November December 2014
Where Christian faith gets down to business
Money scrubber:
Wiring currency in an age of terrorism How a young radical warmed up to business Helping employees achieve their dreams Ohio seniors home leaves a legacy
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The Marketplace November December 2014
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Roadside stand
”Thank you for my job” Canadians celebrated their annual Thanksgiving observance in midOctober; Americans will celebrate theirs soon. What did you (or will you) give thanks for? Besides family, friends and faith, how many are consciously grateful for a good job or company? That thought occurred to the business writers at The Globe and Mail, a leading Canadian newspaper. They wanted to know what readers appreciated about their work. Many of those who responded on Twitter said they were grateful for a job with a purpose that provided them a chance to help others. “A key factor for many respondents was that they felt their work was meaningful and made a difference,” said the newspaper. “Others were thankful that they felt their work helped their company’s success.... A number of employees were grateful for workplace perks that made their job more enjoyable.” Some entrepreneurs were thankful for the freedom and opportunity of running their own firm. One small business owner said, “I’m grateful that my commute to work is 15 stairs, requires no transit, no parking, and no winter boots.” Red or blue? Here’s a twist on the term “bipartisan.” A new app called BuyPartisan allows Americans to shop according to political preferences. Using an iPhone camera, the app scans store barcodes and reports whether the producers are Democrat or Republican (measured by their political donations). Scan a bag of Starbucks French Roast and you’ll learn that the company’s directors Cover shot of global currencies by iStockphoto
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gave five times more to Democrats than Republicans (for Apple products it’s 30 times). If you scan a package of “organic gluten-free quinoa pasta” produced by the Quinoa Corporation, you’ll find that the company donates almost exclusively to the Republican Party. BuyPartisan’s maker, who won’t disclose his own political affiliation, hopes to add data on how firms treat employees. (The Economist) What does a tough economy do to marriage? You might think divorces rise as the economy sours, but there’s evidence to the opposite. For one thing, couples may hang in there during an economic slump because they can’t afford to divorce. Also, hard times can teach couples financial lessons. According to a survey by Experian Consumer Services, couples who married after the 2008 economic crisis talk more openly about financial issues (even checking each other’s credit rating) than those who married before. Post-recession couples, on average, check with their partner before spending up to $256 on an item, while pre-recession couples spend $1,022 without checking. Moreover, 82 percent of postrecession couples discuss financial goals with their spouse at least once a month, while only 65 percent of pre-recession couples do. (MoneySense) Waggle? Doesn’t jump to mind as a title for an e-book, but that’s what it is. It’s about what workplaces can learn from bees, and it’s written by a management expert with the fitting name of David Zinger. Among his lessons learned from bees is that small steps add big value. Honeybees reportedly pollinate the entire U.S. crop of almonds, worth $2 billion. Yet, according to Zinger’s math, each
individual bee pollinates only 19 cents worth. The workplace lesson? Help each employee understand how they create value with a series of small but important contributions. Ask what are the smallest steps you can take to create significant value. Doing well. Here’s more indication that good corporate behavior can pay off. According to a Nielson survey 42 percent of Americans are willing to pay extra for products and services from companies with a record of positive social and environmental impact. Another study suggests that socially conscious firms have seen annual sales rise an average of five percent compared to one percent from similar types of firms not making such claims. (Consumer Reports) Africa is on the cusp of a massive shift in the world’s child population, according to UNICEF. A new study by the United Nations children’s agency says by the end of this century, if current rates hold, almost half the world’s children under 18 will be African. Right now the continent’s share is only a quarter. “This would be one of the most dramatic demographic shifts in history,” says The Economist, which goes on to wonder why robust economic growth has not made a bigger dent in fertility. “The future of humanity is increasingly African,” says UNICEF, but the continent still needs better infrastructure, education and healthcare, not to mention family planning. We’ve arrived. Digitally that is. Come visit this magazine’s new online home at www.marketplacemagazine.org, where you can download past issues, read articles and even discuss topics with others, all from your desktop or mobile device. — WK
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In this issue
Invitation to a young radical: “Join us.” Page 8
Departments 2 4 19 20 22
Roadside stand Soul enterprise Sand in the gears Soundbites News
Volume 44, Issue 6 November December 2014 The Marketplace (ISSN 0199-7130) 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 2014 by MEDA. Editor: Wally Kroeker Design: Ray Dirks
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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Money scrubber
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Warming up to business
Sending money across the globe used to be relatively simple for MEDA’s foreign exchange officer. Not anymore. Rising terrorism has muddied the water for charitable organizations.
He was an eager young professor with bold opinions on economics. How he and local businessfolk dealt with clashing views would alter the Mennonite business landscape.
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Surviving in Ukraine
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Dream on
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In good hands
Running a development project can be grueling at the best of times. Civil war can make it really tough, as MEDA found when it struggled to stay ahead of the turmoil in Ukraine this year.
Most employees want careers that are purposeful. How much should employers help make that happen? Is it the job of a manager to help employees reach their purpose and fulfill their dreams?
You pour your life into an enterprise, and someday have to pass it on. Here’s how an Ohio couple found new owners they could count on to preserve the legacy of their retirement community. Walnut Hills Retirement Community photo
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 November December 2014
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A lousy day but thanks anyway
It’s nice to be nice The CEO of a huge U.S. corporation famously said, “I don’t have time to be nice.” Don’t believe him. In today’s climate, he’d be a dinosaur. While you’re at it, ignore the old line about “nice guys finish last.” It ain’t true. In fact, there’s a growing belief that being nice can actually give you a rung up on the ladder of success. That doesn’t mean you should fake nice, but you shouldn’t apologize for it, either. Not all Christians are nice, but they are expected to be. The qualities society generally regards as “nice” are very close to what Christians aspire to as part of their faith. One of the first things we learn in Sunday school is the Golden Rule (“Treat others the way you would want to be treated”). When we were kids we may have thought that made us wimps. Uh-uh. It can set you up for success — both as a Christian and as a worker. Business language doesn’t usually mention “being nice.” It prefers to speak of “soft skills,” like customer service and relational savvy. An employee manual or job description might mention respect, sincerity, positive attitude, team player and so on. What it boils down to is “nice.” Business functions best when it is characterized by the Golden Rule, says Kristin Tillquist in her book, Capitalizing on Kindness: Why 21st Century Professionals Need to Be Nice. “The business world is a place for the vibrantly, positively, dynamically nice,” she says, adding that if you mesh a caring attitude toward others with savvy competence you will be “an employee of choice.” The same thing applies to the business itself. “Companies that make kindness part of their mission outperform those that don’t,” she maintains. Firms with plenty of “kindness capital” enjoy better productivity and less absenteeism. They also don’t get sued as often. Noting that a main reason why people quit their jobs is because they feel unappreciated, Tillquist warns companies that “the best and brightest employees will not stay where they are not appreciated; they will seek out environments with flourishing kindness capital.” She also warns against “kindness inhibitors” such as rude e-mail and cellphone behavior, brazen competitiveness and even bad table manners (clients and executive recruiters have been known to downgrade someone who is rude to waiters). So don’t hesitate to practice the “niceness” of your Christian faith. You can’t really put it on your resume, but you can bet it will help you in the long run.
Ever wonder what God thinks if we only give thanks when things are going well? Imagine this: A company ends the fiscal year with a great bottom line. The inclination is to thank God for a positive and profitable outcome to the year’s effort. Someone wonders — Last year was dismal. We lost money. Did we thank God then? Sports fans can see a version of this played out in professional sports. Someone scores a touchdown and makes a religious gesture. We don’t usually see that happen when a quarterback is sacked or a runner is smeared after gaining a yard. In his new book, Throwback: A BigLeague Catcher Tells How the Game Is Really Played, Jason Kendall (seemingly not a religious man) comments on this phenomenon: “A guy hits a single, claps his hands, and points to heaven? Getting hits is his job, that’s what he was supposed to do. Why doesn’t he do it when he strikes out? Wasn’t that part of God’s plan, too? You only thank Him when you get a hit? If God’s with you all the time, wasn’t He with you when you chased that slider in the dirt?”
Excerpted from You’re Hired! Looking for work in all the right places, a career guide from MEDA. Available for free download at www.meda.org
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Called to ... what? What do the biblical writers say about “calling”? Was Moses called to herd sheep? Was Jesus called to make tables? Not really, according to Will Messenger, executive editor at the Theology of Work Project. It’s rare in the Bible for anyone to be called directly to a specific kind of work, he says in an interview in Christian History magazine. All believers are “called” to participate in God’s creative and redemptive work, but seldom to a particular “job offer.” Exceptions include people like Noah, who was called to build an ark, and prophets like Samuel, Jeremiah and Amos. Bezalel and Oholiab were called by God to be chief craftsmen for the tabernacle (Ex. 31:1-6). Barnabas and Saul were called to be missionaries. But most people should not expect to get a call from a divine headhunter, Messenger says. “At the very beginning of the Bible, God chose to involve human beings in the work of creation, production, and sustenance.... For most of us, calling means going about our so-called ordinary work, guided by Scripture and prayer rather than by dramatic pronouncements or events in our lives.” Lacking a burning bush, how did people figure out God’s calling? “One way was through seeing what needed to be done to make the world like what God intends,” says Messenger. This often meant nothing more glorious than earning a living to support one’s family or neighbors. “People were also called to serve the good of the larger society, as when Jeremiah told the exiles in Babylon to ‘build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce’.” Are some jobs out of bounds? “The only jobs the Bible explicitly forbids,” he says, “are those incompatible with its values: for example, jobs requiring murder, adultery, stealing, false witness, greed (Ex. 20:13-17), usury (Lev. 25:26), damage to health (Matt. 10:8), or harm to the environment (Gen. 2:15).”
Don’t leave your job at the office Many parents ask their kids after school: “How was your day?” What if kids asked parents the same question? Children can learn a lot from hearing about your job. It can make you seem more human and accessible. It can show them that complex problems are solvable, says Cheryl Hotchkiss of World Vision Canada. Here are five things to share with your kids: • What you like about your work. This opens doors with kids, and might lift your own spirits. • How your job helps others. Who benefits? How would their lives be different if you weren’t there? • What you learned today. Did you pick up a new skill, or figure out how to make a grumpy colleague smile? • People you met. A new client or co-worker? Give your kids a window into a world they wouldn’t otherwise see. • How your journey is unfolding. Are you still learning? Do your children know what your dreams are? (News Canada)
Overheard:
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“Your job is a collection of activities that allow you to add value to the world.” — Todd Henry in Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day The Marketplace November December 2014
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Money scrubber Sending money across the pond used to be relatively simple. Not anymore. Rising corruption and terrorism have muddied the water for charitable organizations.
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currency partners. Then came the rise of global terrorism, which dramatically altered the banking system and brought everything under intense scrutiny. In Canada, anyone transferring money on a regular basis soon gets to be on intimate terms with FINTRAC, a government watchdog that monitors international transactions to detect money laundering, fraud and the financing of Sheri Brubacher with many currencies she has exchanged. terrorist activities. To operate in today’s climate means being subject to a whole new range of guan cordobas. Clients ranged from reporting and monitoring procedures. Save the Children and Canadian CoBrubacher does not come This new global reality has douoperative Association to Mennonite across as someone of interest to the bled Brubacher’s work load. She now Central Committee and War Child Royal Canadian Mounted Police. For spends a lot of time studying anti-corCanada. Altogether the transactions the last 15 years she has worked as ruption reports and keeping up with exceeded a hundred million dollars. the foreign currency exchange and external audits and compliance issues. For MEDA, the service provides compliance officer for MEDA Trade, a two benefits. One, it helps clients She has to patiently educate clients, for-profit MEDA subsidiary that prosome of whom are small charitable (including MEDA affiliates) to maxivides currency remittance services to mize their funds to boost impact on organizations that may bristle at what international non-government orgaseems like unwarranted intrusion the ground. Two, the modest spread nizations in Canada. By using bank MEDA Trade charges can end up pro- into their affairs, and help them get and trading connections cultivated in the habit of providing appropriate ducing revenue which gets recycled over many years, it can offer savfiles to federal monitors. back into MEDA’s own programs. ings on money transfers as well as For example, if more than MEDA Trade dates back to the innovative ways to convert U.S. and $100,000 is being sent to an individuearly 1990s when Jerry Quigley set Canadian funds into local currencies al, confirmation is required from the up a way to broker “debt swaps” for in more than 125 countries. sending organization that the recipient developing countries. By the time Last year Brubacher handled is not a Politically Exposed Foreign the global debt crisis abated, MEDA more than 2,000 transactions for 33 Person (PEFP) such as a politician Trade was known for efficient curclient agencies who needed funds rency transactions and began offering or senior civil servant. Even within converted to conventional currencies a foreign exchange service. It could MEDA, anyone who has check-signing like euros, yen and British pounds, authority has to be documented if easily do so because it understood or “exotic” currencies like Kenyan they are a PEFP. If they are a PEFP, developing countries and had forged shillings, Ethiopian birr and Nicarafurther due diligence is required. relationships with reliable New York heri Brubacher was startled when an official of Canada’s national police force suddenly showed up at MEDA’s office in Waterloo, Ont., and asked to interview her and get a copy of her photo ID. She of course complied, taking a break from her usual routine of sitting in front of a computer screen and processing global money transfers. His visit was an ominous sign of the times in today’s world of global terrorism.
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Pushpins show some of the 125 countries where MEDA Trade has transacted foreign currency conversions.
“Some clients just shake their heads when I tell them what they have to provide,” says Brubacher, who admits to being frustrated on their behalf for all the effort that is needed to prove they are legitimate. “Everything we do is under a microscope, and we have to prove it over and over again.”
Some of Brubacher’s time is spent “scrubbing.” That doesn’t mean “laundering” but rather being able to document for the authorities where money is coming from and where it is going. “Our whole database is checked daily against terrorist and sanction lists,” she says. “If we didn’t do this, our banks wouldn’t deal with us.” In the financial world, MEDA Trade is known as a “money service business” (MSB) and as such gets a lot of scrutiny. “What’s being demanded of us is far more than in the past,” Brubacher says. Some of the work is outsourced to companies that have come into being to perform these functions. Every day, all the information in MEDA Trade’s financial database gets compared to a series of suspect lists to see if anything matches. These lists can change overnight. “Recently we’ve started to get hits from Russia,” says Brubacher. She is also duty-bound to report anything suspicious to the government and to the RCMP. Why, one might wonder, would the feds care so much about a seemingly non-threatening agency like MEDA? As it turns out, charitable organizations are watched closely.
“Believe it or not, a lot of money laundering and fraud goes through charitable organizations,” says Brubacher. “They’ve been a hiding place for funds.” Some banks are so wary of this “suspect sector” that they’d prefer to avoid contact with MEDA Trade because it is owned by a charitable organization and deals with other charitable organizations. All this means piles of extra work that Brubacher never had to do previously. “It’s the cost of doing business,” she says.
MEDA Trade charges a small
spread for currency transactions, but much less than traditional transfer agents charge. With more than 2,000 transactions a year, worth a total of $104 million U.S., even a small spread adds up. Some years MEDA Trade manages to contribute a sizeable sum back to MEDA. For Brubacher, that is part of the win-win. “The client gets a good rate, and any profit we make goes back to serving the poor again,” she says. She acknowledges that MEDA Trade isn’t the only way to move money. A client can simply use a bank and pay a bigger fee. There are also “foreign exchange boutiques” which do not have a mandate of serving the poor and also charge higher fees. MEDA Trade can give Canadian agencies a better deal because it has access to the trading floors of several major banks while the agency might only have access to the local bank branch with its higher fees. Moreover, clustering several trades entitles 7
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MEDA Trade to a volume rate. Another benefit is that working through MEDA Trade gives agencies a documented audit trail showing the exact rate of exchange at the time of the transaction and complete documentation from the banks. Many banks, if asked to send to a remote place, will just send U.S. dollars — which likely means a
“Some clients just shake their heads when I tell them what they have to provide.” second fee when the U.S. funds are converted again. Also, each conversion necessitates additional accounting steps. “When we send, say Kenya shillings, it simplifies bookkeeping for our clients,” says Brubacher. “It means more money ends up going to the beneficiaries rather than being spent on fees and additional accounting costs.” Brubacher sees her work through the lens of MEDA’s mission to create business solutions to poverty. Beyond the tedium of reports and number crunching, she knows that even a routine wire transfer has a human face on the other end — a family getting access to good water, a sick child receiving treatment, a small farmer receiving technical aid. In each case she is helping other service agencies to amplify their work while also earning extra revenue for MEDA. ◆ The Marketplace November December 2014
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Radical with a cause How a young college prof caught the business bug and ended up starting this magazine Businesspeople in central Kansas took notice, 60 years ago, when a young scholar showed up and began asking pointed questions about faith and economics. What happened next would have an impact on Mennonite business for years to come, illustrating how clashing ideologies can be resolved productively. The account is based on Cal Redekop’s memoir-in-progress.
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al Redekop arrived at Hesston College in the summer of 1954 for his first teaching position (social science). Full of idealism and energy, he challenged his students to think about traditional church positions on issues such as church authority, nonconformity, women’s roles — and especially wealth and materialism. By the time he took a break for further studies, “1960s fever” was emerging on campuses across the country, and many students were protesting the “establishment.” Redekop felt the tension between market capitalism and Christian faith, and was particularly troubled that the individualism and self-interest he saw in capitalism didn’t mesh with Jesus’ teaching to “love thy neighbor.”
Freda Redekop, left, was the thoughtful presence who helped her husband (right) temper idealism with reality.
“Armed with more sophisticated intellectual weapons, I returned to the campus with a freshly minted Ph.D from the University of Chicago in the fall of 1958,” Redekop recalls. “I expressed these convictions in my college and Sunday school classes. I semi-consciously reflected the increasing challenge to the status quo that was emerging in America.” Students ate it up but not every-
Excel Industries, then a producer of tractor cabs, embraced the young academic and urged him to put “skin in the game.” The Marketplace November December 2014
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one else in the surrounding Mennonite community was pleased. Hesston was seeing its own renaissance with the growth of local businesses, including a bank, auto dealership, turkey processing plant and lumberyard. Hesston Corporation was just beginning to make big waves. It was begun by an energetic Lyle Yost, who recruited a group of eager and dynamic young businessmen. It would become one of the largest agricultural equipment manufacturers in the U.S. “Prosperity was in the air,” says Redekop, “and it was intoxicating.” Rumors began to spread in the business community of a “young radical” at Hesston College who was questioning capitalism. When Redekop was invited by local Mennonite churches to lecture on “The Christian and Business,” he eagerly accepted, and proposed that Chris-
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tians were called to a life of service, that material wealth was to be used for the benefit of others and that selfish accumulation of wealth was in-
Redekop’s critique created a stir among people like Lyle Yost, whose new company would become one of the
local businesspeople.” He and his wife Freda talked it over. Perhaps he had been too radical and needed to more deeply consider other perspectives, Redekop mused. “How I could keep my growing convictions yet maintain a relationship with the community was not clear.” Freda urged Cal to get involved in a business so he would have more credibility and could not so easily be brushed off as naive and inexperienced. He had already learned to take her counsel seriously. “Throughout our marriage Freda’s sage advice and support often helped me retain my idealism yet deal with reality,” he says.
done for a young academic with graduate school debts and no savings.
Redekop conferred with his
friend Daniel Kauffman, business manager at Hesston College. Soon they had a plan, an entrepreneurial one, no less. They would buy an old house that had just come on the market, spruce it up and sell it for more. The two men and their wives took out a loan to buy the house and went to work. “We had fun and fellowship cleaning, repairing and repainting the house,” Redekop recalls. “We sold the house for $6,000 within several months. Soon thereafter I walked
largest agricultural manufacturers in the U.S. compatible with the Christian life. He used the classic biblical text about a camel and the needle’s eye, and if that wasn’t enough, nailed down his argument with the story of the rich man who built bigger barns and thus lost his life. “This bracing tonic immediately aroused lively discussions,” Redekop recalls.
One response was from Lyle Yost, who found it all hard to swallow and promptly paid a visit to Hesston president Tilman Smith to complain. Yost, chair of the Hesston College board at the time, implored Smith to “constrain this radical who has no experience in the real world.” Smith gamely held his ground. As long as Redekop maintained moral and intellectual integrity “I will stand by him,” he said, but still wasted no time calling the young professor into his office to suggest he cool his rhetoric. Redekop was shaken. “I loved my teaching job at Hesston College,” he says. “I did not want to become alienated from it nor from the Hesston Mennonite Church, nor from the
Redekop (front row, second from left) joined the Excel board and gained quick familiarity with the growing pains of a small company.
Accordingly, Redekop went to see John Reschly, who with Jonathan Mast had a young company (then called Hesston Industries) that made tractor cabs. He asked if he could become a “listener” in their company and learn how businesses run. To his surprise Reschly welcomed him warmly. “I didn’t think an ‘academic’ person would be interested in our humble business,” he said. But Redekop would have to “put some skin in the game.” Buy stock, in other words. That would be easier said than 9
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into John Reschly’s office and plunked down Freda’s and my half of the profit, $1,000, for 100 shares.” Reschly blinked. “To be honest,” he said, “I did not expect to see you come back.” A lively learning curve awaited the new stockholder. The young company (later renamed Excel Industries) was an early leader in a rapidly expanding combine and tractor cabs market. It had all the typical growing pains of a small company. “Every day brought new crises,” Redekop recalls. At the first meeting Redekop atThe Marketplace November December 2014
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tended he was appointed chair of the committee of five owners. “You are better at managing an ordered meeting,” they said. His relationship with the new venture altered when Redekop was invited by D. Elton Trueblood to a new position at Earlham College, Richmond, Ind. But even at a distance he remained a board member for many years. “I left part of my heart at Excel Industries, having tasted some of the excitement and challenges of starting something new,” he says. “My exposure to business had become extensive, and I became more and more interested by the concrete and challenging intersections of faith and business. I was beginning to like the stimulation and challenge of developing a business, and tackling the unpredictable.” In time Redekop would write and publish The company continued to widely on business ethics and faith ... and flourish and instigated sowould become the founding editor of The cially conscious employee and Marketplace magazine. customer relations, including employee profit-sharing bonuses and setting, and the programs did not survive Redekop’s later departure. 10% pre-tax profit contributions to Teaching at Goshen College the Mennonite Foundation. (1967 to 1976) gave Redekop a chance to further pursue these He found he liked interests. In 1969 he was instrumental in creating Church Industry and the stimulation Business Association (CIBA), an organization of Mennonites involved and challenge of in a wide variety of businesses, from small service types to major supportdeveloping a business ing firms like Sauder Corporation, Shenandoah Equipment and Hesston Corporation. At the initial organizaand tackling the tional meeting in Chicago, Redekop got his own dose of “young radicals.” unpredictable. Students from nearby Mennonite colleges were skeptical of this “capitulaAt Earlham (and later at Goshen tion to the establishment” and staged a protest. (Some later had a change College and Associated Mennonite of heart and became members.) Biblical Seminaries) Redekop continCIBA (later called Mennonite ued to pioneer issues of business ethIndustry and Business Associates) ics such as an “Internship in Indusmerged with the earlier Mennonite try” program for theology students and other courses. Not everyone was Economic Development Associates to form the present MEDA in 1981. The warm to the idea of bringing the combined organization supported world of business into the seminary The Marketplace November December 2014
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Redekop’s vision for a “business ethics journal” and invited him to become the first editor of The Marketplace, then subtitled “A Journal for Christian Business and Professional People.” “My participation in these business-related activities opened up growing relationships with businesspeople, and I began to become less skeptical that business and the Anabaptist faith were totally incompatible,” he says. Still, he did not see business and Anabaptism as one cloth. The connection needed to be informed and led by robust Christian faith.
Another related area
of work was the status of the environment. Redekop believes fervently that human “dominion” of the earth as mandated in the Bible has been tragically misunderstood. “The created world is indeed a most generous garden, to be lovingly nurtured and tended so it can be shared, not ravaged or exploited for personal gain,” he says. This became an area for both business and scholarly attention. In 1976, while employed at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kan., he launched a new company called Sunflower Energy Works Inc., which developed thermal solar collectors that would be widely used in central Kansas. When he moved to Waterloo, Ont., in 1979 to teach at Conrad Grebel College, he spearheaded a similar company there. After retiring from teaching he worked with the Environmental Task Force of the Mennonite Church and produced the book Creation and Environment: An Anabaptist Perspective on a Sustainable World (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). Few Mennonites have written more widely on business ethics and faith than Redekop. Throughout his academic career, alongside editing The Marketplace, he undertook numerous research projects relating to business. In the late 1980s he inter-
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viewed more than a hundred Mennonite entrepreneurs across the United States and Canada, which led to the publication of Mennonite Entrepreneurs, published by Johns Hopkins
Is it good enough to act as ethically as possible within the system, or should Christians try to change the system? University Press in 1995. He and his son Benjamin then produced a book taking an in-depth look at 11 Mennonites and their businesses, published as Entrepreneurs in the Faith Community: Profiles of Mennonites in Business (Herald Press, 1996). He also continued to write articles in journals, magazines and books relating to Anabaptist principles in the economic arena.
In all these efforts one can see the “young radical” of more than half a century ago wrestling with how to shine the light of Anabaptist faith into the economic arena. While early convictions that so inflamed some members of the business community have not dimmed, Redekop’s approach has softened and he has widened the conversation. “One basic point of reference for me is simply the straightforward ethical teachings of Jesus regarding human compassion, economic behavior and amassing of wealth,” he says. “Though they seem overly simple, they are profound and express absolutes. Jesus’ parable about the rich farmer who hoarded his wealth and built bigger barns needs no exegesis as far as I am concerned. It’s clear as a bell. The man’s soul was lost because of his materialistic greed.” What has not changed in 50 years is that wealth, for all its good
uses and benefits, has a pernicious way of seducing and entrapping people in lifestyles that can be unwholesome, he insists. “When people succeed, they assimilate the values and perspectives of the new status. Without the help of the ‘ethical community’ the drive for the lifestyles, security and power wealth brings will usually triumph.” Wealth itself is not evil, depending on how it is gained and then shared with others, Redekop believes. “My involvement in the world of business has sensitized me to become more understanding of the problems humans face in the human (i.e. economic) production, distribution and consumption of goods and services, which are absolutely necessary for the survival of humanity.”
Now retired in Harrisonburg, Va., (his wife Freda died three years ago) Redekop looks back on a rich career that took a decided turn when he and the Hesston business community confronted each other and took decisive actions to work together as fellow members of the Mennonite church. “My activity in business has been a highly rewarding and important part of my life and it has expanded my horizons immeasurably,” Redekop says. “I have tasted the exhilaration of dreaming up a venture, making the jump and taking the risks and challenges, and the satisfaction of seeing it succeed.”
“I left part of my heart at Excel Industries,” says Redekop. The company, still based in Hesston, is a leading manufacturer of Hustler turf mowers.
But, he adds, any economic system that does not limit human selfishness and environmental plunder is contrary to the Christian gospel. “The fundamental issue, which has never been fully solved, remains: Is it good enough for Christians to act as ethically as they can within the economic system in which they operate, (even if it is based on a philosophy of self-interest) or should they also be involved in changing the 11
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system as much as they can? I believe Christians are called to the latter.”
He looks back fondly on the late Lyle Yost, who challenged him early in his career and who also mellowed over the years. “We became good friends, and respected each other’s basic integrity and commitments,” says Redekop. When carried out in the spirit of the New Testament, he observes, a clash between different orientations and perspectives can have life-changing positive consequences. ◆ The Marketplace November December 2014
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Ukraine:
Moving ahead despite uncertainty The usual challenges of development pale next to the ravages of civil war
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unning a development projregions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and were driven to a nearby forest and ect can be grueling at the thus was not an immediate danger to eventually released. A former MEDA best of times. Civil war can MEDA staff located farther west. But staff member had been in the same make it nearly impossible, some days staff in Crimea were told store earlier in the day. as MEDA found in Ukraine this year. to stay home because of escalating The turmoil and uncertainty has While daily events in that region’s hostilities. complicated plans for the second conflict alarmed readers across the Fear tactics still keep former phase of UHDP, says Nigel Motts, diglobe, they nearly paralyzed those in staff on edge. In late summer armyrector of Private Sector Development the field. dressed personnel burst into a store – Agriculture. “We had hoped to be The turmoil was sparked in in Melitopol and kidnapped several able to leverage our resources and spring when Russia annexed Crimea, customers saying they were being experience from all the work we did in Crimea, to expand to other locatraditionally held by Ukraine. This recruited for the war. The detainees disrupted but did not erase the gains of MEDA’s Ukraine Horticultural Development Program (UHDP), whose first phase got 7,000 farmers working together to produce better crops and market them more profitably. A second phase (see sidebar), financed by the Canadian government, aims to strengthen small businesses (like processors and exporters) that support farmers. Also affected was the progress of Agro Capital Management (ACM), a leasing company started by MEDA to equip small farmers with appropriate technology. Fighting between Ukrainian troops and Russian rebels was conOne achievement of UHDP was to get farmers — who after years of repression had develcentrated in the eastern oped a distrust of each other — to work together.
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Russia’s retaliatory ban on imports may have a hidden benefit by strengthening markets for local farm commodities. tions, but ground has been lost and we can’t count on continuing clients. Nonetheless we continue to operate.” One upshot may end up helping clients of UHDP’s second phase. Russia’s retaliatory ban on agricultural imports (such as pork and horticulture products) from countries that
New leasing opportunities brought technology, such as simple greenhouses, within easy reach of farmers who could not previously afford it.
have imposed sanctions (Canada, the U.S., and the European Union) implies such commodities must now be sourced elsewhere. Ukraine remains Russia’s accessible, price-competitive source of supply for the horticul-
Phase Two gets $19 million MEDA is partnering with Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada (DFATD) to extend and expand business development of horticulture markets in Southern Ukraine. This $30 million initiative is made possible through a $19 million DFATD contribution, announced by the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. The remaining $11 million will come from various partners, private investors and MEDA itself. Over the next seven years, the Ukraine Horticulture Business Development Project (UHBDP) will expand and extend the achievements of the UHDP, which MEDA operated from 2008 to 2013. The new phase will operate in the Southern Oblasts of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolayiv and Odessa and will seek to benefit 44,000 small and medium horticulture farmers and small enterprises. MEDA anticipates that small farmers assisted by UHBDP will have collectively expanded their horticulture sales to 50,000 metric tons valued at $40 million annually by the end of the project. Ed Fast, Canada’s minister of international trade, said that despite the turmoil in Ukraine Canada continues to encourage sustainable efforts to create prosperity for Ukrainians. “Our efforts are focused on helping to create opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises in key sectors such as agriculture, through improving business practices, increasing access to markets and financing, and creating jobs,” he said. ◆
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ture products to be supported under UHDP’s next phase. Pragmatism may well allow such trade between Ukraine and Russia to continue, creating opportunities for UHDP’s farmers. The impact of the conflict most directly hits ACM, which was recently sold to private investors connected with MEDA. With the seizure of Crimea, Ukrainian banks with whom ACM worked were shut down. On the advice of MEDA’s security staff, key ACM personnel abandoned their homes in Crimea and moved their families and office to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Financial operations have suffered as normal bank transactions have been severely curtailed. Loans cannot be enforced and courts cannot pursue action. Russian leaders have decreed that Crimean citizens (including ACM clients) do not have to repay Ukrainian debt. Enforcing Ukrainian property rights remains uncertain. Nearly half of ACM’s portfolio was in Crimea, and that is in jeopardy. ACM is working with clients on repayment options for early repayment and offering discounts for paying out early. ◆ The Marketplace November December 2014
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Dream on Managers can be an employee’s most important developer
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f you are a boss, is it your job to help employees fulfill their dreams? Most employees want careers that are purposeful. How much should employers help make that happen? “Nobody wants to find themselves in a dead-end job,” writes Bob Robinson, editor of The High Calling, a website on work and faith. “We want to be allowed to dream of better things.” Robinson quotes Monique Valcour’s comments on the Harvard Business Review blog: “Job seekers from entry-level to executive are more concerned with opportunities for learning and development than any other aspect of a prospective job. The vast majority (some sources say as much as 90%) of learning and development takes place not in formal training programs, but rather on the job — through new challenges and developmental assignments, developmental feedback, conversations and mentoring. Thus, employees’ direct managers are often their most important developers.” The burden, says Robinson, is on leaders to help people to fulfill their dreams. He sees it as an investment that eventually pays off. Like a venture capital investor who puts money into a start-up company, the initial financial outlay yields returns in the future. Likewise with employees — investing in them upfront enables them to flourish later. “This takes effort to know who people are and what they dream to be,” he writes. “This requires a longterm vision of what will be needed for each person and for the institution to thrive, but it pays off in the end for both.” The Marketplace November December 2014
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Robinson points to Google’s well-publicized policy to allow its engineers to use a fifth of their work time on personal interests that have company relevance. This produces dual benefits. The engineers gain more satisfaction from their work and utilize their gifts to produce new technologies for Google. Gmail was one fruit of this policy. For him, the issue has spiritual relevance. Christians who toil in a broken world can do their part to bend hard realities to something more in tune with a biblical vision — to work for righteousness in the
Can Christians in a broken world be helped to bend tough realities toward a biblical vision? midst of evil and to show compassion to hurting people. The question then becomes, “How can employers provide that to their people so that when dreams are shattering, there remains hope for a better tomorrow?” Robinson recently shared other writers’ stories of managers who help employees grow. Taking care of your people Investing in people actually is good for business, writes Bill Hendricks, president of The Giftedness Center which specializes in organizational effectiveness and individual career guidance.
He quotes a founder of The Container Store: “If we take care of our people, our people will take care of our customers. And if our people take care of our customers, our customers will pretty much take care of everything else.” This retailer, with some 70 stores nationwide, tests applicants to see how they are likely to perform. Once hired, the company devotes 50 times more hours per year than the standard in the retail sector to train and develop each employee. The company believes that most workers genuinely want to give their best effort and that their personhood has to be taken seriously in order to make that possible. Hendricks says any strategy for adding to the bottom line has to ask how each individual in the company has been designed by God to add value. “As a leader, don’t assume people know how to answer that question. Most people have, at best, a very rudimentary understanding of their giftedness — the way God has designed them. The burden is on leaders to help people to dream about how their work matters and to discover their giftedness in order to fulfill those dreams.” This includes positioning each person in a job that fits their skills, and then resourcing them with an environment that optimizes their capacity. Hendricks also points to Hawaiian Falls, which operates five waterparks in Texas and employs mostly young people in their upper teens during its summer season. CEO Dave Busch says an important part of his mission in business is to build the lives of young employees, helping them develop maturity, a good work ethic and valuable experience. To
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this end he has full-time staff for employee development, professional coaches to provide leadership training, and chaplains at each park to attend to the personal and spiritual needs of both patrons and staff. He believes that if he cultivates the gifts of his staff, they will create an outstanding customer experience, which means more families coming through the turnstiles, and more often. A boss who made space Aspiring writer Billy Coffey took a job at a gas station so he could meet people and get story ideas. The gas station was full of stories “all wrapped up in the flesh and blood of the crowd of people who walked through those doors and handed me money every day. The rich and the poor, the saved and the cursed, the cheats, the ‘no-counts,’ the broken and the mended. I met them all. At some point, we all need to top off
How has each individual in your company been designed by God to add value?
The day his world crumbled the tank in the family car. Gas is the great equalizer.” One day Coffey’s boss caught him jotting ideas down in his notebook. He told him that from now on he could have an hour for lunch. “I’ll make sure you don’t get interrupted so you can do your scribbling,” he said. “The other eight hours you’re here, you’re paying attention. Right?” For several years Coffey pumped gas and filled notebooks — “the greatest education I could have.” He will always appreciate the boss who created space for his dreams. “You would be amazed at the lengths people will go to in order to
Dreams in cubicles
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arents like to encourage their children’s dreams and help them believe they can be anything they want to be. It’s harder to do the same for themselves, their coworkers and employees, writes Roxanne Stone, vice-president of publishing at Barna Group. Many working adults have seen too much of the daily grind and the politics surrounding their work. When Stone described a new job to a friend she was startled to be asked about her greatest hopes and fears for the assignment. “When was the last time you asked yourself what hopes and fears you have for the work you’re doing right now?” Stone asks. “If you are a supervisor, when was the last time you allowed your employees to infuse their dreams into the work they’re doing?” Many people long for a dream job, but maybe that’s not the point. “Maybe the point is to bring our dreams to the job,” Stone says. “Dreams live in children. But perhaps, if we allowed them to, they could also live in our work cubicles.” Stone likes to ask people, “What are your hopes and fears for a particular project you’re working on right now? What would it look like for you to ask your coworkers or employees that same question? How could their answers inform the project and/or the work each is personally doing on it?” ◆
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help you reach your goals,” he says. “You will be more amazed at the tiny things you can do in order to help others reach theirs.” Coffey has since written four novels. He makes sure his old boss gets a copy of every one.
A caring boss put new life into Dan King’s dreams the day his child was diagnosed with diabetes. “The idea of giving our toddler son two to three insulin shots and pricking his tiny fingers six to eight times every day to check his blood sugar levels was overwhelming,” King writes. “My wife was devastated. I had to be the rock. Diabetes felt like a death sentence to me, so I wasn’t sure how I could keep a positive outlook.” In the midst of his hopelessness, the phone rang. It was his boss. “Dan, take as much time as you need,” he said. “Don’t worry about your projects. You take whatever you need in order to get this settled.” The boss had had a similar experience with his own son. “He understood exactly what we were going through,” says King. “He gave me every phone number I could possibly need for him and his wife, so that we could call them anytime we needed to. He was determined to make sure I knew they were there for us. That was the moment when the ground beneath me stopped feeling so shaky. That was the moment when I was able to look at the rubble all around me and know that I would be able to start rebuilding.” That was 10 years ago. King not only was helped to get through a personal difficulty, he also learned that people are more important than projects. “My projects could be resumed whenever I was ready to come back,” he says. “Until then, they were on hold.” ◆ The Marketplace November December 2014
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In good hands It was their business, their ministry, their legacy. It wasn’t something to pass on to just anybody.
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t’s a dilemma faced by many who start a business they love. They pour their lives into it, then one day have to make difficult decisions about succession. If family members are waiting to take over, the choices may be easier. But what if the next generation feels called in a different direction? That’s the prospect faced by Levi and Lillis Troyer when the time came to find new owners of a retirement community campus that had been at the core of their lives for decades.
Lillis and Levi Troyer at their home overlooking The Meadows, an independent living community at Walnut Hills. (Photo by Doyle Yoder Photography)
Retirement Community stretches back to the legendary Emanuel Mullet (Lillis Troyer’s father) and the many Ohio businesses he created. Mullet was a consummate entrepreneur with a brain for business and a heart for helping people. He got into senior housing when a motel came up for sale and Mullet wanted to convert it into a nursing
home. “He had the feeling that we ought to help elderly people,” says Levi, who at the time was just about to marry Lillis. “He asked us if we would be interested in joining him. I had a little inheritance money, and Emanuel matched that. We went to the bank for the balance.” “When we opened in 1961, we did a little bit of everything,” says Lillis. “We were really young. People used to come in and ask Levi for the manager.” She laughs. “He was the administrator and managing partner.” They started Shady Lawn Nursing Home with 39 beds. “We worked our tails off, worked all the shifts,” says Levi. Within six months it was filled. They added 11 beds and built a new dining room. Later they added another 50 beds.
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The story of Walnut Hills
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They bravely navigated the learning curves, like regulations and inspectors. “We had to grow into that,” says Lillis. In the meantime, a passion for senior care took root. One day they visited the Walnut Creek area of Ohio and were smitten by its beauty. They promptly bought a 64-acre farm, on which the retirement community now sits, and sold Shady Lawn. Walnut Hills Retirement Community started in 1971, first with 50 beds, then a hundred. One day as Levi and Lillis walked through the facility it struck them that a lot of elderly people there were still active and didn’t require much care. “They were misplaced in a nursing home,” says Levi. “Assisted living was new then. So we decided to build a retirement home that would
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require less money and less care. We’ve been growing ever since.” One of his enduring memories is the trust people placed in Walnut Hills, and how energizing that was. “When we saw how the people accepted us and trusted us and put their confidence in us, that was huge for us. People were looking for a place they could trust, and we were able to go the extra mile and do things that other places weren’t doing.”
“It’s been more ministry than business, even though we were successful, business-wise.”
then, but don’t miss it now.” In another case, an employee had passed bad checks and was facing jail. Levi went to bat for her. He wrote to the judge: “We need this person and we’ll look after her and make sure it won’t happen again.” That was more than 30 years ago. “That person never wrote another bad check,” says Levi. “And worked for us for a very long time.”
of that is a participative style of leadership. I don’t think people will give you their best unless they feel they’re an integral part of the team.” He learned that from father-inlaw Emanuel Mullet. “He gave me a lot of space.” Levi gives much credit to his employees, more than half of whom have Amish or Mennonite background. Their work ethic and values were an employer’s dream. “Our absentee rate was one
Walnut Hills Retirement Community photo
When they reached their mid-60s the Troyers began wondering Theirs was one of a few what was next for their family and privately-owned retirement commufor the institution. They knew “doing nities in Ohio. Most were non-profit succession right” was not a matter of and church-related. Walnut Hills magic. “As the old saying goes,” says was often confused with a non-profit Levi, “an important measure of sucbecause of its forthright Christian cess is how you pass it on.” principles. By now Walnut Hills had become Walnut Hills, with 250 residents, a substantial capital intensive enteris located on a picturesque 110-acre prise with a significant investment hillside campus. When it came into in infrastructure and a considerable being the area hadn’t yet beoperating budget. Over come a tourist mecca, says the years the Troyers David Miller, who managed had left their money in the facility for 28 years. But it so they could continue to develop the that was about to change. campus with low debt. “People liked the area; it was an appealing place, a Their other business innice place to live. Some peoterests in the hospitality ple came back regularly to industry (such as Der Dutchman restaurants) visit and ended up deciding had done very well. to retire here. Most of the independent living people They began to study are from 30-60 miles out. It succession. They called has become well-known as a in family business conscenic, safe place.” sultants to help. First they looked at Walnut Hills was what was right for the “People were looking for a place they could trust, and we much more than a business family. One son had were able to go the extra mile and do things that other for the Troyers worked in the busiplaces weren’t doing,” says Levi Troyer. “It was our baby, our ness for some time and ministry,” says Levi. there was hope others would also get percent,” says Miller. “People show In nearly three decades of workinvolved. After some processing it up. They’re dependable. They have ing with them, David Miller saw that compassion.” became clear that family succession conviction lived out. “It’s been more was not the way to go. That can work both ways. ministry than business, even though “At Christmas banquets I would Miller remembers an employee we were successful, business-wise,” tell staff they could rest assured that who was diagnosed with cancer and he says. this place was never going to pass soon faced a $100,000 medical bill “I have always felt that it’s a into strange hands; it was going to for a stem cell transplant that wasn’t Christian businessperson’s responstay in the family,” says Levi. He covered. “The Troyers said to pick sibility to create an environment laughs. “And I was dead sure that it up,” he says. “That person is in that is fulfilling and meaningful to was going to happen. We wanted to remission, employed and healthy. It people,” says Levi. “One dimension pass on the goodwill and friendships was money well spent. We missed it 17
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to the next generation, and we naively thought that’s what they wanted, too. But we discovered that’s not where the family was at.”
The next step was to look for
Family succession had been their hope, but that wasn’t to be.
various parties worked together. Said one, “What a picnic to put things together for you people because you have the same goals and want to be fair to each other.” Walnut Hills has now been under Greencroft’s operation for six years. David Miller remained as president for the first two years of the transition. He is now a charitable services representative for Mennonite Foundation/ Everence Financial in Kidron, Ohio. “The transition worked very well,” he says, noting that Walnut Hills recently began work on a $3.5 million, 17,000-square-foot rehabilitation center with 20 private rooms. Greencroft CEO Mark King agrees. “We’re pleased with how it’s
Doyle Yoder Photography
an appropriate business model that would preserve their core values showed interest. At that point Greeneven without family involvement. croft had five facilities in northern InThey brought in consultants to get a diana, with 900 employees and 1,700 bead on the future of long-term care. clients. While the money would be “They told us a lot of things we less than if they sold to a conglomdidn’t want to hear,” says Levi. erate, Walnut Hills would be able The business model for the next to continue its program, expand its generation was likely going to be dif- values, and be a community churchferent than what had worked so well related non-profit organization. thus far. Baby Boomers were coming “It seemed like the timing was along with new demands for differright for them, and for our family,” ent kinds of specialized programs says Lillis. and more private rooms, all of which would require substantial capital. “So we started thinking about selling,” says Levi. One option was to sell to another private institution and give up control. This might have brought top dollar, but what if the buyer just stripped it down and completely changed the culture they had worked so hard to build. “Meeting with three different conglomerates didn’t help our unease,” says David, their son who was deeply involved in the Last year the Troyers donated a pavilion (background) to the Walnut Hills campus. From left, David Miller, longtime former manager; resident Paul Ankrim, primary mower and whole process. park caretaker; and Levi Troyer. “We always walked working out,” he says. out of there just about feeling sick,” This is the option they finally King gives much credit to the says Levi. “While there would have chose. Greencroft did not buy it Troyers’ philanthropic spirit, since been more money there were never outright but contributed its experthey not only discounted the price any good answers about how they tise and financial muscle to form a would operate, or who would opersignificantly but also contributed new Ohio not-for-profit corporation, back to the new organization as ate it, or whether they would just which has a long-term affiliation their commitment to its strength and re-sell it. They never had any good with them for management expertise survivability. answers for long-term operation.” and support. Observers say the TroyLevi and Lillis Troyer live adjaers left a sizable amount on the table Another model was to work to make sure the institution can grow cent to the campus and remain active within the long-term relationship and thrive, and thus perpetuate what in advising on big picture campus they already had with Greencroft enhancements. They have no regrets was important to them. Communities of Goshen, Ind., and In the final analysis, even the big about the route they finally chose. reorganize as a not-for-profit. They They know their legacy is in good city lawyers who handled the transwere pleased when Greencroft hands. ◆ action were impressed by how the The Marketplace November December 2014
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A gospel of grit Why would God’s Word care about a cranky spouse or a mouthful of gravel?
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ur society loves to graze, to nibble. Many popular eateries now specialize in tapas rather than fullcourse meals. I decided to follow this when asked to speak at a reception. I used soundbites borrowed from great people of the past. Since I am not burdened by any need to hold an original thought, I am content with the wisdom of others. I told the audience that I was about to share, in compressed form, the sum total of everything I had learned in life. (Some of them then expected a time of complete silence.) For example: • From the playwright Anton Chekhov: “Any idiot can face a crisis — it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.” • From the eminent Haitian philosopher B. Boku: “When in deep water, it is a good idea to keep the mouth shut.” • From Travis McGee, prominent American social theorist: “It is amazing how long it takes to complete something you are not working on.” • Then there’s this Chinese soundbite that appeals to a Mennonite sense of thrift: “It is not economical to go to bed early to save the candles if the result is twins.” Believe it or not, the Bible also has soundbites. We call them proverbs. The Book of Proverbs is loaded with tidbits of wisdom for everyday living. Our churches usually don’t pay much attention to Proverbs. That’s too bad. The Book of Proverbs has a special role in that it reflects the human side of Scripture. How could we doubt the humanity of a writer
who gives us Proverbs like 21:19 — “Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome spouse.” And then a few chapters later, with growing frustration, tells us that a cranky spouse is like the constant drip of water. The role of Proverbs is to be a connecting link between God and the ordinary activities of life. Here is a book that clearly grasps the risks and perversities of daily life but still calls us to something higher. Here is where the grit of life comes together with the glory of transcendence. Look at the day-to-day business instruction we get in Proverbs:
Out of this homespun wisdom comes the serious truth that God is in everything. • “Do not quarrel with anyone without cause.” (3:30) • “How long will you lie there, O lazybones?” (6:9) • “The Lord abhors dishonest scales, but accurate weights are his delight.” (11:1) • “Have no fear of sudden disaster.” (3:25) • “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.” (14:23) • “Food gained by fraud tastes sweet to a man, but he ends up with a mouth full of gravel.” (20:17) • “‘It’s no good, it’s no good!’ says the buyer; then off he goes and boasts about his purchase.” (20:14) 19
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• “Like vinegar to the teeth, and smoke to the eyes, so are the lazy to their employer.” (10:26) Then there’s a political proverb (4:27): “Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.” Here’s one you won’t hear in any sermon: Proverbs 14:4 — “Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty, but from the strength of an ox comes an abundant harvest.” What does this mean? “Yeah, you can have a clean barn, but what will that get you? No oxen, no manure. But if you want a harvest, you will have to put up with some mess.” Why would this part of the Bible contain such earthy material? Out of these homespun bits of wisdom comes the serious truth that God is in everything. God doesn’t dip into human life for Sunday morning and then take off for the rest of the week. God isn’t like a bear who hibernates for six days and wakes up to wander into our lives on the seventh. God is present in the frantic activity of daily, ordinary existence. God’s Word cares about the ordinary activities of daily life. Like making a living. Like entrepreneurship. Like creating jobs. Here’s a suggestion: Why not look for the places where God is present in your job or industry. Make up a Proverb about the work you do from Monday to Friday. Put it on a plaque and hang it in your workplace. The daily grind of the marketplace is more important than we often think. Our work matters to God. — Bartholomew Wiens The Marketplace November December 2014
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Soundbites
The hours we squander Ever wonder how much time you waste on telephone trees? (Or are you too hip to use a telephone?) “Your call is important to us....” (But not important enough to answer in person.) “Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed recently....” (How is it possible that so many companies have had to change their menu options? Or do they just buy these comments from Excuses ‘R Us?) The trees can be taller in Canada, where many offices greet you in both English and French, then add, “For service in English, press One....” By then 20 seconds are gone, plus those wasted on reciting office hours, telling you how important you are and letting you know that the call “may be monitored for training purposes.” A treed company may protest — “it’s only a minute.” Uh-huh.
Multiply that by thousands of callers and it adds up. You can feel the sand falling, grain by grain, in the hourglass of life. In his biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson relates an incident from the early days of the Macin-
tosh computer. Jobs, known as a despotic fussbudget, complained that the Macintosh operating system took too long to boot up. “If it could save a person’s life,” he asked one of the engineers, “would you find a way to shave 10 seconds off the boot time?” The engineer conceded that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and sketched some figures. If five million people used the Mac, and it took 10 seconds less to turn it on every day, it would add up to three hundred million hours per year that people would save, which Jobs calculated was equal to a hundred lifetimes saved every year. The engineer was impressed — and motivated. Within a few weeks he managed to trim not 10 seconds but 28 seconds off the boot-up time. It is amazing how much less time we’d waste if we put our minds to it. Brian Tracy, professional development trainer, has written, “One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not to be done at all.”
Cool phone I sometimes wonder what our world would be like if Alexander Graham Bell had invented the telephone years after someone else had come up with e-mailing, texting, tweeting et al. “What, you mean I can actually talk to someone directly instead of punching out all my little mis-spelled messages on this stubby little keyboard? How cool is that?” — Dan Turner in The Globe & Mail
Zap the trash God has chosen to order the world in such a way that our food isn’t just miraculously zapped into our refrigerators each day. Clothes do not grow on trees, nor do our houses assemble themselves. The trash The Marketplace November December 2014
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we produce doesn’t just magically disappear each evening. And human society doesn’t naturally remain ordered. All of this happens through the process we call “work.” And we love other people by helping make all of these things happen. — Sebastian Traeger and Greg Gilbert in The Gospel at Work: How Working for King Jesus Gives Purpose and Meaning to our Jobs
Loners? Contrary to the fabled lore of the lone genius slaving away in their studio loft, occasionally gracing the public, then returning to their space to crank away at their masterwork, most of the great work that’s accomplished is done in the context
of a community. Very few people are able to stay aligned and engaged without others in their life to help fuel their passions. — Todd Henry in Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day
jobs. Quit talking about poverty. — Clarence Louie, chief of the economically thriving Osoyoos Band in British Columbia, in The Globe & Mail
First Nations jobs
[T]he good news of the gospel ... has deep implications for the here and now. It has implications for morality and education, for politics and justice, for art and music, for business and finance. In all those areas and more, God calls his children to new perspectives which, like the new birth itself, may at first seem foolish. But the more we keep exploring them, and the more we learn to trust God’s ways in all those areas of life, the more he makes sense to us. — Joel Belz in World magazine
I keep telling government they should concentrate on economic development and then we wouldn’t be in this mess. The original treaty relationship was a business relationship. It wasn’t a dependency relationship.... Even at the national level I never hear the national chiefs talk about that. They always talk about poverty. What is all this talk about poverty? You’ll never get rid of poverty without jobs. Talk about
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Making sense
The Marketplace November December 2014
10/20/2014 5:52:24 PM
News
New Collaborative MBA gets underway at Bluffton A new Collaborative MBA program, offered by Bluffton (Ohio) University, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va., and Goshen (Ind.) College, got underway with a week of residency at Bluffton in late summer. Thirteen Bluffton University business professor George Lehman (right) addresses members of the first cohort adult students in the new Collaborative MBA program that teams Bluffton with Eastern Mennonite University and from as far Goshen College. away as Iowa, Washington, D.C., and Ontario participated in an Faculty from Bluffton, EMU and Gos- said Bluffton business professor George Lehman. orientation to the program, interhen will each teach three of the nine Initial comments were positive. acted with professors through video courses via videoconference. Stu“I think I’ll have more courage to conferencing, and took a class on dents will take the remaining three speak about my values,” said Free“Leadership for the Common Good” courses, in their respective concenman Edwards of North Ridgeville, led by Bluffton business professor trations, from the institution where Ohio, who had considered other George Lehman. they are offered. Program concenMBA programs but thought this one The one-week residency was trations are leadership; health care seemed “the most ethical.” the beginning of a two-year journey. management; accounting and finanMarsha King, Goshen, Ind., saw Most of the program will now be cial management; leading nonprofits; the Collaborative MBA as “a bridge” taught via interactive videoconferconflict transformation; sustainabilbetween her Mennonite background encing. ity; intercultural leadership; and a and her corporate work in medical The curriculum is based on the self-designed concentration. device sales. She said the residency concept of “leadership for the comStudents came from diverse provided a community experience as mon good,” emphasizing six values backgrounds and ages (28-69). Mark a group with “connected values.” ◆ — spirituality, community, leading Leinbach, for example, is executive as service, justice, sustainability and director of SpringHaven Counseling global citizenship. Center, Dundee, Ohio. Doug Zehr is Students will jointly take nine a Foosland, Illinois, farmer who will of the 12 courses in the program. soon start a job with Orrville, Ohiobased Venture Products Inc. Dominique Burgunder-Johnson directs Comments? online campaigns for the National Visit our new online home at Wildlife Federation in Washington, Would you like to comment on www.marketplacemagazine.org, D.C. anything in this magazine, or on any where you can download past The event was planned to alother matters relating to business issues, read articles and discuss and faith? Send your thoughts to low group members plenty of time topics with others, all from your wkroeker@meda.org outside class to “bounce significant desktop or mobile device. day-to-day issues off each other,” The Marketplace November December 2014
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Churches urged to curb short-term mission trips Millions of people participate in short-term mission trips (STMs) each year, to the tune of $1.6 billion. And while STMs provide an opportunity to influence how Christians think about poverty, missions and the poor, the methods they use may
end up harming poor communities and the ministries that work in them. So say Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, co-authors of the new book Helping Without Hurting in ShortTerm Missions (Moody). People who count the full cost of short-term trips
Top-10 list of “happy jobs” for this year’s crop of grads You’ve heard of David Letterman’s top-10 list; here’s a list that claims to show the 10 “happiest jobs” for the graduating class of 2014. It comes from CareerBliss, a job search and review website. Its data analysts pored over 25,000 independent, anonymous employee reviews sent in over a three-year period and ranked jobs in which young professionals claimed to be the happiest. These were: 1. Java developer 2. Embedded software engineer 3. .NET developer 4. Medical technologist 5. Quality assurance engineer 6. Credit analyst 7. Management consultant 8. Network engineer 9. Data analyst 10. Web developer The reviews focused on job elements that tend to affect “work happiness,” including managers and coworkers, encouragement and rewards received, opportunities for professional growth, company environment and culture, workflow and day-to-day responsibilities. Older readers may not recognize some positions. The top-ranked job, for example, is Java developer, which has to do with programmers who use the specific language of client-server web applications. It’s a field that has
been projected to grow 22 percent between now and 2022. “Technology is constantly morphing, leaving great opportunities for new and rising talent,” says Heidi Golledge, co-founder and Chief Happiness Officer of CareerBliss. ◆
Management Faculty Vacancy Eastern Mennonite University announces a full-time assistant or associate professor in tenure-track faculty position in Management beginning mid-August 2015. Ph.D. or D.B.A. in management, marketing, or related field of business; university teaching experience; managerial experience in business or other organizational setting. Teaching responsibilities (typically four courses per semester) include all levels of undergraduate courses and possibility of teaching at the graduate level. Preference will be given to those with teaching expertise or experience in Management Information Systems and/or Quantitative Decision-Making and Research Methods. In addition, other courses will be determined based on need and candidate preference. Applicants must have a strong commitment to high quality undergraduate teaching and be enthusiastic about mentoring and advising undergraduates. Engagement in ongoing scholarly activity and departmental and university service is expected. Nine-month contract, salary determined by education and experience. EMU uses a tenure-with-review contract system. Send letter of application, curriculum vitae, transcripts (unofficial acceptable), and three letters of reference to Dr. Deirdre Smeltzer, Vice President & Undergraduate Academic Dean, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA 22802. http://www.emu.edu. ugdean@emu.edu Applicants will be acknowledged by letter or email. Review begins immediately. Applicants will be asked to respond to questions specific to EMU’s mission after the initial inquiry. EMU reserves the right to fill the position at any time or keep the position open. AAEO employer.
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might find themselves thinking they could better advance the gospel by staying home, the authors say. “We should consider trimming our spending and scale of trips, and instead giving that money to proven, trusted organizations that are engaged in effective, asset-based development work via local churches and workers,” they write. The authors caution that mission jaunts can devolve into power trips as western visitors see all the things the poor lack and think they can meet those needs. “We forget that God created them with gifts and abilities that they can use to improve their own lives,” say Corbett and Fikkert. “Trips need to be reformed, not destroyed. The key to making trips worth the investment is situating the trip as merely one piece in a longer learning experience, moving participants forward in long-term engagement with missions and effective poverty alleviation.” ◆
The Marketplace November December 2014
10/20/2014 5:52:24 PM
The Marketplace November December 2014
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