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Interview with Jennifer Mathews - The Ethiopia Startup that Didn't Work

Published on: 17th January, 2022

Join me as I interview Jennifer and follow her deep journey into redemptive entrepreneurship. Jennifer shares an honest reflection on humble beginnings, a corporate position with Walmart, training leaders and attempting an apparel start up in Ethiopia. You will gain real world insight into the challenges and realities of starting a redemptive business in a very difficult environment. Cultural whiplash, team approaches, theology of work issues and solid advice for mission minded professionals are featured in this authentic discussion. 

Jennifer Mathews began her professional career at Walmart HQ in 2008 working in apparel and marketing for 3 years. She worked for a non-profit in Addis, Ababa Ethiopia for 18 months doing leadership development then attempted to start a leather handbag business to employ marginalized peoples in Ethiopia. She lived in Germany for 2.5 years doing non-profit work among refugees and currently resides in Northwest Arkansas. Jennifer now works as a Housing Specialist at Canopy, a refugee resettlement organization.

Highlights include:

  • Don’t despise the days of small beginnings 
  • How working a Corporate position with Walmart HQ prepared Jennifer for missions
  • An unlikely startup in Ethiopia
  • What happens when our work does not work out
  • How to keep your God story moving forward in your vocation
  • A journey of recovering the dignity and mission of work
  • Advice for young professionals who want to impact the broken places in the world
  • As we work and as we build… we demonstrate a different Kingdom 
  • We are saved from something and also saved UNTO something
  • Community as KEY to success
  • What would Jennifer tell her ‘young self’ if she could before she went into the work world
  • Advice for single women who are called to redemptive entrepreneurship 
  • Theological challenges impacting investors, funding and modes of operation
  • What will HELP you and what will HURT you
  • Can you trust your Gut instinct as a believer?
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About the Podcast

The Metron Manager Project
Recovering the Dignity and Mission of Vocation
The Metron Manager Podcast is a dynamic program that will equip you to become a successful Metron Manager! This transformational program will catalyze your journey to recover the dignity and mission of vocation!

Based on his book, Managing Your Metron, Jonathan Nowlen brings a refreshing and hope filled approach to Theology of Work and the Future of Christian Mission. Crucial concepts and Biblical perspectives are explored and interviews with Christian thought leaders in the workplace will inspire and develop everyone who is called to work in the Kingdom of God.

Jonathan is passionate about recovering the dignity and mission of vocation. He is a career missions leader who has worked in 60 countries over the last few decades. He is the host of the Metron Manager Podcast and author of Managing Your Metron: A practical Theology of Work, Mission and Meaning.

Jonathan is a an experienced strategist, leader, public speaker, coach, consultant and equipper. Currently Jonathan is focused on missionized theology of work and equipping believers to advance the Kingdom through their vocation. After 11 years as executive director of an international, educational non-profit, he founded the Metron Manager Project.

Remember, God has given you Permission and a Commission to work!
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Jonathan Nowlen

WELCOME TO THE METRON MANAGER PROJECT!
My Name is Jonathan Nowlen and I am the Founder of the Metron Manager Project and the Author of the book titled Managing Your Metron: A Practical Theology of Work, Mission and Meaning.

The Metron Manager Project is all about equipping you to become who you were originally designed to be and find your place in the Kingdom of God.

“I believe that one of the next great moves of God is going to be through the believers in the workplace.”
— BILLY GRAHAM (LATE 2000)

God has given me a vision to be part of what many believe is the next great move of God by launching the Metron Manager Project. I have been fully engaged in the cause of Christ and His Kingdom enterprise for over 25 years. As such I have gained wide experience and perspective on the trajectory of the modern mission effort. As a missionary kid I grew up primarily outside the USA in remote and developing countries. After embracing my own call to serve in missions I began working in the socially and economically devastated regions of the former Soviet Union in the early to mid 1990’s. From there I participated in or led missional efforts from Southeast Asia to South America, and from Europe to Africa, covering 60 countries.

I’ve seen the edges of heaven and walked in the streets of hell. I’ve seen the power of God transform lives and nations through average believers like myself who have chosen to hear and obey. I believe that we are entering a new era of mission in spiritual history. This era is marked by the missionizing of believers in the marketplace. ‘On Mission’ is the new mode of every believer in every sphere of society. My book, Managing Your Metron, launched this Metron Manager Project with the aim of providing a reformational understanding of Work, Mission and Meaning.

The vision of the Metron Manager Project is to provide training, resources and theology that will recover the dignity and mission of vocation. Billy Graham’s prescient statement about the next move of God coming through believers in the workplace is a vision of the future that I and many others believe has now arrived. It is time to rethink mission and the Kingdom of God as a new era is upon us. Spiritual history is demanding a broadening of our understanding of what it means to respond to the Great Commission. (Matthew 28:18-20) I invite you to join in this journey to become a Metron Manager and recover the dignity and mission of your vocation.

– Jonathan Nowlen
Founder: The Metron Manager Project
Author: Managing Your Metron: A Practical Theology of Work, Mission and Meaning