| Contact Us | :: | SBE Home | :: | SPU Home |
|
|||
 |
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
Bridging Sunday and Monday: Making Faith Really Matter in Business A one day conference, October 4, 2007 7:00 am—4:30 pm (includes breakfast and lunch) Seattle Pacific University
Conference Overview Over the past two decades the Christian community has seen an explosion of activity around the subject of the “ministry of our daily work.” The growing number of books on this subject is one piece of evidence. Pete Hammond (with Paul Stevens and Todd Svanoe) published an Annotated Bibliography in 2002, and maintains an exploding database of books and other publications on the subject. The Marketplace Ministry report from the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism conference in 2004 demonstrates the international nature of this activity. Marketplace ministries have “sprung up” in cities around the world. It appears that God is truly at work stirring passions and insight regarding the wholeness of the gospel and the destruction of the “sacred/secular” divide. Theology of Work is even finding its way into a few seminaries. From this foundation, we seek to go deeper. If God cares about our daily work, does he also care about its institutions: government, education, the medical field, and business? And if so, what do the Scriptures have to say about how this work should be conducted? And if Christians can grasp what the Bible is saying about this work, does this insight translate to a secular world where the authority of the Scriptures is not recognized? For those of us in business, the development of faith and work integration provides the foundation for developing a biblical view of business. At the School of Business and Economics at Seattle Pacific University, we started this discussion in earnest in 2002. The result was a paper published in 2004 on our view of the biblical purpose of business, [Van Duzer, et. al.]. Using biblical language, the paper demonstrated that God cares about the institution of business and has called people to that field to carry out his work in this world. The fundamental conclusion of that paper was that the purpose of business is to serve. Two vital ways that businesses serve are to distribute goods and services that are needed in the world, and to provide meaningful work enabling people to respond to God’s call for them to work. This is a vastly different conclusion than Milton Friedman drew, and many people accept today, that the purpose of business is to maximize the shareholder value subject to the constraints of the law and ethical norms. We also believe that when something is true, it is true even for those who don’t recognize biblical authority. We have found that our conclusion about the purpose of business can be discussed using different arguments for audiences who don’t look to biblical authority for answers, such as Rotary, universities, and general business groups. Since most ethical problems in business over the past decade have come from greed rooted in the bottom line, these ideas on purpose offer hope through another way of thinking about business. Now the question is this: can we go another step deeper? If biblical insight can help us understand the purpose of business, can it also help us understand the practice of business? Can we look at areas of business such as leadership, organizational culture, marketing, finance, human resources, and corporate social responsibility and gain biblical insight about them? And if the answer is yes, can we take this insight another step further to develop business theories that can be communicated in a secular language, offering insight to business leaders for all sizes of businesses, from all cultures, and all types of industry. That is what the conference “Bridging Sunday and Monday” is all about. We put out a Call for Papers and selected responses from 14 universities (both general universities and those that call themselves Christian) with research ideas in these areas. We had numerous responses from faith-based practitioners in business who have found insightful ways to carry out their work in honor to God. We organized sessions for the presentation and discussion of these ideas on October 4, 2007 in Seattle. Our goal for the conference is to bridge two gaps. The first is between Sunday and Monday. Can we create a strong link between biblical faith and the practice of business? Of course this means acting ethically, and finding ways to demonstrate our commitment to Christ. But it means more than this, in demonstrating the missional value of business as more than a means to some other end. The second gap we sought to bridge was between those in business and those in the academy. Many academics have not had to deal with the day to day challenges of being in business, while many people in business have not sought to ground what they do in solid theory. So sometimes these groups talk past each other, or don’t talk at all. By having strong representation from both communities at this conference, in each session, and in the presentations, we looked to create a dialogue. Ultimately, however, Jesus calls us to be stewards of the resources he has given us, and to be accountable for our work in the world. While we believe that business is a worthy calling, some recent activity in business has been far from worthy. The identification of new and better practices for business can bring healing and help to a hurting world, with the end, that “they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven,” Matthew 5:16. Al Erisman Center for Integrity in Business School of Business and Economics Seattle Pacific University October 2007
Conference Schedule 6:30—7 am
9:45—10:15 am
Parallel Sessions
Contact Information
Al Erisman, aerisman@spu.edu, 206-281-2579 Matt Royston, roystm@spu.edu, 206-276-0945 How to Register
You can register in one of two ways: 1. Through the CBFA conference site http://www.spu.edu/sbe/cbfa/index.htm 2. Through the Kiros website Note: On the Kiros website, you can register either for the entire program, or just the breakfast event.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2006 Seattle Pacific University. (206) 281-2970. sbe@spu.edu Hours: M-F, 8:30AM-5:00PM Location: McKenna Hall 3307 Third Avenue West, STE-201, Seattle, WA 98119-1950, U.S.A. |
||
