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i Unless the Lord Builds the House By Tim Bock Cover art by Sara Van Alkemade ©2017 Copyright Jesus People USA FGM i Unless the Lord Builds the House ii Contents Introduction v 1 A Life in Mission Business 1 2 Share and Live Simply 17 3 Mission Business 37 4 Hard Knocks to Reality 64 5 Direct Ministries 76 6 Kingdom Business Sense 96 7 JPUSA sharing with Romania 106 8 At the Heart of It All 117 9 Can we be content with daily bread? 132 Appendix 139 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A special thanks and an eternal gratitude goes first to my incredible, wonderful wife. She keeps me focused on Jesus, our first love. To my four awesome kids, who keep me young at heart. I am so grateful to the whole Lakefront team who has put their lives into serving Jesus in business with me. Thanks also to my pastoral team who lives out God’s grace. I want to thank Bente James and Chris Rice, who have lived, eaten, and drunk this project. Without their passion in it, it would never have happened. A big thanks to Jay Rothschild, who finished the project and has helped me launch Nehemiah challenge website so that we all can keep the conversation going of using business in missions. Lastly I want to thank Curt Mortimer who resurrected this project just weeks before he went on to glory. His thoughtful encouragements were the reason this is now a completed project so many years after its start. Many people encouraged me to write this book, one being Paul Larsen, the President Emeritus of the Evangelical Covenant Church who has marveled over God’s incredible work He accomplished amongst “these Jesus People.” Another key factor in writing this was our banker’s need for insight into our organization. Blessings to you all, Tim Bock iv INTRODUCTION Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. (1 Pet. 3:15-16, NRSV) Through the years people have asked me why do you give away all your income, if not money, what motivates you to do all this work. This book is, in part, an attempt to answer that question. The other part is an invitation into a world of business and relationships reimagined in behalf of people, rather than monetary sums and hierarchal financial structures. What I want to do is show you my life and my people at a glance. The only way you can really know what I’m talking about is to come and see it for yourself. Jesus People USA Covenant Church is an intentional community of 260 people pooling their resources to serve each other and the neighborhood we live in, with 30 businesses in 45 years to support it. We’re not unique in our mission because the Body of Christ has been doing this work in one way or another for centuries but we are significant. Our particular story, especially where it concerns Business as Missions, bears repeating. There are many books about Business as Missions. When I began this book my editorial team and I asked what it was we had to say that was new. There is a wealth of resources out there for anyone wanting to start a business in order to fund missions. If you notice one very different thing about this book it should be that to us following Jesus in a business means leading in collaboration, not leading alone. Along those same lines, mentoring and servant leadership involve a mutual vulnerability that comes slowly over time, and at great personal cost. What’s in it for me? You’ll hear me say it over and over in this book. It’s really no secret. Relationships. I’m learning daily to live life with and for people. It’s hard to convey what a richly rewarding experience it is to see friends that I work with giving away their time v next to a homeless person at our community. Mopping the floor after one of our parties, listening to the children’s conversations makes me feel so alive, so awake to the world. You can’t buy that with money. But I can’t glorify community either. Community is what you put into it. It’s hard work, and it’s easy to forget why you get started in the first place. I’m excited about what I do. I’m excited about the vision we had at the beginning, and most of what I do as a member of the pastoral team and a mission-business general manager is spread that vision. JPUSA’s understanding of itself has grown over time. We were a practicing community for years before we described ourselves to people as an “intentional community” and, in the late 1970s, we gathered regularly with other Chicago area communities to learn about what it was to be Christian and communal. We actually learned about the Internal Revenue Code we use at JPUSA FGM, 501(D), from these groups. It is important to know that when many of our members who are now in leadership at JPUSA first arrived, they felt rootless, and couldn’t see settling down into one place for a given length of time with anyone. In the 1970s there was a lot of talk about society being fractured and there being little hope for families as social units. As the 70’s burned out and the 80’s moved in many Jesus communes shut down. Many ministries restructured into other entities that didn’t involve living together so closely. The fact that we still live in one building certainly doesn’t mean that we are somehow more heroic or more spiritual. We’ve had to learn to be flexible and accommodating as things changed over the years. But our reason for still being here is Jesus Christ. We know there’s no other reason to be living like this. Many people can’t seem to understand our community. They want to romanticize it. Others demonize it and are sure that, despite all the good we do for people, there must be a screw loose in there. Still others believe in community on a small scale, where a few families live together and pool resources or where individuals live in a house setting. We spent fifteen years renovating a ten story hotel as a home on Wilson Avenue in Uptown. We certainly don’t want people to think they need to live like us to be good Christians. One thing I won’t be quiet about is that people are worth investing in. We could read and talk all day about love, but real love should be vi seen in changed lives. When I can see the change in people I know God is at work. This takes time, and that’s why I’m in it for the long haul. You’ll notice in this book that after some of the chapters I include an excerpt from the Mission Improbable Handbook. This is a workbook that I’ve been using in my seminars and with individuals to spread the vision of mission business on a personal level. It is for people who are ready for hands on involvement in testing their own ideas for a mission business. If you’d like a copy of this book, or want to dialogue about what you’ve read, you may contact me through the Nehemiah Challenge website or email. http://nehemiahchallenge.com/blog or [email protected] Tim Bock Lakefront Supply 2950 N Western Ave Chicago, IL 60618 vii Raising the Roof at CCO, October, 2007 viii 1 A LIFE IN MISSION BUSINESS How a Mission Business Happens t was 6:00 AM on Saturday morning. Our Lakefront Supply stick crane had just set up on the five story 12,000 square foot roof of the homeless shelter. I was getting on the roof when my number Ione commercial sales guy yelled out to me, “It’s 26" deep!” I said “You mean 2.6” right?” “NO,” he said, “I mean 26” thick!” We were about to start tearing off this roof. “Let’s hope it does not rain,” I said. Lakefront Supply hosted a “raise the roof month” in 2007. For six Saturdays we rallied employees, vendors, customers, and shelter clients to tear off an old leaky roof on one of the three shelter buildings at Cornerstone Community Outreach. Business can be about more than just making money. I think it’s very rare that a homeless shelter gets its old roof replaced for free. I know that many people feel like the work they do isn’t fulfilling, in part because it doesn’t even begin to cover their basic needs. I’m fascinated with the way God wanted work to play a very important function in people’s lives in the Old Testament. (See Leviticus 19:9-18) Remembering the poor and caring for the land itself were tightly integrated into what it meant to be God’s people. A recent work/pay ratio illustrates how different things are from what God intends for human beings. Back in 1965 the average US worker made $7.52 an hour while the average executive made $330.38 per hour, but over the last 20 years the average worker’s wage has slumped to $7.39 per hour while the average CEO wage has skyrocketed to $1,566.68 per hour.

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