The big boss had to go away on a long business trip. He decided to give the business to his workers for them to run and then he left. His final instructions were simple: in his absence the workers were was to care for and to enhance and to develop the business in order for it to benefit everyone. One day the big boss said he would return and see what they had accomplished.
The years went by and the workers cared for the business as well as they could. Some of them wanted to develop and modernise the business, to find new markets and serve new customers, but there was a concern shared by many that the business should look and feel the same as it did when the big boss had left.
One day, one of them opened the big boss’s desk and discovered plans that had been written by the big boss many years before in which he set out his hopes to develop the business in a new way. A meeting was held and many people put forward the argument that the development plans meant that the business didn’t always have to be the same. Surely, the business could grow and change in order to better meet the plans that the big boss had for it. Once again though, many insisted that the building should stay the same: the big boss had gifted it to them and they wanted to preserve it in that original state in his memory.
One day the big boss returned and he found a business that did look similar to when he had left, but sadly it was no longer profitable and was out of date. Nobody wanted to buy its products. The big boss knew that the workers had tried to honour him, but he was heartbroken that they had missed the point and that they had been unable to follow his plans to develop the business in a new way.
The EBA Mission strategy is designed to help all of us to consider the Places where we are and the Opportunities that we have in those places for mission. We want to help provide Inspiration, remind us all that we Need God and to offer Training and equipping to help us to be honest about our faith.
It has been really encouraging to hear about the way that churches who have used these mission parables have been blessed, encouraged, provoked and challenged. Please do consider sharing this parable and questions in a service or perhaps emailing it to others in your church or giving it to homegroup leaders.
Graeme Ross (EBA Mission Strategy Task group leader)
