Social Enterprise

I love markets. Seriously, I love everything about sales and marketing. I think it goes back to the days working in my grandparents store, learning about customers, sales and service.. and also about staying out from underfoot!

Social Enterprise - Borough MarketsPhotograph by Abigail Pride
But entering vocational ministry, I was always interested in sustainability but turned off by the talk of Business as Mission. I think mainly because typically Business as Mission is talked about as a world evangelization strategy. Where people move countries and set up a business to begin meeting people to share the gospel with. However what does it look like when mission is the business? When you use a business to generate clean water, to put shoes on the feet of children or to give refugees work?

What about when it is more than about sustainability but that you do the work of the gospel through the business. That is how I see social enterprise... A vehicle, as powerful or more so than the church in certain contexts, to deliver the gospel in Action.

All too often aid to the poor and marginalized has kept them poor. But what does it look like when we create businesses not to exploit but to share resources?

I have been so excited to be a part of the conversations and communities exploring the re-emergence of Social Enterprise in the West. I hope that you will read some of my thoughts about Social Enterprise in this section.