CORPORATE ACCELERATORS: HOW MIGHT A MODEL FROM THE BUSINESS WORLD SPEAK TO THE CHURCH?

Purpose                                                                                               

This paper is written firstly to explore in outline terms the Corporate Accelerator model now growing in importance in the business sector and which was the subject of a recent programme on BBC Radio 4.[i]   Then to ask how, if at all, such a model may speak to UK Baptists and Baptist churches.

Background

We live in a time of rapid change, not least in the business sector. Markets change very quickly and businesses that fail to develop new and differentiated products and services at some speed are increasingly at a disadvantage.[ii] Emerging technologies, for example 3D printing, are transforming the competitive capacity not only of small and medium-sized enterprises but increasingly of individuals. Indeed, the smaller the business unit, arguably the more agile in responding to emerging markets and opportunities.

Global connectivity is making access to knowledge – previously the province of the educated, of governments and large corporations - available to all. The sharing of access, ideas and wisdom can be seen in such examples as Ubuntu[iii], TED[iv] and Wikipedia[v]. Patients now visiting their GP’s surgery often have a far greater awareness of potential diagnoses through the dissemination of knowledge.

Changes to technology and knowledge and more open access mean that, while large organisations may struggle to achieve the flexibility to evolve, start-ups now tend to outflank their older and larger competitors in reinvention and differentiation. The scale of this outperformance is sometimes hard to overstate. While mature markets will often depend upon marginal returns, so-called “exponential organisations”[vi] can enjoy a substantially higher return on investment than that of their larger competitors and in far shorter timescales.

Exponential organisations – an illustration

The following example illustrates the rapid growth and impact of a well-known exponential organisation.[vii] The online hospitality marketplace AirBnB overtook the well-established global hotel chain Hilton in a matter of a few years.  It is hard to remember now that, although the brand name of Hilton has enjoyed widespread recognition for many years, no one had heard of AirBnB 8 years ago – it did not exist then.

AirBnB shares the following characteristics with many other exponential organisations:

1. The firm is guided by an overarching transformative purpose which captures the imagination both of its team and also potential partners and purchasers. AirBnB’s corporate vision is “Belong anywhere”. In other words, they have a bold vision of a changed future, to which they are wholly committed and which they pursue relentlessly, challenging any conventions that do not support their purpose.

2.  In the case of AirBnB, they have successfully challenged two long-accepted givens in the hotels market:

 a.        that you need to own the assets (hotel rooms)

 b.     that there is a high capital barrier – a minimum number of rooms       required to enter the market profitably

Instead, AirBnB has leveraged assets through countless temporary alliances with hundreds of thousands of owners. By engaging these partners and their contacts and by exploiting the democratisation of online markets, they can offer a huge diversity of accommodation at a speed and level of tailored service, and more cheaply, than any linear organisation such as Hilton could match.

The role of corporate accelerators

There are two main traditional growth strategies for businesses:  mergers and acquisitions or organic growth via business development, mostly in the form of creating new products for existing markets.  Corporate accelerators are typically larger firms that have accepted their lack of agility in developing new goods and services in a timely way and have evolved a new strategy.

Why they lack this agility is a good question and one that is hard to answer succinctly. It is likely that the larger the organisation and the longer it has existed, the more it is likely to think, plan and act in fixed, linear and isolated ways – focusing upon their past experience, unchallenged assumptions and being process-driven. An example would be LEGO whose corporate strategy for a long time assumed that children would always love to play with plastic bricks and that the firm’s focus should be on protecting their brand. Children (and not a few adults too) continue to love their products but their main client group is now offered a vast range of digital and online alternatives. LEGO took some time to engage with this rapid change in its environment but has now responded with hybrid products.

The most successful emerging products and services now tend to arrive through a process of ‘discontinuous innovation’.  Such an approach requires a wholesale reinvention of attitudes, skills and the willingness to network and collaborate with some unlikely partners. There is a worthwhile paper exploring these issues, ‘Finding, forming, and performing: Creating networks for discontinuous innovation’ [viii] particularly around networks and joint ventures, written by senior academics at London Business School, Imperial College and Cardiff University.

Corporate accelerators support early-stage innovation in a cost-effective, speedy and flexible way. They are an evolution of earlier models such as Lockheed’s so-called ‘Skunk Works’[ix]  A similar approach is taken by so-called business incubators; sometimes these terms are used interchangeably although there are some differences between the incubator and accelerator models[x]. 

By taking the initial risk on investing in promising entrepreneurs and their ideas, such as AirBnB, the accelerator enables early-stage ventures to make rapid progress towards the market and hoped-for profitability. 

The accelerator process is flexible but might be expected to include some or all of the following:

·           Mentoring and peer-mentoring

·           Brokering connections with potential investors

·           A fixed-term duration, to sharpen target-setting and drive achievement

·           Encourage the formation of collaboration through cohorts

·         Typically take a non-controlling equity stake in the start-up, so that there is a direct financial interest in the eventual profitability of the enterprise

·     The objectives they support have some link with the accelerator’s long-term business interests

Accelerators act as a bridge between innovation and the corporation. They are not philanthropic or disinterested:  they are looking for the next attractive products and services which are expected to provide the greatest return on investment. They provide an environment for new rules and a place to spot ideas on the edge of what is currently known.  When they work well, the accelerator creates an economic benefit which is wider than just the interests of its shareholders, while at the same time nurturing entrepreneurial spirit and culture.

We should not be surprised that the unconventionality of the model means that there are effective examples drawn from outside the business sector and from joint ventures and networks.  An academic example would be the Entrepreneurship Center of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. This collaborative venture has accelerated over 140 start-ups, with a market value of over half a billion Euros. [xi]

Discussion points for churches and mission, arising from the outline description of this model.

These are offered from a personal point of view and I would welcome critical discussion of them:

1.     How important is innovation to us as Baptists Together?

Why do we need innovation when we’ve been doing church for centuries?  Surely if we simply follow the Bible and the Spirit’s leading, we just need to remain faithful.  If this is so, then innovation drawing on lessons from the business sector may be just a fad.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to respond at length to this question. However, it seems to me that there are some powerful arguments commending a serious exploration of new attitudes and approaches:

·  Theologically – all we know, we know provisionally and partially. Scripture has to be reinterpreted by each generation under the Spirit’s guiding. Some theological and ecclesial ‘certainties’ from past centuries are now long since discarded and replaced with new insights.

·    Missionally – the importance of mission as contextual to the locality, culture, people-group rather than a single, universal paradigm.

·   Historical ecclesiology - the church has continually been subject to reinvention. Such emerging movements have limited life-cycles: they grow, mature, decline and are succeeded in turn.

·       Sociological / demographic – however well UK Baptists have maintained our numbers in comparison with other mainstream denominations, we too need to take urgent action to avoid an imminent sharp decline.[xii]

For now, I infer from the fact that this paper was written at the invitation of the General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain that innovation is a topic of interest at the strategic level. 

2. Is there room for a dialogue between the world of business and the household of faith?

We must be wary of uncritically importing what may be attractive but inappropriate models from the business sector and expecting them to be a good fit in the life of the church nationally or locally. For example, anecdotally there is much concern expressed by Baptist ministers about appraisal and performance measures imported by deacons with corporate experience and applied to the ministry. These often lack a theological understanding of the role of ministers, much of whose most valuable work cannot be measured using performance indicators alone.

However, we should not automatically disregard ideas from the business world when these may inform or challenge us, theologically and missionally, and help us to attend to the gospel in the context of the culture in which we live.

We sometimes hear church leaders speaking out against what they perceive to be unhelpful or unjust business practices, for example zero-hours contracts. Are there ways in which we may engage in a process of critical correlation[xiii], bringing insights from business into dialogue with the life and mission of the church? I am not aware of ways in which this is happening in our Baptist networks but I think this might be a useful area to explore. 

3.  How might the culture of exponential organisations speak to the local church?

We saw above that some of the marks of these new firms are:

·    They each have an overarching, transformative purpose – they think very big and some succeed in what they set out to do

·  They are wholehearted in pursuit of their aims and do not allow themselves to be distracted by minor issues

·        They embrace discontinuous innovation

·       They challenge all existing constraints and look to the edge to see what is coming

·     They network to gain access to resources and knowledge they do not need to own

·        They work in cohorts - collaboratively, with teams that share the same values

·       They accept that some ideas will fail and that successful products may have a short life-cycle, leading to a further reinvention.

We must not compare unequal things. The firms we have been thinking about exist for a very different motive and purpose than churches. The church is a collection of saints trying to live out their lives together, faithfully, as followers of Jesus Christ and joining in with his mission. We are witnesses to the work of God in our lives as well as in the wider world. 

Yet we should not deny that there are some important similarities. Hopefully, we remind ourselves at least weekly of the overarching transformative purpose for which Christ has brought us together.  We should be encouraged to see that God has a bigger agenda then we tend to admit, perhaps leading us to acknowledge some minor distractions that we ought to lay to rest. Increasingly, I hear much more said now about the importance of Baptists associating and networking – though I doubt that this can be facilitated best in future through process-driven, linear associations.

The real dangers we face are that we remain too easily satisfied with what we have known recently, too fearful to be serious about exploring alternatives or lacking the tools to engage in such an exploration. 

4.  What might we borrow or adapt from the accelerator model as we reflect upon nurturing entrepreneurial approaches to mission and church?

Here are some points for discussion:

a. Entrepreneurs are not comfortable people to be around. They worry people who long for a settled life. I believe we need a truly mixed economy of church, recognising complementary approaches. Alongside the steady, faithful witness of the whole church there is need for people who are able to move and shake and make things happen. How can we create opportunities for the nurturing of entrepreneurial Baptist Christians in mission, church-planting, wealth creation and so on? How do we hold and prize such people and retain them in relationship?

b. Do we understand why, if you are an innovator, you might remain or choose to associate with us Baptists? Perhaps through personal history, our theological distinctiveness or for reasons of loyalty; possibly not because we are celebrated for nurturing and resourcing truly radical innovation.

c.  Can we find ways to celebrate that, for want of more radical options, our theological colleges function sometimes as accelerators? They serve as places where new and sometimes wild ideas are welcomed, explored and tested in a supportive and non-judgmental environment; where people can dream some dreams and where informal cohorts form. Might we build on this with a dedicated and resourced pilot accelerator project?   

d.  The recent IGNITE report notes the trend towards bivocational ministry. Increasingly, university business schools have degree courses that offer new combinations of subject disciplines to suit the emerging needs of the world of work.[xiv] What new complementary combinations of ‘theology and…’ would aid effective ministry and mission in this new environment?

e. Do our training patterns release our pioneers or do they tend to domesticate them? I perceive a prevailing assumption that traditional models of ministry and mission will endure as the main future of the UK Baptist family of churches. Pioneers are encouraged to function within or alongside mainstream churches. A mixed economy of church is a fine concept but the resources available are almost entirely devoted to the more traditional model. Decisions about resourcing wild ideas are made by those from the centre of church rather than the edges. The assumption for Home Mission churches is that the desired end of most new church plants is to become like the majority of other churches.

f.  By their nature, true pioneers find solutions and make things happen regardless of the institutions to which they are nominally attached. However, I suspect there are lots of semi-pioneers who might be released, developed and become fruitful if there was a paradigm-shift away from resourcing maintenance towards innovation. Alongside the very welcoming emergence of the Pioneer Collective, how are we learning from the experience of the Church of England which, recognising that its long-term existence is in jeopardy, has created and resourced a pioneer stream?[xv].  

g.    How are we exploring how we facilitate the growth of social enterprise – so-called ‘business as mission’ - as a tool in Baptist mission? Here in Essex we are seeing the growth of our own Shared Space cio social enterprise. Next month we open our third centre and confidently expect a fourth to open before the year’s end.  We are priming these transformative projects with funds from the enterprise’s financial engine, not from external grants or Home Mission. This is an innovative approach to funding mission.

5.   How do we as a Baptist family of churches respond to risk?

Being willing to take a first risk is at the heart of the corporate accelerator model.

I contend that some level of risk is inherent in the exercise of faith by followers of Jesus.

Jesus told similar though not identical parables[xvi] about a master who puts his servants in charge of his goods while he is away on a trip. When he returns, the master takes account of the stewardship of his servants. Each is assessed according to how he invested the master’s goods to obtain a profit. It is clear that the master wishes to see the exercise of responsibility, engagement with his values and some profit from the servants’ activity. The master rewards his servants according to how each has fared as a steward. He sees that two servants have made a profit, describes them as having been faithful and gives them a reward. For the single unfaithful servant who played it safe, there is a less happy outcome. While these parables may be interpreted in several ways – and we should not reduce the parables to simple moral lessons – I suggest that both can speak to us about the active living out of faith.

My experience of working with (Baptist, Anglican, Methodist and other) churches is that they often tend to be highly risk-averse. Several reasons suggest themselves as to the cause of this but I believe that one of two reasons is likely to lie at the root of them all.  Firstly, there is a lack of belief in the capacity of God to replenish expended resources. We must hang on to what we have because we cannot expect more in future.  Secondly is the idea that it is better to remain stolidly with the known and safe rather than to speculate on something new which we may think has a risk of failure. Having served in two pastorates and as consultant to other churches, I find this is a commonplace view. Our churches are so often closer to being a Hilton than an AirBnB: asset-rich, cash-poor, highly conservative in deploying their resources, slow-moving, linear, incremental organisations. 

A similar assessment might also be made of aspects of our Baptist intermediary bodies: BUGB, BUC, associations and custodian trustees.[xvii]

I suggest that what matters is not the avoidance of risk but good risk management and a willingness to embrace acceptable levels of risk in seeking a ‘profit’ for the kingdom.

In saying this, I know of many very welcome examples of how Baptist churches are flourishing. I applaud and celebrate these but suggest that sometimes these happen in spite of our systems and structures not because of them.

Some might counter that being a ‘Hilton’ may be a true expression of faithfulness: why should we seek more AirBnBs? They are unlikely to endure. Those reading this paper must make up their own minds. As a passing comment, I find it interesting how often we judge the worth of Christian projects by their permanence. In a Baptist church I know well, they created a community restaurant which ran for 16 years.  Despite offering the gospel in relational ways to countless customers over that period, when the decision to close was made by the church, some members lamented that the original modest setting-up costs had evidently been wasted and queried whether, since it had closed, God had ever been in the venture at all. I hear the values underpinning such views expressed quite widely in my contacts with churches: projects are validated in part by their permanence.

As churches and intermediary bodies, I suggest we tend towards a custodial stance regarding God’s resources rather than a more entrepreneurial one. I find this difficult to reconcile with what Jesus teaches. In any conflict between charity law and a more radical response to the gospel, my experience leads me to believe that an excess of caution usually favours the former.

How can we lovingly but firmly push at the boundaries of our aversion to risk?

6.  How might adapting the accelerator model enable Baptists to test and promote wild, radical and left-field projects from the ‘edge’ for the sake of the kingdom of God? 

We may firstly point to Home Mission, which primes and supports pioneering work that is of benefit beyond its geographical location. The Essex church where I serve is one such beneficiary and we acknowledge this with sincere gratitude whenever the opportunity arises. Yet quite a proportion of Home Mission is spent on infrastructure. This is important: without some structure it is impossible for sustainable new developments to take place. But I wonder whether we have become so used to one way of doing things that alternatives are simply too threatening. We have moved back from scanning the horizon to focus on the safe and known, devoting funds to supporting an idea of church that we have inherited rather than nurturing innovation.

We also have a potentially dangerous over-reliance on this annual revenue source to sustain our Baptist structures.

We should acknowledge and celebrate the Pioneer Collective and perhaps suggest a dialogue with the enablers, mentors and pioneers in the Collective about how the accelerator model might speak to them.

Finally, we might boldly experiment with creating a pilot accelerator, adapting the corporate model to our Baptist values and purpose but being careful to avoid limiting creativity and risk-taking by imposing too rigid a framework about what the outcomes might be.

7.   Why are the issues raised in this paper timely? 

Our Baptist world will change dramatically over the next 10-20 years, with ageing congregations, deteriorating buildings and a reduced capacity of many churches to afford ministers in the traditional model. Brierley Consultancy has predicted a 9% decline within Baptist churches in the period 2013-2020.[xviii] Our ecclesiology means that action to attend to this falls, in the final analysis, to local congregations. They may find change is forced upon them more by external drivers than our prayerful response to the Spirit’s calling.

There remains a dogged assumption that more prayer will result in the kind of revival that will see our churches full once again.  That such a return to known and loved ways of discipleship and being church will vindicate an understanding of faithfulness that is chary of innovation.  I do not know what God will do but I do know that he will not be coerced into acting in line with our wishes. Many Old Testament characters had experience of remaining faithful to God in times of exile and I believe there is a strong possibility that we may face the same. This new environment will demand new missional and ecclesial responses.

In any dialogue between scripture and models from the business world, tested in prayer, how might we adapt aspects of the accelerator model to serve the kingdom of God in such times?

Summary

This discussion paper was written following the broadcast of a programme on corporate accelerators by BBC Radio 4, which was heard by a number of colleagues. We are evidently a Radio 4–friendly church! This discussion paper offers a definition and examples of accelerators and their work, which aim to support the development of so-called exponential organisations and discontinuous innovation.  It has reflected on some questions arising from this concept as they might relate to UK Baptist churches. 

This paper asks how our Baptist structures are promoting entrepreneurial thinking, with fluidity of thought, adequate resources and a willingness to engage with acceptable risk. Will we engage with discontinuous innovation or continue to focus at least as much upon maintenance? Are we willing to resource innovation at some risk?

Will Baptists Together be bold enough to move decisively in the direction of a more evenly mixed economy of church?

Ivan King BA MTh MBA

Co-pastor, Church from Scratch  - July 2016

I am grateful to two colleagues who commented critically on drafts of this paper, the contents of which reflect my personal opinions and not necessarily the views of Church from Scratch.

---

[i] "The Bottom Line: Old Dog, New Tricks. Broadcast on Thursday 9 Jun 2016 20:30." BBC Radio 4, 2016.

[ii] A good example would be Kodak. This was the market leader in the supply of photographic film, with worldwide brand recognition. Although early pioneering work took place within Kodak, the firm failed to recognise the potential of digital photography to threaten its survival. Failing to scan the horizon for emerging technology and ignoring the increasing culture of highly differentiated customer choice meant that Kodak did not accept that digital photography would replace its main products - a fatal mistake.  The contrast is with Fujifilm – a competitor which has successfully transitioned to digital.

[iii] Ubuntu is an open-source software platform that runs across smartphones, tablets and PCs.

[iv] TED is a nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful video talks. 

[v] Wikipedia is a free Internet encyclopedia that allows its users to edit almost any article accessible. Wikipedia is the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet.

[vi] The term was first used in Ismail, S. (2014) Exponential organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it). United States: Diversion Books.

[vii] Source: http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/de/Documents/technology/Corporate-Accelerator-EN.pdf (accessed 1 July 2016)

[viii] Birkinshaw, J., Bessant, J. and Delbridge, R. (2007) ‘Finding, forming, and performing: Creating networks for discontinuous innovation’, California Management Review, 49(3), pp. 67–84    

[ix] Skunk Works is an official alias for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. Skunk Works is responsible for a number of famous aircraft designs, including the U-2.  The designation is widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organisation given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, tasked with working on advanced or secret projects. The concept was explored and widely promoted by management thinker Tom Peters in the 1980s and 90s.

[x]  Accelerators tend to invest financially in their start-ups whereas incubators may not. Accelerators support start-ups in mutually supportive and challenging cohorts; incubators usually work on a one-on-one basis

[xi] https://www.en.unimuenchen.de/about_lmu/research/research_centers/entrepreneurship1/index.html [accessed 20.7.16] 

[xii]Where is the church going? (2010) Available at: http://www.brierleyconsultancy.com/where-is-the-church-going (Accessed: 24 July 2016)

[xiii] The critical correlation approach argues for a critical dialogue between interpretations of the Christian message and interpretations of contemporary cultural experiences and practices. The aim is to arrive at an understanding of why the church is as it is, in its context.

[xiv] When I studied for an MBA at Henley Business School 20+ years ago, the emphasis was on turning out rounded managers for large corporations. Earlier this year I joined the Management and HR Faculty of Coventry University London Campus as a part-time teaching fellow, to equip people to function as managers in portfolio careers where they have to bid to function in short-term roles. It is an entirely different approach, recognising the discontinuous change environment in which we now live.

[xv] http://www.pioneercollective.org.uk

[xvi] Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke 19:12-27

[xvii] In the past couple of years I have had discussions at association and custodian trustee level, in order to explore options for the reprovision of deteriorating church buildings in areas of great need of the gospel, where the local church is currently too poor to manage its own reinvention. At each stage I have heard that Baptist intermediary bodies, constrained by charity law, reluctantly may not lend money “at risk” – a position which has effectively ended the exploration. Our intermediary bodies have benefit of legal advice from those most skilled in charity law. Yet my 30 years’ experience in charity management, including as chief executive or chair of two national and several smaller charities, suggest that all new developments carry some risk. What matters is not the avoidance of risk but good risk management and a willingness to embrace acceptable levels of risk in seeking advancement for the kingdom.

[xviii] Where is the church going? (2010) Available at: http://www.brierleyconsultancy.com/where-is-the-church-going (Accessed: 24 July 2016)

A time to be born and a time to die

To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. 

Right now I am supporting a great team of church-based charity trustees as they manage the closure of their charity. After years of good work, time and circumstance have brought them - correctly in my view - to the decision to close.  They have made good plans to support their staff through redundancy and into finding new work. The winding-up has been managed well. Though not without sadness, closure is timely and marks the end of a good and productive episode in the lives of many people, leaving memories that can be cherished.

I find it interesting how often we judge the worth of faith projects by their permanence. Over the past 25 years as a consultant and also as a minister, I have had to advise the closure of a number of church-based charities and projects. The conditions they face now are some way distant from those facing their pioneers. Sometimes the evidence in favour of closure or merger or substantial change has been clear for some time but decisions get deferred. For some people of faith, when the decision to close is made, they even wonder whether the lack of permanence casts doubt on the validity of the original decision to start-up. 

I am indebted to a colleague for his suggestion that all church-based projects should have a so-called ‘sunset clause’ firmly embedded in their make up from the outset. In public policy, a sunset clause is a measure that provides that the law shall cease to have effect after a specific date, unless further definite action is taken to extend its life. Instead of an assumption that a project will continue indefinitely or simply be a line in the budget that is uprated for inflation year after year, it will be deemed to close unless there is a debate and a formal decision to renew it.

Some might say that this shows a lack of faith or commitment. I disagree. I think building in sunset clauses would require faith communities to be even more diligent about the currency of their projects.

Today is not about Elijah

Lectionary readings:  1 Kings 17: 8-24 and Luke 7: 11-17

The prophet Elijah and the Widow of Sarepta by Bernardo Strozzi

Today is not about Elijah.

And yet he is one of the towering figures of the Old Testament and his story starts in 1 Kings 17.

What I love about Elijah is that he is no cardboard cut-out figure.  He is as complex as the rest of us. The bible story does not just focus upon the most exciting events of his life but also allows us to see that, at times, he is anxious and depressed.  We see him here confidently speaking truth to power to King Ahab. Later we see him as God’s instrument for the public humiliation of the prophets of Baal and Asherah.  A short while later, he is to be found curled up, in the foetal position, under a bush; fearful, hopeless and utterly reliant on the grace of God to sustain his life. 

Give yourself a treat – when lunch today is over, settle down and read 1 Kings 17 to 2 Kings 2 and enjoy his story with all its ups and downs.

But today is not about Elijah.

It is about two women whose names are not recorded for us in scripture. We simply know where they live, their status in society and about the hopelessness that confronts them both.

In the Old Testament reading, the word of the Lord comes to Elijah. “Go to Zarephath in Sidon and stay there. I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food.”  At face value it is simply a statement but for Elijah it would have added greatly to his anxiety.  For Zarephath was in enemy territory. By telling Elijah to go there, God is asking for the highest degree of trust from his servant.  He is also showing that he is at work outside his chosen people of Israel.  The very idea would be a deeply unpalatable one and yet we see it in several places in scripture. For example, the Israelites are to have no dealings with the people of Moab.  Yet it is Ruth, the Moabitess, who becomes the ancestor of King David.

The widow’s situation is hopeless. She expects that she and her dependent son will run out of food within a day or two.  She is gathering firewood to cook a final meal before the pair of them will starve.  We see that she is a morally upright person by her implicit rejection of the alternatives: resorting to earning a living by begging or prostitution.

When God tells Elijah that he has commanded the widow to feed him, we have no sense that she was conscious of this.  She was a Phoenician and would have worshipped the gods of her homeland. She recognises that Elijah is a Jew and acknowledges (as his name suggests) that he worships the God whose name is specifically Jehovah.  But she is what seems to be: a Phoenician woman of low status.

God provides a source of food every day for the widow, her son and the prophet, who is hiding in the last place that his enemies would expect – their own land. We are not told the precise mechanics of the way God provides them with food but it is clear from the story that somehow this takes place – and God gets the credit for it.

Yet for some people, misfortunes tend to come along in clusters. Although her economic needs have been met, this woman now faces another crisis – the deadly sickness of her son. Again, the significance of this is deeper even than the natural anxiety that all of us would have for a family member who is gravely ill.  For her son is her hope for the future, both in terms of having grandchildren and in being supported in later life.  As life slips away from the boy, she turns to Elijah in her anger and her pain and asks whether he came as God’s messenger to kill her son.

When we face such times, it is natural to cry out against God. Indeed, Elijah, the man of God himself – in his prayer – wonders whether God is the author of the unfolding tragedy. I worry about people whose Christian experience has never included shaking their fist at God and wondering why he allows such bad things to happen. 

Well, God is good. When he hears the prayer and the boy’s life is restored, the joyful response of the mother shows the beginnings of faith in the living God.  And I get the feeling that Elijah’s own faith in God has grown too as he says to the woman: “Look, your son is alive!” He sounds surprised and relieved.

We may turn the pages of our bibles and learn how Elijah’s story progresses but we hear nothing further about this unnamed mother and son. And yet I have the sense that they were just as much in the mind of God as the headline-hero of 1 Kings.

Nearly 900 years pass since Elijah stayed at the widow’s house in Zarephath before the lectionary links this OT story with that we heard from Luke 7.

At the heart of the short tale is another unnamed widow, whom we know only by her home village of Nain. It is a small place in Galilee, just south of Nazareth.  It is still lived in today. 

Here we see Jesus and a large crowd, just after he speaks the so-called sermon on the plain. As the crowd approaches the town, they see a funeral procession for the only son of a widow.  She is distraught. Jesus’s heart goes out to her and he comforts the grieving widow. He does what no orthodox Jew should and touches the corpse which is being carried to the burial ground and once again life flows into the boy’s body.  Jesus restores the son to his mother and the crowds give glory to God for the miracle they have seen with their own eyes.

So today we have two amazing stories. What are we to make of them and what difference might these ancient tales make to our lives as we begin a new week as followers of Jesus today?

What I take from this, firstly, is that it suggests that God is at work even when he appears to be absent.  God was as aware of the situation of the widow of Zarephath as he was of Elijah’s predicament, though Elijah was ignorant of her very existence until God told him to go stay with her. And God often seems to choose to work with the kind of people that we would not even think of, let alone choose for ourselves.

In neither case where the son dies does either widow ask God for help.  Yet God provides, in the OT story by placing his prophet there with her and in the NT story we read that Jesus was in the right place at the right time – and that his heart went out to her. The word that we often see in scripture for this is compassion.  It is the human response of identifying with another in their pain or distress in ways that lead to acts of kindness and mercy.

I have been much taken recently with the call of Pope Francis for Christians to be merciful.  One of his assistants has helpfully defined this for us. "Mercy," he says, "is the willingness to enter voluntarily into chaos of another."

In our stories today, God chooses to enter into the messiness of human lives in two specific situations, standing with people that no one else notices or names.  He does not wait to be asked and he is not reluctant but is moved by love to do what he alone can.

Perhaps you are like me, in that you are often tempted to think that the Good Lord has made heaven and earth, all creatures and human beings.  He has set the laws of physics in motion so that everything seems to run on auto-pilot. That Jesus came and gave us a steer about how to think and act and that God has now cleared-off to a distant place while we are left to get on with life.  If so, then I hope these stories story speak to you – as they do to me.  They strongly suggest that, while we may not see God or think he is doing much, he is intimately interested in us and in the everyday parts of our lives.  That he is capable of weaving together our tiny lives into his one big story.

That he is still capable of surprising people of great faith, such as Elijah.

That he knows the names and the lives of the people who don’t attract any headlines.

And that he cares and is moved by love to want to help.

Of course, there are many loose ends in such a view.  Plainly God does not appear on a white horse on the crest of every hill, ready to save the day.  And it is natural to wonder why.  The widow of Zarephath thought that her son’s death was a punishment for her sins – whatever they were. But she was wrong.  I daresay the widow of Nain might have thought herself under God’s curse.  Yet the God who we see most clearly in Jesus does not send illness or misfortune.  Instead, he chooses to enter into the chaos of our lives if we allow him in, to stand with us and strengthen us.

Nothing speaks more profoundly of this deliberate choice of God to enter into our chaos, our pain and our human experience than the Communion we now celebrate together.  As you take bread and wine, banish the idea that God is the distant and passive observer of your life. As you remember his death, make the choice to live as though he daily enters into your chaos.  And as you remember his resurrection, ask for grace to choose to go with Jesus into the chaos of those around you – bringing the good news that God knows, God loves and God wants to make a life-restoring difference.

Amen.

This sermon was given at Friars Baptist Church Shoeburyness on Sunday 5th June 2016

The Reverend Reginald Walter Inchpin (1919-2016)

It is with much sadness that I share the news of the passing of someone who was a pioneer in contextual Baptist mission, the Reverend Reginald Walter Inchpin, who has died aged 97 after a long life of service.

Reg (always ‘Reg’) was born on 15 January 1919, the elder son in a family of agricultural labourers on Mersea Island in Essex. The family were staunch members of the East Mersea Baptist chapel (as it then was). For Reg, church on Sunday meant attendance at morning service at 11am, Sunday School at 3pm and evening service at 6.30pm, often shepherding his younger siblings to and from church. We forget nowadays how primitive life was in rural Essex in the 1920s. There was no electricity at the church until 1934 and Reg liked to reminisce that among the duties he shared with other young men in the fellowship was being a ‘lamplighter’ of the paraffin lamps and the chapel's coke-fired boiler.

Leaving school at 14, his first job was with the Merchant Navy, where he learned seamanship and where began his love of the sea and those who live along its coasts. He continued to serve in the Merchant Navy throughout the 1939-45 war but soon after VE Day, having spent 12 or so years in the service, he felt a strong call to train for Baptist ministry. He completed his studies at Spurgeon’s College in 1949.  It was while at Spurgeon’s that he met Bunty and they married soon after his graduation.

He served his first and second pastorates in Ilford (then very much ‘Essex’ rather than east London) and in Portsmouth, where he was a chaplain to seamen.  It was while in Portsmouth that Reg and Bunty were blessed with 3 children.Though always dedicated in their work, they never really felt ‘at home’ in Hampshire. After four years, the Inchpins dared to hope that there might be a way for their future ministry to include their twin loves, both of the sea and also mission among the people of the Essex marshes.  In the 1950s, parts of Essex were still remote from railways and life continued in the marsh villages much as it had for generations. Growing up in the area Reg loved the people and the place.  A kindly benefactor, knowing of their prayerful exploration, offered to buy and refit a 40-foot motorised launch as a mobile base for mission to the inlets and creeks of that stretch of the Essex coast. An amazing missional door was opening!

Evangeline, in the foreground, off the Essex coast around 1960

Once fitted, the boat was renamed ‘Evangeline’ and Reg was formally inducted to a peripatetic ministry at a commissioning ceremony in 1959 jointly hosted by the (then) Essex Baptist Association and the Coastal Mission Fellowship.  During term-time the family was billeted among church members at Wivenhoe, where the children attended school. This released Reg and Bunty to sail the boat to visit the coastal villages and some isolated farmsteads, where they would invite people on board.  Everyone looked forward to the choruses (the Keswick Convention Songbook was a favourite), a gospel message delivered with much good humour and to the ‘spread’ – tea, sandwiches and cake served by Bunty afterwards. Reg had a seemingly endless store of amusing anecdotes and jokes and this was the basis for his memorable talks to adults and children alike.  They had no need for a baptismal pool for any who responded: the waters of the Crouch, Roach and Blackwater rivers served in place of the Jordan!

The mission boat continued as their home base for the next 25 years’ of active ministry and it was only reluctantly that Reg accepted retirement in 1984.  By then the cost of necessary repairs to Evangeline was very high and the Essex Association could not continue to support the work (the Coastal Mission Fellowship having sadly closed in 1977).  To everything there is a season and it was time now for the Baptist mission boat to conclude its pioneering work.

In retirement, however, Reg found a role as mentor and encourager of a new generation of pioneer Baptist ministers – some young enough to be his grandchildren!  Though by then in his mid-80s, Reg took a keen interest in new Baptist church plants. He was mentor to several pioneering Baptists, though to the end he called it being their ‘senior friend!’  They found in him someone who was indeed a friend and whose commitment to mission served as a pattern to follow.  He will be much missed, not least in the Eastern Baptist Association (the successor to his beloved Essex Association, in which he was a long-serving council member in the '70s and '80s).

A memorial service is planned some time in May or June. If you would like to be kept informed, please contact me by email: parsonking@hotmail.co.uk 

 Ivan King, April 2016