Tag Archive for: testimony

8 BAM Success Factors to Keep You from Failing

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Read this classic blog from our Archives, first published on The BAM Review blog in July 2017.

 

What helps business mission companies succeed? We asked the same BAM practitioners who shared failure stories to also share what kept their businesses from going under completely.

We asked: If you had to give the top two or three reasons for your overall business success, what factors would you share?

Here is a rundown of their combined responses in a Top 8 list of ‘What Went Right’

1. Build a wider network and community

Mentioned in some form by almost all the practitioners we asked, top of the list is creating a robust network around the business and its owners. These BAMers said that forging strong partnerships and building a community of mentors/supporters was key. Avoiding isolation is vital.

Having world class partners has been essential.

As an owner, share the challenges you face with your board, investors, mentors, etc. Tell the truth, early and often.

Surround yourself with counsel. Stay attached to God and his people either through a church/agency or personal mentor or coach.

I’ve succeeded because I’ve had a spouse that has stood by me through thick and thin, not to mention a relationship with my business partner built on tremendous trust and respect. It’s also been important to have mentors and coaches walking closely with us.

A success factor for me has been being well networked in the wider business community as well as the BAM community nationally.

Integration with the local University has been essential. Strong relationships with key professors has allowed us to get first picks on some of the best students who come to do internships with us and eventually become junior staff members.

Read more

Two More Stories from Asia: What Is It Really Like to Run a BAM Business?

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What is it really like to run a BAM company, especially in the kind of challenging contexts that business as mission practitioners often find themselves? In this mini-series, we are sharing three short stories from the frontlines—a behind the scenes look at BAM company leadership. Read Part 1 here.

Fitness Industry, Southeast Asia

 
What do you do and where?

I run a multi location gym business in Southeast Asia serving approximately 15,000 members and employing around 200 staff. The vast majority of our team is local, with only a few foreign employees. Our model centers on membership based fitness supported by personal training, group classes, and leadership development within our staff teams. We operate in multiple cities and focus on building strong local teams who understand the communities they serve. Beyond providing fitness services, we are committed to developing people, both our members and our staff, by creating structured systems, growth pathways, and a culture that promotes excellence, accountability, and long term opportunity.

Why do you do it?

At the core, I see this work as stewardship. In this season of life, that means stewarding relationships, capital, influence, and brand presence in the cities where we operate in a way that honors the Lord. That includes creating environments where people are cared for well, where staff can grow professionally and personally, and where members experience genuine community. Our focus is not merely physical fitness but holistic development. We aim to steward the business to create opportunities for truth to be shared, integrity, and long term flourishing, especially for our team members and their families.

What has it really been like to run your business?

It has been deeply seasonal. There are periods when I cannot imagine doing anything more aligned with how I am wired, leveraging gifts, building teams, and watching people grow. And there are seasons where the challenges feel relentless, where progress is unclear and pressure is high. The hardest parts have often involved leadership strain and navigating growth beyond our support systems. The unexpected joys have come from seeing staff rise into leadership and watching lives genuinely change. Over time, I have learned that clarity, humility, and dependence on the Lord are not optional. They are essential and even the intended main outcome of Joy in growing in knowledge of who the Lord is through these seasons.

Looking back, what are one or two things you wish you knew before you started?

One of the greatest blessings has been having a trusted, like minded business friend outside of my organization. I wish I had understood earlier just how critical that kind of relationship would be. Having someone who can provide accountability, perspective, and encouragement, without being entangled in the day to day operations, has been invaluable. Business leadership can feel isolating, and carrying weight alone is unnecessary and unwise. I have learned that long term sustainability depends as much on spiritual and relational support as it does on strategy and execution.

 

 

Hospitality and Food Manufacturing, South Asia

 
What do you do and where?

We are based in South Asia in the Himalayas. We run a coffee and bakery business where we focus on the employment of locals. We mentor them and equip them in the gospel. We develop them with job skills and so they can bring positive change to society in their professional sphere.

Why do you do it?

Our vision is to use business to reach places and frontiers in closed nations, where it’s vital for us to be able to live among people, and establish a church planting and discipleship movement. We are seeing the fruits of being embedded in our communities and how powerful business is to bring the gospel to places that haven’t yet heard it. It is encouraging how deeply we connect with locals and authorities due to our role in society! I am passionate about the connections between us, and for the region we are in.

What has it really been like to run your business?

This place in South Asia is hard due to its infrastructure, there is no electricity or water in the mountains and also it is difficult to find people to work for some seasons, winter is closed! So the lack of some key tools to run a business is the main problem, and then we need to adapt what we do. Sometimes going through despairing situations, we have wanted to give up! Many things were not done due to lack of resources in the city and it left us wondering how to move forward. It has caused us to improvise a lot, not knowing what each day would bring, But in all this, it has been a joy to learn and it really was the hard way!

Looking back, what are one or two things you wish you knew before you started?

I would have loved some advice on coffee bean quality, better barista training, and tips to organize our finances better! It has been a wild experience from bottom up, young people dreaming, pioneering and achieving their goals without proper guidance!

An unexpected joy to us is just how much access to remote communities we have due to the business of the coffee shop—we can build strongly on the relationships built there. The connections and friends we made through the business have made our life even easier in actually running it and has helped shape so much of our identity where we are.

 

>> Read Part 1 here

 

Read more BAM Stories on our Stories page here. Got a story to share? Contact us about it here.

 

 

 

Photo by Huỳnh Tiến on Unsplash

 

 

 

Engineering on the Frontlines: What Is It Really Like to Run a BAM Business?

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What is it really like to run a BAM company, especially in the kind of challenging contexts that business as mission practitioners often find themselves? In this mini-series, we are sharing three short stories from the frontlines—a behind the scenes look at BAM company leadership. 

 

Z Engineers – Construction Industry, South Asia

Z Engineers is one of the oldest BAM companies in the world, having been founded in the late 1960s by Christian expatriate engineers in a majority Muslim country in South Asia. Its current Managing Director, a national leader, has been in the position for 5 years. Here he shares some of his experiences and insights into what it is really like to run a BAM company.

What do you do and where?

Z Engineers serves the construction industry across a nation in South Asia, with a specific focus on remote rural areas where access to quality infrastructure is often a significant challenge. Our business model is built on providing comprehensive design, consultancy, and construction services with honesty and integrity. We take pride in our inclusive employment practices, hiring a diverse team of engineers, quantity surveyors, and architects from cross-cultural groups. Our work isn’t just about building structures; it’s about bringing high-quality standards to regions that have historically been underserved and have no hope.

Why do you do it?

Our foundational vision at Z Engineers is threefold: to build quality, build people, and build for God. This calling to the workplace is what sustains us. The strong focus and burden to introduce honest business practices and integrity to the construction sector, to provide job opportunities for the large unemployed segment keeps us moving forward. Beyond the construction side, my wife and I have also established E Services. This initiative is a direct response to the vulnerability of marginalized Christian groups. We focus on creating safe, dignified full-time and part-time employment for young women moving from rural areas to a major city, specifically to provide an alternative to the high risks of sexual exploitation they often face. Our BAM focus is to provide both physical infrastructure and social restoration

What has it really been like to run your business?

Running Z Engineers has been a journey of perseverance. The hardest challenge has been the financial strain of managing overheads during lean periods, coupled with the ethical struggle of the bidding process. We frequently face the reality of losing projects because we refuse to participate in the systemic corruption common in the industry. We are also navigating a significant ‘brain drain’ within the local Christian youth, as many seek to relocate abroad in search of financial prosperity. It is a constant challenge to offer tangible hope to these young people when the local environment provides so little to convince them to stay. Since taking over the company in 2021, these past five years have been a profound period of growth in the BAM space for me. The phrase ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ is no longer a metaphor; it describes the literal reality of my journey as I strive to stay faithful to the workplace.

On the other hand, there has been unexpected joy. We recently won a project in the Northern areas that has matured perfectly—a beautiful ‘repayment’ i.e. equivalent in terms of the value, for a previous project we lost because we refused to cut corners. We are also entering a ‘redemptive technology’ phase by pioneering non-fired bricks, which aligns our environmental stewardship with our construction goals. While our newer startup (E Services) is still in the foundational phase, we are learning to navigate the basics with hope and courage.

Looking back, what are one or two things you wish you knew before you started?

First, I wish I had understood the level of personal and familial sacrifice required. A BAM company operates differently than a secular business; the spiritual and ethical weight often falls heavily on the leadership, and navigating those challenges can place significant stress on family life and work-life balance.

Second, I wish I had been more prepared for the mental health toll. There is a constant, exhausting pressure to maintain a ‘successful’ outward image for clients and marketing purposes, even when the business is facing internal crises. Learning to manage that tension between professional optics and the reality of the struggle is something I am still learning to do.

 

Read two more short stories in next week’s post:

>> Read Part 2 here

 

A. has been the Managing Director for Z Engineers since 2021. He holds a Mechanical Engineering degree and has a history of working in Christian Institutions in his nation, in business management, Project Administration & development.

 

 

 

Photo by Jeriden Villegas on Unsplash

 

 

A BAM Story: Witness, Generosity and Transformation in Puerto Rico [Video]

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by Merari Peña


Merari Peña shared some of her story at the Fourth Lausanne Congress Workplace Track in September 2024.

 

 

Transcript:

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Merari Pena, and I am the founder of Forever Crystals, a business that started on the small island of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. It’s such an honor to stand before you today and share a bit about my journey.

When I was 23, I had a life-changing encounter with Jesus. This profound experience allowed me to forgive my father, who had left our family when I was just 3 years old. That forgiveness filled me with a new love for my father and a desire to serve him. At that time, what he needed most was financial support to pursue his missionary work in Cuba.

That same year, in 2007, I started a business in my garage with a simple desire—to support my father’s missionary work. Little did I know how much it would grow and how God would use it to touch so many lives and build His Kingdom.

From the beginning, our main goal was to fund missions. But everything changed in 2010 when I had the incredible opportunity to attend the Lausanne Congress in South Africa. There, I learned about the concept of business as mission, and it completely transformed the way I saw our work. This new understanding of the theology of work reshaped everything we did.

One of the biggest changes in our business was understanding our divine design and realizing that we are missionaries in the marketplace. We already had influence, a voice, and the attention of everyday people. The question then became: how are we going to use it? Our business is a fashion jewelry retail store, and we have focused on designs that inspire others and reflect stories and principles of the Bible. Our most popular pieces are a birthstone collection that celebrates the life of each woman and reflects a fruit of the Spirit. The pieces we create tell a story of biblical virtues and the strength of people in the Bible who overcame difficult times. This approach not only beautifies our customers but also spreads the message of hope and faith through creative designs that add sparkle to their everyday lives.

God’s Faithfulness in our Business Journey

God has been our guide and strength through every challenge we’ve faced. During Hurricane Maria, where our island was without electricity and water for months, our first focus was to be the hands of God, providing for our employees by distributing water and first aid kits to those in need. Our business philosophy is grounded in serving others, reflecting Jesus’ love in practical ways. When the pandemic hit, our priority remained the same—to maintain their jobs. We pivoted our business knowledge to create new ventures, ensuring our team had food on the table.

Through it all, we’ve poured into the lives of our employees, making them our first line of ministry. Our business isn’t just about products or profits; it’s about people and purpose. For 17 years, we’ve walked alongside our employees in their personal journeys, providing not just jobs, but a supportive family. We employ over 50 dedicated young women who share our vision and values, and some of them have been with us the entire 17 years we have been in business. We’ve shared life’s highs and lows together—welcoming new babies, facing cancer diagnoses, supporting through life’s losses, and celebrating marriages. We’re a community grounded in Bible principles, always there for one another.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. – Colossians 3:23-24

What we have gained we have surrendered it to God. We’ve used the influence gained through our business to start a non-profit movement called Oasis Empresarial, uniting local businesswomen to learn biblical principles for healthy, purpose-driven entrepreneurship. Through Oasis, we preach Christ to non-believers, support missionary marketplace endeavors, and minister to entrepreneurial women about Christian values, fostering spiritually and emotionally healthy entrepreneurs.

In closing, I want to leave you with this thought: In business, as in life, our “why” is the most powerful driving force. For us, our “why” has always been to serve God and others, to create a business that is a beacon of hope and love. As it says in Colossians 3:23-24, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

As workplace Christians, we are God’s provision to the church for Kingdom building. The resources we generate through our daily work have enabled us to go out into the world or send others to do God’s work. We’ve seen firsthand how planting, supporting, and maintaining local churches in Cuba has furthered our resilience in business and the Kingdom of God, and it’s been an incredible blessing to be a part of that journey.

Thank you for allowing me to share our story. May God bless you all in your endeavors and may you find joy and purpose in serving others through what God has placed in your hands.

Thank you.

 

Read a longer story about Forever Crystals published 10 years ago on The BAM Review.

Access more videos, transcripts and study materials from the Lausanne Congress Workplace Track here.



Merari Pena, founder of Forever Crystals, holds a Bachelor’s in Business Administration and studied jewelry design at Alchimia in Florence. With over 25 years of retail experience, she launched her fashion jewelry business in her garage at 23. Forever Crystals has grown into a thriving enterprise with an online shop and stores in the Caribbean. Merari also leads Oasis Empresarial, a non-profit empowering businesswoman with biblical principles. Committed to Servant Leadership, she integrates faith and business to support communities and missionaries, spreading hope and purpose.

 

 

Photo by Forever Crystals

 

 

 

 

The Story Behind the Sunshine Approach: A Journey of Faith, Surrender and Calling

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by Don Larson

 

Over the past decade, many people have enjoyed our premium cashews. We started in the Whole Foods Market in 2015, where we proudly remain, and are now growing our footprint to the four corners of the world. But what many don’t know is what’s behind the brand. The story isn’t just about cashews. It’s about faith, surrender, and a calling that turned into a movement.

I spent most of my professional life in corporate America, most notably with Hershey Chocolate in Pennsylvania, where I grew up nearby. I met my wife at Penn State, and we got engaged the week after graduation. Over 40 years later, we’re still side by side. At age 29, both of us became Christians, and over the years, our faith deepened.

Fifteen years into my walk with God, I began to sense an undeniable pull. I felt the Lord wanted more than just my faith… He wanted everything. I couldn’t shake the feeling that He had an assignment for me. I stepped away from my role at Hershey and took on a new position as CEO, leading the construction of the largest cocoa processing plant outside of Philadelphia. The factory was built and then, shockingly, sold by the Board without my knowledge. What followed was a devastating chapter of betrayal, greed, and injustice, as they even tried to deny my rightful ownership stake.

But even in the heartbreak, I could sense God’s orchestration. I felt Him saying, “I want you.” So I surrendered. Fully. What I thought might be a life in ministry began to shift into something I hadn’t expected: business as a calling.

The story isn’t just about cashews. It’s about faith, surrender, and a calling that turned into a movement.

I prayed for over a year, seeking God’s direction, and what began to form in my spirit was a business model rooted in God’s heart for the poor, the widow, and the orphan. A model built not on maximizing shareholder value, but on sharing. A model of restoration. But this wasn’t without intense opposition. Every time I went out to the woods in my RV to pray about this model, chaos would break loose at home. My wife began to dread those prayer times because of the spiritual warfare that inevitably followed. That intensity continues unabated. Can people relate to this? The scriptures scream of it.

Still, I pressed on, determined to move only under God’s direction. The testing came quickly. Right after surrendering, I was offered a senior VP role at Campbell’s Soup, a high-ranking, high-paying opportunity. Many saw it as a sign from God. But in my heart, I knew otherwise. When asked, “How much money will it take for Don Larson to join us?” I answered, “I want to help people.” That was my step into the Jordan.

As our family prepared to move permanently to Africa, our house hadn’t sold. Days before departure, I declared, “I’m going, no matter what happens to the house.” We had already sold or donated most of our possessions. Within hours, the house went under contract. The buyers even wanted to adopt our dog and buy the remaining furniture. When you move in obedience, God moves mountains.

What began to form in my spirit was a business model rooted in God’s heart for the poor, the widow, and the orphan. A model built not on maximizing shareholder value, but on sharing.

We moved to Mozambique because that’s where God led us, not because it was easy. A Portuguese-speaking nation consistently ranked among the poorest and most difficult places to succeed. And yet, that was the assignment. We’ve now lived here full-time for 14 years, with no plans to leave.

The resistance has been intense. Just 18 months after arriving in 2011, we experienced a brutal home invasion. Armed men with AK-47s stormed our house. They counted my life down to zero as I fumbled to find car keys to the two cars they would eventually steal. By God’s grace, my life was spared after they reached zero. Days later, while driving alone, I asked God, “Why?” And in His quiet voice, I sensed Him say: “You didn’t think once of quitting. You’re more galvanized than ever. I am so proud of you.”

That’s the abundant life. It’s not comfort or ease, it’s walking so closely with the Lord that His affirmation carries you through the fire. Often His voice comes through others… godly people who feel compelled to speak into my life, often saying things they didn’t even know I needed to hear.

So, what is this model that has been forged in prayer and opposed by warfare? It’s called the Sunshine Approach, a business model designed to restore dignity and rebuild communities. It’s simple, but powerful. It’s patterned after my two mentors: Jesus Christ and Milton Hershey.

The Sunshine Approach is a business model designed to restore dignity and rebuild communities… And it’s not just a business model—it is a battle strategy against broken systems.

Jesus showed us a vision of society after Pentecost in the Book of Acts, one marked by generosity, shared resources, and care for the vulnerable. Milton Hershey modeled this in business. He took care of his employees and his partner farming communities. Unable to have children of their own, Milton and his wife opened an orphanage for boys in 1909. After her passing, he devoted his life to that orphanage. At the end of his life, he gave his fortune and his company to it. Today, that orphanage holds controlling interest in an $8 billion chocolate company. My wife’s father was one of Milton Hershey’s orphans, graduating in 1955 into a better life. When God designs your path, nothing is wasted.

The Sunshine Approach is built on three pillars:

1. Transformational Employment – We hire the overlooked: widows, orphans, and the chronically unemployed. We give them jobs, training, and a new sense of purpose.

2. Local Agricultural Uplift – We partner with smallholder farmers, helping them transition from subsistence to surplus, often by distributing free cashew trees and building community-based factories.  We grew and helped plant over 200,000 cashew trees in the last 3 years.

3. Reinvestment into Communities – We reinvest profits directly into our people, not into shareholders, by building orphan homes, supporting village development, and funding long-term transformation.

Mozambique is polluted with things that God finds detestable… These are not abstract problems; they are daily realities that destroy lives, distort justice, and entrench poverty. But this is exactly why we are here.

In 2021, we were asked to bring our community development agricultural model (the Sunshine Villages Project) to Palma by both TotalEnergies and the Mozambican government. Over the previous few years, Islamic insurgents had unleashed a wave of violence across northern Mozambique, killing thousands and displacing hundreds of thousands of people as refugees. Entire communities were devastated, many villagers in Palma had been beheaded in the attacks months before. Where others fled, we stepped in to bring peace through prosperity. Today, we are the largest employer in Palma outside of the gas project, operating a factory right in the heart of the region. It was extremely dangerous. In early 2022, I met with village leaders under military escort, often in places few dared to go. But fear not… God desires to permanently deliver people from poverty. And we are here to be His hands and feet.

Mozambique is polluted with things that God finds detestable. With our three pillars, we are constantly face-to-face with corruption, exploitation, and trafficking. These are not abstract problems; they are daily realities that destroy lives, distort justice, and entrench poverty. But this is exactly why we are here. We were not called to build in ease but to stand in opposition to darkness. Every circumstance we face, whether it’s bribes demanded at customs, unjust treatment by authorities, or attempts to manipulate and misuse our mission, we meet with honesty, integrity, and ethics. That is our warfare. That is our stand. The Sunshine Approach is not just a business model—it is a battle strategy against broken systems. We believe righteousness must govern every transaction, every hiring decision, every village initiative. When you walk in light in a place long covered in darkness, resistance is inevitable. But so is transformation.

Cecilia’s Story

Cecilia hugging younger girl Carla

Let me tell you about Cecilia. We met her in 2014, when she was just 12 years old, living on the streets with her two younger siblings. Orphaned, vulnerable, and surviving day to day, she had every reason to believe life would never change. But Cecilia had a spark and when we asked what she wanted to be someday, she looked us in the eye and said, “I want to be a lawyer to help those who cannot help themselves.”

That same year, we launched the very first Sunshine House, a family-based orphan home modeled after the vision of Milton Hershey. It was built with her story in mind. Cecilia became one of the first children to enter the Sunshine House, and over the years we’ve watched her grow into a young woman of character and strength. In 2025, she will graduate from university with a law degree after defending her thesis.  She is interning now with a legal firm and will then step into a professional role in the legal department of our distributor. This is what the Sunshine Approach was always meant to do, not just rescue but restore. Not just meet needs but fulfill destinies.  She is our role model for the dozens of other children now in our many Sunshine Homes.


When we shipped our factory to Mozambique in late 2012, literally packed inside a container, the ship was hit by Hurricane Sandy while still at the docks in New Jersey. We thought we had lost it. That’s where our story began.  We encounter these types of situations continually as a matter of doing the Lord’s business. These are not coincidences. This is warfare. And we’ve learned to expect it.

But do you notice the pattern? Fear, chaos, resistance…they always appear when we’re about to take ground for the Kingdom. Fear not. This is biblical. Scripture tells us that trials will come and that they are often signs that we are on the right path. We are not victims of this warfare. We are refined by it. If you truly want to usher in the Kingdom of God, you must be willing to endure the fire.

And in that fire, you find purpose. You find legacy. You find joy. You find the abundant life.

 

Read more of Don’s story previously published on The BAM Review.

Read a case study on the Sunshine Nut Company at the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation.

Watch Don’s TEDx talk.

Visit Sunshine Nuts website

 

Don Larson is a former Vice President at The Hershey Company and the Founder and CEO of the Sunshine Nut Company. The Sunshine Nut Company is a social enterprise based in Mozambique that produces and sells cashews and is working to revive Mozambique’s economy and reverse the trend in broken families.

 

Read more on BAM and Agriculture on The BAM Review Blog.

 

Photos courtesy of the Sunshine Nut Company

 

Entrepreneurs on Mission: Two Barriers to Break Through

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by Mark Russell

There comes a day when we sit back and ask ourselves what we are going to do with our lives. In a sense, I am still asking myself that question. But many years ago I felt a nudge, a call if you will, to spend time in cross-cultural contexts advancing the gospel. At the time, I had no idea what that entailed. The only role models I had to look to were the missionaries I had met in Paraguay. They were either medical doctors or preachers. As a business student, it seemed I would have to leave behind my business interests and develop a new set of skills.

A few years into my overseas ministry, I began to ask myself some new questions about why couldn’t one be a businessperson and a kingdom builder at the same time.   At the time I was working in a traditional missionary setting, but quickly found that a lot of people resonated with my search to integrate business and mission. Later, I realized that people all over the world were working independently to the same end. It seems God is up to something.

Over the years, as I have worked in various business as mission activities and talked to many others who have been likewise engaged, two points have emerged as worthy of examination.

Breaking Categorizations

First, Westerners tend to live according to categories that are not always beneficial. This tendency is not limited to Westerners but is expressed more strongly there. This is the sort of categorization that leads us to designate one person a “missionary” and another person as not.

Paul was a tentmaker because that is who he was, who he was designed by the Designer to be.

For example, ask most people if the Apostle Paul was a missionary or an entrepreneurial businessman. They will tend to reply that he was a church planting apostolic missionary or something to that effect. Nevertheless, a close study of his life and work reveals that he was both. For many of us, it’s difficult to accept that, so some in the church have taught over the years that Paul worked as a tentmaker solely for financial purposes i.e. to pay the bills so he could preach the gospel.

However, a closer look reveals that Paul lived and breathed the gospel everywhere he went and generally he went and worked as a tentmaker. Paul was a tentmaker because that is who he was, who he was designed by the Designer to be. Read more

It Takes an Ecosystem to ‘Raise a BAM Company’!

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There are many different ways to get involved in business as mission and the BAM movement needs many types of people, skills, experiences and passions. If you are interested in engaging with BAM, there is a path and role for you! Last month, we started with the topic of getting involved in doing BAM yourself. This month, we are exploring ways to support and resource others to do BAM – in other words, how to help build the business as mission ecosystem!

Business as mission companies and practitioners need many different kinds of support and resources to thrive. To discover the many different and necessary roles in the BAM ecosystem, read Part 1 of this series.

To wrap the series up, we thought it would be fun and interesting to look at this issue from the other side; from the point of view of the BAM practitioner. We asked the owners of two BAM companies about the supportive ecosystem around them.

A well-known saying in English is that “It takes a village to raise a child.” I think we could also say, “It takes a vibrant support network and ecosystem to raise a BAM company!” Would you agree with that?… And if so, how have you seen that play out in your own company experience?
Ryan and Lee, BAM Real Estate Development Company in Southeast Asia

Yes, absolutely. We wouldn’t be where we are today without an incredible network of advisors.  For us, it started with informal advisors from our personal network and over the years it has become much more formalized and strategic. I like to think about our network of advisors in concentric circles with those in the inner circle reserved for a few people who care for and understand everything about you. The highest level of trust and vulnerability happens at the inner circle level. Many people refer to this as a personal board. The next circle is our advisory board which in our case functions more like a governance Board for our BAM ventures. They are concerned about us, but also very much concerned about the mission and vision of the venture and ensuring it’s sustainability and purpose.  The next level of advisors we engage with are subject matter experts, who can be consultants and/or coaches. We normally engage with SMEs for specific challenges or time periods.

As we grow, we have had to learn how to adapt our use of advisors along the way. We are slow to bring a new person onto our Board, so we typically engage them first as an SME. An SME may engage with us for weeks/months, a board member engages for years, and the inner circle is  more of a lifetime commitment.  The relational aspect increases as it goes closer to the center, but in all situations we like to clarify expectations in writing that explains what we are asking of the advisor and how we will review our working relationship overtime. In the past, we didn’t have anything in writing and it was awkward to ask someone to step aside from a role, when in reality we needed someone else with a different set of experiences and giftings for a new phase of growth.  Read more

Starting out on Unique BAM Paths: Two More Stories

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This month we are starting a blog series that will explore different pathways into BAM and different ways to be involved. We begin this month with the topic of getting involved in doing BAM yourself. In the coming months, we’ll explore more ideas for enabling, resourcing and connecting others to do BAM.

In Part 1 of this two part series, we shared two unique stories of how God led people to get involved with BAM.

Here are two more stories highlighting different ways to get involved. In the first, Danilo shares how he is has integrated BAM principles into an existing business. In the second, JC started working remotely for a BAM company in his first job out of college. We hope these will encourage you that there are many different paths into business as mission!

Danilo, CEO of Snowman Labs

Danilo, age 34, holds a degree in Computer Networks, and was born and raised in the south of Brazil in a Christian family. His father is a pastor, which deeply influenced Danilo’s upbringing. Danilo loves Jesus, his family, people, technology, and innovation. Those passions opened up the doors for starting Snowman Labs, a digital solution company helping clients navigate their digital transformation challenges. Danilo is currently the CEO of Snowman Labs, where their purpose is to let people experience the kindness and love of God through technology, innovation, and UX/UI design. 

What motivated you to get involved with business as mission?

Actually, it was God who led me to BAM after years of wrestling with my views on the sacred-secular divide in business. I used to see business and serving the Lord as polar opposites. But, through God’s grace, I now see BAM as a natural integration of my faith and professional life.

My journey began in early February 2018 during a service in Brazil, where I heard João Mordomo speak on 1 Peter 2:9. His message, that not all of us would have a call to full-time ministry, but we are all full-time ministers, profoundly changed my outlook. I sought João out for lunch to learn more about BAM, and he has since become a pivotal mentor in guiding me toward integrating these principles into Snowman Labs.

What is your role in Snowman Labs?

As CEO, my role is to steer Snowman Labs toward the vision God has imparted to us. This aligns perfectly with my strengths, especially since it involves overseeing sales, a domain I’m passionate about. My love for our vision and responsibility in sales creates a synergy that drives me daily.

You transitioned Snowman Labs to incorporate BAM principals. Did you run into any challenges or discouragements along the way?

Honestly, starting in BAM felt like a path God had prepared for me, so the initial steps were surprisingly smooth. The real challenges came later as I worked to weave BAM concepts into our company’s culture. Read more

Joining BAM: Stories of People Getting Involved in Business as Mission

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This month we are starting a blog series that will explore different pathways into BAM and different ways to be involved. We begin this month with the topic of getting involved in doing BAM yourself. In the coming months, we’ll explore more ideas for enabling, resourcing and connecting others to do BAM.

Over the past 15 years, there’s been an unprecedented rise in the global connectedness of people involved in business as mission (BAM). As the movement continues to grow, many more seek opportunities to join the movement — specifically by joining or starting BAM companies and resourcing organizations.

As engagement in business as mission grows, so do the range of opportunities. There are almost as many ways to get involved with BAM as there are people on their BAM journey and we’ve  been eager to hear more about the variety of ways to get involved.

We reached a handful of individuals who each had unique stories of how God led them to get involved with BAM. Here are two of their stories:

G, Team Member of a Business Incubator for Refugees in the UK

G works with a team based in the UK that helps local refugees relaunch the businesses they operated back in their home countries. She and the team are driven by BAM principals and hope to see real financial impact with refugees lifted out of poverty and released into economic prosperity for their families. They aim to impact social bottom lines by encouraging and deepening ties between locals and refugees, and to have spiritual impact by sharing Christ with groups who, before arriving in the UK, had limited exposure to the gospel.  

What motivated you to join the organization you’re working with?

I learned about social enterprise during my studies of global business issues at university. After my first exposure to these concepts, I wanted to learn more about businesses doing BAM in a practical and meaningful way.

I am from a very rural area and there didn’t seem to be many opportunities for the practical, hands-on experience I was looking for. During one of my summer breaks, a man from the UK (now G’s team leader) started to share about his community’s desire to serve refugees and start a social enterprise in his area. If anyone was interested in joining them for an internship, he said to connect with him after service.

What did you do to prepare for involvement in BAM? Can you tell us about the networking, research, learning, and formal or informal preparations you did?

As I said, I studied social enterprise in college. But to me, it felt more like most of my learning was “caught” not taught.

My mom is an entrepreneur herself, and I would say most of what I’ve learned has been from watching and helping my mom run her Mary Kay business. She’s always been intentional about networking and connecting to enrich the lives of women, not just to make a sale. She always made sure genuine care for people was never lost. During college, I followed in her footsteps and started my own Mary Kay side business. This taught me a lot about bouncing back from rejection, and how to not take it personally, which is hard!

Running my own business taught me how to talk to people even when I’m intimidated, giving me the confidence to boldly ask questions and follow up with people I’m interested in learning from. This gave me buoyancy to keep following up on this opportunity with the team in the UK, even after it had been repeatedly canceled and postponed due to Covid. Read more

Open Doors to Business: A Report from BAM South Asia

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We are sharing a series throughout October on ‘What in the World is God Doing through Business as Mission?!’ We are aiming to ‘put the global into BAM Global’ by highlighting encouraging BAM developments from different parts of the world during this month.

God is on the move across Asia! To provide an insight into just one part of it, we interviewed BAM Global Executive Director, João Mordomo, who went to India last month.

Interview with João Mordomo

I had the privilege recently of going to India and the purpose of that trip was twofold. Firstly, I was visiting in a disputed region of the country where business as mission is proving to be one of the only models that is effective. This is both in terms of Indians or foreigners having a credible presence in that region, as well as creating the actual mission impact that they desire.

If Indians from further south in India, for example, want go up into this primarily Muslim region with the intention of somehow spreading the gospel they are not going to be able to be there legitimately if they’re not doing business or have some other type of job. It was great to see a combination of nationalities doing business there, both nationals and ex-pats. There were Indians, alongside ethnic Nepalis who have Indian nationality, Nepalis who are both nationally and ethnically Nepali, and then some others from further afield.

Open Doors to Business

Some of the BAM practitioners there are working in the hospitality industry and others are doing things related to agriculture or ecotourism. Recently, the ecotourism component is looking very promising. People go to this region for hiking, camping and mountaineering, things like that. But then those tourists need bed and breakfast accommodation, they need refreshments and meals. So there is a small ecosystem that is developing.

One of the most encouraging things that I saw there with foreigners as well as Indians, is that they are employing locals, with the hope of them hearing about Christ alongside having a really positive social impact. What do I mean by that? For instance, if there’s one group that has three enterprises in three cities, one city is predominantly Muslim, another is predominantly Hindu, another is predominantly Buddhist. And they’re looking at the twofold benefit of being able to hire these other people from these other religions in order to experience the gospel. The employees also get a good job, bringing stability to livelihoods, which is great because finding a decent job is often not very easy in this region.

Alongside that, there is multiplication. When one unit or location is successful and making a profit, that sustainability can be leveraged to start a new enterprise. A new unit may not be profitable in the first year or two, it’s going to take a while, but when it does it can do greater good through expansion. In this case, it’s not about making the owner wealthy, they’re not sending the profits outside of the country – they’re actually using them to expand. This creates even more great jobs, more social impact and more opportunities for people who wish to plant and grow churches in these communities – but that need a real job to have a role and credibility in that place.

BAM Multiplication

The second half of my trip, I was down in the south-central region of India for what is considered to be the largest BAM conference in South Asia, an initiative of a partner network of BAM Global. And one of the immediate things that I noticed there, which linked directly to what I was doing the week before in the other region, was that the church in the south of India seems to be taking the Great Commission more seriously than ever, especially with respect to the needs throughout the north of India. I met many Indians doing really, really good business; important people, some influential people, doing some really good things. And I heard them talking about their responsibility to reach the north of India with the gospel. That was very encouraging.  Read more

What in the World? God at Work through BAM in Europe

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We are sharing a series throughout October on ‘What in the World is God Doing through Business as Mission?!’ We are aiming to ‘put the global into BAM Global’ by highlighting encouraging BAM developments from different parts of the world during this month.

God is on the move across Europe! To give you a flavour, we asked just four business as mission network leaders to give us an update on BAM developments in their nation:

Romania

It’s encouraging to witness the growing interest in engaging with God-centered business across various European countries. Romania, in particular, is emerging as a hub for Christian business networks. BAM Romania and the BAM Connect team play a crucial role in this evolving movement.

This movement includes Christian startup entrepreneurs, NGOs aiming to venture into business activities, and companies exploring ways to incorporate missions into their existing organizations. All are seeking inspirational stories, practical courses, teaching, and events to connect with like-minded individuals. In February of this year, we organized the BAM Connect Summit in Bucharest, which attracted over 100 participants from eight different countries. As a team, we expanded our network, believing in Romania’s significance within the BAM movement in Europe.

After the conference, we set aside time for prayer, team discussions on new opportunities, and consultations with various international BAM leaders. As we acknowledge our calling and seek ways to nurture our passion, we are excited about an invitation to participate in a particular project. In this project, we’ll collaborate with NGO leaders and leverage our specially developed BAM Connect platform and tool. Through this platform, leaders can create Business or Mission Model Canvases to optimize the impact of their organization’s mission and activities.

In Romania, it’s challenging to draw a distinct line between an NGO and a business (as mission). Over the last decades, numerous NGOs have had significant roles within Romanian society. However, they now confront impending challenges such as rising costs, fundraising hurdles, and stricter legal requirements. The BAM movement presents itself as one of the solutions to prepare NGOs for the future and to have sustainable impact.

The personnel, the experience, the services, the knowledge, and the network are all present in the BAM Connect team to serve those organizations in Romania and beyond. People can get in touch with us by email or via bamconnect.net

Netherlands

Here in the Netherlands we see a growing number of influential business owners and investors engaging in business as mission, and local BAM initiatives growing in size and influence. Meanwhile we’re involved with some key mission organizations to encourage them towards BAM.

Right now we’re in full preparation for our annual two-day congress on November 9 and 10. This year, our theme is Integrating the 4 P’s of BAM: People, Planet, Profit and Pneuma. This Congress is bi-lingual in English and Dutch, find out more about the BAM Congress Netherlands here. You are welcome!

Besides that, we see BAM-related initiatives developing, partly as spin-offs from yearly congresses:

  • Itzinya – A course to help entrepreneurial migrants start a business, this training is now available and running in several parts in the Netherlands. Meanwhile the initiating team is helping Hakan Sandberg (based in Sweden) to develop internationally.
  • BAM and church (planting) – There have been steady relationship developments with key leaders involved with church planting and church buildings of the National Protestant Church. Similarly with HeartEdge NL, a network initiated by theologian Sam Wells from the UK (a speaker at our last congress). We facilitate connection between entrepreneurs with a vision in this area and help to bridge the church-business divide.
  • Authentic Lives / Business – Developing life-giving cultures in businesses and organizations. A working group is engaging with this global (and BAM-related) movement based in the UK and their material has now been translated into Dutch.

For the future we are excited that, next to a steady growth in size and influence, we see more depth spiritually. Last year at our congress we introduced prophetic prayer at a workshop led by prophet prophet Sander Wuister. We also gave opportunities during the day for attendees to receive personal prayer. This was meaningful for quite a number of people. Since than some even hired Sander for monthly consultancy. This year at our congress we will have three prophetic prayer-persons available for those who’d like to receive encouragement. Read more

Fruitful Practices for a Healthy BAM Business Team

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‘Team troubles’ were one of the top 4 reasons BAM mentors gave for practitioners giving up and going home. The ability to build effective teams and work through difficult team dynamics is therefore crucial for the sustainability of BAM companies. In this interview, we talk to Luke, a BAM business owner living in the Middle East, about his business story and what ingredients make for healthy business teams.

 

What general principles do you have for any company team for building healthy team relationships?

As soon as you want to build a scalable business the business team becomes super-important. The essence of a successful business is in the team, rather than the individual. To grow you need to be able to manage the business as a team, you need to be able to be on the same page.

I think at the heart of healthy team relationships there is good communication and honesty. These build trust, they reduce the sense of isolation, and they bring unity and agreement on strategy. This is particularly important for teams in multiple locations when there is a high risk of feeling isolated or misunderstood.

Honesty is crucial. Getting to the right level of honesty to enable the team to be most effective can be painful and humbling. Sometimes I don’t want to share when things go wrong, or it’s not looking as good as I hoped. Pride can lead us to partial honesty. I am talking about the temptation to overplay a lead or exaggerate about a potential client because you want to look good. However, partial honesty seriously reduces the ability of the team to manage the business, because they don’t have a clear enough picture of what’s going on.

To reach the kind of honesty required, there has to be trust and commitment in the relationship. It’s a bit like a marriage covenant: you say to someone, “It doesn’t matter what you do, we are going to stay married.” Although a business partnership is different, there has to be a degree of trust and security in the relationship, an appropriate level of commitment.

Read more

How Does Spiritual Impact Intersect with Your Product or Service?

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It goes without saying that the product or service you develop will be tightly interwoven with your missional goals: social, economic, environmental and spiritual. We can learn a lot from mainstream business about how to most effectively develop products and market share that will turn a profit and create economic impact. We can also learn much from the social enterprise movement and other socially responsibility companies about how products and services integrate with both social and environmental impact. But business as mission integrates a fourth bottom line, that of spiritual impact. In what ways does the product you develop or the service you offer intersect with the spiritual impact of a BAM company?

We asked four BAM practitioners in very different sectors in different parts of Asia to share why they chose their business and how it connects with the spiritual goals for their business:

Extreme Sports Equipment – Wholesale and Distribution

For us it’s impossible to separate our products from the impact we want to have as a business. First of all we want to make sure that all our products have integrity. We use the finest quality materials to make our equipment. Factories here tend to use a lower grade of materials when mass producing this type of equipment. We asked our manufactures to use the highest grade of materials possible and have a good standard of quality control in place. We pay more, but we feel that supplying top-quality equipment is integral to our credibility and our message. We also include graphics and images on our equipment that have a gospel meaning behind them. Every graphic has a story and we include booklets with our products that explain what the images mean and essentially tell the gospel. We are actively engaged with the extreme sports community here, we sponsor competitors and hang out with the people who are into our sport. We’ve started a kind of church among this group, we go where they all gather together and we do a bible study there, we regularly meet with a core group of 20 to 30. We send representatives from our company out as they do product distribution to other cities and they are able to build relationships with community leaders and begin to disciple them. – Jon and Dave

Language Academy – Education

I have a passion for training and my wife loves to write curriculum, so taking over a Language Center was a natural fit for us. It was a struggling company at the time, but we could see how it had potential to make an impact in the Muslim nation we are in. People from all over the Middle East come here to learn English and other languages – we offer five languages all together. Some of our staff work exclusively within our Academy, others teach part-time and very intentionally engage in evangelism and church planting work, much of that out of the relationships they build through the center. Education and training work is a great environment in which to be a witness for Jesus and share biblical ideas since we get to spend intensive time with our students. We also have a children’s language program that mostly focuses on English teaching, since the demand for that is so high. We go into Arab Schools and teach children from 4 to 18 years, mainly immigrants from Middle Eastern countries, many coming from difficult situations. The English language represents hope for the future for them and we get to build really good relationships with whole families. We talk in our classes about religious beliefs, for instance at Christmas we were able to share all about who Christ is. We also get to go and drink coffee with the parents and make friends outside the classroom. – Steve  Read more

6 Product and Market Bloopers: What to Do and Not to Do

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This December marks 8 years of regularly posting content on The BAM Review Blog. This month we are sharing some past posts on practical BAM topics that you might have missed.

Some things are learned the hard way. Mistakes are part of life. But we can also learn from others’ mistakes and hopefully avoid them. We asked BAM practitioners in very different sectors in different parts of Asia to share a lesson they had learned about developing their product or service. Here is their BAM blooper reel:

1. Don’t jump from your idea to… we’re going to do it!

Do your research. Don’t do, “I’m just believing God” and not do your homework. Take time to do some basic surveys and cost comparisons. We’ve always done market research and surveys, asking: is it out there, what’s the competition, how long have they been around, what they are charging? If there is nothing out there then look at a nearby country or look at a product that is close to the one you want to offer. We’ve seen businesses come in with a ‘good idea’ and just go ahead, with no research. One man I met came in with an idea for selling waffles, a business he’d done before. However, he was very badly advised by a local consultancy. He only had one product and here in this country if you don’t have at least 10 things on your menu no one will come in and buy. I walked into his shop and saw in five minutes that it wasn’t going to work as a business. He’d spent his retirement money and closed up after only 6 months. – Ron Read more

Three Stories: How BAM Goals and People Goals Fit Together

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This December marks 8 years of regularly posting content on The BAM Review Blog. This month we are sharing some past posts on practical BAM topics that you might have missed.

 

We asked company leaders to share how their goals as a BAM company fit with their goals for their people, and how that influenced their business planning and development.

Three BAM practitioners share from very different industries on how their strategy for their staff connects with their overall strategy to be a Kingdom-focused company.

IT Company in South Asia

We work hard to manage expectations upfront that the company exists only because of Jesus and has been dedicated to bringing glory to God. So 100% of our staff are aware of our high level BAM goals in that sense, but mostly just the around 15% of believers connect fully. The other 85% connect to our Kingdom goals of renewing our industry, providing meaningful work, raising up leaders worth following, and so on.

We spent years passionately praying for, discussing and trying to understand God’s purpose for the business. Saying that a business exists to make money is like saying I exist to breathe oxygen and keep blood flowing through my body to stay alive. We all have a purpose and calling as individuals and I believe we do as businesses as well.

We continue to seek and refine our purpose. It is an evolving thing with God revealing new layers and aspects, again, just like us as individuals. So in our early startup phase we spent an absurd amount of time navel-gazing, trying to understand the “WHY” and our employees saw this and see it today. They know they are a part of something bigger than themselves. Most of them acknowledge that Jesus is an important part of the company even if they don’t agree or like that. They know we don’t have it all figured out and fail often. But they have seen the process of us passionately seeking God, doing our best to follow God and simply asking them to, “Follow us as we follow Jesus”. Read more

Scarcity versus Abundance

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by Don Simmons

Many of us suffer from a “scarcity” mindset in which we believe that life is a finite pie and if one person takes a big piece, there will be less for everyone.  Counter to this is an “abundance” mindset in which there is plenty available for everyone.

The Apostle Paul challenges the scarcity mindset in his discourse on sowing and reaping in 2 Corinthians 9:6-10.  As you read, you will see words like generous, abundant, abounding, increase, and enlarge—which are an obvious contrast to the limits of scarcity:

“Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written:

‘They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor; their righteousness endures forever.’ [Ps 112:9]

Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.”

Wealth Creation: Making More Pie

What Paul seems to suggest is that giving  leads to abundant blessings so that the giver is not depleted, but rather added to. The addition should not be misunderstood to be for our own benefit, but it is given so that we can continue to bless others. The same principle can apply to harnessing the power of investing to increase the wealth in our worldwide economy. Read more

Matching A Steward Investor’s Goals with God’s Goals

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by Don Simmons

In my previous post I offered the good news of engaging in worldwide missions through investing into missional businesses.

In order to effectively move capital from where it is stored up (retirement accounts, charitable funds, savings accounts) to where it is in short supply (SMEs in emerging markets, corrupt communities, or impoverished lands), we need to reconsider our personal investment goals.

What are your investment goals?  If you are like most people, your goals probably include high financial return, minimal risk, and tax avoidance. Have you ever thought about why you have those particular goals?

What do you believe matters to God? Frequently people respond by saying that the Great Commission and the Great Commandment matter to God. Have you ever considered that your investments should be aligned with God’s objectives and His purposes since He is, in fact, the true owner of your investments?

What is the connection between our wealth and the kingdom of God?

The familiar story of Jesus’ conversation with the Rich Young Ruler, in which he asks him to sell everything and give to the poor, challenges the common blindness we exhibit when viewing the connection between our wealth and the kingdom of God.

Fiduciaries are obligated  to manage another’s resources according to the true owner’s wishes. As God’s fiduciary, managing God’s resources, we must do some hard work and think through questions like these:

1. Does my portfolio look any different than someone’s who does not proclaim Jesus as their Savior?

If we are merely investing to achieve financial returns and protect our holdings either for our own comfort or to pass on to our children, then we are not investing any differently than the majority of investors on the planet.  We cannot ignore Jesus’ teaching on Mammon in Matthew where he challenges the assumption that a person can serve both God AND Mammon. Read more

God’s Steward Investor and the Great Commission

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by Don Simmons

I want to challenge those of us who have achieved basic financial competency and have plans in place for our investments to earn financial returns. If we truly believe that God owns all of our resources, we must believe that includes our investment holdings as well.

We need to become God’s steward investor, one who is charged with managing His resources for His purposes.  He is the true owner, and we are his managers, his oikonomos. An oikonomos, in a Greek household, was the manager of the owner’s resources. As God’s oikonomos in the 21st century, the investments under our management are actually assets that belong to God himself.

An oikonomos commits capital with the expectation of furthering the kingdom of heaven on earth. These steward investors do this by seeking to achieve not only financial returns, but also positive spiritual, social, and environmental impact. A steward investor knows first and foremost that they are a fiduciary,  managing someone else’s resources.

Fulfilling the Great Commission through Investment

Inherent in the term “Business as Mission” is the word mission. Ever since Jesus sent out the seventy-two  into his harvest field, and then charged the believers gathered after His resurrection to go and make disciples of all nations, many followers of Jesus have accepted the call to go as missionaries.

Often willing to risk what’s familiar for what’s foreign, what’s comfortable for what’s complicated, what’s predictable for what’s problematic, men and women stake their lives on God’s faithfulness to go ahead of them and produce fruit from their ministry for His kingdom. Read more

God’s Steward Investor: Investing for Eternal Impact

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by Don Simmons

To the BAM Global audience: thank you for the chance to engage with you this month through a series of blogs dedicated to themes of investing God’s resources for eternal impact.

I have been a financial planner for over three decades and a follower of Jesus during my entire career.  In recent years, God has opened my eyes to truths I cannot escape regarding the role we all have to play in connecting our financial resources with God’s eternal purposes. In short, I have come to believe that we are all God’s resource managers, his fiduciaries, and as such we are to become his steward investors. Simply put, we must move beyond financial competence to proactively investing God’s resources to achieve His eternal purposes such as the Great Commission. We must not simply invest for our own temporal financial goals.

What is a Steward Investor?

A steward investor is a person who acknowledges that God owns it all and seeks to invest in a way that accords with God’s purposes.

By definition, a steward is a manager of someone else’s resources. It derives from the Greek word oikonomos, who was the manager in an ancient Greek household. A steward knew he didn’t own anything but had an obligation to manage the resources and affairs of the owner as the owner himself would.

All of our resources—financial and otherwise—have been given to us by God, the true owner. God tasks us as his stewards with managing those resources according to His values, goals, and precepts communicated in scripture.

While many of us value “good stewardship” of our finances, making sure we live on a budget, save, and give generously, most of us have not considered how to steward our investments. Read more

2 Company Leaders Look Back: Financial Planning Highs and Lows

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Read this classic blog from our Archives, first published on The BAM Review blog in November 2016 and republished for the Summer Series 2022.

 

When we have a major decision to make, we often ask those around us for input. Sometimes we follow that advice and other times we don’t. Occasionally we might look back and wish we had followed the advice we received from others. Hindsight is a beautiful thing!

Drawing on the wisdom of others can be helpful and the benefit of hindsight is illuminating. With those two things in mind, we asked a couple of well established BAM leaders for their advice about financial planning. We asked them to share what has been fruitful and has enabled them to grow companies that are doing well. We also asked them to share the lessons they’ve learned the hard way and what they would do differently in hindsight.

Hospitality Company 

Company A is a Hospitality company with 125 employees, it has two owners and was established 12 years ago.

What financial planning have you done to grow your company to the place it is today?

The growth of our company over the past five years has been quite substantial. We have seen our revenue increase 475%, and our earnings grow 540%. Though our financial planning was not the driver of that growth, it was certainly the foundation. Without the steps we have learned and taken over the years, we would not have been able to facilitate the amazing growth we have seen.  Read more

7 Creative Ways that Practitioners Integrate Business and Mission

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Read this classic blog from our Archives, first published on The BAM Review blog in June 2015 and republished for the Summer Series 2022.

A defining characteristic of a BAM company is that it intentionally integrates mission with business. But what does that look like in practice? What are some creative ways that practitioners work out their goals for spiritual impact, alongside their commercial, social and environmental goals?

We asked a small group of practitioners to share what they do in the business context that moves them towards their missional goals and spiritual impact. This could be something they did when establishing the company, or practices they do on a regular basis in the day-to-day life of the business. The practitioners shared a diverse range of specific practices, but there were some common themes. These seven ways to integrate business and mission stood out:

Keep Purpose Front and Center

Keeping the purpose, vision and objectives of the company at the forefront emerged as a key principle. This is important all the way through the life of the company, from the planning stages and goal setting, to evaluating those goals and choosing measures, to on-boarding processes for new hires, to daily communication with employees. Read more

Four Hands in Two Countries: A Parable of Talents!

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by Evan Keller

What brings a stone carver and a mechanic together? Although they‘ve never even met, this story connects two (of my favorite) people who revel in lavishing generosity on others. Both Josue and Don beautifully embody the joy of giving that my new book explores. They are master craftsmen who love blessing people through their handiwork: Josue’s hands work in stone and Don’s hands master mechanics. Their Haiti-Florida bond was born in February of 2012 as we at Creating Jobs Inc mentored Josue Jean-Gilles in his business of creating plaques and gifts carved from stone.

At the epicenter of the 2010 earthquake, Josue suffered damage to his Léogâne home and workshop while fellow church members lost their very lives. Important foundations of his life continued to crumble as his mother died of a likely curable illness and his wife abandoned him and their children. After we heard Josue preach with passion one Sunday morning, his divorce forced a year-long furlough from teaching and leading at his church, which shook him further. So, you can see that his youthful face masks more heartache than a young man should have to bear. Yet his soul has not shrunk in self-protection but keeps giving, hoping and investing in others. It would have been natural to closely guard what remained, including a regional monopoly on his type of artisanal stone carving. Instead, he spread his skills far and wide by sharing his well-honed techniques with not only employees, but many orphans, and several new competitors he helped to raise up. Now that’s a mindset of abundance!  Read more

How We Built Consistent, Committed Prayer into our Company

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A classic from our ‘Ask a BAM Mentor‘ Archive

 

Dear BAM Mentor,

What prayer habits have you found helpful in your business? How have you experienced prayer and hearing direction from the Lord fitting alongside ‘normal’ business practices and hearing from advisors and others?

~ Exploring Prayer

Dear Exploring,

Whatever we attempt for God has to be in accordance with His will and be blessed by Him if we are to see genuine success (in the heavenly definition of success). This is true for every venture, whether operated under the auspices of a local church, a Christian organisation or an overtly commercial business venture. In fact, because of the pressures and expectations that the world brings to bear on business ventures, it is all the more important to ensure close communion and communication with God. Whatever this may mean in practical terms, it has to include prayer.

The most obvious biblical instruction about how we should pray is Jesus’ introduction to His model prayer – that which most people refer to as the Lord’s Prayer – as recorded in Matthew 6. What these instructions boil down to is: keep it sincere, keep it personal (you and God) and keep it short and to the point. How this operates in practice will vary according to local circumstances. Our own experience was developed over a short time but then served the business well for many years – but not without some hiccups along the way, it may be added. Read more

So What Shall We Do Tomorrow? How We Have Endured

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One day down

Sleep deprived, stressed, hiding in the office to cry, then pulling it together and working hard physically, attempting to speak a foreign language, smiling at potential customers, doing everything for the first time, from start to finish, from nerve-wracking open to exhausted and exuberant close. We did it! There was cash in the drawer to prove it. Success!!! We made it through… Day one.

We arrived home near midnight, our three small boys in tow. As we straggled through the door, my husband turned to me and said, “So what shall we do tomorrow?”

I stopped. I stared at him. Then I’m pretty sure I laughed. Barely.

All the focus for years and months had been to start a business. Now it was started. We were worn out, but the real work had just begun.

Later we learned that starting a business is like having a baby. In so many ways. One moment it appears unbelievably fragile. The next moment it’s screaming its lungs out in a show of robust strength. Helpless. Demanding. Exceedingly needy!

There was one American woman who understood this business-baby analogy before we did. She visited us the first day at the shop, congratulated us, and gave us a lasagne. Read more

What is Success? Advancing Spiritual Impact in BAM: Best of BAM Blog

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AND THE AWARD GOES TO...

Our goal is to provide the BAM Community with great content and resources. Each year we do a summer roundup of articles which have stood out in the past 6 months.

Below is the “Editor’s Pick” for January to June 2019.

Please enjoy and thanks for following!

by Tom

It is easy to be confused by how success in business as mission (BAM) is defined today from a spiritual perspective.

Once-upon-a-time the core concept of BAM was to have a spiritual impact. The reality that a business needed to be profitable should also have been a given, after all, a business that does not make money can’t survive or, as we say in BAM, cannot be sustainable. Even with this relative simplicity, being able to measure spiritual impact seemed elusive.

Early definitions struggled between Business AS Mission and Business FOR Mission both of which held that a central purpose was spiritual transformation. Early theological debates centered around the secular-sacred divide, could business even be spiritual? There were common perceptions of money and profit, often portrayed as evil and exploitive among Christians, that needed to be overcome. Business AS Mission assumed that when operations aligned with spiritual values, businesses could and would produce spiritual results when driven by the influence of the Holy Spirit. Business FOR Mission simply used the profits of a business to support traditional missional activity.

Today the definition of BAM has expanded to include an emphasis on poverty alleviation and job creation etc., issues that are also popular in the secular social enterprise world. However, one danger we face is that while we are expanding, we might also lose what makes us distinctive, appearing to put less and less emphasis on spirituality or spiritual impact. Yet, without intentional spiritual impact BAM is not any different than any well-meaning secular program.

Twenty years on from the early days of the business as mission movement, we continue to wrestle with this topic of spiritual impact in BAM!  Read more

What is Success? Advancing Spiritual Impact in BAM

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by Tom

It is easy to be confused by how success in business as mission (BAM) is defined today from a spiritual perspective.

Once-upon-a-time the core concept of BAM was to have a spiritual impact. The reality that a business needed to be profitable should also have been a given, after all, a business that does not make money can’t survive or, as we say in BAM, cannot be sustainable. Even with this relative simplicity, being able to measure spiritual impact seemed elusive.

Early definitions struggled between Business AS Mission and Business FOR Mission both of which held that a central purpose was spiritual transformation. Early theological debates centered around the secular-sacred divide, could business even be spiritual? There were common perceptions of money and profit, often portrayed as evil and exploitive among Christians, that needed to be overcome. Business AS Mission assumed that when operations aligned with spiritual values, businesses could and would produce spiritual results when driven by the influence of the Holy Spirit. Business FOR Mission simply used the profits of a business to support traditional missional activity.

Today the definition of BAM has expanded to include an emphasis on poverty alleviation and job creation etc., issues that are also popular in the secular social enterprise world. However, one danger we face is that while we are expanding, we might also lose what makes us distinctive, appearing to put less and less emphasis on spirituality or spiritual impact. Yet, without intentional spiritual impact BAM is not any different than any well-meaning secular program.

Twenty years on from the early days of the business as mission movement, we continue to wrestle with this topic of spiritual impact in BAM!  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

Refugees: A Crisis or an Opportunity?

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by Hakan Sandberg

Few issues have got more attention in Europe than the rapid influx of refugees seeking a safe haven in a new host country. It has toppled governments, changed the whole political landscape in several countries, and made many initially generous and empathic people eventually withdraw and instead lean towards right wing, racial nationalism. But is the refugee crisis really the “mother of all problems”? Have we given those new arrivals a real chance to contribute and be part of adding value to our societies?

If we believe all human beings are created in God’s image, then we also believe all human beings are inherently creative to some degree. This also must include these newcomers to our countries. What if we would focus on bringing that creativity out of them, so that they can flourish and be a blessing to others?

Instead many of our well-intentioned governments make them stand in line, waiting for jobs after first having gone through language and culture training, etc. etc. These are good things but represent a journey that can take years and often leads to a loss of vision and energy. Not all incoming refugees are cut out for this type of process, some have the drive to create a different future for themselves.

From Crisis to Opportunity

If we are realistic about it, migrant flows are not going disappear. Conflicts have always been there in different regions at one time or another, and they are not likely to end. Many experts are also pointing at a new reason for migration coming in the future, namely climate migrants, people who have lost everything due to the global warming and rising water levels around coastlands.

How can we turn what media have labelled as “crisis”, to become a real, tangible opportunity?  Read more

Let Freedom Ring! Fighting Slavery with Business Solutions

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by Mats Tunehag

Young children sold to sexual slavery. Yes, it was a grim fact of life year after year in a remote village in the Himalayas. Poverty was rampant and there was a lack of jobs. This made families desperate and vulnerable, and traffickers exploited the situation.

Some seasoned BAMers explored how they could change the situation. In communication and collaboration with the villagers they started an adventure tourism company with village home-stays. To make a long story short: this new economic opportunity transformed the village, and its families, for the good. Jobs with dignity were created and no more young children from this village have since been sold into slavery.

This is more than a sweet, and true, story from Nepal. This is an example of a growing number of companies that fight human trafficking through business. They are dealing with root causes to modern day slavery and they are tackling the systemic issues underpinning today’s evil – and highly profitable – slavery business.

Learning from History

In the 1700’s the slave trade was widely accepted and legal. It was, in fact, a backbone of the economy of the British Empire. It was a big, organised and transnational business.

William Wilberforce and the Clapham group decided to fight this evil trade. They chose to attack the systemic issue – the legality of the slave trade and slavery. To that end they organised a decades long campaign focusing on justice, aiming at a root cause. They worked politically to change unjust and ungodly laws that permitted that dehumanising trade.  Read more

When Things Go Wrong: 9 BAMers Share Mistakes & Misadventures

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We asked some (otherwise very successful) BAM Practitioners that we know to share some of the errors, disasters and unfortunate events that they have experienced in their business as mission journeys. Here nine BAMers share eleven stories about their mistakes and misadventures:

They Didn’t Come…

In our first years we did not have enough focus on sales and revenue, it was more of a “build it and they will come” mindset. It almost killed us. Then the solution was to hire a sales guy in the US, but the problem was twofold; first I should never have tried to outsource sales so early as CEO and second I hired a great guy but one that had bigger company experience and not the early entrepreneurial sales experience needed at our stage. This was a second failure on the sales side that almost killed us. I have come to fully understand the saying “no margin, no mission” and put sales as a key priority for myself until we got fully into orbit and could hand it off to the right person with right experience for our company stage, deal size and industry. MC

Too Many Cabinets

There’s two ways you can kill a startup: too little business and too much business. A couple of years ago, our 5 month old custom cabinet business was featured on our local news station. In our exuberance, we signed up too many customers with an unrealistic view of how quickly we could complete jobs. In less than a month, we had ended up with upset customers and significant cash flow problems as we made mistakes in our rush to complete jobs whilst also missing deadlines. In this case, we were able to recover our financial footings through a few key factors: Our product ultimately was a good fit with customer demand, so after apologizing and then completing jobs satisfactorily, we were able to refine our product and service to even better serve our customers. We started specializing in only Shaker Cabinets which sped up our production time and allowed us to more strategically market to our customers. Finally, our grasp of our cash flow position enabled us to raise funds in time (through God’s abundant blessing) to make it through our mistake and onto the future. JR  Read more

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