Business is Not a Silver Bullet: The BAM Movement is an Ecosystem

by Jo Plummer

 

Business is obviously at the heart of business as mission! A major part of the international BAM community is made up of businesses and business people. This is business as mission and at its core it involves for-profit companies. But, as Mats Tunehag says in the video below, business is not a silver bullet!

Business as mission is a movement and that movement is made up of four major constituencies—including leaders from business, mission, church and academia—plus others. 

BAM companies and business people will not thrive outside of a healthy ecosystem made up of many types of individuals, skills, perspectives, and institutions. We will not see macro impact through business as mission unless our business constituency is connected to and supported by a much broader network.

Introducing the Four Major BAM Constituencies

For business as mission to be fruitful, we need the involvement of entrepreneurs and business professionals of all kinds, in a diverse range of roles—plus churches, mission agencies and NGOs, academic institutions, researchers, and others. The BAM community is certainly made up of many different people from many different constituencies, but over the years, we have identified the four major ones, as follows:

The Four Major Constituencies in the BAM Movement

BAM thought-leader Peter Shaukat expresses this same idea as the 4 As: ¹

• Academy: scholars and educational institutions
• Agency: mission agencies, yes, but also other kinds of entities with specialist functions
• Assembly: local churches and congregations
• Actualizers: the business people who run business as mission enterprises

 

Here is a brief introduction to each of these four constituencies:

Business People

As well as entrepreneurs that start BAM enterprises, there are also many other types of business professionals (involved in management and specialist roles) that help develop and scale a company towards stability and longevity. The BAM movement revolves around these business starters and professionals—the business operators that are involved directly in running BAM companies. But we also need other kinds of business people to surround and support the operators, including investors, mentors, coaches, incubators, trainers and others—often called capacity builders for the BAM movement.

Church Leaders

The Church with a big C–i.e. the global body of Christ—is made up of people from all vocations, including business. The church with a small c—i.e. local churches and denominations—have business people and other professionals sitting in their pews each time they are the ‘gathered church’. It is the role of the clergy or church leader to serve the laity and equip them for works of service as the ‘scattered church’ in their daily vocational lives (Ephesians 4:12). Therefore, the BAM movement also needs Church leaders and staff who recognise BAM as an effective ministry strategy and are looking to resource and mobilise the business people in their congregations or denomination. Read more about BAM and the Church.

Academics

Christian academics and researchers are uniquely positioned to add value to the BAM movement by driving research into critical business as mission issues and being a frontline catalyst for student engagement. Scholarship and education are engines for business as mission, helping to equip the next generation and ensuring that vital issues for BAM practitioners are undergirded by robust research. The BAM movement needs academics looking to inspire their students for BAM, educators / trainers to develop curriculum, and researchers that connect their study with real BAM practice. Explore the Academics Pathway Toolbox.

Mission Leaders and NGOs

Those sent out to do BAM with an agency affiliation have been among the pioneers of business as mission and continue to be engaged at the frontlines—although now that many more business people are getting engaged the relative numbers are going down. Mission leaders and NGOs staff have filled key supporting roles in the BAM ecosystem, with many areas of expertise that can fruitfully contribute, such as: pastoral care, counselling, mission mobilisation, cross-cultural communication, language learning, training in specific mission strategies and focus areas, community development expertise, and so on. The BAM movement needs agency and NGO leaders that see how business as mission aligns with the strategic goals of their organisation, that can effectively oversee and care for the BAM company leaders associated with them, and that can form fruitful partnerships to enrich the whole BAM ecosystem. Read more about BAM and Mission Agencies.

Watch this episode from the Lausanne Global Classroom on Business as Mission to learn more:

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Peter Shaukat in Appendix D: Transformational SME – Business Incubation Process and Lessons Learned, p44 of the BAM Incubation Issue Report.

A couple of sections of this article have been adapted from an older post.

 

Photo by Emma Henderson on Unsplash