Sam Wells says the church should learn how to do business. The church literally is business and commerce offers three ways of being church by being a business; instrumental, exemplary and social.
For William Temple the church is a particular form of business, a cooperative business. It’s through instrumental, exemplary and social cooperative commercial activities that the church demonstrates a deeper understanding of the Faith and a wider vision of co-operation than that offered by the modern secular cooperative movement, “the church is the only cooperative society in the world that exists for the benefit of its non-members."
Andrew McLeod speaks of the role of the church in the development of the modern secular cooperative movement which now makes up thousands of democratically controlled businesses serving millions of members worldwide. But both the church and the cooperative movement have largely forgotten the theological basis for cooperative commerce and William Temple’s wider vision of the church as a cooperative society primarily of benefit to the wider community of non-members. McLeod points to the experience of the first Christians in immediately creating a social structure based on democratic control of their collective resources, which were shared freely. This voluntary system carried great spiritual weight for them and was a clear continuation of values that were encouraged in the stories of the Old Testament.
For McLeod this presents a challenge to the contemporary church “…to shift from the soup kitchen [and Food Bank] mentality to becoming a birthing centre for cooperative enterprises that empower those who are struggling”.
For me, a mere two months into the role of HeartEdge Commercial Development Co-ordinator, I have come across a wealth of examples of churches, often unwittingly piloting, searching for and exploring such specifically cooperative approaches to instrumental, exemplary and social commerce. The irony is they are often doing this in isolation, reinventing the wheel on their own, rather than cooperating together to replicate and grow good practice.
HeartEdge is about sharing what we have and finding what we need. A big part of my role is to enable sharing of what works for you commercially and what you need commercially. It’s about making useful connections with other churches, co-operating together to grow co-operative instrumental, exemplary and social commerce across the HeartEdge network and beyond.
I’m currently working with churches to scope out and deliver 3 sorts of new instrumental, exemplary and social commercial opportunities, all of which are a series of variations on the theme of caring, sharing, cooperative commerce:
Develop new income streams from church premises and other fixed assets.
Examples:
A second example concerns doing the same with Church Car Parks currently rented out to commercial car park management companies. Churches would form their own national cooperative Car Park Management Company and thus retain more of the income for churches who are members.
Develop commercial social enterprises and co-operatives to provide new income streams to finance the church’s mission, particularly social mission whilst expanding that mission through commercial activities. Developing Replication Strategies of successful church-based models with other churches.
Examples
Develop new sources of charitable giving to the church from mainstream commerce – ‘Re-inventing the Commercial Benefactor’
Example
FOR HELP WITH AN INITIAL SCOPING EXERCISE OF OPPORTUNITIES LIKE THESE AND OTHERS FOR YOUR CHURCH CONTACT DAVID.NICHOLSON@SMITF.ORG
Dave Nicholson
26th July 2021