Sabbath-Rest

February 22, 2024
Abiding in Christ, Leadership

An Invitation to “Restless” Missional Entrepreneurs

Despite the increasing efficiencies achieved through modern technologies, rhythms of appropriate rest are less and less common.1 This is especially true of business owners and entrepreneurs. For example, a 2017 survey of entrepreneurs found that their greatest ongoing challenge was achieving an appropriate work-life balance. A summary of the survey2 listed the “greatest ongoing challenge” for entrepreneurs as:
  • Finding work-life balance — 45 percent
  • Building a good team — 35 percent
  • Fundraising — 30 percent
  • Keeping up with email — 28 percent
  • Market penetration — 28 percent
  • Sales leads — 25 percent

Furthermore, a report in the Harvard Business Review explains that trends of overwork continue even as evidence mounts that it is back-firing and actually leading to lower productivity. The article3 summarized the research in the following way:

There’s a large body of research that suggests that regardless of our reasons for working long hours, overwork does not help us. For starters, it doesn’t seem to result in more output.

Christian business owners and entrepreneurs, for whom the concept of sabbath-rest should be familiar, seem to be no different. How can we cultivate a proper understanding of rest and cultivate life-giving practices of rest, even as we bear the significant responsibilities of business leadership?

In the coming weeks, we will feature several articles about the topic of sabbath-rest for missional enterprise leaders. These insights come from the experience of business leaders who have wrestled with the challenge of developing rhythms of rest and sabbath.

Entrepreneurs and business owners are generally more inclined to accept risk. Will we accept the “risk” of stepping out in faith as we grow in this area?

Verse of the Week:

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God . . . Hebrews 4:9

May God lead us increasingly into a better understanding and practice of “Sabbath-rest” as we lead our businesses.

1 Some of the content in this introduction to our series on Sabbath rest is taken from a previous M3 Weekly article, entitled “The Restless Entrepreneur.”
2 https://nodesource.com/press/entrepreneur-survey-findings-personality-traits-challenges
3 https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-backfire-for-people-and-for-companies

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