Many leaders of missional enterprises have been given the entrepreneurial gifts needed to initiate new ventures. Certainly, entrepreneurs need to know how to begin, create, and sometimes make dramatic pivots along the way.

They also need to know how to persevere when that is called for. To keep going. Not to give up.

Missional enterprise leaders throughout the body of Christ give testimony to the critical importance of perseverance:

• The Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics calls perseverance one of the “Five Christian Traits Every Entrepreneur Needs.”
• An article on Perseverance on the Blog site of Convene, a Christian Business Forum organization, provides the following anecdote:
  

  “One of the questions I ask [business leaders] is: “To what do you attribute your financial and business success?”  The most common response across all respondents is: perseverance.”

   

• Speaking specifically to Business As Mission (BAM) efforts in pioneering regions around the work, the GoLiveServe organization says:
  

  “Business is hard work. In developing countries resistant to the Gospel, BAM is even harder. It takes great perseverance to remove rocks, sand, and toxic substances before the soil could be ready for sowing. There is no short cut to harvest.”

The apostle Peter indicates that our perseverance is built on our faith in God and our knowledge of him. He exhorts his readers to add perseverance to the sequence of qualities starting with our faith:

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.1

Interestingly, even the secular world senses the reality of this principle: Entrepreneur.com features an article entitled “In Order to Persevere, You Need Deeply Held Beliefs.”

May we all, with our missional enterprise ventures rooted in our faith in Christ, and equipped with knowledge and self-control, receive grace to persevere in his calling, for his glory.

Verse of the Week:

Lord of the Harvest, give grace this week for us to persevere in your strength, in your work, for your glory.