Restoring Enterprise to its Place in the Body of Christ

Business as Mission, Kingdom Business, Great Commission Companies, Purpose-Driven Business, Enterprising Ministry, Kingdom Entrepreneurship - It goes by many names, but there is a new, and yet very old calling in the Global Body of Christ. Many believers are called to walk out their calling in the marketplace. A subset of those believers are called to plant and grow businesses that serve God and the rest of the church. It is their ministry, enterprising ministry, that we describe, support, and explore here.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The Power of the Poor

When the poor get access to property ownership and documentation, their lives change forever.


Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Top Three Business as Mission Documents

I.
God is at Work by Ken Eldred

This is a book about kingdom business, the effort to promote Christian faith and commerce through profitable business. It recognizes and describes the fundamental connection between spiritual transformation and economic transformation. By mobilizing its business people, the church has a unique opportunity to make an impact in developing nations. While secular development efforts focus solely on economic objectives, kingdom business recognizes that successful commerce, which improves a nation, requires a biblical moral-cultural foundation.

-Regent Center for Entrepreneurship

II.
Luassane Occasional Paper 59, Business as Mission

This document clarifies what Business as Mission is, and what it is not, This is a must read, as it was a set of standards set up by a working group of passionate Practitioners in 2005.

III.
Business as Mission: The Power of Business in the Kingdom of God  by  Michale R. Baer

If God has called us into business, our goal is to discover why and act on that purpose. As we do so, God's creation will be blessed, and He will be glorified." - Michael Baer

This book is a great read! According to this book, there are four characteristics of a kingdom business:

1. A kingdom business is vocational; something that God has called us to do.
Col. 1:16-20, Eph 4:1, Rom 12:1-2

2. A kingdom business is intentional; God has a very specific purpose for each business.
Eph 2:10

3. A kingdom business is relational; we are exposed to a vast network through business and God wants these relationships to be valued.
Mark 12:30-31

4. A kingdom business is operational; operations must honors and reflect God.
1 Cor. 10:31

Baer suggests establishing a kingdom business by doing the following:

1. Create a kingdom foundation
Write out what you believe about: profit, people, growth, service or quality, productivity and innovation. Examples:
- We will always seek mutually beneficial outcomes in all that we do.
- We will operate in a fiscally responsible manner.
- We will maintain the priorities of family and friendship.
- We will endeavor to find the maximum enjoyment in whatever we do.
- We will seek continual learning and improvement so that what is done is done well and with full commitment.
- We will live lives that invite inquiry.

2. Articulate a kingdom direction
Vision: broad, expansive statement of the general direction in which company is headed.
Mission: a narrower definition of your vision - or your vision with metrics.
Purpose: the expression of what you believe God has as his specific will for your company.

3. Identify kingdom targets and objectives
Target: a three year goal for your business.
Objective: a one year goal.
For example: revenues, expansion, staffing, profitability, ministry and missions.

4. Focus on a few pivotal strategies
For example: execute marketing/business plan, etc.

5. Draft and assign quarterly action items
Break down your plan into a list of 10 or fewer action items

6. Schedule regular accountability

-Review on Amazon

Related topics but not the same as Kingdom Business are:

-Tentmaking
-Church Planting with a partially supporting business
-Business activity built around a ministry.
-A church or parachurch ministry that survives primaily through ongoing donations.
-Social Entrepreneurs
-Ethical Enterprise


-Great Commision Companies are one type, a subset of Kingdom Businesses

There  are about 2 dozen books out there, but these three guys get it.


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LeeRoyal

Monday, December 21, 2009

A Kingdom - Purpose Driven Business

The Purpose Driven Business Concept is one of the Anchors On the Qualitative Axis of the Kingdom Business 3 Dimensional Model. It is at the oppositend of the axis from The Workplace Minitsry Anchor.
So what is a purpose driven business?

Here is what Brad Dawson says in his article, a Purpose Driven Business:

"A purpose-driven business is an organization that balances quantitative financial performance metrics with qualitative higher level personal
values. Unfortunately, a definitive purpose-driven business model does not exist. Since success is subjective and cannot be measured by financial statements alone,it is defined by the attainment of the owner’s vision at a given time."


This ecoomist says that a purpoe driven business considers Outcomes along with Incomes in Building a Business:





Tina Olivero at Trans4mind Suggests that Indivduals design their own purpose driven work experience by asking the following questions:
  1. The place we are today, how did I create this? How can we create connection, peace and purpose?
  2. The place I want to work becomes a place of personal expression and purpose; what structures do I need to create this?
  3. When I look back on my working career I want it to be meaningful. What do I need to do to create that?
  4. How can I develop creativity, imagination, and vision within myself and my people that will make a difference and have us in alignment with our mission?
  5. How can I foster, courage, persistence, and passion in pursuit of the goals and missions of our people, teams and outcomes?
An adapation of this list provides guidelines for designing A Kingdom-purpose driven business
  1. Would Jesus be engaged in doing this kind of enterprise?
  2. How can we create connection, peace and purpose in business model Design?
  3. How can the business model create an expression of Kingdom purpose that believers will want to join; what structures do I need to create this?
  4. When the business looks back at its accomplishments over the past decade, you want it to be meaningful for Kingdom purpose. What do I need to do to create that?
  5. How can the business develop creativity, imagination, and vision within myself and my people that will make a difference and have us in alignment with our mission?
  6. How can the business encourage, courage, persistence, and passion in pursuit of the goals and missions of our people, teams and outcomes?
  7. How Does the business model Serve Matt 28 19-20,
  8. How Does the business model Serve The Two Great commandments, loving God, loving people?


Step One is Creating a Shared Vision:

The Design of a kingdom Purpose Driven business is led by a leader with a God-given vision for the business. They cast the vision to a small group of people who, together, will hold a stake in the success of the company. At a minimum, they give detailed answers to these ten questions:

1.     Who are our Customers?
2.     Who are our Competitors?
3.     What are our products and or services?
4.     Where will the business operate?
5.     What is your plan and budget for starting up,
6.     Where will this funding come from?
7.     Who is the owner(s) (Steward (s)), and what roles do others play?
8.     How will the owner meet their own obligations until the business can pay them?
9.     How does the business advance the Kingdom of God?
10.  What are the political, cultural, situational barriers that must be overcome, and how will you go overcoming themt?

The answers are the beginings of a business plan.

Step Two is Begining to prayer together over the vision, and building the business plan.
(Stay tuned)


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LeeRoyal







Sunday, December 20, 2009

Kingdom Business 3D Business Model

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Tent Makers Are Alive and Well

Originbally published
Sunday, November 01 2009

For Stuart Hake, his personal venture into missions has been mind-bending.

“I’ve come to recognize that much of our thinking about mission has been influenced by Greek thinking—that spiritual is superior to physical,” he says. “The problem with that is it is not biblical. We base so much of what we do on an unbiblical concept.”


Stuart and Debbie HakeIn the summer of 2008, Stuart and his wife, Debby, left their comfortable life in northern Indiana and moved to Bangkok, Thailand. He had spent the previous 12 years as chief financial officer at Grace Brethren International Missions (GBIM). She had a successful career teaching disabled children in the local public school system. Their three children were grown and settled in careers or families of their own.

“I’m recognizing I have only so many years left in my life where I can invest my life for the kingdom,” says Stuart.

In Bangkok, his focus has been to explore business as mission, a concept that encourages economic development at the local level, providing support for the physical needs of the indigenous people while teaching them about Jesus. It’s a biblical mandate that seemed largely forgotten throughout much of the 20th Century and only in recent years has been re-invigorated as thousands of Christian workers around the world strive to share God’s love with the poorest of the poor while helping them learn to support themselves.

The Hakes are virtually self-supporting, needing to raise only about a third of the support a traditional missionary must raise. Though sent by their home congregation, the Winona Lake (Ind.) Grace Brethren Church (Bruce Barlow, lead pastor), Debby joined the staff of the International Community School to help with their support. (The English-speaking school uses biblical principles in their teaching methodology.)

“It’s demeaning to the people we are working with to assume they are needy and we’re not,” Stuart stresses. He feels it leads to an attitude of superiority on the part of the missionary, even if unintentional. “Let’s find out what assets they (the nationals) have,” he adds. “That doesn’t mean we don’t want to assist; we just don’t want to cripple them by doing things they can do for themselves.”

Wayne Hannah, who travels regularly in Asia as the GBIM director for that region, sees business-as-mission as “planting uniquely cultivated, contextualized seeds.”

“We kept bumping up against a cultural glass ceiling,” he remembers. To develop a ministry among many of the unreached people groups was difficult. “We couldn’t go further. There were cultural, linguistic, and economic barriers.”

He also notes that those who study church-planting movements say that to the extent that a people depend upon a subsidy from the west, there is an inverse correlation, to that extent they will not likely reach their own people with the gospel.

“We need to encourage enterprise on a small scale to help the nationals subsidize themselves,” he recognizes. “When that happens, stand aside. When they take ownership, you see that God can empower them to reach their own people.”

Stuart has spent the last year analyzing the region to determine what methods fit best in GBIM’s ministries in Southeast Asia. Soon there will be nearly 12 staff members who will have some role in holistic or benevolence ministries and businesses in the region, according to Wayne, who has overseen missions in Asia for 14 years. He hopes to take the concept of holistic missions throughout Asia.

“It’s a way to approach a country and reach the least reached,” Wayne says. “Without it, the national church will never take full ownership to reach their own people.”

Stuart hopes to play a role in one of four ways—as a consultant with enterprises created by missionaries to work with local people; to mentor interns or students coming to Southeast Asia to learn or study; to be a catalyst for business as mission while promoting the concept in U.S. churches and with business people or pastors; and possibly working as a professional manager in an existing business in the region.

The recent economic downturn has only emboldened Stuart in his quest. “People are seeking help,” he says. “We need to be positioned to help people in all aspects of their lives.”

(Editor’s Note: If you would like to help Stuart and Debby Hake in their unique mission, contact them at sahake@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .)

The Rest @ FBGC World




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LeeRoyal

Business as Mission: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice

Business as Mission
A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice
C. Neal Johnson Inter-Varsity Press, January 2010

Business as mission (BAM) is a mission strategy whose time has come. But Christian companies and business leaders do not automatically accomplish missional purposes. BAM requires mastery of both the world of business and the world of missions, merging and contextualizing both into something significantly different than either alone. C. Neal Johnson offers the first comprehensive guide to business as mission for practitioners. He provides conceptual foundations for understanding BAM's unique place in global mission and prerequisites for engaging in it. Then he offers practical resources for how to do BAM, including strategic planning and step-by-step operational implementation. Drawing on a wide variety of BAM models, Johnson works through details of both mission and business realities, with an eye to such issues as management, sustainability and accountability. More book information. Download 40% discount code.

The Rest @ Business as Mission.com



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LeeRoyal

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Reclaiming Enterprise as an Act of Worship: 10 Essential Principles

1. Whereas enterprise is a biblical domain in God's Kingdom, the place where vast numbers of Christ followers are predestined to joyfully labor in advancement of His Kingdom, Christians in the secular workplace and workplaces designed and owned by believers in Christ are called to Matthew 6:9-13, Mathew 10, and Matthew 28:19-20 Commissions.

2. God often places kingdom business professionals in kingdom businesses and non-kingdom businesses alike to advance His Kingdom. Wherever they are called to serve, Ephesians 2 is their guide, serving their workplace leaders whether present or not, knowing they are really serving God.

3. A kingdom business is owned or privately controlled by a kingdom business entrepreneur, a subset of kingdom business professionals.

4. A kingdom business may be in any principled business area, no matter how mundane it's labor, and is designed and operated according to the following:

-The enterprise, whether constructed as for profit or non-profit, is designed for and is successful in generating both revenue and sufficient profit to stabilize it, and plan for enterprise survival and growth, and the development of its employees.
-The enterprise's policy and practice obey the laws of the land.
-The Steward of the enterprise can ask God's blessing for its mission, short and long term objectives, within the transparent context of advancing God's Kingdom.
-The Enterprise's demands of and ministry to its employees advance God's Kingdom while obeying the laws of the land.
-It's demands of and ministry to its suppliers and other partners advance God's Kingdome Enterprise, demonstrated by the enterprises character and integrity.
-It's products, services and ministry to it's customers advanced God's Kingdom through their joint interactions.
-The enterprise is known in it's community as a good citizen.
-It practices sound and biblical financial practices in a transparent manner.

5. The Kingdom Business encourages its employees to support the local church, and recognizes The church’s authority. Kingdom Business Professionals actively practices the personal disciplines of a believer, including Active participation in the local church and small group accountability. The enterprise makes no attempt to create a parallel or replacement organization for the church in the workplace.

6. As in all things belonging to Christ, the enterprise acknowledges it's entire dependence on God for provision, most notably the provision of work for the enterprise to do that generates revenue.

7. Therefore, an interpretation of economics which suggests that any successful enterprise must always act in its own self-interest toward the accumulation of wealth, and that only individuals who receive that wealth are capable of good works, is rejected as an incorrect, and amended as follows:

-The "invisible hand" that guides economies proposed by Adam Smith, who wrote both The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, is the Hand of God.

-That Christ followers in the workplace act in the interest of God's Kingdom, which may be interpreted by non-believers as their own self-interest, or the interest of the company. However, the supremacy of God as revealed by His Word reigns in all actions and choices, including enterprise.

-Therefore, Kingdom Business Owners and Kingdom Business Professional alike are stewards of business opportunities provided by God for His purpose.

8. The Enterprise is a "finger on the Hand of God" just as are other domains which actively engage our world culture, such as government, media, art and entertainment, education, the church, etc.

9. Kingdom business owners (Stewards) and Kingdom Business Professionals reject the concept of secular business, with a set of truths and principles separate from God's word.

10. Kingdom Business Professionals who operate inside an enterprise designed on a secular-sacred separation hold themselves to a higher standard, and pray for creative ways to demonstrate Kingdom Business integrity, principles and solutions while serving their leaders in their most excellent way, using Shadrack Meshack and Abendigo as Models. (Daniel Chapters 1 and 2)

- Lee Royal



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