by Spencer Burke, Maria French and the Hatchery LA team
Hi Friends!
We have been keeping busy with the launch of our new Certificate in Spiritual Entrepreneurship and the overwhelming response we have had to our new curriculum! It has been an amazing 5 weeks so far, with over 30 students joining us from our region, around the country and globe as we look toward the future and ask the question, what is next and how are we going to build it together?
We are currently preparing to launch our Phase 2: Coaching and Training that will be offered to our graduates this coming fall!
We will also have more exciting news to share with you shortly as we are planning our first Spiritual Entrepreneurship Summit coming this fall! Watch for more information.
As an organization, we are investing in this new discipline of Spiritual Entrepreneurship. Hatchery LA defines this as:
Responding to the shifts within culture and the world, motivated by the goal of common good, Spiritual Entrepreneurship is an invitation to engage new questions of god and new ways of engaging god that promote community, sustainability and viability.
Spiritual Entrepreneurship innovates and iterates to anticipate and address the changing needs of spirituality in the 21st century.
As we have been working in this new field we have identified a counter-point to this work; an equally important partner and that is those with the gift of what we call Spiritual Philanthropy. As Spiritual Entrepreneurs are exploring new modes of innovation and iteration, we have identified a new group who are also developing new tools, new places and new practices in terms of giving, funding and resourcing.
Spiritual Philanthropy allows you to connect more directly through relationship with what and whom you are giving to, it is non-hierarchical and it creates new ways of resourcing and funding. There are new ways of giving to faith-based communities and projects outside of the main mechanism of traditional church methods such as tithes and offerings, capital campaigns, etc. New funding opportunities like crowd sourcing, micro financing (just to name a few) have revolutionized the way we give and how we give.
At Hatchery LA, we have an amazing opportunity to look at the new horizon, and the changing horizons(!), to meet the people, hear the stories of life and transformation and be able to assess where Spiritual Entrepreneurship is at work. We are bringing these projects and people to you so you can be a part of them and get connected personally. It used to be that you could simply give money and you knew things would be taken care of. However, there has been a change in this trust pattern. People are starting to fund social causes and Social Entrepreneurship ventures. Now there is a new opportunity to give within the faith realm of Spiritual Entrepreneurship.
We are inviting Spiritual Philanthropists to join us at the beginning of the innovation curve—to be our early adopters and early investors.
Every field that is actively moving forward in their discipline has an R&D (Research and Development) department. The auto industry is moving to electric and hydrogen, technology is moving smaller, lighter, faster. These things don’t happen without research and development. You wouldn’t want to go see a doctor that was still operating under medical knowledge of the 19th century? Or even the 1980’s? You wouldn’t want to get on a motorway in 2018 with a Model T? And yet all too often we expect people to do ministry with the same models of the last 500 years or even in the last 20-40 years.
Hatchery LA is the church’s R&D department. We are the place the research for church innovation and sustainability happens. But we are more than that. We are an incubator. We are a place where risk is expected and rewarded.
But we cannot fulfill our mission without your help. You are vital partners in our project to revitalize and rejuvenate the church. R&D needs funding; funding, training, accountability and measurements of success.
We will shortly be sending out more information, which will give more details about our projects and the stories behind them and the spiritual entrepreneurs we are already working with. Click here if you would like to be added to our email list.
We are so excited to be launching this next innovative phase of our mission and talking more about what it means to support Spiritual Entrepreneurship by becoming a Spiritual Philanthropist.
Spencer Burke, Maria French and the Hatchery LA team