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1 The Marketplace September October 2015

Where Christian faith gets down to business

SeptemberOctober2015

Hospitality witha down-home flavor

Josiah Wedgwood:The potter of God

Amish furniturehot online seller

Why support MEDA?Here’s a Top Ten list


Roadside stand

Cover photo of Der Dutchman restaurant courtesy of Dutchman Hospitality Group

How much would you give to achieve world peace? More than you contribute to reduce poverty? Which good cause would give you more bang for your buck?

Development writer William MacAskill contends that as desirable as it may be, peace is not the best investment for charitable dollars. More effective, he believes, is to rid the world of disease.

In his book Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make A Difference he urges generous folk to seek out the most effective ways to invest charitable dollars. At the top of his historic impact list is the eradication of smallpox (around 1977), possibly “the best aid program in history.” How does that compare with, say, achieving world peace? His answer may be hard for peace-loving Mennonites to swallow. According to MacAskill’s tally, the body count of all the wars, genocides and terror-ist acts (eg., Cambodia, Rwanda, Congo, 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq) that have taken place in the four decades or so since smallpox was wiped out would total 12 million people. Smallpox, however, claimed up to three million lives a year before it was eradicated, for a total of 60 to 120 million during that period. By his reckoning, getting rid of smallpox saved five times as many lives as world peace would have.

Maybe so, but let’s keep up our peace work anyway.

Viral vitriol. A customer who is eventually satisfied with a product or service will end up telling 10 to 16 people about the experience, accord-ing to a 2013 “customer rage” study

by Arizona State University. A dis-satisfied customer will tell about 28 people. (Consumer Reports)

Gotta give. A new law in India re-quires all large Indian companies to donate two percent of their net prof-its to philanthropic causes. The new Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Act, signed into law in 2014 but only now beginning to be enforced, is the first of its kind worldwide. It is expected to generate some $3 billion annually in corporate contributions. Some commentators, while applaud-ing the intent of the law, have doubts about its impact in a nation with relatively little institutional response to social and economic issues. Some fear the ruling could lead to forced philanthropy, “tick box” behavior, tokenism or even corruption, and masking of data to avoid having to comply. It is estimated that some 6,000 Indian companies, many of them first-timers, will have to under-take CSR projects in order to comply with the new guidelines.

“The law represents big money in a country with even bigger prob-lems, from open sewers that contrib-

ute to one of the highest disease bur-dens in the world to infrastructure so crumbling that buildings routinely fall of their own accord,” writes Neha Hiranandani in Quartz India.

“Can government-mandated CSR be a social development path for a nation in which over 900 million have a mobile connection but only 600 million (36% of the population) have access to a clean toilet?” asks Ashok Prasad in the Guardian.

Under 35. Last year MEDA intro-duced “20 Under 35” awards to recognize an often-unnoticed group of young people who are enrich-ing their communities through their faith, service and entrepreneurial spirit. The program will be repeated this year, says coordinator Ethan Esh-bach. “These young professionals are deeply invested in the lives of others and are passionate about making the world a better place,” he says.

One of last year’s honorees, Chris Steingart, owner of QT Webdesigns in Kitchener, Ont., says the 2014 recognition helped his business. “Clients saw the coverage [that came with winning a 20 Under 35 award] and it reminded them to get in touch [with my business].”

Everence Financial is the offi-cial sponsor for this year’s awards. Recipients will be announced at the MEDA convention, Nov. 5 to 8 in Richmond, Va.

Haute at work. We hadn’t heard the term in these parts, though we’ve done it for years. Eating lunch at our office desk, that is. Now there’s a word for it — “al desko.” It’s a play on the Italian term “al fresco,” meaning dining outside. The Oxford English Dictionary added the word last year, but we’re slow around here. That said, it gives a load of new panache to a tuna sandwich. — WK

Wage peace or cure disease?


Volume 45, Issue 5September October 2015

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 2015 by MEDA.

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12Wedgwood’s legacy of ceramics and faith. Page 10

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Hospitality with an Amish flavorEmanuel Mullet’s robust vision for family busi-ness continues to flourish throughout Amish Country, where six restaurants feed more than 2.5 million customers every year. By JB Miller

God’s potterJosiah Wedgwood launched a ceramics empire that still endures 265 years later. He also fought to abolish slavery and pioneered better housing, sanitation and medical care for his employees.

Top 10 reasons to support MEDAWhy single MEDA out for your donations? By boosting self-employment and creating robust businesses, MEDA is a great way to share God’s love through economic empowerment.

Amish furniture — hot onlineWho would have imagined you could sell Amish-made furniture over the Internet. This Florida couple has tapped into a lively niche market for old-school quality. By Michael Pollick

On a missionCompanies’ mission statements can be tedious exercises in propaganda and self-promotion — or they can provide an empowering glimpse into the corporate soul. Here are some samples.


Finding God in comp classDoes God care about “non-spiritual” things like grammar? Someone who thinks so (besides many editors) is Richard Mouw, former president of California’s Fuller Theological Seminary (and one-time MEDA convention speaker).

In a recent issue of Crux, a journal of Vancouver’s Regent College, Mouw ex-plains why God cares about all aspects of culture and creation, from pots and pans to works of art. He quotes theologian-ethicist Lewis Smedes who wrote about his first college composition class where he discov-ered that God was offended by dangling modifiers.

“If the Maker of the Universe admired words well put together,” Smedes wrote, “think of how he must love sound thought well put together, and if he loved sound thinking, how he must love a Bach con-certo; and if he loved a Bach concerto, think of how he prized any human effort to bring a foretaste, be it ever so small, of his kingdom of justice and peace and happi-ness to the victimized people of the world. In short, I met the Maker of the Universe, who loved the world he made and was dedicated to its redemption. I found the joy of the Lord, not at a prayer meeting, but in English Composition 101.”

Mouw extends that insight to all manner of daily endeavor. God, he writes, “takes delight in the products and process-es of human cultural activity. God cares about well-formed sentences and good music and just social arrangements.”

One can assume that God takes pleas-ure in a creature who excels at running or pole-vaulting, at meeting a market need with a useful product or service, at design-ing an agricultural project for tree growers in Ghana that is sustainable, measureable, replicable and scalable. In all these forms of work we can please God and fulfill the divine calling in our lives.

Stock photo © svengine

Blueprint pastor“Dave is a developer who builds homes. Sometimes he and his partner build entire neighborhoods.... One day Dave and I were talking about the steps a Christian can take in the marketplace, and he asked me how this would play out in his job. It soon became clear to Dave that every building project provides him with the unique opportunity to be a pastor to hundreds of people who work for him — carpenters, plumbers, electricians, archi-tects, engineers and real estate agents, even city officials with whom he has to interface. He decided that from that point on every time he and his partner buy a parcel of land and hire contractors and subcontractors, he will consider them part of his congregation.... He will speak peace over them when they submit their bids. He will fellowship with them while they work for him.” — Ed Silvoso in Anointed for Business: How Christians Can Use Their Influence in the Marketplace to Change the World

Why he stayedNot every job is a bed of roses. Some workplaces are ugly and toxic. Is that sufficient reason to leave? Maybe your call-ing is to hang in and help change the place, to be the face of Christ, says David Miller of Princeton University. In the video, Going on Vocation, Miller mentions a leading financial institu-tion whose founder was widely known to be a very difficult boss. Miller asked one of the company’s executives, “Why did you stay there all those 19 years?” The man answered, “Because I could protect my people.”

Blueprint pastor

The Marketplace September October 2015


Overheard:

Stock photo © merznatalia

“The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.” — Richard Rohr

Confused? Or compassionate?Here’s a true story we’ve told before, but it’s worth repeating for a new generation: Albert, a Pennsylvania Mennonite who believed strongly in Christian generosity, suffered a stroke. During therapy his doctor wanted to test his cognitive progress. He asked Albert to identify several objects and explain their uses. Holding up a pencil, he asked: “What is this, and what is it used for?” Albert answered promptly, “That is a pencil. It is used for writing.” Then the doctor held up a spoon and asked the same question. Again, Albert answered correctly. Then the doctor reached into his wallet and pulled out a dollar bill. “What is this and what is it used for,” he asked. Albert replied, “That is money and it is for giving away to the poor.”

Later the doctor reported this exchange to Albert’s wife. “Many of his answers are appropriate,” he said. “But in some areas, like money, he’s still confused.”

“Not at all,” responded Albert’s wife. “For Albert, that is a very appropriate answer.”

How will you spend 80,000 hours?Most people have something like 80,000 work-ing hours in their life. If used well, they can use this time to greatly improve the lives of hundreds of people, writes William MacAskill in his new book, Doing Good Better: How Ef-fective Altruism Can Help You Make A Differ-ence.

Too bad that many people don’t think much about their impact.

“Your choice of career is a choice about how to spend more than eighty thousand hours over the course of your life, which means it makes sense to invest a considerable amount of time in the decision,” writes Mac- Askill. “If you were to spend just 1 percent of your working time thinking about how to spend the other 99 percent, that would mean you’d spend eight hundred hours, or twenty working weeks, on your career decision. I doubt many people spend this much time thinking about their careers, but it might be worth it.”

Some questions he raises about selecting a career:

How do you personally fit with this job? Will it satisfy and excite you? Can you stick with it for a decent amount of time?

What’s your impact? What influence will you have (resources, money, public platform)?

How does this job contribute to your im-pact later in life? Does it build your skills and credentials?

Job satisfaction can be critical to im-pact, writes MacAskill. “If you’re not happy at work, you’ll be less productive and more likely to burn out, resulting in less impact in the long-term.”

He also urges job-seekers not to write off the potential impact of choosing a career in business. Nonprofits, he says, “are not the only effective organizations you can work for. Most of the incredible progress that humanity has made over the last few hundred years has not been due to the activities of nonprofits but through technology and innovation generally spurred by for-profit companies and govern-ments. If you can find a company that is ben-efitting many people, or is correcting market failure in some way (such as by developing re-newable alternatives to fossil fuels), this might be an effective means to have an impact.”


by JB Miller

It’s 4:00 a.m., mid-February, and Florida’s peak tourist season. In the darkness Amish men

and women are heading to their jobs at Sarasota’s Der Dutchman restaurant. Aboard bicycles and three-wheelers with flashing lights to warn pedestrians, they crisscross driveways and sidewalks. Once inside the restaurant, the employees busily prepare for the 6 o’clock opening. Some regu-lars — workmen and retirees — are already lined up at a side entrance to get their serving of breakfast and the latest news. These early birds are mere harbingers of the more than 3,500 guests who will be served by

the time doors close at 8:00 p.m.Der Dutchman, Sarasota, is part

of Dutchman Hospitality Group (DHG). The company’s beginnings go back to 1969 when Emanuel Mul-let and two partners purchased an

85-seat restaurant in Walnut Creek, Ohio. Located in the heart of the world’s larg-est Amish community, the renamed Der Dutchman became extremely popular among locals and tourists who came to visit Amish country.

Although DHG is led today by second and third-generation Mullet descen-dants, its founder’s influ-ence remains and is careful-ly stewarded. Born in 1910, in Holmes County, Ohio, to Amish parents, Emanuel

knew poverty from early childhood, as the Mullets eked a sparse exis-tence from their farmstead. How-ever, this oldest of five children was endowed with a driving ambition and rarely-matched entrepreneurial

Hospitality with an Amish flavor

Emanuel Mullet’s robust family business legacy endures, feeding more than two million customers every year.

The popular buffet table features salads, vegetables and meats prepared as in an Amish home.


zeal — coupled with a goal of diversification to spread his investment risk.

Prior to marrying Alma Swartzentruber, Emanuel joined her congregation affil-iated with the Conservative Mennonite Conference. Over the next years he launched numerous enterprises rang-ing from mining and over-head door manufacturing to restaurants and retirement communities. His business success has left an indel-ible imprint across Holmes County and far beyond, thanks to his entrepreneurial spirit and the nine children he and Alma reared, many who carry on their parents’ legacy in the family-owned businesses they run.

Currently DHG operates six res-taurants, five bakeries, six gift shops, two inns, a market featuring all-natural meats and traditional Amish foods, and a distribution company that supplies their restaurants and other businesses. Five restaurants are located within 150 miles of the company’s headquarters in Walnut Creek, Ohio, with the sixth in Sara-sota, just outside Pinecraft, a popu-lar winter getaway for Amish and conservative Mennonites.

One of Emanuel’s strengths was awareness that his children and their spouses were competent business leaders, which reinforced his belief that he or family mem-bers should always have controlling interest in any business he invested in. While initially Der Dutchman had a non-family partner, his interest was purchased by second-genera-tion family members in the 1970s, along with Emanuel’s interest, which had been donated to his local con-gregation. Today the company is family-owned and overseen by two of Emanuel’s daughters and sons-in-law, Bob and Sue Miller, and Dan and Mary Miller, who serve on the board of directors, along with two

considering? We try to take the emotion out of tough decisions.”

Third-generation mem-bers were added about the same time as the in-dependent members. “We recognized we were getting older,” says Mary Miller, “and if the company was to remain family owned we needed to get the next generation involved.” Each third-generation member brings deep experience to board governance. Grandson Bart Miller has spent over 20 years in finance and bank-ing, and Jeff Miller grew up in the hospitality business, working at Der Dutchman in Middlebury, Indiana, a separate sister company.

Today he’s in charge of operations at the Middlebury campus.

A family council consisting of all third and fourth-generation mem-bers, including spouses, was formed a number of years ago. They meet every 15 to 18 months, have their own agenda and often consult with the second-generation members and the company president during meet-ings. They receive quarterly finan-cial statements and other pertinent information and serve in an advisory capacity. “The third generation is committed to maintaining the family ownership,” says Bart Miller. “Every member of the third generation is a shareholder and is very interested in seeing DHG remain in the family and thrive.”

While the company is family owned, no family members serve in management. The day-to-day operations are left to Mike Palmer, a seasoned hospitality professional who has been president for nine years. The selection of a non-family member as leader is unusual for many family-owned businesses but is in keeping with Emanuel’s prac-tice of identifying competent people and giving them the tools to succeed — developing metrics to measure

Adding non-family

directors, who can ask

the tough questions,

was “one of the best

things we ever did.”

grandsons, Bart Miller and Jeff Mil-ler. Two non-family members, How-ard Brenneman and John Bontrager, serve as independent directors.

Independent directors joined the board 15 years ago. “It’s one of the best things we ever did,” says Dan Miller, current board chair. “They are

encouraging, objective and some-times resolve something the family can’t.”

Howard Brenneman observes that, “As an outside director it’s important to understand the vi-sion and strategy and diligently help them carry it out. They are a very well-run company. We ask the tough questions, such as are there businesses they should discontinue and what businesses should they be

Helping oversee the Dutchman enterprise today are two of founder Emanuel Mullet’s daughters and sons-in-law: From left, Bob and Sue Miller, and Mary and Dan Miller. Sue Miller is a former chair of the MEDA board of direc-tors, and Dan Miller was a board member for a number of years.


progress towards cor-porate goals and holding people accountable. An integral part of manage-ment accountability is general managers’ participation at board meetings. One of three annual board meetings is devoted primarily to strategic planning; during the other two meetings general managers partici-pate and share with other managers what’s working well (or not) elsewhere. “There is healthy compe-tition between the vari-ous general managers but we encourage the sharing of ideas that work,” says Palmer. “We try to build a strong team mentality, so managers can share their successes and help other managers as well.”

DHG restaurants are large, expansive fa-cilities, all with capacity to host banquets. The largest, Walnut Creek, has seating for 550, plus 500 banquet seats. The six locations together have a total of 4,250 seats.

The restaurants are meeting places for many groups, including service organizations, Bible study groups, family reunions, or daily workmen who gather at a commun-ity table. Sarasota resident Angela Bacon comes in at least once a month for an event. “Der Dutchman is the best place for special occa-sions, it has great home cooking,” she says. “Today we were here as part of a memorial service remem-bering a friend, and later this month we’ll be back for a women in min-istry program. I love coming here.”

Four of the six restaurants are in tourist destinations, so business is seasonal. The three in Holmes Coun-ty, Ohio, are busiest in summer and fall, with Sarasota’s busy time being winter. Thanksgiving can be particu-

larly hectic for the Sarasota location, which last Thanksgiving served 2,716 buffet meals and 400 carry-out meals. Eight thousand whole pies were sold during Thanksgiving week. The sea-sonality allows some staff members to move between locations, working in the north during the summer and spending the winter in Florida.

All restaurants offer buffet meals in addition to an extensive menu. The buffet table reflects the best of Amish kitchen cooking, featuring numerous salads, vege-tables and meats prepared as in an Amish home. The buffet and menu have evolved with changing dietary patterns, offering more salads and low-calorie choices than in the past.

In the early years manage-ment was fairly decentralized with little attention to corporate brand. The addition of gift shops and inns highlighted the need for a stronger

brand identity, so the board engaged Margaret Jeschke, wife of Bart Miller, to develop and introduce a Dutchman Hospitality brand and bring consistent visuals throughout the company including the corporate website (http://www.dhgroup.com). Her work was guided by one of Emanuel Mullet’s oper-ating principles — be respectful of the Amish and do nothing that would offend or appear exploitive. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Margaret fo-cused on finding the best representation of simpler times. “The brand is about giving yesterday, nostalgia comfort, what’s true, authentic and re-spectful of the culture,” she says. “We focused on the beautiful countryside, the quilting and beautiful food, things that are true

of Amish country.”The commitment to authenti-

city runs deep, says Jeff Miller, a third-generation member. “We don’t want to exploit the Amish. We talk about it a lot. Reality TV with Amish-themed shows have definitely had an impact on our business.”

Charitable giving is a core value of Dutchman Hospitality. It’s some-thing that Alma Mullet cared deeply about and modeled through a quilt shop she operated. Ten percent of after-tax earnings is allocated for charitable causes. General managers support local charities and family members, including the third gener-ation, can designate to charities they care about.

The company employs approximately 1,200 employees, with 500 fulltime. It’s estimated that 60% have some ethnic connection to Mennonites or Amish. Benefits in-

“They treat us like family,” says longtime waitress Charlene Koehn, shown serving regular customer Mary Ellen Leechford.


clude health insurance, 401(k)s, paid vacations, wellness programs and educational scholarships. Opportun-ities for advancement are supported by internal and external training and a formalized leadership develop-ment program. Most of the general managers have been promoted from within.

Charlene Koehn who has worked as a waitress at the Sarasota location since 1982 for two previous owners, appreciates the emphasis on quality, whether it’s the food, facilities or the way they treat employees. “My favor-ite thing is they treat us like family,” she says. “They recognize that working mothers have commitments to be moms as well, and I appreciate the flexibility they’ve extended to me when family matters need to come first.”

Charlene has developed relation-ships with many long-time patrons. “I work at making connections with my customers,” she observes. “I realize that I might be the only person some of my customers talk to in a day. I try to bring a smile to their face.” Over the years she has attended customers’ weddings, funerals, baseball games, and has sat and prayed with family members during surgery.

While on a trip to Lancaster, Pa., in the 1980s, Bob Miller was impressed by how some restaurants had become destinations by incorporating inns and other activities on their properties. “We wanted people to come and enjoy our food and the countryside, but we wanted them to stay longer than just one meal,” he says. “So we built the Carlisle Inn in Walnut Creek and another one in Sugar Creek. After all, we’re in the hospitality business.” The pictur-esque rolling countryside of Holmes County is a popular destination for people who want to learn more

“I might be the

only person some

customers talk to in

a day. I try to bring a

smile to their face.”

about the Amish and Mennonites. Visitors by the thousands come to see the leaves during the fall.

As a further encouragement for people to extend their visits, live the-atre was introduced three years ago at the Sugar Creek location with pro-ductions throughout the summer and fall. While the shows have Amish and Mennonite themes, there is a great deal of vetting before a script is approved. “These shows must align with our values and must have a message,” Mike Palmer says. “We’re about God’s work; the hospitality business is our ministry and our mis-sion.” There is heightened sensitivity to not offend the Amish in either the script or the promotional material.

A guiding company principle is to not pay dividends. Emanuel

always felt profits should be avail-able as capital to grow the company. In 2012 the restaurants in Sarasota, Berlin and Bellville were purchased as part of their growth strategy. Today the focus is on internal growth

through upgrading and expanding existing locations and growing the catering and bakery business.

None of the restaurants are open on Sunday. “We believe our employ-ees should have the opportunity to attend worship services with their families on Sunday,” says Dan Miller. In the recent past two restaurants were purchased that had been open on Sunday. “Closing them had a very positive impact on being able to hire help and it had no negative impact on the bottom line,” he says. In deference to its large Amish staff, the Walnut Creek restaurant is closed on Ascension Day, a holiday observed by many Amish.

Both families have long con-nections with MEDA. Dan and Sue served on its board of directors and Sue was chair during the 1990s. Her childhood ambition was to be a mis-sionary but she later found business could also be a form of mission. “If I’m going to be in business I’m going to do it well,” she says. “MEDA res-onates very well. At MEDA we found people with similar values; it was a safe place to tell your story. It’s been a tremendous resource for us.”

Emanuel and Alma Mullet’s enduring principles — respecting the

sensibilities of local Amish and Men-nonite people; not paying dividends but reinvesting profits in the businesses; maintaining family ownership; and charitable giving — continue to guide the work of Dutchman Hospitality. When asked how Emanuel would respond seeing an 85-seat restaurant grow into a company serving 2.5 million

people annually with revenues in ex-cess of $50 million, Sue says, “He’d be happy.” ◆

JB Miller (no relation to the Dutchman Millers) recently retired to his hometown of Sarasota, Florida, after a 24-year career at Everence.

“I love coming here,” says Angela Bacon, who visits the Sarasota restaurant at least once a month for some event.


Chances are you’ve encoun-tered his legacy over a scone and spot of Orange Pekoe. Maybe your china cabinet

has an ornate cup and saucer crafted by his descendants. Still, that may not be enough to take the measure of Josiah Wedgwood’s moral and spiritual impact.

Wedgwood (1730-1795) has sometimes been called “God’s potter” for harnessing his skills in socially transforming ways. He launched the great Wedgwood ceramics enterprise that still exists today, was recog-nized for his tireless work to abolish slavery, and was known for applying his Christian faith to his work life in ways that were unusual then and perhaps remain so today.

Josiah Wedgwood made his appearance as the Industrial Revolu-tion was coming into play. He was the youngest of many children in an English pottery-making family. By the age of nine he was learning the family trade from an older brother.

By all accounts he showed talent from early on, but tragedy struck when he came down with smallpox. He survived, but in the process his right knee was so damaged and weak-ened that he couldn’t work the pedals on the potter’s wheel. Ever resource-ful, he turned his attention to other parts of the trade and began experi-menting with different kinds of clay and glazes. He continued to refine his craft and develop glazes during an as-sociation with Thomas Whieldon, then the best-known potter in England.

By the age of 20 Wedgwood had started his own business. One of his inventions, a green glaze, is still used today. He also invented a cream-col-

God’s potter

ored earthenware that met the need for good quality, afford-able pottery for the growing middle class.

Innovative to the core, Wedgwood teased out ways to do things better, keeping abreast of new artistic and production techniques.

One lasting innovation was to control the temperature in his kilns so he could achieve consistent results. The pyrom-eter he invented (and which earned him a Royal Society ranking in 1783) was the industry’s first tool to precisely measure the very high temper-atures needed to fire ceramics.

Wedgwood improved effi-ciency by setting up an assem-bly line with specialized labor. Rather than each potter making a complete piece, he broke down the process into steps, with each person doing only one step. This allowed potters to excel at their particular step, dramatically increasing the rate of production.

Wedgwood was known to be tem-peramental about quality. When he walked through his factory, if he saw a piece that did not meet his stan-dards, he was known to smash it with his walking stick, proclaiming, “This will not do for Josiah Wedgwood!”

His pottery factory in Etruria was the first in Britain to use a steam-powered engine.

Wedgwood extended his innov-ative spirit to marketing. He created the first illustrated catalogues, em-ployed the first traveling salesmen, and pioneered direct-mail sales. He offered money-back guarantees, free delivery and self-service in his shops. He even set up “buy one, get one

free” sales for his products.All this, along with new clays

and glazes, made his artisanal de-signs popular across Europe.

One fan was Queen Charlotte, which led to naming his cream-col-ored earthenware Queen’s Ware. He received numerous commissions from the British royal family as well as from Catherine the Great in Russia.

Besides ceramics, Wedgwood was noted for his efforts to abolish slavery. A key tenet of his Chris-tian faith was that God had created human beings equal and in his own image. Slavery was an egregious offence against this belief, as were many business practices of the day. He generously lent his talents, as well as his money and the prestige of his company, to eradicating slavery and other forms of injustice.

In 1787 Wedgwood became a founder of the Society for the Aboli-

For Josiah Wedgwood faith was more than glaze on clay


tion of the Slave Trade.He asked a member of his staff to

design a seal for the society, and the result was a Slave Medallion depicting an African in chains, bent on one knee with hands upraised and plead-ing, “Am I not a man and a brother?”

“Wedgwood quickly realized the power of the image and so, thinking like a marketer, he began to mass produce it as a ceramic cameo, creat-ing the first logo for a political cause in history,” writes Glenn Sunshine in Christian Worldview Journal. “The cameo took off like wildfire.”

Sunshine quotes abolitionist Thomas Clarkston as saying that men had the cameo inlaid in gold on the lids of their snuff boxes and women wore them on bracelets and hairpins. “At length,” Clarkston said, “the taste for wearing them became general, and this fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was seen for once in the hon-ourable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity and freedom.”

“The cameo’s impact was huge,” writes Sunshine. “It allowed women, otherwise excluded from the politi-cal process, to express their oppo-sition to slavery. The image even crossed the Atlantic and became a staple of the abolitionist movement in America. Ben Franklin said it was the ‘equal to that of the best written pamphlet’ in promoting the cause of abolition.”

Wedgwood came along at a pivotal point in the Industrial Revolution when manufacturing was being mechanized by coal and steam power. English society was undergo-ing massive shifts. People had moved from rural areas to new industrial cit-ies. Everything was different. Along with economic disruption came a blurring of what was right and wrong. Employees were mistreated. Abuse and alcoholism rose.

Fortunately, not all the innova-tions of the Industrial Revolution

revolved around new technologies. It became an era for faith-infused busi-nesspeople to flourish in unique ways.

Wedgwood and others promoted the idea that people should discover the dignity of work, and this would mean they not only worked diligently themselves, but they showed up on time and consciously sought to serve their communities.

Wedgwood provided his employ-ees with good housing, sanitation and medical care. He sought to make his factory towns into genuine com-munities.

What made him outstanding was his progressive treatment of employ-ees, says theologian Charlie Self in the video production Going on Voca-tion: Exploring work as it was meant to be (reviewed on page 18 of this magazine). He treated them with dig-nity, gave them decent working con-ditions, and sought their welfare and education. Industrialists like Wedg-wood “were way ahead of their time in understanding that the purpose of work was not merely profit but the well-being of everyone involved and society at large,” says Self.

In a way, it is unfortunate that Josiah Wedgwood is remembered primarily for his enduring product line rather than as an economic reformer, says Greg Forster, a special-ist in theology and economics, in the same video.

Why did Wedgwood have money, fame and prestige to lend to the abolitionist cause? Because he had a vision for how daily toil could serve the common good. “He put that into his business practice,” says Forster, “and he built one of the most suc-cessful companies of the 18th century, a revolutionary new model of how factories could be run in a way that was both more humane and more productive. It was more productive because it was more humane but it was also more humane because it was more productive. And it became one of the most successful companies of the 18th century and is still today the world’s leading producer of china and porcelain products.” ◆

Shattered!

Besides fighting

slavery, Wedgwood

provided his

employees with good

housing, sanitation

and medical care.

One day Josiah Wedgwood, accompa-nied by a young apprentice, showed a nobleman through his factory. As

they toured, the nobleman kept making profane and sacrilegious com-ments. Wedgwood was mortified that his apprentice was hearing all this, moreso when the boy began to enjoy the coarse jokes.

At the end of the tour the distressed Wedgwood showed the noble-man an exceptionally beautiful vase. The man, charmed by its exquisite shape and beauty, immediately wanted to buy it. As the man reached for it, Wedgwood purposely let it drop to the floor, where it shattered. The nobleman was furious. “I wanted that vase for my collection,” he said, “and you have ruined it by your carelessness!” Wedgwood answered, “Sir, there are things more precious than any vase — things that can never be restored once they are ruined. I can make another vase, but you can never give back to my helper the pure heart you have defiled by your vile language and sacrilegious talk!” ◆


1. It’s the best way to help poor people escape poverty. Eight cen-turies ago Jewish philosopher Mai-monides suggested there were eight levels of giving to help the poor. The highest level was “giving in such a way as to provide employment, so the receiver will not need help again.” By helping people find and create work, MEDA provides a long-term solution to poverty. A handout will get people through a day, week or month, but a job or a business can last a lifetime.

2. There is an urgent need for jobs in the developing world. The developing world needs to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs every day to meet the needs of its growing population. Most of these jobs will be the result of self-employ-ment, as poor people create their own small and micro businesses.

3. We address a serious gap in the developing world. There are lots of aid organizations providing emergency assistance. But only a few address the serious need for poor people to gain access to:

• financial services so they can manage their money and start or grow businesses,

• markets for their produce, and• long-term investment capital

that will help grow the small and me-dium enterprises that provide these services to the poor.

It is very difficult for poor people

in the developing world to open a bank account, safely save money, get a loan from local banks, assemble enough quality produce to interest market buyers, or find investors will-ing to help them buy the equipment and inventory they need to grow their businesses. MEDA works with microfinance institutions, marketing companies and investment funds to develop products that meet these needs. The result? Businesses grow, profits increase, new jobs are created, families are fed, children are educat-ed and communities are enriched.

4. The way MEDA works is sus-tainable. We believe the best way to help the poor is by developing local institutions and businesses that have, as their goal, becoming independent of North American help. In other words, we don’t want our projects to depend on perpetual handouts from us for survival. MEDA’s goal is to start projects, nurture them as programs, and then “graduate” them to become independent businesses that no longer need us. Like proud parents, we take satisfaction in the growth of independent businesses in places like Ghana, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Morocco and many other countries.

5. We work with — not against — local businesspeople. Aid can unintentionally hurt people in the developing world by disrupting lo-cal markets. For example, sending a container of used clothing to a

Why support MEDA? Because it’s a great way to share God’s love through economic empowerment.

Top 10 reasons to love MEDA



poor country may seem like a gener-ous gesture; after all, we don’t need the clothes anymore, and people overseas need something to wear. But what if you’re a local clothing manufacturer? What happens to your business when the free clothes show up? You know what will hap-pen — nobody will buy your clothes, you may go out of business and you might need charity yourself. After all, who is going to pay for locally made clothes when clothing is being handed out for free? We don’t harm local businesses. Instead, our goal is to strengthen the local economy.

6. We emphasize results. Just like businesses in North America, the programs we run have to mind the bottom line. Good intentions aren’t good enough — they have to show how they are making a difference. We call this a business-oriented ap-proach to development.

7. We affirm the dignity and self-worth of poor people. Aid can create dependency. People can begin to see themselves as being unable to help themselves. A Haitian develop-ment worker, observing the effect of decades of free aid in that country, said Haitians have come to believe that they “are afflicted with a disease called poverty.” But by receiving a hand up, instead of a handout, their dignity is preserved. They aren’t getting handouts — they’re working to help themselves. They aren’t aid

recipients — they are clients. It’s a business relationship, not a relation-ship built on charity.

8. We have over 60 years of experience. MEDA has been offer-ing this business-oriented approach to development since 1953. Over the years we have learned many valu-able lessons about the best ways to help poor people. Today we share these learnings with our industry col-leagues at conferences and through consultancies.

9. Your contribution is multi-plied many times. Your gift multiplies in impact seven times on average with other funding sources, including governments and foundations.

10. It’s a way to put faith into action. By supporting MEDA, you’re doing more than just giving money — you’re becoming part of a mission to connect faith and work in a needy world.

Each year generous MEDA supporters help to bring new hope, opportunity and economic well-being to millions of families living in poverty in dozens of developing countries around the world.

We are often asked why we do what we do. Our simple answer is that we are compelled by our faith to change lives and save lives by creatively defeating poverty.

We invite you to join us by be-coming part of MEDA! ◆

MEDA’s strategy is to

start projects, nurture

them into programs,

and then “graduate”

them into independent

businesses that no

longer need help.



Marketing Amish-made furniture online

by Michael Pollick

Jim Miller and his wife, Linse, have found a unique business niche, one that makes per-fect sense when you think of

Sarasota as a southern outpost for the nation’s Amish and Mennonite communities.

Miller, a former Mennonite pas-tor in Sarasota, and his wife have become the largest Internet-only marketers of Amish-made furniture.

Operating as JMX Brands from

Old-school quality is hot, even over the Internet

Jim and Linse Miller relax in their Amish-made Leisure Lawns chairs, constructed of recycled plastic Poly lumber.

Her

ald-

Trib

une

phot

o by

Dan

Wag

ner

offices in east Sarasota, and with no showroom, they are now taking more than $6 million a year in orders that they route to 190 Amish craft shops, mostly furniture makers in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Many of these factories have no telephones or computers, in keeping with the Amish tradition of living simple lives free of technological distractions.

The lack of voice and email

communications made it tough for the Millers to set up their business. But now it helps discourage potential competitors.

Sarasota’s history as an Amish resort dates back to the 1920s and, like many other Florida transplants before them, the Millers were follow-ing in their parents’ footsteps when they came to Sarasota in the 1990s.

He had graduated from Goshen College, a well known liberal arts

college associated with the Mennonite Church USA, and took a job here as an assistant pastor. He later moved to another Mennonite congregation as its pastor.

But that was be-fore the Millers found what must be their true calling.

They started their online marketing business in 2003 with just $1,000.

“We had to make money from the very beginning,” Jim Miller said.

After a modest success with hand-made mailboxes, they found “this Amish guy who had these lighthouse replicas,” Miller said. “We hit it just right with those


Not all Amish artisans

are averse to technology,

but they want some

degree of separation

from the world.

Everything is hand made, says JMX supplier Alan Mill-er (right), whose equipment is powered off the grid.

lighthouses and sold them like crazy.”

That craftsman in Pennsyl-vania introduced the Millers to others.

“The more success we had, the easier it was for us to con-vince these Amish guys to let us have a try,” Miller said.

JMX operates several websites, but the main one is DutchCrafters.com.

Toward the end of 2003, their first year, Linse Miller convinced her husband to try dealing in furniture.

“We see this beautiful hardwood indoor furniture. I said ‘Nah, that is not going to work. Nobody would spend that much on indoor furniture they haven’t seen in person. And it’s hard to ship,’” Jim Miller said.

“But she pushed it,” he added.They made their first furniture

sale at the end of 2003 and never looked back. In 2004, their first full year online, they did half a million dollars in furniture sales.

While wooden furnishings are its core business, JMX is not against plastics, as long as they are used right. In fact, one of their hottest sell-ers is a line of heavy-duty lawn furni-ture made from recycled milk bottles.

Some items, like birdhouses and mailboxes, are what Jim Miller calls “UPS-able,” meaning they are easily cartoned up and shipped.

But for delivering big pieces of furniture, the couple has found that their best method is to hire two guys with a truck, an approach Jim Miller calls “blanket-wrapping.”

Customers for larger pieces are told up front that, even after a cus-tom piece is made, they should allow extra time for delivery.

The logistics folks at JMX will put together batches of orders com-ing from one of their regions and heading for the Northeast or the Western U.S.

“We are busy enough that it usu-ally doesn’t take any longer than two weeks. We always have a truck going

to the Northeast,” Miller said.“So, we would contract with a

specific driver, say Matthew, and Matthew would go to eight different workshops in Indiana and Ohio and do all his pickups and take a full load of furniture out west,” Miller said.

Having shippers they can trust, and then double-checking everything by phone from Sarasota is critical.

“You can’t get to California and say, ‘Oh, this is the wrong stain color,’ or ‘We forgot the leaves for the table,’” Miller said.

The company now has a quality-assurance team of four people whose job is to keep incidents like that from happening, and to straighten out any that do.

The online business the Millers created is benefitting not only from their own growing sense of what represents quality and what will sell, but also from two trends:

• Each year, more people are willing to make a big-ticket purchase online.

• Amish furniture, made in America and emphasizing quality, is

hot.“The e-commerce channel

is becoming a much more im-portant channel for furniture,” said Larry Thomas, business editor at Furniture Today, a trade publication based in Greensboro, N.C.

“Our research depart-ment estimates that 10 percent of furniture sales were done online in 2014, which is not an insignificant number. They project it could hit 17 percent by 2020.”

JMX made it on three lists of the fastest-growing private com-panies in the United States last year: the 2014 Gulf Coast 500, Inc. 5000, and Internet Retail 1000.

In 2012, the company employed 10 people and grossed $2 million. By 2014, sales had hit $6 million and the payroll had risen to 24.

For the first quarter of 2015, rev-enues were up 70 percent, Jim Miller said.

“Nobody in their right mind would expect 70 percent growth to continue,” he said. “We do have some growth projections that are progressive, but they are well short of that. We are realistic.”

From the beginning, the couple has been making at least one trip each year, sometimes more, to Amish regions in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

These days, they typically ar-range for two or three staff members at a time to join them as they meet with their vendors, tour their fac-tories and get a feeling for how the goods are assembled.

Alan Miller, an Amish man who is not related to the Sarasota Millers, runs a 30,000-square-foot furniture factory in Dundee, Ohio, supporting a payroll of 40.

But like most of the roughly 600 furnituremakers in his two-county region, he shuns some of the con-veniences of modern life that most Americans take for granted, such as electric power supplied by a utility


company.He does use electrically powered

equipment to make his all-wooden dining-room, living room and office furniture. But the power comes from his own natural-gas-powered genera-tor.

“We have some machinery and stuff like that,” Alan Miller told the Herald-Tribune in a telephone inter-view. “But everything is hand made. Everything is made for that specific customer.”

In Sarasota, Jim Miller explained that, in general, it is not that the Amish are averse to technology.

“They are interested in degrees of separation from the world,” Jim Miller said.

The customs for a given Amish community typically are set by the local bishop. There are also varia-tions from church to church.

Alan Miller will talk on a phone, but he avoids going on a computer, ruling out receiving email, let alone

selling furniture on the Internet.To follow up on the telephone

interview, Miller provided a reporter with an email address. But emails to him are routed to a service that sends the messages to Miller as faxes, so he reads them on paper, not a screen.

Other Amish craftspeople whose goods are handled by JMX prefer not to have a fax machine, either. In those cases, JMX will send the furni-ture order to a courier service, which will receive the fax, then hand carry it to the factory.

In some cases, business owners have built a wooden phone booth at the end of the family driveway, so it is neither in the home or the shop.

The owner would typically go to the booth to retrieve messages in the morning, make return phone calls, and then make a second round in the evening before quitting for the day.

“It is refreshing for us as we get to go up there and visit farms and woodshops, to see this sort of other-

worldly style that is off the grid,” Jim Miller said, “where people actually talk to each other in the evenings, or just sit and watch the kids play.”

Alan Miller’s company, Genu-ine Oak, has been in existence for 19 years. Just three years ago, he began selling some of his production through JMX.

“In several cases, including Alan’s, we are very near the top of their customer list or at the top,” Jim Miller said.

Before the Internet, Alan Miller said that his most important way of winning customers was through Amish craft fairs.

The Internet has augmented that old-school approach, he said.

“They get the customers who don’t want to go out and fight the crowd.” ◆

Copyright 2015, Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Reprinted by express permission of the Herald-Tribune Media group.


Some company mission statements provide em-powering peeks into the heart of an enterprise;

others are tedious and promotion-al, little more than propaganda in virtuous garb.

It can be tempting to allow a mission statement to lapse into a bland marketing slogan with plenty of puff but little strategic dir-ection. The good ones, however, are lively and energizing.

Once written, a mission state-ment can be hard to live up to, and many end up as wishful thinking. Others serve as a constant reminder of what the company is and why it exists.

We looked at a number of state-ments. Some were crisp and appeal-ing. A few were yawningly long (one company with a strong global reputa-tion for ethics and competence has a mission statement of more than 600 words).

Here is a sample. Do they make you sit up and pay attention? Are

On a missionMission statements can offer a glimpse into the corporate soul

they something their framers have been able to live up to?

ServiceMaster (cleaning, disas-ter restoration and insect control) — “To honor God in all we do; to help people develop; to pursue excellence; and to grow profitably.”

Starbucks (coffee) — “To inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup, and one neighbor-hood at a time.”

Ken Blanchard Companies (management training and consult-ing) — “To unleash the potential and power of people and organizations for the common good.”

Nike (athletic footwear) — “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”

Patagonia (outdoor gear) — “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”

Panera Bread (restau-rants) — “We believe in raising, serving and eating food that is good and good for you.”

Tyson Foods (meat pro-cessing) — “To be an honorable and faith-friendly company; to serve

as stewards of the animals, land and environment entrusted to us; to earn consistent and satisfactory profits for our shareholders and to invest in our people, products and processes; to operate with integrity and trust in all we do; to honor God and be respectful of each other, our customers, and our stakeholders.”Timberland (outdoor outfitter)

— “To equip people to make their difference in the world.”

Charles Schwab (brokering and banking) — “To help everyone be financially fit.”

Google (Internet services) — “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

ING (financial services) — “We lead Americans back to savings.”

Dacor (kitchen appliances) — “To honor God in all we do: by respecting others; by doing good work; by helping others; by forgiv-ing others; by giving thanks; and by celebrating our lives.”

What’s your mission — and how do you describe it? ◆



Going on Vocation: Exploring work as it was meant to be. (Video release from Christian History Institute and Vision Video, 2015; two 52-minute DVDs with study guides. $19.99 U.S. To order go to http://www.GoingOn-Vocation.com)

The world would be a much, much better place if churches throughout the land bought

this video and showed it to their working members. Even better if all those workers took the message to heart and transformed the way they do their daily jobs.

Disclaimer: I am predisposed to love this video because its message is close to what MEDA and this magazine have promoted for dec-ades — namely, that daily work is a vital arena of Christian mission and a place to express our values.

Going On Vocation uses personal stories of ordinary people at work to show that vocation or calling is about much more than a paid job. Theologians are joined by a waitress, policeman, stay-at-home father, bee-keeper, beautician, business owner, farmer and others to explore how God calls Christians to a life of voca-tion. You’ll see working Christians who have learned to see their work not as drudgery or obligation but as an opportunity to live out their faith and serve others.

Interspersed among the numer-ous workplace anecdotes are inter-views with religious scholars who provide a biblical view of the role of work in God’s economy.

One prominent voice is David Miller, director of the Princeton Uni-versity Faith & Work Initiative (who has been a MEDA convention key-noter). Another familiar voice is Nick Ramsing, senior project manager in MEDA’s Washington office, who explains the spiritual foundation of

MEDA’s work.A central mes-

sage of the docu-mentary is that “the diversity of gifts in our com-munities becomes the way God serves the com-mon good.... As we exercise our gifts and vocations we become, quite literally, the hands of Christ, extended to others.” Wher-ever we serve others “there’s a space to fulfill Jesus’ second great love com-mandment to love our neighbor as ourselves.”

This belief naturally spills over into workplace competence, since good quality work is also a way to show love.

“If you really love your neighbor you’re going to give your neighbor your best work,” says Gene Veith, author of the book, God at Work.

This holds true for businesses as well as individuals. Greg Forster, program director at the Kern Family Foundation, notes that the church has often done little more than tell successful businesspeople how to spend their money. The bigger picture, however, is that “business can make a profit by mobilizing the power of human work to serve the common good, that work is created to serve the needs of other people and make the world a better place.”

In the modern economic system,

says Forster, “we are all serving strangers all day long with our work and we learn to treat strangers right and to see strangers as beings made with dignity and purpose. That’s why every single person’s job matters, everybody at every stage of every economic transaction has got to be doing his or her job well, or we all suffer.”

He acknowledges that it can be hard to maintain a sense of meaning when technology, insecurity and chaos threaten livelihoods. It isn’t easy to feel called when surrounded by disruption that could result in a job being yanked away. That poses a tremendous challenge to the larger church.

“It’s always been a critically important role of the church,” says

Work as God intended

Reviews


Daily work is one

way to fulfill the

love commandment

of Jesus. “As we

exercise our gifts

and vocations we

become, quite literally,

the hands of Christ,

extended to others.”

Forster, “to help people understand what God is doing in their world and help people understand the meaning and the dignity that their work has even in a period of big economic change.”

The video acknowledges that the workplace can be rife with difficulty, and representing Christ there is not always a walk in the park. It can be a difficult place to take seriously Jesus’ message of peace. Says Vincent Bacote, a professor at Wheaton (Ill.) College: “If you love your enemy, what does that mean for how you think about competition? What does

that mean for how you think about a co-worker who treats you as the enemy?”

Churches would do well to acquire this video for small-group interaction. It’s a good way to reinvent the work week as a place to express values and make a job into a ministry. Watch it and there’s a good chance you will become a better worker, a better employer and a stronger moral force in society.

— Wally Kroeker


Soundbites

So long to bragging about how busy you are. At least that’s what Lucy Kellaway would have us believe from an article in The Economist. People who took fake pride in being snowed under will have to find new ways to impress as punishing CEO schedules will start to look unhip and inef-ficient.

The “long-hours culture” is due for an overhaul, Kellaway predicts. “The pressure for change will come not only from lazy millennials averse to hard slog, but from older workers

Bye-bye to long hours?

exhausted by the tyranny of technol-ogy.” Among her indicators: “Google in Dublin confiscated employees’ devices when they left the office, and

Daimler deleted messages that arrived in the inboxes of staff who were on holi-day.”

In the new work econ-omy, “To get your work done by a reasonable hour will not be a sign that you are a slacker, but that you are working efficiently.” Office productivity will soar: “There will be fewer pointless initiatives and meetings,” writes Kellaway. “Memos will be shorter.

Performance reviews will be less un-wieldy. For most things three bullet points will be enough.”

But not all is lost for Type A folk who need somewhere to use their abundant energy. “Some,” she pre-dicts, “will do aggressive volunteer-ing and compete to change the world more successfully than the next guy.”

Flourish or falter

[Business] is a noble calling. Busi-ness activity raises individuals and whole populations from idle penury to greatness. By attending to a society’s basic needs for goods

Uplifting inventionYou may not know this about elevators. It comes from an interview in Ethix magazine with Randy Wilcox, Otis Elevator Company’s recently retired president for the Americas.

By his account, Otis came into being 162 years ago because of a safety problem. Elevators had been around since Egyptian times, but they could be perilous contraptions. Elisha Graves Otis invented a safety brake which kept an elevator from falling if the hoisting rope broke. “So the company was essentially born out of solving a safety problem,” says Wilcox.

“An elevator is actually the safest form of transportation,” he claims. “It is even safer than walking down the street.” Moreover, “Safety remains our most important absolute and it is more important than profit.... At Otis if you compromise in safety or ethics you’re much more likely to lose your job than if you miss the numbers.”

Wilcox contends that elevators are environmentally friendly because they are regenerative and can put energy back on the grid.

“A traction elevator has a counterweight and a cab, and whenever there’s an imbalance you’re either using energy to overcome that im-balance, or that imbalance can create energy,” he explains. When the counterweight is heavier than the elevator cab, the movement actually generates electricity. “If you are the only passenger on an elevator going up, you are likely putting energy on the grid. And on a loaded elevator going down, you are also putting energy on the grid.”

So if you are one of those who takes the stairs instead of the elevator, keep doing so — but for the exercise, not to save the environment, says Wilcox. ◆


Letter

and services, it frees people for other pursuits. By generating wealth for workers, investors, and governments, it liberates individuals and countries from the enslavement of poverty and the tragedy of limited opportunities. The commercial vitality of a nation largely determines the degree to which other disciplines — art, medi-cine, and education — will flourish or falter. Indeed, in most parts of the world, business is the very under-pinning of civility. — David Olive in Ju$t Rewards: The Case for Ethical Reform in Business

Role of business

Business plays a central role in our lives. We are affected more by businesses than by any other social institution. Most of us earn our liveli-hood and provide for our families by working for companies, and all of us purchase the goods and services companies produce with extraordi-nary efficiency and ingenuity. The quality of our lives, our health, our overall well-being, and even our hap-

Disappointing cartoon“I think you know that I love MEDA and everything you do, and also the magazine, which I usually read cover to cover. Good review (July/August issue) of the Orie Miller biography; he must have been quite the guy.

“I was a little surprised and disappointed by the cartoon a few pages later on p. 21. ‘...as wide as yer Aunt Tillie.’ Really? This plays into a negative, gender and body-based stereotype in my view. Not helpful in any way (although the point of the cartoon is well taken).” – Sara Jane Schmidt, Winnipeg

Born in the marketplace

Jesus was in touch with the mar-ketplace from the very beginning

of his life on Earth. He was born in a place of business, the stable of an inn (Luke 2:7), and the angelic worship service to celebrate his birth took place in a nearby feed lot (Luke 2:13-14).

Rather than religious leaders, Je-sus’ first visitors were employees and small-business owners. They were shepherds (Luke 2:15-20) whom his parents received in the inn’s park-ing lot. I point this out because the stable was the equivalent of the modern service station — it was used to dispense food (fuel) to the mules and donkeys (vehicles) that rested (parked) there for the night....

He had learned a trade in order to make a living, and this required that he run his shop at a profit. His daily business routine likely included the calculation of the cost of goods and labor, the interplay between sup-ply and demand, the establishment of competitive pricing, the measure-ment of the potential return on his investment, the estimation of main-tenance costs and the replacement of equipment. — Ed Silvoso in Anointed for Business: How Christians Can Use Their Influence in the Market-place to Change the World

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.

piness depend greatly on the ways in which businesses operate. — John Mackey and Raj Sisodia in Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business


News

Popular journalist and radio per-sonality David Greene will bring his engaging warmth and globe-trotting touch to MEDA’s annual convention, Nov. 5-8 in Richmond, Va.

Host of National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, he will speak Satur-day evening on “Finding Strength in Adversity: The Stories of Some Down-right Courageous Business Owners.”

Theme of the convention will be “Growing Business, Building Com-munity.” Sessions will be held at the Omni Richmond Hotel.

Greene’s assignments have in-cluded the White House, Arab Spring in Libya, Chernobyl and Hurricane Katrina. He served for several years as NPR’s correspondent in Moscow, after which he wrote the book, Mid-night in Siberia: A Train Journey Into The Heart Of Russia.

He will recount stories of entre-preneurs who faced long odds but turned challenges into victories and went on to build successful enter-prises with an impact on their com-munities.

A panel discussion on Friday will feature three business families who view their enterprises as a calling and an integral part of their steward-ship.

• Faith and Tim Penner live in Harper, Kan., where Tim is the CEO and an owner of Harper Industries, which manufactures agricultural, hydraulic and turf equipment. Faith works part-time for the business, coordinating new construction, re-modeling and interior design proj-ects. The company has grown by five times since its purchase by employ-ees in 1998.

• Ed Shenk is a co-owner (with his wife Christine) of Weavers Hardware Company, Fleetwood, Pa., which operates two retail Ace hardware stores as well as a com-

mercial sales division in eastern Berks County. His goal is to operate a profitable business that also provides a platform to create positive impact and make a difference in the lives of customers, associates, vendors and their communities.

• Marcus Shantz and his cousin Sheila Shantz operate numerous businesses in St. Jacobs, Ont. Mar-cus is president of Mercedes Corp., which was founded by his father Milo, uncle Ross, and several private investors in the early 1980s. Sheila, daughter of Ross Shantz, directs market operations at the St. Jacobs Farmers’ Market and Flea Market, including vendor relations, property maintenance, customer relations, hiring and training of market staff as well as advertising and promotion.

The panelists will describe the challenge and satisfaction of growing financially successful businesses while pursuing higher purposes and keeping the good of their employees and their communities at the forefront.

Thursday night’s keynote address

will tackle the critical issue of race relations and how it relates to busi-ness and Mennonite society. Sociolo-gist and race relations expert James Loewen will bring his unique brand of humor to a speech on “Race Rela-tions: Lies We’ve Been Taught and What To Do about Them.”

Loewen, who holds a PhD in sociology from Harvard University, taught race relations for 20 years at the University of Vermont. He has written extensively on race and American history, including the best-seller Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong. He has been an expert witness in more than 50 civil rights, voting rights and employment cases.

He will focus on ongoing racial challenges, looking at both the his-tory of those issues and some for-ward-looking strategies for a brighter future.

“He aims to widen understand-ing of these problems and move toward better race relations in daily

Convention to featureMorning Edition host

The historic riverfront canal walk in Richmond, Va., site of MEDA’s convention.


lives, workplaces and communities,” says MEDA convention planner Carol Eby-Good.

The Saturday morning Year in Review and Annual General Meeting will highlight MEDA’s accomplish-ments of the past year including sto-ries from clients and partners from around the world, as well as reports on MEDA’s finances, investments and future directions.

On Sunday morning former MEDA staffer Joyce Bontrager Lehm-an will speak on “The Difference Between Us and Poor People.” She has spent 16 years in international economic development including an executive position with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She works as an independent advisor on increasing access to financial services for the billions of unbanked people in developing countries. She also serves on the boards of MEDA and MiCredito, a microfinance insti-tution in Nicaragua that grew out of MEDA’s work there.

A wide variety of professional de-velopment and faith/business semi-nars will be available, including:

• Likes, Tweets & Pins – Why So-cial Media Matters to Your Business

• Leadership: From Ego to EQ• Creative Capital to Build

Healthy Communities in the U.S.• Healthy Organization, Growing

Business• What Do Employers Want?

Skills Today’s Professionals Need• Using Catalytic Questions to

Unlock Solutions in Business and the Church

• Toward Shalom: The Role of Business in Society

• It’s in the Blood: How a Fam-ily’s DNA Turned Vision into a Jour-ney for Impacting the World

• The Government Giveth, and the Government Taketh Away

• American Roots Music ProgramMEDA staff will present semi-

nars on topics like food security in Africa, unleashing entrepreneurship

A weekend conference on living out faith at work is planned for April 22-24 at Laurelville Mennonite Church Center, Mount Pleasant, Pa.

Titled “Faith at Work: Living out Christ’s Heart,” the conference will feature keynote speaker John Pletcher, pastor of Manor Church in Lancaster, Pa., and author of the book Henry’s Glory: A Story for Discovering Lasting Signifi-cance in Your Daily Work.

Work and faith are con-cepts many Christians struggle to integrate, says David Dupuis, Laurelville’s program director. “We know that being faithful requires more than participation in a church and faith community. It is often easy to use our gifts in a church setting. But, at work? Can we only serve God in church or service-oriented profes-sions? How do we share? Are values such as honesty, trustworthiness and reliability evidence of faith? How do we daily apply biblical principles and engage in faithful living at our workplace?”

As for work ethic, Dupuis notes that Sandi Krakowski, author of “Faith at Work is About the Practice, not the Preaching,” asserts that faith “should make me the best worker anyone ever encounters.” A faith-filled worker, though not necessarily perfect, should be “more faithful, more patient, more honest and the one who shines the most.”

The confer-ence will probe various issues Christians may face on the job. “When the inevitable conflicts or frustrations arise at work, what is the faith-filled response? A person’s response to conflict says

much about their view of the world,” says Dupuis. “Does a faith-filled worker avoid conflict at all costs? Initiate conflict when the issue is one of justice? Do we model Christ-like behavior in conflict? Are there biblical principles to use in resolving workplace conflict?

“Like so many aspects of our faith journey, we are not alone. There is support and guidance avail-able in each other. We journey with many faithful men and women who seek to have more meaningful, faith-filled work lives.”

Dupuis says participants will find answers to these questions by hear-ing how others face the challenge of integrating faith and work and will explore personal challenges in small discussion groups.

For more information and reg-istration go to Laurelville.org or contact David Dupuis at [email protected]. ◆

Laurelville conference:living out faith & work

in Tanzania and Kenya, and seizing new market opportunities for women in Burma (Myanmar).

A strong menu of regional attrac-tions includes tours featuring Wil-liamsburg, Richmond City and Black

Heritage, Richmond International Raceway, Shirley Plantation, Lav-ender Fields Farm and various local food experiences.

For more information go to www.medaconvention.org ◆


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