Mission and Business

I wanted to talk about how the failure of churches can teach us about the failure of business. We learned that there are several ways for a church to be ineffective, from having ineffective leadership, to believing they’re too small, to leaving scripture behind. I think that, in some way, even secular businesses can often fall into the same traps.

Businesses are usually founded for a mission. Deviating from this mission, like deviating from the great commission, will often result in the failure of the business. Just as everything Christians do is for saving the fallen, everything a business does should be revealed in its mission statement. While the form of the company may change over time, the mission should always stay the same.

This is why it is useful to have a broadly defined mission. Blockbuster video thought their mission was renting video tapes to people. What they were really doing was providing people with a better way to access movies. When other competitors realized what the real goal was, they took over the industry with streaming. Blockbuster fell valiantly, still clinging to a narrowly defined mission.

The great commission, on the other hand, is a massively broad mission statement. It has survived so long because it is simple and forgiving, creating boundless potential for all the world. In the same way, we can define our businesses more broadly to be ready for what comes. Remember, the method of your business is a tool to your end, not the end itself.

Many people believe that they can’t start a business because they’re just one person, in the same way that someone might think they can’t save someone just because they’re only one person. But sometimes somebody needs to hear you say something to believe, and sometimes the world needs you to make something great.

As far as leadership is concerned, in both fields it’s important that no matter how important you think you are, you maintain a group of people around yourself to keep you accountable and to support you. Sometimes you won’t be the person in the spotlight, and that’s okay.

Overall, the pitfalls in running a church are more or less the pitfalls for running any organization. This doesn’t lessen the application of these principles to churches, it just means we can apply them to so much more. So next time you set up anything, make sure you ask yourself these questions, it’ll get a lot of hassle out of the way early so you can focus on what you do best.