Faithventure Forum

Love God and Love People. Those two activities need to be the guiding philosophy of any faith venture business as mission that seeks to employ and train individuals rebuilding lives from addiction, homelessness and prison. I was reminded of that during the last couple of weeks when I’ve been missing in action from the Faithventure Forum. We are in a season at Belay of intense strategizing as we finalize our plans for the summer and beyond. It’s been one decision after another. Unlike many organizations, we’re facing good decisions, but it has just seemed wise to unplug for a bit and really seek out God. In the midst of it, I was reminded that I have a tendency to complicate things. I sometimes have trouble trusting my gut and instead spend hours and days wrapping my mind around all the dimensions of the decision. I list out the pros and cons and try to anticipate the potential outcomes related to each possible choice. It’s a good undertaking…up to a point. In the end, you still ...

I'm excited to be included as part of a panel discussion this summer hosted by Bakke Graduate University. If you're interested in business as mission and a free barbecue, join us for an event open to the public on July 28, 2010, at Confluence Ministries (1400 Quitman Street, Denver) from 6pm to 9pm. Dr. Mark Russell, co-founder of Russell Media and Professor of Record for the July 28-31 Denver area Bakke Mission-Focused Entrepreneurship Class will be presenting a short lecture on Entrepreneurship and Missio Dei. This will be followed by a panel discussion hosted by Eric Swanson featuring Mark Russell, Tom Beck of Synergos Solutions, and myself. I know I'm looking forward to learning more from Mark and Tom. I always enjoy spending time with Tom Beck and learning about World Venture's Business as Mission project as well as his experience as one of the founders of Blockbuster and Einstein's Bagels . For more information and to register for the free event, vi...

I just learned today from my friend Rudy Carrasco that Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles had to lay off 300 of their employees yesterday . That was almost their whole staff. I am really sad over this. Over the last 11 years at Belay Enterprises , I have tried to model the passion and innovation that Father Greg Boyle deploys on behalf of individuals rebuilding lives. When I occasionally speak around the country on faith ventures, I often share Homeboy as one of the innovators of this unique form of business as mission. Three years ago, I had the opportunity to work with Father Greg while organizing a Faith and Enterprise Pre-Conference for the Social Enterprise Alliance in Long Beach. He absolutely enraptured 100 people with his stories of life change in the numerous business ventures started to assist ex-gang members trying to rebuild lives. I remember thinking he should have been the keynote speaker for the whole conference. Even during this tough time, Father Greg is already ...

When you work with ex-offenders trying to rebuild lives, sometimes your heart will be broken. One thing seems to be constant for individuals trying to start over after prison. The past often stalks the future. For some, bad choices will be made, promises broken, and they will find themselves no longer in our program facing new legal consequences. But as I've written in the past, even in those individual cases that might be labeled “failures”, God is still at work. And our organization’s "biggest failures” are often transformed into some of our biggest successes. The reality is we live and work in a world where God often chooses to hide Himself. Sometimes God's activity in the lives of our program participants is hard to see. And other times, God's power whacks you in the face. It’s impossible to miss and all you can do is worship the Creator for his power, grace and goodness. Over and over, God chooses what our world calls “lost cases” so that His goodness is dis...

Over the last 11 years at Belay Enterprises , I have had the opportunity to write and review numerous business plans for possible faith venture enterprises. They all seek to create opportunity for individuals or communities rebuilding lives. This morning, I had the chance to review a business plan draft for an exciting faith venture in a different community. I am also facing two looming decisions related to a new Belay business and the expansion of an existing one. In all three cases, I’m reminded of the importance of the following four items to any faith venture business plan: It’s important to answer this question up front: Is it a for-profit or non-profit business? Either structure will work but there are definitely pros and cons to each possibility with resulting ramifications for the business plan. It’s often very complicated and difficult to try a hybrid of the two. Faith venture practitioners tend to be passionate about the mission side of the venture and the resulting busin...

I have a friend who used to broker private business sales. He would help entrepreneurs sell their companies to new owners. Unfortunately for those new buyers, industry statistics showed that less than 50% would succeed in their new business. The entrepreneurial “secret sauce” of the former owner, honed over many years of hard work and learning by trial and error, wouldn’t always replicate in the new owner and the business would find itself failing. This idea of entrepreneurial secret sauce started me thinking about what are the necessary ingredients for someone to succeed in a faith venture start-up that seeks to employ individuals or communities rebuilding lives? Someone asked me today how I determining who to hire to lead one of our urban business as mission projects. Without a doubt, I look for six key ingredients in such a person: A Love of Sales and Marketing If someone is going to succeed in building a new venture, they have to know how to succeed in sales. This is non-negotiab...

Harry Truman once said “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” Yesterday, that was the theme of a great lunchtime meeting with a minor tweak to the quote: It is amazing what God can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. I shared earlier this week that “sometimes it seems that you pour all your time, energy and heart into a project or task only to see little movement towards your goals. Other times, all you did was get out of bed and big things started happening.” I argued that one of the keys to arriving in the “sweet spot of faith” was to make sure you first seek guidance from God in community with other followers of Christ. As Americans firmly entrenched in the prevalent ideology of self-reliance, we tend to overlook the community part. It’s easy for us to miss how early Christians—and by early I mean pre-Enlightenment Christians—would have had very little notion of self. All activity was seen in relation to community. Individual ...