Business As Mission gaining momentum
I had an opportunity to speak at the Stewards of the Mission conference in Richland Hills, Texas last weekend. The organizer heard our story of The Source Cafe, told at this year's Tulsa Workshop, and how God used business to aid our mission effort in Uganda. He asked me to share it again at this conference but in much more detail this time. He also invited Tom Sudyk, a founder of the BAM movement and the EC Group. Tom spoke for 3 1/2 hours in the morning and I had the same amount of time in the afternoon. It was an intense 7 hours but those that attended were extremely receptive to the ideas.
And these meetings are just the beginning. If you are interested in business and missions here are just a few more opportunities and resources for learning more. The DFW area seems to be the area for BAM conferences!
The International Conference on Business and Mission Integration - Dallas, Oct. 12-14, 2006
YWAM's Business as Mission Resource Center
C12 Group's Leader Conference - Arlington, TX Sept. 28-30, 2006
posted by Clint @ 7/26/2006
2 comments
2 Comments:
Clint,
You did a great job in sharing the story of the Source. I was impressed how many people at the conference went to the BAM sessions. Seems to have caught the interest of quite a few.
Personally, I love the idea of BAM and hope to find a role for myself in this area. But as I listened from the standpoint of a missions committee member, I saw lots of challenges to trying to develop a BAM opportunity for the local church. We have a hard enough time getting church-planting mission teams right without trying to add layers of complexity (find the right biz opportunity, the capital to back it, the right people to run it, etc.) It might sound like I'm pessimistic but I think it's that I realize better the work that is cut out for us if we want to do BAM right.
In spite of the daunting task, BAM holds great opportunity to engage more laypeople in God's global mission and there's absolutely nothing but upside there.
Carter,
I don't think you're pessimistic. I think that's a healthy perception of the complexities related to BAM, especially from a sending church perspective. As we discussed, it must be a God conceived plan and it needs to truly address local felt needs. That's why I think churches should focus on sending well trained teams of people with a broad mix of education, skills and gifts. Then the team should just "be" in their mission setting, learning culture while developing relationships for some time as they pray for God's direction in how they can use additional means, like business, in a positive way as part of the overall mission. This takes first of all an open minded sending church. It will likely take a long time to develop but the fruits of a holistic Spirit led mission like that are plentiful.
But of course BAM can happen in many different ways. People like you can go ahead and use your skills to get involved in other ways and through other organizations, businesses and non-profit organizations. I think involvement in least developed countries will often require donor funded type BAM efforts. We hope Kibo Group will help to facilitate creative BAM efforts like this.
For more developed countries, there is already a lot of business investment already going there so we need to tap Christian businesspeople on the shoulder and empower them to be more intentional about making our business efforts more mission minded.
The great thing is there is already a lot of openness with young people today for BAM-like ideas. The challenge is helping them execute these efforts in good and appropriate ways. We need to do a good job in directing towards good business mission efforts whether they be church-led, non-profit led, or led from more of a traditional business perspective.
Great to see you down there and I hope you get a chance to go to some of these other business mission conferences. Let me know how they are if you do get to go!
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