What is BAM?
What is Business as Mission?
As Dallas Willard once said, “Business is a primary moving force of the love of God in human history.” Business, done well, is glorifying to God. Period. There is an intrinsic power in business to create dignified jobs, to multiply resources through creativity and hard work, to provide for families and communities, to push forward innovation, and, in short, to do good in society. We don’t have to tack on a mission strategy to justify a company’s purpose or to somehow make that work holy. Business professionals following Jesus in the marketplace already have a sacred vocation.
However, there is also a huge opportunity before us to leverage that God-given power of business to address some of the most pressing spiritual, social, environmental and economic issues in the world today… To make a positive impact through for-profit business, along the ‘quadruple bottom lines’ of people, planet, profit and eternal purpose. There is a growing movement in the global church of people grasping this opportunity and they go by many different labels. One of them is ‘Business as Mission’ – a community of those building God’s kingdom through business, among the most vulnerable, most disadvantaged and most out of reach of the gospel in our neighborhoods and around the world today.
Business as mission is demonstrating what the Kingdom of God is like in the context of business – and as we do so, engaging with the world’s more pressing social, economic, environmental and spiritual issues.
Defining BAM?!
There is no one universally agreed definition of business as mission, but there are some key common denominators in the global BAM movement. And while there is growing consensus around the concept, many other terms are also used for the same, or similar, idea. Many prefer alternative terms such as: Kingdom business, missional entrepreneurship, transformational business, missional business or business for transformation (B4T), among others. Business as mission, or “BAM”, is just one widely used term in the English language, other terms have developed in other languages.
This is the working definition of business as mission used by BAM Global during their Think Tank processes:
Business as Mission is:
- Profitable and sustainable businesses;
- Intentional about Kingdom of God purpose and impact on people and nations;
- Focused on holistic transformation and the multiple bottom lines of economic, social, environmental and spiritual outcomes;
- Concerned about the world’s poorest and least evangelized peoples.
Intentional and Integrated
Business as mission is not a new idea! Business and mission have been combined in different ways, at different times throughout Church history. However, the contemporary business as mission movement represents a growing intentionality in the global Church to fully integrate business goals with the call to the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world. It is an answer to the prayer, ‘May Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven’, as people and communities are positively transformed through for-profit business activities. BAM is the intentional integration of business and mission.
Business is a God-given vocation and institution in society, with the potential to bring multiple benefits to people, communities and nations. Business as mission intentionally leverages this intrinsic power of business to address spiritual needs, hand in hand with social, economic and environmental needs.
The idea of integration is important. This is not ‘ministry’ tacked onto business for convenience or business tacked onto ministry. Instead the mission is worked out in and through the business, through its activities, through the products and services and through relationships.
As mentioned above, business has the potential to generate wealth through a combination of creativity, hard work and risk. A profitable and sustainable business is able to create new jobs, drive new innovations and increase resources for society. Business can provide goods and services that are needed in a community and is established on a wide network of relationships.
These activities, products and relationships are integral to business and part of the God-given potential of business to transform society and glorify Him. Through business we can intentionally tackle poverty, increase quality of life, bring positive social change and carry with us the message of eternal life.
Business as mission is a concept that can and should be applied everywhere, but the business as mission movement has a special concern for people and places where there are dire economic, social, environmental and spiritual needs – Mats Tunehag
We invite you to be inspired and equipped by the stories and resources that we’ve curated and created on this Business as Mission Resource website.
by Jo Plummer
Updated August 2018
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