The Heart of Social Entrepreneurship

Was walking back home, after visiting some of the bros and sisters in NUS mugging for their exams, and thinking about the future career path.

Very thankful to God that He has allowed me to do some freelance work that, by His grace, will give a good boost to the efforts of some church-planters setting up a company. Think this is the kind of work that I REALLY love to do. Knowing that what I'm doing for Him has eternal value, and to boot, I get paid while doing something I love which will help to make an impact of ETERNAL value too! w00t! :D It really is sweet and proper to work for the Lord!

So this set me off on a trail of thinking. I realised that, actually, the path that I'm becoming more and more interested in is the path of social enterprise, where you run a business that is first and foremost, self-sustaining, and secondly, able to help provide consistently, whether in terms of educational or financial or other types of value, for a target group of people.

And also, I hope to, in the course of running a multimedia design company next time, be able to provide support to other fellow social entreprises too. :) After all, a multimedia design agency's primary role is that of a support service... and also, hee, help support the Kingdom of God in whatever way possible. Of course, financially is one way, but think can support in terms of expertise and skill too.

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Then it struck me that actually, social enterprise has already been mentioned in the Bible. The principle of social enterprise can be seen very clearly from Acts 20:32-35, when Paul, in his farewell speech to the church in Ephesus that he had helped plant, told them:

"Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I have not coveted anyone's silver or gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'"

Then it struck me that philanthropy, volunteer work and social entreprise are all simply fellow agents on the same continuum - based on the same underlying principle: working hard to provide for oneself, and also to help the weak - remembering the Lord Jesus' words: "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

Gosh. Both capitalists and communists really can learn from Christ. :)

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Think this is one of the experiences that I've been going through, how God has been helping me understand that my current way of understanding and seeing the world is inadequate. I've been learning that I have this tendency to shoehorn my understanding of what I should do and shouldn't do - whether it's in social manners, or relationships, or work, or graphics designing or family, etc... - into a framework, a model, a set of algorithms.

And it's inadequate, because (as WZ would put it) this being overly pedantic makes me ill-equipped to handle new situations and challenges.

So thank God for my dear shep who has been helping ... ok, pushing me... to learn and apply principles for living... and all these principles can be found in the Bible!

Still learning. It's not easy to change my mindset - but I know my Daddy in heaven will help me grow in this area of wisdom, because He has promised already in James 1 that if anyone lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it WILL be given to him. :) Amen!