God is a risk taker, 485 MEDA convention-goers told

Risk taking and business go hand-in-hand. So it’s no surprise that Risky Business was the theme of this year’s Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) Business as a Calling convention.

“God is an entrepreneur, a risk taker,” opening speaker John Stahl-Wert told 485 convention-goers from across North America who gathered Nov. 4–7 in Pittsburgh.

When God looks at the world, “God sees what it can be, and makes an investment in it.”

If entrepreneurs want to achieve greatness in business, he also said, they “have to be willing to fail. There’s no growth without failure.” But, God is not “hung up on our failures. God is not a punitive boss. The only pathway to growth is through risk, failure and forgiveness.”

Sarah Smith, a businesswoman and ordained Southern Baptist pastor from Madison, Wis. emphasized the importance of following dreams. “God gave me a dream for the future,” she said, describing how she heard a call to help people in the developing world through MEDA.

Dreams rarely show up with a completed business plan, she noted. “God does not ask you to have all the answers, brilliance or money – just a willing heart,” she said, “It’s not the not knowing, but the not going, that gets us into trouble.”

Simon Bailey, author of Simon Says Dream: Live a Passionate Life, praised MEDA for taking chances on poor people around the world. “The people MEDA help are diamonds in the rough,” he said. “You help them crystallize their dreams.” Linda Freeman, associate pastor at Trinity Church, an Assemblies of God congregation in North Miami, Fla. challenged convention-goers to keep addressing the needs of urban poor people in North America.

Risky business was also the theme of MEDA’s annual year in review. MEDA President Allan Sauder reported that MEDA had a good year, despite economic uncertainty and political instability in countries around the world.

Sauder noted that MEDA helped 335,000 entrepreneurs and their families in the past year, with women comprising over 50 percent of beneficiaries.

Highlights from the past year included the launch of a new microcredit bank in Nicaragua, the start of new programs in Peru and Pakistan, and a record year for giving, with $1.9 million Cdn contributed in the 2003–04 fiscal year.

Next year’s Business as a Calling convention is November 3–6, 2005 in Whistler, B.C.

—John Longhurst