What Can the Church Teach the Marketplace?

I’ve always only wanted to be a pastor. As a kid, while others dreamed of playing shortstop for the Yankees or acting in movies, I wanted to stand behind a pulpit and preach. I never doubted it.

As a young man I followed that call, attending Cincinnati Christian University and earning a dual degree in Biblical Studies and Christian Ministry with a special emphasis in Church Planting. By the time I was 22, I knew not only that I wanted to be a pastor, but I knew wanted to start my own church. After all, you know exactly what you want at 22…

While college trained me well for ministry and teaching, it did not train me very well for the business of church. I don’t blame my college, as I don’t know of any Bible colleges in the early 1990’s that had much of an emphasis on business, many are better now, but it quickly became apparent that the business world had a lot to teach me as a church leader. From strategic planning to budgeting and branding, it was all part of church work and I spent many years reading business books to learn all I could.

Then the strangest thing happened. At the age of 38, I had worked as the Teaching Pastor at two of the largest churches in the country and I had, indeed, planted my own church just as planned. Then at the time my “ministry career” should have come into its own, I elected to leave church work to enter the marketplace. 25 months ago I stepped down as a pastor to launch Rebel Pilgrim Productions, a full service film, TV, web media and stage production company. (It’s a long story as to how I got here.)

That call of my youth is still present though. I am called to pastor, preach and help lead the Church…but no longer as paid staff.

And guess what I’ve learned? The marketplace needs the Church. I don’t mean that in some sort of spiritual or salvific way. I mean it in a business sense. For as much as the business world has to teach the church, the church has to teach the marketplace. Over the next several weeks I will write about the lessons I learned within vocational ministry that have served me as an entrepreneur. For the purposes of this introduction to the topic, let’s just lead with what may be most obvious – mission.

As a church planter in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was no bigger buzzword than “missional.” Learning from foreign missionaries like Lesslie Newbigin many of us approached our church plants from the perspective of pioneers into an emerging post-modern culture. The church needed a clear mission that would translate to the culture. People were more attracted to missional churches because they wanted to give themselves to something bigger. Churches without a clear mission seemed to be meandering and losing relevancy.

To my great surprise many businesses today also lack mission. They remind me of those churches that had lost their first love and deeper purpose. I used the word “missional” in a client meeting a few months ago to describe our company, and our client asked what the word meant. It hit me then - the business world needs a crash course in missionary thinking. I told him that it just means everything we do at Rebel Pilgrim comes down to our mission – to tell stories that spark hope and action. We will do anything within reason to do that. It’s why we are here.

I’m honored to be a new contributor for Catalyst because this community of change makers is comprised of both vocational church workers and marketplace professionals. I think we may have a lot more to teach one another than we realize. I hope my posts here lead to discussions that all of us can use to sharpen our leadership and see our God-given missions (inside and outside of church walls) realized.