by John Jackson. I have an entrepreneurial spirit and feel that most bivocational pastors do as well so the title really reached out to me. It's been a few years since I've read the book, but occasionally I'll check out some of the places I highlighted and a few of the notes I made in the margins.The author defines a pastorpreneur as "an innovative Christian 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." Does that define you? I hope it does. Jackson goes on to ask, "Are we content to remain comfortable doing ministry the way we have always done it, with some positive but limited results, knowing in our hearts that we aren't making much of a dent in our culture? Or will we take the risk of boldly trusting God for a fresh vision, powerful strategies, and incredible results? I believe that a fresh, Spirit-led burst of entrepreneurial activity will lead the church to greater impact that ever before." I agree.
Unfortunately, I see too little of that entrepreneurial spirit at work in our churches today. I believe most ministers go into ministry with such a spirit, but then lose it as they deal with the day-to-day aspects of ministry. It is so easy for a pastor to get caught up in trying to maintain the status quo of the church. (Someone once defined status quo as "the mess we're in." Not a bad definition!) How does a pastor keep the church machinery running and find the time to seek a fresh vision from God and develop a strategy for getting buy-in from the congregation? This book addresses these challenges, but I can tell you that it's not easy.
It requires an entrepreneurial spirit, but that can be a problem as well. Many churches don't like entrepreneurs. These churches want a chaplain as pastor, not someone who is a risk taker, someone who too often thinks outside the box and then asks the congregation to join him or her there. Denominational leaders are also often uncomfortable with entrepreneurial leaders. They prefer pastors who are willing to follow the manual, march in step with the rest of the denomination, graduate from the denominational seminaries, and fill out their reports in a timely manner. Entrepreneurs are too often people who ask questions, and some churches and denominational leaders are very uncomfortable with questions.
However, without such an entrepreneurial spirit we are unlikely to have the impact we planned to have when we entered ministry. We may have a more comfortable ministry, but I'm not sure we were called to a comfortable ministry. We are called to impact our culture for the Kingdom of God, and by any measurement the church in North America is not doing a great job of that.
I have always felt that most bivocational ministers are entrepreneurial by nature. It's part of our DNA, and that is why God called us to this ministry. Let's not allow that part of our nature to be sucked out of us by the expectations of others or by the daily demands of ministry.
Fully-funded pastors also need to maintain an entrepreneurial spirit. Our culture is changing so rapidly today that we need to be constantly looking for new ways to do ministry. The strategies we learned in seminary twenty years ago (five years ago?) are often going to be ineffective today, but the call to impact our communities for Christ remains the same. PastorPreneur...that's a good way to look at the calling of today's minister.
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