A Decade of Nurturing the BAM Community & A Year in Review
BAM Global has been celebrating its ten year anniversary in 2024, having been formally founded in 2014 on the foundation of earlier network-building efforts. We look back on this year, within a decade of BAM Global.
by Jo Plummer & João Mordomo
As we conclude 2024, we reflect on a decade of God’s faithfulness and the transformative work accomplished through the Business as Mission (BAM) movement. This year has marked BAM Global’s 10th Anniversary, a milestone that has allowed us to evaluate our journey and set our sights on the future. Although the roots of our work resourcing the business as mission movement stretch right back to the late 1990s, we had our formal inception in 2014, after the BAM Think Tank project and the Global Congress of 2013. Read more about our history here.
Our Highlights in 2024
Throughout our history, our intention has remained constant: To build a vibrant community of practitioners dedicated to integrating business with mission, to live out the Great Commandment and fulfil the Great Commission. Our efforts in network building, resource provision, research, and thought-leadership have significantly contributed to the growth and impact of BAM worldwide.
Our vision is for a movement of businesses transforming people and nations for God’s glory!
And we fulfil our mission to accelerate the global business as mission movement through six key initiatives:
Partner Network Initiative
In 2024 we relaunched the initiative that works to nurture and establish BAM networks around the world, renaming it the Partner Network Initiative. Partner Networks focus on regions, issues or industries for business as mission connection and collaboration. In 2024 we launched a new Community of Practice for Partner Network Leaders to support one another and this year, 28 leaders from 24 global networks went through the introduction process. Regular Zoom calls and online forums have been established to help leaders learn from each other and plug into the global BAM community on an ongoing basis. The Partner Network Initiative will serve as an incubator to see the growth of robust, flourishing regional, issue-focused and industry-based networks in the coming decade and beyond.
Events
We continue to support regional and network-based events around the world, promoting them in the wider BAM ecosystem and providing content and speakers. If you have an in-person BAM event in your region, we want to encourage you to get to it! However, one of our unique functions is convening online BAM Events that enable the global business as mission community to come together. In 2024 we hosted two main virtual events, attracting around 550 attendees: the BAM Global Summit and the BAM Global Connect. The Summit in May 2024 was a full day program billed as the annual global connecting point for business as mission. With the theme of ‘Accelerate’ we offered 12 hours of BAM content, including main stage keynotes, case studies, panels, workshops and roundtables. In November, we hosted our annual free networking event, which is always a great opportunity for new people to find out more about BAM and veterans to come and connect on the topics that interest them.
BGlobal Community
We now have over 800 members through organic growth in the BGlobal Community, a secure online platform for the international BAM community to connect and collaborate. The platform already has an active Members Directory, Live Feed, Jobs Board and direct messaging. We are planning a rebrand for BGlobal early in 2025, with new features and communities of practice coming soon.
Think Tank
BAM Global initiates working consultations under its BAM Global Think Tank initiative where there are identified gaps in the BAM ecosystem. BAM Global Consultations open up an unprecedented opportunity for discussion, collaboration and networking with the results captured in a published BAM Global Report and outworked in new projects and communities of practice. In 2024, a major new report in BAM and Mission Agencies was published after a multi-year consultation process, and a new BAM Global Consultation on BAM Practitioner Care and Well-being was launched. This new Consultation group will collaborate throughout 2025 and is currently seeking input from the preliminary survey that will help shape its agenda and direction.
Media & Communications
Our long-established social media accounts, websites and mailing lists have been serving the BAM community for over a decade, both aggregating and creating new business as mission resources. In 2024 we refreshed our logo and branding for BAM Global and and relaunched our two main websites. Our BAM Global organisation website at bamglobal.org hosts over 30 published BAM Global Reports and the landing pages for our events and other initiatives. This BAM Resource Center website hosted at businessasmission.com is one of our communications initiatives and is home to the online BAM Resource Library and The BAM Review Blog, with over 650 short articles on business as mission related topics.
Prayer
In 2024, we celebrated 5 years of monthly prayer for the business as mission movement. Since May 2019, BAM Global has hosted a monthly Zoom prayer call, sent a monthly Prayer Update email (now to around 150 subscribers) and shared prayer concerns in a BAM-focused WhatsApp Prayer Group. We have a mechanism for subscribers to our BAM Review email news to submit BAM-related prayer requests and have intercessors engaged with praying for concerns in our community.
Help us Continue to Accelerate in 2025
Since our formal inception in 2014, BAM Global has been instrumental in building a vibrant community of practitioners dedicated to integrating business with mission in order to live out the Great Commandment and fulfill the Great Commission. Our efforts in network building, resource provision, research, and thought-leadership have significantly contributed to the growth and impact of BAM worldwide. As the movement continues to evolve, we remain committed to catalysing new initiatives, addressing global challenges, and envisioning the next generation of BAM leaders.
As we prepare for 2025, we invite you to partner with us in accelerating the global BAM movement. We are grateful that generous donors have offered $15,000 in matching funds for our year-end giving campaign. This means your contribution will be doubled, amplifying and accelerating our efforts globally.
U.S. Donors: We encourage you to make your donation by December 31st! International Donors: Donations will be matched through January 31st 2025
Thank you!
Jo Plummer is the Creative Director & Co-Founder of BAM Global and the co-editor of the Lausanne Occasional Paper on Business as Mission. She has been developing resources for BAM since 2001 and currently serves as Editor of the Business as Mission website and The BAM Review Blog.
Dr. João Mordomo loves to help start and lead anything — mission agencies, churches, businesses, networks — that helps fulfill the Great Commission. He is a founding board member and Executive Director of BAM Global, and Catalyst for Business as Mission at the Lausanne Movement. João serves variously as owner, managing director and board member of several BAM companies, and designs and teaches BAM and other courses at several universities.
