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How to Catalyze and Accelerate a Global BAM Movement

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

by Mats Tunehag

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

Hallmarks of a Movement

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

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

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

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

Social Movement Organizations

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

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

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

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

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

Nurturing Partner Networks

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

How BAM Global is Nurturing the BAM Community: A 10-Year Retrospective

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.

by João Mordomo

Over the past decade, Business as Mission (BAM) has evolved into a vibrant global movement, playing a pivotal role in the integration of business with mission to address spiritual, economic, social, and environmental challenges. BAM Global, at the heart of this movement, has been instrumental in fostering a community that is not only committed to business excellence but also deeply rooted in Christian missions. Let’s explore how BAM Global has built and strengthened the BAM community over the last ten years, reflecting on key milestones, challenges, and future directions.

The Foundations of BAM Global

BAM Global’s origins are closely tied to the Lausanne Movement, which has significantly influenced modern Christian mission strategies for 50 years. Since its inception, BAM Global has focused on leveraging business as a powerful tool for holistic transformation, guided by the belief that business activities, when conducted ethically and missionally, can serve as a conduit for the Gospel. This approach, which integrates faithful ministry with good business, seeks to fulfill the Great Commission through sustainable and scalable models.

One of the foundational moments for BAM Global was the 2004 Lausanne Forum in Pattaya, Thailand, where the concept of BAM was formally recognized and endorsed. This event produced the Lausanne Occasional Paper on Business as Mission (LOP 5) and the BAM Manifesto, both of which have become cornerstone texts for BAM practitioners. These documents have articulated the theological and missiological foundations of BAM, providing a framework for how business can be used to advance the Kingdom of God.

The Lausanne Forum in 2004 brought together over 70 people from all continents at the conclusion of a year-long virtual consultation process. This first truly international, collaborative effort also marked the beginning of BAM’s journey as a global movement and set the stage for the later creation of BAM Global as an organization dedicated to advancing this mission-focused approach to business.

Building a Global BAM Ecosystem

Over the past decade, BAM Global has played a crucial role in building a global ecosystem that supports and nurtures BAM initiatives, mobilizes involvement, and deepens understanding in business as mission. This ecosystem includes a diverse network of businesses, churches, mission agencies, educational institutions, BAM networks, and other organizations that share a commitment to integrating business with mission. BAM Global has facilitated this through many key activities, including creating and connecting networks, hosting global forums and events, and creating and curating BAM resources.  Read more

The Vital Place of Mission Agencies in BAM

In the month of June we have been highlighting excerpts from the recently published BAM Global Report on BAM and Mission Agencies. To round off this series, here’s a repost of a blog from our archives on why Mission Agencies are a major and vital constituency in the BAM community, alongside our main business constituency and also the church and academia. 

by Jo Plummer

Mission Agencies have long been a crucial player and partner in the contemporary BAM movement.

Many early pioneer BAM practitioners of the 80s, 90s and early 2000s either came from a missionary background or were members of a mission agency. These agency workers- turned-BAMers were at the forefront of the early wave of BAM companies because they were already at the front lines. Sent out with a call and vision to see people and communities transformed by the gospel, they discovered that business could be a powerful means of integral mission – meeting spiritual, social and economic needs in communities.

Looking back on 20 years and more of recent BAM history, we see that companies with missional goals embedded within their business model, business culture, company values, working relationships and so on, have often proved to be the most fruitful way for agency workers to pursue their work. But it has not always been easy.

Business failure – already a high possibility for seasoned entrepreneurs in home cultures – became a common experience for missionary-run startups with the additional hazard of being in environments often hostile to both mission and business. Many missionaries are by nature pioneering and somewhat entrepreneurial, however most early agency-related BAMers lacked the know-how and practical business experience they needed to create sustainable, scalable companies. Early BAM companies had few models to follow and lessons were learned the hard way.

Those hard-won fruitful practices are now being passed on, benefiting the current generation of BAM practitioners. They are able to stand on the shoulders of a host of early BAMers (from both business and mission backgrounds) because those pioneers heard the Lord and were willing to go, they were willing to innovate, risk and persevere. In turn, these early BAM pioneers stood on the shoulders of many generations of traditional missionaries that passed on their own hard-won lessons.

Beyond ‘Business as Visa’

Necessity is the mother of invention. In some parts of the world, starting a business has long been the only viable means to establish a settled, credible role in a community. William Carey, right back in the late 1700s, took a management position in an indigo factory when he first arrived in India because missionary visas were hard to come by in the days of the East India Company. And like William Carey*, modern day mission workers soon discovered that the power of a business model extends far beyond a means to getting a visa. (Read more on how it extends here).

Thankfully most agency workers who are getting into business now have many more resources to draw on. They understand that to have a credible, sustainable role in a community, their company has to be credible and sustainable. That means aiming towards excellence in business practice and the true integration of holistic missional goals into every aspect of a company – from business plan, to daily business life.  Read more

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

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

A Thread in a Tapestry: How God has Woven Us into His Story

Our individual stories are like the “threads in the tapestry” that make up the story of mankind. Each unique thread contributes to the whole picture. This week in The BAM Review, we will use this metaphor as we consider our stories in the context of God’s story, business as mission, and the stories of people around us.

A thread cannot see the whole picture of the tapestry, but the Maker of the tapestry can

Understanding how and where we fit into God’s story is complicated. We’ll never fully know the reason we’ve been woven into the relationships, positions of authority, communities, or situations we are in now.

This can be intensified for BAMers, who are often part of a challenging and complex picture. At some points we might have the most authority in the room, at others we may have the least. Some of us may have many friends, people we’re discipling, and feel rooted in our communities. Others of us may feel outsiders as we grapple with language and cultural differences. Some may have thriving businesses and the capacity to expand. Others of us may have been trying for years and never made it into the black. Many of us have gone between these extremes. Yet God is capable of weaving all of our experiences and all of these extremes into a glorious tapestry. He is able to redeem our circumstances to His glory. In the process, He has more innovative and creative solutions than we ever could imagine.

As just one thread in the tapestry, we know that in our most intensely dry, brittle seasons and in our most glorious and beautiful seasons, we are being woven by Him. God will weave our complicated stories into his big picture, even if we never are able to see the whole.

A thread is deeply interwoven with other threads around it and cannot be separated from the tapestry

A tapestry must be tightly and strategically woven or else it is just a pile of threads, not a picture. Business and mission are both relationship-oriented and we can clearly see how intertwined, dependent upon, and connected we are with other people – the other threads in our picture.

As business people, we consider others daily. How are we providing value for our customers? How are we benefiting our stakeholders? We consider and weigh our interactions with employees, bosses, coworkers, teammates, and the surrounding community. We have more reason than most to deeply consider our interactions with others because the life of the business depends on it. In business we are acutely aware of our connectedness to, and our dependence upon, other people.  Read more

Future BAM Challenges: Keeping Momentum in the Right Direction

In this new blog series on the BAM Manifesto we are taking the different parts of the Manifesto as inspiration and exploring them in the context of current BAM practice and the still-growing movement, twenty years on.

We asked a group of BAM leaders:

Looking back on the development of the BAM movement globally over the last one to two decades, do you think that a shared understanding created by the BAM Manifesto – and similar materials or opportunities for dialogue – have created growth/momentum in your region, network or sphere?

If yes, please share a little of the ‘how, why and what’ of that development. If no, please share what you feel has helped or what is still needed.

From the responses we’ve ‘charted’ the impact of the Manifesto on the BAM movement over the last few decades – read Part 1 ‘Pioneering Practitioners’ for a fuller introduction.

 

GRAPPLING WITH FUTURE CHALLENGES 2020s Onwards

At various times in the past twenty or so years, groups of BAM leaders have asked, ‘Where are the gaps, where are the pitfalls, what are we still wrestling with?’ These have been recurring questions in the past few years in particular, as we have contemplated ‘BAM 2.0’ two decades into intentional BAM collaboration – and especially as we prepared to come together at the BAM Global Congress in 2020 (though eventually disrupted by Covid).

The journey continues! We are still a relatively young movement and there is still much work to do and dangers to avoid for the future. One of the things we asked the twenty BAM leaders for this series was, ‘What are our current and future challenges? What is still needed to maximise future BAM growth and acceleration?’   Read more

Global BAM Ecosystem Growth and Multiplication

In this new blog series on the BAM Manifesto we are taking the different parts of the Manifesto as inspiration and exploring them in the context of current BAM practice and the still-growing movement, twenty years on.

We asked a group of BAM leaders:

Looking back on the development of the BAM movement globally over the last one to two decades, do you think that a shared understanding created by the BAM Manifesto – and similar materials or opportunities for dialogue – have created growth/momentum in your region, network or sphere?

If yes, please share a little of the ‘how, why and what’ of that development. If no, please share what you feel has helped.

From the responses we’ve ‘charted’ the impact of the Manifesto on the BAM movement over the last few decades – read Part 1 ‘Pioneering Practitioners’ for a fuller introduction.

 

BAM ECOSYSTEM GROWTH & MULTIPLICATION Late 2000s & 2010s

The initial burst of BAM networking, advocacy and resource development in the early 2000s – including the publishing of the Lausanne Occasional Paper on BAM and the BAM Manifesto – helped to lay the foundation for a multiplication of regional networks and BAM initiatives over the following 10-15 years and resulted in the greater mobilisation of new BAM practitioners.

Ecosystem builders began to intentionally support and connect BAM companies and helped the identification and spread of fruitful practices. And while business people and companies are the central constituency in the BAM movement, there was also growing acceptance and understanding among the other key BAM constituencies of mission, church and academia. Read more

Creed or Conversation Starter? Creating a Shared BAM Understanding

In this new blog series on the BAM Manifesto we are taking the different parts of the Manifesto as inspiration and exploring them in the context of current BAM practice and the still-growing movement, twenty years on.

We asked a group of BAM leaders:

Looking back on the development of the BAM movement globally over the last one to two decades, do you think that a shared understanding created by the BAM Manifesto – and similar materials or opportunities for dialogue – have created growth/momentum in your region, network or sphere?

If yes, please share a little of the ‘how, why and what’ of that development. If no, please share what you feel has helped.

From the responses we’ve ‘charted’ the impact of the Manifesto on the BAM movement over the last few decades – read Part 1 ‘Pioneering Practitioners’ for a fuller introduction.

 

CREATING SHARED UNDERSTANDING Late 1990s & Early 2000s

The late 1990s saw some early conversation and collaborative efforts among a small network of pioneer BAM practitioners and mission thinkers, with a couple of first books published and the term business as mission emerging through early dialogue. This led to a sudden acceleration of activity globally in the early 2000s which can only have been instigated by the Holy Spirit! Within a few short years from 2000 to 2005, the first full BAM conferences took place, networking/advocacy teams were established, the first websites launched, training courses pioneered, the first BAM investment fund began, key regional consultations started, and a small wave of further books were published.

In 2002 and 2003 the first ‘think tank’ effort for BAM was initiated, convening under the auspices of the Lausanne Movement, and a direct predecessor of BAM Global. This was the first attempt to gather a significant number of practitioners, as well as mission, church and academic leaders, to bring some consensus around the concept and practice of business as mission. In total over 90 individuals worked virtually together and around 70 convened face-to-face in November 2004, to produce the Lausanne Occasional Paper on Business as Mission (2004), a landmark collaborative effort – of which the BAM Manifesto was a concluding one-page call to action. Read more

Charting the Course of the BAM Movement: Pioneering Practitioners

In this new blog series on the BAM Manifesto we are taking the different parts of the Manifesto as inspiration and exploring them in the context of current BAM practice and the still-growing movement, twenty years on.

The BAM Manifesto was conceived twenty years ago this year. To celebrate this milestone, we asked twenty BAM leaders whether, in their view, the Manifesto had impacted the business as mission movement, and if so how. These included practitioners, capacity builders and network leaders, representing different regions and constituencies.

We asked them:

Looking back on the development of the BAM movement globally over the last one to two decades, do you think that a shared understanding created by the BAM Manifesto – and similar materials or opportunities for dialogue – have created growth/momentum in your region, network or sphere?

If yes, please share a little of the ‘how, why and what’ of that development. If no, please share what you feel has helped.

One of our contributors suggested the Manifesto could be a ‘map’ for BAM practitioners to help them achieve their goals. Inspired by that metaphor, we’ve ‘charted’ the impact of the Manifesto on the BAM movement over the last few decades. Over the next few posts, we’ll share the stages of BAM movement growth that we observed in the responses we received:

 

PIONEERING PRACTITIONERS 1980s & 1990s

Although the interweaving of business and mission is nothing new and has occurred at various points throughout church history, the emergence of the contemporary BAM movement can be traced back to the 1980s and 1990s. During those years a small number of early pioneers began to practice what would come to be known as ‘business as mission’ before any unifying term had been coined for it. Prior to that, during the 1970s and 1980s, the practice and concept of ‘tentmaking’ had become more familiar. In the late 1990s out of a number of small discussion groups and conferences, the name ‘business as mission’ began to emerge as a distinct label for a small, but growing wave of integrated business-mission models. Other terms such as transformational business, business for transformation (B4T), missional entrepreneurship, plus many more in other languages, have also been used. Much more important than the specific label was an emerging dialogue around the concept, plus early networking efforts, that came right at the end of the 1990s. Read more

3 Characteristics of a Growing BAM Movement: Diverse, Learning, Multiplying

In this new blog series on the BAM Manifesto we are taking the different parts of the Manifesto as inspiration and exploring them in the context of current BAM practice and the still-growing movement, twenty years on.

The BAM Manifesto was conceived twenty years ago this year. To celebrate this milestone, we asked twenty BAM leaders to reflect on what they had seen developing in the last 5 years in the business as mission movement. These included practitioners, capacity builders and network leaders, representing different regions and constituencies.

We asked them:

What have you been most encouraged by, or you have seen accelerating the most, in the last 5 years in BAM in your sphere of influence, region or network?

The responses we got were comprehensive and deeply encouraging. Although there was overlap between different points, we identified 6 main themes, characteristics of a maturing BAM movement, if you like.

In a first post last week, we introduced the first three themes in, 3 Hallmarks of a Maturing BAM Movement.

In this second post, we will cover the second three themes that emerged from the responses:

3 Characteristics of a Growing BAM Movement

These characteristics are:

  • Diverse – growing in global depth and breadth
  • Learning – growing in understanding of fruitful BAM practice
  • Multiplying – growing in numbers

Here are the responses of those we asked:

1. DIVERSE

The business as mission movement is growing in terms of its diversity. BAM is a global, poly-centric movement. It is not a ‘west to the rest’ model, centered on a few places – it is already ‘anywhere to anywhere’ and is becoming ‘everywhere to everywhere’. BAM is innovating, evolving, and diversifying in terms of geographical spread, industry representation, and range of impact.

I’ve been involved in BAM since the early 1990s and, while the early days were pioneering and exciting, the developments of the last 5 years have been beyond encouraging. BAM has become (or perhaps has been revealed to be) a truly international movement of God. The national, ethnic, and strategic diversity – especially that came to light as the pandemic forced us to meet virtually – is astounding and proves this is a heavenly thing not an earthly, religious trend.  – MB, USA

Read more

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