Because God has gifted us in various different ways, everyone has a different way they experience the joy of being His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which he prepared in advance for us to do. One of the ways we feel His joy is when we can introduce friends to each other, where each person is encouraged by the other. I had one of those experiences recently in a Zoom meeting between Pastor Adrian Reeves of NAAMC (naamcevents.org) and Brian Jenkins of Entrenuity (entrenuity.com).
--NAAMC, the National African American Missions Council, started in 2014 as an annual conference to mobilize African Americans to world missions. Just a few months ago, they named Adrian Reeves as their Executive Director and shifted from an annual conference to a year-round ministry, with a new strategic plan to expand their ministry for the sake of the Great Commission. They desire to expand their work to help Black churches get a stronger vision for world missions and deploy more People of Color to cross-cultural ministry. Part of their multi-year vision is to develop an advisory group who can help them in specific areas of expertise. When Cathy and I heard this, we both thought of Brian Jenkins.
--We met Brian many years ago through our work at TUMI, where he launched a ministry training program in Chicago and became instant fans of his ministry called Entrenuity, which provides entrepreneurship education, training and small business development for people in under-resourced communities and the formerly incarcerated. He developed an excellent tool to help entrepreneurs develop their business plans, called StartingUp Now. His workshops for teachers and youth workers helped thousands of urban young people in the fundamentals of entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and character development in the business world.
--Brian also began a program called mox.E, a co-work space and business incubator dedicated to funding, connecting, and coaching minority entrepreneurs. This is building a strong business-focused community that supports ethnic diversity and entrepreneurial collaboration. As you can imagine, for us who are dedicated to innovation for the Great Commission--this is music to our ears.
--So bringing these two great organizations together was a highlight of this month’s work. Please pray for (and donate to) NAAMC and Entrenuity as they seek to advance the Kingdom.
