Archive Article: Sustaining The World. 14th Feb 03.
December 27, 2008

Business schools are now catching up with the Bible. They think that they have found some new ideas – but Christians have known about them for thousands of years.

Wesley Mission has just had a conference for its senior staff and the focus was on “corporate sustainability”. One of this country’s leading experts, Professor Dexter Dunphy, was the keynote speaker.

By way of background, Professor Dunphy – son of the Australian pioneer environmentalist Myles Dunphy – gave the 1972 Boyer Lectures on “The Challenge of Change?” He was very quick off the mark in alerting society to some major developments. The passage of time has proved him correct. Now he is calling for attention to “corporate sustainability” as another important trend.

“Sustainability” requires corporations to pay attention to the environmental and social costs of their work. Short-term greed has to be replaced by a more long-term vision of a company’s programme of work.

I was asked to open the discussion on the keynote speech. As Professor Dunphy himself noted, “God has given us a wonderful home and we are literally wasting it. We need to be stewards of the world’s resources and not exploiters.” I built upon those comments.

First, “sustainability” is the core business of the church. Christians are called to be stewards of the earth. They are also to care for fellow human beings: environmental sustainability and social sustainability.

Second, the business focus on “sustainability” means that companies need to take a long-term view. Well, the church is here for the long haul. Businesses come and go but the church keeps on keeping on. For example, not only is Wesley Mission larger than 90 per cent of the registered businesses in Australia but it is also older than almost all of them. (By the way with roots going back to 1812, the Mission is also older than the State and Australian Governments).

Third, “sustainability” is a way of looking at the world – rather than a set of fixed procedures. It requires not only attention to the environment and society but also making sure that there is a holistic approach to these two factors and the third one of finance. It is not a matter of pitting one against the other two and claiming that one is more important than the other two. It is more a matter of seeing how all three factors can be blended into everyday operations.

Professor Dunphy congratulated the Mission on its work to date. “You have the spiritual commitment to support the creation of a sustainable society in a sustainable world” he told the conference.

None of this should suggest that the Mission has a perfect record on sustainability. In this era of rapid change, there are always opportunities for improvements. But it does mean that the Mission can provide some leadership to other churches and other organizations.

By the way, the Mission is producing it own annual reports on the basis of sustainability – what is called “triple bottom line” reporting. This is more than can be said about the country’s own leading environmental non-governmental organization which calls on businesses to follow the triple bottom line approach but has been slow to introduce it in its own reporting.

Broadcast Friday 14th February 2003 on Radio 2GB’s “Brian Wilshire Programme” at 9pm.