Serving from a Position of Weakness: Reflections from a 20 Year Journey in BAM
by Andy Hoard
Twenty years ago few would have predicted I would end up writing something like this. I was sitting in Turkey, in the metaphorical rubble of a struggling business, carrying a mountain of debt and with a very uncertain future. But that’s exactly where my story with Transformational SME (TSME) begins.
My family and I first went to Turkey in 1990, originally with a large Turkish-American joint venture defence manufacturing company. I stayed. Over the years I became deeply rooted—in the culture, the language, the rhythms of doing business in the Turkish context. I was also one of the founding elders of the International Protestant Church of Ankara, and after about fifteen years, the only remaining one. For a time I led the unofficial alliance of foreign workers in the country—the first tentmaker, and the first independent, to do so.
During those years I did a lot of teaching on the theology of work—on the legitimacy of business as mission (BAM) not merely as a platform for church planting, which was the common thrust in many BAM circles, but as genuine ministry in itself—discipleship in the workplace; Kingdom values lived out in real commercial life, with real pressures and real consequences.
That mattered in Turkey, because many Turkish Christians had come to associate business success with corruption. Bribery was common. Taxes and regulations were widely disregarded. I wanted to show a better way. My insistence on honest business practice cost me—significantly. I can’t hide entirely behind that when accounting for my difficulties, but it was a real factor. My financial downfall was taking on a large contract with a German manufacturer that neither they nor I were able to support. I wish I had had mentors and an engaged board to advise me, but I didn’t.
In 2005, I finished the German contract and closed my factory, I down-shifted to consulting. It was at this point that my wife and I joined a mission organisation, one that valued wholistic ministry. We’d been informal friends of their fellowship for years, but we realised that to be able to continue in Turkey we needed to raise support. I continued consulting for other companies and that, alongside working with TSME and the support, kept us going. But I was carrying a debt that had consumed my retirement savings and would take fourteen years to repay. Three things saved us in that season: my wife getting a job at a respected Turkish school, joining the mission organisation, and TSME.
Discipleship in the workplace; Kingdom values lived out in real commercial life, with real pressures and real consequences.
A Korean friend who was then the mission organisation’s regional director first told me about Transformational SME—at a conference in Şile, Turkey, coincidentally the same city where TSME had been born. He knew my background and introduced me to Peter Shaukat, one of the founders of TSME.
A few months later when I was in Baltimore, visiting my daughter, Peter flew down from Canada and we met at the airport. We never made it inside. We stood in the grass off the highway near the terminal for about an hour—Peter telling me about TSME and both of us getting the measure of each other.
Peter was interested in my background. At that point the team was small, just four or five people doing remarkable work in mentoring and building the foundational infrastructure of the group. They recognised that if TSME were to grow, the programme needed structure and oversight beyond what Peter and the others could provide on their own.
The return members get is something most financial institutions can’t offer: active, meaningful participation in mission in some of the most challenging places on earth.
The whole idea of TSME was exciting to me—an advisory group that would help BAM businesses, not just financially, but with mentoring and prayer. The thing about TSME that captured me so quickly was seeing a group of dedicated and highly skilled business people working in their gifting to expand the Kingdom. And unlike most ministry organisations I’d encountered, TSME had a genuinely multi-faceted vision—actively seeking investment and leadership from many different countries, understanding the limitations that come to Western-dominated organisations. It didn’t surprise me when later Peter told me that one of the board members had been alarmed at the prospect of an American defence executive joining in a key role. Far from taking offence, I found that concern admirable. It reflected something core to TSME’s DNA. And I’m happy to say he and I quickly became friends once we met. I don’t think I matched his stereotyped expectations.
I was also struck by the financial model. The TSME Fund pays a generous 0% interest on the funds it receives! Instead, the return members get is something most financial institutions can’t offer: active, meaningful participation in mission in some of the most challenging places on earth. Mentors are valued not just for their money, but for their expertise—accountants, marketing professionals, engineers, managers. People whose gifts most churches only ever call on for internal finances or for writing cheques. TSME said: “we need what you actually know how to do.” Many mentors have told me they feel they receive far more than they give.
I saw this crystallised in a meeting in Cairo, when the leader of a prospective partner organisation asked two of our most capable mentors whether this model was really sustainable—asking people to participate for no financial return and, on top of that, to pay for their own travel as mentors. The two mentors answered immediately, without hesitation: “Yes! Exactly right!” That moment told me everything. Here was the value proposition that TSME offered members—the opportunity for Christian business people to engage directly in global mission using the skills God had given them as professional accountants, engineers, executives, and marketers, the gifts most churches and ministries don’t appreciate and fail to use.
You learn more going down than you do going up!
Once the board agreed, I travelled to Canada, Michigan, and London to meet the other members of the team as well as the UK mentors. I was awed by the calibre of the people in this organisation. That someone like me, who had just closed a factory and was still working through the consequences, should oversee mentors of that quality was humbling. But I’ve come to believe that I learned more about business through those troubles than I ever would have if everything had gone smoothly. You learn more going down than you do going up! And that experience turned out to be an asset—when sitting with entrepreneurs whose businesses weren’t going exactly as planned, I wasn’t speaking from a distance.
In the following years, we did what any growing organisation does—build systems and learn more about the reality of the market we served. We struggled with challenging economies and global crises. We learned from the different cultural perspectives of our board members and new team members. We expanded our global community and worked with an increasing number of companies.
Turkish has a rich anthology of lovely expressions—“Hey gidi günler!”means “ah, for the good old days!” I think back on the dinners at our finance director’s home in north London, the regular board gatherings, training programs we ran in the Middle East and Central Asia, the early team finding its way together. Those days weren’t perfect—they never are. But what was real was the community, and the conviction that God was forming something in this organisation worth giving ourselves to.
I didn’t come to TSME from a position of strength. I came from difficulty, debt, and a long season of humbling. I suspect that wasn’t an accident. Twenty one years on, I’m deeply grateful to be part of this amazing community of Jesus followers.
This post was first shared as a reflection at the twenty year anniversary celebration for Transformational SME and is published here with kind permission from the author.
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