Chris Horst

Though most of us aren’t bowing to statues or poles, we’d argue from personal experience that many leaders’ idol of choice is the idol of our own abilities: a good thing we are tempted to distort into the ultimate thing.

Chris Horst and Claire Stewart share their Christianity Today article “The Christian Roots of the Fair Trade Movement” with us. Beneath the buzzwords around sustainability, transparency, and ethical sourcing we find something far more important than consumerism: Christ-centered love for our neighbors.

In a suburb north of Denver, Prime Trailer Leasing manages a fleet of gleaming white semi-trailers. Like the Hertz of semi-trucks, Prime owns and rents its trucks to commercial customers of all varieties. Wes Gardner, the founder and owner of Prime, acknowledges that “semi trailers aren’t glamorous,” but the work his company is doing is anything but mundane.

Mica May, founder and CEO of May Designs, took in what she just heard. The stern instructions came to her from Tory Johnson, a regular contributor on ABC’s Good Morning America. She needed samples of May’s notebooks for a feature she was hosting on gift ideas.

At the time, May was a staff-of-one, a scrappy entrepreneur working from her home. Thrilled about this opportunity for increased publicity, she shipped off a few of her classic notebook designs.

But then the show aired.

Brian Rants never thought his contribution to the world would be a $15 lamp. But for schoolchildren in Swaziland and earthquake survivors in Haiti, these solar lamps have made all the difference. Rants’s Denver-based company—Nokero, short for “no kerosene”—have allowed African students to read at night and increased safety for Haitian families living in tent cities. As vice president of marketing, Rants’s job is to get these lamps into the hands of millions of families in the developing world.

Millenials flock to Denver faster than almost every other city in the country. Colorado’s recreational culture, active lifestyle and surging downtown create a magnetic atmosphere for young people. But our new neighbors include more than hipsters in search of tech startups and fresh powder.

“Colorado is better than other places,” said Ah Hki, who moved to Colorado two years ago from a refugee camp in Thailand. “I found a great job and have a lot of work. Housing is expensive here, but the wages are higher here, too. And the weather is better.”

Each year, several thousand refugees make Colorado their home. When they do, a make-or-break factor in their acclimation is whether or not they can find good work.

A “restful buying experience.”

Few American consumers would ever think to describe mattress shopping this way. In fact, if you have been mattress shopping recently, restful is probably the last word that comes to mind.

“This is one of the sleaziest industries in the world,” says business owner Ethan Rietema. “Customers are treated so poorly. Stores beat you up, trying to get as much money as they can, but they couldn’t care less if you get the right bed.”

Rietema and Steve Van Diest, both former campus ministers, are bringing rest—and integrity—back to a business largely devoid of it.