The church needs a pastorpreneur for 21st century leadership

You may have stumbled a little with the title of this post over the word pastorpreneur.  I can assure you my spell checker doesn't like it one bit, but this is exactly the kind of leadership our churches need today.  The word comes from the book PastorPreneur written by John Jackson.  I think the book may be out of print, but there are still copes for sale at amazon.com if you click on the above title.  If it is out of print, it's a shame because it is a book that pastors need to read.  It is especially appropriate for bivocational ministers because many of us are entrepreneurial by nature anyway.  The title is a combination of the words pastor and entrepreneur.  The author defines a pastorpreneur as "an innovative leader..., a creative dreamer who is willing to take great risks in church ministry with the hope of great gain for Christ and his kingdom."

The book describes five strategies for leading one's church beyond "business as usual."  They are

1. Grab the community's attention.
2. Build strategic partnerships.
3. Conduct faith-building events.
4. Everyone's a 10 - get them moving.
5. Multiply your impact.

Of course, each of these are discussed in detail throughout the book.  The first time I read this book I wore out a highlighter and made numerous notes in the margins.  Let me share just one piece of advice he gave in the chapter about conducting faith-building events.

Almost every family in every community in the country is interested in topics like marriage, parenting, finances and handling debt, and finding purpose and meaning in life.  Does the church have anything to say about these things?  You bet it does!  Can the church use its classes on these topics as outreach tools?  Of course.  Entrepreneurs can help the church understand how to position these events to reach the maximum number of people.

Compare that approach to reaching a community for Christ to what smaller churches often ask for.  Several times a year I'll get a call from a church leader knowing if I know anyone who could come and lead a revival to try to get people to come to the church.  Do they really believe a revival is going to attract people?  Probably not, but they don't know what else to do.  It's all they've seen modeled, and just because it hasn't been effective in the past twenty-plus years it's still the only thing they've got.  Jackson would argue there are many things a church could do to attract people and earn the right to share a life-changing message with them, and he gives numerous examples of churches that are doing just that.

Churches need a new style of leadership to be effective in the 21st century, and I believe it will be entrepreneurial leadership that is needed.  Denominational leadership may not like it very much because entrepreneurs tend to color outside the lines.  Their work is often messy, and we often prefer things to be neat and tidy.  Their structures tend to be a little loose.  But, I'm afraid our neat and tidy structures have brought so much order and predictability to what we are doing that they have effectively kept many people from experiencing God in any meaningful way.  If what we've been doing isn't working then maybe it's time to do something different.  Maybe it's time to replace our managerial styles of ministry with one that is more entrepreneurial.