Entrepreneurship for Human Flourishing

What brings people out of poverty?

To this question, many answer "charity." While charity may be effective for short-term relief in a crisis situation, it doesn't work on a long-term basis. Which brings us back to the original question, "What brings people out of poverty?"

To provide an answer, Chris Horst and Peter Greer from HOPE International wrote Entrepreneurship for Human Flourishing. This small book furnishes a Christian entrepreneurial framework and makes a strong case that ordinary business plays a central role in the fight against poverty.

The book is published by the American Enterprise Institute as part of their Values and Capitalism project.

Building Healthy Communities Through Medical-Religious Partnerships

Is your parish looking for a primer to get started doing health ministry? Do you need some good ideas about how to do holistic ministry? Then Building Healthy Communities Through Medical-Religious Partnerships, published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, is the book to read.

Authors Richard G. Bennett, MD and W. Daniel Hale, Ph.D. describe how parishes can get involved in a variety of health ministries of varying levels of complexity. The authors do not take a “one-size-fits-all” approach and suggest ministries that can be scaled to the size and level of interest of the parish.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I provides the philosophical background for congregational health programs. Of particular importance is the focus on prevention rather than curative care. As a preventive medicine specialist, I appreciate the discussion provided in chapter 2 on the three levels of prevention: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Part II covers suggested topics for congregational programs. Topics include coronary heart disease, hypertension, cancer, diabetes mellitus, depression, dementia, influenza/pneumonia, communicating with health care providers, modifying common risk factors, managing medications, and accidents/falls.

Part III is an exploration of resources including community resources, case studies of innovative medical-religious partnerships, and national organizations/resources.

Part IV contains a series of appendices including a sample congregational survey for health ministry, program evaluation form, and a series of forms for a patient advocacy ministry.

The book is perfect for a vestry book study, Deacons, and parish health-professionals. Non-medical parish members can also get involved in many of the ministries suggested. For example, the authors suggest a patient advocacy ministry where non-medical people are trained to accompany elderly patients on their medical appointments to ensure that instructions are followed and that the patient’s concerns are addressed.

Pick up a copy of the book today and begin exploring how your parish can embark on health ministry

The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom - Reviewed by Dr. Val Finnell

Robert Nisbet

ISI Books, 2010 (originally published in 1953)

Reviewed by: Dr. Val W. Finnell

Originally published in Forward in Christ Vol 3. No. 5

Why does it seem that all forms of community are in decline in America, whether church, social club, or fraternal organization? We lament that there are so many “unchurched” people. Yet, we are often at a loss to explain how we arrived at this point in history.  What were/are the factors that have contributed to the decline of community? In 1953, Robert Nisbet (1913-1996), a professor at Columbia University examined this question in his book, The Quest for Community; now back in print by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.  Nisbet’s analysis  examines the problem of community decline from a sociological perspective, a view that brings fresh insight into the 21^st Century.

Nisbet defines the problem of community as the decline of the functional and psychological significance of small social groups and associations, namely the family, civic associations, and other organizations (such as the Church and guilds) that have had a mediatorial role in human social, economic, and political relationships. These social groups performed indispensible functions in the life of medieval society, functions that are only possible in an environment where centralized power was relatively weak.

Everything changes in the 16^th Century, when we witness the rise of the autonomous individual who becomes more steadily detached from the historical institutions that gave meaning and social context to life. Nisbet sees the Protestant Reformation as a shaping influence that removed man from the social context of the hierarchical Church in turn for a more privatized and internalized religion. Only three elements of Christianity were left in Protestant theology: the lone individual, an omnipotent, distant God, and divine grace (p. 85). Also, the exchange of the visible for the invisible Church degraded the importance of ecclesiastical institutions.

In similar fashion, Nisbet sees the rise of laissez faire capitalism as another atomizing influence for mankind. Human beings now “existed for the work day, not as members of society, but as individual units of energy and production.” (p. 88)

Neither the religious or economic changes taking place in medieval Europe were enough to remove man from the socially normative institutions, however. Only the rise of the political State could achieve what economic and religious changes could not.

It is Nisbet’s central argument that the “single, most decisive influence upon Western social organization has been the rise of the centralized, territorial State.” (p. 91) The author traces the development of modern political thought through the theories of Bodin, Hobbes, and finally Rousseau. Paradoxically, the centralized, all-powerful State seeks to abolish all of the former allegiances in the name of freedom and  liberation of the autonomous individual. It is the abolition of the vital influence of family, church, and social group that leads to the crisis of community. Faced with atomization and isolation from former community contexts, man seeks what is lost by searching for community through participation in the State itself. This creates a vicious circle that further increases the power of the State at the expense of the former, small social group (including the Church).

Here is what is key for Christians to understand: when there is a gap between the moral claims of a social group (like the Church) and its institutional importance in the social order, people seek social membership elsewhere. People join a social group “if and when its larger institutional or intellectual functions have relevance both to [their] own life organization and to what [they] can see of the group’s relation to the larger society.” (p. 54)

As an example, the growth in State welfare programs has reduced if not eliminated the Church’s role in providing economic assistance to the community. It is simply not seen as a viable option and this, in turn, reinforces man to seek “membership” and political involvement in the State.

Nisbet’s solution is to decentralize the government, thus creating an environment where man’s freedom can truly be realized in diverse communities. No nostalgic return to the past is suggested, but rather the creation of new social structures that address current problems and reintegrate man into meaningful, local community contexts.

Transformation through Holistic Ministry

I gave this talk back in February of 2012 at Christ Our Savior Anglican Church during a fundraiser for Medical Mission Adventure's free mobile medical clinic.

In it, I recommend some key resources for doing holistic ministry, that is ministry in both "word and deed."