Tag Archive for: Church Short Reads

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

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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:

 

 

 

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. 

 

 

[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

 

 

 

Business and Church Do Mix! 3 Reasons for a Paradigm Shift

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by Renita Reed-Thomson

 

The Business as Mission (BAM) movement has grown exponentially over the past 25 years—to the glory of God! It has been exciting to watch. When I first became involved in 2005, there were only a handful of books on the subject. Today, thousands of faith-and-work titles have been published, with new ones released almost daily. In the U.S. alone, more than 1,200 NGOs are working to integrate faith and work. What an incredible time to be part of this movement!

Yet, one key institution has remained largely disengaged—and without it, the BAM movement risks losing momentum over time. That missing institution is the Church.

Many faith-and-work organizations have developed a parallel path alongside the Church, discipling believers to glorify God through their work. However, pastors, church leaders, and denominations have often not been formally engaged. Common reasons include perceptions that “the Church is too inward-focused,” that “church and business don’t mix,” or fears of promoting a “prosperity gospel.” As a result, the Church often avoids conversations about work, business, or money—except when it comes to tithing.

Let’s clarify: we all agree that the Church—the ekklesia—is the body of Christ, the people of God. We know that where two or three gather in His name, Christ is present among them. But over time, since Constantine institutionalized Christianity as a state religion, the Church has become increasingly defined by buildings, programs, and professionally paid leaders, rather than by the people of God living out their faith in daily life.

I believe God is reclaiming the marketplace and calling His Church—His bride—to join Him. This requires a significant paradigm shift in how we view both the Church and its mission field.

1. From a Church Vision to a Kingdom Vision

A church vision is often centered on numbers, converts, programs, and buildings. A Kingdom vision, however, seeks the flourishing of all creation—people, communities, and the natural world. It focuses on holistic discipleship and life-on-life evangelism.

A Kingdom-focused Church teaches that every believer is in full-time ministry. It understands that worship is not limited to Sunday mornings but expressed through every act done for God’s glory. The Church with a Kingdom vision helps believers see that “the purpose of Sunday is Monday.”

Sunday gatherings are like a team meeting—where the light of Christ gathers to be recharged. But the Church truly “opens for business” when its members leave the building to live out their faith in their homes, workplaces, and communities.

2. Redefining the Church’s Mission Field

A Kingdom-focused Church doesn’t limit its mission field to the neighborhood around its building. Instead, it recognizes that it has multiple parishes—each corresponding to where its members live and work.

Church leaders are called to equip the saints for ministry (Ephesians 4:12–13). Most of that ministry happens outside the building. As believers grow in maturity and unity, they reflect the “full and complete standard of Christ.”

The five-fold ministries—apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher—are not offices reserved for a few but gifts that all believers are to develop and express in their spheres of influence. Every follower of Christ is called to live these out daily, becoming mature disciples who bring His presence into every place and space.

3. Recovering Three-Dimensional Discipleship

The Great Commission is often understood too narrowly. True discipleship is three-dimensional:

1. Vertical (1-D): Focusing solely on our personal relationship with God. This is good but incomplete—it remains private and static.

2. Vertical + Horizontal (2-D): Adding the Great Commandment—loving others and integrating faith into relationships. This widens our faith but can still remain “flat.”

3. Vertical + Horizontal + Creation (3-D): Adding the Great Commitment of Genesis 1–2—to steward creation and bring about the flourishing of all things. This makes our faith fully alive and transformational.

Too often, Christianity has remained flat—lacking impact on communities and nations. Like Israel, we have become a nation with priests rather than a nation of priests.

But when we equip every believer to be the Church in every place and space, we begin to experience the fullness God intended from the beginning.

We serve a three-dimensional God—Father, Son, and Spirit—who invites all creation to worship Him. Let’s join Him in helping every part of creation glorify God!

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, read the BAM Global Report on BAM and the Church.

To explore how your church can start a workplace discipleship ministry, contact Renita Reed-Thomson at renita@dmleaders.org or visit www.dmleaders.org to learn more.

 

 

Dr. Renita Reed-Thomson is the President and founder of Discipling Marketplace Leaders. Renita has her MBA and a PhD in Sustainable Development.  Discipling Marketplace Leaders (DML) is a product of her experiences in Africa where she has lived and worked since 2005. 

 

Download the BAM and the Church Report

Click cover to access Report

 

 

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

BAM Community: How We Stay Mission True and Continue to Bear Fruit in the Next 10 Years

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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 and Part 2.

by Jo Plummer

 

BAM Community,

Look what God has done! Look what He is doing!

About 25 years ago the term business as mission was coined to try and capture something that God had already been stirring among His people – business people, mission agency people, church people, educators and others. Small clusters of those people began talking to each other about what they were seeing: the potential of business to help solve the pressing mission issues they were working on. The intention to leverage the intrinsic God-designed power of business to do good in the world and bring glory to Him has only increased from there. Those clusters have become a global movement.

My friends and co-leaders, João and Mats, started this series of posts by looking back (part 1) and looking at what we are doing now, and why (part 2). My message to you in part 3 is forward-looking. How can we continue to grow and bear fruit as a movement? How do we avoid mission drift and stay mission-true?

Staying Mission True

In my view, one of the most important things we can do to stay mission true is to intentionally and vocally keep the Great Commission central to our messaging and engagement in business as mission.

Let me unpack what I mean by that.

Mission is central to God’s identity. As God’s image-bearers and co-creators, it is also central to the identity of His Church and every Christ-follower in it. Whatever our vocation, we are all participants (ministers) in God’s missio Dei (the mission of God). [1]

The implication is that we who follow Jesus are all ‘on mission’ every day in all our vocations – family, work, and stewarding creation. In an article for Missio Nexus, Greg Wilton calls this ‘missionhood’ which describes the centrality of mission in Christian identity:

Missionhood – all Christians must know and be convinced of their identity in God’s universal call to his missio Dei.

Within that, business people should know God’s design for business, and therefore be convinced of their unique identity and role as business people in the mission of God.

Commissionaries

When Jesus said, ‘Go and make disciples…’, many scholars agree that he did not mean primarily ‘go elsewhere and make disciples’, but instead ‘as you are going, make disciples’.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” – Matthew 28: 18-20

‘Go’ is not the operative word in the Great Commission, ‘making disciples’ is. We are all disciples of Jesus and we make disciples in all our daily contexts. Or, as Greg Wilton goes on to say, we are all ‘commissionaries’.

Commissionary – all Christians must know, understand, and practice the Great Commission in their daily life.

The first reason we need to keep the Great Commission central is because it reminds entrepreneurs and business professionals who follow Jesus that they too are ‘commissionaries’.

Read more

How the Church Can Engage in Discipling Marketplace Leaders

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by Dr. Phil Walker and Renita Reed-Thomson

There is a story told about a frog in a kettle. The frog is placed in a kettle of cold water. The frog does not notice that the water temperature is being turned up gradually until it is too late. He dies from the heat of the water, not realizing the danger he was in.

The Global Church is suffering from the “frog in the kettle” syndrome. As people increase in financial security, they tend to decrease their dependence on God. It is time to get the frog out of the kettle! In many parts of the world the local church has moved from an evangelical, spiritual force in the community to a closed off social activity in the corner. This move away from the vitality of government, education and business is slowly making the local church irrelevant to the community it is called to serve as a light. Like the frog in the pot, we are slowly reaching a boiling point from which we will not recover our critical role and calling. The dropping statistics of church attendance in both Europe and North America is alarming. Failure to make Jesus relevant in the marketplace will lead to a failure of mission. While business as mission has found a niche in the Christian community, it is not fulfilling its potential.

In 2004 the Occasional Paper on Business as Mission from The Lausanne Movement called on the church to disciple and release its members to be lights in the community.

We call upon the church worldwide 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.

In the same proclamation it called on the business people to live out their calling as Ambassadors, moving out of the four walls of the church into the four corners of the marketplace. Read more

BAM and the Church: A Case Study from Ethiopia

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This case study from the new BAM and the Church Report published by BAM Global showcases the process that one denomination in Ethiopia took to implement a workplace ministry throughout the denomination, following key leaders embracing the need to overcome theological challenges inherent in the church’s understanding of work.

Background

The Ethiopia Kale Heywet Church (EKHC), with 10,000 churches and 10 million members is Ethiopia’s largest evangelical denomination. In 2017, Pastor Yoseph Bekele was appointed to be the ‘Business as Mission Director’ for the Kale Heywet Church. Yoseph had previously worked in youth ministries across the country, even while running several businesses of his own.

When he started, Yoseph shared that businesspeople were considered ‘sinful people’ in his setting. There was no understanding of the purpose of business from a godly or biblical perspective. He also shared that while Ethiopia has a rich heritage and culture, it is poor economically. Therefore, sharing about work as worship and business as mission would be critical for Ethiopian Christians to understand the biblical call to work and how to do business that honours God, which can allow them to grow economically and to flourish in God’s way.

Outcomes to date

In the first three years of the program, from 2018 to 2021, Yoseph and his team of BAM trainers reached nine of the eleven regions of Ethiopia with the message of church-based business as mission. There are teams of trainers who help pastors understand the call of the local church to equip their members for the work of the ministry from Monday to Saturday. The leadership of the headquarters church of the Kale Heywet denomination has agreed that every local church should have a workplace ministry, just as they have a youth and women’s ministry.

In addition to working through the local church leaders, BAM trainers are also bringing this message to youth leaders, women ministry leaders, children’s ministries, prison ministries, mission departments, and the many Kale Heywet Bible schools, while also passing on the teaching and training to other denominations. As part of the training, everyone learns that there are one or more critical outcomes from the three Great Directives—the Great Commitment, the Great Commandment, and the Great Commission.

The Great Commandment outcome is social. Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is about loving God whole-heartedly and loving our neighbour as ourselves. The Great Commission outcome is missional. Jesus tells us to go and make disciples, beginning in Jerusalem and reaching the whole world. But the outcomes of the Great Commitment, a universal call, is economic and ecological. For many Ethiopian Christians, this often comes as a surprise. Read more

BAM and the Church: Unleashing the Power of the Congregation in the Global Marketplace

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We believe the local church can effectively disciple and equip their members to have a positive influence on the marketplace – and especially the spheres of business and economics – with the complete understanding that God said it is ‘very good’.

While the modern business as mission movement has been growing and expanding globally for several decades, much of this growth has been outside of local church contexts. Yet the BAM Manifesto, published twenty years ago, thoroughly grounded this movement in the global Church when it ended with these recommendations:

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

We call upon businesspeople 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.

In 2014, BAM Global further identified three major goals for the BAM movement, our ‘BAM BHAGs‘. The third of these goals is ‘Transform views of business in the Church worldwide’. To this end, we are committed:

…to change the thinking of the global church on business. BAM Global will positively engage with leaders in business, church, missions, and academia to influence attitudes about business, wealth creation, work, and economics and affirm business as a God-given gift and calling. Business as mission is about realizing this new paradigm in the marketplace.

The Church Gathered Empowering the Church Scattered

These recommendations and goals are powerful reminders of the vital role played by both the church gathered and the church scattered in business as mission.

The ‘church gathered’ is the gathering of the saints in specific geographical areas, that is believers joined together in their local institutional church congregation or assembly, be it part of a denomination or an independent assembly. The ‘church scattered’ is Christ’s disciples spread throughout society, living out their faith within the home, neighbourhood, community or workplace.

The newly published BAM Global Report on BAM and the Church aims to rediscover the power, potential and synergy that flows out of a strong relationship between the local church gathered and the church scattered in the marketplace.

Read more

10 Key Points About Work in the Bible Every Christian Should Know

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by Andy Mills, co-chair of the Theology of Work Project

As we begin a new year, we are posting some ‘foundational’ material on our biblical foundations for business as mission and how we respond to God’s call in each of our individual lives and circumstances.

Andy became a Christian as a CEO, and he felt God impress upon him the importance of asking, “What difference does being a Christian make for my work?” Over the years, Andy’s extensive experience as a Christian working in the marketplace and his study of scripture have helped him form the following perspective on work.

The Bible makes it clear that work matters to God. No matter what your profession or occupation – whether you’re a parent, a bus driver, an artist or an engineer – God cares about your work. Here are ten key points about work drawn from the Bible. They provide a practical foundation for Christians asking what the Bible says about how we should approach our work.

1) Work is part of God’s big picture

God created all things and He has revealed that, in His sovereignty, He is progressing created order through a process of Creation, Fall and Redemption. God’s created order started with the perfect garden (Garden of Eden) and will be consummated in the perfect city (New Jerusalem).

2) Our actual work matters to God, now and eternally

God has chosen to create men and women in His image to, among other things, work and tend this created order for His glory and for the betterment of humankind.  In ways we can’t fully understand, the good work we do now, done with and for Him, will survive into the New Jerusalem. Work itself has intrinsic value.

3) God provides us with unique skills, gifts and talents, and calls us to particular roles and activities

Read more

Transforming the Church, One Engaged Business Person at a Time

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by Larry Sharp

Over the years I have had various business owners and executives travel with me as I’ve coached and supported companies around the world. On one particular trip, the VP of a Fortune 500 company came with me and some others to a former Soviet Republic country. He had gone on many mission trips, built churches, passed out tracts, and tutored English – all good things! But in Kazakhstan he helped Kazakh believers and expats with business mentoring on topics like making financial projections, contract law, and international marketing. On the trip home he told me that he finally saw how his skills can be used to build the kingdom of God. “Where are we going next?” he asked, after a short time of reflection at home.

I have had many experiences like this, witnessing firsthand the moment business people have felt affirmed and become engaged in using their skills and experience in business as mission. They go from seeing their contribution as limited to PRAY or PAY, and start to realise they can be actively involved – i.e. PLAY! And there are multiple ways for people to get engaged.

For the first time she saw that her business ability and position was a God-given asset.

A young fellow about 30 years old heard me speak in a large mega-church in Pennsylvania. He asked to meet with me and said, “All this is new to me and I don’t think my wife will want to move outside the state, what can I do?” After finding out he was the owner of an SEO company with 14 employees, I said absolutely – and you don’t even have to leave your computer. He has been a wonderful contributor to business startups in unreached areas of the world.

On another occasion, I spoke in a church in the Philadelphia area one Sunday morning. The pastor seemed open to all I spoke about that morning but the real encouragement was talking to several business people afterwards. One woman was a chemical engineer, a former Proctor and Gamble manager who supervised the development of Pampers. She joined our team and helped us with our “product development” when we were just getting going as a BAM consulting group.  Read more

Breaking Down the Sacred-Secular Divide

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by Mike Baer

Adapted from material first published on the Third Path Blog, as part of a series, reposted with kind permission.

What is the Sacred-Secular Divide?

You don’t have to go very far today to hear some reference to the ‘sacred-secular divide’ or the ‘sacred-secular dichotomy.’ It’s in all the books, blogs, conferences – and occasionally in a sermon. And it’s always in a negative connotation.

So what exactly is the sacred-secular divide? In one sense, it’s impossible to define. It’s a kind of culture, a nuance, an entirely too subtle way of looking at life, vocation and ministry. It’s a shadow that covers many other aspects of our lives. It seems innocuous, but it’s not. The divide is a false dichotomy, a false worldview, an infection in the minds of Jesus’ followers that has done incalculable damage to the cause of the Church.

However, we can at least approximate the meaning of the divide in this way. It is a view of life built on a separation or distinction between those things, people and places someone believes to be sacred (holy and of God) and those believed to be secular (worldly and not of God). Certain callings are holy (missionary, pastor) and others are secular, i.e. of the world and therefore unholy (business, medicine, construction, etc). Certain places are sacred as well—church buildings, graveyards, seminaries while others are secular—my house, your house, schools, and athletic stadiums. I know you might like the sentiment, but a candle lit in a church building is no more holy or special to God than a candle on my 2 year old grandson’s birthday cake. Caution: if that statement offends you, then you are living in the divide. In short, it is all about distinctions and separations and classes and castes. Read more

BAM Journeys: Three Practitioners Share How Their Thinking has Changed

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We asked three BAM practitioner at different stages of their BAM journey to share how their thinking has changed enroute.

Carlos in West Africa

My wife and I initially came to West Africa as ‘traditional missionaries’. After 3 years of pastoring a church we came across some real challenges. The country where we live is 95% Muslim. Since we’ve been here, we have witnessed a number of evangelical churches being torched and ransacked. Muslim background believers (MBBs) have lost their jobs, their families and have even been physically abused because of their faith. That is not the only challenge, anyone that has spent any time in Africa will inevitably be confronted with the harsh realities of poverty. Jobs are already scarce for any African, let alone an MBB. Unfortunately, most churches are not setup to meet this need.

We started praying for another way to serve Jesus here. That is when the Lord put in our hearts to start a business. With a business we could provide jobs to MBBs and pre-believers, having contact with them eight to ten hours a day in a non-threatening environment. Read more