"There are two kinds of people in this world..." In reality, who can guess how many "kinds" there really might be? I'm not thinking of the "big" dividers -- race, religion, gender identity and sexual orientation -- although those are certainly relevant. I'm thinking of those subtler "wirings" that animate us and distinguish us.
Last night we attended an event held in the workplace of an entrepreneur whose family we count among our friends. His business is now well established, and reasonably successful, and he was showing a group of us the next expansion of his business soon to be launched. It's a clever idea, and he is visibly excited about it -- emanating that spicy mixture of enthusiasm and apprehension, giddiness and nervousness. As he talked, you could see the wheels of his creative imagination still spinning with tweaking possibilities and extensions. He talked of concept, of marketing, of application, of rationale. He waxed rhapsodically about incentives and human psychology and workplace dynamics and how the idea had been conceived and then born. If the listening group's noises of approval are any indication, our friend should do well.
And I left feeling a little like I do after visiting the farm: fascinated, but utterly foreign. I know just enough to know that I don't know anything about this world that is being described to me. I can follow the conversation, but can't intelligently participate in it. My mind simply doesn't work that way. To borrow from the prophet Isaiah, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways."
That's not critique -- on either of us. I'm fairly creative, with a busy imagination. I enjoy some measure of expertise at what I do. And I am impressed with my businessman friend, and, if the truth be told, a little bit envious. But listening to him talk I realized again why certain churches grow exponentially and why others -- OK, others like the ones I have served -- don't. I'm not suggesting that it's all about entrepreneurialism and marketing, but packaging and promotion are key dimensions, and while my mind rarely even breaks into that plane, my friend from last night actually lives there. I know there are those who talk about the church as a business, and evangelism in terms of expanding "market share," but I simply find such language distracting and unrelated. The marketplace is having one conversation; the church, it seems to me, is having a different one.
There is a part of me that would like to think that my friend might walk away from my world -- one in which he had heard me wax rhapsodically about the new insight I had come to from scripture, or the sermon I was in the process of writing, or the justice issue I was currently engaging -- feeling just as bewildered as I had in his. But the larger part of me wishes he might find himself quite at home.
I suppose that's one difference between ministry and business: in business you wish for some way to create and corner a market -- to be, somehow, profitably unique. In ministry you wish for some way to be utterly common.
As it stands, my friend is rolling out his product and I -- well, it's Sunday morning and I have another sermon ready to preach. Each of us doing our thing. He'll likely sell more sandwiches than I will give away gospel, but I plug along.
Last night we attended an event held in the workplace of an entrepreneur whose family we count among our friends. His business is now well established, and reasonably successful, and he was showing a group of us the next expansion of his business soon to be launched. It's a clever idea, and he is visibly excited about it -- emanating that spicy mixture of enthusiasm and apprehension, giddiness and nervousness. As he talked, you could see the wheels of his creative imagination still spinning with tweaking possibilities and extensions. He talked of concept, of marketing, of application, of rationale. He waxed rhapsodically about incentives and human psychology and workplace dynamics and how the idea had been conceived and then born. If the listening group's noises of approval are any indication, our friend should do well.
And I left feeling a little like I do after visiting the farm: fascinated, but utterly foreign. I know just enough to know that I don't know anything about this world that is being described to me. I can follow the conversation, but can't intelligently participate in it. My mind simply doesn't work that way. To borrow from the prophet Isaiah, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways."
That's not critique -- on either of us. I'm fairly creative, with a busy imagination. I enjoy some measure of expertise at what I do. And I am impressed with my businessman friend, and, if the truth be told, a little bit envious. But listening to him talk I realized again why certain churches grow exponentially and why others -- OK, others like the ones I have served -- don't. I'm not suggesting that it's all about entrepreneurialism and marketing, but packaging and promotion are key dimensions, and while my mind rarely even breaks into that plane, my friend from last night actually lives there. I know there are those who talk about the church as a business, and evangelism in terms of expanding "market share," but I simply find such language distracting and unrelated. The marketplace is having one conversation; the church, it seems to me, is having a different one.
There is a part of me that would like to think that my friend might walk away from my world -- one in which he had heard me wax rhapsodically about the new insight I had come to from scripture, or the sermon I was in the process of writing, or the justice issue I was currently engaging -- feeling just as bewildered as I had in his. But the larger part of me wishes he might find himself quite at home.
I suppose that's one difference between ministry and business: in business you wish for some way to create and corner a market -- to be, somehow, profitably unique. In ministry you wish for some way to be utterly common.
As it stands, my friend is rolling out his product and I -- well, it's Sunday morning and I have another sermon ready to preach. Each of us doing our thing. He'll likely sell more sandwiches than I will give away gospel, but I plug along.
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