| UPCOMING EVENTS |
|
INTRO TO ADVOCACY
October 21 - 24, 2009
Cincinnati, OH (held at CCDA)
Explore what it means for every Christian in every context to observe God's call "to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." Participants will explore various biblical, theological, and historical traditions of social justice.
STRATEGIC PLANNING, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, & SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
November 19 - 21, 2009
Seattle, WA
This course studies the role of strategic planning, both entrepreneurial and global, in today's business climate, with special emphasis on business planning for a start-up business, defining its values and multiple bottom lines, functional analysis approaches, organizational systems, process and controls for promoting social projects, and employee empowerment in both the domestic and international contexts.
This course is also open to seminar participants at $100 per day or $150 for all three days.
POVERTY, DIVERSITY & SOCIAL JUSTICE
December 3 - 5, 2009
Seattle, WA
This course will examine current theories of poverty, diversity, and social justice, including current debates on poverty and development, the proper role and response of the church to urban, inner-city realities, Liberation Theologies for today's world, and evangelical reflection on social action and political involvement.
CREATING ONRAMPS OF CALLING FOR EMERGING URBAN LEADERSHIP
December 27 - 31, 2009
St. Louis, MO (held at Urbana)
Urbana is a missions conference for North American students hosted by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada. BGU doctoral and master's students can receive credit for attending the conference, with Dr. Randy White as Professor of Record.
HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
February 4 - 6, 2010
Bellingham, WA
This course examines all aspects of those formal and informal systems within an organization to ensure the effective and efficient use of people, their gifting and talents, to accomplish the goals of the organization.
You can register by clicking this link, or contact BGU (800-935-4723 or bgu@bgu.edu) for more information. |
|
INNOVATIVE RESOURCE |
|
Dennis Bakke, Joy At Work, is not a book of theories and hypotheticals. Dennis modeled this culture within his energy company, Applied Energy Services (AES). His approach to corporate culture revolutionized joy at work. "A joy-filled workplace gives people the freedom to use their talents and skills for the benefit of society, without being crushed and controlled by autocratic supervisors." This book will provide you a fresh look at the role of leaders.
|
| JOIN OUR PRAYER TEAM |
 | |
|
|
October 2009 |
|
|
FIXING AMERICA
 There is nothing like bad weather to reveal cracks in a foundation. There is nothing like an economic downturn to reveal cracks in our civic fiber. Our global economy is broken. Two major camps have emerged with two opposite solutions; more government; more free markets. The debate has gotten so rude that a third camp has emerged proposing more civility.
Steven Malanga in a recent editorial in the City Journal offered yet a fourth solution - more Christian values*. Part of this editorial is reprinted below. The editorial captures many of the reasons why Bakke Graduate University, a school known for educating the world's leading urban workers, has started a global business school that focuses on developing ethical, urban business leaders to become change agents for Christ:
In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville worried that free, capitalist societies might develop so great a "taste for physical gratification" that citizens would be "carried away and lose all self-restraint." Avidly seeking personal gain, they could "lose sight of the close connection which exists between the private fortune of each of them and the prosperity of all" and ultimately undermine both democracy and prosperity.
The genius of America in the early 19th century, Tocqueville's thought, was that it pursued "productive industry" without a descent into lethal materialism. Behind America's balancing act, the pioneering French social thinker noted, "lay a common set of civic virtues that celebrated not merely hard work but also thrift, integrity, self-reliance and modesty - virtues that grew out of the pervasiveness of religion".
What would Tocqueville or Weber think of America today? In place of thrift, they would find a nation of debtors, staggering beneath loans obtained under false pretenses. In place of a steady, patient accumulation of wealth, they would find bankers and financiers with such a short-term perspective that they never pause to consider the consequences or risks of selling securities they don't understand. In place of a country where all a man asks of government is "not to be disturbed in his toil," as Tocqueville put it, they would find a nation of rent-seekers demanding government subsidies to purchase homes, start new ventures or bail out old ones.
They would find what Tocqueville described as the "fatal circle" of materialism - the cycle of acquisition and gratification that drives people back to ever more frenetic acquisition and that ultimately undermines prosperous democracies.
And they would understand why. After flourishing for three centuries in America, the Protestant ethic began to disintegrate, with key elements slowly disappearing from modern American society, vanishing from schools, business, popular culture, and leaving us with an economic system unmoored from the restraints of civic virtue.
Not even Adam Smith - who was a moral philosopher, after all - imagined capitalism operating in such an ethical vacuum. ...
...."The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism," Weber wrote in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. "Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and still less its spirit."
Instead, the essence of capitalism is "a rational tempering" of the impulse to accumulate wealth so as to keep a business (and ultimately the whole economy) sustainable and self-renewing, Weber wrote. It is "the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational ... enterprise."
Written by:
Weber famously argued that the Protestant Reformation - with John Calvin's and Martin Luther's emphasis on individual responsibility, hard work, thrift, providence, honesty and deferred gratification at its center - shaped the spirit of capitalism and helped it succeed.
Calvinism and the sects that grew out of it, especially Puritanism and John Wesley's Methodism in England, were religions chiefly of the middle and working classes, and the virtues they promoted led to a new kind of affluence and upward mobility, based not on land (which was largely owned by the aristocracy) but on productive enterprises.
Nowhere did the fusing of capitalism and the virtues that made up the work ethic find a fuller expression than in America, where Puritan pioneers founded settlements animated by a Calvinist dedication to work.
.... In the wake of the market crash, our national discussion about how to fix capitalism seems limited to those who believe that more government will fix the problem and those who think that free markets will fix themselves. Few have asked whether we can recapture the civic virtues that nourished our commerce for 300 years.
|
|
Bakke Graduate University (BGU) is the educational arm of a network assembled over a span of 30 years, around the values and practice of the whole church engaging the whole of culture with the whole gospel. Participants include church, business, government and non-profit leaders in 250 of the world's largest cities. BGU conducts city consultations and training programs, as well as offering accredited doctoral and masters degrees in theology. GlobalScape is an expression of this network.
You're receiving this email because of your relationship with Bakke Graduate University. |
|
|
