10 Quotes to Inspire You for Business as Mission
BAM Global is celebrating its ten year anniversary in 2024, having been formally founded in 2014 on the foundation of earlier network-building efforts. To celebrate, we are posting a new 10 x Series this month; sharing some of our top 10 favourite BAM-related resources and inspirations.
10 of our favourite BAM-related quotes:
1. Ralph Winter’s editorial endorsement
Really big and sudden changes in the world of missions don’t come often. But now one is upon us. It’s the major optimism and thrill of business people who are devout believers starting or extending ‘Kingdom Businesses’ around the world. – Ralph Winter
Ralph Winter identified business as a major force in world mission in his Editorial for an issue of Mission Frontiers magazine in 2007. This bold statement from an elder statesman of evangelical missions in the first decade of the contemporary BAM movement was a great boost.
2. Dallas Willard’s panel gem
Business is a primary arrangement on God’s part for people to love one another and serve one another… Business is a primary moving force of the love of God in human history. – Dallas Willard
This is Jo’s favourite quote on business and she almost always shares it whenever she speaks. Originally made in a panel response, Dallas expands on the question ‘What is business for?’ and comes out with some gems. This quote is echoed in the title of the booklet Called to Business: God’s way of loving people through business and the professions published posthumously by Dallas Willard Ministries.
3. Mats Tunehag’s keynote bombshell
If God has called you to business, don’t lower yourself to be a pastor. – Mats Tunehag
We’ve included this quote by our very own Mats Tunehag from his presentation at the Lausanne Congress in Cape Town 2010. That’s because out of the many, many things Mats has said about business and BAM, this is the one that most often gets quoted back to him. Provocative, but true!
4. Rabbi Sack’s biblical cornerstone
Work, in other words, has spiritual value, because earning our food is part of the essential dignity of the human condition. Animals find sustenance; only mankind creates it. – Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
A biblical view of work and its role in human flourishing – and humans’ role in creation care – is a cornerstone for business as mission. This wonderful quote, from an article in 2000, is from the Jewish tradition on this topic.
5. Pope Francis’ noble affirmation
Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving the world. – Pope Francis
And building on that foundation of the value of work, this is an affirmation of the vocation of business in particular. Pope Francis continues an extremely rich Catholic tradition of robust thinking on this topic and this quote from his Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ was used in his address to the U.S. Congress in 2015.
6. Paul Steven’s foundations of intent and integration
God’s mission is business, and business is God’s mission. We are called to bring the light of Christ into the marketplace through ethical, profitable, and impactful businesses. – João Mordomo, after R. Paul Stevens
R. Paul Stevens, a pioneering mentor, author and scholar of marketplace ministry, is one of João’s favourite writers on the biblical underpinnings of BAM. The statement above is not a direct quote, but rather a paraphrase of teachings that Stevens affirms throughout two of his most well-known books: Doing God’s Business and The Other Six Days. The intentional integration of business and mission is a rallying call for BAM. Paul Stevens gives us just this: both the why and the how of BAM. Why? First of all business is an integral part of God’s mission – the mission we are called to be part of. How? ‘Ethical, profitable, and impactful’ gives us a framework for the mechanisms by which business can be a transformational force in society. These mechanisms are unpacked somewhat by the following four quotes.
7. Sharon Swarr’s pioneering primer
The business environment is an all day, almost every day opportunity for teaching and transmitting values to other individuals… Teaching employees and others how to succeed in business demands that we teach them moral and ethical behaviour. As they try and apply the standards of behaviour to their practice, we can introduce them to our handbook for best business practice, the Bible. And as they struggle to practice we must introduce them to the power of the Holy Spirit who enables them. – Sharon Swarr
The first book to use the phrase ‘business as mission’ was Dwight Nordstrom and Sharon Bentch Swarr’s Transform the World: Biblical Vision and Purpose for Business. Published in 1999 it was the first book on BAM and set out some helpful foundational teaching for early proponents, at a time when there were few available BAM resources of any kind. This quote eloquently conveys the power of an ethical business environment to show people what the Kingdom of God is like and to introduce them to the King.
8. Wayne Grudem’s business treatise
I believe the only long-term solution to world poverty is business. That is because business produces goods, and businesses produce jobs. And businesses continue producing goods year after year, and continue providing jobs and paying wages year after year. Therefore if we are ever going to see long-term solutions to world poverty, I believe it will come through starting and maintaining productive, profitable business. – Wayne Grudem
Here we are getting deeper into the application of the ‘noble vocation’ of business to the church’s mission. One of the most eminent theologians of his day, Wayne Grudem gave a stunning presentation titled ‘How Business in Itself Can Glorify God’ at the Consultation for Holistic Entrepreneurs in 2002. This gave us such a clear framework for thinking about business that it was subsequently adapted into the book Business for the Glory of God where this quote originates.
9. Peter Drucker’s succinct summary
Every single social and global issue of our day is a business opportunity in disguise. – Peter Drucker
Business is a powerful force for good in the world because it has been designed by God to enable human flourishing. Business uses market forces to solve local and global problems and therefore provides scalable and sustainable solutions. One of our BAM Global BHAG’s is to ‘Solve global issues with innovative BAM solutions’ – issues like extreme poverty, environmental degradation, human trafficking, corruption, and gospel poverty. Management guru Peter Drucker succinctly captures why we need entrepreneurs to take up the challenge. In BAM Global we want to see Christian entrepreneurs fully released to use their gifts in Kingdom-building enterprises.
10. J.D. Greear’s Great Commission wings
Today, the greatest opportunities for mission advancement still lie with Christians in the business community. Consider this: If you overlay a map of world poverty with a map of world evangelization, you will find that the areas most in need of business development are also the most unevangelized. Many of the most unreached places in the world, most closed to Christian missionaries, have arms wide open to any kind of [businessperson]… The next wave of missions will be carried forward, I believe, on the wings of business. – JD Greear
Coming back full circle to echo our first quote from Ralph Winter, this excerpt from JD Greear’s Gaining by Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send spotlights something that we never want to lose sight of in business as mission: the power and potential of business in to fulfil the Great Commission. The world needs Jesus-followers in the marketplace, to the ends of the earth. And the world is open for business!
Bonus: BAM Quote Goldmines
Both the BAM Manifesto and Wealth Creation Manifesto have the concept of business as mission and biblical views of wealth creation distilled into one page documents. As a result they are chock full of pithy quotable quotes. Here are just two:
There is a need for job creation and for multiplication of businesses all over the world, aiming at the quadruple bottom line: spiritual, economical, social and environmental transformation. – BAM Manifesto
Read them all in the BAM Manifesto
Wealth creation through business has proven power to lift people and nations out of poverty. – Wealth Creation Manifesto
Read them all in the Wealth Creation Manifesto
What are your favourite BAM or business quotes? Share them with us via our Contact form.
Disclaimer – these quotes are all in English because we mostly read in English. However, BAM inspiration exists in many languages, so feel free to share your favourite non-English quotes!
Quotes compiled by the BAM Global leadership team, Jo Plummer, Mats Tunehag and João Mordomo. Annotations by Jo Plummer.
Celebrating 10 Years of BAM Global
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