Entrepreneurship and the Church: The Case of Heartfelt

International Ministries in Harare

By Oscar Tutai

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Diploma in

Theology

Heartfelt Institute of Ministry

December 2016

1
Chapter 1
1.0 Introduction
Religion impacts many different areas of a persons life, such as family, politics, gender roles and
work. Sociologists have managed to marginalize the area of work and religion as work plays an
important role in the everyday lives of people. Entrepreneurial behaviour as a particular kind of
work has increased and can be seen as the driving force behind the capitalist system. Scholars
define an entrepreneur as someone who possesses a new enterprise, venture, or idea, and also
assumes the accountability for the risk and outcome, or someone who assembles resources (such as
innovations, capital, knowledge) in order to transform them into economic goods. The research on
entrepreneurship and religion has sociological beginnings in the works of Alexis Tocqueville and
Max weber in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, more recently, entrepreneurship researchers have
exposed specific links between religious beliefs and entrepreneurial behaviour. The findings show
that there is a relationship between religion and entrepreneurship, but these associations vary over
time and social settings. However since the new millennium, research on the relationship between
religion and work has gained consideration in sociology, but the specific relationship between
entrepreneurialism and religion has received limited attention. This paper seeks to establish a
sociological exploration on the relationship between entrepreneurial work and religion using
Heartfelt International Ministries as a case. The goal is to understand the link between religion and
entrepreneurial work for Christians.

2
1.1 CONTEXTUALISATION OF TERMS
1.1.1) CHURCH
As used in this paper, the church will refer to Heartfelt international ministries.

1.1.2) ZIMBABWE
The republic of Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa and is bordered by
South Africa to the south, Zambia to the north, Mozambique to the east and Botswana to the west.
Its size is 390 757 Square meters with approximately 1% of its surface area being water. According
to ZIMSTAT in 2012 the population stood at 13,061,239. Formerly known as Rhodesia, Zimbabwe
is a former colony of Great Britain and gained independence in 1980. English remains the official
business language with Shona and Ndebele being the dominant other languages in use. Zimbabwe
has an adult literacy rate of approximately 97%, one of the highest in Africa. Between 1980and
2000 Zimbabwe enjoyed accelerated economic growth and this slowed and later culminated in
serious economic crisis evidenced by unprecedented inflation levels. The local currency was later
abandoned in 2009 with the adoption of multi currency system popularly known as dollarization
(Shumba, 2014 pg 2)

1.1.3) ENTREPRENEURSHIP
According to the Wikipedia Encyclopaedia (2010), entrepreneurship is the act of being an
entrepreneur. It is a French word meaning one who undertakes innovations, finance and business
acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods. In order words, entrepreneurship
carries with it the idea of probably setting up a new (innovative) business idea, financing it or
sourcing for fund as well as meeting an economic need in the society. Notwithstanding the fact that
entrepreneurship is in itself a complicated, ambiguous and changeable phenomenon,(Landstrom
2007:12), my working definition for entrepreneurship is any deliberate action by groups of people,
communities or individuals in starting or engaging in business activities either formally or
informally to make a profit.

1.1.4) BELIEVER
One who accept Jesus as Lord and believes in Him.

3
1.2 AREA OF STUDY
This dissertation is in the area of Church and Society. In all societies the total value of goods are
distributed unequally with the most privileged individuals and families enjoying a disproportionate
share of income, power , and other valued resources. These inequalities forms divisions within
societies and this stratification system is present throughout the various social institutions which
includes the church. Ideas of Early sociological theorists continue to strongly influence the
sociology of religion. Durkheims 1921 book, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, which
is certainly the best known study on the sociology of religion, viewed religion within the context of
the entire society and acknowledged its place in influencing the thinking and behaviour of the
members of society. Durkheims theory of religion outlines that people see religion as contributing
to the health and continuation of society in general. Thus religion functions to bind societys
members by prompting them to affirm their common values and beliefs on a regular basis. On the
other hand weber viewed Christianity as a salvation religion that claims people can be saved when
they convert to certain beliefs and moral codes. Karl Max on the other hand held that religion
served as a sanctuary from the harshness of everyday life and oppression by the powerful. Within
religion is the strong hold of Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism encompasses a wide range of activities
which include healing, exorcising of demons, prophesy, miracle performances and the gospel of
prosperity. Anderson (2000) noted that in the 1970s partly as a reaction to the bureaucratization
process in established churches, new independent Pentecostal and Charismatic churches started to
emerge all over Africa. Anderson also noted that many of these vigorous new churches were
influenced by the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement in Europe and North America. The
Pentecostals from their beginning have been associated with healing, miracle performances this
standpoint is taken from Hollenwegers (1998) assertion that many parts of the world Pentecostal
churches developed after the World War II and had their peak in the fifties. From Hollenwegers
work it is seen that from its beginning Pentecostalism has been associated with healing and miracles
which can be the reason why in the Zimbabwean context Pentecostalism is also greatly associated
with healing and miracle performances. In Zimbabwe, Pentecostalism has been widely accepted by
many because of its assumed power to deal with the problems of society that had been deemed
impossible. Despite all these assertions social stratas are found in the church and there is still a
great deal of work that need to be done so as to deal with the inequalities in distribution of wealth in
the church so as to empower believers, who continually flock the Pentecostal church in this case
Heartfelt International ministries.
4
1.3 PROBLEM STATEMENT
The process of interaction and integration among people have resulted in both positive and negative
outcomes for believers and for the Church. With the globalised environment of the church,
entrepreneurship can be found to be a constructive outcome as it has its own particular niche. As
Rev Canaan Banana outlined at the University of Zimbabwe in 1991 according to the Religious
News service, Africa has shaken off the shackles of European colonialism, but African Christians
havent had as much success in gaining theological independence. Western theology according to
Rev Canaan Banana is theoretical, whereas Africans are faced with practical problems of living.
The newly born again Christians want to eat today rather than tomorrow and with the confines of
our gospel they must be feed. They dont have to postpone living. However the Gospel seems to
centre on debating doctrines about the end time and the kingdom to come, a pie in the sky as Rev
Banana would put it across, and this comes at the cost of enhancing the Christian experience and
focusing on changing the livelihood of the Christians especially those newly born. A question may
then be asked within the confines of social stratification and social statuses that are all social
problems in some way the problem of the Gospel? If all social problems points to the problem of
the Gospel, what then has the church done to try and regularise as well as level the social
framework or ground for all the believers.

1.4 AIM OF THE STUDY

The aim of this dissertation is to:
1. Evaluate the practical side of the Gospel in providing entrepreneurial skills.
2. Investigate the role of the church in managing social strata.

1.5 OBJECTIVES
Following the above aims are the objectives below:
1. Investigate the Historical background on Heartfelt International Ministries in line with
entrepreneurial concepts and activities.
2. Investigate entrepreneurial activities in Heartfelt international ministries alongside the
Gospel.
3. Providing a summary and conclusion of findings.

5
1.6 JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY
As the director of discipleship ministry within Heartfelt International ministries, I have noticed that
the value of the church will be questioned at one point in the coming years. To maintain credibility
among non-believers, the believers have to defend allegiance to the church by pointing at tangible
ways in which the church has made the believers better people. Thus attending church has to
become a social necessity, spearheading the provision of economic survival techniques for families
and individuals. As attending church provides the most important means of establishing and
maintaining a sufficiently strong connection with God, however such a connection is specifically
understood in the confines of salvation, life of meaning and provision of livelihood. Based on the
experiences in heartfelt international ministries gained through the discipleship ministry, many
people who give their life to Christ remains with untouched areas of life, which include provision of
employment among other things. Whilst effort to cloth the new believers have been made, the
empowering of the newly born again Christian. With all these concerns in mind, this thesis is
necessary as it seek to provide solutions to the believers in the church as it seeks to answer to
concerns of what the church is doing in terms of empowering the believers.

1.8 METHODOLOGY
This chapter presents a description of the research methods and methodologies that were employed
in the research and the reasons why they were chosen for this particular research. The study was
conducted on the HIM congregants in Harare, HIM stands out as one of the fastest growing
Pentecostal churches in Zimbabwe.

1.8.1 RESEARCH DESIGN

6
According to Denzin and Lincoln (2005), qualitative research refers to the systematic empirical
inquiry into life experiences and awarding them meaning, the researcher here tries to understand
how others make sense of lived (experienced) reality. Qualitative research aims at understanding a
certain phenomenon, it primarily answers the how and why questions of the research. In the context
of this study one of the aims is to answer to the questions how the congregants perceive
entrepreneurship in the church, how they manage to continue committing the few resources they
have and why they continue to give even when there is no guarantee that they will receive what they
are looking for. In this regard, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and unstructured interviews were
employed in this research in order to understand the congregants perceptions on financial
empowerment and entrepreneurial activities led by the church.

Quantitative research aims at understanding casual explanations, it primarily answers to who, when,
how much and how many and why there are relationships among specific variables. Quantitative
research is well suited for comparisons between group areas for example, congregants perceptions
on entrepreneurship may differ according to class, race, sex and educational level which is why
quantitative research was also employed in this study. However with quantitative research it is
difficult to study processes of dynamic phenomena, it only produces a statistic view of reality,
which is why qualitative methods were also employed in this study such that through their in-depth
analysis of social phenomena they would cater for the weaknesses of quantitative method.

SAMPLING DESIGN
Conyer (1984) notes that sampling involves the selection of a part to present the whole. The
research used purposive sampling as its sampling design. Purposive sampling is a technique that
does not rely on probabilistic theory but select samples based on the researchers subjectivity.
Purposive sampling can be very useful for situations where one need to reach a targeted sample
quickly and where sampling for proportionality is not the primary concern. Tamale (2011) explains
that using purposive sampling enables the researcher to arrive at potential respondents based on
his/her judgement on the data he/she thinks shall get from those respondents. In this case the
researcher targets only HIM congregants in Harare for the research.

7
SAMPLING SIZE
Heimen (2000) notes that, a sample is a process of selecting units (participants/respondents) from a
population of interest so that by studying the sample we may fairly generalize out results back to the
population from the study chosen. The study population was derived from the population of HIM in
Harare. HIM was specifically chosen for this study as it is one of the fastest growing Pentecostal
churches in Zimbabwe where business development of congregants have been emphasised so much
of late. The participants in this study were HIM congregants who are above the age of 18 years as it
is the legal adult age in Zimbabwe where a person can start making their own decisions and taking
responsibility for their own actions. The study used a sample size of 30 respondents derived from
the HIM Harare congregation. This sample size was chosen as a result of the limited time frame of
the research which could not allow for a very big sample size and as a way of trying to minimise
costs as this was a non-funded research.

DATA COLLECTION METHODS

Questionnaires
The researcher administered thirty questionnaires to thirty HIM congregants in Harare. Key (1997)
defined a questionnaire as a set of structured questions designed to facilitate the acquisition of
information, as a means of eliciting the feelings, beliefs, experiences, perceptions or attitude of
some sample of individuals who are asked a series of questions to obtain statistically useful
information about a given topic. The questionnaires comprised of both open-ended and closed
questions. The closed-ended questions calls for yes or no answer, a short response that is fairly
easy to interpret and summarise, for example asking respondents if there is a connection between
God and money. Its strength was that there was uniformity of questions in all questionnaires such
that each respondent received the same set of questions and responses are easy to code. Open-ended
questions in the questionnaires allowed respondents to provide answers in their own words giving
them more room for self-expression.

DATA ANALYSIS TECHNIQUE

Creswell et al (2008) notes, before analyzing data from both qualitative and quantitative research,
data should be integrated so as to make the analysis less laborious. Both qualitative and quantitative
data obtained are analyzed in relation to the research questions of the study and grouped into
sections tied to each research question.
8
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
First and foremost the researcher informed all participants on the purpose, nature and aims of the
study. After being debriefed on the purposes and nature of the study, the respondents were asked if
they still wanted to participate in the study or not. For purposes of anonymity, the researcher did not
use participants names and applied pseudonyms in the study. Furthermore, participants were
informed that they were free to withdraw from the research at any time during the study.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

The study only focused on the HIM in Harare, which then makes it difficult to generalise to
generalise the results to Zimbabwe as a whole. Secondly, the research derived its conclusions based
on the perceptions of the selected sample. However, perceptions may differ from individual to
individual, as people have different opinions and conceptualisation regarding different situations.

1.9 LITERATURE REVIEW

Pentecostal Movement in Africa and Zimbabwe
Several scholars have written on the topic of Pentecostalism, most of the works done were the
origins, rise, the characteristics and major attractions of Pentecostalism. However, not much has
been researched on the methods of financially empowering believers in the Pentecostal setup. The
aim of this study is to come up with data on the peoples perceptions on entrepreneurship in a
Pentecostal set up.

The key features and major attractions of Pentecostalism.

9
Anderson (2000) noted that, Pentecostals believe that the coming of the spirit brings the ability to
perform signs and wonders in the name of Jesus Christ to accompany and authenticate their
evangelism. Anderson goes on to note that Pentecostals all over the world but especially the third
world countries see the role of healing as good news for the poor and afflicted. Mclung (1986)
argued that divine healing is an evangelistic door-opener for Pentecostals and that signs and
wonders are the evangelistic means whereby the message of the kingdom is actualized in
person centred deliverance. Anderson (2000) also agrees with Mclung noting that the Pentecostal
understanding of the preaching of the word in evangelism was that signs and wonders should
accompany it and divine healing in particular was an indispensable part of the Pentecostal
evangelistic methodology. Mclung and Anderson fail to provide information on how individuals
connect these features of Pentecostalism with the practices of seeding and offertory which might
make out to be the foundations of church entrepreneurship. This research aims to come up with
information on how individuals connect seeding and offertory with prosperity, good health and
healing; without directly lining these practices with entrepreneurship.
MacRobert (1988) noted that the rhythmic handclapping, the antiphonal participation of the
congregation in the sermon, the immediacy of God in the services and baptism by immersion are all
common Pentecostal practices.
Jean and John Comaroff (2000) observed that at the turn of the millennium, the triumph of global
capitalism has been accompanied by the proliferation of occult practices, money, magic and
prosperity gospels that constitute enchantment of a decidedly neo liberal economy whose mere
inscrutable speculations seem to call up from fresh spectres in their wake. The ferocious rise of
Pentecostalism in the last decades of the twentieth century represents one such enchantment.

10
According to Togarasei (2008), in many cultures of the world, especially Africa, the major attraction
for Pentecostalism has been its emphasis on healing. In these cultures the religious specialist or
person of God has power to heal the sick and ward off evil spirits and sorcery. This holistic
function which does not separate the physical from the spiritual is restored from Pentecostalism
and indigenous people see it as a powerful religion to meet human needs. Togarasei continued to
note that the emphasis on healing is so much part of Pentecostal evangelism especially in Africa that
large public campaigns and tent crusades preceded by great publicity are frequently used in order to
reach as many evangelised people as possible. Togarasei goes on to say that in Africa, preaching a
message that provides promised solutions for the present felt needs like sickness and the fear of evil
spirits were heeded and their full gospel readily accepted by ordinary African people. However,
Togarasei does not account for what motivates the congregants to seed and give offertory even
when they are poor and there is no guarantee that they will receive the blessings and favours that
they are promised.
Lewison (2011) argues in the same line as Togarasei, postulating that Pentecostalism has shown
remarkably the ability to adopt in a pace with a rapidly changing world, transposing novel value
systems, challenges and opportunities onto its basic cosmology or personal salvation. Lewison goes
on to argue that Pentecostalism presents believers with a chance to make a complete break with
the past.
Ayegboyin (2004) argues that Pentecostalism in Africa proclaims a pragmatic gospel that seeks to
address practical needs like sickness, poverty, unemployment, loneliness, evil spirits and sorcery. In
varying degrees and in their many varied forms and precisely because of their inherent flexibility,
these Pentecostals attain an authentically indigenous character which enable them to answer some
of the fundamental questions asked in their own contexts. Pentecostals confront old view by
declaring what they have convinced more powerful protection against sorcery and a more effective
healing from sickness than the existing churches.
Maxwell (2002) notes that the influx of new membership to Pentecostal church ministry has
continued to swell due to the fact that many people through Pentecostalism have had their physical
and spiritual needs solved and have also discovered the root causes of generational curses which
run through their ancestral lineages and have managed to solve many mind blogging family
misfortunes that may have persisted in their extended family for many years. Maxwell goes on
further to say that the Pentecostal movement desperately try to bring families out of darkness and
into Gods marvellous light.
11
Ayegboyin (2004) like other scholars cited above argues that the enthusiasm and willingness of
Pentecostal churches to address peoples problems like sickness, poverty, attacks from evil spirits,
barrenness and all kinds of unproductiveness and misfortunes demonstrates the centrality of
Pentecostalism in peoples lives.
Dete (2011) also echoes that for many people living in a shoe string budget Pentecostalism has
offered hope in desperate situations they encounter in their lives.

12
Chapter 2

Entrepreneurship the Heartfelt way: Historical Background

Chapter 3

Entrepreneurship the Heartfelt way: Gospel vs. Current activities

Chapter 4

Entrepreneurship the Heartfelt way: conclusion and recommendations

13