By Daniel Pryfogle
From The Christian Citizen, Spring 2003
(Reprinted with permission of National Ministries, American Baptist Churches USA)

For 29-year-old Victor, a man unable to find employment because of his disabilities, written off by the government as a hopeless case, justice would be getting a job. And it would take a miracle to find one.

In Caguas, Puerto Rico, a miracle is coming in the mail. Make that mailbox: Community Office and Mail, Inc., to be precise, a venture of the aptly named Corporación Milagros del Amor (Miracles of Love Corporation).

When fully operational this summer, Community Office and Mail will provide paid employment for Victor and three others, while it generates income for the nonprofit parent organization, which is sponsored by Iglesia Bautista de Caguas. Executive Director Laura Ayala says her organization is committed to helping the poorer residents of Caguas reach self-sufficiency. Thus, Ayala says, the organization "should take the same approach and set the example." That means earning more income through enterprise rather than depending solely on government and private funding.

Corporación Milagros del Amor, one of the Christian centers affiliated with National Ministries' Neighborhood Action Program, is part of a growing movement of nonprofits and for-profit companies that use business to do social justice. Called social enterprises, they wed management and marketing strategies with a passionate commitment to helping people on the margins. In a post-Enron environment, these ventures offer an alternative that is anything but business as usual. Their creative engagement with the marketplace is a challenge to the church, which is often conflicted about its role in a global capitalist economy.

Signs of Social Enterprise

Social enterprise is showing up in a number of places today. In Seattle, ex-offenders make cargo bay pieces for Boeing airplanes. In East Palo Alto, at-risk youth design Web sites for Silicon Valley firms. In North Carolina, recovering addicts staff one of the most popular moving companies.

Academia is taking notice of the trend. Harvard, Berkeley, and Duke are among the business schools now offering programs in social enterprise. This spring, Yale School of Management, The Goldman Sachs Foundation, and The Pew Charitable Trusts will award $500,000 in a competition for the best business plans with a social agenda.

Social enterprise is defined in various ways by its practitioners. For some nonprofits, it means establishing a business that provides employment for the organization's clientele while generating income to support the overall mission. A soup kitchen becomes a restaurant where the clientele are fed and employed. The business pursues a "double bottom line." That is, its leaders are driven by a social vision, but they also understand the adage "no margin, no mission."

For other nonprofits and for-profits, social enterprise is defined more broadly. It's about entrepreneurial leadership-taking risks, being innovative, creatively leveraging whatever resources are available-to address a social concern. When the church gets down to business, enterprise and entrepreneurial leadership become kingdom-building tools. Greater attention is given to a community's assets than to its problems. Ownership of property and businesses is pursued, because leaders recognize that capital is essential for a sustainable community. When the church faithfully engages the marketplace-when the prophet and the entrepreneur mix it up-the cry of the poor is answered: "We want equity," they say, "not charity."

"It's a matter of justice," Ayala explains. "It's a matter of having resources available for everyone who needs them."

A Crooked Kind of Vision

"What's that in your hand?" the Rev. Jerri Hubbard asks members of her San Diego community, just as God asked Moses. Hubbard sees "diamonds in the rough" when she talks to people who think they have no future. Her word to them: "Whatever God has given you, think about how to market it."

The president of American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest, Hubbard is a prophetic entrepreneur. Last year she launched a cookie distribution business called Ebenezer's, housed at Inner City Baptist Church in San Diego. Her aim is to eventually employ youth from disenfranchised families-the children of incarcerated parents, kids who see opportunity only in gangs and drugs. The goal of the business, Hubbard says, is to "break that cycle."

Entrepreneurs such as Hubbard are often regarded as having extraordinary vision. They see opportunities beyond present limited resources. For prophetic entrepreneurs, it's a crooked kind of vision: In a community caught up in seemingly intractable problems, in a desperate situation that feels like a dead end, they see hope coming around the corner. It's Jeremiah buying a piece of property when Jerusalem was on its way down. It's Laura Ayala and her team seeing beyond Victor's disabilities to his gifts. And dreaming of a business to employ him.

Mixing It Up

Ayala attended the National Gathering of Social Entrepreneurs in Seattle in 2001. She was right at home with this growing group of leaders. Called to ministry as a teenager, Ayala knew God was leading her to a different kind of ministry, but she didn't know what. After earning her Master of Arts in Religion and Society from Drew University, she discovered her place of ministry in the nonprofit sector. She eventually returned to Puerto Rico at the invitation of her pastor to build Corporación Milagros del Amor from the ground up.

In the past five years, the organization has served hundreds of Caguas residents through housing assistance, emergency groceries, advocacy for adults with disabilities, and training for women to launch their own businesses. Ayala and other prophetic entrepreneurs are willing to mix it up-to get the church into business, to move beyond ambivalence about money and economics, to create rather than simply critique. "Our faith should be grounded in our reality," she says. "We live in a capitalist economy. That's our setting."

The prophetic entrepreneur actually turns the traditional notion of entrepreneurism on its head. Prophetic enterprise is not about self-made success. The call to self-sufficiency, which is really a call to venture beyond the place of supposed security, gives way to a new sense of God's provision. It is to discover, as biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann says, that God is the one who generates hope.

Ayala made that discovery. She knew she wanted to start a business. After going to Seattle, where she witnessed social enterprise in action, she says, "I realized I wasn't as crazy as I thought." But the business had to be one that could employ Victor with his limited mobility. So one morning Ayala asked her staff to pray. That very afternoon, a woman came to the organization with a gift. Unable to manage her mailbox business because of illness, she offered it to Milagros del Amor.

"Not only was our prayer answered," Ayala says, "but Victor had a job."

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What do you think of Prophetic Enterprise? Join a conversation.

Read more: Check out Daniel Pryfogle's articles on "Prophets of Profit" and "A Generation Gets Down to Business."