This morning, I read an interesting article with the appropriate title “Great Entrepreneurs Are Obsessed With The Product” by Brad Feld. For those who have never heard of Feld, he is co-founder and managing director at Foundry Group, a Boulder, Colorado-based venture capital firm that invests in cutting-edge software and internet companies. Feld’s list of investments reads like a list of who’s who of startup internet companies which, although most of their names have since faded into the mists of time, built the foundational blocks of some of the online services which technophiles take for granted today.
Feld’s achievements in the world of venture capital are impressive, to say the least, and so when he speaks, entrepreneurs do well to listen. But in the case of this article, I think Feld is speaking to more than just businesspeople. His basic advice is that, if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you must be absolutely consumed with the product that you have to sell. And I would submit to you that, if we want to be successful leaders of churches, big or small, then we must be consumed with the product that we have to sell, too. The question is, what is the product that we have to sell?
For several years now, the prevailing paradigm of church growth has held, I believe, that the product that we have to sell is the church. Thus, we expend fantastic amounts of energy and resources to make sure our kids’ programs are superb, our singles ministries thriving, and our worship services on a par with rock concerts. The problem is that, for small churches, that’s simply not viable. We will never be able to have a kids’ program that competes with the megachurch up the road. Our singles ministries may never fly because there just may not be enough singles to populate it. And our worship service may not be a rock concert. In fact, I would submit that even megachurches can’t satisfy this paradigm every time. Some have begun to realize this, and so one of the models we’ve been seeing among church planters focuses solely on one or two of these things, foregoing everything else. Thus, we have churches that have great Sunday morning worship services, but nothing else throughout the rest of the week.
Over the last few years, as leaders have realized the flaws with the paradigm where church is the product that we sell, we’ve started to see new emphases arise. Probably the most popular is what we’ll call the Body. As in, the Body of Christ. That is, we’ve begun to sell people the relationships that naturally form among people who live and minister together. It makes sense, and I truly believe that it is one of the greatest things that we have to offer a generation which may have a thousand Facebook friends but none in real life. Indeed, of the 170-ish friends that I have on Facebook, there are only about 30 that I speak with on a regular basis. Only about 20 of them that I speak with regularly off-line. And I don’t need all the fingers on one hand to count the number that I would actually entrust with the most intimate details of my life. There are lots of people out there who don’t even have that; they’re desperate to connect with someone. And offering them the chance of fellowship – of friends – is compelling. So we have churches that focus primarily on relationships, encouraging people to come and “get connected” with a small group, ministry team, or just plain friends. The problem here, though, is that it’s difficult to keep forming new relationships with new people, all the time. So you end up with a church that is fragmented into a bunch of cliques or, maybe worse, in-grown to the point that it no longer reaches out. And even if that doesn’t happen, there’s probably always going to be a bigger church down the road that offers more relationships than you can.
I would like to suggest to you a different product that we can obsess over. No, that we must obsess over. Eternal life.
Eternal life is, after all, the product that Jesus sold. I use that term “sold” carefully because Jesus was always up front about the cost: while they could never truly earn salvation, people who would own eternal life would have to repent of their sins (that is, stop doing them!) and commit to a life-driving faith in Him as the Son of God (that is, live in obedience to Jesus!). But he was also always telling them about what it did for them. In Matthew 19:29, He promised we would “receive a hundred times” whatever we sacrifice to obtain eternal life. In John 3, we discover that it will protect us from [eternal] death. And a chapter later, in John 4, He proclaims that eternal life will “well up” within us, providing the image of life that doesn’t just fill, or even overflow, but gushes forth! Who wouldn’t want that kind of life?
Moving beyond the gospels, we learn that – as though that stuff wasn’t enough – eternal life includes the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2) which fills us with the presence and power of the Most High; inclusion in the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12-13) which provides fellowship (i.e., relationships with a purpose); an infusion of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5); forgiveness and actual cleansing from sin (1 John 1); and more!
In fact, just like the entrepreneurs Feld describes in his article, Jesus and his disciples were constantly talking about eternal life! Every now and then, they would stop to do a miracle, but then, immediately after, they would be right back on message. And the miracle they just did? Well, it was just one of the things that eternal life could do for you!
Jesus and co. didn’t have a church to sell. There were no fancy buildings or outstanding programs or kicking music. There was no children’s ministry, or youth ministry, or singles ministry, or seniors ministry. There was just eternal life.
While Jesus and co. certainly did offer fellowship within the body of Christ, it was always secondary. They didn’t worry about organizing small groups or scheduling lunch fellowships. That stuff just sort of happened as a natural part of eternal life.
For them, it was always all about eternal life. They lived and breathed eternal life. They talked about eternal life. And they wanted nothing more than for every single person they encountered to experience eternal life.
Because they knew that, if you only experienced the kind of life they had for even a split second, you would never ever let it go.
So here’s the thing. When you lead your church, however small it may be, what are you obsessed with? Are you constantly telling people about your church, how great the programs are, how wonderful the facilities are, and on and on? Because you’ll never be able to match the megachurch over there. Are you trumpeting the connections your church offers, the relationships people can build? Because there’s someone else who’s going to do exactly the same thing, only better.
Why don’t you start obsessing about eternal life?
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