It's Not Business, It's Personal

Jesus is not merely an entrepreneur who has found a promising enterprise on one of His planets. Rather, He is a ravished Bridegroom who has come to win the affections of a lovesick Bride. That makes it personal to Him. In an age when ministry success is often measured by church growth statistics and name recognition, Jesus is calling us to once again return to the simplicity of serving Him because it's personal for us, too.

Following is an excerpt from It's Not Business, It's Personal...

            I’m reluctant to admit it, but I got the title for this book from a movie.
            Sometimes you’ll find a one-liner in a movie that will arrest your attention with it’s profundity. That’s what happened to me while watching the movie, You’ve Got Mail. I’ll paint the backdrop so the one-liner makes sense.
            In the movie, Meg Ryan plays the role of a bookshop owner in New York City who inherits the business from her mother. With her mother now deceased, the bookshop means the universe to Meg. It’s her inheritance, her livelihood, her passion, her future. Her entire world revolves around this bookshop.
            Tom Hanks plays the other main character in the movie. He’s a multi-millionaire who owns a chain of book superstores, and he decides to open one of his superstores right around the corner from Meg’s tiny bookshop. That development incites Meg to try to save her livelihood by launching a campaign of negative publicity against Hanks and his superstore.
            The plot has an interesting twist to it. Hanks and Ryan, totally by chance, happen to strike an anonymous friendship through email correspondence. Without realizing who he’s emailing, Hanks begins to give Ryan counsel (via email) on how to deal with the person who is making problems for her business. He encourages her to resist her competitor with everything she’s got. To bolster her confidence, he keeps repeating his mantra, “It’s not personal, it’s business.” What he means is, when you attack your competitor, you’re not launching an attack against him personally; you’re merely making wise business moves. Be combative. Put up a fight. There’s nothing personal about what you’re doing; it’s strictly what must be done to survive in the business world.
            He tells her to keep repeating to herself, “It’s not personal, it’s business.”
            Soon thereafter, Hanks learns of the true identity of the woman he’s been emailing. She’s the owner of the bookshop that he’s putting out of business! As the irony of it strikes him, something else also strikes him: He’s falling in love with her!
            Hanks begins to spend more time with Ryan, purposely finding ways to get to know her better. Throughout their budding friendship, Hanks knows that he’s emailing Ryan, but Ryan doesn’t know she’s meeting with the man whom she is anonymously emailing.
            Well, the inevitable happens. Meg Ryan’s customer activity plummets, and she is forced to close her business.
            After Meg’s business dies, Tom Hanks has a sudden epiphany and realizes he wants to marry Meg. But how can he possibly win her heart, now that he’s the one responsible for putting her out of business?
            It’s against this backdrop that we come to a scene in the movie in which Tom and Meg are together and Tom is trying to formulate an apology for putting her out of business. What can he say? At a loss for words, he reverts to his old slogan and lamely says to her, “It wasn’t personal.”
            Meg’s response is classic. “All that means, is that it wasn’t personal to you. But it was personal to me. Because whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal.” At that, Tom Hanks is rendered entirely speechless.

It’s Personal To Jesus

            The profundity of Meg’s response is amazingly applicable to the church of Jesus Christ. To Jesus, the church is not a business. It’s personal.
            Jesus is not merely an astute businessman who has found a promising enterprise on one of His planets. He’s not an entrepreneur who is working a new angle to enlarge His inheritance. He’s not a speculator who is trying His hand at a new, innovative venture. No, none of these images come even close to depicting the heart of Jesus and His mission on planet Earth.
            Rather, Jesus is a lovesick Bridegroom who has come to win the affections of a Bride—the Bride His Father has promised Him.
            Love isn’t business, it’s personal.
            Allow me, therefore, to take Tom Hanks’s mantra, invert the wording, and make this statement regarding Jesus’ perspective on the church:

It’s not business, it’s personal.

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