We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful CJ Winslow. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with CJ below.
CJ, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
My for-profit company has “Glorify God” as part of it’s mission statement, and in such we strived to operate to biblical standards and include prayer in our culture. We included customers, vendors an anybody who wanted to join us, to join. While I felt we were on the right track, I was wrong. I was honored with the opportunity to experience a life-changing James 1 moment back in the 2008 recession where we had to cut employees and stop paying our own personal bills to keep things afloat. This extended the point where we were nearly out of food, no money for electricity nor gas in the car. We listed our house on the onset of this famine and our home was on the fast track to foreclosure, so we had homelessness, hunger, no utilities and no apparent hope in our sights. In the middle of this spell, we drove to church with enough gas to get there, not enough to get back home and I decided then and there that I was done with being The Provider for my family and threw all what I had (which was a gift card to Best Buy as a birthday present) into the offering basket and was done with myself. Up to that point, every morning I awoke with despair in my heart and the regular stresses of life magnified by that. After that point, the despair was still there, but it was coupled with Joy. I was done and knew He had me. It didn’t just get better the next day, however, we did seek help at Grace (a local community outreach) for help with food which they were happy to provide. We walked that walk with others we were used to donating towards and feeling sorry for in the past. We were still on the track for losing our home and no funds for any of our bills for about 6 more weeks when the switch flipped. Our home sold for asking price, our business got it’s traction back and we were able to stabilize and recover. We were struggling to make payroll every week for a few years after that, but making it every time, just in time. In the midst of all that, I decided praying and operating biblically ain’t my all, and decided that we’re going to go into the world and help uplift those with our gifts and resources to magnify the Lord’s work being done by His Servants down here. Praise God for loving me so much that he’d bring that trial into my life, break down my perspective and show me His. I pray and hope everybody has the opportunity to experience and appreciate their own James 1 moment with that degree of impact. My resilience stems from solid faith that the Lord and I are in stride and what looks like travesty is truly a testimony in the works.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
We’d originally created a program supported by our for-profit company in 2009 which later became a non-profit organization called Catering to Love. Our mission is to combine our network of gifts and resources to uplift Christ-honoring community outreach events. From event to event, I noticed event hosts running all over the place doing their darndest trying to make sure the show went off without a hitch. When serving, I noticed a lot of the volunteers didn’t appear to be “present” nor know how to actually serve. In fairness, my last 20+ years have been serving the hospitality market, so I’m a service snob. Finally, I found most events need utility resources such as food or fun stuff like cotton candy or snow cones and much more and that most of which comes with a high price tag. I said to myself “self, these folks doing these good works have been entrusted by donors, tithers and others to steward their donations to honoring their core mission. Feels wrong if they’re paying off some executive’s private jet bill with all that for-profit markup serving these utility needs.” The Holy Spirit jumped in with a reference Matthew 22:21 to put icing on that cake. This made our execution plan quite simple: 1) Let us resource what we can to make $1 spend like $5 by leveraging our network of believer resources and gifts. While this isn’t necessarily always donations, our network has agreed to pass their costs through as our costs.
2) We are a checkbox on the event host’s list of event activities so they don’t have to fret about arranging our sections. Our captains know how to run their section (normally better than the event host) and volunteers. Point us where to go and connect us with our people and we got it from there
3) We want to uplift those who serve with us so they can check their baggage at the Cross and be present with the guests. A pristine volunteer experience where volunteers can see what serving really looks like is priceless
4) Paring with #3 above, we want the guests of the event uplifted, laughing, smiling and fulfilled by our part in an event. A positive attitude lends a positive experience making the event’s purpose better served
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
There is no question that walking the walk opened my perspective greatly to those I’m serving and those I’m serving with. Having had the opportunity to be served when in need was a huge blessing when it came to serving those walking a similar path. I’d encourage folks looking to get into a venture to work in a similar venture in multiple roles to firstly understand the walk, but also assess the potential. Set yourself aside and prioritize who it is you’re trying to serve. Does it make sense to do a new venture or connect existing ventures to leverage speed to market and quality of product and service? I find that most folks are only competitors if you put that label on them. They can be partners if you’re willing and persistent to find the opportunity that makes that a reality. Treat every day as a birthday! You only get today once, and God made it and put you in it for something amazing, if you’re willing to seek it.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Our vision is to scale Catering to Love throughout the United States and eventually globally. As we form to scale here in our starting market, Dallas-Ft Worth, we’ve got a few areas we’re looking for folks, partnerships and help: 1) We badly need serve team captains (folks who love serving) who can adopt events and run their part of the show. We’ll show you the ropes, we just need willing souls called to serve.
2) We’re working to unite the many competitive entities serving the spaces where the church really should have prevailed (in this moment I’m specifically talking about the foster and trafficking spaces) and lift those serving in those spaces (families, lawyers, social workers and so on) with the end goal of positively influencing the children and trafficking survivors. If you have connections in this space who don’t know we exist, please connect us
3) We’re looking for churches/entities who have commercial kitchens who aren’t putting those to work for Christ-honoring community outreach events throughout the week. Yeah, I know it’s a tall ask, but if you have an amazing kitchen pledged to the Lord’s work, why let it sit on the bench with all it can do. Couple that with a handful of captains and we’ve got us something to talk about! If you have something like that in your arsenal and want to explore, connect with us!
4) In 2024 here in DFW with 3 serve team captains, we served food/fun/fellowship at 81 events, serving over 14,000 people guests, 400 volunteers (at about 2000 hours) at an expense of $13,883.01 to the event hosts providing what would have cost them about $119,272.00. If you’re a benefactor of an entity who performs Christ-honoring community outreach events (churches, non-profits, schools, police departments, family services folks, pretty much anything where their work would bring a smile to His lips) and they may not know we exist, please connect us so your donations and those they are meant to serve can be multiplied and uplifted!
You can reach us at [email protected] or 817-898-1308.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.CateringToLove.org/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CateringToLove
- Other: Email: [email protected] Phone: 817-898-1308
