BAM and Mission Agencies

Mission Agencies: Challenges and Opportunities for Business as Mission

Mission agencies are discovering the unique opportunities and challenges of doing business as part of mission strategy. Some agencies have done business as mission (BAM) from their inception, others have come to it lately or after a lengthy consideration of business as part of their mission. Several agency leaders who were working on the complex issues of for-profit business inside or alongside a non-profit agency began to talk together at the beginning of the BAM Global Think Tank process. We agreed to meet at the April 2013 BAM Congress in Chiang Mai, Thailand to continue the conversation face to face. After the Congress there was an ongoing dialogue utilizing electronic media. This Special Report is written as a summary of those conversations.

While the individuals and agencies involved have wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, we have had participation of around 30 individuals from 22 agencies at various times. We are clear that each agency will have their own solution to the issues of doing BAM, this report simply outlines our discussion to identify some of the key issues that commonly arise.

This report identifies issues in three main areas:

1. Worldview

The attitude of the agency towards business, and the tensions caused by differences between business and mission culture and between old and new ways of approaching mission.

2. People

The challenge of recruiting and mobilizing people with the right skill-sets, creating robust teams, followed by providing the appropriate kinds of support and accountability to those people.

3. Financial and legal

The complexities surrounding ownership, funding and financial transfers, as well as the legal complexities created by agencies and businesses often operating across national borders.

This report is written for agency leaders who are grappling with BAM issues within their existing structures and processes. While we have no perfect solutions, we have outlined the major issues that should be addressed by agencies doing BAM as part of their mission strategy. It would also benefit BAM practitioners who are working within agencies to dialogue with their agency leaders on these issues.
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Executive Summary

The world holds fresh opportunities and challenges for the global Church. In regions where Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are dominant and where 90% of the world’s unreached peoples live, you also find 80% of the world’s poorest populations. Unemployment in these countries ranges from 30% to 80% and it is even higher among Christian minorities. Furthermore many Christians and others in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin American are living in poverty because of lack of jobs and unjust economic systems.

Over the next 20 years, more than 2 billion people will enter societies where there are few churches and very few jobs.

What should be the response of the Church and particularly Christian business people to such challenges?

What the poor want is not aid, but jobs – real jobs, not subsidised ones. This is the dignity and self-reliance they deserve.

There is a wave of thousands of Christian business people from all continents who are experiencing a dynamic move of God as part of a renewed call to His kingdom work. God is on the move in Latin America, Asia, Europe, North America, Africa and the Pacific regions, calling His global church to rediscover His heart and intention for business.

God established the institution and practice of business as a means of fulfilling His creation mandate to steward and care for all of creation. He is releasing the power of business to aid in the task of fulfilling the great commission making disciples of all nations. God longs to be glorified through our business
activities.

Business people are being challenged to look anew at their business activities as an expression of their calling and service to God. They are being affirmed in their vocation as business people and used as instruments for extending God’s kingdom. God has led a growing number of business people to think strategically about how they can integrate their skills and experience in business with the task of world mission. God is calling many more business people, from all nations to go to all nations, in this new paradigm of mission.

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Business as Mission Manifesto

The Lausanne 2004 Forum Business as Mission Issue Group worked for a year, addressing issues relating to God’s purposes for work and business, the role of business people in church and missions, the needs of the world and the potential response of business. The group consisted of more than 70 people from all continents. Most came from a business background but there were also church and mission leaders, educators, theologians, lawyers and researchers. The collaboration process included 60 papers, 25 case studies, several national and regional Business as Mission consultations and email-based discussions, culminating in a week of face-to-face dialogue and work. These are some of our observations.

Affirmations

  • We believe that God has created all men & women in His image with the ability to be creative, creating good things for themselves and for others – this includes business.
  • We believe in following in the footsteps of Jesus, who constantly and consistently met the needs of the people he encountered, thus demonstrating the love of God and the rule of His kingdom.
  • We believe that the Holy Spirit empowers all members of the Body of Christ to serve, to meet the real spiritual and physical needs of others, demonstrating the kingdom of God.
  • We believe that God has called and equipped business people to make a Kingdom difference in and through their businesses.
  • We believe that the Gospel has the power to transform individuals, communities and societies. Christians in business should therefore be a part of this holistic transformation through business.
  • We recognise the fact that poverty and unemployment are often rampant in areas where the name of Jesus is rarely heard and understood.
  • We recognise both the dire need for and the importance of business development. However, it is more than just business per se. Business as Mission is about business with a Kingdom of God perspective, purpose and impact.
  • We recognise that there is a need for job creation and for multiplication of businesses all over the world, aiming at the quadruple bottom line: spiritual, economical, social and environmental transformation.
  • We recognise the fact that the church has a huge and largely untapped resource in the Christian business community to meet needs of the world – in and through business – and bring glory to God in the market place and beyond.

Recommendation

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

We call upon business people 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.

Conclusion

The real bottom line of Business as Mission is AMDG – ad maiorem Dei gloriam – for the greater glory of God.

Business as Mission Issue Group

October 2004

Convening Team: Mats Tunehag Wayne McGee Jo Plummer

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