Entrepreneur/Apostle

I had the pleasure of being a part of a faith based business group tonight and we hammered out some good and I’m sure, controversial, reflections.

  1. Teachers and Pastors are equipping entrepreneurs to act like teachers and pastors rather than what they typically are: apostles and prophets.

  2. Many entrepreneurs are innovators. They are iconoclasts. They are risk takers. They redefine the status quo. Many pastors/Teachers are retrospective, keepers of tradition, harmonizers and stabilizers.

  3. Having an entrepreneur be cast into a pastor mold creates a tremendous amount of tension and guilt as entrepreneurs feel like to be missional they have to:

    1. Have cheezy church slogans built into their company (HeBrews Coffee, etc)

    2. Have to take losses and limit their income (victim mentality)

    3. Focus their faith expressions on “church” oriented expressions of faith: music, closed on Sundays, prayer times, teaching bible rather than natural ones.

    4. Not be bold, not be prophetic, not be “apostolic” in their faith expressions. (i.e. represent through the culture instead of against the culture as Paul did in Acts 17)

      1. Paul lived in the freedom to “Become all things to all people, that by all means he might save some” (1Cor. 9:19–23). That Apostolic flexibility shaped the way he engaged with Greeks and Hebrews across Roman. In synagogues, Paul was able to use Scripture to show how it pointed to Jesus and had been fulfilled in him. Outside the synagogues, that wouldn’t have made any sense because the people didn’t care about how the old covenant Jewish Scriptures fit together.

        In Acts 17, we see Paul in the Athens marketplace philosophizing with whoever he found there, depicted as mimicking the popular philosopher Socrates. He interacted with people, learning how they thought, and quoted their poets. In a short time, Paul was able find common ground without shying away from confronting untruths.

      2. Thinking like a Teacher and Pastor means you’re focusing on people that have already come to faith whereas entrepreneurs (i.e. apostles/prophets) are on the front lines of innovation, understanding market desires, connecting with people and can really be the tip of the spear for people outside faith institutions.

    5. Business is about adapting to people, listening to their needs, and responding to immediate priorities that individuals and groups have.

    6. Church requires people conform to it. Sunday clothes, strange songs, pews, special language for that context, “brother so and so” language, etc. It assumes priority and really works best for people who have accepted that culturally foreign practice. (Forgive me here, but I didn’t grow up in “church” and went straight to Africa as a missionary after coming to faith and still see the “church” experience as I did into early adulthood)

  4. There is an opportunity for these two groups to work together, as a missional team, but the reigns have to be cut and entrepreneurs set loose to:

    1. Create amazing, innovative, beautiful, and revolutionary products that change peoples lives.

      1. To do this, they must be free to obsess over excellence as an expression of their faith

    2. Express their faith through good wages, benefits, company culture, creativity, environmental responsibility, color, music, culture and expressions of truth that encompass a vision of “all truth is God’s truth” and “all beauty is God’s beauty.”

    3. Be free to obey Reformation leader Martin Luther’s maxim of “The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”

  5. Pastors/Teachers must engage Entrepreneurs beyond being greeters, ushers, or committee members. These are not roles for apostles/prophets, which I contend more align with Entrepreneurs.

    1. Of 52 parables Jesus told, 45 had a workplace context. Of 40 miracles in the book of Acts, 39 were in the marketplace. Why do we keep making everything about “church” attendance?

I am passionate about reimagining the engagement of Entrepreneurs on mission and excited to find others who can help create a new model that unleashes the energy being lost in conformity over innovation. What do you think?

(As with all my posts, these are thoughts in progress here, perspectives not concrete but evolving with time)

Matt Hangen