There has been a lot of talking over the past year or so regarding the role of the entrepreneur with the emerging church, and i have to confess that I'm quite uncomfortable with it. I'm not sure why and I'm not convinced that I'm right, but i do think that there needs to be a debate and a discussion about this. It seems that the role of the missional entrepreneur has been developed and promoted by missional entrepreneurs who, arguably, have a vested interest. This post is not directed at anyone but written to stimulate debate, many of my friends are missional entrepreneurs and i affirm them in their vocation.
Firstly, i think that it is excellent that we have some entrepreneurs, however i have reservations about setting the vocation of the entrepreneur with the prophet or the poet. I have at times being called a prophetic voice, and in all honesty i confess that it massages my ego. This is a personal failing of mine - i acknowledge it, seek forgiveness and move on. The prophets of the OT were reluctant prophets because they knew that it would make them unpopular within their religious communities, our Entrepreneurs are not unpopular but praised and paid by the institution...
Mark Berry, in his excellent article here gives this quote from two business leaders:
'In a chaotic world, people cry out for individuals who can provide meaning for their… lives.' - Ridderstrale and Nordstrom. My reservation is that the role of the Christian leader is not to be the individual to provide meaning, but to point to Christ who provides ultimate meaning. The danger with this kind of personality based leadership is that it is open to abuse. The entrepreneur needs to be aware of this tension, they need to be constantly be pointing away from themselves and to the person of Christ.
Finally i think that it is right that we have a culture of experimentation within church, try new things be creative and be innovative. But also remember that we are dealing with people; many vulnerable, broken wounded people who are not there to be experimented on. Some people will love the ride, others will be broken by it. The entrepreneur has a pastoral responsibility to care for those that they engage with, or else the short term entrepreneur creates long term pastoral casualties.
Technorati Tags: emerging church, Prophets, entrepreneurs, theology
Ben: this is a brilliant post and raise some significant concerns that are well worth discussing in the emerging church arena. Sociologist Richard Sennett talks of "the culture of the new capitalism" whereby the way we do business is shaping the essence of the individual and the nature of our relating. Essentially, the weak, immobile, experienced, the old all become redundant and expendable. Instead the "gold-plating" of the new offering the tantalising glimmer of novelty provides insubstantial substance.....I wonder if some of the talk of entrepreneural mission is merely pandering to culture in a way that the Kingdom of God would resolutely challenge.
Posted by: Richard Sudworth | July 27, 2007 at 08:11 AM
I have found the talk about entrepreneurialism rather refreshing. For most of the past 20-odd years of my ministry, I've operated in an anti-entrepreneurial culture, where suspicion haunted any development that could not be plotted out in full beforehand or which smacked of any kind of risk. The entrepreneur, for me, is the servant in the Parable of the Talents who invested what he had been given in ways that made it grow. In the days before National Savings, this would inevitably have meant risking the capital itself. Meanwhile, the Church I've worked for for most of my ministry operated like the the servant who buried his deposit in the ground - only in our case, it was the same as burying paper money in the ground. It just decayed.
For me, the figure of the Entrepreneur is the person who has an idea which is marked by novelty. Because of the novelty, it potentially marks the breaking of new ground, a breaking of the mould, and potentially large benefits. Key to this is the entrepreneur's willingness to take risk and expose him/herself to vulnerability, should the vision be incorrect. On this basis, the entrepreneur moves forward, working hard to persuade others of the viability of the scheme. Sometimes they will fail, and suffer the consequences. But other times, they will succeed, to the benefit of all. Lastly, it's often in the nature of entrepreneurs that they move on, once the project is running, to something which exists only in their imagination.
In other words, to be Apostolic, the Church has to be fundamentally entrepreneurial.
It normally needs the kind of person who is a bit autocratic to get this thing going: a single source of a driving vision. However, given the boredom factor for most true entrepreneurs, this means that the community eventually has to move away from this model, if only because the entrepreneur has his/her eyes on the next project. Autocratic models in the Church seldom work for very long - they're just unsustainable if the community is going to continue to grow numerically or spiritually. But they often have to happen at the very beginning because the distance between vision and reality has to be crossed by a lot of pushing and shoving. To return to my reflection across the years of my ministry, I've seen many brilliant, fertile ideas and visions die, before seeing the light of day, in a committee. It's also worth saying that there is a difference between autocracy (ie. key decisions devolving to a single person) and authoritarianism (power being manipulated by one or a few to control others). We see quite a few autocracies in the New Testament communities, but authoritarianism is expressly forbidden by Jesus.
Posted by: Paul Roberts | July 27, 2007 at 08:19 AM
Ben
this is a great post – thanks! I have to admit that I share many of your concerns, especially regarding how the term ‘entrepreneur’ is being used to give a 21st century business-like validity to ministries that have been present in the Church for 2000 years. My hunch is that there is a power issue behind all of this (but then I am reading Foucault at the moment and so may be ‘warped’ by him!) Once a person’s ministry is given weight and validity simply because a title or term is attached to it, they are given a power that is very easy to abuse, especially, as you so rightly point out, when ministry is amongst vulnerable and broken people.
None of us are completely neutral to titles – any title evokes in us a reaction and this is the power that titles hold. I have to confess that when my title shifted from ‘adviser’ to ‘consultant’ (a shift that had nothing to do with me) it did, to use your words, massage my ego a bit! But the question I ask about this is what permission does this title give me and what associated power am I given that I, being a normal fallible being, am open to abuse? The question is then followed up with ‘how do I avoid this abuse?’ and this leads me into accountability relationships, effective line-management, etc.
The danger with the ‘entrepreneur’ tag is that it seems to give a carte blanche for the entrepreneur to do practically anything they like, and if it rides rough shod over other people he or she can defend themselves by simply saying “well, you don’t understand… I’m an entrepreneur you see!” That’s a dangerous power to have if unchecked.
Posted by: Malcolm | July 27, 2007 at 09:41 AM
Ben, I think you've done us all a great service posting this. It's honest, to and from the heart. Thanks.
I wonder if we might make some headway by thinking on the role of the missional leader as the role of the artist.
I remember going to see the Nantes Triptych ( http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=20961 ) by Bill Viola some years ago - and being literally moved to tears by it. It stirred up some very deep stuff, and prompted me to do some 'dirt work' with some of my past. I tell the story simply because the right person to go and do that work with was not the artist themselves. And it never is.
Artists, as Lewis Hyde has brilliantly explored, have to negotiate a very difficult path. The 'gifts' that they offer can be very deep and powerful. But they are still gifts: the buying and selling of them is still an uncomfortable issue for many artists. Not only that, that which they are giving within a piece is not actually even theirs to give. So they give something that is not theirs, and feel somewhat uncomfortable making a living from it.
In fact, many artists would rather be prophets than entrepreneurs, but, as Hyde points out, artists still have to eat. The artist who is pure prophet will make none, and die of starvation, even though they kept their work 'pure and untainted by the market.' The artist who is pure entrepreneur will never offer gifts of any power. They will soon be exposed as a fraud.
And, as I've discovered sometimes the hard way being involved in alt.worship, the artist is rarely the pastor to guide you through the shit that the artist has dredged up.
I'm with you actually - I have the same discomfort with the entrepreneurial missioner as I do with the overly-commercial artist. I fear they have lost sight of the essence of the gift.
But, the truth is, we need these people to negotiate these difficult paths. The gift we have is not ours, and we have a responsibility to hand it on. There are those who, in turn, have a special gift in facilitating opportunities for that. What we must be wary of doing is thinking that the power of the gift we give is in any way wrapped up in these entrepreneurs. It is not. And those who are wise entrepreneurs know that. It's one of those struggles I think we see within St. Paul in his epistles.
And, of course, it is Christ who most perfectly exhibits the mystery of the artist who is entrepreneur and prophet... and pastor. Fortunately, as the body of Christ, all these tasks are divided between separate people. Unfortunately in the church, we too often try to project them all onto our poor leaders.
Posted by: Kester | July 27, 2007 at 09:42 AM
Richard: I understand exactly what you mean about the entrepreneur bringing new life. However, as Ben noted, that is usually personality that is the source of the new life, not a new influx of the Holy Spirit. The personality based leadership will be a bright flame for a while, but it usually doesn't last long. A leader (NOT necessarily the pastor) truly invested in his/her congregation will help the congregation mature into a greater connection to Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
As long as we continually look to others to provide our spiritual maturity (and thus it is not ours, and not mature), the Church will continue to struggle.
I infer from your comment that you are in a "mainstream" liturgical church. While it can be stale, sometimes, I suspect that all are not bringing it truly to Jesus, but merely going through the motions. An entrepreneurial leader won't change that (again, unless they are truly invested in the people they lead), they'll just change the lighting.
I suspect that all the denominations (not all the congregations) are suffering from some of this malaise, hence the "emerging" church movement, which is an attempt (one that is fraught with eternal danger) to revitalize denominations and churches in the same way as an entrepreneurial leader would.
Somehow, the faithful will negotiate through this, we just need to keeping surrendering to Jesus.
Posted by: starlyth | July 27, 2007 at 06:34 PM
Thanks, this has been a helpful discussion. I was on the beach all day yesterday, so came back to a great discussion - thanks.
There is little point spending time analysing the role of the entreprenuer they will just get on and do it. However, i think the wider question is whether there is a hierachary of vocation within the emerging church? with Missional entrepenuer at the top and pastor at the bottom. If this is the case, then how do the missional entrepenuers avoid the temptation to buy into this, and how do we address the lack of balance in this hiearchy?
The missional entrepeneur is a vocation that i want to affirm, but i also want to affirm the vocation of the missional servant, pastor, teacher etc. My thinking is that in the long term this is how we will create along term sustainable missional church.
Posted by: Ben Edson | July 28, 2007 at 09:07 AM