A minute with Ant
Walking alongside another human being in some kind of endeavour is an incredible privilege. It is even a great honour when you are invited to participate in the hope and dreams of a person you respect and who hopes to achieve change for humanity is some small or large...
Reflecting with JB
When Seed was launched back in 2015, we wanted to invest in the formation of Jesus followers to help them make a real difference in the world – to move beyond belief. And we were confident that if we could help people design and create tangible expressions of the way...
A note from Naomi
Earlier this year I had the privilege of getting to know some of our Seed community by connecting with some of our alumni. I was really after some information and feedback that could help us move forward with our programs and learn from past iterations of our...
Transform Aid – Case Study
https://youtu.be/sYQpEPQB-h0transform aid
HOW RACHEL FOUND OUT THE REAL REASON SHE GOT THAT PROMOTION – Eternity News
“For quite some time I struggled with why I seem to be blessed at work with lots of opportunities and promotions that I didn’t actively go seeking,” Wirth – a manager for a large telecommunications company – tells Eternity.
Salvation Army – Case Study
In 2018 JB met Greig from the Salvation Army. Greig had been tasked with the job of creating, implementing, and embedding innovation within the Salvation Army, not a small task by any stretch. Listen to how Seed was able to help Greig and the Salvos successfully launch and embed innovation in such a large organisation.
To find out how Seed can help your organisation, go to: https://www.seed.org.au/consulting
The Eve Project – update
The Eve Project was featured on the local news last week sharing about the work they do and the progress of their initiative. Helen and Lisa were part of our Incubator Program a few years ago.
If nothing is new under the sun, why should we Innovate?
As an entrepreneur and business owner, I am constantly amazed at how the online space is continually coming up with new and different ways to do things you thought were fine just as they were. Just when I thought I had seen it all and that there was nowhere else for...
Position Available: Design & Learning Lead
Establish the infrastructure to facilitate people growing as Redemptive Changemakers, with a particular focus on developing and scaling Seed’s Purpose Course.
Applications are open for our 2021 Internship Program!
Applications for our 2021 Internship program are now open! We’re excited to welcome a new round of interns as we’ve added a third area someone can intern with us. We are offering internships in Design & Learning, Comms & Marketing and Operations.
SPOTLIGHT
A minute with Ant
Walking alongside another human being in some kind of endeavour is an incredible privilege. It is even a great honour when you are invited to participate in the hope and dreams of a person you respect and who hopes to achieve change for humanity is some small or large way. Working at Seed provides these opportunities on a weekly basis. At Seed we have four values. One of them, is to be a guide. This includes fostering imagination, enduring fear and worry, embracing hope and rigorously struggling in the pursuit of redemptive change. It has included laughter, tears, long design dialogues, brainstorming, admitting we are lost, celebrating breakthroughs and many other deep relational wonders. Perhaps for me, what is most exciting is the effort and actions of discernment that is a big part of a guide’s role. Drawing from all our senses, scripture, nature, relationships, social movements in the endeavour of seeking His will. Asking a question at an existential level, “Jesus what are you doing and how can we get in the way of that”. I love it, and it has brought me great joy and relationships with people I will always be ‘with'.
ALL POSTS
A minute with Ant
Walking alongside another human being in some kind of endeavour is an incredible privilege. It is even a great honour when you are invited to participate in the hope and dreams of a person you respect and who hopes to achieve change for humanity is some small or large...
Reflecting with JB
When Seed was launched back in 2015, we wanted to invest in the formation of Jesus followers to help them make a real difference in the world – to move beyond belief. And we were confident that if we could help people design and create tangible expressions of the way...
HOW RACHEL FOUND OUT THE REAL REASON SHE GOT THAT PROMOTION – Eternity News
“For quite some time I struggled with why I seem to be blessed at work with lots of opportunities and promotions that I didn’t actively go seeking,” Wirth – a manager for a large telecommunications company – tells Eternity.
If nothing is new under the sun, why should we Innovate?
As an entrepreneur and business owner, I am constantly amazed at how the online space is continually coming up with new and different ways to do things you thought were fine just as they were. Just when I thought I had seen it all and that there was nowhere else for...
The Lawrie Styles, Reventure, Faith and Word Fellowship.
The Reventure Board has initiated the Lawrie Styles, Reventure Faith and Work Fellowship with the principal objective of perpetuating and honouring Lawrie Style’s legacy.
What Makes Entrepreneurs Distinctive?
What makes entrepreneurs distinctive? How do they see things that others cannot see? What motivates them to keep going, in spite of obstacles?
Start with Why
Some of you might have read Simon Sinek’s best-selling book ‘Start with Why’- or at least seen the Ted talk. The rediscovery of ‘why’ surprises me because I’m one of those people who are always thinking about why.
Discover God-given Purpose
We founded Seed in response to three problems. In this blog series we’re outlining the problems and a taste of how Seed plans to respond to them.
Finding a Fixed Mindset Amongst The Frantic
A couple of years ago I ran a Busy Women’s Retreat… That might sound like a contradiction in terms. How can we retreat in the midst of busyness? Is it possible to be still, when nothing around you is?
Pathway Builders Part Two
Where should those pathways lead? Our hope is that the pathways ultimately make it possible for Christians to be agents for redemptive change in society.
Redemptive change is our term for a particular approach to social change that grows out of our engagement with the Christian story. It is an approach to change that results in our growth and formation as followers of Jesus, while also making a positive impact on society and bearing witness to Jesus.
Pathway Builders Part One
Over the last 6 months, a deeper clarity has emerged around the purpose of Seed. After a couple of years working through the detail of ‘how’ we do what we set out to do, we’ve had the pleasure of returning to reconsider in fresh ways ‘why’ Seed exists.
That ‘why’ – Seed’s purpose – is to create pathways for effective and faithful engagement by Christians in society. We might not talk about that in our public messages all the time, but that lies at the core of Seed’s existence.
Doing Business God’s Way by Dennis Peacocke
This book was the result of years of study, conversations, and seminars which I taught on the general content in the 1980s. What has always seemed clear to me is that “spiritual truth” that does not result in measurable change in the here-and-now is either not yet clearly understood or irrelevant. For sure, economics and business are about here-and-now reality, and the issue therefore is to connect these endeavors and ground them to their spiritual foundations in the God who created them.
Three Tips on Harnessing the Power of Imagination in Your Organisation.
Recently I had a participant in one of our training courses in tears as she went through an imagination process. The tears came because of a realisation that she had lost the capacity to imagine.
The Soul Of An Entrepreneur by Jordan J. Ballor & Victor V. Claar
Although often acknowledged as critically important, the role of the entrepreneur in the modern economy is often underdeveloped or inadequately understood. The reason for this is in large part due to the complex anthropological mysteries that lie at the heart of entrepreneurship.
Identity, Story & Purpose
When God calls people into relationship with him, he offers them new life. Intrinsic to this new life is the offer and assurance of salvation, yet the transformation to new life is much more than salvation, much more than a mere transaction. What happens, primarily, is that God designates us with a new identity. God changes who we are.
The Challenge of Change
As part of our Accelerator program at Seed we consider the reality that in the current marketplace any organisation that wants to succeed must embed innovation and change into their structures and processes from a very early stage.
Beyond Belief
Some of you would be old enough to remember the Blackstump Christian music and arts festival that used to light up the Sydney Christian scene. The time when it was most influential was right in my formative teenage years.
Being whole-hearted for Christ: Our identity in Christ
Some of us have had our working lives significantly impacted in the present crisis. I regularly teach and speak and mentor; and all those activities have been drastically curtailed lately
Work and Meaning-Making
If all work has value, the important thing is to be faithful to the work and the place that God has called us. We can be called by God to work in the church and work outside the church.
THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: A PERFECT CONTEXT FOR CHRISTIAN MENTORING
Amid this COVID-19 pandemic, it is quite sensible for us to cancel many things. Our current context requires these cancellations.
Faith Fuels Work.
Faith does more than just intersect with work. Faith fuels our work.
Design Should Matter More To Christians
As creative Christians, we need to be especially attentive to all facets of our work: design, form, content, function. Does our work bear witness to the goodness of Jesus, and particularly to the sacrifice and humility He embodied for us?
The Great Entrepreneurs of the Bible – Boaz: Business as the Extension of Faith
Boaz is described as “a man of great wealth” (Ruth 2: 1). The words of the verse have a heroic quality to them – being the same words as used to describe the “mighty men” of David.
Re:Imagine. Re:Build.
We’re offering a new course called Re-Imagine especially designed for Christians who own or are leading small to medium enterprises through this season
Four Principles of Biblical Stewardship
What does stewardship look like in our lives today? What does it look like in our businesses?
How to Adapt Your Business in Times of Social Distancing
There’s no way around it… Because of COVID-19, things are changing and businesses will have to adjust in order to survive the upcoming times.
A Redemptive Purpose For Profit in Business
But our primary purpose for making a profit (which I prefer to call being economically viable) is to support the other two purposes of the business, which together form its primary purposes.
CHRISTIAN ENTREPRENEURSHIP: WHY AN OTHERS-CENTERED APPROACH IS NECESSARY
Entrepreneurial intentions and their motivation(s) are essential to understand better how Christians operationalize business formations
Meet Our 2020 Incubator Cohort
Our 2020 Cohort // This year we have been blessed with our biggest cohort yet! This is the crew at their first Intensive.
The Entrepreneur Call
Entrepreneur is a word thrown around a lot these days and rightfully so when you consider that an entrepreneur is not simply someone who starts a business…
What Genesis 1 Says About Work
Genesis is incomparably significant for the theology of work because it tells the story of God’s work of creation, the first work of all and the prototype for all work that follows
A Problem To Solve
It would seem to me there is a lot of people searching for purpose these days.
Incubator 2020: An Idea you want to bring to life
So, if you have an idea that you want to bring to life, but you just don’t know how to take to step 1 and then 2, 3, …. Come and join us at Seed’s 2020 Incubator!
Who Am I Not To Do This?
We rob ourselves of immeasurable joy when we compare what we do know about ourselves with what we don’t know about someone else.
Faith + Entrepreneurship
The first time I inadvertently explored the intersection between entrepreneurship and faith was through the gold-standard of middle-school communication: the viral chain-emails promising good fortune or the absence of utter tragedy if you forwarded it along to 20 friends.
Walk The Talk
Walk the Talk. Is one those clichés that I find confronting true, mostly because of the absence of its reality in my life.
How I Built This Podcast
There are some awesome resources out there for innovators and entrepreneurs. One such resource is the “How I Built This” Podcast by NPR
Ask Big Things Of God For The Right Reason
Who wins when I ask for big things? I have thought it was me, of course. Recently, however, I have been seeing a different dynamic at work when looking at three passages that follow each other in the book of John.
Failing Forward
Some people refuse to use the word failure. Instead, they substitute words like slip-up, setback, glitch, mistake—or at least frame the failure in a positive light.
Work Is Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be
The Bible explains that because of the rebellion of humanity against God’s good intention for our lives, shalom is not the way it is anymore. Instead of work consistently being done for the flourishing of all, work is often just a means to other ends, sinful ends.
Pay Attention to Those Desires in your Heart
I don’t know about you, but I’d love to be awakened by an angel some morning with a direct message from God about what I should do.
Consider the Ant: Why Daily Faithfulness Matter
Success, he suggested, was not achieved by a quick fix, quantum-leap method offered by our fast food culture. Instead, success comes by doing the small things we know to do over time.
Incubating Vision For Your Unique Context
But you, as an individual can incubate a vision of our unique context, that perhaps might be a sign that the Spirit of the Creator God has not abandoned that context, but is intent on filling it afresh with His image – even with you.
Design Thinking
Design Thinking is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days. At its core the concept of Design Thinking is Customer-centric.
God Was The First Entrepreneur
Disruption. This idea that things could be done better and you have a solution as to how that could happen or at the very least you’re willing to go on the journey of finding out if there is a solution to be found.
The Secret To Better Storytelling
The world is flooded with stories. It’s how we interact, share knowledge, connect and create. Stories exist at the core of the human experience.
How AirBnB Used Design To Master Product Market Fit
You would think a huge disrupter like AirBnB wouldn’t need to employ someone to disrupt their own business. Disruption is at the core of who they are, doesn’t it come naturally?
Cultivating a Creative Mindset
We recently provided our top tips on cultivating a creative mindset. We received such a great response to the series that we have decided to compile them into one handy blog!
How do we respond to failure as changemakers? (part two)
One of the tough things for the Mercers has been dealing with failure, businesses that haven’t taken off. They are open about that experience, “There is much about business you can control. And much of it that you can’t,” explains Aron.
Aron & Louise Mercer are innovative leaders of change…(part one)
Aron and Louise Mercer are an amazing couple who are innovative leaders of change in their respective fields.
Three Tips To Harness The Power of Imagination in Your Organisation
At Seed we’re all about forming a community of changemakers – individuals and organisations who are being shaped by Jesus while working at the forefront of positive change in our society. One of the pillars of our approach is imagination.
Is It Possible to Remain Relevant and Innovate Without Losing Our Religion?
Innovation is not a word that we readily associate with the Christian church or the faith-based sector. We’re seen as traditionalists, outdated, resisters of change
Jesus Loves Me Brings Hope
When Dana joined the Hub she had a prototype for a book for people with dementia. By the end of the year, she had a contract with a publisher…
Women At The Frontline Of Social Innovation
The seven women are gathered in the boardroom looking at me with expectation. Each of them have been working mostly alone on projects that have absorbed their thoughts, actions, lives for up to 12 years.
I’m dreaming of an ethical and sustainable Christmas
At the time it was a strange concept, to step back from the pressure and greed of a western Christmas, and to focus on the poor. It seemed revolutionary simply to admit to ourselves that we have enough stuff.
Finding a Fixed Mind Amidst the Frantic
A couple of years ago I ran a Busy Women’s Retreat… That might sound like a contradiction in terms. How can we retreat in the midst of busyness? Is it possible to be still, when nothing around you is?
From Sydney to Silicon Valley and Back
Dave walked outside of his home in the United States’ famous Silicon Valley, conscious that his whole world was falling down around him.His promising tech start-up had just floundered..
A Conversation: Jess Smith – Common Grace
Movements are about broad culture change, about identity and community transformation. When you have a ‘big’ vision, you will often dream of seeing not just your small project or product succeed but it multiply and snowball to transform whole communities and societies.
A Conversation: Graeme Anderson Part Two
We conclude the discussion on Spiritual Formation and the important role it plays in our lives as entrepreneurs and change-makers.
A Conversation: Graeme Anderson- Part One
I was heading into full time pastoral ministry and I was confronted with the reality that I didn’t really know what I was talking about when it came to Jesus…
Mentoring Women Entrepreneurs
I find the work anniversary notifications from LinkedIn annoying. Sometimes they are quite arbitrary, that is, when someone remembered to update their LinkedIn profile!
God’s Entrepreneurs
An initial study, utilising the Baylor Religion Survey, discovered that entrepreneurs tend to pray more frequently, are more likely to attend a place of worship that encourages business activity, and are more likely to see God as engaged and personal.
Top Tips For Social Entrepreneurs
Spiritual formation: you need deep roots to bear lots of fruit. If you have deep roots you won’t be blown about by other people’s opinions. Stay true to the only one whose opinion matters: God.
Greater impact for God and good
Tim is a director with a social business that had already been operating for two years when the opportunity came to participate in the Seed entrepreneurial incubator.
Revolutionising the Fashion Industry
Davyn de Bruyn had it all: a wonderful job, speeding up the career ladder, living in Mosman, girls keen for his company… but on the 10th of January in 2012 he found himself asking ‘Is this all life has to offer?’
Why you should apply for the Hub
This is the model of The Hub, an opportunity for women to explore a ministry, an idea, a business, or an art project in community and with expert coaches.
The Challenge of Change
What about the church? We’re not exactly known as a bastion of innovation and disruption. Australian Professor of theology and sociology Charles Ringma pointed out about 40 years ago (before the innovation revolution was on the radar) that the church hasn’t innovated in centuries.
Stop managing your life and start living it
It was two days after the images of Aylan (the three year old Syrian refugee boy who drowned at sea last week) were released, that I finally found the space to engage with the reality of his death. His death was a moment that captured the reality of the pain and...
Responding to pressing social issues
We founded Seed in response to three problems. In this blog series we're outlining the problems and a taste of how Seed plans to respond to them. Problem 2: The world is not as God intends it to be. We see and experience brokenness, injustice, oppression. Christians...
Discover God-given purpose
We founded Seed in response to three problems. In this blog series we're outlining the problems and a taste of how Seed plans to respond to them. Problem number 1: Many Christians are frustrated that their faith feels disengaged from the world and disconnected from...
Start With Why
Some of you might have read Simon Sinek’s best-selling book ‘Start with Why’- or at least seen the Ted talk. The rediscovery of ‘why’ surprises me because I’m one of those people who are always thinking about why. I’m always asking questions. If I can’t understand the purpose behind what I’m doing then you won’t have me on board for very long. Starting with why comes naturally for me.