Mission Incubator

Across the country entrepreneurial incubator sites and organizations are springing up to assist people in launching new businesses.  Sometimes they have commercial kitchens with them which can be rented by the hour and people trained in all the regulations and business requirements of the food business.  In Candler NC is Advantage West, the Blue Ridge Entrepreneurial Council and Blue Ridge Food Ventures.  The commercial kitchen idea has been copied in Burgaw NC where the town’s historic depot has been converted, and in Warsaw NC where Sprunt Community College has developed the site.

I see the need to have the same kind of entrepreneurial incubator environment for mission projects.  Something close is offered through conference centers.  North Carolina Baptist Men have “Mission Camps” at Shelby and Red Springs.  But even these are not quite what I have in mind.  In all these cases established programs are promoted and pursued. But what I have in mind is a place where people with a unique vision can come and find practical help in bringing it to reality.

Christian Cohort Living

Families who are embedded in a community and actively seeking ways to serve the Lord and build strong family and church share that in common with other families trying to do the same thing.  Trouble is, these families may not be in the same church or move in the same circles, so they never make contact.

There’s another need to meet - linking entrepreneurial Christian families so they can support one another in ministry project, pray for each other and grow from their fellowship.  Like iron sharpening iron, these families will find they spiritually respond to each other and are more vitally active in the service of the Lord because of their fellowship.

Not only ministry families, but lay families need to be involved in the cohorts.  They become valuable to each other in many ways:
    - prayer support
    - encouragement
    - practical help in mission projects
    - information
    - providing services and
    - providing job opportunities
    - co-laboring on mission/ministry projects

Now ask yourself, wouldn’t you like to live in a community where you have a group (cohort) of Christians you can call upon when you have a need, pray with, and who are gung-ho to do missions and ministry projects and impact the community for Christ.  You may be semi-retired and be thinking “I’d just like to live in that kind of community.”  That’s the Christian Cohort living I’d love to see emerge.

Embedded Christians

There is in our community a man who made his fortune in restaurants.  Now he has sold them and spends his time planting churches and helping others do the same.  I sat with him not long ago and talked about church planting in this new day.  He tells people to move into a community and settle down there.  Then go out and get a job, any legitimate job.  Work in fast food if you have to.  With your Christian lifestyle and work ethic, you’ll be managing the place in six months.  Do what you have to do to make a living.  Then do what you have to do to bring together that core group to start your church.

His approach is not only entrepreneurial, but also includes Christians being embedded in their community.  Our greatest goal should be to insert into a community called people who are trained and connected, then help empower them to support themselves while doing viable and vital ministry through existing small churches and/or through planting new house churches. 

We want Christian families to become embedded in their communities.  Many people today never make a place for themselves in their neighborhood or community.  They are present only as a resident and only as long as their jobs keep them in that location.

While we recognize the necessity of being mobile, we should also seek to become contributing members of a community.  We should seek to know our neighbors and introduce them to Christ.  And we want to know and fellowship with other Christian families.

Entrepreneurial Minister

In a day of economic challenges and shrinking churches and denominational bodies comes a call from God that we enlarge our territory of ministry.  The calling comes not only to churches, but to those called to do the ministry.

For those called to ministry, carrying out the call of the Lord often means taking more responsibility for raising their own support.  An entrepreneurial attitude toward ministry must be developed.

An entrepreneurial minister is creative.  The Lord works in the heart to bring vision - sometimes a new vision no one is even attempting.  But that means there are no tried and true ways to make it happen.

An entrepreneurial minister is self-sufficient.  The entrepreneurial minister recognizes it is up to them to make things happen.  The final responsibility is not shifted to a church or organization, though those partners are gladly welcomed.

An entrepreneurial minister is connected.  That sounds like a contradiction to being self-sufficient.  We all depend on each other.  And it is the wise person who realizes that dependence.  While the entrepreneurial minister is not afraid to take the lead in developing, planning, funding ministry, that same minister welcomes and develops contacts through various networks. No entrepreneurial effort is likely to succeed without a network of support. 

An entrepreneurial minister is ready to fail, if need be.  An entrepreneurial minister is prayerful.  No one is more prayerful than someone who carries so much of the responsibility themselves.  An entrepreneurial minister is willing to do what is necessary to support a family and to make that ministry happen.

Let this be a summons to people with a burden for ministry to take the necessary steps to make that ministry a reality.  Maybe you can depend upon a church to make it happen.  Maybe you’ll have to find other support.  Likely it will take it all.