God Said "Go!"

I had never heard of Rob Hall, but this article grabbed both my head and my heart.

Rob was a Canadian who heard the call of God, like his hero, Abraham, to 'Go!', without knowing quite where he would end up. He and his wife Kate (cousin of songwriter and worship leader Ben Cantelon) took this full on the chin, knowing it would mean leaving behind everything they'd known and embarking with their three young children on a voyage into the unknown.

'The plan? To learn what it means to be on an adventure with God,' they wrote in their blog. 'Sharing ideas on helping people launch their own adventure and hopefully in some way using our skills to bring justice and mercy to those in need.'

The Halls didn't side-step the radical implications of the call. 'Have you ever wondered what you would do if all you had on earth was the possessions you could carry with you?', Rob wrote. 'What would you keep? What would you get rid of? If you don’t deal with your baggage before you start, it will be an even bigger burden as you move on. This is true both spiritually and practically.' This clip shows what a family of five ended up with.

The path took them via the Christian community at Taizé in France to a Bible college in Zambia, where they taught theology, agriculture and Christian entrepreneurship.

Then, with the vision still in its infancy, Rob was killed in a construction site accident. His funeral was in early March 2011. This webpage set up in his memory shows the amazing impact of his example. Friends are urging all Christians to do "random acts of kindness" to others, in memory of Rob.

I close with some wise sayings that Rob cites in the blog, which illustrate the heart of a passionate disciple of Jesus Christ.

If you want change - take risks.

If you want security - get ready to jump.

If you want adventure - allow for the unplanned.

If you want to write a book - live something worth writing about.

If you think it will be easy - think again.

Christian Social Entrepreneurship Today?

At a recent event it was my privilege to talk with Patrick Shine, senior partner at the Shaftesbury Partnership , "a social business whose mission is to create and inspire trailblazing social reforms that empower communities by tackling disadvantage and generating opportunity".

I remarked on how popular the term "Christian social entrepreneur" seems to be becoming, judging by the number of internet search returns. There is even a blog: "Compassion in Politics; entrepreneurial social change plus faith and Kingdom principles".Patrick admitted that the term had become something of a cachet, with some ambitious young Christian professionals keen to have it on their CV.

How refreshing, then, to read Mark Greene's article on Kim Tan, co-author of 'Fighting Poverty Through Enterprise: The case for Social Venture Capital'. "I am in the business of making wealth [in order] to distribute wealth", he says, and is unfazed by the (to most people) dichotomy of 'Christian venture capitalist'. He has indeed generated considerable assets.

A committed evangelical Christian, Tan lived for some years in Christian community in Surrey, UK, with some 45 others, as a way of rediscovering the radical lifestyle of the early church and "to deal with our material addiction". Without this experience, Tan says, "I wouldn't have learned how to hold things lightly".

Tan is the founder Chairman of SpringHill Management Ltd (UK), a fund management company in biotech and social venture capital investments. He is also co-founder of Transformational Business Network, a UK charity with social transformational businesses in developing countries, including the Kuzuko Game Reserve (South Africa) and the Hagar Social Enterprise Group (Cambodia).

Christian social entrpreneurship, in Tan's view, means helping the poor escape poverty. Micro-credit has been a crucial first step here. He looks for not only to invest in areas of the world where there is grinding poverty, but also to invest in such a way that local people take responsibility and are empowered long-term. In his experience, every job created in a developing country has the potential to affect ten other people positively.

"Some people are like rocks," he says. "they give when you strike them. Some people are like oranges; they give when you squeeze the. And some are like flowers; they give because it's in their nature to give. When I meet people, I ask myself 'do they smell of Jesus?'" Tan's basis for this is his grounding in the writings of the Anabaptists (see previous posts in my blog) and the biblical concept of the Jubilee, a time of social redress, justice and liberation for all the people.

Tan is convinced that his entrepreneurship isn't a special gift. "We have all these highly gifted, talented people: creative, innovative, with superb executional skills - and we let them rot in [church] pews!" Not only can such people make a genuine contribution to justice and the relief of poverty, but they can achieve their true potential in God - daring to dream bigger than they would have supposed.

Labours Of Love

Since 2001 her face has been on every Bank of England £5 note, but who was Elizabeth Fry?

She was born into a banking family in Norwich, England, in 1780. When she was 18, she heard a Quaker preacher speaking and she was converted. She joined a Quaker assembly, where a woman had a prophecy for her: "You are born to be a light to the blind, speech to the dumb and feet to the lame."

Immediately she was moved to charitable acts. She collected old clothes for the poor, visited those who were sick in her neighbourhood, and started a Sunday School to teach children to read.

Marriage took her to London, and motherhood kept her so busy that after 12 years she lamented: "I fear my life is slipping away to little purpose." How wrong she was!

Another Quaker minister told her of the horrifying conditions in the capital's prisons. Fry went to the infamous Newgate jail to see for herself. She found hundreds of women and their children living violent lives in unsanitary conditions and sleeping on the floor without bedding.

Fry sprang into action. Immediate practical needs had to be met. She enlisted local women to make clothes for the children. She got permission to start a school for prison children. She founded an organisation of women who would visit prisoners, pray and read scriptures with them, and provide them with materials to sew and knit goods which could be sold to give them some income.


But more visionary action was required if lasting change was to happen. Fry took to spending some nights in the jail and invited members of the aristocracy to come and do so too, to experience at first had the inhumane conditions. Her brother-in-law, a Member of Parliament, also promoted her work in government circles.

The atmosphere at Newgate changed so noticeably that Fry's model was followed in other towns and even abroad. She became well known. She was the first woman ever to give evidence to a parliamentary select committee, leading to a series of prison reforms in the 1820s. Queen Victoria admired her and made donations.

Fry's work didn't stop there. Even while raising 11 children and suffering from what today would be called post-natal depression, she established a night shelter for the homeless in London; campaigned for more humane treatment of orphans; raised awareness of the plight of newly-released prisoners with nowhere to go; began an outreach ministry to sailors and founded a school for nurses. It was nurses trained at Fry's school who went with Florence Nightingale to the Crimea.

She was incensed at the transportation of women prisoners to Australia. The night before they left, there were always riots in the prisons. The women would reach Australia penniless and with dependent children, leaving prostitution as the only option for many. Elizabeth lobbied parliament and personally visited all deportees, giving them materials for making clothes on the voyage which they could sell on arrival.

Together with her husband, Fry also agitated against capital punishment. At that time, upwards of 200 crimes were punishable by death. After initial indifference in high circles, they gained the ear of Robert Peel, the Home Secretary, who met with them and started the process of penal reform.

Elizabeth’s motives in all these activities were avowedly Christian. Her faith was the centre of all she did. Quakers allowed anointed women to preach, and Elizabeth did so. It is said that her voice carried such emotion that hard hearts would weep.

"Let us cleave to God in spirit," she exhorted, "and make it the first business of our lives to be conformed to His will and live to His glory, whether prosperity or adversity be our portion, and though our years pass away like a brief tale. Through His unbounded love, the blessings of the Most High will rest upon us."

Fry proved it. The prophecy was fulfilled absolutely. Called "the Angel of Mercy" in her lifetime, when she died in 1845 over a thousand people lined the way to her grave, to honour the passing of a truly great woman.

A Visionary Employer

What did you do for a career if you were a Quaker? They were barred from universities; as pacifists, the armed forces were not an option; they rejected established churches.

One option was business, and Quakers gained a deserved reputation as principled and reliable tradespeople. In the latter half of the 18th century, three Quakers families were attracted to the chocolate industry. They became household names: Fry, Rowntree and Cadbury. There were sound reasons for choosing chocolate. The medical world had declared it a healthy drink, and Quakers (who were teetotal) saw it as a viable alternative to alchohol.


George Cadbury (1839-1922) inherited the Birmingham-based family business in 1861. He was a visionary and a philanthropist. He determined to create a business which would "reflect his religious ideals, his belief in thrift and hard work, worthy products, fair dealing and good employment conditions."

So he moved the business away from the smoke of the city to a greenfield site which he called Bournville. In this healthier environment he created a model village, where his workforce could live. He incorporated parks, a lake and recreational facilities for the health and peace of his staff. Bournville workers enjoyed medical care and a pension scheme. Good workers were rewarded with what was a very good wage for the time.

What made Cadbury a Christian social entrepreneur was that his vision and action took him beyond simple philanthropy. In an interview in 1889 he said:

"Forty years ago I visited among my scholars and knew their hardships and the difficulties men have to contend with when they are reformed - unattrative neighbourhoods, no social life and but few objects of interest in and around their homes. But if each man could have his own house, a large garden to cultivate and healthy surroundings - then, I thought, there will be for them a better opportunity of a happy family life.

Largely through my experience among the back streets of Birmingham I have been brought to the conclusion that it is impossible to raise a nation, morally, physically, and spiritually in such surroundings, and that the only effective way to bring men out of the cities into the country and to give every man his garden where he can come into touch with nature and thus know more of nature's God."

He not only dreamed it, he did it - even exceeded his expectations. It cost him, but he gave willingly. "I have for many years given practically the whole of my income for charitable purposes," he said, "except what is spent upon my family. Nearly all my money is invested in businesses in which I believe I can truly say the first thought is the welfare of the work people employed."

Enabling The Poor: the Origin of the Savings Bank

What comes to your mind when you think "Savings Bank"? A quaint 'olde worlde' place where an equally quaint lady issued you National Savings Certificates?

Well, this article shows how the old idea has got young again. The Savings Bank as a concept is admirably suited to the new world of "microfinance", which benefits people in developing countries by allowing them to save some of their earnings for future needs. This page shows how aid charity World Vision is implementing such an initiative in Ethiopia.

All of which takes the Savings Bank a full circle, away from national financial institutions and back to its local, small-scale roots. It all goes back to a largely unsung Scottish pastor, who became a giant of Christian social entrepreneurship.


Henry Duncan (1774-1846) had some experience in banking as a young man, but saw his future as a minister. In 1799 he accepted a pastorate in Ruthwell, a village on the Solway Firth in Scotland.

They were hard times. War with France had brought rampant inflation. The cost of grain went up by over 300% in 15 months, while a farm labourer might earn 5 pence a day. Rural communities were devastated, whole families destitute. Duncan preached faithfully, but he also acted. He bought consignments of Indian corn from the docks and sold it to the poor at cost price. He provided the flax needed for local women to start a cottage industry. He employed the men to turn the land adjoining the manse into a garden which, in time, people would come from miles around to admire.

But Duncan saw that something had to be done longer term. He picked up an idea once touted by Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, but which few had tried so far: the Savings Bank. It would be run on sound business principles, offering secure investment with a fair interest rate; it met a desperate need; and if successful, his model could be rolled out in other places.


In 1810 he opened his books in a formerly derelict cottage at Ruthwell which he had persuaded an Earl to release to him. Today it houses the Savings Bank Museum. After one year, funds stood at £151 - a considerable achievement in those impoverished days. Duncan's other forte being publicity, he founded a local newspaper and with characteristic gusto spread the word about the Savings Bank. The idea caught on, and within five years there were banks around the United Kingdom.

Much came down to Duncan's personal vision and energy. He underwrote the expenses himself (e.g. travel to London to secure legislation), taking no expenses from the bank. He had to be a diplomat, agitator and defender, which at times exhausted him. He became friends with many of the great and good of the day, including the socialist pioneer and benefactor Robert Owen. He became something of a celebrity, but did all he could to escape this, saying his prime duty was to save souls.

The enormity of Duncan's achievement is that this was no city enterprise, no work of high financiers. Duncan did it all on a church minister's stipend! Its genius is the sheer 'portability' of the initiative. What began in a remote village backwater in Scotland became one of the formative impulses behind the Grameen Bank, the "Bank for the Poor" (Grameen in Bangladeshi means 'village'), the foremost microfinance organisation in the world today.

The Power Of Compassion

A contemporary of John Thornton (see last post) also deserves wider recognition. John Howard (1726-1790) had an unpromising start to life, being physically frail and showing no aptitude for learning. But at the age of 24, he inherited riches from his father (a successful London tradesman) and an estate in Bedfordshire from his grandmother.

A life of comfortable obscurity beckoned. But in Howard's case, responsibility seems to have made the man. There were two catalysts. During the "Great Awakening" he had a profound conversion experience, becoming good friends with Methodist pioneer John Wesley (there is a statue of both men together in St Paul's Cathedral in London). Howard also got married. His wife, Henrietta, was a woman of fine character and great philanthropy.

The effects were soon felt on the Bedfordshire estate. Howard was one of few landlords at that time who saw his obligation to provide properly for his workers. He refused to allow them to live in squalor and embarked on a building program of workers' cottages, which still stand today. Howard also ensured that conditions in the workhouse (orphanage) were humane, and funded the education of all children living on his estate.

The death of his wife almost broke him, but it threw him into the work that would startle the civilised world. Having become Sheriff of Bedfordshire, he got to see at first hand the horrors of the prison system. Much like credit card debtors crippled by interest today, entire families were devastated by debt: the head of the house would languish in prison long after the original debt was paid, held there by the 'fees' demanded by jailers, who had no other income. Moreover, prison conditions were overcrowded, filthy and corrupt.

At this point we see the heart of the 'social entrepreneur' awaken. A philanthropist will demonstrate sympathy ('I feel so sorry for their suffering'), even empathy ('I feel their pain because I have suffered too'), and be moved to a gesture of great generosity. But the social entrepreneur demonstrates the compassion that says 'I feel their pain - and I'm going to DO something!'

Howard began lobbying parliament. Over the next 15 years he secured changes in the law:

debtors were to be freed when the original debt was paid;
jailors were to be salaried so that 'fees' could stop;
justices could be held legally responsible for the conditions in their prisons.

To ensure these were enforced, Howard toured the counties of England, visiting and enforcing. He also drew up plans for religious education to given to all prisoners.


His labours did not go unnoticed. Requests came from other lands to visit the reformed prisons. This in turn led to Howard becoming something of a globetrotter, visiting most of the nations of mainland Europe from Portugal to Russia, advising on prison reform and enabling spiritual input to convicts. It was on a trip to Ukraine that he died. His grave there has the epitaph "Whoever you are, you are standing at the grave of your friend". Back in England, a colleague said that "from the dungeon to the throne, his name was mentioned with respect, honour and gratitude".

Giving All You Can

This story appeared on the BBC News website on December 13. An Oxford University academic has pledged to donate one million pounds to charitable causes in his lifetime, and has set up systems for regular giving to start delivering on this undertaking. Already sixty-four people have joined him in this initiative to "Give as Much as you Can".

John Thornton (1720-1790) would have rejoiced. He fits well into this overview of Christian social entrepreneurship because he marks the start of a significant shift. Having begun with sheer philanthropy, giving large sums to good causes, he came to see that strategic giving and the creation of enterprises would benefit the needy more in the long term.

He was one of the richest men in England, having made a fortune trading between Hull and the Baltic states. A devout Christian, Thornton gave the equivalent today of £25,000 to good causes, every year for fifty years (well over a million in his lifetime). He provided food and blankets for the starving. He paid debts and fines to get the poor released from debtors' prison. He supported missionary societies and funded the distribution of bibles.

In time, Thornton realised the greater good that would come from having men of influence in key positions. So he used his wealth to 'buy' the livings of important parishes, so the he could install the minister. Most notably, he brought John Newton, the converted slave ship captain and author of "Amazing Grace", from rural obscurity to the church in Lombard Street in the city of London, which was attended by members of parliament, bankers and successful merchants. This greatly furthered the Evangelical cause, which lay at Thornton's heart.

He also came to see the value of education and training. He aided Lady Huntingdon in setting up her ministers' training college with an interest-free loan. He ploughed funds into a school for native American Indians in Connecticut, and founded Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, a prestigious establishment where a hall of residence still bears his name.

A curious juggling of values had to be maintained. Thornton never missed the chance to make a profit in business, but at home he was scrimping and saving in order to have more to give. What he started was carried on by his son Henry with his friends Wilberfore, Macaulay, Venn and the rest, who not long hence would form the Clapham Sect, the archetypal Christian social entrepreneurs - to whom we shall return.