Reviews

Taming today’s lions

Job-Shadowing Daniel: Walking the Talk at Work.

By Larry Peabody (Outskirts, 2010, 194 pp. $16.95 U.S.)

We all know Daniel from Sunday school, perhaps also from the old gospel hymn, Dare to be a Daniel. But is he more than a one-night stand in the lion’s den?

Daniel emerges here as more than a mere pop-up on the biblical screen. Peabody depicts him as a seasoned bureaucrat who served many decades in the upper reaches of the Babylonian government — “a world superpower of the day” — and who “had his hands on its levers of power.” During that time he would

Plant your feet in your own Babylon and let Daniel be your mentor

have confronted numerous “workplace lions” in addition to the growling creatures he faced in the infamous den.

His Godly witness, then, is more than a one-time showdown, and as such his life “provides a lens through which you can see Jesus more clearly, even as you run the faith-race in your workplace.”

None of us are likely to face a literal carnivorous threat in the places we work, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other forces out to devour us. “Your workplace ‘lions’ can be just as daunting,” Peabody asserts. Our “lions” might be cloaked in the fur of legalistic separation (the world is too polluted for us); religious tradition (which splits our world into sacred and secular and demeans those who live in the

into the hands of those who would “quarantine Christian influence” inside the safe confines of Sunday. Daniel shows us how to live as scattered seed, Peabody says. Although 2,600 years separate Daniel’s workplace from ours, there are lessons for today. Among them: Know the spiritual risks in our world, and “Decide to resist the rot, not to run from it.” Peabody provides plenty of specific illustrations of how this might be done, and they are not confined to spiritual wordplay. A Christian presence on the job “does not mean doing religious things on company time.”

Peabody offers suggestions for how Christians can think through how their daily work fits into God’s big-picture agenda. He urges them to think about how their work: • benefits those outside the family; • supplies something needed by people; • contributes to the upkeep of the earth; • helps create or maintain peaceful and quiet conditions.

Dare to be a Daniel? “I wouldn’t advise anyone to take the dare at face value,” Peabody concludes. “Daniel was Daniel. David was David. Paul was Paul. And you are you. Instead, I dare you to be you, yourself, right there in your workplace. Look to Daniel as a mentor. But let God develop you and your ministry in the way that belongs uniquely to you.” — Wally Kroeker

latter); diminished identity (“I’m just a layperson”) and unbelieving co-workers who will pounce at the first hint of a Christian witness.

Peabody’s hope is that Christians will plant their feet in the Babylon of their own workplaces and live authentic lives Monday to Friday.

“But,” he says, “our training has not readied us with a clear idea of what ministry looks like in the day-in-day-out flow of life in the work world where so many Christians spend so much time.”

He reviews — and critiques — how ecclesiastical structures and tradition have kept Christians from seeing themselves as full-bodied ministers by separating “laypeople” from “full-time” workers in the church. “Other than fueling financial contributions, the workplace plays little or no role in the traditional church system,” he writes. In fact, there seems to be a “Christian caste system” in place that “assigns most Christians to the minor leagues and a tiny few to the majors.” Somewhere along the way the church has forgotten that it is not only ekklesia (gathered people) but also diaspora (scattered-seed people). By doing so it has unwittingly played

One decision a day

In normal times, the labor force in the United States totals roughly 150 million. Suppose the average working person averages one decision on an ethical question each day. That would amount to 150 million right-versus-wrong choices in the workplace daily. Let’s say half of these people believe God sees each choice and why they make it. The other half think God can’t or doesn’t bother to see such things. Each group will be making 75 million ethical decisions per day. How do you think the choices of the God-sees group would differ from the God-doesn’t-see group? Which workers would do a better job of ruling their small corner of the earth by bringing situations into line with God’s will? — Larry Peabody

Back to business in Haiti

In the aftermath ... the rebuilding continues

A Fonkoze client, bolstered by a small loan, sells rice in the local marketplace.

Sometimes you can find hope in the strangest places.

That was Steve Sugrim’s experience when he visited Haiti this summer, months after a catastrophic earthquake killed 225,000 people and displaced more than a million others.

As MEDA’s photographer and multimedia designer, he was there to track the economic recovery spurred by MEDA and longtime partner Fonkoze, the country’s leading microfinance provider. Fonkoze’s headquarters were destroyed, some staff lost their lives, and thousands of clients were left homeless. MEDA secured a $4.5 million grant from The MasterCard Foundation to restore Fonkoze’s headquarters and help clients rebuild livelihoods. It also arranged a unique collaboration with Mennonite Central Committee to rebuild and repair homes and train local masons and carpenters in how to build earthquake and hurricane-resistant structures.

Sugrim brought back the photos on these pages, along with some impressions:

(left) Rebuilding goes on, sometimes using rubble from the earthquake. Materials are scarce, and construction techniques are rudimentary. (below) More than 800 children showed up for Fonkoze’s youth camp experiment. They spent three days doing crafts and learning life skills. At the end, each was given a citrus seedling to take home and plant.

Crumbled buildings. Tent cities. There are people everywhere — and I mean everywhere — living in things and using materials that you and I would throw out. Imagine living in a shanty made of sticks and a plastic roof, with seven children, a crippled husband, and two chickens. Heartbreaking.

These are among the poorest people I have ever seen. But they helped me see hope in the darkest areas of Haiti.

From my hotel room, at night, I heard singing in the darkness — happy singing in the streets, in the Creole language. Amazingly, people had let go of their hurts and were staying the course towards a better future.

Kids of the very poor have nothing to do, literally. You see them everywhere, just sitting by the side of the road — watching you.

Staff from Fonkoze have reached out to them by starting a youth camp in addition to their normal work of providing financial and literacy services to the poor. The camp drew more than 800 kids, ages five to late teens, to feed them, teach life-skills, restore selfesteem, and help them to — dare I say it — have fun.

We heard them singing from the other side of the hill as we approached the camp. Dancing, singing, clapping, laughing — from everyone in this small community. Amazing. It sounded like the happiest place on earth.

Where there are children, there is life and hope.

Clients gathered at a local church for a three-day Fonkoze class on how to tend goats. They were taught, fed, and given an animal at the end of the course. They also received a stipend for travel, as many came a long way to attend. Most kept the money for other purposes and walked home instead.

(above) A Fonkoze client takes home a load of palm leaves she purchased to make into bed mats and rope to resell. (top right) A staffer teaches clients using a MEDAsponsored book (mostly pictures, as few can read). This lesson is about basic business principles and inventory control. (bottom right) A Fonkoze case manager reconciles a loan repayment with a client.

Why I decided to start a business

After two decades of toiling for others, entrepreneurship offered a new path to meaning

by Jean Kilheffer Hess

Ilearned to provide excellent customer service under the direction of a skilled manager at the deli where I worked in high school and during college breaks.

I learned professionalism and relationship management in my five years working as an auditor and CPA fresh out of college.

I learned team building, cooperative management, and staff supervisory skills in a nonprofit where I had the responsibility, but not the directive authority, to bring about greater efficiency and growth in affiliated, independent not-for-profit businesses.

I learned branding, marketing, and communications as manager of a major fundraising campaign focused on empowering local education initiatives around the world.

For 20 years I’d been conducting business for others in the marketplace, thriving on the differing challenges posed by retail service, professional financial services, and faith-based nonprofit work. I worked with gifted people and great teams in each place. I’d also seen and survived significant dysfunction in the workplace including a psychologically abusive boss, childish behavior enacted

Alternative service worker tests milk in western Pennsylvania: “What better way to learn about the period than to interview people who lived it?”

by adults, a persistent lack of healthy communication and accountability. When it seemed time to consider my next career move, I took stock of the skills I’d developed and took up the exciting, creative challenge of “entrepreneur.”

I recently read that Gen Y women are making career choices based on a “quest for jobs with meaning, variety and true work/life balance,” and they exhibit “a lack of interest in conforming to the way it’s always been done.” Increasingly these well-educated, globally-minded women are choosing to become “A what? Almost entrepreneurs rather than climb the corporate ladno one had heard der.* Some debate the useof the service I fulness of generational cohort analysis, but as a late Gen Xer, I resonate provide.” with the spirit of this apparently-accelerating trend among my younger sisters. I found myself ready to walk a new path, ready to invest in and manage my own ideas and energy to create a meaning-filled, balanced life.

In June 2009 I left my full-time job and started StoryShare, an oral history interviewing business. “A what?” you might be asking. And that quickly you’ve identified an obstacle to this line of work! Almost no one has heard of the service I provide.

As I described my new business to networks of friends and other contacts, I received mostly-predictable responses in a particular order. “That’s a really great idea!” a friend replied, before screwing his face into a quizzical look and following up with, “How do you plan to market that?”

A bit of background: between my years in public accounting and my years in nonprofit work, I studied church

* (From the Washington Post “On Leadership” blog, Sep. 17, 2010 post by Selena Rezvani titled “What’s Next for Gen Y Women?”)

history and theology at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind. I’d attended public schools, then expected Messiah College (Grantham, Pa.) to give me a better grounding in Anabaptist history than it did, so seminary was an attempt to understand the faith tradition of which I was a part.

For my master’s thesis work I studied the interface between economic activity and the rules of “nonconformity” in some parts of the Mennonite Church in the mid-twentieth century. What better way to learn about the period, I thought, than to interview people who lived it? I conducted 30 oral history interviews — asking a few questions, but mostly listening and recording.

Honoring someone’s life story by listening well, carefully transcribing the recorded audio, crafting a commu-

Jean Kilheffer Hess: “Passionate about helping people value and share their stories”

nication that integrated the interview, I loved it all. Put together this experience with the often-lamented rat race of life that leaves people unable to accomplish the very things they’ll value most in the long term, such as capturing a loved one’s life story, and a business idea blossomed.

Clients hire me to create a custom product

based on one or more oral history interviews conducted with a narrator (the person telling her or his story). In addition to the audio, the final product might be a coffee table-style book featuring an interview with Grandma and accompanying heirloom photos. Or it might be a full-length book attempting to capture a lifetime of experiences and learning.

One job involved a local family-owned business celebrating its 40th anniversary and a generational transition. I worked with the family to concisely tell the founding story and promote the business. I collaborated with a designer to provide a unique communications piece which shared their story with anniversary open house visitors and their existing customer mailing list.

Eye contact and physical touch may be the most basic units of human connection, but I suspect it’s story that rounds out the top three. Whether within families, among

The stories speak, but the interview itself provides its own kind of service.

friend groups, or in a business or other setting, I’m passionate about helping people value and share their stories.

Which brings me back to marketing! As an entrepreneur, especially in an unusual field, I feel the pressure to be constantly creating new networking connections and introducing people to the services I provide. This I’ve found to be the most stretching part of building a business.

I take a variety of approaches to marketing, but I know the personal referral network, coupled with a high-quality product, provides my best chance at serving a new client. And I really do mean serving. The stories recorded will hopefully speak for generations to come, but the interview experience itself provides its own kind of service.

In an interview I conducted last year, I noted that the narrator intermittently prefaced her comments with, “I hadn’t thought of this until right now, but ....” We are so unaccustomed to being asked carefully-chosen questions and then provided with undivided attention that I believe the situation creates a holy space for self-reflection — separate and holy as if kissed with the Spirit.

Finally, I invite God to use the disciplines of oral history interviewing to shape me into the kind of person more likely to love my neighbor as I love myself. It’s funny how knowing another’s story can help with that. ◆

Employees of the Moseman Peanut Butter factory (1920s): The final product might be a book capturing a lifetime of experiences.

Stewards of the land and its fruits

Prairie firms stay close to their roots

What does a family farm, accessible only by dirt roads, and a dealership for the world’s largest farm machinery manufacturer have in common besides being “green” businesses with Hutchinson, Kansas addresses?

More than you might think.

The companies were PrairieLand Partners, a partnership of John Deere dealerships, and JaKo Inc., which retails its own products directly from the farm. The firms were visited on a fall tour by members of the MEDA Kansas Chapter and students from Hesston (Kan.) College.

As they told their stories, principals of both companies revealed they shared many values, family traditions, and common farm roots. PrairieLand Partners (“Partnering together to nurture the land”) is the result of merged John Deere dealerships, now numbering 10 locations.

The merger sought to combine the synergies of three separate businesses and give John Deere “a bigger footprint” in central Kansas, said sales manager Darrell Pankratz. He likened the partnership to a marriage, stressing the need for each partner to have common values.

“Quite simply, our company is built on Christian values,” he said. “We care about the company, care about each other, and we care about the community. Our overriding philosophy is to be good stewards of the land to sustain success.”

All personnel are expected to buy into core values of integrity, excellence, financial success and partnering. “A positive customer experience is our top priority,” Pankratz said.

Employees are empowered to take responsibility, make relevant decisions and, if necessary, hold one another in check if a “values gap” is perceived, he said.

Recognition is accorded to “values champions” who exemplify the partnership’s principles in relating to customers and co-workers. For Pankratz, John Deere is a family tradition. His grandfather ran a John Deere business in Oklahoma in the 1940s when the company sold fertilizer. His father also worked for John Deere. In 1989, Darrell quit his job as a high school principal and with his father started Pankratz Implement in Hutchinson. He bought his father out in 1998 and expanded the dealership. Pankratz sees a promising future in the “many young, smart, high-quality” employees who keep looking for ways the company can “do better tomorrow. They’re the ones that will sustain the business,” he said.

PrairieLand’s Darrell Pankratz (left) and tour

member Tim Penner of Harper Industries. Ken King also followed his father and grandfather into business, and is now well into the process of succession. “I find passing on the farm to the next generation extremely fulfilling,” he said. King (whose company name is a blend of his and his wife’s initials, Judith Ann and Kenneth Oliver King) is the third generation to live and work on the family farm near the town of Yoder. His father raised conventional crops and cattle but was willing to let Ken take on the farm and run it as he wished, which led to a switch to organic production. The company’s mission is “to produce the healthiest food possible so that our customers can For Ken King, thousands of satis- enjoy a sustainable fied “inspectors” provide their lifestyle. Our busiown form of certification. ness will honor God,

respect creation, and operate with integrity.”

King amused tour members by telling how he decided to let his cows do the walking to forage for their own food and spread their own manure. After all, he said, they had four legs and he had only two! He fenced eight paddocks for the cattle to graze on grass in a low-stress environment. By milking the cows only once a day, he focuses on quality more than quantity in the dairy products he began retailing directly from the farm after land that the family rented was sold, He let the cows leaving them with half their previous acreage. do the walking, The milk, butter, cream, cheese and yogurt since they had from his 26 milk cows is “nutrient dense” and valfour legs and he ued by health-conscious customers, he said. had only two JaKo also produces and retails free-range chickens and eggs, and grass-fed beef and lamb.

Egg sales soared this fall when an Iowa chicken farm suffered a disastrous salmonella outbreak and customers were anxious to buy unadulterated eggs, said King.

Although its products are organic, JaKo saves some $5,000 a year by not seeking certification. “We have thousands of inspectors,” King said, namely the customers who “certify” the quality of JaKo’s products by coming back to buy more. Ken and Judy’s children and their spouses are now finding their own niches in the family business. Son Daniel planted 5,000 strawberry plants that were still producing at summer’s end. He has since gone on to serve with Mennonite Central Committee in Brazil, so Judy and other family members manage the berry patch.

Daughter Kendra assists with marketing and bakes whole wheat bread, rolls and pizzas that are sold fresh or frozen. Her husband, Mark Horst, has a pottery shop in the barn-turned-store at the farm.

Horst said he appreciates that his father-in-law doesn’t say “no” to anything that family members have a passion to do, and gives them the freedom to fail and to end a product when necessary.

The Kings’ youngest son, David and his wife Haly, live in Indiana where David manages JaKo’s database and online operations and works in the IT department at Goshen College.

JaKo’s retail store is open 24/7, but not re-stocked on Sundays. The Kings operate it on the honor system. Customers fill in their own sales ticket and deposit cash and checks in an open container.

Satisfied customers do the advertising for JaKo’s products. “Our product is unique enough, they find us,” said King. — Susan Miller Balzer