Why Ministry and Entrepreneurship Require Reform, Risk & Relationships
When you ask most entrepreneurs what made them strike out on their own and do something different, perhaps sell or rethink something already on the market, many times they say that it boils down to believing in themselves. That they woke up one morning and genuinely believed that there was something deposited in them by God that gave them permission to take a risk and try something that may or may not have made sense. Entrepreneurship is the ability to recognize the need for reform, to decide you are willing to put yourself at risk to engage it and building the necessary relationships to make it happen.
I do not want to make it seem as if entrepreneurship is all about positive thinking, because it is not. To reduce it to that makes it seem like being an entrepreneur is just about throwing positive feelings into the universe hoping for a cosmic return on your investment. I believe that being an entrepreneur is about being able to harness belief into action. Acknowledging the power that God has deposited in your spirit and creating something different or improving something that needs to reach new people in a new time or space.
The Bible is full of examples of entrepreneurs, people who created and reformed in order to effect change. Rehab, Hannah, Esther, Amos, Paul, Priscilla, Lois, Eunice and Jesus were all people who looked around them, were able to create and reform by building on relationships, and did not allow the risks to dissuade them.
When I think about the relationship between entrepreneurship and ministry, I think about the challenge to the preacher of the gospel to do what entrepreneurs do. An entrepreneur does not believe that everything that there is to create has been created. There is always something new to think of, an easier more effective way of getting a product or service to people, in other words an entrepreneur does not accept the world as it is. As preachers our posture should be that, we have something in us so powerful that it drives us not to accept things as they are.
In 2010 as he addressed young people assembled from 183 countries world-wide for the One Young World conference, former general secretary to the United Nations Kofi Annan uttered haunting words to the leaders all 25 years or younger. He said, “In many ways my generation has failed you.” As he looked across the crowd, he painted a harrowingly vivid picture of the world that they were inheriting. A world afflicted with fragile economies, poverty, environmental hazards, intrastate and international conflicts, transnational crimes and much more. It was as if his generation was handing ours a ship, damaged after colliding with several jagged rocks and we are charged to keep it afloat. Rocks like racism, sexism, heterosexism and consumerism have ravaged the hull of this ship called humanity and Kofi Annan apologized for the world we are challenged to live in.
However, what Mr. Annan was also saying is that as young people, and we as preachers, are exhorted not to accept things as they are. Ida B. Wells as she crusaded against the lynching of Black bodies and the unrecognized humanity of Black people did not accept things as they were. Ella Baker, an unsung contemporary to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as she reoriented social resistance from centering on one dynamic leader to the power of the collective did not accept things as they were. Sen. Elizabeth Warren as she unashamedly pushes for Wall St. reform is not accepting things as they are.
And that is what it means to be an entrepreneur in ministry. When Jesus stands before Pilate and is asked what He has done to ignite His foes, Jesus answers that His kingdom is not from this world. Jesus was telling Pilate that He could not try to fit the vision of His ministry nor call into the paradigms and systems of a colonized, imperial Roman 1st century world. His opponents were against this. The gospel He encapsulated, the liberation He brought and the power He was releasing did not fit the ideals and norms of the world He was living in. I would posit it was entrepreneurial.
We have this model to follow. As ministers, called to preach a gospel of love, restoration, grace and justice in all its forms means to be entrepreneurial. We are to understand that the paradigms and systems of the world will not always be conducive to carrying out God’s word. The reform we are called to enact, the relationships we are called into and the risk that it all entails means that we will proudly don the title of entrepreneur. At first, I had a problem with the term, “entrepreneur” being associated with ministry. I thought it was somewhat sacrilegious, communicating once again that the Church was trying to adopt the language of the competing religion of this age Capitalism. I have come to understand however, that the boldness and faith that drives an entrepreneur to disregard their naysayers and external conditions in order to create something powerful is what we need as ministers. Our call is to proclaim what God has to say. What that is will not always be popular, will require deep relationships we can count on when we need encouragement and require innovative thinking to propose solutions and not just be able to point out problems. Our call is be entrepreneurs.