I’m coming into Missional Buisness from full-time urban missions, planting simple church networks in the New York City metro area. Our city-wide mission team MetroSoul, and various other friends are forming cooperative ventures to fuel and sustain mission here, impact more lives, and have more life-on-life time with emerging leaders. Right now, most of what we have are heavy questions and few answers. I’m thinking that might also be true of many people in the house/simple church movement right now. I have friends from Mexico to Chicago to Texas and Denver all asking very similar things.
Perhaps the most pressing question comes from the most apostolic leaders among us. Although these guys have served to catalyze countless leaders and networks, they are having trouble figuring out how to pay the bills. They’re question is very real: “How am I going to avoid bankruptcy?” (This was actually a topic of concern on a conference call today with other national simple church leaders.)
So let’s lay the questions out on the table. I sincerely believe that we must repeatedly take these issues before the throne of God, tenaciously seeking his response. We must wrestle with them because it is through the process of struggle that God will make us into daughters and sons worthy of inheriting his mission in the workplace and beyond.
- How can I bring the simple, organic life-giving principles I’ve learned in simple church into business? God has taken us on a tremendous journey away from comforts and idols, through desserts, and into a Promised Land of authenticity and wholeness. How could we bear to have any part of our life not experience this same fullness?
- Is this going to be a distraction? I have a good friend who is a full-time church planter. He says he’s willing to do missional business as long as it doesn’t effect his church planting activities, family life, discipling, and evangelistic activities. He’s not alone. The average work week in the US is 46 hours or more. Can we seriously seek the Kingdom, fuel Gospel movements, have time for people, and hold down a full-time job as well?
- Does this mean I have to sellout? Nothing steams me more than hearing Christians shrug their shoulders and say “well, business is business.” I simply won’t accept anything in this world that will not conform to the reality of Christ. Can we find ways of entering the empire of man, subverting and serving, without advancing human kingdoms?
- How is this different from Christian Businessman’s Fellowship or Amway? I have a friend who is a great Christian entrepreneur. He (only half-joking) says there’s only one type of person he won’t do business with: Christians. Sure everybody’s out to get you, but Christians think they can make you take it because of your shared faith. Many people worry that sort of thing will happen if we mix business with this great thing we’ve got going. Is this going to involve us all in some pyramid scheme? Doesn’t money always chance things? Will this become a generic social club where people come to simply swap business cards?
- Who’s going to finance this? Are there people with money in the movement or outside of it who will leverage assets for the sake of pushing the movement to the next level? How do we connect people with resources with people with vision, and form cooperative relationships that provide accountability, people development, asset protection, and profitability and still remain friends and see the Kingdom come in the process?
- How do I get started? Maybe you’ve been in ministry for years. Maybe you’ve been working insane hours in a dead end job. Do you feel like you have no employable skills and a pretty bleak resume? How can you strep into this went your bills are going to come every month, but a pay check may or may not?
Please leave other questions in the comments sections of this post for the benefit of the community.
For years, I called them “Missional Beggars” who sought the hand of God for every crumb they could get from stingy congregants who could not relate to anything outside their own world. It is a system of failure that has always bothered me. We have all of these radical people, who love the Lord with all their heart, willing to sacrifice much in the way of life and seek God, to evangelize. Often, we find them years later, totally burned out, marriages wrecked, wayward kids and other maladies that would suggest that something might not be right with this way.
I truly believe that each of has been given a “passion” that gives us the life we are to pursue. How is it that there are just so many doctors or just so man plumbers in the world? How is that we have kids from a very early age gravitate towards those things that make them come alive in their childish pursuits? I believe the key is chasing after the God given passions the Lord has given you.
I often coach many managers and clients in my business who take the time to seek that which is near and dear to them – the dreams and aspirations of their heart. I think if we focus on this “one” thing, God will orchestrate the rest.
I believe there will come a time of unprecedented alliances and networks of those with the financial means to support those who have the need in such a way as for most, if not all them to cease being ‘beggars’ and focus more on the Kingdom.
I could expand much more on this, but if this furthers the dialogue, that is very cool with me.
Blessings,
Eddie
Eddie,
There are many people in full-time ministry who are coming into the movement. Some of these will likely become tent-makers. But I like the fact you and some others I’ve talked to see some form of full-time ministry for others of these people who will seek an apostolic vocation. In some house-church circles, full-time Kingdom workers are almost seen as sinful. Biblically, people with apostolic gifting accomplished the mission both ways, often depending on the context or season in their lives. I think there are still major questions on how people can be empowered to listen to their passions without becoming “beggars” in something like the old system — either beggars of the church or beggars of the corporate-consumer complex.
I like Eddie’s response. Here are my crazy thoughts. I know they are edgy, but it might stir up something fun. Feel free to tell me where I am wrong.
You asked above, “Is this going to be a distraction?….Can we seriously seek the Kingdom, fuel Gospel movements, have time for people, and hold down a full-time job as well?” My answers are that absolutely you can, and many of us must. If you view the ‘Kingdom’ and ‘workplace’ as separate, then working 50 hrs/wk will be trouble for you. But they are not separate. If we see them as overlaid, then corporations are not ‘evil’ and we can function in the business world wholeheartedly. This is when the subversive nature of the gospel infection will spread at its best.
Our founding fathers realized that when men and women are free to pursue their ‘selfish’ businesses, the law of supply and demand applying to all, the whole system works wonderfully and we ALL are blessed and opportunities are created. Now that is a system that works on natural laws. And I think that we, as Christians, should unashamedly play to win. At the same time we can lay it all at the Master’s feet, and either wisely invest it in other businesses or in the Kingdom in different ways. (But only AFTER we own it.)
I don’t see any moral dilemma in taking a full-on and passionate attitude toward business, because I feel called to do so. It can’t make me compromise my calling if it IS my calling, and if I believe that the business world belongs to my King.
I happily want to support church planters in very poor areas that really have a lot of success and a good track record…having done it for little to nothing for a season to prove they are serious.
Amen to that jimmybob! I agree that we need to stop separating our lives into compartments; the holy and unholy. We are called to live our WHOLE lives in the light of His Presence that indwells us. That means, wherever we are…He IS. That makes WORK “ministry” to whatever, whomever and however it takes form that particular day. Jesus ministered “only doing what He saw the Father doing”. That took many forms throughout his three years preaching and demonstrating the Kingdom. Paul, I assume didn’t keep quiet about the Lord during those hours spent mending and creating tents. It was all incorporated and intergrated into normal life…work and ministry blending into one.
I don’t have a problem with supporting those in Kingdom works……what I have a problem with is the “entitlement” attitude that has permeated the church for years mainly with those who have relied upon other people making a living from actually working a job to support their “ministry” work. It has again, without intention, separated those called to “holy” work and those called to “unholy” work. Of course, the unholy should feel obligated to the holy and give them what they ask for! (sarcasm, I’m sorry).
If we truly begin to see the Kingdom as wholistic and where we are ALL called to be agents and ambassadors of it, then we each have a place to function that is equally “holy” and necessary for the purposes of Christ. Working a marketplace job is equally valid in itself if your doing so to be obedient to Christ and His Kingdom purposes. We can support or not support those who choose to rely upon others to make their budgets work without obligation but with freedom and obedience, joyfully giving because we know He gives freely to us so we can freely give to others.
I’m looking forward to the days when the church really functions with freedom in the area of money, markets and supplying the needs of the saints…..the book of Acts can be our reality too, with the Lords empowerment.
Katie,
If what you’re talking about really catches on and millions of working Jesus-radicals understand Kingdom-call for their day jobs, a revolution will be catalyzed that will turn the world upside down. You’re absolutely right that “holy” space is created by the incarnation of the Presence of God whenever we go to serve him in any space, no matter how profane or worldly it was a second ago, becomes the Kingdom comes as soon as we bring Christ there and hold him up! Thanks for your thoughts.
Would you be interested in tell us a little about your story on the post Three Types of Journeyers? We’d like to know the different journeys people out there are on.