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Entrepreneur or Organize?
To Entrepreneur or To Organize?
Andrea Laux
Applied Social Justice 510
Carson Newman University
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Entrepreneur or Organize?
Abstract
In further reading of the bene)ts of both social entrepreneurship and community
development, there have surfaced several distinct di+erences between the two approaches to
social problem solving. This re.ection will explore the di+erences and apply them to my
personal endeavors. Volunteer service projects in which I am involved are often best handled
with community development techniques. The larger social ills with which I have identi)ed will
require my involvement in entrepreneurship. What follows is an overview of my personal
application of the two approaches.
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Entrepreneur or Organize?
Introducon
“The desire to be a world-changer is planted in the heart of every human being, and
that desire comes directly from the heart of God. We can suocate that desire in
selshness, silence it with the cha er of compe!ng demands, or bypass it on the
fast track to personal achievement. But it’s s!ll there. Whenever we wonder if the
daily eight-to-ve grind or our round-the-clock paren!ng tasks are all there is to life,
that divine desire nudges us. Whenever we feel restless and unsa!sed, the desire
whispers in our soul. Whenever we wonder what a life of real purpose would feel
like, the desire calls us to something more.”
-Volunteer Revolu!on (Hybels, 2004).
On my third trip to Tegucigalpa, Honduras I met a remarkable young lady with a great
story. Helen Ward was from a London borough and had recently taken on the position of
Director of Operations for Nueva Esperanza (the charity with which I am involved). I knew we
had a new Director, but didn’t know much about her story. (And story, as Brown insists, is so
important.) (Brown, 2006). Helen and some friends had finished graduate school, studying
gender politics, and had moved to Honduras to volunteer to organize the gay and lesbian rights
movement in urban Tegucigalpa. (There are very few openly professing homosexuals.) The only
apartment she could )nd was next door to a church. A letter from her parents was mistakenly
delivered to the church one a1ernoon and the pastor, not knowing who she was, saved it in his
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Entrepreneur or Organize?
desk drawer. Helen observed church from her kitchen window. The comings and goings of it
anyway and decided to go see the pastor to ask him some questions that she had a1er si?ng
next to a Christian on her plane ride to Tegucigalpa. They exchanged questions, answers, and he
gave her the letter. Not long a1er, she became a Christian and a missionary, working for Nueva
Esperanza for the next two years.
Helen had an innate desire to serve, in some capacity, somewhere. Her heart was
nudged into working for people in third world countries and God used that desire to draw her to
Him. While it is becoming increasingly popular for people to engaged in some form of social
service and can often be misguided and ine+ective, the desire is God-given as part of our
humanity. But what do we do with it?
In reading Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes, Brown wastes no
time getting to his point. He proposes the question what is knowledge and what is its relationship
to action? He supposes that principles/knowledge comes first, then action, then more knowledge,
then more action. They have a cyclical, symbiotic relationship. No matter what we do with our
knowledge, we are doing something, according to Brown. “Not to act, is to act.” It accuses our
culture of merely storing knowledge like money in a bank account, waiting for it to accumulate
before we act. Brown introduces four steps for Knowing and Doing:
1. What’s going on here? (What is the struggle?)
2. What went on before? (Study history, especially of the culture you’re working with.)
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Entrepreneur or Organize?
3. Reflection must turn to action. (This makes the road that’s been travelled suddenly make
sense. How/why we got where we are.)
4. Once insight is reached, the action that is next has moved elsewhere. (Like when Christ
disappeared after being recognized and the disciples get up to go tell the others.)
Brown’s example for this concept comes from one of my favorite passages. Luke 24:13-35. I
really enjoyed Brown’s insight in to this passage. One thing to be noted is that the we (as did
the disciples) must walk with him for a time, study his word, and sit down/dedicate time to
him before he truly reveals himself to us. We can still gain insight, as the disciples did on the
road, in focusing on him during our “running” times, but we truly see Him for himself when
