Abstract
A growing number of leaders around the world believe that business can be a force for good: for justice and equity, for meaning-making, and for human flourishing. Yet the Church has very little to say about engagement in the marketplace beyond the tradition’s negative injunctions (i.e., do not abuse people). This lack of theological address to the marketplace leaves the Church with a partial witness amid empire, with a critique but without creativity. This gap is not problematic for the “powers that be,” which let the Church preach and have its protests so long as the status quo is protected – which is what happens unless there is a new creation. The new creation provokes the “powers” and the institutional Church by concretizing hope in God’s economy and evoking the gifts God gives for human flourishing. Reimagined as ekklesia in enterprise, the Church will undertake the construction of a new theology of work. It accomplishes this first by the creative discovery of divine movement in the world that began at creation with God’s word that work is good, then by the appropriation of ekklesia’s cultural orientation for the common good, which leads to the marketplace, the heart of the empire and the locus of human flourishing, the place for the Church to make its revolutionary witness to the way of Jesus.
“You will be witnesses to me, not only in Jerusalem, not only throughout Judea, not only in Samaria, but to the very ends of the earth!” (Acts 1:8; J. B. Phillips)
There is a movement underway but it is not the movement that followers of Jesus have been hoping for. Refugees travel by the millions from disaster to further heartbreak. Workers leave home and family to labor on the other side of the planet and find empty promises. Human beings are trafficked for pleasure and profit with no way out.
Watch the news, observe the neighbors, witness our common landscape and this much is clear: the global economy races away from the poor. Eight percent of the world’s population—over 620 million men, women and children—live in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than $1.90 per day. 1 From a historical viewpoint, this is significant improvement. In the early 1800s, 90% of the planet lived in abject poverty. 2 Diseases have been conquered; difficulties have been overcome. Tracks have been laid to a more prosperous world. Yet the technological shifts, trade patterns, and flow of capital that propel the global economy are an express train with limited stops. Fewer truly get on board, though they may acquire the requisite tickets (i.e., cell phone, name-brand shoes, access to fast food) that get measured as progress. The destination is increasingly out of reach for the poor. Even the middle class is left behind, stranded on platforms that can give way at any moment.
Our witness sharpens with the long view. We notice that some places disappear whereas other places many miles apart take on the same appearance. Billboards that once trumpeted opportunity weather on land once clear-cut for speculation but now given up to weeds and spindly pines. The long view reveals that certain changes have crept up on us over the years like the slow-moving RV that was once regarded as a symbol of the good life – the pensioned retirees’ freedom on the open road – which now carries nomads looking for work, suffering from loss and dead ends as they move through the broken places. 3
This is a picture of empire: ever-widening reach, ever-growing displacement, never-ending concentration of wealth, and never-ending loss of security. One may scoff at the idea of a ruling force amid free nations and free people, or dismiss as eccentric the notion that a cabal controls our lives. Yet the logic of empire cannot be denied. We live under its dominion. Its decrees constrain almost every facet of our existence. Extend the metaphor of movement and we may marvel at the daily transmission of billions of pieces of data about us that bind us to systems that move so fast their blur melds into something solid that suggests stability, predictability, and even power. The “royal consciousness,” Walter Brueggemann’s phrase for the dominant narrative, 4 is an all-encompassing force that spreads, in part, by our belief that there is no such thing as empire, that we are free of such control.
The “powers that be” maintain the empire through curious maneuvers: first, by promising freedom while locking us into discursive politics that we regard as the apex of our freedom, and second, by dazzling us with ceaseless possibilities for the self while dulling us to the truth that, as the playwright Tony Kushner puts it, “one is a fiction.” 5 This arrangement will not sit well with many of us, but the empire can accommodate our anger. Indeed, it offers many outlets for us to shout and swing. So the “powers” are more than content to let us preach and have our protests so long as the status quo is protected, which it is, unless there is a new creation.
Herein lays the countermovement. The new creation is not apart from the world. The new creation engages the world. Followers of Jesus will be his witnesses first by provoking the world, confronting it with a genuine alternative to empire. Then, followers will witness by evoking the world, calling forth the gifts God gives humanity for the healing of the world. 6 The provocation is the critique; the evocation leads to creation. Together, these moves of provocation and evocation are the fulfillment of the prophetic vision and the fullness of the way of Jesus. Our witness is therefore ultimately generative. The new creation is our project. It is an undertaking through difficulty, with risk, by way of resourcefulness and innovation: in short, an enterprise.
The gap between profession and practice
Christian communities that engage the world, rather than accommodate or separate, do so most often without the fullness of a critical and creative witness. We critique unjust systems but neglect the creation of countercultural ventures. The critique is the basis of theological education, the focus of faith-rooted community organizing, and the content of much congregational teaching and preaching. But the Church has little to say about the creation of ventures that heal the world. Indeed, the Church’s partial witness suggests we lack the imagination to offer more than negative injunctions (i.e., do not abuse others) when it comes to engagement in that most basic mode of human interaction, the marketplace. Thus, there is a huge gap between what we profess about the economy of God and what we practice.
Consider that we advocate for living wages, but who will create the jobs? We push for policies to protect the environment, but who will create the new technologies that reduce carbon emissions, recycle waste, and harness sustainable sources of energy? We critique the unjust systems that trap people in poverty, but who will create the enterprises that build wealth in the broken places?
Our partial witness spiritualizes the new creation. Lacking the imagination to see God’s “new thing” as a material thing, the new creation is other-worldly. Yet the new creation concerns the whole of the created order. The new creation is not a replacement but a recovery project. It is the tikkun olam, the repairing of the world. 7 The prophetic vision is nothing but concrete. Highways are made straight. Cities are rebuilt. Streets are restored as places in which to live. 8
The new creation is a path that runs counter to the ways of empire, so it runs through this world. The Spirit of God promises the people of God a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The provocation is not a challenge to believe in a mystical future but an invitation to see what is already being made real. “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” 9 The provocation is to see more reality than the royal consciousness permits. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear take hold of an imagination that is constructive, for the provocation leads to evocation, the drawing out of the material gifts that constitute creation.
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” the Spirit of God asks in the voice of the prophet who embodies the provocation and evocation. 10 The Body of Christ, which enfleshes the full witness to such a degree that New Testament writers are hard-pressed to out-materialize the metaphors of household, flock, temple and kingdom, might well ask, “Who will go into business, and who will join the Spirit in making all things new in the marketplace?” It is a legitimate question, so why does it sound so crass to Christian ears?
Toward a theological reappraisal of work
The Church’s lack of imagination for affirmative engagement in the marketplace points to an undeveloped theology of work, which impacts ecclesiology. Theology is the creative discovery of Divine movement in the world. “Creative discovery” means each sighting of God’s action should catalyze the Church’s own activity, metaphorically and literally. Whereas the divine movement from the beginning of creation has been to enter into work and call it good, the Church has bought into the dominant narrative that work is merely a means to an end – the weekend, security, prestige. Furthermore, we believe that work is merely a means to an end for the more spiritual occupation of ministry. In other words, our “tent-making” sustains us for “real ministry.” This view, which has no biblical basis except for our modern appropriation of a cultural lens that diminishes the value of work itself, leads us to misinterpret passages such as “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” 11 as a value judgment; in other words, although it is one thing to be a fisherman, it is a better thing to fish for people. The goal, it seems, is to eclipse work. No wonder Sunday is so far from Monday.
Our view of work has implications for how we do Church. It is a source of conflict between clergy and laity, a barrier to healthy congregational development, and a problematic mixed message when it comes to stewardship of our time, talents and money. The view forces an awkward twisting of well-intentioned Christians who want to help people yet have nothing affirmative to say about work, enterprise, or engagement in the marketplace, the place where we spend most of our time—the very locus of human flourishing.
The Church needs theological reflection on the biblical, historical, and contemporary responses to the marketplace. We also need an invitation to re-imagine Church as our view of work is baptized. Earlier conversations beginning in the 1950s about “marketplace ministry” were helpful in thinking about the role of the laity in the world, yet they continued to be steeped in the binary of the spiritual and material, and came out as “use work to do the work of the Church”—a narrow, utilitarian focus. The context today, in which a growing number of leaders are discovering the potentially transformative triple bottom line of profit, people, and planet, and in which spirituality can be defined in the shorthand of “making meaning,” invites us to consider work as valuable in itself, not merely a means to an end. Saying yes to work itself changes the work of the Church.
Recently, a friend and I had a conversation about Paul’s “tent-making.” I wondered, did Paul love tent-making? Did he like the smell of the materials? Did he take pleasure in a finely crafted product? Did he enjoy engaging customers? Maybe, but the Church is of no help in this creative inquiry, for God’s people internalize the dominant culture’s devaluing of work. People of faith who affirm the work of a Creator, who said that work is good, regard work as curse rather than blessing. We separate work and meaning. We put up with work to get to meaning.
It is true that sometimes work is not meaningful, not pleasurable. Sometimes “everybody’s working for the weekend,” as the song says. 12 Yet when we value the work itself, we affirm something integral to being human, namely our creative capacity. We can make things. We can fix things. We can find meaning in what we do with our hands and with our hearts and minds. Ecclesial re-imagination in our time must begin with a reappraisal of work, starting with the Divine decision for work: “And God saw it was good.” 13
Enterprise as countercultural creation
There is a movement underway. Formerly incarcerated youth practice social and professional skills aboard the food trucks of Brooklyn’s Drive Change. 14 Captives are set free through the manufacturing jobs of Seattle’s Pioneer Human Services. 15 Refugees receive training, certification, and living wages through Just Bakery of Atlanta. 16 In the same city, a husband and wife who are ministers run CenterForm, a co-working space for startups. They create a community of believers who seek the health of their city through a rhythm not unlike the monastic innovation of ora et labora, prayer and work. 17
A growing number of leaders around the world believe that business can be a force for good, for justice and equity, for meaning-making, and for human flourishing. Whereas some critics see a neoliberal whitewash in “social enterprise” 18 (the distrust of the marketplace is so baked into the critique), the new creation does indeed counter empire when it reverses the dominant narrative, when the weak shame the strong, the poor receive plenty, and the earth is healed.
For example, Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si, with the subtitle On Care for Our Common Home, inspired a yearlong accelerator program in 2017 that invested in nine startups focused on sustainable development, from portable water filters to a ride-sharing platform that uses scooters. 19 Additional capital will flow toward such enterprises in the future owing to the 2017 adoption by the world’s major faiths, including Christian communions, of an impact-investing approach by which they intend to leverage the three trillion dollars in assets held by their traditions in order to say “yes” to the new creation rather than merely divesting from or filtering out undesirable business. 20
There is a movement underway. It is the movement for which followers of Jesus hope. We hope for peace, security, and equity. The royal consciousness cannot circumscribe our hope when other stories get out. As the overarching narrative is pierced, and the Spirit slips through the cracks, falling fresh on God’s people, a new consciousness arises. First is an awareness of the limits of empire’s provision, a knowing that the train to prosperity will always leave us behind. We do not have to buy what empire sells. Then comes a new understanding that is so radical, so rooted, so natural, so material that our faith likens it to being born again: the conviction that God in Christ is making all things new—a “wayout of no way,” as the civil rights movements put it.
Our generative metaphors
The early Church’s creative task was to work out an understanding of life together in Christ in the midst of empire. It therefore read its life back through Judaism and forward through the world. The early Church’s key metaphors cluster around retreat (flock), respite (temple and sanctuary), reenactment (Body of Christ), and reengagement (household, which is the basic economic unit, and ekklesia, which is an assembly for the common good). All of the metaphors are borrowed from culture – religious, artistic, political or economic—a kind of lingua franca that makes sense in the public square. The metaphors show the Church’s options for life together and reveal the enduring tensions toward separation, accommodation, and engagement.
Ekklesia, a “gathering of those summoned,” 21 is interesting with regard to Christians’ self-identity as witnesses of Jesus. The ekklesia is the Greek gathering of citizens who share responsibility for decision, for action. It is not a crowd. It is not a passive audience. Participants are expected to contribute in thought and deed. 22 The ekklesia comes together for regular meetings and for ad hoc sessions as needed. The people are summoned for a purpose. So the ekklesia gathers people who normally go about their business to join a particular venture that serves the city, the whole community. Ekklesia is a provocative metaphor, for it challenges both the separatist and spiritual-as-immaterial inclinations of the Church. Ekklesia is an evocative metaphor, for it calls out the gifts needed for the common good, thereby catalyzing creation. Ekklesia moves witnesses toward generative possibilities.
Enterprise is also a metaphor that provokes and evokes. It will not let us off the hook for the well-being of God’s people. It says there is work to be done, and it says work is good. Moreover, the metaphor tells us we possess gifts from God that are equal to the challenge, though in the empire’s accounting our gifts amount to little. Enterprise sends witnesses on mission across the empire bearing good news and bringing us into relationships beyond the “powers”’ control, where we discover that “all real life is meeting,” 23 or encounter, or commerce in love.
Ekklesia as enterprise is an undertaking that resists empire by subverting its very market mechanisms to create the one thing that empire cannot manufacture: hope. People truly liberated by enterprise will take hold of their newfound freedom to join the Spirit in making all things new. The revolution therefore calls for a re-imagination of the Church’s role in the marketplace. The re-imagination is resistance to the dualism and spiritualism that empire countenances. If it appears we are “getting our hands dirty,” as the dominant culture declares to us, then good, because that means we are on the way.
Ekklesia as enterprise is a movement that declares, manifests, and carries us toward a new reality. Extend the metaphor and we shall make an ekklesia where buyers and sellers interact, where there is traffic in goods for the common good, where humanity assembles amid the noises, smells and beautiful diversity of the marketplace, wherever two or three are gathered in his name. We will be witnesses who trade stories, exchange blessings, 24 and deal in the hope that God’s way will be transacted on earth as it is in heaven.
Footnotes
1
2.
3.
4.
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2001), 21–37.
5.
T. Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part Two: Perestroika (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1994), 158.
6.
Sister Kathleen Anderson, OSB, Benedictine Sisters of Annunciation Monastery, Bismark, ND, gifted me with the model of leadership as provoking and evoking.
7.
T. Freeman, “What Is Tikkun Olam,” Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center, accessed April 2, 2018, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3700275/jewish/What-Is-Tikkun-Olam.htm. “In Jewish teachings, any activity that improves the world, bringing it closer to the harmonious state for which it was created.” See reference to Midrash Rabba, Gen 11:6, translated at On1Foot: Jewish Texts for Social Justice, accessed April 2, 2018, 
. “All that was created during the six days of creation requires improvement.”
8.
Isa 40:3; 58:12. All citations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
9.
Isa 43:19 RSV.
10.
Isa 6:8.
11.
Matt 4:19.
12.
Loverboy, Get Lucky (Columbia Records, 1981).
13.
Gen 1:25.
18.
20.
22.
23.
M. Buber, I and Thou, a new translation by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), 62; “All actual life is encounter.” “C.S. Lewis used the alternative translation, “real life is meeting,” as a chapter heading in That Hideous Strength (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1965).
24.
The “exchange of blessing” is a beautiful phrase gifted to me by the Rev. Sally Sarratt, senior co-pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Washington, DC.