A few months ago I wrote a reflection on Steve Hill and Jim Howey, two friends who lead a metal fabrication business in Northeast Denver. That blog post grew into a full-fledged article that was published today on Christianity Today’s This is Our City project. This is Our City is my favorite online destination. Last year they profiled another favorite business of mine, Bud’s Warehouse. Here’s the summary of the project:

A new generation of Christians believes God calls them to seek shalom in their cities. These Christians are using their gifts and energies in all sectors of public life—commerce, government, technology, the arts, media, and education—to bring systemic renewal to the cultural “upstream” and to bless their neighbors in the process. No longer on the sidelines of influence, emboldened by the belief that Jesus loves cities, they model a distinctly evangelical civic engagement for the 21st century.
This Is Our City, a multiyear project of Christianity Today, seeks to spotlight in reporting, essays, and documentary video how these Christians are responding to their cities’ particular challenges with excellence, biblical faith, and hope. The six cities we are profiling differ dramatically from one another in size, economic climate, ethnic and racial composition, and in their history of Christian presence, leadership or abdication, at crucial moments. But they all have stories worth telling. Wherever we live, we can learn something from these cities about faithfulness to our own place.

It’s the ordinary-ness of Jim and Steve’s business that is the very reason their story needs to be shared. Across our country, entrepreneurs like Jim and Steve add immense value to our society. Quite simply, they just do business the right way: They create jobs, treat their people well, and innovate valuable products and services for their customers. It’s profound work, even if the images of rivets, sheet metal and factories don’t necessarily sing.

I write extensively about poverty on this blog. An article on metal fabricators almost feels like a distant relative to the poverty conversation. But I don’t see it that way. Steve and Jim aren’t just “business guys.” They are urban ministers, justice workers and artists. Heroic civil rights activist, John Perkins, once said, “Jobs are the world’s best social service program.”
Perkins was right. When we reimagine the entrepreneur, we realize that Jim and Steve’s work is hardly ordinary. It’s heroic. And that’s why I’m thrilled to share it.

There’s a simple reason why manual laborers are called “blue-collar”: The color blue, it turns out, hides dirt better than the white seen in office buildings. But “blue collar” defines more than work apparel, of course. It defines industry, even a way of life. And its stereotypes are often unflattering. But a metal products manufacturer in Colorado is working to undermine those stereotypes, right on the shop floor…

To read the article, head over to Christianity Today.