corporate citizens develop broken communities - when business aims

8/8/2019 Corporate Citizens Develop Broken Communities - When Business Aims

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W h e n B u s in e s sA i m s f o r M i r a c l e sMinneapolis-St. P au l b u s i n e s s p r o f e s s io n a l s a re some of the I n n e r city'sm o s t effect ive "social entrepreneurs." b y T O D D S V A N O EW H I L E S O M E social ministry leaders are tappinggovernment funds, Minnesota evangelicals ar eblazing a dif ferent trail: th e business world,which they find richer not only in funds but inskills and leadership.These faith leaders are com-bining biblical piety, corporate funding, and a "just do it" busi-ness manner to produce a civic witness for Christ on a scalebeyond what their seminaries prepared them forall free ofgovernment bureaucracyand church-board stalemates.

General Mills, for example, was so com-pelled by Bethel Seminary graduate Alf redBabington-Johnson's vision fo r healing a bro-ke n African-American community that it offered funding an d10 0 volunteers to help create an award-winning soul-foodmanufac turer and packing company in north Minneapolis.Stairstep Initiative's Siyeza Inc. employs 80 people (andexpects to hire more than 17 5 at its peak capacity), 80 percentof them from poor neighborhoods. Th e $4.3 mill ion invest-ment, created through an alliance of 49 black investors, Gen-eral Mills, and US Bancorp, produced a $94,000 return at only10 percent of factory capacity last year.

Based on projections and new contracts, debt will beeliminated in less than five years, after which workers willhave an opportunity for a stake in ownership. Siyeza's mis-sion is to demonstrate God's friendship to disfranchisedpeople, Babington-Johnson says.

"God does not just say he loves us, he shows it, and somust we," he says. "Our desire is that the manifestation ofGod's power in this community-building work translatesinto What must I do to be saved? But for many that won'thappen until they hold stockpapers in their hands."C R A C K A L L E Y T O T H R I V I N G C E N T E R"Historically, urban ministries got mad at the rich. Now,we're partnering with them," says veteran youth pastor ArtErickson, who started Urban Ventures Leadership Founda-tion in 1993 with retired banker Ralph Bruins. Their goal:create a Christian community development corporation asa catalyst for joining faith and business resources to helpinner-city kids succeedan area in which the church hadf loundered . In only eight years, through alliances with busi-

nesses like General Mills, Honeywell, Edina Real ty , andAD C Broadband, Urban Ventures ha s transformed an aban-doned city strip in south central Minneapolis formerlyknown as "Crack Alley" into the thriving center now called"the Opportunity Zone."

The avenue, once pocked with porn shops and crackhouses and crawling with prostitutes, now offers youthsports, an Olympic-quality soccer field, computer and fami-ly education, a jobs agency, an evangelical church and Bible

studies, emergency finances, and an outlet withfree food, clothes, an d furniture.

Enthusiastic business veterans sit over mapsand catered lunches in a boardroom planning their nextmove: the $1 6 million Colin Powell Youth Leadership Cen-ter. "I've never been involved in anything so good and purein all my life," says Dave Bigler, former senior vice presi-dent of marketing at Principal Financial Group.Bigler led a committee that hosted a luncheon last sum-

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mer in which Erickson and Powell appealed to more than1,000 Minneapolis business leaders to partner with faithleaders to revitalize urban neighborhoods.

Philip Styrlund, vice president of sales at ADC,says of Urban Ventures, "They get things donehere. They have a focus."U r b a n Ventures' leaders a re neither shynor retiring: corporate funders on a tour ofUrban Ventures ar e immediately shown wallsof professionally mounted photos in whatcould be called a Gallery of Outcomes. Theyar e told exactly -what part they could play inUrban Ventures' unfolding strategic plan. Styrlund findsthis approach no t only businesslike bu t also Christlike.

"Jesus w as passionate an d revolutionary," he says. "H ewashumble, but he did not act small."

Churches often lack the shrewdness to accomplish thegrand missions to which God calls them, Styrlund says.Business professionals,on the other hand, are proving to belike long-lost siblings and partners in mission.S K I L L S W O R T H M O R E T H A N G O L DCould relationships between faith an d business communi-ties change the landscape of social welfare in America? Thatdepends, says former businessman Floyd Beecham, pastorof Faith Tabernacle Gospel Church an d president of UrbanHope Ministries, which offers crisis counseling an d referralsin the inner city.

Those who see financing as the primary benefit of busi-ness professionals are stuck in old Great Society thinking,Beecham says. The harder commodities to come by arepeople's time and talent.

"Of the 10 churches that partner with us, half of themthrow money at us," he says. "But we need lawyers, bankers,

financial planners, an d people with professional expertise."Beecham found this help from th e Twin Cities Urban

Reconciliation Network (TURN), which matches grad-uates of its urban ministry training with business

veterans. A pilot group of volunteers from alarge suburban church includes an accountant,tw o attorneys, a fundraiser , tw o former vicepresidents, a human-resources manager, and astrategic planner."A huge disconnect between those withtremendous resources and those with tremen-

A r t Erickson dous yision^ the viability of the churchin our generation," says Art Treadwell, pastor of ChristTemple a n d C E O o f Exodus Community DevelopmentCompany.

Community development partnerships bring a witnessto the world that has been lost because of "the absence ofmiracles," says Treadwell, whose multimillion dollar pro-jects, partially funded bythe St. Paul Companies,have produced 135unitsof affordable housing an dmental-health servicessince 1991.

From the plagues ofEgypt to the walls of Jeri-cho to Paul's quakingprison to Jesus' manyhealings, God both saidand showed he was Lord,Treadwell notes.

"Big physical changesget people's attention," hesays . "I see hope in theboldness of Christian busi-nessmen and womenwho have begun to bridgethis separation in concreteways."

Soul Food: Siyeza I t ic. 's missionis to bring disfranchised peopleto God.

S M A L L - R R E D E M P T I O NUrban Ventures' Erickson says that during his 35 years ofyouth ministry he has seen 63 urban churches abandontheir posts in Minneapolis and move to greener pastures.Some merely lost members when their employers relocat-ed to the suburbs. Bu t others, he says, lacked the businesssavvy to adjust to changing markets.

"We have to know what our market, product, and out-comes are," says Erickson, unabashedly using the languageof business to speak about ministry. "In this case the prod-ucts are people with values and behaviors."Th e citywide Soul Liberation Festival, created by Erick-son in 1973, was his laboratory for learning some importantlessons about reaching urban people.Th e festival still draws thousands to south Minneapolisto hear the nation's top evangelists and Christian musicianson the blacktop outside of Park Avenue United Methodist

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Church, where Erickson led youthfor 25 years.To all appearances, the festival

has been a youth pastor's dream.But dysfunctional families inblighted neighborhoods oftenstunt the personal spiritual growthof individual believersor, asErickson says, "There is a big dif-ference between saved souls andchanged lives."

Faced with systemic problems,many ministers just preach louder,Erickson jokes, while businesses doresearch and development with aproblem-solving mentality. One ofhis goals in starting Urban Ventureswith Bruins was to help Christiancommunity leaders address prob-lems in a holistic way.

"When you save a prostitute,you've created a new problem,"says Erickson. "Now she's out of ajob. She still has rent to pay andchildren to feed."

Bruins says a deeper look at the needsof a regenerate ex-prostitute might revealshe is listed at a local job bankbut mostof the jobs are in the suburbs.

"A t our local job bank, I wastold that of the last 150 appli-cants, only five had driver'slicenses," says Bruins, whooversees economic develop-ment at Urban Ventures."And that doesn't meanthose had cars."

Salvation through Christis important, Erickson says ,cares about areas of common grace aswell as saving graceredemption with asmall r as well as a big R," in areas such asjobs, food, education, housing, and aclean and safe neighborhood.

Neglecting these areas can render min-istries ineffective, and addressing themrequires resources beyond the capacity ofthe average church. "We need new com-munity development corporations run byfollowers of Jesus Christ," says Erickson,who as a boy was influenced by watchinghis father, a chemist, inventor, and busi-nessman, at work.

"Dad would take an idea, develop amodel, create a product and an assem-bly line that produced it, all the way to

Mobile Home: The St. Paul Companies, Dain Rauscher,andevangelical leaders work together to solve theTwin Cities' housing crisis.

shipping, billing, and monitoring out-comes," he says. "I carried that mentali-ty into ministry."

Pastors and other leaders with"tremendous ministry skills, full

of the zeal of the Lord andwilling to sacrifice to maketheir missions work," oftenhave dreams larger than theirjob descriptions, and ministryvisions that take thembeyond their church walls,says Joy Skjegstad of TURN.

Y et their visions are often too expansivefo r a church board to support or for anoffering plate to sustain.

S k jeg s t ad , who has spent two yearsstudying and training leaders of fa i th-based organizations, says she has seenleaders struggle with "strategic planning,grant-writing, legally establishing a non-profit, staffing [and] setting up an effectivegoverning board." She created an eight-week training program for leaders offaith-based organizations called "Vision toReality," sponsored by TURN /VisionTwin Cities and the Center for NonprofitManagement at the University of St.Thomas in Minneapolis.

"Many of these leaders have consid-ered entering M BA programs, but they

Alfred Babington Johnson"but G od

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W H E N B U S I N E S S A I M S F O R M I R A C L E S

want to integrate the biblical faith compo-nent," she says.F R O M D O U G H N U T T O B I S M A R C KFamous Dave's Restaurants has also car-ried it s business acumen into ministry.Founder D ave Anderson, a N at ive A meri-ca n and an evangelical, works with Gor-don and Sheila Thayer in their street min-istry to the estimated 55 percent of TwinC ity N atives who are alcoholics.D e l ive red f rom a lcoho l i sm by thepower of C hrist themselves, the Thayersevangelize and help N ative Americansadapt to urban life. They recently built anapartment complex for N ative Americansrecovering from alcoholism.Revenues from Famous D ave's, whichgrosses $70 million annually, are also ear-marked to start a new "boot camp" fo rN ative American youth. This will includetraining in physical fitness, life skills, andbusiness ( f ocus ing on how to createwealth), Anderson says.

Gordon Thayer also directs the Amer-i can Ind ian Housing a n d C o m m u n i t y

Development Corporation, funded bythe St. Paul C ompanies and D ain Rausch-er. Full-time medical care and case man-agers helped 100 homeless alcoholics lastyear, and 15people who had made up to75 detox or emergency room hospital vis-its per year made significant changes intheir lives.Erickson says that when business own-ers return to the inner city, they have anopportunity to act redemptively. Theycan begin to "reweave w h a t has beenunraveled" in the last 35 years as peoplewith skills and resources have vacatedmetropolitan areas all over the na tion.

"What this has produced is a metro-po l i t an doughnut, w i t h a hole in theinside. What we're seeking is an Englishmuffin, or better yet, a Bismarck, with thegoodie in the middle. And it can happenlike that," he says, snapping his fingers, "ifbusines s folks join us at the table." T o d d S v a n o e ([email protected]) is anu r b a n r e p o r t e r w h o c o v e r s e f f e c t i v e f a i t h -b a s e d m i n i s t r i e s a r o u n d th e n a t i o n .

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corporate citizens develop broken communities - when business aims

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