Talent Trippers, LLC

Mission, Vision and Purpose

Talent Trippers operates as a for-profit business with a decidedly Christian-partnered purpose.  Talent Trippers engages the talents of Christians in personal discipleship.  Talents may embody financial wealth, avocational interest, professional experience, personal friendship, empathetic sharing, encouragement and understanding, and abilities to do things physically, intellectually or spiritually reflective of God’s special grace and empowerment.

Talent Trippers envisions multiple ways in which co-disciples engage in Christian endeavor.  Talent Trippers currently envisions the following programs:

  1. Christian Enablers International – A program of mission opportunity whereby Christians from the United States engage in mission trips to Tanzania that;
    1. Require each missioner to inventory his/her talents and creatively plan their personal application to a Tanzanian mission experience with peers.
    2. Engage each missioner in culturally significant activities.
    3. Incorporate participation in a Tanzanian mission organization.
    4. Participate in group fellowship, prayer and sharing between US and TZ co-disciples.
    5. Provide a safari component to take advantage of cross-world location-specific opportunity.
    6. Document experiences to cement new relationships and chronicle experiences for return-home re-telling.
  2. Shoulders TZ Entrepreneurial Empowerment Ventures – A program of entrepreneurship education, planning, investment, and execution that;
    1. Pivots on the premise that appropriate planning lies at the core of success. Therefore, every partnership entered into by Shoulders will require the development and documentation of a business plan.  Three pillars or essential components to every business plan, prefaced by some crazy idea or dream, will include the following;
      1. The Idea or Dream. This leads to a business’ mission, vision and strategy, what it’s all about.
      2. Marketing. Every business needs to identify its market and figure out how it’s going to sell its services (or products) to that market.  Therefore, every business plan needs a marketing plan component.
      3. Operations. Every business needs to figure out how it’s going to operate.  Operations includes how it will manufacture or acquire its product, or how it will provide its service.
      4. Management & Organization. Every business needs to take care of business through proper administration.  Nobody likes to think about the back-office stuff, but no business can survive without it.
    2. Creates venture partnerships that partner US based venture partnerships with Tanzanian entrepreneurs in business as co-disciples to provide Tanzanian individuals the opportunity to achieve greater levels of self-sufficiency, and
    3. Obtains a reasonable and fair profit for US and Tanzanian partners,
    4. Operates within parameters of;
      1. Profit Maximization – Shoulders will seek to maximize profits within the constraints of Christian co-discipleship objectives. Shoulders believes that a reasonable profit motivation will incentivize creativity, encourage reasonable risk taking, and foster perspectives of mutual respect.
      2. Results Accountability – Shoulders aspires to sustain itself by making a profit (rewarding its investors), as well as by providing a societal good (jobs provided, managers promoted, entrepreneurs rewarded).
      3. Societal Good Maximization – Shoulders aspires to turn economically disadvantaged individuals, though caught in the trap of a poor economic opportunity circumstance, into profit incentivized and rewarded participants in both a profit-worthy as well as a Christian discipleship-opportunity endeavor.
      4. Transaction Orientation – Shoulders will conduct itself with the utmost respect for its partners, always requiring reciprocal fair value for value provided, and always rewarding value received with reciprocal fair compensation.
      5. Incentivizing – Shoulders seeks to achieve a worthwhile co-discipleship between Christians from economically contrasted countries; it also seeks to provide economic and spiritually motivated individuals the opportunity to participate in this discipleship walk and to strengthen themselves economically in the context of full mutual respect and economic partnership.
      6. Societal Contribution – To the extent that Shoulders yields profits, it will pass those profits on to its investors in the form of taxable income, or allow itself to be taxed itself.
  3. Story Telling, Chronicling Culturally Significant Experience – A program of experiential sharing that preserves for fun, re-telling, reminding and remembering the thrill and all-out joy of spiritual fulfillment. The importance of chronicling stems from the following ideas;
    1. Intentional Engagement – Discipleship involves intentional planning, execution and remembering. Like pictures taken and accumulated for posterity during the growing years of a child, Talent Trippers believes that similar recording of a Christian’s maturation through talent investment is worth remembering and re-telling.
    2. Uniqueness of Experience – Every co-discipleship venture will result in unique Christian experience.
    3. Word and Picture – Talent Trippers attempts to capture, in word and picture, the life-altering experiences of missioners on their journeys toward fulfillment of talent investments.
    4. Posterity, Remembering and Retelling – Recording the experiences of each missioner’s adventure will preserve for the benefit of both missioner and wannabes, the excitement and fulfillment of true personal discipleship.

Talent Trippers began as a Crazy Idea!

Talent Trippers now embodies and boldly advocates for craziness!

Living a Christian life represents the acceptance of an exceptionally crazy idea, that God sent His Son to not only pardon us, but to give us life full of talent, full of the tangible evidence of His gracious love!  The Christian life gives us the opportunity and responsibility to invest talent on behalf of, and in response to, the grace that he or she has received.  That investment of talent represents an investment of the love that God showed to us in so many ways.  When we purposely and intentionally love, we invest our talents, in hope and anticipation of Christ’s return.

What return on His investment in us will we make?

Perhaps Talent Trippers will play a part.

Perhaps personal engagement in discipleship through planning, execution and remembering will return His grace.

How will our Master respond in the context of our investments?