As the Johannesburg Training Manager for Paradigm Shift, a large part of my job is helping to train local volunteers to serve as Business Trainers within our program. Business Trainers facilitate all of our business training materials for our entrepreneurs, including: the Business Experience Course, the Business Growth Course, and the Business Advancement Course. Our Business Trainers are all business professionals with a wide range of business experience and an incredible heart to serve the poor entrepreneurs of Johannesburg. It has been such a blessing to work with them and to play a part in this ministry.

Starting this month, I am sending out a monthly publication called, Business Trainer Times. The purpose of this newsletter is to help the trainers feel connected to one another, to suggest facilitation tips and to serve as a reminder of why we do what we do.

Below you will find the first issue of the Business Trainer Times : ) Click on the image to read the newletter!

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

This brief passage was recently discussed at the cell group I attend. The part of the verse that struck me the most was where we’re commanded to act justly. Naturally, this begs the question, “What does it mean to act justly?”

My understanding of justice is rather simple. But in order to fully comprehend…we have to go back to the beginning. Genesis 1 tells us that God created the heavens and earth; He spoke light into existence; He produced living creatures; He created man. Verse 31 tells us, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

Unfortunately, things didn’t stay the way God created them. Genesis 3 tells us about the fall of man and the curses brought upon humankind as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin. Those of us who are alive today don’t know the world as God intended it to be; we only know a world that has been corrupted by sin.

So there’s a way that things were supposed to be. And then there’s the way that things actually are. Justice, then, is restoring things that have been twisted and defiled by sin back to their original, God-intended state.

God did not intend the world to include poverty, hunger, suffering, inequality, abuse, pollution, or people taking advantage of one another…all of those are a result of sin. Therefore, erradicating poverty, feeding the hungry, banishing inequality, preventing abuses, stewarding our environment, and loving one another are all forms of justice. They are all actions that bring us closer to the way things were meant to be. Closer to bringing heaven to earth.