Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
A good entrepreneur is someone who can spot opportunities, who can be creative, who has
got energy, who can articulate a vision, someone who can bring others with them, someone who
can... someone who habitually spots new opportunities and does new things to build things of recognised
value is one definition that's been used and that's helpful to me. I think in the sense
of church leadership it's someone who is prophetic in some sense - that they can spot opportunities
others might have missed and say look, I think we should be moving towards this - and then
draw down the resources that are needed in order to make that thing happen. But it speaks
to me of someone who has hope, who articulates hope, who has energy, who's creative, who
can take risks to a degree and yeah, who takes others with them, all for the service... for
servicing the kingdom and for the greater glory of God.
When we're thinking about this idea of do entrepreneurship and the gospel mix, I think
the thing I want to get away from is this idea of the maverick entrepreneur, who has,
you know, thought about making some money for their own personal gain - that's not what
I'm working with at all. I would want to get right away from the entrepreneur as seen as
someone who was making money, who was making anything for personal gain. I'm using the
term to refer to those who have a focus on the gospel and who realise that in order to
be effective in the current missionary situation we need to be energetic, we need to spot opportunities
that might otherwise have been missed, we need to be creative, we need to be collaborative,
we need to work together - and all of this infers leadership, but it's not... it's leadership
plus plus - leadership which can spot things that wouldn't necessarily be spotted. Do the
gospel and entrepreneurship mix? Of course they do. The gospel is the good news of Jesus
Christ. And how do we convey that? Well we need to be creative, we need to be energetic,
we need to move outwards and spot ways in which we can make Jesus known which might
be surprising. So for me that's the way in which I'm using the term entrepreneur - someone
who can do that. So of course in that sense I think that the gospel and entrepreneurship
fit very well together. It's not that they're inevitably seen together, I think that in
order to share the gospel faithfully in our current culture, entrepreneurship is really
helpful, it's a helpful way of looking at sharing the gospel and being good news.
Often the language of pioneer and the language of entrepreneur are used together. I don't
think it's inevitable that all pioneers are entrepreneurs, or that all clergy or ministers
working in a more inherited situation are not entrepreneurs. I think what can be said
is that those who are labelled pioneers generally exhibit entrepreneurial qualities, that they...
we might tend to see more creativity - but that might be about having the opportunity
to exercise that creativity. They might be more willing to take risks, but again that
might be because they've been given permission to take those risks, whereas clergy in more
inherited contexts may not have either opportunity or feel that they have permission. And I think...
so I would want to say that pioneers perhaps 'get it', get this language of entrepreneurship
when it's linked up to ministry, but that's not to say that clergy working in other situations
don't get it. My research here at Durham is with clergy who are not labelled pioneers,
in a whole range of contexts, and I see huge... a large number of those exhibiting entrepreneurial
qualities and making space to have entrepreneurial ministries. And that requires being able to
say I'm not going to do certain things, I'm not going to use my time in certain ways,
I know I'm going to get flack for that but I need to create space to do, you know, a,
b and c, whatever that is. So not all pioneers are entrepreneurs, but I think more pioneers
get that term and just get the language and are more... are happier with the language.
Is there a time when the entrepreneur should move on and someone else take their place?
I don't think I'd want to be in the business of saying we can make a principle about this.
Entrepreneurs generally start things, they tend to be habitual so they want to start
new things. That doesn't mean that entrepreneurs who start things in a particular context can't
stay in situ and can't stay where they are and begin new things from where they are,
or having begun a community or, you know, been a person who's been part of starting
community, can't see new things happen to that community and see new possibilities with
a fresh expression for example. So I wouldn't want to say that pioneers who are entrepreneurs
always we see them starting new things and then moving on - in some cases that will happen
but I think that entrepreneurial spirit can be brought to bear over a long period of time
in one place and certainly I'd want to use the language of entrepreneur enablers as well
- I want to use that phrase rather - that we would want to see entrepreneurial leaders
in the church enabling that in others, so that an entrepreneurial community would be
a place where creativity was valued and that creativity helped those who are part of that
community to exercise entrepreneurship in their places of work.
I think some people in the church have a problem with the language of entrepreneurship. They
say it smacks of business and the corporate world. And I get that, and programmes like
Dragons' Den or The Apprentice certainly have helped to manufacture that kind of image - or
Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses for example. I want to get right away from that and say
that the language - the use of the term entrepreneur and the language around entrepreneurship can
be really helpful because the qualities that we'd want to associate with that - about being
creative, about risk-taking, about drawing others together, about being habitual, about
innovating, about spotting advantages and going for them - that kind of stuff is just
really helpful at the moment given the current missionary situation we're in and given the
need to rethink large parts of our received understanding of church and mission and evangelism
and the way those things work together. So I would want to say actually I'm not trying
to shoehorn this language into the church but I think it can help us, I think it's useful.
And I'd also want to just throw a challenge back to the church to say we've got no problem
using bureaucratic language you know, or other language drawn from other parts of the business
world or from organisational... you know, organisational terms. We have the Church Commisioners
for example, you know, we have Ministry Division and we don't have a problem with using these
kind of terms. We see that they're valuable. We also know that they're loaded, but we see
that they're valuable. And I think it's the same with entrepreneurship. I think it's got
great value at the present time.