Cherish the Golden Goose: Why the Church Should Celebrate Entrepreneurs

Editor's Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Regent University, its faculty, administration, or affiliates.

As spring returns to our hemisphere, a wide variety of bird species are making their journeys northward, leaving the warmer southern regions to rejoin our gradually warming, freshly blooming landscapes. One unique species that is new to this migration pattern is the “golden goose,” also known as the entrepreneur (Walters, 2026).

These are the people who work and sweat to build a business and may actually find success in doing it. Sometimes, their success is unfortunately met with stereotypical envy and cries from lawmakers who seek to tax these successful entrepreneurs and coerce them into paying what is called their “fair share” (WCAX News Team, 2026).

But what’s fair about it when data confirms that wealthy people pay significantly more in taxes to support social programs in certain locations (Walters, 2026). In the state of New York, for example, the top one percent of wage earners already account for more than 40 percent of the state’s personal income-tax revenue (Reisman, 2026). In California, the top one percent supplies nearly half of all income tax collected (Walters, 2026).

It seems entrepreneurs and high-wage earners have seen enough of this approach. They are catching on and migrating out of these tax-happy locations to areas where they are able to keep more of their hard-earned income (Unruh, 2026). It is not just these wealthy individuals migrating out of the tax-happy states: They are taking their businesses with them (Walters, 2026). These are businesses that also generated significant tax revenues in their previous location (Walters, 2026).

This tendency to undervalue entrepreneurs extends far beyond state policy; it can appear even within the church (Faith Driven Entrepreneur, 2026). When was the last time church attendees heard a sermon lauding the contribution of the entrepreneur? Are they being recognized for their efforts to build businesses that provide needed jobs and healthcare to people in their congregations?

When was the last time your pastor compared the entrepreneur to the work of God as a co-creator and partner in fulfilling the admonition in Genesis 1:28: “And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Genesis 1:28 ESV).

We haven’t heard these sermons, because many pastors and church leaders are very similar to these liberal state legislators. The pastor often sees the entrepreneur as a means to his end, a person to support their latest initiative or helping to close a gap in church budgeting.

Attention, pastors and religious leaders! You are in danger of losing a valuable resource in your congregation. You could lose the attention of your entrepreneurs if they do not sense your support nor affirmation!

These creators of businesses are not valuable simply because the money they make can be invested in the kingdom of God. They are valuable because they reflect the creativity of God (Faith Driven Entrepreneur Team, n.d.). They are co-creators with Him, imagining new products and services that, when tested in the marketplace, will provide jobs for your congregation, taxes to fix the roads in your community, and yes… tithes and missions offerings.

But more than anything, entrepreneurs provide a reminder of the creativity and awesomeness of God. These are the gifted artists, artisans, and craftsmen, who — like the artisans the wilderness tabernacle (Exodus 31:1-11 ESV) — have been inspired by God to create something entirely new from raw material.

Peter Thiel, in his famous book Zero to One (Thiel and Masters, 2014), posits that the entrepreneurial experience is only valuable when something new is created. Thiel uses the concepts of “vertical” progress, which is creating something that did not previously exist; as compared to “horizontal” progress, or expanding on an existing idea (Thiel and Masters, 2014). He says this vertical progress requires seeing the present differently.

It is contrarian thinking, challenging the old established patterns to strike out and create something unique, regardless of the risk (Thiel and Masters, 2014). The entrepreneur as artisan and craftsman creates something new from someone else’s junk (Huddleston, 2021) or inspires a vision of something that can be done where there previously was no vision. You need those entrepreneurs. You should cherish their efforts and pray daily for them!

The entrepreneur adds contrary thinking and new ideas to the marketplace and, if effective, can earn a profit when those ideas are positioned uniquely enough to garner revenue. The entrepreneur infuses a group of nonbelievers to believe in a new future. The entrepreneur envisions a level of superior service in a market that doesn’t serve its customers particularly well.

It is the creativity of the entrepreneur that imagines a captivating future of better service or improved resource allocation which is superior to what is currently in place. The entrepreneur’s step of risk and faith provides more opportunity for people to use their gifts and talents to express the glory of God, which they all carry in themselves. 

The entrepreneur is an evangelist for change — a “prophet of the new.” But our culture qualifies them only in terms of the money they make. Meanwhile, they put capital and ideas at risk to provide a better life for their customers and, if successful, for themselves. Entrepreneurs envision opportunities that lead to flourishing for different groups of people: investors, stakeholders, shareholders, and society.

Because entrepreneurship is so closely linked with co-creation and with vision casting, and since entrepreneurial activity releases the greatness in individuals to achieve goals they could not achieve on their own, it should also be linked with another attribute of God: redemption. This is where we must separate the entrepreneur from the act of entrepreneurship. It is entrepreneurship that releases new opportunity, new products, and new vision, but it is the act of being entrepreneurial that releases powerful renewal in a stagnant market. Entrepreneurship is redemptive in the marketplace, providing new opportunities for customers, employees, and industry.

According to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur (Kaestner, Greear, and Ingram, 2021), the approach that entrepreneurs take in assuming risk and product creation reflects God‘s act of creativity when He brought the universe into being (Kaestner, Greear, and Ingram, 2021). There is a dynamic and creativity to this process of starting a new venture — whether creating something that did not previously exist or introducing a disruptive innovation. This book suggests all earthly entrepreneurs sow the seeds of innovation as embodied in the work of the Original Entrepreneur: the Trinitarian founder of the Earth (Kaestner, Greear, and Ingram, 2021).

The church can support business owners and entrepreneurs through acknowledging their efforts and by offering encouragement, advice, and a strong community for people who may be going through hard times in their business. The church should consider business success as an extension of its mission, but not simply in a financial way. Success is not only measured by profit, but also by integrity and character.

When the church provides support to entrepreneurs spiritually and relationally, it is providing support to an individual whose market presence represents the Christian community. These entrepreneurs are missionaries to the marketplace. Supporting entrepreneurs can be considered an extension of the church’s mission to provide restoration and redemption to a broken world — and broken people given second chances (Bucci, 2022).

Instead of chasing off the “golden goose” or begging them to return once again to a dystopian paradise (as the current governor of New York tried to do recently [Unruh, 2026]), the entrepreneur as co-creator should be valued for their contributions to job creation and to the tax base as it already stands. Entrepreneurs are not merely economic assets; they are reflections of Divine creativity. Both society and the church flourish when they are supported rather than stifled. The earthly entrepreneur is responding to the calling of our Founding Innovator and, by doing this work, brings glory to the One who (to paraphrase Peter Thiel) provided us all with great value when creating the universe from zero to done!

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Sources:

Bucci, J.J. (2022). Redemption Inc.: Why Offering Second Chances Makes Good Business Sense.

Norfolk, VA: Kingdom Business Press.

Faith Driven Entrepreneur (2026, January 12). The Partnership Revolution: Why Your Church Needs Entrepreneurs More Than Ever. LinkedIn [Media Blog]. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/partnership-revolution-why-your-church-needs-entrepreneurs-eszoc/.

Faith Driven Entrepreneur Team (n.d.). Creative God, Creative You. San Francisco, CA: Faith Driven Entrepreneur [Web Blog]. Retrieved from https://www.faithdrivenentrepreneur.org/blog/creative-god.

Huddleston, T. (2021, January 12). Founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? dropped out of college to haul junk — now, he’s eyeing a billion-dollar business. CNBC: Founder Effect [Web Blog]. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/01/how-the-1-800-got-junk-founder-became-a-multimillionaire.html.

Kaestner, H., Greear, J.D., & Ingram, C. (2021). Faith driven entrepreneur: What it takes to step into your purpose and pursue your God-given call to create. Carol Stream, IL.: Tyndale Publishing.

Reisman, N. (2026, March 11). Tax fight will test Mamdani’s influence in Albany against Hochul. Politico [News Blog]. Retrieved from https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/11/tax-fight-will-test-mamdanis-influence-in-albany-against-hochul-00823627.

Unruh, B. (2026, March 18). ‘Our tax base has been eroded’: Governor begs rich people to move back to state, pay high taxes. World Net Daily [News Blog]. Retrieved from https://www.wnd.com/2026/03/our-tax-base-has-been-eroded-governor-begs/.

Walters, D. (2026, March 17). Billionaires bolt from blue states amid tax fears, mirroring rebellion in‘Atlas Shrugged’ novel. CalMatters [News Blog]. Retrieved from https://calmatters.org/commentary/dan-walters/2026/03/billionaires-bolt-tax-blue-states/.

WCAX News Team (2026, March 2). Sanders introduces ‘Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share’ Act. WCAX News [News Blog]. Retrieved from https://www.wcax.com/2026/03/03/sen-sanders-introduces-make-billionaires-pay-their-fair-share-act/.

Thiel, P.; and Masters, B. (2014). Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. Crown Currency.