Touchstone inspires students to change the world one business idea at a time
Kim Chaudoin | 615.966.6494 |
Rob Touchstone knows firsthand what it’s like to have a “crazy” business idea, and as the newly appointed director of missional entrepreneurship in Lipscomb’s College of Business, he hopes to inspire crazy notions in others.
Touchstone’s idea developed while he was a Lipscomb graduate student in a missional living class taught by Earl Lavender, professor of Bible. This idea tugged at Touchstone’s heart for about four years when he shared it with some friends, who also caught his vision.
And today, his “crazy” business idea is a reality in the form of The Well, a nonprofit coffeehouse with two locations in the Nashville area focused on serving quality coffee and giving profits to provide clean water around the world.
Touchstone (’97, M.Div. ’12) said this business idea took on life because of the tools he was equipped with and the people he met while at Lipscomb. Now, Touchstone has the opportunity to share his knowledge and to inspire future generations of students to pursue their business dreams while also having a positive missional impact on the world.
This month, Touchstone was named director of missional entrepreneurship in Lipscomb’s College of Business, to be a resource for students who seek to make an impact on the world through new business ideas.
“Missional entrepreneurship is an idea that fits perfectly with the mission and purpose of the College of Business,” said Ray Eldridge, interim dean of the college. “Rob’s story is one that we hope to replicate with other students. We are a business school, but we also want our students—wherever they go in life—to not only be successful in business but to do good. We also want to encourage and equip students who have ideas for projects like The Well to have the business skills they will need to launch and run a successful organization. Vocational mission. That’s what we are about here.”
Eldridge said business schools, especially at Christian universities, often struggle with how to incorporate vocational mission and social entrepreneurship into the curriculum. At Lipscomb, every undergraduate business major takes an introduction to entrepreneurship class. This course introduces students to business by taking an entrepreneurial perspective to the pursuit of value-creating opportunities. At the end of the course, each student develops a business model for an entrepreneurial opportunity and gains an understanding of how that business model can apply to any business endeavor.
“I feel like I am returning to my roots in a way in this role,” said Touchstone, who has been an adjunct faculty member in the College of Bible & Ministry for seven years. “I served in youth ministry for 16 years and have been around students and involved in mentoring them for much of my career. This is a natural extension of that. I absolutely love working with students and being able to help them discover and live out their God-given talents.”
Touchstone learned to be an entrepreneur at a young age, selling golf balls he found in the woods of his childhood neighborhood to golfers playing the nearby course. He said he hopes his “real-world” experience of having a business idea and implementing it will be helpful to students as an example that ideas can become reality.
“As a student in Earl Lavender’s class we were challenged to think about mission as a way of life and to imagine the church as something more than what happens for a couple of hours a week in a church building,” said Touchstone. “The idea I had for The Well became a vision to create an intersection for church, community, mission and culture by stepping outside the walls of our church buildings and meeting people right where they are in their lives. In this new role, I hope to help other students use their gifts to do similar things.”
This spring, Touchstone is serving as a practitioner and co-instructor in business classes and laying the foundation for a possible future center for missional entrepreneurship for Lipscomb students. He will also continue as adjunct faculty in the College of Bible & Ministry. He said he hope to also “be a bridge-builder with the other colleges on campus to find ways for students in other disciplines to learn how to implement their ideas.”
“What excites me about the College of Business and this new role is that we will show students how to integrate faith and business,” said Touchstone. “I feel more empowered than ever to train students to ‘be sent out into the world’ to create businesses that will be missional.”
Eldridge said the College of Business’s mission is to develop students who are purposeful, bold, credible and creative servant leaders.
“The point is to help our students see that they can do good no matter what field they work in,” said Eldridge. “We place a strong emphasis on academics, but education happens both inside and outside the classroom. So many students today are passionate about making a difference in the world and are thinking about how they can do that in their careers. We are here to equip them with the knowledge and tools they need to do that.”
For more information about Lipscomb’s College of Business, visit business.lipscomb.edu and its Center for Entrepreneurship visit entrepreneurship.lipscomb.edu.