Economics and Work on the Margins: Remembering the Poor & Powerless | Julius Walls
Channel: Faith@Work Summit
Date: 2014-12-22

The economic machine that is America continues to move forward but too often leaves many behind. While the Dow roars towards unprecedented heights, the poor and powerless reach new lows. But there is a solution that is both obvious and obscure: business. Business has changed lives of the less fortunate in the here and now when leaders and shareholders look beyond their own pocket. The principles and the experiences of the Greyston Bakery social enterprise in Yonkers exemplify this power of business to change the lives of individuals, families and the neighborhood itself. Deuteronomy 10:18 tells us that God “administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing.” The people of God are called to do the same.
___

Julius Walls

(BS, Concordia) is the pastor of Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church in Yonkers NY and the President of Greater Centennial Community Development Corp, the non-profit arm of a 5000+ member church. Rev. Walls has worked in business, academia, and the church, serving, in addition to the previously mentioned positions, as Chief of Staff of Greater Centennial Church, CEO of Greyston Bakery, a $7 million social enterprise, as VP for a $23 million chocolate manufacturing company, as an adjunct professor at the business graduate schools at NYU and BGI and serves on several local and national non-profit and government boards. He is the co-author, with Kevin Lynch, of Mission, Inc. The Practitioner’s Guide to Social Enterprise. 
___

Reflect/Respond

Can an unethical for-profit business yield a God-desired result?

Can a “Double Bottom Line” (financial and social) enterprise really work? Is it sustainable?
___

Resources

William Eggers, The Solution Revolution: How Business, Government, and Social Enterprises Are Teaming Up to Solve Society’s Toughest Problems (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013)
Marc J. Lane, Social Enterprise: Empowering Mission-Driven Entrepreneurs (ABA, 2012) 
Social Enterprise Alliance www.se-alliance.org
Julius Walls, Jr., and Kevin Lynch, Mission Inc.: A Practitioner’s Guide to Social Enterprise (Berrett-Koehler, 2009)

___

Faith@Work Summit 2014 by fwsummit.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://www.fwsummit.org.

Downloadable for non-commercial use only, under creative commons license: https://vimeo.com/113645931