The SISSI Principles

     I can still remember my mother who, in true American entrepreneurial style, sold hamburger dinners for $1.50 to subsidize her mortgage payments. In addition, my aunt (my mother’s only sister) is a genius in the kitchen, and she is famous for her rich desserts and her crown rib roasts. Auntie also sold her culinary masterpieces to supplement her income. It really is no mystery how most of the famous restaurants and  catering companies found their beginnings; someone, somewhere, tasted their cooking, and was so impressed that they felt compelled to offer payment to share the same palatable experience with family and friends. It’s kind of funny, but vast fortunes have been made by people who could not for the life of them cook an entire meal, but who had the insight to market a particular recipe i.e., a corn muffin recipe, a spaghetti sauce recipe, or even a pound cake recipe!

     I know people who can mess up a bowl of corn flakes, but yet they make the best barbeque sauces, pound cakes, cornbread dressing, and banana puddings in the world! Wealth and riches were at their fingertips had they taken the initiative to market what God had anointed, or empowered them to do (Deuteronomy 8:18)!

     It was not uncommon in days past, to see signs posted that advertised the sales of baked goods and barbeque dinners, the proceeds from which were earmarked for, among other things, church building funds, special projects, youth group field trips, new choir robes, and the list goes on and on. With regard to the contemporary church in America, the African American church in particular has a long history of supplementing the incomes of their local churches by sponsoring sales of chicken and barbeque rib dinners, in addition to several varieties of baked goods. Dinner sales were ingeniously combined with rummage sales where the hosts not only sold food and drink, but also sold used clothing and household articles were also made available to those who attended the advertised functions.

     Those sales generated dollars that were earmarked for various special projects, that otherwise may have been solicited from the already hyper-taxed members of the Parish. Those organized supplementary sales were not necessarily the results of the actions of a people in financial desperation, but these events were the direct result of ingenious ideologies designed specifically to generate finances that were to be used to improve the lives and conditions of those who sponsored them.