J. Nathan Matias (@natematias), Research Assistant, MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media continues his Urbana12 series. This post in original form (12/28/2012) can be found here. As some of you know, the seminar is part of the Business Changing the World Track. Thank-you Nathan! Great to have you contributing material to the ESN Blog. Your work is much appreciated.. ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Associate Director of ESN.
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This weekend, I’m at Urbana, a gathering of Christian students interested in the work of the church worldwide. Over the last few days, I have been blogging seminars, in which a speaker gives a talk to around 50-60 participants.
Speaking today are John Greenhill & Chi-Ming Cheng of Dayspring Tech, a web and mobile app consultancy.
“How can Christians bear witness to the reign of God in a for-profit business?” they ask. Ministry is usually considered a non-profit endeavour. They’re not here to talk about personal discipleship in a place of business (which is good), but how businesses themselves can bear witness to God.
These issues rise to the fore when you start making basic decisions in your business. This sometimes requires us to expand how we think of business; it also requires us to expand the meaning of the word ministry.
John was an aerospace engineer coming out of school in ’87 — not a typical ministry education. He wasn’t doing ministry training, translation, or languages. He sometimes wondered how his passions fit together, but he came to discover the broad varieties of living out the gospel in a discipline. We should be encouraged by the variety, freedom and possibilities that are available to us.
John shares a quotation from Amos 5:15, “Hate evil and love good, then work it out in the public square.” The gospel must be worked out in our lives and it is not isolated, but it works itself out in the public square and everywhere else. It applies all the time, everywhere, in all arenas. How? That’s what this talk is about.
Chi Ming is speaking now. He starts out with a story of the first time he spoke on business at a seminar for InterVarsity students. His session was double booked with one on relationships. He spent that hour session with an audience of two. Today’s group has around 60 attendees.
Chi Ming’s web and mobile app company, Dayspring Technologies, is in San Fransisco. It was founded 15 years ago by 3 church members. The company has 16 employees and $1.7 million in revenue. Recent projects include an entrepreneurship mentoring platform for the US State Department and the ImageNations group. They have also recently worked on a household budgeting app. Recent partners and clients include Accel, KPCB (VC), MercyCorps, North Face, PJCC, UCSF.
What does this have to do with announcing the kingdom of God? [Read more…] about The Intersection of Church and Business