Soul enterprise

Faith that flies

“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who cor‑ rectly handles the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

These are words that Barry Rempel’s grandfather instilled in him as a child and which he carries with him in his job as chief executive officer of the Winnipeg Airports Authority. For more than 10 years Rempel has overseen a burgeoning aviation corporation that employs 150 people directly (and thousands more indirect staff including airlines, airport concessions and restaurants, cleaners, couriers and ground transportation providers such as taxis and limos). Most recently, he oversaw the completion of the new airport terminal, “the largest construction project that has ever happened in Manitoba, at $600 million,” he says.

Rempel, a Christian, acknowledges that unless he maintains a close relationship with Christ, “the spokes of my wheel, no matter how strong they individually are,” are insufficient to carry him. Nurturing the “hub,” that relationship to Christ, is central to him.

Growing up in a Mennonite home, Rempel’s family moved in 1969 to Vancouver, where his father was the director of maintenance for Air Canada.

Rempel started out in maintenance and eventually took time off to get a business degree. He feels fortunate to be one of a few to bring a well-rounded aviation background to his position, having spent 27 years with an airline before switching to the airport side of the business. “I got to do almost everything except be a pilot,” he says, including working as a flight attendant.

The lessons of servant leadership that he learned from his grandfather and the Mennonite church are central to his understanding of his role and the vision he brings to the aviation industry. “They are biblical principles that have stuck with me throughout my career,” Rempel says. “Our values of respect, integrity and service are consistent with the ministry that Jesus extended to people.”

At times the business of faith has not intersected easily with the business of the world. It is “difficult in this day and age in Canada because you cannot be seen as being the preacher or be seen to be leading for the purpose of converting people to your way of thinking,” he says. “The only way allowed in today’s environment is to inspire people to a vision of common good. I hope to lead by example and then hope people ask me about my faith.”

One resource Rempel has found helpful is “a group of people in similar positions like myself — presidents of companies, people that hold positions with a fair significance on others. Originally we were a group of eight, six of whom were Mennonites.” This group meets regularly to share experiences, learn from each other and bring their faith perspective to the challenges they face.

Rempel attends Grant Memorial Baptist Church in Winnipeg. “At Grant I realized there was a connectivity with a broader cross-section of the Christian family,” he says. “I started to learn things there that I didn’t appreciate until I went there.” — Evelyn Rempel Petkau, Can‑ adian Mennonite

Barry Rempel in Winnipeg’s new Richardson International Airport on opening day, Oct. 30, 2011.

You’re hired (not)

Dave Anderson doesn’t have much patience with unprepared job candidates. Being a Christian boss doesn’t mean lowering standards, he writes, adding “Hasty hiring brings eventual firing.” When his company posted a job opening for an administrative assistant on a college web site it was deluged with e-mail applications. In How to Lead by The Book, he describes what made it easier to cull the list: 1. Some applicants had multiple spelling or grammatical errors on their e-mails or resumes. (One of the company’s core values is attention to detail). 2. Some sent e-mails in all-lowercase letters, as though they were writing a text message. 3. An applicant failed to call back at the appointed time we had scheduled in reply to her resume. 4. An applicant called one hour before the interview to cancel and move it to another day. 5. While speaking with the applicant on the telephone, it was obvious that she did not speak clearly or coherently. 6. The applicant spelled his own last name wrong! He spelled it differently in two different places on the resume.

For students

“I was asked once which was most important in life: competence or luck. It’s kind of a silly question, because luck is by definition something outside of one’s control. But I also believe that luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity. You are now in preparation mode and that may continue for some time. That’s the easy part. The tricky thing about opportunity is that it can be hard to recognize because it doesn’t always look like what you expect or hope for. But if you walk through an open door, it will very often lead to another. It’s OK to walk the first mile without knowing where the last mile will take you. It’s also OK to be in a situation where you feel like you’re trotting along, just barely keeping up with all that’s going on around you. You are already fortunate because you have an amazing and enviable network available to you — starting right here in this room. Don’t be shy about using all the resources available to you, and as you embark on your journey, you too will be humbled and grateful for the people who give you a lift on the road and on whose shoulders you can stand, lean, and even cry.” — Microfinance specialist Joyce Bontrager Lehman, in an aside to students during her 2011 MEDA convention speech, “From Kalona to Kabul and Beyond: A Journey from an Amish Community to Global Economic Development”

What’s your story?

“What is the church’s story of itself? Who and what are central to the narrative? For a simple test, visit the Web sites of a few churches and notice the images describing the congregations and their priorities. You will likely find many depictions of worship, youth activities, service projects, clergy, and perhaps a foreign missionary or two. Seldom will you see photographs or other descriptions of church members in their weekday work. Too often we reduce the church’s rich story to a collection of programs, inevitably dampening the vitality of a community of believers serving Christ through their everyday living.

“How different might our understanding of discipleship be if the church’s narrative told of bankers, bakers, teachers, and truckers — the living body of Christ in action? Perhaps we would begin to see work life within the scope of a shared Christian vocation, rather than as something ‘other’.... There is arguably no more important issue on the horizon than the church’s need to explain itself — to itself and to others — in a way that connects with where real people spend their daily lives.” — John C. Knapp in How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about it)

Overheard:

“The more I know of a man’s business, the better I can preach to him.” — Topeka pastor Charles M. Sheldon in 1890, later author of In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do?

Photo by Carl Hiebert

Working for The Boss

Who is The Boss in your place of work?

Is it the CEO? The board of directors? The shareholders? The bank?

Maybe it should be the customer. Viability slides when customers are dissatisfied. It’s so easy to let the daily grind become internal churning — keep the machinery humming — and neglect the consumer who ultimately buys the product or service.

Roger Martin, one of North America’s top management thinkers, uses the image of professional football to re-focus attention on customers (as in ticket-buying fans). His new book, Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL, urges businesses to serve the “real market” (the customer) rather than the “expectations market” of stock options and shareholder value. The National Football League, he says, has wisely concentrated on delighting the real customer, namely the fans in the stand, rather than on making team owners richer. Happily, the more it has dazzled fans with its product on the field, the more team owners have thrived as well.

He cites companies that have become ultrasuccessful by targeting the needs of customers rather than being diverted by secondary (if occasionally more alluring) preoccupations. At one of them, Martin writes, the pecking order is clear: “customers come first, employees are second, communities third, and shareholders absolutely last.” But, he adds, by serving the customer (The Boss), shareholders have done well, too.

In all this he echoes the late management guru Peter Drucker who had blunt words for businesses and institutions: “Any enterprise begins to die when it’s run for the benefit of the insiders rather than for the benefit of the outsiders.”

The pivotal and persistent question — “How will this project improve the life of The Boss?”

How does this relate to development aid

(and the child in the adjacent photo)?

Joyce Bontrager Lehman gave some clues at last fall’s MEDA convention. A former MEDA microfinance specialist in Afghanistan, she moved on to become a program officer with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, whose objective is that “every person should have the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life.” As with MEDA, it was a goal she could embrace with passion and “give poor people the opportunity to live more productive lives and to experience the dignity that comes with being able to provide for your family.”

At Gates, where she worked in Financial Services for the Poor, the daily goal was to have an impact on the life of The Boss. Before any grant was approved, her team had to be able to answer, “How will this project improve the life of The Boss?”

That Boss, she said, was not who people might think. It was not the billionaire Bill Gates, nor his wife Melinda. Rather, she said, flashing a photo on the screen, it was a plaintive little girl, obviously impoverished, and obviously from a developing country. That child [not the same one pictured here] was The Boss, and everything Lehman’s team did was supposed to improve the life of this child or millions like her. That child’s welfare was the reason why she and her colleagues went to work every day.

“The Boss not only lives every day with financial uncertainty and risk,” said Lehman, “there is a good chance she does not have access to clean water, to sanitation, to health care, to education, and she surely does not have access to the range of formal financial services and tools that we enjoy in the rich world.”

Then, connecting the dots, she linked the wel-

fare of The Boss to a new strategy that deploys modern cellphones as an “electronic wallet” that allows them to store and transfer money on a simple handheld device.

How did that help The Boss?

Lehman explained with an illustration from Kenya, where electronic banking has taken root.

“She is a toddler living in a rural village and has developed an eye infection. Her father is working in the city and her mother does not have on that day the few dollars needed to purchase the medicine. The infection worsens and over time could even lead to blindness. In Kenya, her mother can call the family member working in the city. He can instantly transfer electronic value from his mobile phone to hers and she can go to an agent, cash out and purchase the medicine — that very day.”

The point of the story was that a sophisticated application of technology could be interconnected with the simple persistent question back in the office: “How will this project improve the life of the Boss?”

A good question in any line of work. ◆

Zacchaeus — modern manager?

A business scholar unpacks first‑century management practices for the 21st century

by Bruno Dyck

Money, business, salvation and the kingdom of God. You won’t often find these words sharing the same sentence, but they do belong together in the Gospel of Luke. It turns out Luke has a lot to say about how we manage organizations that produce goods and services, and about how this is very closely related to salvation and God’s kingdom.

Luke’s passage about Zacchaeus provides an excellent example of this, although it may not be obvious at first for many modern readers. In this passage Jesus visits the house of a rich chief tax collector named Zacchaeus. When Zacchaeus says that he will give half his money to the poor, and repay fourfold anyone whom he has defrauded, Jesus responds by saying: “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:9).

To unlock how passages like this one are exploding with meaning for management, it is helpful to examine three key words — “house,” “rich” and “salvation” — in the larger context of Luke and first-century Palestine.

House

Consider the word “house.” The Greek word for “house” is oikos; the Greek word for management, oikonomia, is the source of the English word “economics.”

It is a travesty that the word oikos is translated as “house.” The modern word “house” has a very You may have different meaning than the first-century word heard oikos oikos. Today we take “house” to be the place defined as where we live with our families, and from which “house.” A better we go to our jobs in organizations that produce definition would goods and services. In contrast, in the first be “company.” century, an oikos referred to the goods-and-services-producing organization of the day. An oikos was

where you lived and where you worked. A husband and wife and their children formed an important part of an oikos, but it also encompassed other people who were not relatives, such as slaves. For example, the Roman Empire was sometimes called the oikos of the emperor. In the first century there was no equivalent word to what we call “family” to refer to a biological-kinship unit.

The Gospel of Luke mentions the word oikos more than 50 times! And it refers to 50 additional goods-and-services-producing organizations without using the word oikos.

Consider what happens if, rather than translating oikos as “house,” it was translated as “goods-and-service-producing organization,” or perhaps as “company.” Greater awareness of its meaning helps readers to see that an oikos is key to understanding how the kingdom of God is put into practice. An oikos is the location for 10 of the 12 passages in Luke that describe how the kingdom of God is enacted by followers or outcomes associated with the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is evident when you have a banquet and invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind; when people come from the east and west and north and south; when people are willing to leave the oikos of their parents and siblings to join a new kind of oikos.

An important part of the message in Luke is

that conventional first-century oikos structures and systems were not working well. In fact, Luke consistently challenges classic ideas about oikos management regarding the nature of husband-wife, parent-child and master-slave relationships. In particular, in first-century Palestine there was growing disparity between rich and poor, and about 10 percent of the population did not belong to an oikos. This included many of society’s sick people, who were cast out due to their leprosy or other conditions. Without the security that comes from being a member in an oikos, the average lifespan of these social outcasts was between five and seven years. One of the consistent and dominant themes in Luke is that new forms of oikos should be developed that are inclusive of the 10 percent of the population who are outcasts, who do not belong to a conventional oikos.

This message is certainly as pertinent today as it was two millennia ago, since there is now also growing disparity between rich and poor within organizations and countries, and between countries.

Rich

Zacchaeus is about as close as we get to a rich businessman in Luke. He was sort of like a district manager of tax collectors in the area around Jericho. And because of this, he was despised by just about everyone. The crowds did not want Jesus even to visit the oikos of Zacchaeus, because Jesus would be guilty by association.

There are 18 passages in Luke that talk about money, wealth or possessions. Nine of these passages do not use the word “rich.” In these nine passages, the use of money is seen as normal and a non-issue: the Good Samaritan pays the innkeeper, women provide resources for Jesus, and soldiers are to be satisfied with their pay.

The other nine passages about money that do use the word “rich” are very different in tone: The rich will be sent away empty, woe to the rich, the rich should sell all their possessions. When read as a whole, the message in these passages is pretty clear: The kingdom of God is about reducing the disparity between rich and poor.

And the passage about Zacchaeus is one of the two passages in Luke that both uses the word “rich” and describes how the gap between rich and poor is actually being reduced. This is a special passage. Rather than condemn the rich, the passage ends with salvation coming to Zacchaeus’s oikos because of the way he manages it.

Zacchaeus essentially turns conventional management thinking on its head. Instead of using money to make more money, or instead of following the increasing first-century tendency toward conspicuous consumption, Zacchaeus institutes organizational structures and systems that decrease the gap between rich and poor, and that promote social justice.

Zacchaeus, who is about as close

as we get to a rich businessman in Luke, turns conventional

management thinking on its head.

Could it be that “salvation” happens when managers enact systems that foster social justice?

Salvation

Which brings us to the third keyword in the Zacchaeus passage: “salvation.” Two insights are particularly helpful to understand what Luke says about salvation: • First, in the first century salvation usually meant either being saved from something, or being saved for something. The former meaning was associated with the Jews, who were waiting for a savior to save them from their oppressive Roman overlords. The latter meaning was associated with the Greco-Romans, and referred to the advent of a new blessing. So, for example, the Roman emperor was called a savior because he provided Pax Romana for the people. • The second insight that is helpful for understanding what Luke meant by salvation is that Luke uses the verb form of salvation differently than the noun form. Luke uses the noun form eight times, which includes references to “salvation” or a “savior.” And Luke uses the verb form 17 times, which refers to people “being saved.”

This is where it gets interesting, and a bit complicated. Seven of Luke’s eight references to the noun form of “salvation” occur prior to Jesus’ baptism (Luke 3:21); in each case it refers to a group of people — house of David, Gentiles, all people — receiving both dimensions of salvation (saved from/saved for).

All 17 subsequent references use the verb form of “salvation,” and each refers to individuals being saved. In passages where specific people being saved are identified, they are usually being saved from something, from being social outcasts, for example, when they are healed. In passages where people being saved are not specified, they are being saved for something new, which usually involves establishing a new, more inclusive oikos.

There is only one time in all of Luke where Jesus uses the noun form of salvation, which is in this Zacchaeus passage. And this passage is also the only time Jesus refers to salvation coming to an oikos, rather than to a person.

Why did Jesus not use the same phrase he used on four other occasions: “Your faith has saved [verb] you [person]”? Why use a strikingly different phrase in the Zacchaeus passage: “Today salvation [noun] has come to this oikos [goods-and-services-producing organization]”?

Is this merely a case of adding some variety in word choice to keep things interesting? Or does it underscore the fact that salvation is something that happens in community? And, more to the point, does it suggest that salvation is something that happens in the goods-and-services-producing organizations of the day? Perhaps salvation is something that happens when managers enact organizational structures and systems that decrease the gap between rich and poor, and that foster social justice.

Reading the Bible through a first-century lens helps to see it in a new way. In regard to what Luke says about management, there are three implications for the church that may be especially important: • Don’t overlook the role of organizations that produce goods and services. Such organizations are an important part of everyone’s lives today, just as they were in biblical times. To ignore them is to do a great disservice to understanding the Bible, and to do a great disservice to people who seek to integrate their faith in their everyday lives. • Don’t overlook management, which plays an important role in all organizations that produce goods and services, whether they are businesses or church-based organizations. Failing to deliberately think about what a biblical approach to management looks like makes people vulnerable to follow mainstream management practices, perhaps thinking they are value-neutral. Because there has been very little research on what the Bible teaches about management, we are left with books with titles like Jesus CEO and Jesus on Leadership, which have been criticized for doing little more than sprinkling Bible verses to “bless” mainstream business practices. • Don’t ignore people who manage goods-and-services-producing organizations. Don’t ignore the Zac-

chaeuses in your church. Don’t treat them as outsiders, as people who do not have much of a role in the church or in the kingdom of God. Don’t dismiss them as a necessary nuisance. They have an important role to play in the kingdom of God. Indeed, if the Gospel of Luke is any indication, they play a much more central role than any religious leaders. It is Zacchaeus, not a Jewish leader or someone in Jesus’ inner circle, whose managerial actions prompt

Lessons for the church

• Don’t overlook the role of companies • Don’t overlook management, in both businesses and church organizations • Don’t ignore the Zacchaeuses in your church, or treat them as outsiders Jesus to say: “Salvation has come to this oikos.” It is a Roman centurion of whom Jesus says: “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith” (Luke 7:9). And it is the Good Samaritan, who was probably a trading merchant, whose actions prompt Jesus to say: “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).

May we all become more like Zacchaeus, and do our part to help salvation come to the organizations of our day. Go and do likewise in deed. ◆

Bruno Dyck, business professor at the University of Manitoba, is a specialist on multi‑stream management, which balances financial, social, ecological, spiritual and physical well‑being for business stakeholders. This article (which appeared first in Canadian Mennonite, is based on meditations he presented last fall at a MEDA event at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va., and draws from a book he is completing, tentatively entitled Luke on Management: A First-Century Analysis for 21st-Century Readers.

The first Anabaptists – how they worked

What kinds of jobs did the earliest Mennonite forerunners have? In time, they would prosper in trade and industry, but the first generation were regular working folk, much like the rest of society.

by Peter J. Klassen

Aside from those who chose to adopt communal living, most of the early Anabaptists were economically quite similar to the rest of the society in which they lived. They were drawn mainly from the working classes, and their occupations showed nothing unusual.

Especially in the early years of the movement, members were often town craftspeople of various sorts. Then, when persecution drove many from the urban centers, Anabaptism came to be increasingly confined to the agricultural classes, especially in Switzerland and Germany.

Switzerland

When the movement first gained a following in the urban centers of Switzerland, it naturally attracted a large number of artisans, for these constituted a major part of the townspeople. There is no evidence to suggest that Anabaptism had a special appeal to any particular economic class here; rather, its membership was drawn from the typical elements that made up the population of the towns. The notion that the discontented, destitute and disinherited flocked to the movement in hope of getting easy material gain bears neither critical historical scrutiny nor logical evaluation, for Anabaptism stressed giving, not receiving, much less grasping. Few vices were so severely castigated as those of greed and avarice.

It is therefore natural to find that the first congregation of Basel consisted largely of weavers and tailors, as well as printers, representatives of common trades in the city. Similarly, Zurich Anabaptists reflected the artisan population of the city. Frequently, records of trials in this center indicate the occupations of the defendants. Among those brought into court there were teachers, booksellers, weavers, furriers, millers, bakers, hatters, cartwrights and simply wage-earners. Occasionally, an Anabaptist is described as well-to-do.

In the rural areas, Anabaptism gained a strong following among the farmers. Of the approximately 90 farm-owners in the village of Zollikon, some 30 joined the movement. Here again the adherents of the fellowship were not necessarily drawn from the poorest class of farmers. Sometimes, records indicate that Anabaptists

were wealthy “Bauern.” Ordinarily, however, little reference is made to their economic circumstances, for there was nothing unusual to relate. They were simply typical citizens whose religious offence bore no obvious relationship to any economic factors.

From weavers to millers, Anabaptists could be found in practically every occupation found in the city.

Germany

Even a quick perusal of the Anabaptist chronicles for the various German regions indicates a wide diversity of occupation among the Anabaptists. In the city of Strassburg, many of them were artisans plying their trade in their own little shops. Goldsmiths, locksmiths

and watchmakers could be found in the congregations. A number were active in various facets of the leather industry, engaged as tanners, saddlers or cobblers. Substantial numbers were employed in the different aspects of the textile and clothing industry. Some were cloth-shearers, others weavers or tailors.

Carpenters and cabinet-makers likewise joined the movement, as did turners, coopers, furriers and cutlers. Among those brought to trial there were also some vinedressers and gardeners, as well as millers and blacksmiths. Occasionally, Anabaptists would be merchants, having their own shops where they sold wares. More often, they would produce articles for sale, such as hats, rope, sacks and soap. Or they might be bakers or butchers. Indeed, Anabaptism had its representatives in practically every trade and industry found in the city.

Of the many Anabaptists tried in the cities and towns of South Germany, a large number were local craftspeople. Although court records often make no reference to occupations, where this information is given, the textile trade is especially strongly represented. Thus, many of the defendants were weavers, while their related tradespeople, such as cloth-shearers, cloth-workers and tailors, were hardly less numerous. Some were carpenters and masons; others, such as blacksmiths and cobblers, had their own shops. Sometimes the Anabaptists were engaged in quillmaking or in bookbinding. Among those brought to trial, there were also some merchants who plied their trade in various towns and cities. Others were peddlers, like Hans Nadler, whose occupation was selling needles to shoemakers and tailors. Teachers are also listed among those appearing to explain their religious practices. Most of those tried were craftspeople of average means, although a mason of Regensburg is described as “very rich.” Similarly, records of Hessian Anabaptists often do not indicate any profession or occupation, but sufficient evidence is available to show that members were drawn chiefly from the peasantry. In addition, a substantial number were craftspeople of various sorts. Among the various trades represented, the cloth-making and clothing occupations were especially strong. Tailors and weavers, as well as cloth-workers, were among those tried for their Anabaptist views. Others were engaged in various phases of metal-working, like the blacksmith of Nonenweier, or in carpentry, like Hans Gentner, a preacher of Sulzfeld who later sought refuge in Moravia. A considerable number were engaged in construction trades, such as bricklaying and stone-masonry.

Repeatedly, occupational pursuits were regarded as only incidental to the task of disseminating Anabaptist doctrine. Thus, Wendel Mueller, a miller of Barbelrode, incurred the wrath of local authorities when he successfully combined milling with the propagation of Anabaptist teachings.

The Netherlands

Among the Dutch Anabaptists, there was a heavy predominance of craftspeople. Many were employed in the clothing industry, as weavers, tailors, hatters, tawers, thread-twisters, button-makers and cloth-shearers. Others were active as cutlers, cobblers, potters and glaziers, and wagoners. Dutch Anabaptists were more liberal in their attitude toward business than were some of their counterparts in central Europe, especially the Hutterites. A substantial number were merchants, engaged in earning a livelihood by buying and selling wares. Booksellers and goldsmiths were also to be found in the ranks of the Anabaptists. Here, too, reference is sometimes made to well-to-do members of the persecuted movement.

A few of the Anabaptists were members of the medical profession. Others were artists and painters, while some were printers. On the whole, Anabaptism in the Netherlands did not draw its strength from any particular class or profession. The suggestion that Anabaptists belonged to the unpropertied class does not bear investigation. The frequency and severity of the fines imposed upon them — and the regularity of their payment — demonstrates that adherents to the movement came from the various strata of the population. There was no such thing as the class appeal of Anabaptism.

This lack of emphasis upon any specific economic class or practice was also apparent in the attitudes of the Anabaptists themselves. They never stressed any particular vocation as being most honorable or desirable, although they were prepared to abandon any trade that they felt to be at variance with New Testament teachings. Much more important than the kind of occupation or profession was the spirit in which it was pursued. Any attempt to become a status-seeker would meet with swift denunciation. All outward show and extravagance could never be acceptable to a fellowship that constantly taught and practiced simplicity, thrift and humility.

The preaching of the day, often with more than a touch of pietism, showed a great concern with responsible stewardship. Extant sermons indicate that ministers were more interested in moral and ethical problems than in exploring the subtleties of doctrinal questions. The emphasis was practical rather than theological. ◆

Peter Klassen is professor emeritus of history and dean emeritus of social sciences, California State University, Fresno. His article is excerpted with permission from his book, The Economics of Anabaptism 1525 to 1560.