Academik

So I’m sitting in an apartment building in Jakarta right now, thinking that I should be telling you more about why the podcast isn’t happening for the moment, although I have one more that is hopefully going to go up soon, and let you hear about my trip because hey, it’s kinda cool.

All of the trip details will be posted to Academik.org and to Sevenlamps (on the blogroll).  I’m spending the next 2 weeks here doing some Christian consulting in Jakarta who are interested in involving God in their businesses… sounds crazy right?  That’s what I thought until I did some more investigation from a Christian perspective.  49 out of 51 of Jesus’ miracles in the Bible were in the marketplace.  He chose all of his disciples from the marketplace.  The words for work and ministry are the same in Hebrew (or is it Aramaic?)… The ideas that we currently have of work and ministry being separate are unfounded biblically.

I’m not saying that work should be a time to thump the bible over someone’s head, but I am saying that the workplace gives us a great place to act out our values.  More and more we’re leaving our principles at the door when we live our lives.  My boss, Jeremy Toeman, and I just facilitated a discussion on social responsibility at the Web2.0 Conference and a few of the things I took away from the meeting were:

Social Responsibility has different meanings to different people; it’s some variation of all of them, including volunteering, a triple bottom line, and a commitment to the long-term.

We can’t give up on our principles just because they’re not practical.  Would you stop recycling if you had to drive to a drop-off? Do you leave lights on in your house because you are too rushed to turn them off?  Do you encourage friends to follow principles that are good for the environment?

There are so many ways we can make an impact, but often we feel like we’d be inconveniencing others or embarassing ourselves in doing so.  The truth is that when you stand up for what you believe in, you stand out… and no one ever liked you because you were like everyone else.