How to Catalyze and Accelerate a Global BAM Movement

BAM Global is celebrating its ten year anniversary in 2024, having been formally founded in 2014 on the foundation of earlier network-building efforts. This month BAM Global leaders are looking back, taking stock, and then looking forward – exploring how the worldwide business as mission community has been flourishing and continues to grow. Read Part 1.

by Mats Tunehag

A movement is different from an organization. The latter is registered, has a board, a budget and they hire (and fire) staff. It is defined and operates under some kind of legal and management control. A movement, on the other hand, consists of many independent initiatives and organizations. The movement flourishes as these independent entities choose to be interdependent; they share a common vision and are aligned in mission and values. Examples are the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, and the BAM movement.

Hallmarks of a Movement

Historically movements start small, are in a minority and face big challenges. As groups connect and work together, they gradually gain critical mass towards a tipping point, and transformation can take place.

Nobody has an executive control or power over a movement, but it is held together by a common cause. Movements grow through collaboration built on trusted relationships.

Today BAM is a global movement, with numerous initiatives on all continents; in business, missions, church and academia. The glue is our common vision, our aligned mission and values, as briefly expressed in the two manifestos: the BAM Manifesto and the Wealth Creation Manifesto.

These manifestos help form a common conceptual language, which enables meaningful communication and impactful collaboration.

Social Movement Organizations

A movement can be served by an ‘SMO’, a social movement organization. BAM Global is such an entity. An SMO facilitates communication and collaborations within and outside a movement, and it catalyzes new initiatives.

BAM Global exists to accelerate, serve, and equip the global BAM movement. We do that by creating and sharing intellectual and social capital in the global business as mission community through our three core activities:

  • Nurturing Partner Networks
  • Creating Global Forums
  • Delivering Essential Resources

In other words, we develop BAM concepts and create resources, sharing them broadly, and we connect people and initiatives with each other.

Our manifestos form a common conceptual language, which enables meaningful communication and impactful collaboration.

Nurturing Partner Networks

BAM Global catalyzes and helps grow BAM related networks around the globe, today about 40 of them. Most are geographical, and others are related to a particular group like church leaders or academics. There are also groups working on particular issues, like business solutions to human trafficking, and creation care. Others are related to industries. We have regular meetings with leaders of existing and emerging networks, to learn, support, strategize and create a community of practice – all to grow the movement. We are currently piloting a new initiative, the BAM Global Partner Networks Initiative that will acceleration the growth of business as mission networks globally.

Creating Global Forums

For over 20 years we have created various meeting places, often global in nature. As João shared in part 1 of this series, a groundbreaking event was the 2004 Forum in Thailand which was the culmination of a global consultation process. This was the first ‘think tank’ on business as mission and produced the BAM Lausanne Occasional Paper and the BAM Manifesto, which helped catalyze the movement and define foundational parameters.

In 2013 we hosted both a Leaders Forum and a Global Congress on BAM, also held in Thailand. These events were also linked to a much larger BAM Global Think Tank process, which led to an exponential growth of BAM initiatives, materials and networks.

We continue to have regular online global forums in the form of annual online BAM events; please join us – and the movement!

Delivering Essential Resources

A thriving movement operates on consensus, and it needs to stay mission true, keep aligned to its mission and values, and continue to be a learning movement. To that end we have, for over 20 years, engaged hundreds of people from all continents in the think tank and consultation group mentioned above. The objective of these conversations has been to ‘Listen, Learn, Share and Connect’ on BAM as a biblical concept and as a historical and contemporary global praxis. ‘Share’ is a key component of these processes and the findings of these consultations – contained in 30+ BAM Global Reports – can be can be downloaded free of charge from bamglobal.org.

We also continue to create and curate business as mission resources here on the Business as Mission Resource Library – the biggest BAM resource collection in the world.

There is wisdom in the counsel of many, and a variety of people and skillsets are essential for a movement to grow and have a holistic and intergenerational impact.

4 x I

One may describe BAM Global as a small SMO in the middle of a large network of BAM networks. From the beginning 20 plus years ago, we have been guided by, among other things, these four key I words:

Intentional: We never network for the sake of networking. We are not trying to facilitate everything or everyone. No, we are intentional, and have a purpose which is to accelerate the global BAM movement. It is about BAM, and not everything work or business related. It is about:

 1. Business

2. Holistic impact and societal transformation

3. Multiple bottom-lines: financial, social, environmental and spiritual.

4. Multiple stakeholders – God is the ultimate one

5. A special focus on the underserved, including unreached peoples

6. Building ecosystems

7. A Great Commission purpose, perspective and impact

International: As stated in the BAM Manifesto –

We call upon the Church world wide to identify, affirm, pray for, commission and release business people and entrepreneurs to exercise their gifts and calling as business people in the world – among all peoples and to the ends of the earth.

We call upon business people globally to receive this affirmation and to consider how their gifts and experience might be used to help meet the world’s most pressing spiritual and physical needs through Business as Mission.

Inclusive: We welcome and work with Christians who are seasoned leaders and young students, people from all continents, men and woman, young and old, successful entrepreneurs and struggling start-ups, individuals and organizations, thinkers and doers, investors and researchers, pastors and mission leaders, networks and writers. And many others. There is wisdom in the counsel of many, and a variety of people and skillsets are essential for a movement to grow and have a holistic and intergenerational impact.

Integrated: We know from history that ecosystems are critical to achieve societal transformation. Although companies and business people are at the core of BAM, they are not the silver bullet. We believe in building ecosystems, and thus we have from the very beginning engaged leaders from church, missions and academia. This is reflected in both reports and networks.

Our aim is to connect leaders and integrate initiatives from four critical constituencies: business, church, mission and academia.

3 x P

Today the global BAM movement can also be described with three P words which start with the prefix ‘poly’, which means ‘many’.

Polycentric: BAM does not have a global headquarters. Today you’ll find BAM centers, initiatives and networks from Seoul to Sao Paolo, from Sydney to St. Petersburg, from Bucharest to Birmingham (Alabama), from China to Cuba, from Egypt to England, from Southern Africa to Sweden, from Nepal to the Netherlands, from Myanmar to Mongolia – and beyond

Polydirectional: BAM goes from everywhere to everywhere. It is not a Western idea or an initiative which goes from the ‘West to the rest’.

Polyglot: BAM operates in many languages. In fact, the biggest BAM networks in the world are not using English. Today there are many BAM websites, books, conferences, blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels in different languages. Many of the documents mentioned above, along with other key articles and papers, are  available in over 20 languages here.

With these foundations, we look forward to seeing how God might work through business as mission in the coming decade.

 

>> Read Part 1 by João Mordomo

The BAM Review Blog is an initiative of BAM Global.

Celebrating 10 Years of BAM Global

 

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Mats Tunehag is the Chairman of BAM Global, and he is a global thought leader on Business as Mission, BAM. Since the 1990’s he has created numerous networks of leaders from business, church, missions and academia from all continents. He has served as an advisor to groups involved in business, investment, freedom businesses, research and partnership development. He is the chief architect of the ‘Business as Mission Manifesto’ and the ‘Wealth Creation Manifesto’, which is a conceptual framework for the global BAM movement. See matstunehag.com/about/

 

 

 

Photo by Daniele Franchi on Unsplash