What Is Our Business?

Business management expert, the late Peter Drucker  was once asked, “What is the key to the success of the church in the 21st century?”  He responded by saying, “The church of the 21st century needs to answer two questions.  First, what is the business of the church?  And secondly, “How’s business?”  In other words, the church needs to understand what it’s purpose is and then be committed to doing it.  To forget our purpose would be tragic.

I want you to read a large portion of a blog from James White that relates to this subject and the church.  “Eastman Kodak, a historic blue-chip American company, filed for bankruptcy because it didn’t adapt to the digital age.  The irony is that it was Kodak who developed digital photography. How can that be?  It’s simple. They didn’t know what business they were in.

They weren’t the first to make this mistake.  In the late 1800s, no business matched the financial and political dominance of the railroad. Trains dominated the transportation industry of the United States, moving both people and goods throughout the country.  Then a new discovery came along — the car — and incredibly, the leaders of the railroad industry did not take advantage of their unique position to participate in this transportation development.  The automotive revolution was happening all around them, and they did not use their industry dominance to take hold of the opportunity.

In the video presentation developed to accompany the bestselling book The Search for Excellence, Tom Peters points out the reason: The railroad barons didn’t understand what business they were in. Peters observes that “they thought they were in the train business. But they were actually in the transportation business. Time passed them by, as did opportunity. They couldn’t see what their real purpose was.”…

The lesson is profound.  A past that was so secure, so profitable, so dominant, was destroyed by an unwillingness to consider the future.  It was more than not being able to make predictions - it was an inability to rethink how they did business.  And even more foundationally, a misunderstanding of what business they were in.

Eastman Kodak thought they were in the yellow film box business.  In truth, they were in the picture business.

Churches can make the same mistake as culture changes, methods become antiquated, and technology progresses.

Yes, I know you can’t take business models and practices and always compare them to the church, and I know the term “business” applied to the church is both crass and theologically skewed.

But let’s at least try and make an overarching point.

Are you in the Sunday School business, or the discipleship business?

Are you in the door-to-door visitation business, or the evangelism business?

Are you in the hymnbook and organ business, or the worship business?

As we finish the series “The Main Thing” we need to remember this truth.  The Main Thing is to keep The Main Thing, The Main Thing. Our purpose is to see lives and eternities  changed by the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.   Lives are changed for God’s glory as we commit ourselves  as a church  to fulfill God’s purpose.  God’s purposes of Evangelism, Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship and Ministry never change.  They have always been and will always be the key to developing healthy Christians and healthy churches. Now, the way those purposes are communicated and achieved may change as culture changes but make no mistake God’s purposes for His people never change.  Fulfilling the purposes of God as  a church is our business.

As we enter into a new year, let’s renew are commitment to creatively communicate the unchanging purposes of God to our changing world.

Pastor Scott