How Running A Business is Like The Acts Church

Every time I read the book of Acts, I’m a little envious. But just a little.

All the snake bites and temporary jail time doesn’t appeal to me, but there’s one thing that does: community. And I’m not talking about a short Bible study of age-related peers.

I’m talking about hard-core community.

People who have thrown all their money in together, all their food, their possessions and even their time.

These days that kind of community, at least in America, would be dismissed as a hippie, socialist experiment, many of which failed in the 60’s.

But then I realized the other day that, to a small degree, I actually do live in a community like that.

I mean I interact daily with a small, loving team of faithful believers who’ve thrown their dreams, their goals and yes, even their money together so that we each depend on each other to live and work and survive.

And amazingly, that community is called a business.

I know it sounds crazy but the reality is I depend on my team and my team depends on me.

We depend on each other.

It didn’t start this way and I never intended this. It’s just that, as our conference grew and our customer service needs grew and as we had better and better ideas, we had to staff those initiatives.

Suddenly I had a payroll that required us to wake up every morning and keep the hamster wheel spinning.

Business is often seen as bad.

But that’s usually the perspective of young twenty-somethings who don’t have a lot of experience providing for others or, for that matter, completely providing for themselves.

What those same idealists often discover (or at least I hope they will) is that business can be quite beautiful.

And I think it’s something God intended.

Whether we’re trading fish for potatoes or cabbage for firewood, humans aren’t designed to be able to make it on their own.

We were each given skills and ambitions and passions that are unique, and yet dependent on others to create a complete and substantial life.

The reality is our business doesn’t just exist to make money.

It also exists to create community. And those two things go together, because houses and baby food and gas for cars isn’t free.

We need to be competent in our jobs or the community suffers.

But in the end, none of us will remember the money.

We will only remember each other, and how when one of us wanted to buy a house to bring a baby home to, the rest of us got off our rear ends and worked a little harder.

Jesus bless the church. Jesus bless the family. Jesus bless the community. Jesus bless the business. Jesus redeem every dark thing to make it light.

How Running A Business is Like The Acts Church is a post from: Storyline Blog