| UPCOMING EVENTS |
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2008 Anniversary Celebration - An Invitation
If you will be in Seattle area on the evening of January 17, join us for this festive annual event.
(Click here for invitation details) |
| UPCOMING COURSES |
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LOS ANGELES - Urban Field Experience
January 6-11, 2008
With the Urban Rescue Mission hosting this immersion into the second largest city in the U.S. you are guaranteed an upside-down view of the City of Angels. Michael Mata, Andy Bales & Dr. Ray Bakke(To see For-Credit option click here)
SAN FRANCISCO - Urban Field Experience
January 30 - February 3, 2008 Plunge into the City by the Bay area with Ray Bakke & Keith Russell. Ray calls it exegeting the city ... interpreting and studying a city while immersed in it. (To see For-Credit option click here)
BGU in AFRICA - Signs of Hope in Nairobi & Addis Ababa
February 19-28, 2008
In this course, two cities in Kenya and Ethiopia will become labs for understanding the socio-cultural dynamics that affect the quality of life and challenges facing the Church in Africa where Muslim fundamentalism is on the rise. Dr. Ray Bakke. (To see For-Credit option click here)
Servant Leader - Seattle, WA
February 21-24, 2008
Spend four days with Dr. Grace Barnes exploring the person of the leader and the paradoxical concept of servant leadership, modeled by Jesus, to gain a clearer understanding of one's true vocation and how to best lead in an increasingly multi-cultural and complex world. (To see For-Credit option click here)
New Testament Theology - Seattle, WA
March 6-8, 2008
Discover the missional nature of the New Testament and build a hermeneutical bridge to your own ministry context by exploring the content, structure, and theological interrelationship of the New Testament literature with Dr. Jeff Keuss. (To see For-Credit option click here)
Missional Church - Seattle, WA
March 10-13, 2008
Challenge your views on current practices of evangelism, reconciliation and justice while grappling with personal and public faith issues of the day with Dr. Neil Tibbott. The course does not assume that a merely "post modern" reality defines every context, but discusses the effects of changing worldviews, cultural dynamics and Biblical theology on our global society. (To see For-Credit option click here)
CHINA - Overture II China
April 2-11, 2008
Dr. Peter Van Breda will lead you on a journey through the cities of Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai to discover modern Chinese history. Your worldview will be greatly challenged as you explore the social changes and difficulties in China that have resulted from rapid urbanization and contemporary economic and social policies. (To see For-Credit option click here) |
| For further information, including cost, and to reserve your place for any of the trips below, please call Shirley Akers at 800.935.4723x12 |
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INNOVATIVE READING |
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Heroic Leadership
by Chris Lowney
This book illustrates how the 'do the right thing' leadership values of the Jesuits can influence the same kind of thinking in the corporate world. |
| JOIN OUR PRAYER TEAM |
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December 2007 |
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| DO THE RIGHT THING WHEN THE FIRES RAGE
Jesus calls us to minister to those in need. Jack vanHartesvelt , BGU Board Member, has ministered in the middle of New York during 911, New Orleans during Katrina, and recently San Diego during the fires. Jack is not in a business you'd normally expect to be central to urban ministry and disaster relief. Jack owns luxury hotels.
In mid-October, before the national media started reporting the fires, Jack received calls that fires were coming and his hotel, Hyatt Mission Bay in San Diego, would be near the worst of it. His first commitment was to his employees at the hotel. He called his general manager , Mohsen Khalegi, first to be sure Mohsen and his family were safe. Mohsen is the strength and glue at the hotel so it was imperative that he was cared for so he in turn could care for others. Jack told him, "You have people being evacuated. You have rooms. Open those up to people who don't have a place to stay." Mohsen was told to use his discretion: "If you have people who have lost their homes, don't charge them. If someone has been evacuated but still has a home, just charge them the government rate. Don't turn anyone away. If it gets bad and you run out of rooms, don't turn anyone away. Set up cots in the meeting space and also recognize you are a place that could set up medical care if needed. We can feed people. We have communications. Don't worry about the money now. We will figure that out later."
Jack said Mohsen did not need to be convinced. He was already inclined and empowered to respond in this way even if Jack had not called to add his support. An owner makes this decision far in advance when he hires a general manager who will do the "right thing" in a crisis.
As an owner, Jack establishes the culture and values of doing the right thing and hires people who will support that culture. "During 9/11 we took in people at our W Hotel - Union Station. These people were everywhere in the hotel caked in this thick, white, dust. We reached out to relief workers - police, fire department, National Guard, and people directly. We put people up in the hotel. This way of reaching out did a lot to forge the culture in this hotel. It brought the staff together because they did something pretty wonderful and they knew it. It wasn't about the money because we didn't charge anyone anything. We just did it!"
Similar outreach was orchestrated in New Orleans after Katrina. "We had the General Manager and the Human Resource director from our Loews - New Orleans going from shelter to shelter, pulling out our employees and getting them into safe housing. We also put cash in their hands because they had nothing. Nothing! The city was flooded. There was no running water, no electricity, no flights out and many had lost their cars, yet they were all told to get out of the city. When you are sitting in a shelter with your family huddled around you not knowing what to do and you see a familiar face asking you to come with them to a safe place, you never forget that. We put 60 people - employees and their families up in the hotel after it reopened. This boosted the moral of the staff and provided good-will in the city. We sent 28 trauma counselors down there for a month to work with our employees. We also took a group down there and rebuilt a church. We stayed in the hotel during that time. All the employees knew what we were doing. They get it. You are doing the right thing, and it is right on every level."
Jack continues, "From time to time I was asked by our employees, 'How can I repay you?'" I just told them, 'Love our customers.' That is all they have to do. It isn't a 10 point list - just one thing. They do it, too. Our New Orleans hotel had the highest guest satisfaction in the Loews chain right after the hurricane, and today it is the second highest. Last month they were #1 in the market in terms of the revenue per available room. Profits are not the reason you do the right thing, but there is often a connection between doing the right thing and profits."
What keeps most of us from seeing opportunities to minister to those in need in our normal job? Sometimes it is a false line that places profit-making business on one side and care for people on the other. Sometimes it is a false definition that ministry is only helping people who are a different race, nationality or socio-economic group than ourselves. Jack vanHartesvelt says from his experience, "In times of crisis, people in positions of authority, who control lots of resources - human, capital, material, have a responsibility to rise up, to step in and do the right thing. In times of crisis, everyone is poor. When your city is on fire, the lines between rich and poor disappear. Everyone is poor." So there lies the question, "What are we going to do about it?"
Doing the "right thing" in his business propels Jack to both give and receive from his local church. Jack recently led efforts to rebuild two dilapidated urban church buildings. Jack empowered the members of those congregations to make the core decisions in the effort and then organized hundreds of volunteers to donate labor and material to the projects. Weekend urban building projects are notorious for their inefficiency. Yet volunteers were organized into categories of skilled labor, supervisors and non-skilled volunteers with different colored T-shirts, clear assignments, and ready materials and tools. One of the projects was estimated to be a $1.2 million project, yet it was accomplished over two weekends with a cash layout of just $200,000. People with years of experience in similar building projects said this raised their bar of how such projects should be managed. Boyd Stockdale, former Executive of the Seattle Presbytery (PCUSA), described Jack as having natural gifts "to see a need, size it up, devise a plan and then orchestrate each piece into a symphony." One of the projects inspired Boyd to write a book on racial reconciliation called The Improbable Quest. Another leader remarked that this innovative new approach to volunteer-based construction is a "billion dollar innovation waiting to be discovered."
For Jack it is just another way to "just do the right thing." |
| BGU Ready to Hire Dean of New Business School |
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| Bakke Graduate University is in the final stages of authorizing and accrediting a new business school that will include an MBA and a hybrid degree of theology and business called the Masters in Social and Civic Entrepreneurship (MASCE). These degrees are uniquely designed as non-residential programs for key leaders especially in Asia and Africa. BGU is ready to hire a Dean of the Business School to oversee the MBA and MASCE programs. For the right leader, this is a unique opportunity to be at the forefront of an innovative new approach to develop leaders who build companies, churches, neighborhoods, cities and nations focused on the least, the last and the lost. Please email julieg@bgu.edu for more information, or visit our website at www.bgu.edu.
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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.
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