Business learns from Purpose Driven Church

Forbes.com: Purpose Driven Yep, you read that right. Business leaders are learning from 'The Purpose Driven Church'. Now, I've never read the book; I suspect I've tended to feel let down by the whole grow-your-church thing since I never found any of it that 'successful' when I was in Parish ministry. But looking at this article I think I may have misjudged, somewhat.

From the article: "So let's engage our imaginations, substitute the word "business" for "church" and see what Warren has to tell us. • Don't try to make your business grow. Instead, work to make your business healthy. Because if it's healthy, it will grow...."

That's the principle of of obliquity again! In fact the best thing that came out of the whole Church Growth movement of late has been Christian Schwartz's Natrual Church development"> which takes exactly the view Rick Warren propogates in the quote: Churches grow if they're healthy. The book then goes on to help you to administer and understand the results of a health check. Had I still been in parish ministry, this is the kind of approach I would be looking seriously at.