Finding Momentum

This week at Urbana was what I needed. I think I heard what I needed to hear: echoes of the King­dom told through busi­ness­peo­ple who under­stand that with regards to their busi­nesses, “it’s not about the money, but all about rela­tion­ships.” It’s about being con­sci­en­tious to how you can use busi­ness to advance the King­dom and change lives: cre­at­ing jobs, being eth­i­cal, open­ing doors.

I’ve been need­ing some sort of spir­i­tual kick in the pants, and I think I finally feel that there’s a door open­ing with regards to my future. Com­ing here and get­ting excited about using my skills and pas­sion about soft­ware, design, pro­gram­ming, peo­ple… man. I think this is help­ing me focus where I need to be going and grow­ing. Men­tor­ship, dis­ci­ple­ship, prac­ti­cal real-world busi­ness skills, prayer…

Tom Hsieh is an Asian-American tech entre­pre­neur whose story tells that story well. Years ago Tom went to Urbana and came away with two convictions:

1. God’s heart was for the urban poor.
2. Tom did not love the poor.

Some­thing needed to hap­pen, so Tom decided to move into the inner city after grad­u­a­tion, turn­ing down sev­eral lucra­tive offers and serv­ing with a local church there. He took a part-time com­puter tech job with flex­i­ble hours so he could do his ser­vice there.

Tom was suc­cess­ful in what he did and his career advanced. Soon he found him­self an exec­u­tive at Earth­link (in its nascent startup days), where he told us sto­ries about sim­ply being obe­di­ent to Jesus in the work­place, liv­ing a sim­ple life in the grind of cor­po­rate Amer­ica, liv­ing a life of rad­i­cal giving. Tom and his wife have com­mit­ted to live at or below the median income level, so that means they give away about 80% of their income. Crazy.

Tom was clos­ing a busi­ness deal over a power lunch one day: “This isn’t real!” he thought to him­self while bring­ing the slice steak up to his mouth. Hang­ing out with the neigh­bor­hood kids and see­ing their smiles? That’s real. Being spir­i­tu­ally authen­tic and Hope­ful in a world that denies it? That’s real.  Choos­ing to fight greed with gen­eros­ity? That’s real.

Hear­ing sto­ries like these this week was good for my soul. More specif­i­cally, I think I have some sort of call­ing to live a focused, mis­sional life. Here. Or over­seas. Who knows, and where a few years ago that was some­thing I felt I had to fight, this time around it’s some­thing that’s freeing.

Who knows, who knows. It’s the start of a new year. New pos­si­bil­i­ties. We’ll see.