Where Christian faith gets down to business September October 2022 MEDA restructures for growth ahead A challenging year for farmers Career bliss through ice cream BikewithRepairspurpose:shopteachesyouth job skills
A few years ago, in the fall of 2019, he was a cordial host to this writer at his Harrisonburg home. He was eager to discuss MEDA and a range of other topics.
Asking insightful questions about MEDA’s commitment to mitigating the effects of climate change in its programming, he urged that even more be done in that regard. His interest in solar power, both personally and in business ventures, was initially ahead of its time. But it arose from a deep conviction that humans have misunderstand God’s command to have dominion over the planet.
“I would hope the (2022 MEDA convention) theme would include the concept of entrepreneurship as being applicable to religion, politics and society (including academics!) They are equally good and bad movers and shakers.”
Rest in peace, Cal. This “tragic yet beautiful planet” is a little poorer after your passing. .
Cal Redekop with his Nissan Leaf and battery-powered cycle, both of which were fueled by the solar panels on the roof of his duplex (Russ Eanes photo) Challenged to consider other perspectives, he became a board member and shareholder in Excel Industries. That Hesston-based firm grew to become a leading manufacturer of premium commercial and residential turf equipment. His concern for faith and business integration led to the founding of the Church Industry and Business Association. CIBA was based at Goshen College, and he edited their quarterly newsletter. CIBA later merged with another group to form the Mennonite Industry and Business Associates. By 1980 his newsletter had grown into an early version of The Marketplace magazine. Up until the last few months of his life, he was suggesting new projects. He offered to adapt parts of a book he had written decades earlier for a new article for The Marketplace.Hiscorrespondence included apologies that declining health prevented him from attending MEDA’s annual convention.
Remembering a modern Renaissance man
In an April email, he wrote that health concerns would mean that he would not “be able to travel, or even exist in November on this tragic yet beautiful planet!!’’
Freda and Cal Redekop. As is the case with many entrepreneurs’ partners, Freda did much supportive behind the scenes admin work for Cal.
Cal Redekop, who died in July at the age of 96, will be remembered by many as an academic, author and founder of this magazine. He was all of those things, plus several other passions and talents rarely found in a single individual. Environmentalist. Serial entrepreneur. Philanthropist. Deeply committed church member, and arguably a prophetic theologian on matters of business ethics and faith.
2The Marketplace September October 2022 Follow The Marketplace on Twitter @MarketplaceMEDA Roadside stand
“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 said. Less known is the number of businesses he started or invested in. For many years, he worked on new ventures during evenings and weekends, eventually handing them off to others to run. Those entrepreneurial efforts might have surprised his early students. Or people who heard him suggest in Mennonite churches that selfish wealth accumulation was incompatible with the Christian life.
Sweet career success Chemical engineer Ajoa Mintah (at right) finds the right formula with Four All Ice Cream. (Photo by LOF Photography) MEDA to shift its corporate structure Governance changes proposed to allow for more impact. Flexibility for all Serial entrepreneur launches aluminum firm to improve customer service. Shorter good reads 22 Roadside stand 24 Soul Enterprise 22 Books in brief Features61915 In this issue A hard row to hoe War in Ukraine, soaring prices for supplies and supply chain delays are creating a challenging year for farmers. 19 3 The Marketplace September October 2022 Steve Brenneman demonstrates a button customers can use to order extruded aluminum.
One resident, Gerry, a former boxer, would say to me, “Tommy, photo by Margo Head
All the time. Once he had one while my father held him on his lap, there, at the kitchen table, at the window. That’s where Bert, unexpectantly, remarkably, pushed out his life’s last, exhausted breath. It was like a punctured bike tire. My father held him for some time. It was just the three of us. My father’s first wife, my mother, had died some years earlier. She never saw that garden. So my father, with help, was a single dad. But when he later remarried, when I was best man, it was a good time to talk about it, this farmer’s perspective. You put a seed in the ground. It dies. Cracks open. The rain comes. So does the sun. Then something new, which needs constant tending, grows. Finally, the harvest. The concept relates to all sorts of life matters. Like, say, your vocation. Or relationships. And salvation itself. Jesus loved to use the agrarian imagery for his teaching. “A man bought a field,” or “A farmer scattered some seed,” or “The fields are ready for harvest, but where are the workers?” Then, to make sure we got the point, Jesus went off and died. Went into the ground. Cracked open. Spilled his own blood to redeem the curse of Eden, that first garden. Not all of this came to mind when I spoke at my father’s wedding. But some did. And to mark the occasion, for a wedding gift, I gave him a golden hoe. It was just a garden hoe from Canadian Tire. Nothing special. Some gold paint did the trick. But it’s a tangible reminder of those garden memories. Thirty years on, I’m told, it’s still somewhere in that old home. Funny enough, long after I left the garden, I lived and worked in East Africa, for 12 years, with my own family, in Uganda, just one
4The Marketplace September October 2022 Soul Enterprise
Living and giving thanks with a farmer’s perspective
Five houses, with yards and children and all that, now sit where we’d grown carrots and beets and potatoes and cabbage. The rambling house that was home — an old 1870s estate home — still stands, but with difficulty. Most rooms now have neither occupancy nor life. When you’re growing up, a garden, like everything, seems even larger. And even though, when I was very young, I’d apparently tell people “When I grow up, I want to be a father and a farmer,” the truth is that the garden was not a favourite spot. For one, that supersized plot was hard to maintain. The weeds seemed as large as Douglas Firs. Other activities, I reasoned, should be filling my days. My father thought differently. It wasn’t just the garden. He worked on the house also, for decades, his tools often in hand. It was all part of our family business, a so-called rest home. We took in people who fell through the cracks and had no home of their own. Some were old. Some weren’t. Some had psychiatric issues. Most had no family, or no family that cared. Food from the garden — at harvest it went into freezers for winter — was food for supper.
In this 2016 photo, Thomas Froese is with his son Jonathan in the garden of their former Ugandan home. promise me that you’ll never go into boxing.” He worked that garden until his hands calloused. Stephen, later, helped. He died one Easter Sunday. Other residents were less capable. Walter had kidneys shot from drink. Donna arrived in her 20s, her brain somehow fried already. Others made an entire church choir of outof-tuneBertcharacters.hadepileptic seizures.
By Thomas Froese
My father taught me to have a farmer’s perspective. We weren’t farmers. Not with a farm. We just had a garden. But what a garden. At times, like in spring during planting, it wouldn’t be unusual for my father and I to work into the night, just the two of us under the moonlight, our hands digging in the cold muck.
Where there is sorrow, bring your comfort, and a renewed belief that the world is a safe place for them.
We all long for safety, especially in times like these. Where there is violence, we need your peace, where there is instability, your calming presence, where there is hatred, your abundant love, where there is suspicion and fear, your assurance. God of great gifts, we long for a harvest of righteousness; equip us to be agents of your kingdom, ambassadors of hope, even in such a time as this.
By Carol Penner
You watch over the sun, whose rays warm us, you order the moon, whose light silvers the night. The seasons follow your guidance, and we give thanks for farmers and their harvests; for the last combines collecting the crops, for golden stubble fields stretched out for a long rest. Even as food is collected and stored, we are mindful of places where food is hard to find; the rains didn’t come, and the plants didn’t grow, or hurricane winds blew the harvest away. Open our hearts to share nature’s bounty with all your children who are in need.
Carol Penner teaches practical theology at Conrad Grebel University College. You can see more of her resourcesworshiponher leadinginworship.com.blog
You know that we care for each other, yet we confess that we love imperfectly, sometimes grudgingly, sometimes with only half a heart. Give us the courage to apologize when apologies are necessary, and to try to do our best, modeling ourselves on Jesus Christ, who gave his whole life in service to others.
Volume 52, Issue 5 September October 2022 The Marketplace (ISSN 321-330) 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 2021 by MEDA. Editor: Mike Strathdee Design: Ray Dirks Postmaster: Send address changes to The Marketplace 33 N Market St., Suite 400, Lancaster, PA 17603-3805 Change of address should be sent to Mennonite Economic Development Associates, 33 N Market St, Suite 400, Lancaster, PA 17603-3805 To e-mail an address change, subscription request or anything else relating to delivery of the magazine, please contact subscription@meda.org For story ideas, comments or other editorial matters, email mstrathdee@meda.org or call (800) 665-7026, ext. Subscriptions:705 $35/year; $55/two years. Published by Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA). MEDA’s economic development work in the Global South creates business solutions to poverty. MEDA also facilitates the connection of faith and work through discussions, publications and conventions for participants. For more information about MEDA call 1-800-665-7026.
We pray for newcomers to country, seeking a new home.
Cover photo of Jacob Brown and Dick Fox by Bike and Sol volunteers nation where millions of people sustain themselves by working land with tools like a common garden hoe. All those garden plots, an economic backbone in a place rich in humanity, where you’ll often hear the children pray, “We’re thankful for the gift of life.” And behind the modest bungalow that was our family’s East African home, I grew a small garden. It gave, for one, some garden time for me and my own son. It comes to mind this fall. Even as it did at my father’s funeral. This is the year we buried Dad Froese. I said a few words. So did others. Then we pushed soil overtop my father. It was spring. It was a simple casket. Just a pine box, at his request, which came from the Mennonite heritage he so much prized. “When I’m in my pine box,” he’d say. My father lived to 90. His life, like that garden, was full. I’m grateful. Books could be written. Stories told. In some other place. .
Thank you for families, for friends, for our church community, offering love and support.
In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen. . Web site www.meda.org Want to see back issues or reread older articles? Visit https://www.meda.org/download-issues/TheMarketplaceisprintedonRollandEnviro®Satinandismadewith100%post-consumersustainablefibercontent,FSC®Certifiedtohelpmeetclientsustainabilityrequirements,AcidFree,ElementalChlorineFree
Thank you for your care for us, for the way you bring people into our lives to love us.
Harvest Prayer in Times Like These
Thomas Froese is a journalist in Hamilton, Ontario. He writes about news, travel, and life. You can read more of his reflections at www. thomasfroese.com
5 The Marketplace September October 2022
Thank you, God, for your care for all creation.
Knowing your care for us, we are confident as we lift up those we love who are grieving, or who face health challenges of various kinds.
Farmers switch crops, livestock plans to cope with price swings, product shortages
By Augusta Nafziger
“We don’t have pigs this year because they eat feed,” said John Mishler, director of agroecology at Merry Lea Sustainable Farm in Wolf Lake, Indiana. “But we did get rabbits because… they can be grazers.”
Mishler is not the only farmer who has switched up his plans this year. As the war in Ukraine and continued effects from the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in inflation and supply chain disruptions, many farmers have been forced to adjust their usual crop rotations and the animals that theyDarenraise.
Good has been running his Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farm for 10 years. In addition to Merry Lea Sustainable Farm switched from raising hogs to rabbits this year due to rising feed costs. They use the meat for staff and students hosted at the farm. From l to r: Goshen College assistant professor Ruth Mischler, Merry Lea farm manager Kaeli Evans, Merry Lea director of agroecology John Mischler.
bystaffLeaMerryofPhotoEmmaZuercher
When life gives you rising prices on feed, fertilizer, and oil — buy rabbits.
6The Marketplace September October 2022
“We didn’t want to deal with the grain price volatility that we knew we’d have with pigs,” he said.
Soaring fertilizer prices, supply chain disruptions challenge US farmers
“In terms of the amount of acreage that producers had maybe planned to cut, fertilize, mow down and build up as far as hay, I think that’s reduced,” he said. “I would really attribute that to fertilizer prices being more or less 100% over what they were last year.”
John Benner serves as the agriculture and natural resources extension agent for Augusta County, Virginia. He first began hearing from farmers about rising fertilizer prices early in the winter of 2022. Prices climbed even further following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
managing 40,000 cage-free laying hens, he owns a seed business and farms 250 acres of crops. Prices on agricultural products, particularly fertilizer, “skyrocketed” following the beginning of the war in Ukraine in late February, he said. “We definitely saw a spike. There was clamoring that nothing was coming into the ports.”
Some Virginia farmers have responded to the high cost of fertilizer by cutting back on hay production, Benner said. On his own farm, Benner is planning for 25 acres less hay than last year.
The price hike has been dramatic. Potash, which is used to supply plants with potassium, had an average price of $879 per ton in the second week of June — up 94% from last year. Nitrogensupplying fertilizers such as urea and anhydrous ammonia saw 81% and 111% increases, respectively.
Other farmers are more hesitant to reduce their fertilizer usage.
7 The Marketplace September October 2022
“In addition to the commodities that Ukraine and Russia export, you also have the impact of Ukraine being an exporter of phosphates and potash,” Benner said. “That definitely contributed to the increase in fertilizers.”
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Good said. “I know if I pull back on my inputs, especially on the fertilizer side of things, I’m going to suffer on the other end. So, so far, I haven’t really pulled back on fertilizer.”Fertilizer is not the only commodity that has soared in price as a result of the war. Good has Pennsylvania farmer Daren Good is concerned about rising fertilizer costs and long delays to get new tractor tires.
GoodMichellebyPhoto
“I felt like, hey, I’ve got to order ahead now,” he said. “That mentality is shifting… Now, we’re having to order way in advance, and that’s a foreign concept to me.”
“All sorts of other things were… at risk of just not being available, and that’s something that we are still continuing to learn and deal with,” Benner said.
Some Virginia farmers are growing less hay this year due to the high cost of fertilizer. John Benner (left and above) is planning for 25 acres less hay on his farm than what he harvested in 2021.
As a farmer and an educator, Mishler struggles to make the right decisions for his farm while “still keeping in mind the folks in Ukraine.”“Oftentimes we’re just told, hey, grain prices are high and that’s going to increase meat prices, right?” he said. “I would encourage folks to look into it and understand a little bit more about how everything functions.”
Other products that Benner notes farmers have been struggling to obtain include implants, needles, syringes and even vaccine appointments for their animals.
Benner noticed farmers in his area of Virginia experiencing similar supply chain delays, particularly when ordering ear tags for cattle identification.
“Just like the Midwest is the breadbasket of North America,” Mishler said, “Ukraine has the same dark organic rich soils that the Midwest has; they’re the breadbasket of Europe. And so it was inevitable that there was gonna be an effect on grain prices.”
Mishler also hopes that the past few months will motivate farmers to begin rethinking where they get their products and how they run their“Let’sbusinesses.putour energy into reimagining a future where this is less likely to happen, rather than trying to get back to some fabled, perfect state that never really existed.” .
As people around the United States and the world continue to experience the effects of inflation and supply chain disruptions from the war in Ukraine, Benner notes that many farmers have been struggling to make ends meet, as well.
“The thing I keep going back to is my good fortune is the direct result of somebody’s misfortune,” he said. “Unfortunately, that’s how economies oftentimes work.”
“The increase in market volatility really makes producers in Virginia, as well as other states, much more hesitant to put out a wheat crop,” Benner said. Some farming supplies have not experienced a significant spike in cost but have become more difficult to find. When Good was inspecting his tractors in the spring, he decided to place an order for new tires — and was told that they would take 16 to 18 months to ship.
“The higher prices that you’re paying at the grocery store for vegetables, fruits, meat, bread… the farmer isn’t quite seeing much benefit, if any, out of that,” he said.
Good is excited to see how much his wheat crop will sell for in the coming weeks — but he is also aware of conditions in Ukraine that are boosting his income.
Because of the high prices of fertilizer and other agriculture products, other countries that might once have been able to double down on wheat production in order to make up for stalled Ukrainian and Russian wheat exports cannot meet the input costs to do so. In the United States, Benner says, some farmers are planting less wheat this year.
“never seen wheat prices like this.”
Worldwide wheat prices for the month of May were up 56.2% from their corresponding value a year earlier. Good says he and many other farmers struggled to place contracts for their wheat crops in the spring. Buyers were hesitant to promise payment amidst market uncertainty.
8The Marketplace September October 2022
“This year I think we put in our order a month ahead, and they really didn’t show up until calving season was just about over,” he said. “We had to go to a couple different retail outlets including our local co-ops and vet services to find the tags that we needed.”
Rising wheat prices come as a result of Russia and Ukraine’s prominent roles in the international wheat market. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Russia was the top global wheat exporter in 2021, with an 18% global market share. Ukraine was the sixth largest exporter, with a 10% global market share.
Reorganizing for growth
9 The Marketplace September October 2022
MEDA is restructuring its governance model for greater impact.Proposed changes will better align with best practices in the international development sector and prepare for unprecedented growth
charity lawyers about best practices over the course of the governance review
Governance changes equip MEDA for greater impact, board members say
Rob Schlegel Crystal WeaverGreg Gaeddert
“Theopportunities.horizonhas a whole lot of growth for MEDA, way larger than we’ve ever been before, taking on bigger projects,” says Rob Schlegel, who chairs the MEDA Canada board.Schlegel has had deeper involvement than most in the governance review that led to the proposed board restructuring. He served as MEDA’s interim chief financial and investment officer for four months following the tragic death of CFIO Orvie Bowman. During that time, Schlegel built on work that Bowman had begun. MEDA consulted leading
Theprocess.proposed changes involve the creation of a new not-forprofit organization (see graphic, next page) that will guide MEDA’s overall governance, strategy and direction. MEDA Canada and MEDA US will be subsidiaries of the new entity. That structure “better adapts to the changing opportunities and the mechanisms, or the methods in which we can grow our impact,” said MEDA US board chair Greg Gaeddert.“Thetentacles of MEDA have outgrown that (existing governance) structure,” he said. MEDA Canada, and MEDA US’s existing boards will continue to provide governance and oversight of the specific projects each organization has made. MEDA’s Canadian subsidiary will remain a registered charity. MEDA’s US subsidiary will still be a 501(c)(3) status non-profit organization.Thechanges put MEDA squarely in compliance with a rapidly changing regulatory environment. They will also position MEDA for emerging growth
wesousnew“WhatdidthatfromBgetsGaeddertopportunities,said.Schlegelagrees.“WhatyoufrompointAtopointongrowthdoesn’tgetyoupointBtopointC,anddoesn’tmeanwhatyoubeforeiswrong,”hesaid.we’veincorporatedinto(thisproposedstructure)willhelpgettothenextlevelandimpactmanymoredifferentlivesthancould’vedonebefore.”Anot-for-profitgovernance
It will simplify governance and “absolutely serve as a catalytic engine” to assist MEDA in its strategic goal of creating decent work for 500,000 people, she said. AS MEDA scales to bigger projects, it routinely will do investments alongside its project work. “Not that it was never done before, but it’s kind of the norm now that you’re going to do that,” Schlegel said. “Almost everything you do (in international economic development) is leaning that direction.”MEDA will work to integrate access to investment, access to markets, and technological enhancements in order to enhance the overall impact of its efforts, Gaeddert“Accesssaid.to capital is a critical part of the equation (of growing businesses and creating decent work).”Project initiatives in Nicaragua have demonstrated the value of that integrated approach.
*Not all entities related to MEDA are depicted above, for simplicity’s sake.
Following implementation of the governance changes all individual members will be members of MEDA (holding company).
theirneedSmall-scalelivestock,producewheresystem,inupstreammid-streamdownstream,andtheparticipants”theagri-foodmarkethesaid.(Upstreamisfarmerscrops,andfish.farmerstoadaptagricultural
The proposed new structure assists MEDA in several aspects of a new phase of growth, said MEDA CEO Dorothy Nyambi.
MEDA’s membership will be asked to ratify the governance changes in November, at the annual convention in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. .
thenewallowsWeaver.boardthingsaboutSchlegelinstitutionalandfunders,said.“I’mexcitedgettingalltheseinplace,”saidmemberCrystal“Ithinkitustodoalotofexcitingthingsinfuture.”Weaverispartofthe US board’s executive committee, nominating & governance committee, and is also a director on the MEDA Canada board.
alongside investments in small and medium enterprises “helps the
Making investments in technology
10The Marketplace September October 2022 structure will provide MEDA with much more flexibility in dealing with both regulators
practices through new methods of production to produce a better quality product, Gaeddert said. The mid-stream participants are firms involved in logistics, processing, and wholesaling. These include the small and mediumsized enterprises that work with small-scale farmers to provide more consistent quality products. This group are critical MEDA partners, implementing quality standards that allow farmers to get better yields and prices for what they produce, he Downstreamsaid. participants are involved in retailing and consumption.)Boardmembers from outside of North America will serve on the overarching MEDA board. That board will become more international over time. “Diversity, whether it’s skills-based, locationbased or experience-based, is beneficial to good governance,” Gaeddert“Havingsaid.representation from other parts of the globe, in parts of the globe that we do work in, seek partnerships in, raise money from… should all be beneficial to a better global governance structure.”
Photos courtesy Bike and Sol volunteers plant used the space until the spring of 2012. The bike shop project started out in a shed, then grew to a construction trailer. In the summer of 2016, an area high school student did a project to collect bikes for Bike and Sol. When she gathered 78 donated bikes, “we didn’t know where to put” all the inventory, Roth recalled. That was a tipping point, with the community centre making way for a shop inside the former church building.“That’s how I got to that spot, and the school just kept sending me students.”Thosestudents were given the opportunity to earn a bike by completing a 15-hour bike maintenance training course. More importantly for Roth, the program taught those young people how to work. Roth thinks Bike and Sol is one of the few, if not the only, places in the US that “will teach a middle school kid how to work and give them a job reference for their first job.”
“It’s huge for a 14 or 15-year-old that goes to get a job that they can say they’ve got skills, and there’s an organization that says: yeah, Bike and Sol founder Scott Roth (right) helps Abby Nace repair a bicycle.
Pennsylvania’s Bike and Sol teaches youth how to work
Starting a bike shop was never part of Pastor Scott Roth’s plan for doing ministry.Inaddition to working with a church, he was heading up a community centre for at-risk students in East Greenville, a small town in Pennsylvania.southeastern“Wedidn’texpect to turn into a bicycle shop. People kept showing up wanting their bikes fixed.” Given all of those requests for help, the community centre needed to get bike parts. Roth contacted a large bike parts distributor who informed him that before he could get parts, he needed to have a bike shop. That meant getting insurance, a brick and mortar building, plus signage.Signage required a name. Several people sat around, discussing and discarded several names before coming on the idea of sun and bikes. Eventually they settled on Bike and Sol. That name includes a reference to the sun (Sol) and a play on words given that Sol is close to soul, a nod to an entity headed by a pastor, working out behind a formerBikechurch.andSol is now located in a church building that was a place of worship for the Ebenezer Evangelical congregation until the mid-1990s. A Mennonite church
11 The Marketplace September October 2022
A bike shop with a mission
Roth has been the public face of Bike and Sol. The 46-year-old married father of two gives about 20 hours a week to the shop, Wednesday through Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings, in addition to his full-time work as pastor of Line Lexington Mennonite Church. But he wasn’t trained to fix bikes when the program started. It was a friend, Dick Fox, a retired auto and bike mechanic, who offered to teach kids how to fix bikes. Fox is still working at the bike shop seven years later, and the cohort of adult volunteers has grown to 15.
Scott Roth is an entrepreneurial pastor. Bike and Sol has turned this former church building into a space where youth learn job skills.
September 2022 12
If Scott Roth seems more entrepreneurial than the average pastor, he comes by it honestly. His father was a real estate agent. His grandparents ran a snack bar at a farmers’ market in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, and at an auction house where Roth frequently hung out as a child. A neighbor had a thriving orchard.“Iwas around that,” Roth recalled. “Business was like, always around me. It was just part of life.”
12The Marketplace September October 2022 we taught them, they know how to answer a phone, they know how to talk to people, they know how to work in a team environment.”
As student programming moved to the YMCA, the former church gradually became the home of the Bike and Sol bike shop.
Roth has hopes of expanding the Bike and Sol model, internationally as well as in the US.
“We’re in talks with some people in Puerto Rico right now, and the Dominican Republic … We (also) have a vision to get electric bikes into Native American reservations.”Heisalso excited about the possibility of working with an organization that “puts programs in schools, like what we do, but it’s an actual curriculum in the school.’’ .
After graduating from Messiah College in 1997 with a business information systems degree, he had several jobs in the private sector. Roth worked as a technology and internet consultant, as a store manager for the GameStop video game chain and as a sales trainer for Univest, the Souderton-based banking organization. His sense of calling to youth ministry led him to volunteer, then move into part-time and full-time churchWithinwork.a few years of becoming a pastor, his sense of social entrepreneurship following a tragedy meshed with community need. After a student committed suicide, Pastor’s entrepreneurial streak developed early in life consultations with the local school board revealed three local needs: an afterschool program for kids, a community centre and a nonprofit that could bring these all Whentogether.achurch building became available, Roth helped to launch after-school programming. He enlisted high school students to do the majority of the renovations the former church needed.That project thrived for several years, until the local YMCA built a large $22 million facility. That project, while much needed in the community “essentially put me out of business,” he said. “There was no way I was competing with a lobby that was bigger than the whole (church building) property.”
“The other piece that’s been good from a ministry standpoint for me as a pastor, is bringing people from my church into the shop. To teach them what vocational ministry looks like.” Roth doesn’t tell people that they should come work in the shop, “but I want you to see how I work the shop and see how you can be the pastor of your workplace.” .
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Bike and Sol's original motto was: "Bicycles fix everything. We fix bicycles."
Bike and Sol works with about six to seven students a week during the school year, double that during summer months. Roth thinks what the shop has done can be replicated. He also admits to having scared off some people once they realize “it’s not something you can turn on and off.”No one person can make a go of the shop, as it requires various skills, he said. “You gotta make it a lifestyle. It takes work, especially if you’re teaching kids, because it’s not like guitar lessons. .. They can only practice there (at the shop).” .
“It was always my attitude that you have to earn the right to be heard,” he said. “When you’re in a (former) church building, it starts conversations, (as people say) ‘I wonder if everybody is rolling over in their graves that the bicycles are where the pews should be’.”
With mental health issues on the Relational pastoring through bike repairs rise, the act of bicycle riding can be an uplifting experience, Roth said. “What we’ve learned is, people ask questions for advice from us because we’ve been in theirRothlife.” has built spiritual relationships with people who approached him in times of need that he never would have met outside of the shop. “That was our common ground.”
The shop’s original motto was: “Bicycles fix everything. We fix bicycles.”
13 The Marketplace September October 2022
When Roth tells people that he is an ordained minister, some think that is funny.
“But the biggest thing for us is that people’s bikes, there’s some people that it’s just recreational, for other people it’s a way of life. And when you are servicing their way of life, you’re servicing their life too.”
Bike and Sol is one of the few places, if not the only, place in the US that “will teach a middle school kid how to work and give them a job reference for their first job.”
Some of the graduatesprogram’sreturn to volunteer as well. In early 2020, Roth’s game plan was to launch a church plant out of the bike shop, but then “everything got kids’happensbikeandindustrytime,months.shopstudentstheylockdownsweird.”Pandemicmeantcouldn’thaveintheforabout18Atthesame“thebikeexploded”“webecameashopthatjusttohavetheprogram.”Theshopended
up buying inventory from several bike shops that were closing, increasing Bike and Sol’s inventory 20-fold. As pandemic restrictions eased and students started returning, Roth found that some students wanted to volunteer but didn’t want to be bike mechanics. He has involved some in computer work, including one girl who takes pictures for the shop’s eBay account and checks out customers who have bought bikes.
— Scott Roth
When Pastor Scott Roth is dealing with clients in the Bike and Sol bicycle shop, he prefers to let his actions do the talking.
Dorothy Nyambi and Sunoko Lin speak at a business leaders summit. were sent through WhatsApp to clients without health insurance. With 643 clients affected by COVID, MiCrédito also redesigned their loan processes, so that clients could contact a call center to arrange for delivery of a loan in cash by a driver, similar to a pizza delivery.
Dorothy Nyambi spoke about how social impact boosts business, which can happen when business people integrate their faith and values into their work.
TRACE Worldwide represents U.S. manufacturers of products for airplanes such as seating, overhead bins, wheels, and brakes, and introduces them to foreign markets. In the history of the company, their business has shifted from Europe to Japan and more recently from Russia, (when they received a cease and desist order March 1 from the U.S. government due to the Ukraine invasion), to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. Lin noted that while COVID is unprecedented, it created opportunities for those who cared to look and move fast.
After the assembly, Lin, who is Mennonite World Conference’s treasurer, hosted a business leaders’ summit. That event aimed to start a movement among Indonesian business leaders to create socialHeroimpact.Wijayadi, a business leader from the host church, JKI Injil Kerajaan, spoke on doing business via digital transformation. One of his companies provides a digital platform for small florists, allowing them to increase their sales.
14The Marketplace September October 2022
By Carol Eby-Good Mennonite World Conference’s assembly in Indonesia in July provided many opportunities for some of MEDA’s managers to build relationships with Mennonites from the Global South.
Jabri talked about how GBRI’s business exporting horticultural produce completely stopped for eight months, as most of their customers in Europe were in lockdown. GBRI has now used their cold storage infrastructure, set up with MEDA’s support, to diversify from only exporting vegetables to include selling bananas in Tanzania. The firm now sources fresh bananas from 3,000 small-scale farmers in two regions in northern Tanzania and have opened another branch in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city and financial hub. It distributes ripened bananas to 1,200 vendors, most of whom are women. GBRI also added avocados to their portfolio and have 2,000 farmers supplying avocados. Lin explained how his company has had to shift three times.
Business leader and evangelist Frits Triman gave a testimony on integrating Christian faith into his business practice. He shared his vision for his life, to be a present to God. His mission is to live a holy life, serving God and people. .
Discussing business challenges on a global scale
Dorothy Nyambi, MEDA’s president and CEO, took part in panels both during and after the assembly, which had a theme of following Jesus together across barriers. During the gathering, she facilitated an online workshop entitled business and faith in a post-COVID world. The session focused on experiences of several businesses during the pandemic and now.Panelists were Veronica Herrera, CEO of MiCrédito, Nicaragua; Hadija Jabri, managing director GBRI, Tanzania; and Sunoko Lin, chief financial officer at TRACE Worldwide Corporation. They discussed the disruptions in their respective business sectors and how they were able to find opportunities among the challenges theyEachfaced.panelist told stories of resilience and pivoting to new product offerings or new markets. MiCrédito, a MEDA partner, is a financial institution that reaches underserved populations in both urban and rural Nicaragua. Herrera described how MiCrédito staff developed MEDIPHONE, a product to respond to clients’ fears of traveling from their rural area by public transportation to receive medical education about the pandemic.Everyweek, educational sessions presented by a medical doctor
Carol Eby-Good is MEDA’s constituent engagement manager, based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
photos by LOF Photography Four All staff in the Waterloo store (L-R) Alice Kreinen, Marisa Paterson, Ajoa Mintah, Emma Leuty
15 The Marketplace September October 2022
Frozen treats for all Chemical engineer finds happiness, success in a second career making ice cream
For Ajoa Mintah, the road to entrepreneurship started a long way from her eventual destination creating and selling tasty frozen treats. Mintah is founder and CEO of Four All Ice Cream, which has a factory in Kitchener, Ontario, and a retail “scoop shop” in neighboring Waterloo.TheOttawa native started her career as a professional chemical engineer in 2001. Her parents, who came to Canada from Ghana, placed a high value on education.
In high school, Mintah had no idea what she wanted to do for a career. Being good at math and sciences, she decided to study engineering at University of Waterloo. She thought that she could decide later what to do professionally.Duringher co-op studies, she worked in manufacturing and production. “It was all valuable experience, but none of it really sparked anything in me.” Her first job was working for a plastic injection moulding firm, developing car interiors, working with Ford engineers. “My job was to take what the design was and make it work.” It was a “fun but stressful” experience, which she enjoyed because working from concept to finished product allowed her to be creative.Mintah married her husband while working there. Eventually she decided that they both shouldn’t be working at the same firm in case something happened to that company.
Focusingbusiness.onfinding her personal passion, she considered what would both bring joy and what she would enjoy learning. Given her love for food, she decided: “I want to make food.” She sought out mentors in Kitchener-Waterloo who were “doing something neat.” Surveying the food scene in Waterloo Region, she was impressed with the easy access to farms and small craft food firms. Eventually, she decided that she would make ice cream. The first step was learning how to make ice cream. She enrolled in the ice cream university course at University of Guelph in late 2016. After completing the program, she understood the technical aspects of what she needed to do. Her vision was for making ice cream that would be local, natural, and Formindful.Mintah, making mindful ice cream means understanding ingredients, understanding who her customers are, as well as what they want and need. As a chemical engineer, her self-described superpower is understanding “what has to be in it, and nothing else.”
16The Marketplace September October 2022 That decision led her to move into consulting, work she also excelled at, and was promoted. Eventually, that firm was bought out by a largerShecompany.worked long hours, too hard, leading her husband to ask why she was working so hard. If he had hoped to convince her to slow down, the message didn’t get through. “What I heard was, if I’m going to work this hard, I should own it (a company).”Realizing that she wasn’t happy in what she was doing, Mintah started her entrepreneurial journey. Knowing that engineering happiness in her own life would require reflection, she quit her job to think about what she wanted to do. She knew that she loved being creative and making things but wasn’t sure how to turn that into a
During the first half of 2017, she found a building to rent, built it out, set up her equipment and got what she thought were the necessary approvals from public healthSheofficials.started making ice cream, but soon came up against a major hurdle. “In October, I found out that everything I had done was illegal.”Ontario’s dairy industry is highly controlled. Only the province can give approval to a new ice Ajoa Mintah is the founder and CEO of Four All Ice Cream
Mintah’s original plan was to make ice cream three days a week, deliver to businesses on Thursdays and “sell a bit” through a small retail counter on weekends. Public health officials were dismissive of her chances of success in an out-of-the-way location behind a former shoe factory in central Kitchener. “Good luck,” they told her. “This is a weird location. Nobody’s going to show up.” The doubters were wrong. “Everybody showed up,” Mintah said. “We were busy from the second we opened our doors to the public.” With no marketing background, she realized that she didn’t know how to do retail and decided to try otherHerlocations.nextretail effort was a 10foot by 10-foot space at a building that has space for emerging tech companies. She described that one year venture as a learning opportunity about making business deals “and ensuring that they work for you.”Next, she got an opportunity to use a space in downtown Kitchener as a summer-only “pop-up” location. That left her feeling more confident about running a retail location, so she began looking for a permanent site. Mintah found a space in the heart of UpTown Waterloo and held her grand opening on March 13, 2020. The store was open for about 10 days “and then we weren’t (due to the COVID pandemic.)”
Initially the company used dry ice, then they got a freezer van. Working as a wholesaler meant that Four All was able to keep operating.
The Four All name has several meanings. Given that Mintah’s oldest daughter can’t have dairy, she wanted to develop products that would ensure “there is always going to be a choice for everybody.”
Four All typically features 16 types of ice cream in rotation at any given time. The company has sold over 200 flavors since its inception.Thissummer, the company’s website listed four core flavors “that aren’t going anywhere” –vanilla bean, chocolate milk, salted caramel, and strawberries & creamplus a dozen “get them while you can” rotating flavors. Mintah’s favorite flavor, surprisingly, is vanilla. “There are no secrets. There’s nothing to hide behind with vanilla.”
The company has a strong commitment to sustainability. It purchases carbon offsets, and sells halflitre containers in returnable glass jars, with a refundable $1 deposit. It also has a strong social media presence, with more than 18,000 followers on Instagram. Recognizing the visibility Four All has built, Mintah decided it seemed responsible to “use our voice for good.”
Mintah also thought about developing four distinct categories of flavors, one to suit each of the four members of her family. Her husband enjoys classic flavors, “nothing weird.” There are dairy-free flavors (sorbet or coconut milk-based) for one of her daughters, and nostalgia or childhood-themed flavors for another
Finally,daughter.thereis a foodie category that she created for her own interests. “I do want something (for sale) that maybe you have never heard of before.”
“The most sampled flavor, but never bought flavor, was sausage and sauerkraut. Everybody tried it, but nobody bought it.”
Four All has a donate button on its website, inviting community groups to apply for donations. “My honest feeling is that we are where we are because of the community,” she “Ifsaid.we are able to give back, we will give back.” .
Mintah was thrilled by the number of people who wanted to buy gift cards and support her business, without knowing when they would be able to redeem.
Finally in 2022, Four All is able to enjoy a full summer season serving retail customers hungry for its special ice cream products.
The firm has 10 employees year-round, and 31 between May and “There’sSeptember.still a lot more to learn, but I think that’s the path of every entrepreneur,” she said. “You learn every single day.”
Commercial orders also came in at a surprising rate. “Really, I hadn’t figured out how I was going to get it to them (retailers), once they ordered it.”
Asked about the weirdest ice creams that she has ever developed, she recalled being asked to make four Oktoberfest-themed products for Kitchener’s Oktoberfest event.
Four All’s website was built on the Shopify e-commerce platform, with a view “that one day, way in the future, I could sell ice cream online.” That future arrived much quicker than she envisioned. The company needed to open an online store to sell its products to retail stores and gift cards to people who enjoyed her products.
17 The Marketplace September October 2022 cream manufacturing venture. Mintah was discouraged and wanted to give up. Her husband encouraged her to persist. She contacted the provincial ministry of agriculture and food to learn what she needed to do in order to make her operation legal. Understanding the changes that were necessary, she retrofitted her space over what she described as a “six month hiccup.” Her mother, a retired lawyer who used to work for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, helped her understand the rules.
Carissa Rempel, who works as a talent acquisition and public relations specialist for Vidir Manufacturing, will discuss women in manufacturing. Vidir has more than 200 employees and was chosen as one of Manitoba’s top employers for recentlyauthorRoth,entrepreneurshipcarbonizationexplainingclimateBrentPennsylvania2022.entrepreneurAlderferwilltacklethecrisisinasessionwhyhebelievesde-isamoralimperative.JohnD.RothwilldoasessiononandAnabaptism.awell-knownMennoniteandprofessorofhistory,tookonanewroleto
supportingtheCEOintegrationgeneratedbusinesstriumphsthatseriesCo.recentintegrationnessThursdaytheFaithfulUniversity’sdirectornutritionthehasForandyoungfoundationtheNigeriaAfrica.&mentpubliccognizeddevelopmenthasspeaker,SaturdayPennsylvania.evening’skeynoteNdidiOkonkwoNwuneli,over25yearsofinternationalexperience.Sheisare-serialentrepreneur,author,speaker,andconsultant.Nwenuliworkedasamanage-consultantwithMcKinseyCompanyintheUSandSouthThenshereturnedtoin2000tobecomeexecutivedirectorofathatsupportsentrepreneurstostartgrowtheirbusinesses.thepast14years,shefocusedontransformingAfricanagricultureandlandscape.JoannFlett,executiveatSeattlePacificCentreforBusiness,willdeliveropeningmessageonevening.TheCenterforFaithfulBusi-isaleadingthinktankontheoffaithandbusiness.Theorganization’sfocusinyearshasbeenFaith&Thisprojecthasproducedaofshortdocumentaryfilmshighlightthestrugglesandofpeoplelivingoutastheircalling.Ithasalsoanonlinecourseontheoffaithandbusiness.KenHochstetler,presidentandofEverenceFinancial,willbeSundaymorningspeaker.Hochstetleriscommittedtoandenrichingcommu-
18The Marketplace September October 2022
A Friday lunch plenary session on food security will explore the risks in our global food system and what they mean for entrepreneurs. As always, the convention will feature thought-provoking seminars related to business, faith, and international development.
• Unlocking the potential of youth entrepreneurship in the Global South will describe the importance of agriculture to rural development. It will explain why 30 percent of MEDA’s efforts to create decent work for 500,000 people by 2030 are aimed at encouraging youth to enter the agriculture sector. It will also discuss significant challenges that need to be addressed to engage youth in the sector and ensure their success.
Convention venue The Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square is central to downtown Lancaster and integrated with a world-class convention centre. It is located within walking distance of many entertainment and trendy dining venues. .
Other workshop sessions will explore:
Celebrating entrepreneurship is the focus of MEDA’s 2022 convention. The event will be held November 3-6 at The Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square in Lancaster,
In praise of the entrepreneurial spirit
• the connection between servant leadership and forgiveness.
MEDA staff will lead seminars related to important issues in the world of international development:
• gender lens investing: changing the landscape of investment in the Global South • the stewardship of creativity: reflections on beauty, transformation, and Mennonite entrepreneurs.
• A partnership approach to equipping entrepreneurs will explain how partnerships are evolving. MEDA staff will explain the organization’s approach to partnerships. They will outline how partnerships will be used strategically to shape projects moving forward, and how this will better equip entrepreneurs for success.
spearhead publisher MennoMedia’s Anabaptism at 500 initiative.
The Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square nities. He serves on the boards of two local organizations in Goshen, Indiana. A past treasurer of MEDA’s board of directors, he also served with many church-related organizations in Pennsylvania, where he lived before joining Everence in 2014.
The Nappanee, Indiana basedfirm uses about six million pounds of aluminum that has been pushed through a dye to create tubes and other shapes every year. Brenneman pushed his company toward lean manufacturing. That meant he wanted frequent deliveries to minimize the need for purchasing large quantities of inventory and then storing it. Brenneman wanted the supplier to help. “They just wanted to ship us truckloads,” he said. The supplier begrudgingly did help and started delivering more often. ATC went from receiving weekly or monthly deliveries to daily deliveries. But Brenneman wanted to do more to solve the problem.
By Marshall V. King SYRACUSE, Indiana — Steve Brenneman didn’t like how he and his company were being treated.
“I don’t think it’s fair that Ford, General Motors, and Boeing get white glove treatment from extruders (while smaller firms do not),” he said. He saw room for someone to Flexible customer service for a flexible metal Indiana serial entrepreneur takes a second swing at the aluminum extrusion business
Photos by Marshall V. King Aluminum Insights hopes to produce millions of pounds of extruded aluminum each year at its new Syracuse, Indiana plant. both produce excellent material and deliver it regularly to the customer. That’s the strategy of the serial entrepreneur’s new company, Aluminum Insights. In the mid-2000s, Brenneman co-owned an aluminum extrusion press. When the economic downturn hit, he lost it. With new partners and investors, Brenneman is starting Aluminum Insights to supply not just ATC, but also other customers with product and great service.
Brenneman learned trailer manufacturing in the late 1990s and saw an opportunity to utilize aluminum rather than steel. In 1999, he started ATC to create lighter, stronger trailers.
19 The Marketplace September October 2022
A year later, he and his brothers bought Nappanee
The entrepreneur had started Aluminum Trailer Company with the premise of making trailers from extruded“Extrusionaluminum.isthe heart of ATC. It is why ATC exists because instead of using a steel frame, we made it out of aluminum. And so, this is the heart of our business,” he said.
The three men weren’t sure how they would find enough funding to get going but moved ahead with selecting an equipment manufacturer. They chose one of two firms in Italy that could have provided a giant press to turn aluminum logs into tubing, rail, and other Presezziparts.Extrusion Group responded to not getting the contract for the press by offering to become a Steve Brenneman (left) talks about his new company Aluminum Insights with co-founders Niles Graber Miller (center) and Jeff Miller during a MEDA Michiana event in July.
Window to create products for the recreational vehicle company. In 2006, he bought an aluminum extrusion press to serve ATC, but mostly the recreational vehicle industry. When the Great Recession hit in 2008, Elkhart County was hit hard and Brenneman was over-extended. He hadn’t planned ahead. In the Elkhart County economy, doing so is a rare trait. The extrusion press that he had was sold for a fraction of its worth. A good CEO had steered ATC through the recession. In 2009, Brenneman went back to ATC as president and CEO. He left that role in 2018, though he remains the firm’s largest Brennemanshareholder.workedbriefly in development for a local nonprofit focused on education, but left in August 2020 to focus on entrepreneurship. At age 50, he says his mission is to start companies. That mission has led him to start two other new firms besides Aluminum Insights. Invign was established in the last several years to manufacture doors and windows. Crew Seating is working toward creating boat furniture. In both instances, Brenneman worked with two other men to set up a company and start operating to feed a market. In 2019, he had begun work to create an aluminum extrusion company. Jeff Miller, who had worked as general manager of farm equipment manufacturer ChoreTime, and Niles Graber Miller, who had cofounded Menno Tea and worked as a manufacturing and tech consultant, joined Brenneman. They began supplying customers with aluminum others produced at a plant in Goshen while their new plant in Syracuse, Indiana came together.
20The Marketplace September October 2022
That took more time than expected. The land in an innovation park was full of clay. After groundbreaking, rain and snow turned it into something with a gravy-like consistency. The ground was eventually removed and replaced as a 75,000-squarefoot building came together. They designed the building from scratch, working to include lean manufacturing principles to assure efficiency and minimize waste.
21 The Marketplace September October 2022 partner with Aluminum Insights and help with the more than $20 million investment needed to get going.
Brenneman knows what it’s like to be a customer who wants more, so Aluminum Insights is implementing a system they call “the easy button.” In Europe, customers can hail cabs by pressing a button that sends a cellular phone signal. Using the same button boxes, co-founder Graber Miller created a system that lets someone pulling a bundle of aluminum in a factory alert the Aluminum Insights that more is needed. That creates an order ticket and delivery from Aluminum Insights.
The company’s founders believe in aluminum’s business potential as a material. It is lightweight and needs a small percentage of energy to repurpose it for a new use. It is recyclable, reusable and fundamental to building a closedloop economy, they said.
Eventually, Aluminum Insights could have a second press and more automation to move finished This “easy button” lets customers alert Aluminum Insights when they need more product. It uses 4G technology and is based on a system to hail cabs in Europe. products and the scrap from the process, but the focus now is on getting as much production as possible from the initial press and using people to move items as needed.When the press is fully operational, it can produce 4,000 pounds of finished material an hour, which would be three truckloads of billets a day. The extrusion process takes a lot of energy. Northern Indiana Public Service Co., the regional power utility, worked with Aluminum Insights to offer rebates and power, yet much of the needed power comes from a 500 kw/ hr solar system on the roof that can power most of the daytime production. The payback on that system, at the utility’s current rates, could be 1.5 years, said Brenneman.
Marshall V. King is a writer and journalist based in Goshen, Indiana. He is the author of the book, “Disarmed: The Radical Life & Legacy of Michael ‘MJ’ Sharp.”
The recreational vehicle industry uses a lot of aluminum. If you look at a 100-mile radius around Elkhart County, where Aluminum Insights is headquartered, roughly a billion pounds are used in industries. The area is a hub for aluminumBrennemanextrusion.believes what sets Aluminum Insights apart from other extruders is the firm’s operational and customer service approach. After the Great Recession, he also believes in planning and diversification. The new company isn’t supplying the volatile RV industry.
The new facility and its press, which supporters of MEDA’s Michiana hub toured in mid-July, is state-of-the-art, but one that Brenneman and his partners can also describe simply. “It really is just a Play-Doh Fun Factory with a lot more heat and a lot more pressure,” Brenneman told the group as he showed a photo of the children’s toy.
Elkhart County in northern Indiana has 12 extruders that produce and deliver aluminum. By Brenneman’s estimate, 350 million pounds of aluminum a year are converted from billets, or long logs of solid metal, into parts for other uses.
Aluminum Insights is providing product to five core customers, including ATC and producers of boats, fencing, stairs, railings, and industrial products.
“We’re not selling to RV because of volatility in that market,” he said. “I had an extrusion press before and I lost it in the downturn because I was too dependent on RV.”
The pieces are cut and moved toward carts and racks. If the product is going to be bent, it’s packed for the customer and hardens over time. If it’s staying straight, the part is baked in a large oven at 350 degrees for three to four hours.
Its aluminum, which is sourced from Ohio and Kentucky, is nearly all recycled metal. It arrives in logs eight inches in diameter and weighing 1,100 pounds. The logs, called billets, are heated to 1,000 degrees, and go into a press that can push them through steel dies with more than 50,000 pounds of pressure per square inch. The pieces that come out the other side of the die can be up to 200 feet long and then cut into lengths that the customer uses. What the machine produces is directly linked to what the customer needs. After a piece of extruded aluminum comes out of the press, a clamp pulls both ends to stretch it two to three percent, which helps straighten it and align the fibers.
Aside from the planning and innovation, the founders want to have a plan for every employee to create meaningful work and be known as an outstanding employer, said Jeff StartingMiller.acompany isn’t as easy as pushing a button, but Brenneman and those he collaborates with are pushing the right ones. .
Into the EncounteringMysticMystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age by Dale E. Allison (Eerdmans, 2022, 253 pp., $21.99) Dale Allison is a New Christianthebookappendices,ofcitesAlthoughexperiences.studyisscholar.TestamentThisbookananecdotalofmysticalAllisonover50pagesfootnotesandtheisnotaboutBibleorthefaith.
22The Marketplace September October 2022 Books in brief
Mastering skills needed for sparking change
Chance teaches one of Yale School of Management’s most popular classes — and for good reason. She supplies every tool needed for winning hearts and sparking change. It’s your choice which tools will make up your personalized toolkit to choose from when it comes to influencing those around you to make good things happen for everyone, starting with you. You may not be able to take Zoe Chance’s class at Yale, but give Influence is your Superpower a read. Try these tactics for yourself or share them with others. Start planting your seeds of influence, then watch them grow and see how your life changes. .
Fred Redekop is the pastor of Poole Mennonite Church, and a municipal politician in Woolwich Township, Ontario.
Ask yourself: What am I truly passionate about? Think what your superpower would be, if you had one, and how it would make achieving your passion even better. Does this superpower allow you to cultivate charisma, negotiate comfortably and creatively, or spot manipulators?Influenceis a source of power we all have within. This is what behavioral economics researcher Zoe Chance breaks down in clear explanations, witty stories, and creative experiments that show you how its magic can be crafted.
Influence Is Your Superpower: The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen by Zoe Chance (Random House 2022, 224 pp, $28.99 US)
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In the first chapter, the author recounts three different times he had mystical experiences. They only lasted for a few moments but have given him an enduring sense of peace.Inthe middle chapters he writes of AIW (angels in white) and NDE (near death experiences), among other different kinds of mystical experiences. He does not discount any of the examples that he names in the book. He advocates strongly for a variety of religious experience. He writes:
The final chapter is on what a pastor should do when someone shares this mystical experience. I found it straightforward in what a caring pastor would do — listen, ask questions, and invite the person to explore the experience. He does address a challenge on how to identify a person with mental illness (ie. schizophrenia) and their professional.toreferpastorexperience.religiousTheshouldthepersonanother
“Some theologians and pastors are unconcerned with the book’s subject matter. Their lack of interest puzzles me… To fail to attend to the experiences that inform many lives, experiences that in some cases suggest that reality may be larger and far more complex than widely presumed, is to lack curiosity. And being incurious is not a virtue.”
Khola Nasir was a marketing intern with MEDA and a Wilfrid Laurier University business administration undergraduate in the summer of 2022.
When starting Influence is your Superpower, I was skeptical about the techniques I would learn and concerned if they were ethical. However, to influence people to get what you want you do not need manipulation or tricks. The skills you need to learn are rooted in trust, respect, and generosity. Those “impossible” goals we want to reach can come to fruition by overcoming self-imposed obstacles.
While the book is crammed with quotes from CEOs and at times reads like a self-serving defense, Murray accomplishes his purpose of documenting the shifting landscape and ongoing challenges of corporate business leadership.
Alan Murray, with over 30 years in business journalism, writes Tomorrow’s Capitalist to defend global capitalism and corporations while acknowledging the concerns of the critics. He describes monumental changes in the last decade in order to illuminate a path forward.
ofbecomeTheratherandtowhomeetingexecutivesbusinessthepope,chargesthemleadwithcarecompassionthangreed.pope’swordstheiconthecriticisms
Books in brief
A blueprint for corporate redemption Tomorrow’s Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business by Alan Murray with Catharine Whitney (Public Affairs Hachette Group, 2022, 236 pages, $29US) Capitalism has come under severe scrutiny, with blame placed on corporate leaders who benefit from the inequalities of a global capitalist system.
The first section recounts the rise of the pure profit shareholder capitalism of Milton Friedman and the negative impacts of this business philosophy. These failures have led to a movement towards stakeholder capitalism, which Murray portrays as corporate redemption.
In a collision of power and influence, he begins with a peculiar story of as well as the beacon of hope for what the future might hold.
23 The Marketplace September October 2022
The book ends by providing a roadmap for CEOs and businesses pursuing stakeholder capitalism, highlighting some of the areas that require further development.
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Nathan Good pastors Swamp Mennonite Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, has a history of entrepreneurship, and coaches leaders and organizations through Customized Coaching LLC.
The second section develops and narrates the shift towards stakeholder capitalism, which focuses on the needs of employees, customers, communities, investors, and ultimately the whole planet, arguing that this version of capitalism will solve the problems created by profit-only capitalism.
