Social Entrepreneurship

Pondering my potential retirement from the military and trying to discern what God would have me do with two decades of relatively diverse experience, I've recently become fascinated with the idea of "social entrepreneurship." This term, which, I've come to find out, has been around at least since the '80s, encompasses quite well what I thought I was dreaming up on my own as a novel idea! Well all the better that this wonderful concept didn't wait around for me.

Some key organizations: The Skoll Foundation and Ashoka.

Most of these endeavors involves unique cooperative endeavors between public and private actors. Rick Warren points out that "public-private cooperation" was a huge topic at the Davos summit a few years back (no wonder its all over now).

But he takes it a step further pointing out that a stool with only two legs will tip over. What is really needed is Public-Private-Church cooperation. The Church is the ultimate logistics organization, on the ground in ever village in the world with a deep understanding of local culture, need and capability. His interview with Krista Tippett describes his awakening to the plight (existence) of the globe's underprivileged.


A recent cover story in Time describes the opening steps his "PEACE plan, a bid to turn every single Christian church on earth into a provider of local health care, literacy and economic development, leadership training and spiritual growth."

Cognitive tension

I got the title of this blog from a recent quote a I heard on a podcast on iTunes U from the Stanford Center for Social Innovation.

John Sage, founder of Pura Vida coffee, gave a talk entitled "How do you take your coffee?" wherein he describes his philosophy behind creating a company that is motivated by both profit and philanthropy.

Martin Luther King based a sermon entitled "The strength to love" on Math 10:16 where Jesus sends out his disciples "without a tunic" and instructs them to "Be as shrewd as serpents, and as gentle as doves." Highlighting the inherent contraction in such a statement King said,

The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. The idealists are usually not realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites living together in fruitful harmony.

Isn't that the truth! As much as we strive to understand and differentiate the contradictions of life, we can't. Instead understanding comes through holding seeming opposites in creative tension.