will never forget her expression of fright and despair. She became separated from her husband who remained on the plane, presumably never to see her again. We finally got off the ground, dangerously overloaded, saving ourselves and some thirty-five people.

But I found myself having used physical force, along with another person who wielded a gun which he would probably have used if necessary. My innocence was no more. I felt that I was no longer a Mennonite in practice, though maybe at heart — if such a condition is not an Anabaptist-Mennonite contradiction. I lost the ‘good conscience’ about which my former teacher, Harold Bender, talked about so much. Somehow I could accept physical suffering as an implication of discipleship, but I had not been prepared for ‘tragic necessity.’ From then on I could no longer deny the existence of an authentic moral dilemma. I had found it necessary to use force against some so that others could be ‘saved’.”

Burkholder suggests a new story for the church — It is time to evolve from a people bound by the limits of our close-knit communities to a values-based people who draw on the strength of community engaged at all levels in society. What the world needs are loving people, empowered by a Christlike passion for the other, yet whose experience draws from a pragmatic engagement in the world, which provides a unique platform to bring about positive change moving our communities forward. This sounds like what many of my Anabaptist brothers and sisters in MEDA are doing. In business the daily reality is fraught with the paradox of understanding that we in the business world have power. Admittedly at times we act out of self-interest, and yet at the same time, we take up the cross of the suffering servant. Businesses often have more ability to impact positive change in our communities than churches or government.

As business people in the Anabaptist tradition, we engage the

world, understanding all along that this engagement will be fraught with ambiguity and paradox. This is not a world of perfect Christian community. Wisdom often comes from creatively holding the tension of two opposites on complex issues. So we live on the ambiguous edge, toeing the line between our faith communities and the business world. We accept our employees for who they are and appreciate the gifts and talents

Our theology tends to look down on power, yet many of us are deeply enmeshed in power structures.

they bring to our companies. We do not expect them to conform to our perfectionistic two-kingdom theology values. We are a loving people, but we also embody Burkholder’s “tragic necessity.” We understand that at times love requires us to help others understand the pinch of reality, a reality that can be dark and difficult.

But we trust that God’s hand is there with us, through the sufferings and the setbacks. And we also understand that we are not to be about building our own kingdom, we are to be building God’s kingdom and that we will cease to be salt and light in the land when we lose our distinctiveness as a people.

This understanding has given me a renewed focus and energy.

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Whether I am in the for-profit world or working directly for a church organization, I work to improve our organizations and our communities not in the hopes that I will dramatically alter the structures of society. I do so, as Thomas Merton says, not for the hope of results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself: Because it grows out of who I am and what I must do.

As business people, out of necessity and the reality of being fully engaged in our world, we have provided a path for our church out of two-kingdom theology. We are showing that we can remain fully committed to our Anabaptist values but work each day with the ambiguity and paradox that we experience in our everyday world. We confess that we do not have all of the answers. We understand that our work is riddled with mistakes, but we go boldly hoping that in the end we will not only act in Christlike ways, but we hope our presence helps others to become more Christlike and more loving people for having participated in our community of work.

If you have been following my logic, my work has really not changed in qualitative ways as I have moved from the for-profit world to a church-related institution. At Eastern Mennonite University, I work with a group of people to fulfill a mission.

Along the way I hire and train new staff, develop budgets, hope for a reasonable “surplus” at the end of the year so we can reinvest and serve more “customers,” all so we can continue to bring about positive change in people’s lives and communities and build the kingdom of God. All of which sounds pretty much like what my Anabaptist sisters and brothers do in the for-profit world. ◆ Long-time businessman Jim Smucker is Vice President & Dean, Eastern Mennonite University School of Graduate and Professional Studies, Harrisonburg, Va. In addition, he remains a co-owner of the Bird-in-Hand Corporation, a family business that runs hotels, a restaurant and playhouse near Lancaster, Pa. His article is adapted from an address to the Lancaster MEDA Chapter.

The Marketplace July August 2015

New project targets Burmese women Once stuck in time, a mystical country has a chance to make up lost economic ground

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t is a country of ancient mystique, memories of Mandalay, and the muse of colonial poet Rudyard Kipling. Now it is also the site of new poverty alleviation efforts by Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA).

Burma, also known as Myanmar, has suffered one of the longest run-

ning civil wars in history. A ceasefire has been in place since 2012, enabling new initiatives to help the country make up lost economic ground.

MEDA has been approved by the Canadian government to assist with a major new initiative called Improving Market Opportunities for Women in a New Economy in Burma.

A key issue: help women seize new opportunities that have eluded them for years.

The Marketplace July August 2015

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It aims to help 25,000 women from two ethnic regions (Shan State and Kayin State) to grasp the opportunities offered by their changing environment and become active, respected and empowered agricultural economic actors and leaders.

It will improve their incomes and agricultural productivity and increase

the number of women rising to leadership roles. It also will boost the availability of goods and services to small-scale producers.

The total budget is $16.9 million over five years, with the Canadian government contributing $16 million and MEDA providing $894,000.

To start, the project will work in three sectors (subject to revision with new research): • Strawberries — a high-value crop grown primarily in the Shan region (particularly North and South), and in big demand among city dwellers.

• Rice — a big crop in the Karen region, home to one of the largest (and most marginalized) ethnic While many lack farmland, most villagers have space to grow gardens. groups. Tended mostly by en adjust to the new climate women laborers, rice leads and seize new economic in agricultural importance opportunities that have been but very little has been denied them for years. done to address production “The Burmese economy and marketing issues. has been stuck in time and • Vegetable gardens — now they face a very fastin which MEDA has extenchanging environment as sive experience. A driver they open up to the world,” of poverty in Burma is says Ariane Ryan, project landlessness, and although leader. “Their economy is in many people have no access serious flux.” to agricultural fields, most Ryan recalls visiting a villagers have space within village on an earlier extheir housing compounds to ploratory trip where straw grow gardens. was being processed with MEDA’s project aims to: machines more than half a • help women farmers century old. “They still had and sales agents to improve ‘British-India’ stamped on productivity and access to them. It reminded me of the markets old 1950s-vintage cars in • help them gain access Cuba. There’s a lot of hometo new technology through made equipment being used voucher schemes and matchthat will not be competitive ing or innovation grants as the economy opens up.”

• offer gender trainA new dimension to this ing to help women get into project will be to explore linkleadership positions ages with the Conrad Grebel • improve access to College Centre for Peace Adfinance vancement. “They are going • upgrade technology to help us refine our baseline and build supply chains Strawberries are a high-value crop in big demand in cities. templates, as we want to do MEDA has been told International Development Agency a better job of measuring the that this is a new country (CIDA). MEDA’s project will be impact of our work on women as it refor Canada’s Department of Foreign Canada’s flagship program there. lates to peace, security and community Affairs, Trade and Development A key issue will be to help womstabilization,” Ryan says. ◆ (DFATD), successor to the Canadian 17

The Marketplace July August 2015

Reviews

Saint in a business suit My Calling to Fulfill: The Orie O. Miller Story. By John E. Sharp (Herald, 2015, 441 pp. $29.99 U.S. $34.49 Cdn.)

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ike many of his day, Orie Miller (1892-1977) wondered if he was called to the ministry. Back then, his church chose ministers by lot. Candidates would line up and get to choose a Bible or hymnal from the presiding bishop. One volume contained a slip of paper, or “lot.”

Whoever chose that book would be “called” to ministry.

At Miller’s first such encounter, at the age of 26, he reached for the first proffered book, then pulled back and chose the second instead. The first book had contained the lot.

After being passed over two more times, the message sank in that he was not destined to be a conventional minister. Instead, writes John Sharp in this power-packed biography, Orie Miller sensed he was being

He was a serial entrepreneur for the church, a forger of a new kind of spiritual calling. called to be a lay leader with a gift for administration.

He would never be ordained. The world, history would show, would be the better for it.

Miller would say later that it

seemed every time he turned around he was asked to raise, count and manage money. At a time when those skills were not widely recognized, Orie Miller brought business savvy to the church.

The Marketplace July August 2015

From early on he concerned himself with the plight of the less fortunate. He set off for Beirut in 1919 to do postwar reconstruction work for the American Committee for Relief in the Near East. His administrative skills shone, and were also enlisted to help Mennonites in South Russia who were reeling from the Bolshevik Revolution. That stint would lay the groundwork to form Mennonite Central Committee.

Miller graduated from the

Goshen College School of Business and stayed to teach bookkeeping, commercial law and arithmetic. When he married Elta Wolf his business connections deepened, as her father was a founder of the Miller Hess shoe factory in Akron, Pa. (The Miller in the company name was no relation to Orie, though over the years many people would think so.) It became a major employer in the area and would provide Orie and Elta a lucrative canopy for myriad other pursuits.

When Orie joined the firm, Miller Hess was producing 1,200 pairs of shoes a day. His job was sales — marketing shoes wholesale to stores through the east and midwest. He told friends he liked his work “even if the thing that interests me most is trodden upon by you.”

Passionate about global needs, Miller took frequent and lengthy absences for relief work. His bosses tolerated the inconvenience because when he was on the job he was very pro18

ductive. “Business was better when Orie was involved,” Hess and Wolf conceded. In 1922, when Miller Hess added a second factory in Denver, Pa., Orie spent 127 days on the road, often timing business trips with committee and board work.

Even as the Depression deepened in the early 1930s, the company did well. People liked being able to buy Mennonite quality at modest prices. Miller Hess shoes, Orie noted, “surely do please the trade.” By 1965 the firm employed 900 workers and shipped 12,000 pairs of shoes a day.

In 1931 Miller made the first

of many trips to South America to help dislocated Mennonite immigrants from Europe. Those Mennonites received help from MCC but needed more than temporary housekeeping.

They needed working capital to set up businesses to provide goods and services in the Mennonite colonies. The South American banks weren’t much help, offering loans at usurious rates.

North American Mennonites wanted to help, but there was no structure to do so. In 1952-53 two groups of business and other leaders flew to Paraguay to take a look. The members of these “flying missions,” as they were dubbed by the Mennonite media, brought their concerns to Orie Miller and others in MCC, but MCC was not equipped to meet capital needs. Miller, a consummate motivator and organizer with a heart for business, then brought business leaders together in a Chicago hotel in late

1953 to form Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA).

The new organization would provide capital to develop enterprises that the community needed to grow and prosper. Miller saw MEDA as “bristling with challenge and opportunity,” and in its first 15 years it launched 33 projects in six countries.

In 1970 he went on his last eight-week around-the-world MEDA mission. When he returned he admitted to feeling tired. He would remain involved until his death in 1977.

MEDA scratched other itches besides an immediate lack of capital.

Here was a new way for businessfolk to share their gifts of managerial talent, entrepreneurship and investment savvy. Countless others would discover that they, too, had a legitimate “call” of their own.

Orie Miller was a serial entrepreneur of church organizations. Besides MCC and MEDA, he was the engine behind Mennonite Mutual Aid, Men-

nonite Mental Health Services, Mennonite Indemnity and Menno Travel Service. “He started enough programs,” observed fellow MCCer Peter Dyck, “to keep the rest of us occupied a lifetime carrying them out.” By the end of his life Miller had served 65 church-related organizations.

In a turn of phrase often attributed to theologian Karl Barth, Orie Miller held the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

“The Bible,” writes Sharp, “provided the prism through which he saw nearly everything.... The Wall Street Journal was the lens through which he saw the world – international events or trends and financial markets.”

Always practical, he was known for being able to put wheels under ideas so they would happen. A relief worker in Germany said, “It was amazing how in one hour he had the answer to a problem over which we

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had struggled for weeks.”

Miller is credited with helping lead Mennonites from rural isolation to global engagement. “Everywhere Orie traveled,” said Paul Kraybill, “he saw possibilities; his expansionist mode was irrepressible.”

Sharp says he “forever changed Mennonite education, business, relief work and peacemaking.” He helped to “steer Mennonite values and ministry into a global perspective while integrating sound business and organizational principles.”

John Sharp has done a magnificent job of digesting years of service into a readable, at times even suspenseful, narrative. Orie Miller was a faithful servant of the church who may have taken some time to grasp the configuration of his calling, but when he did, the earth trembled in his wake. Businesspeople who read this book today will likewise gain greater clarity into their own role on God’s stage. — Wally Kroeker

The Marketplace July August 2015

Soundbites

Young, texting and lonely Nell Frizzell, writing in the Guardian, was not surprised by a survey showing that 83% of 18- to 34-year-olds have suffered from loneliness. “Of course it’s easy to be lonely in your 20s,” she writes.

“You may sit in an office of 50 people, but if you e-mail your colleagues rather than exchange gossip over tea in the communal kitchen then it’s hard to feel truly part of a group. When you eat lunch sitting at your desk, idly scanning through other people’s Facebook photos rather than chatting around a table about the canteen’s latest attempt at tex mex, you leave yourself open to the cold draught of loneliness. If you sit on a sofa with your flatmate silently scrolling through everybody tweeting about a party you didn’t go to, you may well start to feel socially estranged. Is it so surprising that 28% of people under 35 wish they had more friends?”

Meeting St. Peter When you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not go-

two from now. That’s what Walt Disney did, and Hewlett and Packard, and the people who built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money. That’s what I want Apple to be. — Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in a biography by Walter Isaacson ing to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small.

But he’s going to ask you what you did for the poor. You’d better have a good answer. — John Kasich, Republican governor of Ohio, quoted in World magazine

Built to last I hate it when people call themselves “entrepreneurs” when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business. That’s how you really make a contribution and add to the legacy of those who went before. You build a company that will stand for something a generation or

building for sale or lease

More than giving Too many people equate social responsibility with philanthropy. Philanthropy is actually just a small part of the social responsibility of business. If a business is responsible to its investors, employees, customers, suppliers, and the environment but refuses to contribute toward philanthropic organizations, it would be neglecting the important community constituency. Such a business would be considered a stingy neighbor, but the fact is that it still creates value in the world through the value it creates for its other stakeholders. Conversely, a business could be very philanthropic to its communities, but if it creates shoddy or harmful products, exploits its employees, cheats its suppliers, and does significant damage to the environment, it can hardly be considered an ethical or socially responsible business. — John Mackey and Raj Sisodia in Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business

Heavenly work

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Industrial/commercial building for sale or lease. Almost

10,000 sf plus office space. Full of natural light, in-floor heating throughout. Very well suited for multiple work stations. Recently vacated by expanding business that employed 50 people. Excellent small town community, 15 minutes south of 401. Call or email Grace Miedema at Coldwell Banker, 519-765-4993 or spacebygrace@gmail.com

The Marketplace July August 2015

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If imams started talking about making this world a paradise, rather than preaching that the only life that matters is the one that begins at death, we might begin to see economic dynamism in more Muslim-majority economies. Giving capitalism a greater chance to thrive in Islamic societies might be the most effective means of redirecting the aspirations of young Muslims to the rewards

of life on earth instead of the promise of rewards after death. Such opportunities would give them a reason to live, instead of a reason to die. Only when Islam chooses this life can it finally begin to adapt to the modern world. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Heretic: Why Islam Needs A Reformation Now

Meeting clutter Peter Drucker once observed that, “Much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.” Nine years after the management guru’s death, his remark is truer than ever: employees often have to negotiate a mass of clutter — from bulging inboxes to endless meetings and long lists of objectives to box-tick — before they can focus on their real work....

Bain & Company, a consulting firm, studied a sample of big firms, finding that their managers spent 15% of their time in meetings, a share that has risen every year since 2008. Many of these meetings have no clear purpose.

The higher you go, the worse it is. Senior executives spend two full days a week in meetings with three or more colleagues. — The Economist

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The Marketplace July August 2015

News

Paraguayan gate finds a new home It may look like just a few welded pipes, but an iconic farm gate from Paraguay embodies more than six decades of MEDA values.

Now it has found a new home in Ontario.

In 1954 when MEDA made its first investment, it was in a Para-

guayan dairy that its owners called “Sarona” after a plain in Palestine that was celebrated in Scripture for its beauty and fertility.

Like its namesake, the investment was successful. Cattle herds improved, milk yields increased, agricultural practices were enhanced,

The original Sarona gate’s longtime home at the entrance to MEDA’s first investment in Paraguay, which transformed the country’s dairy industry.

jobs were created, and the enterprise went on to revolutionize the dairy industry in Paraguay.

MEDA’s founders discovered that their new strategy of investing capital to help small businesses in Latin America improved not only those businesses but also the well-being of the entire community.

In 1972, 18 years after receiving the initial MEDA investment, the Sarona Dairy shareholders repaid MEDA. The dairy was eventually owned solely by the son of one of the original shareholders and was one of the top-producing dairies in the area.

In 1999, MEDA’s Global Investment Fund adopted the name Sarona to symbolize its historic strategy and pay tribute to the first investment.

Gerhard Pries, CEO of Sarona Asset Management, always liked the gate at the entrance to the original dairy. His wife Hilda got the idea that the gate should join the Sarona team in Ontario. She arranged to buy it and have it shipped to Kitchener.

“I managed to keep it a secret for six months,” says Hilda. During this time the current owner of the property in Paraguay built a new gate to replace it. Then it embarked on its journey through Argentina, across to Europe, and then to Canada, finally arriving in Ontario in June.

“Now the Sarona folk can figure out how to hang it in their office,” she says. ◆

Comments?

The gate, modified by one of its owners, now has a new home in Ontario (shown with Gerhard Pries, CEO of Sarona Asset Management).

The Marketplace July August 2015

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Would you like to comment on anything in this magazine, or on any other matters relating to business and faith? Send your thoughts to wkroeker@meda.org

Sub-Saharan countries have highest hopes for business One in seven adults worldwide (14%) who are not already business owners say they’d like to start their own business, writes Justin McCarthy in a Gallup report. Entrepreneurial intent was highest in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than one in three respondents (35%) to a 2013 survey planned to start a business. It was lowest in former Soviet countries (5%) and Europe (4%).

Entrepreneurial intentions were highest in regions where many new

businesses are born out of necessity. Limited job opportunities in less-developed countries drive up business intent. Where well-paying jobs are few, residents turn toward self-employment.

Business intentions decline as economic growth increases, since people can find jobs with higher wages, Gallup says. That’s why plans to start a business were lowest in the more developed countries of Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Stage play exposes “sweatshop tyrants” A new play at London’s Young Vic theatre has liberal hipsters abuzz as it suggests that most of them have a ruthless capitalist hidden inside.

Zoe Svendsen’s play World Factory makes the audience the cast as it puts teams of patrons into the position of pretending they are running a clothing factory (read: sweatshop) in China.

These role-playing teams then must decide critical values issues like how to treat workers or bamboozle buyers from ethical retail brands.

They face dilemmas like what to do when things go sour — cut workers’ pay by a third, or simply lay a third of them off?

What has surprised a lot of people is how readily “progressive” patrons will shuck their compassion and cheerfully make the tough choices. For example, the decision to cut wages by a third was made quite easily by the majority of makebelieve sweatshop operators.

The choices were anything but palatable, says economics writer Paul Mason in the Guardian. “But what shocked me — and has surprised the theatre — is the capacity of perfectly

decent, liberal hipsters on London’s south bank to become ruthless capitalists when seated at the boardroom table.... Despite the fact that a public-address system was blaring out that ‘your workforce is your vital asset’ our assembled young professionals repeatedly had to be cajoled not to treat them like dirt.”

Scores on numerous nights showed that every audience “veers towards money and away from ethics,” according to Mason.

Compounding the surprise was that most patrons who were later given a chance to raise wages, after having cut them, chose not to.

Mason asks: “Why do so many decent people, when asked to pretend they’re CEOs, become tyrants from central casting? Part of the answer is: capitalism subjects us to economic rationality. It forces us to see ourselves as cashflow generators, profit centres or interest-bearing assets. But that idea is always in conflict with something else: the non-economic priorities of human beings, and the need to sustain the environment.” ◆ 23

In the 14 countries surveyed where more than 40% of non-business owners planned to start businesses in the coming year, most were located in Botswana, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria.

Many of those countries lack mature markets, offer few job opportunities, and are primarily agricultural economies or exporters of natural resources — all conditions that propel interest in self-employment, especially in the informal sector.

Starting a business may be the only way for such residents to generate income. The data did not speak to the training and funding barriers these aspiring entrepreneurs might face.

Few European non-businessowners planned to start a business. The better the prospects of steady jobs or unemployment benefits, the less likely people are to consider starting a business, the Gallup report says. ◆

DutchCrafters opening Mennonite owned Internet Retailer JMX Brands owns DutchCrafters, an Amish Furniture brand. We are seeking a sales & service manager, responsible for broad management of customer experience, including leadership and management of our telephone sales team, maximizing conversions, enhancing customer experience, broad customer service, and delivery coordination.

Management responsibilities include protocol, growth of sales and service teams, cost containment, and internal communications and processes.

This job is located in Sarasota, Florida. Compensation is $6580k. Contact ceo@jmxbrands.com for more information.

The Marketplace July August 2015

The Marketplace July August 2015

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