Metaphors to Muse Upon: Pirates (Part 2 - Broke but Smart)

Henry Morgan was a rare individual, and i won't go into a lengthy history here, but there were a few details about his life that really stood out to me, and reinforced the notion in my mind that in many ways, what i really think that we're attempting to accomplish in our lives as we attempt to follow Jesus in the world in which we are emerging is "becoming pirates"! Here's what i mean:

* Broke but Smart - "Modern" Piracy (piracy itself is older than the ancient Greeks) was started by King Henry VIII after he had to sell his navy to pay off his debts, and emerged out of the need of desperate kings who could not finance their own navies, but who would offer a sort of "license" to opportunistic or desperate men who wished to raid enemy ships, forts and cities in order to carry off whatever could be of any value. This practice was given a veneer of legitimacy under the guise of being called "Privateering" (Piracy sounds like such a nasty word... so why not call it something "nicer"). In return, these mercenaries agreed to pay the crown as much as 16% of their total (10% to the Lord Admiral and 6% to the King), and their only real limitation to what they could accomplish was their own audacity. This unorthodox approach to solving really big problems (i.e. financial shortages and economic collapse from within, hostile enemies on every border baying for your blood from without) required cash-strapped kings to completely re-think conventional notions of funding their empires and defending their borders without having large standing armies. Sure, it was nice that Spain had a dedicated Navy with huge, gold-gilded ships and highly disciplined crew ranks, but small, heavily armed sloops of freed slaves, runaways, mountain men and drifters who were given freedom, opportunity and a chance to succeed as far as their dreams could take them eventually proved a match for even the highly disciplined fleets of armed Spanish, Dutch and Portugese forces. This was the world that Henry Morgan inherited as he began his pirate career.

Like most businesses, families and individuals, we in local churches, NGO's, local agencies and other such entities often find ourselves (particularly in our current economy...sheesh!) in positions where cash is scarce, demand and need are high, and pressure is on to deliver better and better solutions to really large problems that confront us on every end. I think we'll need to increasingly consider what it might look like to unleash the force of not only volunteers in our communities, but businesses and entrepreneurially minded people as well in capacities heretofore unexplored. More on that later, but the environment of Morgan's day isn't TOO different in many ways from our environment.