church planting and the dotcom days

As some of you know, I ventured (or strayed) into the dotcom world in the late 90s. It was a heady time when new companies were popping up in dorm rooms, garages, and in coffee shops. Entrepreneurs were getting funded on the basis of scribbling a few notes on a napkin. "Conventional" business world was temporarily suspended in favor of the "new" economy that we were entering.

For part of that time, I was involved in running my own start-up and had a chance to interact and network with other 20/30-year olds who were involved in start-ups. Later I worked for six months at Christianity.com, now on its third owner.

Two things converged to create a chaotic experience:

• Internet companies were going public and create enormous sums of paper wealth for lots of people. This often happened irregardless of profitability (an "old" economy assumption);
• As this happened, more and more companies kept getting huge sums of venture capital (also known as "other people's money or OPM).

In my opinion, this changed what I thought was the beauty of the Internet revolution -- a group of people setting out to change the world. These early missionaries bootstrapped and worked long hours because they wanted to make a difference. They believed in their mission.

As the venture capital increased and IPO's created instant millionaires, you saw fewer missionaries and more mercenaries. Here's the basic difference:

• A missionary does what he does because he feels called to the task and would do it for free.
• A mercenary is a hired gun who is simply there to make money.

In my opinion, the mercenaries ruined the Internet revolution.

This is why I love to be around other church planters. No one goes into church planting for the money! I believe the assessment tests are designed to select only those people who are a bit nutty and crazy.

And Christ-followers who are attracted to church plants tend to be missionary in nature as well. This is a good bit of the reason why the most evangelistic years of a church's life will be the first ten. A majority of the people are "on mission."

The truth is ... God always expects the church to be missionary in nature, no matter if it's one year old or 100 years old. May God create more missionaries and fewer mercenaries.