Bits from Bill Bolton - Entrepreneur Imperative

The Gospel Imperative is a ‘content’ imperative — it is about the Good News of Jesus.

For the Christian, the Entrepreneur Imperative has the same mission content but is a ‘person’ imperative. It calls us all to action — to release the entrepreneurial talent in our midst and put it to work.

We need to embrace this imperative and be more entrepreneurial in the way we live and tell the Good News, just as the early Church did. Those involved took enormous risks; they challenged the status quo, they thought and lived differently.

Above all, they did what entrepreneurs always do, they ‘built something of recognised value’: the Church...

Since that time, the Entrepreneur Imperative has been lost for long periods both in society and in the Church as authoritarian bureaucracy has taken hold.

However, when conditions were right, it surfaced again, most notably in the Renaissance period and then the Industrial Revolution.

The key condition was an environment of deep and profound intellectual and social change.

Economically, socially and spiritually, we are in a different place. The old certainties have gone and we struggle to understand what is happening.

It is at such a time as this that we must grasp the Entrepreneur Imperative.

Entrepreneurs are motivated to build something of recognised value and, in the process, they create capital....

Social capital is about values shared within a community or group of people that give them common purpose and a sense of unity. Trust is its currency. The more trust within a group, the greater the social capital.

Economic capital is something with which we are all familiar. Its currency is cash.

In the past, some have taken the Gospel to mean only spiritual capital. Others have focused on social capital. Economic capital has also got involved when missions and commercial interests have operated together.

The Entrepreneur Imperative is not about this past but about the future and offers a new and holistic approach to mission which values all three forms of capital.

Henry Venn’s three principles of a self-propagating, a self-governing and a self-financing church say the same thing.

His emphasis on ‘self’ is important and at the centre of the Entrepreneur Imperative. It is something for all of us, whether we are entrepreneurs or not.

It is about creating an environment in which those with entrepreneurial talent can take their rightful place in our society and institutions, including the church.

Popular culture in the West is ready for the entrepreneur. Its uncertainty and rapid change is the entrepreneur’s natural habitat. The greater publicity being given to entrepreneurs shows that society is starting to grasp this new imperative and run with it.

Big business has struggled to cope with change and, after trying to re-organise, re-engineer and even re-invent itself, is finally recognising that it too must grasp the Entrepreneur Imperative.

The Church, with its tradition and hierarchy, is in a difficult position.