Urban Social Enterprise, A Way to Do Entrepreneurship as A Ministr

In today's changing economy, nonprofits are challenged with creating a sustainable business model to support their budget and missions work. For-profit businesses likewise are challenged with becoming more environmentally friendly and social-cause driven. The solution lies in the principle of shared value through Social Enterprise (Kramer & Porter, 2011). Social Enterprise is a sustainable business model that Urban community-based nonprofits and for-profit businesses can collaboratively implement to build healthy communities and subsidize ministries (Bornstein, 2007). As for-profit businesses adopt Social Enterprise models as part of their mission, a portion of the funds or resources can be used to support nonprofit programming (Martin & Osberg, 2007).;The goal of entrepreneurship is to learn self-sufficiency by creating a service or product and taking it to market to be purchased. In the Urban community, minority business development is stifled by the social issue of "co-dependency". This co-dependency is a byproduct of destructive economic decisions in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Cannon, 2009). Katie Cannon calls this social ill of codependency, anthropological poverty, defined as the dehumanization of African-Americans. The co-dependent person focuses on the concerns of others, while denying their own concerns. This learned behavior pattern can become destructive when one seeks by any means necessary to gain the approval of others before believing in themselves. Co-dependency is exemplified throughout the urban community by the lack of shared economic wealth displayed by a diversity of businesses throughout our communities; yet they consistently need to purvey to society their "Bling" (external goods purchased to appear wealthy). They seek to better other community businesses before establishing their own. Co-dependency is taught from generation to generation. I believe these generational patterns can be reversed by mentoring and modeling self-sufficiency and healthy behaviors through entrepreneurship applied through an Urban Social Enterprise Ministry model.;Through Urban Social Enterprise the church can restructure its outreach ministries as community service businesses. These outreach ministries can donate a portion of their proceeds to the nonprofit church entity to support the educational development of its members. This collaborative business model will lower the overhead of the church while increasing its income potential by renting administrative office space within the church to the outreach ministries. The church staffing can also increase its capacity as a subcontractor to the outreach ministries. The community becomes better served by having full-fledged businesses as Urban Social Enterprises with qualified professionals staffing them.;Urban Social Enterprise creates an opportunity for the church to empower its members by building upon their trade skills as ministry skills. Through this model, the church will be able to teach the community how to utilize their trade skill to sustain themselves. It is practicing faith with works by teach a man how to be a fisherman rather than give him a fish.;The seminars provided the education to understand Urban Social Enterprise as a business model and how to implement its principles and structure to make it an outreach ministry template for the church.