Ignatian Business Chapter
Seton Hall Micah Family, please find the attached press release from RENEW International describing the new partnership with the former Woodstock Business Conference and the newly renamed Ignatian Business Chapters (IBC). Together with IBC, we will continue our monthly readings and reflection.
Mission
The Mission of the Ignatian Business Chapters is to establish and lead a national and international network of business executives to explore their respective religious traditions in order to help the individual executives:
- To integrate faith, family, and professional life,
- To develop a corporate culture that is reflective of their religious faith and values
- To exercise a beneficial influence upon society at large.
The chapter, grounded in the Roman Catholic tradition, welcomes believers who are open to and respectful of one another’s religious tradition. It is committed to the conviction that ethics and values grow out of one’s religious heritage.
How to Join
For more information about the Seton Hall Chapter of IBC, please contact Danute Nourse at [email protected] or call (973) 275-2525. Monthly readings and reflection questions are available here.
Why the Chapter
Everyone searches for meaning in life. The search is not limited to the private dimension
of family, friendship, and person development; but also includes the world of work
and profession. Often the search is accelerated by feelings of agitation, restlessness,
sleepless nights. This search may lead thoughtful men and women of faith to sense
an apparent gap or chasm between faith experience and experience in the marketplace. They
may come to a gulf between moral expectations and actual experience in life in the
corporation and a sense of disquietude. After a period of serious reflection, a person
may see the knowledge born of faith that we are loved by God as inconsistent with
the sometimes harsh experiences of life in the day-to-day world.
Is peace of mind possible? Is this gap bridgeable? Is the apparent discrepancy between
what we profess in faith and what we see and do in business either necessary or inevitable? Helping
business leaders to answer these questions, to navigate in troubled waters, is what
the Chapter is all about.
Chapter participants take care to identify values consistent with their religious
commitments, to the end that their decisions and actions will be based upon ethical
principles informed by and growing out of their religious faith. Religion in general,
and particularly the Judeo-Christian tradition, contributes in a number of significant
ways:
- thousands of years of prayerful reflection have produced a rich treasure of thought directed to practical resolution of questions of right and wrong;
- the motivational power of religious conviction sustains morally correct behavior;
- a picture of the world emerges from which it makes sense for people to take the dilemmas of moral action seriously and make the effort to do the right thing;
- a way of life is presented which is more comprehensive and demanding;
- a community of believers opens access to a much deeper range of values than those expressed in the conventional wisdom of the day.
Chapter Meeting Format
A typical seasonal meeting runs about an hour and a half. The following format is generally used:
- Opening prayer
- Self-Introductions
- Reading of the Mission Statement
- Reading of Scripture
- Silent Reflection on the Scripture (5 min.)
- Discussion of Scripture reflection by group
- Presentation of topic for discussion by one of the members
- Discussion of the topic
- Reflection and evaluation on the meeting and process (5 - 10 min.)
- Closing prayer