Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[From Fortune]

What business are you in?” Peter Drucker famously asked his clients. The wisest of all management thinkers knew that fundamental question was most important. If we could ask his question of the entire Fortune 500 today, the answer would be especially important because it isn’t what it used to be.

The implications of the change are considerable for all of America’s big companies and for the country. Here’s the change in a nutshell: Until recent years the Fortune 500 was in the business of solving people’s problems. Now, increasingly, it’s in the business of solving the world’s problems.

Ford  is promoting - not better things for better living, but “Better World.”

Wal-Mart is saying, “Change a light. Change the world,” to promote the environmental advantages of fluorescent bulbs.

Exxon Mobil is “Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges.”

GE says it’s helping “solve some of the world’s toughest problems.”

Starbucks  buys “fair trade coffee

What’s going on? A major part of the explanation is that we’re an incredibly rich society. One must never minimize the plight of the poor, but the reality is that on the whole we live amid greater abundance than any nation has ever known, and that changes people’s priorities. We can worry more about helping the world to the extent we can worry less about helping ourselves.

Read about it here.

[From me]

When I saw the headline it caught my attention.  As I read the article it hit me that corporations are attempting to do what the church should be doing.  Corporations are no longer just trying to make a profit they are trying to change the world.  Isn’t that the job of the church?

Didn’t hospitals, orphanages, and other social agencies used to be run and funded by churches?  Not anymore.   What are a few churches known as today?  In the eyes of unbelievers they are seen as “freeloaders” because they don’t pay property taxes.  Sometimes churches go asking for donations when in my opinion it should be the other way around.

I pray our church gets to the point if we weren’t around there would be a void.  If Fortune 500 corporations are getting “religion” isn’t it time that churches became known for changing communities, cities, nations and the world?

What do you think?

Trackback URI | Comments RSS