The Navigator’s calling is simple yet very profound,​

​The last part has an interesting word: “living”. To some this would mean “where you live”, yet I believe it has bigger implications. I believe this word means “your entire life” or “as you live”. If this is the case then we are to be making disciples where we live, where we play, and even where we work. Every part of life.
 
I began my journey of discovering God in the workplace as I was graduating college. Perfect timing. The commands were quite clear in the Bible: to work heartily as unto the Lord and to do everything for the glory of God  (Ephesians 6:5-8 and Colossians 3:22-24). The lost were all around me, so I had no problem believing Jesus when he said the harvest was plentiful. The longer I work (which I’ll admit has not been very long) the more God teaches me about following him in every aspect of my life, even work.

​When I went to the Entrepreneurial Readiness Workshop (ERW) I didn’t really know what to expect. I didn’t have a business idea ready or even have one brewing. Not a feasible one, anyway. Yet I know now that God used that workshop to teach me more about himself. And I don’t have to start a Missional Enterprise to put what I learned into practice!

The triple bottom line is foundational to running a successful Missional Enterprise. Yet this same triple bottom line has the ability to inform everyone’s work from a corporate job to an entrepreneurship. 

While I don’t know where God is leading me in regards to starting a Missional Enterprise or joining an existing one yet, I am already able to apply lessons from the ERW to my current workplace. How will you bring glory to God in every aspect of your life? 

Back in the 1980´s, the Navigators in Africa began making small loans to help African disciples launch businesses that would provide much needed income for their families.  Today, there are hundreds of enterprises across the African continent run by business men and women who have been trained by the Navigators in evangelism and discipleship.  With more and more “missional enterprises” springing up, Navigator representative Wanjau Nduba (who resources this network), saw an urgent need to have many more trained mentors and coaches who could help these business practitioners stay focused on a triple bottom line of financial sustainability, spiritual transformation, and social impact. This need led to the birth of an initiative called “Venture Villages”.

After 16 months of development, the first Venture Village was launched in Nairobi, Kenya in November of 2016 as a joint initiative with Naventure (the Navigator African business network led by Wanjau), Agora Enterprises (a US based ministry that promotes international entrepreneurial accelerators), and the Global Enterprise Network (the resource team that serves Navigator missional enterprises around the world). The goal is to launch dozens of successful startup missional entrepreneurs around Africa in the next few years.

One essential ingredient in this Venture Village process is to recruit and train successful Christ-centered entrepreneurs as business coaches and mentors who can walk alongside new and existing Navigator business practitioners.  These mentors and coaches will empower Navigator entrepreneurs to stay focused on pursuing the triple bottom line that is being used in the Global Enterprise Network (GEN). 
 
In this first Venture Village nine mentors, who were trained in the techniques of Lean Startup and coaching skills, met bi-weekly with nine aspiring entrepreneurs.  Prize money was awarded at the end of the three-month course to the three entrepreneurs with the best business ideas. Investors will be reviewing all nine business plans for potential capital investments. The next Venture Village, which will begin at the end of September 2017, will train a new cohort of mentors to work with more new entrepreneurs so over time there will be a growing number of mentors/coaches to serve the ever-increasing number of missional entrepreneurs in Africa.

The operative principle behind training new business mentors/coaches is Ecclesiastes 4:9 - “Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor.”  By having trained business mentors/coaches working with new Christ-centered entrepreneurs to pursue a triple bottom line, God will ensure there will be a good return for their labor.  This will enable the gospel to flow out of these businesses into communities around the world as business men and women live out their faith daily in the marketplace.
 
Says Matt, who trained the coaches, “Our passion is developing missional entrepreneurs to become lifetime laborers who can be fruitful in the marketplace where they will spend most their time.”  Feel free to contact us  if you would like to learn more about how to become an entrepreneurial mentor/coach.

Can sweet, organic honey impact the world for Christ and advance our calling into the nations through spiritual generations of laborers living and discipling among the lost?  Is that even possible?  Just have a quick conversation with smiling Paul from West Africa, and you will say a resounding “yes!”  Paul and his wife, Mary, have an exciting ministry with the farmers of their country.  Paul was burdened for the rural poor who had little means of income, including a way to pay for their children´s schooling.  In central West Africa, where there are consistent attacks by cattle herdsmen (the remaining active arm of a militant group) on the poor villagers, the possibilities are scarce. As Paul thought and prayed about how to reach these people for Christ and disciple them, he was guided by the philosophy: “Don´t give them fish.  Don´t only teach them how to fish.  Go fishing with them.”  That makes sense to us as Navigators as we walk with people through life, but how could he do this in rural Africa? 

One day, after a visit to a beekeeper in Zambia, God gave Paul an idea about beehives.  If he could provide beehives to people in the rural villages and let the bees make honey, he could then buy the honey from the people and sell it for a profit.  This would create a business that was financially sustainable that could also fund the ministry in the future.  If he could organize the villagers into beehive groups, where they could watch over their beehives and be accountable to each other, and if these beehive groups could also double as savings groups that provide a forum for them to save their money, loan it among themselves to start or grow enterprises, and pay their children’s school fees, this would create a business that was having a great social impact.  And if he could share stories of Christ in their regular beehive groups, trusting in the Holy Spirit´s work in each heart to bring the person to faith in Him, this business would have a transformational spiritual impact.  Thus, the Honey Value Chain Experience was born with grants to Paul from two Navigator sources:  the British Navs for the honey processor, and NavPartners Children Mission for the beehives.  He began his business under the care of the Africa Navigator Global Enterprise Network (GEN).
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Paul and Mary serve together in this endeavor as they wrestle through ways to protect the beehives from theft (deciding to give the people the beehives for free), to wrestling through ways to ensure that there is a spiritual generational impact.  They carefully watch and pray that the Gospel is shared in a natural way as discipleship is taking place. They have mobilized 233 villagers and are working with them in two groups. Forty-five of these people have either started or are growing their enterprises in West Africa. Five young people are also being discipled and have been trained as apicultural technicians. They have also now trained the six group leaders with Insider skills to be leaders in this transformational ministry. Paul says that the Gospel is shared more frequently now and better understood by the rural people. He and Mary are excited about how God is using sweet, organic honey and His powerful Word to transform lives and advance the Gospel of Jesus and His Kingdom into the Nations.  His Word is going forth, and it is good!

Does capitalism promote greed?  Are capitalism and altruism incompatible?
​
These are questions Dr. Peter Heslam, Director of Transforming Business at the University of Cambridge, discusses in his article, “Capitalism – is greed its creed?” Heslam concludes that greed is a heart problem, not a problem with capitalism.  Capitalism, it seems, is an opportunity to express greed.  Although his short article does not answer if capitalism is based on greed, Heslam provides some historical and Biblical perspectives on greed and the need for trust and serving others for markets to work.

Read the full article at the Transforming Business website. 

After a particularly crazy December, I finally carved out an hour to hole up in the local Starbucks and compose my introductory blog for the GEN Desk explaining Second Story Coffee Roasters, our missional enterprise in Japan. My coffee had arrived, my computer was open, my earbuds were in -- and just a literal moment later, my phone buzzed. A text message, written in Japanese: "Are you at Starbucks?" I looked up, puzzled, mainly because I didn't recognize the Chinese characters of the author's name. How do you read that kanji again? "Yes, I'm in Starbucks. Where are you?" I glanced around for a familiar face as I typed, hoping I might remember the name that went with it.

I didn't need to wait long, because she showed up at my table: a woman I'm slightly acquainted with through my volleyball league. She asked if she could join me, though I was clearly there to work and even said so. Nonetheless, she grabbed her bag and sat down, which is unusually forward for a Japanese person, so I took the hint and closed my computer. This was outlined long ago in our cultural training, right? To let go of expectations and go with what comes? I took the opportunity to practice, and found myself excited to have coffee with a new friend.

She and I talked about the normal things of life: work and children, medical appointments and shopping, daycare, school life, and trips we'd taken. It was essentially an hour of chitchat. The time I had set aside to work had been totally enveloped into conversation with this woman, whose name I would later look up and make a note of so I could actually use it the next time we met. I mentioned the time and we parted ways, she to get groceries and I to pick up kids. I was musing over our meeting in the car, when realized that God had given me my blog post, though I hadn't written a word. That simple conversation about day-to-day life in Japan? That was at the heart of our desire to start a missionally-minded business.

When we worked in traditional ministry with college students, though we had good relationship with the young adults that came to our home, we felt out-of-sync with the culture at large. While everyone else's husbands were at work, mine was available to help. Whenever anyone asked what our job was, they quickly became lost after we tried to explain. We were living our lives in a way that was very different from the people around us. Though we had moved to their country, studied their language, and sent our children to their schools, there was a part of the nominal, everyday chitchat that we just didn't get. We keenly felt the ways in which we could not relate to our Japanese friends and neighbors, from childhood memories to language, skin color, family culture, and even worldview. But we felt that if there was anything we could do to bridge the gap, enabling us to understand the hearts and minds of our friends just a little bit more, we wanted to do it.

This is one of the reasons we have started Second Story Coffee Roasters.

Go, Live, Serve is hosting a BAM business consulting competition.  Your answers will go to help solve a business problem in an emerging market.  Today the founders are faced with the decision of how to grow the business while helping them stay true to their vision.  Teams will be asked to advise the client in this case competition.  Finalists will have the opportuntiy to present their solutions and win $20k.  

Register before January 1, 2017 and send in your solutions to qualify for the final round.  

For more information, visit: www.goliveserve.org/overview.

Second Story Coffee Roasters (SSCR) wants to take care of people. "We want to be a resource to our friends and neighbors, helping them to move closer to who they were made to be.  We believe we can do this through coffee, which is the second most traded commodity in the world.  Within this large market, we would like to create a business where taking care of people and their stories is as valuable as the quality of our product."
​

Bryan and Jamie launched SSCR to be a relationally-sourced, primarily single-origin coffee roaster located in Shizuoka, Japan.  Currently, they operate on a subscription basis, mailing and delivering coffee to our customers weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, in addition to occasional pop-up coffee stands in the Shizuoka area. They also roast for wholesale and commercial accounts and hope to open a retail location.

Japan is one of the  leading consumers of specialty coffee in the world.  

​Bryan and Jamie have a passion for the art of the craft and take great care to bring precision to every part of the process.  But beyond the roast and the cup, they brilliantly illuminate the stories of life... from the plantations, consumers, and themselves.  They are also deeply interested in the "second story" that is being written every day.  

​"SSCR strives to buy direct and fairly traded high quality coffees roasted on location with full knowledge of the story behind each bean.  We strive to connect with your story, the 'second story,' as we introduce you to the countries and producers of your daily pleasure, even offering the opportunity to travel with us and experience the communities that produce your coffee."

Their own story to launch SSCR has been written over many years.  Read more about a first leg in their journey to launch, "Our Story to Become Missional Entrepreneurs."   

A second phase is currently taking place to raise capital needed to secure a new roaster and continue the story.  Follow SSCR on Facebook and Instagram, or contact us for more information about Navigator Missional Enterprises and Business as Missions (BAM).   

On the first weekend of October, 22 aspiring missional entrepreneurs descended on the Springs for an intense weekend. Each Entrepreneurial Readiness Workshop (ERW) is designed to teach and equip participants on impacting the nations through business and other missional enterprises.
 
The ERW moves at the speed of a startup. On Saturday alone many participants invested full 14-hour days learning and preparing for their team’s Sunday missional enterprise proposal. On Sunday an experienced panel reviewed all the teams’ proposals and announced a winner. In the meantime attendees learned, laughed and discovered more deeply how God may be asking them to reach the nations in a sometimes chaotic entrepreneurial context (click on video here).
 
ERW organizer, Jennifer of the gendesk.org, says that a Nav alumna who attended the previous ERW was so excited about the event that she brought several friends along to the October ERW.  “It was the best Nav event I’ve ever attended,” she said the EDGEr.
 
Let us know if you or someone you know would like to find out more about the ERW and missional enterprise as a pathway to the nations. We are tentatively planning future ERWs for New York City, Minneapolis and College Station.

-- NavMissions Communications Director

Often there is a chronic divide between the "sacred" and the "secular."  But Monday through Saturday matter too... we will feel disconnected and fractured.  

​How is your work related to your worship of God?  Is it at all? 

As missional entrepreneurs, there needs to be a connect.  Otherwise the toil of every day tasks will feel like a distraction rather than the context of where we worship God and expect His Kingdom to advance.