Most of us approach the idea and practice of BAM from a particular motivation or starting point. Perhaps we are confronted by the very real needs of the poor, the need of a woman rescued from trafficking to have a job. Perhaps we are being a witness to the gospel in our daily business life in a community that has never before heard the good news about Jesus. Perhaps we are a business owner that senses God’s prompting to somehow use our skills and experience for strategic kingdom work.

It is certainly not wrong to approach business as mission with certain motivations and goals. But as we do so, let’s not look at business through a straw and miss out on what God fully intended in his design for business. I believe doing so is bound to make our business as mission strategies less effective! Why? If we are not thinking about all the ways business in itself, as a God-given institution, might positively impact a community, then we will not be working intentionally to create that impact.  

Of course God can expand our horizons in the process. There are many BAM practitioners out there that began with one set of goals and have been amazed at how they have been used by God outside of their original box! They might have started out creating jobs and ended up planting a church; they might have rescued vulnerable women and ended up helping to write a new tax code for the country!

Good for Business

Thinking broadly about the transformational power of business is also good for business. This is something the world at large is waking up to. Michael Porter of Harvard Business School calls this ‘shared value’. He argues that we can no longer think about benefiting society through our business as something ‘tacked-on’, like a corporate social responsibility program that simply makes us look good. Instead he says that as we integrate creating social benefit into the core of our business model, when we create products that are good for society and meet human needs, then that will also be good for business in the purely economic sense. Perhaps that cutting-edge thinking is only rediscovering God’s original design for business!

We are living in exciting times. While ‘Occupy Wall Street’ was making big news last year, at the same time certain States in the USA were creating Benefit Corporations, a new legal framework for companies to be able to intentionally create positive impact in society. It seems that there is a movement going on in the world, one that is straining towards redefining the purpose of business and enterprise within society. As Christians we need to have a firm grasp on what God says about the purpose of business and enterprise in society so that we can speak into this growing movement with boldness. In the business as mission movement, we need to work out what makes us distinctive as we also seek to address issues of spiritual bondage and poverty, in addition to eradicating other forms of bondage and poverty, through business. 

Several Christian leaders have been asked to continue the conversation by responding to this lead article.  Read their responses and share your own thoughts:

Joseph Vijayam

André Mann

Jo Plummer served as the Facilitator for the Lausanne Forum 2004 Business as Mission Issue Group as part of Convening Team and co-edited the Lausanne Occasional Paper on Business as Mission. She currently curates the Business as Mission wesbite and edits the Business as Mission e.zine.

Jo Plummer and Mats Tunehag are Chairing the 2nd Global Think Tank on Business as Mission.