I was driving down the road last week when I heard a woman being interviewed about a workshop she was giving that evening. It was on "Being an Intrepreneur" which is a new word related to being the opposite of "Entrepreneur." An entrepreneur comes
up with a new idea and takes it out into the world and makes it a reality. Usually, if this person is already in a company of some sort, that company doesn't easily welcome the new idea, and that person often leaves the company and goes out
on his own.
What this woman was promoting was welcoming new ideas within a company. She was focusing on how a company might need to change in order to welcome new ideas and the changes they would necessarily imply. Thus a person would
be an intrepreneur...bringing new ideas within the already established group. Google as a company already does this, even has a structure for it.
My thought was how this would apply to religious communities, to our well-established structures
and ways of doing things, so fixed and firm that we are hardly aware of the rigidity of thinking in which we live each day. I find it in myself in such unexpected ways - and I live unconventionally - that I know it is even more unconscious in traditional groups
and even untraditional ones.
A sister in her mid-eighties said recently to a woman in her 50's who is considering joining that group, "Come with us but don't be like us - show us the new." I wonder how being an "intrepreneur" in religious
life might work? Or not...