What role does local community play in our pursuit of doing business as Christians?

A community economy is not an economy in which well-placed persons can make a 'killing'. It is an economy whose aim is generosity and a well-distributed and safeguarded abundance. -- Wendell Berry

In our last discussion it was noted that "Jesus did not teach economies of scale. He taught intimacy and community." I have to agree with this. Before we start going off on the benefits of economies of scale and free market capitalism we need to start with where we are--literally--with place. We all find ourselves in local communities in which we are most likely mediocre participants. We think globally, buy globally, and work globally at the cost of disintegrating what is local. In fact, I would argue that we cannot see ourselves as members of a global community until we see ourselves as members of a local community. The implications for this are widespread as we go about discerning what it means to do business as a Christian.

We are all part of a community, but the difference between local and global cannot be understated. We are all connected in business but the more global, the more "economies of scale" we become, the more we lose sight of those connections with real people. Take, for example, coffee. Coffee farmers are often paid market price for their crops without concern to the well-being of the farmer. The wages these farmers make are often not enough to provide the basic needs for their families but we're OK with that because: 1) we get cheaper coffee and, 2) we don't actually know the men, women, and children bearing the brunt of this global model. Galatians 5:13-15 says, "For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another."

How can we practice "love your neighbor as yourself" (also in Leviticus 19:13-18, Matthew 22:36-40, Mark 12:29-31, Luke 10:27, Romans 13:8-10, James 2:8) in business?

Wendell Berry has described 17 rules for the preservations of local communities and economies which I would like to make the topic of discussion. I have taken this from his article entitled Conserving Communities, which you can read by following the link.

To find out more about Wendell Berry in order to have a better idea of where he is coming from this article and this webpage should be a good start. I also want to say that he is a committed Christian. Everything he says comes from a worldview that is distinctively shaped by the scriptures and a devotion to Jesus. So I urge you to read carefully some of the words from, as Eugene Peterson describes, "One of our country's wisest guides."

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...We must ask how a sustainable local community (which is to say a sustainable local economy) might function. I am going to suggest a set of rules that I think such a community would have to follow. And I hasten to say that I do not consider these rules to be predictions; I am not interested in foretelling the future. If these rules have any validity, that is because they apply now.

If the members of a local community want their community to cohere, to flourish, and to last, these are some things they would do:

1. Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth.

2. Always include local nature - the land, the water, the air, the native creatures - within the membership of the community.

3. Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbours.

4. Always supply local needs first (and only then think of exporting products - first to nearby cities, then to others).

5. Understand the ultimate unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of 'labour saving' if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination.

6. Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of national or global economy.

7. Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.

8. Strive to supply as much of the community's own energy as possible.

9. Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community for as long as possible before they are paid out.

10. Make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community.

11. Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining its properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring for its old people, and teaching its children.

12. See that the old and young take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily, and not always in school. There must be no institutionalised childcare and no homes for the aged. The community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and young.

13. Account for costs now conventionally hidden or externalised. Whenever possible, these must be debited against monetary income.

14. Looks into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan programmes, systems of barter, and the like.

15. Always be aware of the economic value of neighbourly acts. In our time, the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighbourhood, which leaves people to face their calamities alone.

16. A rural community should always be acquainted and interconnected with community-minded people in nearby towns and cities.

17. A sustainable rural economy will depend on urban consumers loyal to local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.

These rules are derived from Western political and religious traditions, from the promptings of ecologists and certain agriculturalists and from common sense. They may seem radical, but only because the modern national and global economies have been formed in almost perfect disregard of community and ecological interests. - WB

Discuss away...

Intro - What does it mean to put the Church back in business?

“Putting the Church back in business” is an intentional play on words with two distinct meanings. But before describing the solutions, I’ll present the two problems they are intended to address:

1) In my experience, Christian men often pursue one of two career paths. One is what we call “full-time ministry.” We’re all called to be full-time ministers, but there are men who get paid to do ministry. Peter was probably the first example of a man pursuing this kind of vocational ministry. 1 Corinthians 9:13-14 says, “Don’t you know that those who work in the temple get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.”

The problem is, Peter had an important contemporary and American Christian men seem to have forgotten his example. Paul was a businessman. We don’t think of him that way because he was a follower of Jesus first and a businessman second. Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 9, “But I have not used any of these rights (receiving his living from the gospel)…I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of this boast…What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge…” (v. 15-18). Paul sold tents to provide for himself and his followers, not so they could rest in the wealth they had accumulated, but so they could preach a “no strings attached gospel.” It saddens my heart that people have rejected Jesus because the men teaching us about Him often have misrepresented His teachings on money.

So why is it that men, when selecting a career path, often feel as if they must choose between being a committed Christ-follower and entering vocational ministry or compromising their faith to work in the business world? Maybe it’s our fault for failing to remain singularly-focused, full-time ministers disguised as businessmen. Maybe it’s the business world’s fault for forcing compromise. I think it’s both.

When God set up society in ancient Israel, He set aside the Levites to “perform duties for Him and for the whole community at the Tent of Meeting by doing the work of the tabernacle” (Numbers 3:8). It’s interesting to note that the total number of Levites was 22,000 (Numbers 3:39) and only 8,580 were old enough to serve (chapter 4). If you take that number and add it to the total number of Israelites from the other 11 tribes old enough to serve in the army (603,500 – 1:46), the adult male population in Israel was 612,130. The “full-time ministers” accounted for a mere 1.4% of the population. I’m not suggesting that God desires a similar ratio today, but it’s a simple fact that 98.6% of the Israeli society was not to work in the Tent of Meeting. But God certainly intended for them to be committed followers. They had their role in this society centered on God. Someone had to raise the bulls that were sacrificed in worship and then used to feed the Levites. For the Peters of the world to get paid for ministry, there have to be Pauls willing to sell some tents.

But what constitutes Godly business? Are corporations Godly? Is it Godly to sell products like cigarettes or “soft core” pornography even if they’re legal? Is it Godly to pay “market wages” in third world countries if that wage isn’t enough to provide a sustainable living? Business is not inherently bad, but some business is. Where do we draw the line?

2) The Church (capital “C”) is failing to meet its potential in a colossal way. God doesn’t need our money but He commands us as believers to participate in His work. God could wipe out disease, crime, suffering, death and all of the other ills we introduced to the world through sin, but He hasn’t. Instead, He gave us a very simple system showing how the Church and business should interact while remaining focused on Him: generosity. The minimum standard for this generosity is a tithe of 10%. Unfortunately, in America, Christians give only about 2.6% of our income to the Church, drastically short of the Biblical minimum. Incredibly, if we all generously responded to Jesus to the point of giving 10%, an additional $139 billion would be available every year for God-fearing leaders of the Church to distribute as He directs. Some estimates say that just $5 billon could end preventable global deaths of children under the age of 5. Seven billion could provide primary education for every child in the world. Eighty billion could provide access to basic health and education services to all of the world’s poor. That amounts to $92 billion per year. What if we spent the remaining $47 billion on seeking to fulfill the Great Commission? Quite a leap from the $810 million churches currently spend on reaching unevangelized nations.

I look at these numbers and I don’t think it’s a huge leap to say that extreme poverty, preventable death and disease exist because of the lack of Christian generosity.

So what does it mean to put the Church back in business?

First, it means putting the Church, Jesus’ devoted followers, literally back in the business world. Or if we’re already there, we have to teach and practice Biblical business, not American business. Jesus didn’t teach “economies of scale,” He taught intimacy and community. He didn’t teach marketing, He taught unfiltered Truth. He didn’t teach the accumulation of wealth, He taught sacrificial generosity. Biblical business is business where God is God, not money.

Second, it means serving our role as Christian businessmen to give generously to the Church to provide for our pastors and reach out to the world. The result would be a hardly recognizable movement of compassion and humble service all in the Name of Jesus.

To begin this process, I hope to use this blog to simply get the conversation going. I’ll probably just post questions and we can discuss for a few days and then I’ll post another. Or if you have questions, I’ll post those.

Twelve apostles changed the world with their willingness to die for Jesus. We can do this.

Let’s ask questions, let’s share our thoughts, let’s think, let’s act. Let’s put the Church back in business.