Why BAM? It’s Biblical, Strategic and Time for New Wineskins!

In the month of June we are highlighting excerpts from the recently published BAM Global Report on BAM and Mission Agencies. Mission Agencies are a major constituency in the BAM community, alongside our main business constituency and also the church and academia. We believe these resources will be of value whether you are agency affiliated or part of another BAM constituency.

Why Mission Agencies do Business as Mission

Business as mission (BAM) is the strategic use of authentic business activities that create authentic ministry opportunities that bring spiritual, economic, social and environmental transformation to unreached peoples and marginalised people. In other words, it is taking the instrument of business, with its innate, God-given ability and power to do good in the world, and intentionally harnessing that power towards the work of mission.

There has been much discussion around the value of and justification for doing business as mission, not least among mission agency leaders. We would like to suggest that there are at least three strong bases for taking a positive approach: It is biblical, it is strategic, and it is time for new wineskins.

It is biblical

There are numerous themes in the scriptures that provide strong support for running businesses that give expression to Kingdom of God values and purposes.

In Genesis 1 and 2, we see God’s great enterprise of creation by which He reveals Himself as the original Great Entrepreneur. God created human beings ‘in his own image’ (Gen 1:2), as creative beings who are to co-labour with him to steward creation through innovation and work. They are to use the fruit of their labours to sustain families and communities, and to care for others.

In Deuteronomy 8, God reminds his people Israel not to forget him as they prepare to enter the promised land—to settle down and start agricultural and mining businesses (Deut 8:8-9)—because ‘it is [God] who gives you the ability to produce wealth’. In the desert, the Lord had provided manna daily, but when the people entered this new land the manna stopped immediately because God designed human society to be provided for through enterprise and work. Business is a God-designed and ordained institution that can bring glory to Him. Business done well involves innovating with natural resources, good stewardship of these resources, the opportunity for dignified work, the creation of life-enhancing products and services, and the multiplication of resources and wealth that enable people and societies to flourish and advance.

The Apostle Paul exhorted Christ’s followers to work hard and not be idle (2 Thes 3:10-12), and modelled the value of work and enterprise by his own example. Paul seemingly engaged in the business of making tents (or perhaps leather working or saddle making) to provide for financial needs (1 Cor 9:6), to ensure his message was credible by being free of the complications of patronage (Cor 9: 18, 2 Cor 12:14), to enable mobility and open up opportunities to meet and spend significant time with others (Acts 18:1-3), and to model the Christian lifestyle (1 Thes 4:11-12, 2 Thes 3: 6-9).

Justice and concern for the poor and marginalised is a theme pervading the scriptures and one in which all business as mission practitioners can actively participate and make a significant contribution. Starting business as mission enterprises enables us to ‘open our arms to the poor’; just as the entrepreneurial woman in Proverbs 31 did as she worked hard, produced good products, and traded well.

Another noteworthy biblical theme is the idea of redemption of people and communities. While having a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, God desires that there be transformation at all levels of society and a Kingdom-oriented enterprise certainly can contribute to this. Business people are able to actively demonstrate what the Kingdom of God is like by following Jesus’s commands and modelling biblical values in daily business life, as well as being given opportunities to verbally share the good news. The great arc of the Scriptures following the Fall is that of redemption and renewal to which Jesus was pointing when He taught his disciples to pray to the Father that His Kingdom come and will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Followers of Christ can participate in this process through their enterprises.

Thus, BAM practitioners work to honour God as they model Kingdom living, add value to and serve their local communities, seek to combat social injustice and poverty, influence people for Christ and provide jobs, among many other contributions.

For a more comprehensive scriptural basis for business as mission, please read the previous BAM Global Think Tank Report, Your Will be Done, Your Kingdom Come… in Business: Biblical Foundations for Business as Mission.

It is strategic

We live in rapidly changing times and cultures, where distrust is on the rise. Cross-cultural access and credibility for what we might label ‘traditional’ Christian missionaries to many parts of the world is increasingly limited if not completely restricted. Business can create access to places and people that might otherwise be off limits, giving BAM practitioners a stable, credible role in a community.

Excellent business practice in the context of a viable, sustainable company in turn allows a viable, sustainable gospel witness in otherwise inaccessible places. Such companies can and often do open natural pathways for developing a wide-range of relationships—with employees, suppliers, customers, local residents, government officials, and so on—making contributions to the local economy and building a relational network that helps engender trust and credibility. It also helps provide sustainability both economically and in terms of being able to remain working and living in an otherwise challenging context. As a result, there is more likely to be a longer-term presence, increasing the potential for lasting impact.

In addition, as increasing numbers of mission workers go out from nations with emerging economies there may be a more limited capacity to self-fund through traditional support-raising methods. This is leading to a growing need for alternative funding strategies, which may include starting profitable BAM enterprises.

And, finally, since gospel work needs to be mobile, business often provides a greater opportunity for mobility, just as it did for the Apostle Paul with his tentmaking enterprise.

In short, both non-profit and for-profit models of mission have relative strengths in certain areas of operation and impact, and both are valuable. Business as mission, as a for-profit model, can build credibility and create impact in economic, environmental, and social areas in ways that non-profit models alone cannot, while also intentionally integrating spiritual impact and fruitfulness. The world is crying out for business solutions to some of its most pressing issues, such as job scarcity, human trafficking, economic exploitation, corruption, environmental degradation, dire poverty, and the challenge of reaching the remaining unreached peoples. Business as mission is strategic today because it is often best placed to meet such pressing needs in communities around the world.

It is time for new wineskins

Since the time of the first centuries, following the life and death of Christ, a sacred-secular way of thinking has worked its way into the worldview of much of the church. This has led to many believing that church-related activity is somehow more spiritual than work-related activity. This viewpoint is deeply embedded in the global church today, perhaps nowhere more so than with respect to the place of business, which is in many cases viewed as a ‘necessary evil’ by Christians.

As if to throw more fuel on the fire, there is a growing critique around the world of capitalism as a manipulative, oppressive and unjust way of exercising control and benefiting the few at the cost of the many. It is not dissimilar to the way that the Roman empire was viewed broadly during the time of Jesus. Just as the Kingdom message of Christ was a counterpoint to the self-serving message promoted by the imperial rulers of the Roman world of that time, so too does the Kingdom message today serve as a counterpoint to the materialism and more nefarious aspects of capitalism which have risen to idolatrous levels in many places around the world.

However, as noted earlier, God created the world and the institution of business as something good. As practitioners of business as mission, we have the opportunity to bring transformation to the God-created sphere of business and capitalistic initiatives so that they might better reflect Kingdom values and God’s original intentions.

At the same time there is also a counter movement in today’s world by which enterprise is increasingly seen as a force for good, something that is happening even beyond Christian circles. The social enterprise and impact investing movements are examples of this.

Approaches to mission, or ‘wineskins’, of the church have not typically been viewed as compatible with and able to take in the ‘new wine’ of business-led mission efforts (although there are some notable historic examples of business and mission integration, so it could be argued that this is a ‘rediscovery’ in contemporary mission strategy, rather than a totally new concept). Church and mission leaders haven’t commonly known how to engage with business and business practitioners. This is rapidly changing as church and mission leaders are looking where God is working and seeking to join Him in it.

Despite lingering resistance in some circles, increasing numbers of mission organisations and churches and are seeing the need to reimagine their processes to allow for the new wine of labourers for the harvest who are using their businesses to move in, reach, and serve communities in some of the world’s most challenging and hostile places. It is also a call to those in all walks of life to take part in the extension of God’s Kingdom, not just the ‘professional ministers’ in the clergy or mission staff.

Like the sons of Issachar we need to understand the times and know what to do, (I Chron 12:32).

The question is no longer, ‘Why BAM?’, but rather, ‘Why not BAM?’

Download the full BAM and Mission Agencies Report

A free BAM Global Think Tank Report