Guest Essay: What it means to be a Christian entrepreneur

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

Something a bit different this morning. I asked our parishioner, Kevin Rains, to please write a short essay about what it means to be a Christian entrepreneur. Kevin graciously responded to my request with the reflections below. At the end of the essay, you will find a link to a YouTube of Kevin further discussing the history behind his vocation as a Christian entrepreneur. Perhaps this is something of "Orthodoxy in the Workplace."

Fr. Steven

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Fr. Steven asked me to write a few words on what it means to be a Christian entrepreneur.

At times, I’ve heard entrepreneurs praised as gods in our culture. At other times I’ve heard them vilified as nothing more than greedy exploiters. Neither of these extremes is helpful. 

In light of these misconceptions, our first stop has to be to define our terms. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, an entrepreneur is “one who organizes manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.” That is a good, basic start. Yet that could apply to almost anything from a lemonade stand to a non-profit organization to a multinational corporation! And it doesn’t really answer the question of what an entrepreneur actually does.

Jean-Baptiste Say, a French economist who first coined the word entrepreneur in about 1800, sheds some light on the doing aspect. He said: “The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.” 

So, an entrepreneur is someone who manages resources in a productive way that benefits themself and others. This is typically - though not exclusively - related to business enterprises. 

Now, what can make the entrepreneurial pursuits distinctly Christian? For that to happen, all efforts need to be in line with Christian understandings and practices. In other words, they must be guided by the mind of Christ and practicing virtues consistent with the call of Christ. Humility. Generosity. Care for team members and creation. Prayerful dependence on God and not oneself. Actions that are not rooted in anger or lust. Non-anxious. These are just a few and most of those come from Christ’s central teaching in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel chapters 5-7.  

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More personally, being a Christian entrepreneur to me means launching and leading a group of auto body shops. We’ve grown from one small shop in Norwood to five and soon to be six. But it’s not just that we’ve grown. It’s more about the “how.” We foster a culture of care in our shops that gets expressed in different ways that are rooted in our family’s faith. 

We care for our customers through empathy. 

We care for our craft by doing high-quality repairs - even the hidden stuff that no one sees after the repair but it makes the repair stronger and safer for the long haul.

We care for the communities we serve through generosity. 

We care for the earth by using water-based paints that don’t compromise the longevity of the finished product but reduce our environmental impact by 97% (vs solvent-based paints)

We care for our team members by offering them the opportunity to grow and expand in their role through training and development that we pay for. 

In short, we strive to love our neighbors, our neighborhoods, and the earth, while operating from a Christian lens. We also fail. And repent. Which is also part of being a Christian entrepreneur and probably the best starting point.      

_____

In one sense, being an entrepreneur is the vocation of every Christian. We confidently declare in our creed that we believe in “one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.” This is a proclamation rooted in the opening of our Scriptures, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1.1) Later in that same passage, it’s recorded that God made humanity and commissioned them to “build-out” what he started. (Genesis 1.26-28) He declared creation good but it was not perfected. Humanity’s role was to take the raw materials that God created and form them into things that are both useful and beautiful. 

 

Another way to say this is to say that God created but he intended humanity to …. Creation and culture. God made the tree but humanity made the violin. God created the chicken and the egg (the chicken came first so we can put that debate to rest!) but humanity made the first omelet. Of course, nothing can be done without God’s help and we are only creating from the raw materials he provides. Yet, we have an important role to play in taking those resources and raw materials he gave us “into an area of higher productivity and greater yield” to use Say’s words. So we fashion furniture and musical instruments from trees, make beautifully curated omelets from the simple egg, and even make complex technologies like phones and computers that allow us to communicate across vast distances. Everything that is, is from God. And any time that creation is re-assembled into something “new” humanity is fulfilling her calling. 

-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1CJ4-GN0Dc&t=27s

 

Kevin Rains 

CEO/ Owner 
Rains Family CARSTAR Group

(513) 383-2854

 

The Ascension - The Meaning and the Fullness of Christ's Resurrection

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ, 

"I ascend unto My Father, and your Father, and to my God, and Your God.” (JN. 20:17) 

  

 

Today is the fortieth day after the glorious Resurrection of Christ, and that is, of course, Ascension Thursday. We celebrated the Feast with the Vesperal Liturgy yesterday evening, and we had a great representative body of parishioners present for the Feast, including some of our parish children. I hope that one and all have a joyous and blessed feast day.  The Risen Lord is also the Ascended Lord and, therefore, in the words of Fr. Georges Florovsky: “In the Ascension resides the meaning and the fullness of Christ’s Resurrection.”   I would refer everyone to the complete article by Fr. Florovsky, a brilliant reflection on the theological and spiritual meaning of the Lord’s Ascension. This article is accessed from our parish website together with a series of other articles that explore the richness of the Ascension. In addition to Fr. Florovsky’s article, I would especially recommend The Ascension as Prophecy. With so many fine articles on the Ascension within everyone’s reach, I will not offer up yet another one, but I would like to make a few brief comments:

Though the visible presence of the Risen Lord ended forty days after His Resurrection, that did not mean that His actual presence was withdrawn. For Christ solemnly taught His disciples – and us through them – “Behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (MATT. 28:20) The risen, ascended and glorified Lord is the Head of His body, the Church. The Lord remains present in the Mysteries/Sacraments of the Church. This reinforces our need to participate in the sacramental life of the Church, especially the Eucharist, through which we receive the deified flesh and blood of the Son of God, “unto life everlasting.”

Christ ascended to be seated at “the right hand of the Father” in glory, thus lifting up the humanity He assumed in the Incarnation into the very inner life of God. For all eternity, Christ is God and man. The deified humanity of the Lord is the sign of our future destiny “in Christ.” For this reason, the Apostle Paul could write: “your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (COL. 3:3) In his homily on the Ascension, St. Gregory Palamas (+1359) draws out some of the implications of this further:

 

In the same way as He came down, without changing place but condescending to us, so He returns once more, without moving as God, but enthroning  on high our human nature which He had assumed. It was truly right that the first begotten human nature from the dead (Rev. 1:5) should be presented to God, as first fruits from the first crop offered for the whole race of men.  

On account of our sins He was led to death, and for us He rose and ascended, preparing our own resurrection and ascension for unending eternity. For all the heirs of everlasting life follow as far as possible the pattern of His saving work on earth.

Those who live according to Christ imitate what He did in the flesh. Just as He died physically, so in time everyone dies, but we shall also rise again in the flesh as He did, glorified and immortal, not now but in due course, when we shall also ascend, as Paul says, for "we shall be caught up," he says, "in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (I Thess. 4:17). (The Saving Work of Christ - Sermons by St. Gregory Palamas, p. 113-114)

 

The words of the “two men … in white robes,” (clearly angels) who stood by the disciples as they gazed at Christ being “lifted up,” and recorded by St. Luke (ACTS. 1:11), point toward something very clear and essential for us to grasp as members of the Church that exists within the historical time of the world:   “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”  The disciples will remain in the world, and must fulfill their vocation as the chosen apostles who will proclaim the Word of God to the world of the crucified and risen Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. They cannot spend their time gazing into heaven awaiting the return of the Lord. That hour has not been revealed: “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority” (1:7). The “work” of the Church is the task set before them, and they must do this until their very last breath. They will carry out this work once they receive the power of the Holy Spirit – the “promise of my Father” - as Christ said to them (LK. 24:49). Whatever our vocation may be, we too witness to Christ and the work of the Church as we await the fullness of God’s Kingdom according to the times or seasons of the Father.

In our daily Prayer Rule we continue to refrain from using “O Heavenly King” until the Day of Pentecost. We no longer use the paschal troparion, “Christ is Risen from the dead …” but replace it from Ascension to Pentecost with the troparion of the Ascension:

 

Thou hast ascended in glory,
O Christ our God,
granting joy to Thy disciplesby the promise of the Holy Spirit;
Through the Blessing they were assured
that Thou art the Son of God,
the Redeemer of the world.  

 

 

 

The Ascension - 'An Endless Soaring Upward'

 

FINAL PASCHAL MEDITATION

Pascha - The Thirty-Ninth Day

The Ascension - 'An Endless Soaring Upward'

 

'

Dear Parish Faithful,

CHRIST IS RISEN!     INDEED HE IS RISEN!

Today is the "Leavetaking of Pascha" but also the "Forefeast of the Ascension." In other words, we are transitioning from one aspect of the paschal mystery to another - from resurrection to glorification. I am prone to saying on an annual basis "that Pascha comes in with a roar and goes out with a whimper." How far and long ago it may seem that we experienced that explosion of joy at the Paschal Liturgy following Holy Week. And how quickly that experience disappears! 

 I often find myself asking the pastoral question once Great Lent is over: Did we "redeem the time" and by the grace of God and our efforts allow Great Lent to bear fruit in our lives? Or did we somehow squander the precious time of Great Lent? Perhaps the same kinds of questions are fair now that the forty-day paschal season has ended: Did we "redeem the time" and by the grace of God and our efforts allow the Paschal Season to bear fruit in our lives? Or did we somehow squander the precious time of the Paschal Season? These are both forty-day periods of liturgical time and together combine for an extended period (Holy Week connects them) that without a doubt is at the very center of our lives as Orthodox Christians. The question remains: Does the Death and Resurrection of Christ shape our worldview and the manner in which we live our lives?

Regardless of how we answer these questions, the coming Feast of the Ascension allows us to be positive and hopeful, for in this celebration we experience both glorification and a "taste" of heaven. In words that I hope will inspire all of us to embrace this Feast with sincerity and awareness, Fr. Alexander Schmemann writes the following about the Lord's Ascension:

 

There is a thrill of joy in the very word "ascension" that issues a challenge, as it were, to the so-called "laws of nature," the perpetually downward-leading, downward-pulling, and enslaving laws of gravity, weight, falling. Here, in contrast, all is lightness, flight, an endless soaring upward. The Lord's Ascension is celebrated forty days after Pascha, on Thursday of the sixth week after the feast of Christ's Resurrection.

The feast of the Ascension is the celebration of heaven now opened to human beings, heaven as the new and eternal home, heaven as our true homeland. Sin severed earth from heaven and made us earthly and coarse, it fixed our gaze solidly on the ground and made our life exclusively earthbound. Sin is the betrayal of heaven in the soul....

... heaven is the name of our authentic vocation as human beings, heaven is the final truth about the earth. No, heaven is not somewhere in outer space beyond the planets, or in some unknown galaxy. Heaven is what Christ gives back to us, what we lost through our sin and pride, through earthly, exclusively earthly sciences and ideologies, and now it is opened, offered, and returned to us by Christ. Heaven is the kingdom of eternal life, the kingdom of truth, goodness and beauty. Heaven is the total spiritual transformation of human life; heaven is the kingdom of God, victory over death, the triumph of love and care ... And therefore, heaven permeates our life here and now, the earth itself becomes a reflection, a mirror image of heavenly beauty. Who descended from heaven to earth to return heaven to us? God. Who ascended from earth to heaven? The man Jesus.

 

Fr. Alexander writes of "flight, and endless soaring upward ..." Perhaps that may be claiming a great deal more than what we are prepared for. However, the opportunity for lifting up our minds and hearts to "Our Father who art in heaven ..." through the Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ is always an open possibility when we are present at the Divine Liturgy. For the Feast of Ascension itself, we will serve the Vesperal Liturgy this evening beginning at 6:00 p.m. If you come, you offer yourself and your families that blessed possibility. The Lord can "lift us up," but we need to give Him the opportunity.

 

Break On Through (To The Other Side)

 

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

 

The Orthodox Church’s claim that Pascha is “the Feast of Feasts” is far more than poetic rhetoric. On the most basic level, it reminds us that the very existence of the Church is dependent upon the reality of Christ’s bodily resurrection “from the dead.” The Feast of Pascha makes that abundantly clear with an intensity that can be overwhelming. This, in turn, reinforces the blunt apostolic insight from the St. Paul: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (I COR. 15:14). No amount of modern “reinterpretation” of the Lord’s resurrection to the contrary can effectively silence or refute what the Apostle wrote. The Christian Faith – and the Church – stands or falls on the truthfulness of the bodily resurrection of Christ.

The Apostle Paul further warns us that a non-resurrected Christ has even worse consequences for those who would mistakenly proclaim a resurrection that never actually occurred: “We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God the he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true the dead are not raised” (v. 15). Finally, and with a brutal honesty that reveals the Apostle’s clarity of thought, he does not shrink from exposing the futility of purpose that a non-resurrected Christ would collapse into: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied” (v. 19). That assessment sounds just about right to me.

Yet after decisively dealing with such theoretical scenarios, St. Paul confidently proclaims the Gospel that he had himself received (literally that which was “handed over” or “traditioned” to him): “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (I COR. 15:20). Therefore, when someone dies, we do not have to “grieve as others do who have no hope” (I THESS. 5:13). Christian hope is directed to the future and the eschatological fulfillment of God’s providential care for, and direction of, our common human destiny, culminating in a transfigured cosmos and “the redemption of our bodies” (ROM. 8:23). This is only possible if the “last enemy” – death itself – has been overcome from within, revealed to the world in and through the Risen Lord. Little surprise, then, that Pascha is the “Feast of Feasts” and “Holy day of Holy Days” if all of the above is what we indeed celebrate! Pascha has inaugurated the current paschal season of forty days – culminating in the Ascension - during which we intensify our focus on the Lord’s triumph over the sting of death. We, too, with the Apostle Paul exclaim with glad hearts: “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I COR. 15:57).

The natural cycle of life and death can weary the human heart with the inescapability of its endlessly reoccurring patterns: “Vanity of vanities! … All is vanity…. A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” (ECCLES. 1:2,4). “And therefore,” according to Fr. Georges Florovsky, “the burden of time, this rotation of beginnings and ends, is meaningless and tiresome.” Our dissatisfaction with this closed cycle undermines the very claim that it is all “natural,” and therefore acceptable to the human spirit. On the contrary, human beings are always seeking an escape into whatever “reality” will allow us at least some temporary relief from the oppressiveness of a closed universe forever marred by corruption and death. If not Stoic resignation – “the impassibility or even indifference of the sage” (Fr. Florovsky) - then perhaps a desire to transcend the limitations imposed upon us by “nature,” will lead to a desperate search for an ecstatic experience – the dionysian impulse.

If I may indulge in a pop culture reference from the heady rock music of the past (over fifty years ago now!), there exists a song that more-or-less captures this inchoate desire for liberation: “Break on Through (to the Other Side).” For the moment forgiving the fatal excesses and self-indulgent pretensions of the singer-songwriter of this popular song; we can hear in its strained lyrics the human need to pass over (“break on through”) into a realm (“the other side”) that promises a heightened experience of reality that our mundane world cannot deliver. Of course, this can begin with “religion” or what we call “mysticism” (often a dangerous combination of mist + schism as I have heard it described). On a more secular level, the search for transcendence can be attempted through science or art. Within the context of the song we are now discussing, however, this possibly/probably refers to the rebellion associated with transgressing moral and ethical norms that seem to be restrictive and not liberating. This would be the dead world of bourgeois middle-class values supported by an insufferably bland moralistic Christianity. In other words, to all that the word “suburbia” implied in the 60’s. This is justified by the individual desire for self-autonomy, “freedom,” or a stance against hypocrisy. Only God knows how much of this was only a self-justification for indulging the passions and acting irresponsibly. In other words, the quest for freedom can easily degenerate into “license.” When the imagination fails, there is always the more prosaic and ever-popular “eat, drink and make merry, for tomorrow we die.” When practiced with serious abandon, though, this leads to a “breakdown” rather than a “breakthrough.” (Alas, this was the fate of our singer-songwriter).

All of these attempts to “break on through to the other side” can be both exhilarating and dangerous; heroic or pathetic; inspiring or disgusting. When pursued with a seriousness that reveals the human spirit’s refusal to submit, not only to mediocrity, but to the laws that eternally legislate the “house of the dead” that our world has become through human sinfulness, then such attempts at self-transcendence can earn our respect. Yet, an air of futility permeates all such autonomous attempts at self-liberation, for the human person has no such inherent capabilities apart from the power of God. A wholly different issue is raised by promethean pride that resists any “authority” greater than the self – including God. (It was the anarchist Bakunin who said: “If God exists, then I am a slave”). Here we cross over into the world of “mystical insolence” and demonic rebellion.

 

It is only Christ who has truly “broken through” to the “other side.” Again, this claim can only be made based upon the “fact” of His bodily resurrection.

 

Yet, it is only Christ who has truly “broken through” to the “other side.” Again, this claim can only be made based upon the “fact” of the bodily resurrection of Christ. Death itself – the fear of which subjects us to “lifelong bondage” - has been transcended in the voluntary death of Christ; a “resurrecting death” that was revealed to the Lord’s astonished disciples when He appeared among them following His burial and said: “Peace be with you.” (JN. 20:19) This was not a case of resuscitation and the resumption of natural life within the time and space of this world. For the Apostle Paul writes: "For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never did again; death no longer has dominion over him” (ROM. 6:9). The human spirit’s “natural” desire for self-transcendence is no longer wasted on rebelliousness, utopian dreams, or nihilistic despair. Now it is Truth itself which has set us free. And this Truth is Christ. It is actually the will of a merciful and loving God that desires this for us; and God has acted to make this possible by raising Christ from the dead, the “first fruits” of a general resurrection that we await in patient expectation of God fulfilling the promises made to us “according to the Scriptures.”

We can close these “fragments” with again turning to Fr. Georges Florovsky who, employing some of the remarkable liturgical hymns that illuminate our celebration of Pascha, describes the one meaningful “breakthrough - our liberation from death - in the following manner:

 

Amidst the darkness of pale death shines the unquenchable light of Life, the Life Divine. This destroys Hell and destroys mortality. “Thou didst descend into the tomb, O Immortal, Thou didst destroy the power of death” (kontakion). In this sense Hell has been simply abolished, “and there is not one dead in the grave.” For “he received earth, and yet met heaven.” Death is overcome by Life. “When Thou didst descend into death, O Life Eternal, then Thou didst slay Hell by the flash of Thy Divinity” (Vespers of Great and Holy Friday).

 

More On the Samaritan Woman

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

 

CHRIST IS RISEN! 

INDEED HE IS RISEN!

 

Pascha - The Thirty-Second Day

More On the Samaritan Woman

 

 

I was reading the commentary of the biblical scholar, Brendan Byrne, on the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. Following his commentary, he concluded with an additional passage tha he termed a "Reflection. It is a very concise and insightful application of the meaning of this timeless dialogue for Christians of any time and place:

 

Reflection: The conversation between Jesus and the woman of Samaria begins with a request on his part for a gift of water to slake his thirst. His need for this simple service becomes the occasion for bringing the woman to an awareness of a much deeper need that she has, a "thirst" for life, which he alone can satisfy.

As the conversation proceeds and deepens, Jesus leads the woman to ever-deeper self-knowledge, knowledge of himself and knowledge of the gift he has to give her - a gift so much greater than anything she can do for him. The woman allows Jesus to "tell her the story of her life." Running beneath all the disjointed and unsatisfactory aspects of her life has been a story of divine grace. Jesus has brought this story to the surface in the context of his wider mission to her people.

All this makes the episode such a wonderful paradigm of progress in prayer and spiritual transformation. Spiritual direction aims to allow Jesus to  tell us "the story of our life" in the sense of gathering up all the fragments, the twists and the turns, the false steps and failures, so that we can see them woven into a coherent and meaningful narrative of grace. The Lord can then lead us, as he led the woman, across constricting barriers  of prejudice and fear, to a "worship in Spirit and truth" that is both liberating and apostolic.

From Life Abounding by Brendan Byrne (p. 90)