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The Next Wave of Missions
Dec 02 | Pastor J.D. | 16 Comments |
I am convinced that the next wave of missions (at least coming from the Western World) is going to happen on the wings of business.
This has a strong biblical and historical precedent. Luke seems to go out of his way to show that the gospel got to some places in the ancient world faster via the hands of Christian merchants than even Apostles. He notes that the first time the church “went everywhere preaching the word,” the Apostles were not engaged (Acts 8:1). He also notes that when Paul finally arrives in Rome to preach Christ there, he is greeted by “hospitable brothers,” who seem to have been there for quite some time (Acts 28:15). As Steven Neill notes in his classic History of Christian Missions, of the three great church planting centers in the ancient world (Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome), not one was founded by an Apostle.
In the same way, Christians in the marketplace today are able to gain access more easily to strategic, unreached places. Globalization, great advancements in technology, and urbanization have given the business community nearly universal access.
Others have seen this potential, and there are new, encouraging conversations about “Business as Mission.” In our view, however, current discussions have yet to lead to sustainable, efficient, effective, and reproducible platforms in unreached areas.
We believe that at least four different types of individuals will be especially effective in this movement, and want to devote ourselves to the equipping and training of these kinds of people. Could it be that God has already placed in his church the skills necessary to penetrate the most unreached parts of our world—and that those skills are business skills? We believe that churches should encourage Christian business people toward a two-part vision: Whatever you are good at, (a) do it well (for the glory of God); and (b) do it somewhere strategic (for the mission of God). Furthermore, we believe missions organizations like the IMB (the International Mission Board) ought to consider a more comprehensive and catalytic approach to missions that focuses on working through churches to identify, equip, and train these people.
So here they are:
1 . The gifted entrepreneur:
This would be a man or woman with a proven track record of starting new companies in the United States and decides to do this overseas in an unreached area. This is extremely difficult to do because just to succeed in business in the 1st place is difficult. After all, many talented entrepreneurs who intend to start businesses in their home context fail!
Conducting business overseas exponentially multiplies this difficulty. What we don’t need are a bunch of seminary students with no business training and no real entrepreneurial ability thinking they can simply move to an unreached people group and start a new business. This will end up being even more of a drain on the church finances than traditional missionary approaches, because no longer are we merely having to support a couple on the field but we’re pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a non-profit making businesses.
But there are some who have the capacity and the skill proven by what they’ve been able to do here. We should encourage them to think about how they could leverage that skill into places where the gospel is not known. We also need investors who can spot good profit-making potential and invest in these businesses that will carry the gospel into unreached places. I know of a couple guys who have done this successfully overseas.
2. The kingdom-minded business owner:
This is a successful company that is led by somebody who gets the vision and is able to expand their existing business into an unreached area. Again, the numbers of people in our church who would fit this criteria is very small–either because their product doesn’t have an international market or they are not in a position to direct their company to pursue such international endeavors. But there are some, and they need to be given vision for this; a support network of other people who are doing it; and, investors who will seed their ideas. We have one guy at our church who has done this successfully. We need more of him.
3. Kingdom-minded people who work for a large multi-national company:
This is the man or woman who works for a large company. Think Sara Lee, IBM and Coca-Cola. This business person is able to pursue overseas transfer for the purpose of living missionaly in an unreached area. My father is one who pursued this option. After he retired he was hired back by his company to lead a project to help establish a factory in a very unreached part of the world. From that position he was able to present the gospel and lead people to Christ that traditional missionaries may never have been able to get close to. These people do not need funding. They need vision and training about how to effectively and ethically pursue kingdom interests while they are on assignment from their company.
4. College graduates seeking jobs in unreached places:
This is a variation of model number 3, except here you have someone who is not yet established well in their career. A recent graduate simply says, ‘I need to get a job somewhere. Why not try to find a job where my church is involved in church planting efforts already, or in the midst of an unreached people?’ If your church does not have a work within an unreached group, look for U.S. based companies that are expanding outside the US (e.g. Living Social). There are jobs in some US company in almost every unreached country.
We have a lot of college students in our church pursuing this very option and we are trying to connect them with the right people.
What we need to preach to our people is a two-fold vision: Whatever you are good at, (a) do it well (to the glory of God); and (b) do it somewhere strategic for the mission of God.
Again, I suspect this is the future of missions to unreached people groups. And I hope that we can bend our missions paradigm to tap into what is arguably the greatest potential mission force in the world.
16 Responses to “The Next Wave of Missions”
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YES YES YES and I wrote a book on that “Realtime Connections – How to Connect Your Job to God’s Global Mission”
JD, a roundtable discussion of practitioners and supporters of best practices in “tentmaking” and other non-traditional approaches in the marketplace should be convened by perhaps you and Roberts. Some excellent approaches and learnings could be built upon and the need to create new and expand such approaches is significant.
my two cents,
Rodney Hammer
I would add that the above efforts of “business as missions” should be networked and strategically linked with national and international Christian businesspersons, East to West, South to North…i.e. East and South Asian Christian businesspeople and their businesses providing the entries and partners in strategy and implementation…Singapore Xns working alongside Westerners, Asian businesses providing opportunities, etc.
VERY interesting! I’d not thought of this — shows you how often some of us think (and live) inside the box!
[...] morning, J.D. Greear posted a new article, “The next wave of missions,” which led with, “is going to happen on the wings of [...]
I agree with you, JD. I envision that this new wave of missions would not replace the traditional seminary-educated missionaries, but would add to and complement them. The traditional missions movement has a lot of experience in cross-cultural ministry that will benefit this new wave of people who would be added to the task. Further, when the Kingdom professionals go overseas, they will benefit greatly from the fellowship, accountability, and en encouragement they will receive from joining with established church planting teams.
Well said! The ordinary witnesses (“anonymous and unchronicled witnesses”–Neill) have always been God’s primary agents of the gospel. The point of the spear has been (biblically and historically) the soldiers and merchants. May their tribe increase.
Pastor JD,
Why do you separate businessmen of old from the apostles, as if to say some missionaries were businessmen and others were apostles? Scripture indicates that the Apostles *were* businessmen and that they taught the pastors that were to follow after them to do secular work as well.
The only description of an Apostle’s actual pay and work life we have record of in Scripture is for the Apostle Paul. Scripture says that he refused to take pay from the churches he led “to win more souls,” (1 cor. 9) and instead worked in business (he made tents for a living, Acts 18:3).
Why are you assuming the other Apostles were any different? I see no reason to assume the other Apostles behaved any differently especially given the reasons Paul gives for his own work. As I noted, in 1 Cor. 9 Paul said he worked outside of the church to win more souls. Also, in 2 Thessalonians 3, Paul said the reason he did this was so that those under him in the church would follow his example! Do you think the rest of the Apostles spurned his example?
More importantly, how many are following the Apostolic example today? One might even say the modern evangelical approach is to “peddle the word of God for profit,” which many were doing even when the Apostle Paul was alive to combat the practice. See 2 Corinthians 2:17 where the Apostle Paul condemned teaching for profit and said he didn’t do that because it proved his sincerity.
“I teach the gospel free of charge. I belong to no man, but I work for free to win as many as possible… I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some… I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. Follow my example as I follow Christ.” – The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 9:18-22, 10:33-11:1.
On target! I agree wholeheartedly. The move of the Gospel through business in the book of Acts is evident and there is a move today of people willing to invest spiritual venture capital through financial resource, time, expertise – a combo of Kingdom passion and business passion.
JD – Great post. Couldn’t have said it better myself
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I would, though, add a little bit to this post. (and, quick caveat, this is still in the baking process).
5) Kingdom-minded independent professionals:
This is the man or woman who works somewhat independently and whose skills set transfers fairly easily to any part of the world. Think CPAs, Attorneys, Drs, PhDs, Consultants, Graphic Designers, Computer Programmer, nurses, etc. This group has immediately relevant and in-demand skills – either directly, or as mentors/teachers for countries that have a need for folks like these to make their economies work. This group needs vision/training, but, also need practical help in getting the necessary licenses, getting their practices set-up and plugging in to the right opportunities.
6) Church-Planters:
This group is maybe obvious to mention, but, I do think it’s important to note that those focused more on church planting – let’s call them pastors – are still very necessary. I see the people we mentioned above (let’s call them 1-5 Types) as the early church in any country. These are the folks who will be salt and light in their communities, working 9-5 jobs and sharing their lives and the gospel in the marketplace and in their neighborhoods. They will need a church planter who can more deliberately set their time aside to build up the other Christians, disciple new Christians, and train additional pastors. Because this is likely a full-time job in itself, ideally CPs will do this full-time, or, perhaps as part-time workers in another business endeavor.
7) Future-minded, Flexibly-organized, Leverage-creating missions organizations:
If you believe these 6 groups will make-up the future of missions – which I do – then what does the future missions organization look like? I’d venture to say it won’t look like the IMB of today which spends ~$300ml to support ~5,500 CPs around the world (at a cost of ~$60k per). In its current model, the IMB must send “teams” of CPs into an area, which means its a) pretty expensive and b) pretty hard to get to critical mass in terms of gospel-centered, evangelistically-minded Christians in a given area. What I see as a better use of resources is for the IMB and other missions organizations to use their resources to do 3 things: 1) identify strategic areas for Christian work, 2) research and identify opportunities in those areas for our 1-5 Types and recruit a team large enough to create critical mass, and 3) partner them up with a CP who can serve as their pastor and who can begin to train up the new (Lord Willing) Christians in that area. Imagine if the IMB gave their time to this. So, we have someone stateside selecting a city/region and then figuring out all the opportunities for our 1-5 Types above (researching job openings, laws, business opps, networking people, etc). Let’s say they are successful in building a team of 15-20 people (including families, and, not necessarily all at the same time). Then, a CP is attached to the team. Now, instead of 1 team consisting of maybe 3-4 CPs (at a cost of ~$200-250k / year and not having too many tentacles in a community), you now have a team of 15-20 people with 1 CP (at a cost of $60k/yr). If you could repeat this model around the world, you could have 100k Christians living and working overseas in coordinated communities, paired with 5,500 CPs, all at a cost of $300ml. That’s called leverage. And, that, I believe, is the shape the future of missions needs to take.
I applaud all the efforts of those who are making evolutionary changes in the way we approach missions by encouraging business people to get involved and by helping CPs be more business-minded. But, I’m looking forward to seeing someone make truly revolutionary changes in bringing missions into our “flat world”.
I agree with this to a large extent…it certainly does seem like “missions” is moving this direction, and that move seems like it could have a very large upside.
One of my questions, though, is what it looks like to do missions in places where businesses (at least as traditionally conceived) aren’t terribly viable? So what does mission through business look like in North Chad, the jungles of Brazil, or South Sudan, for example?
One of the best things about this post is that it changes business people’s perspectives to consider missions along with their professions. It helps expand our view of missions beyond the usual story we see of people leaving behind everything they know — including their jobs and talents — to live overseas as church planters with no job. In this model, you can have both. And, it’s more financially sustainable.
Pastor Greear,
First, thank you for your passion for church planting and taking the time to recognize the need for strategic involvement from our brothers and sisters gifted in business. We are all called to make disciples and yet we often resolve ourselves to the fact that the Great Commission is just for full-time ministry professionals, domestically or internationally.
I recently left my career in politics to be part of a church-planting team in China. I don’t fit any of your four categories necessarily. God has seen fit to give me a gift of networking, building teams, and bringing the right people together to build successful projects and see ideas turned into solutions.
My vision is to take folks from one of your four categories and plug them into a viable business model that overlaps and actually encompasses a ministry (for us, a church planting team) on the ground in hard to reach places. It is one thing to do business abroad and live for Christ, but even as a lay person transitioning into missions, I see that it is entirely another to do business for the purpose of reproducing the church. I’ll let others argue about the theological value of that spectrum, but to me the key is get our non-ministry professionals involved, creating, helping, guiding, consulting, and reproducing business platforms abroad that allow our ministry teams and the businesses to make an impact for the Kingdom.
I wholeheartedly agree with Sebastian and Adam above – the key is to get the average Christian out of the pew and actually utilizing the gifts God has given him to reach the Nations.
I would love to hear how yours or other congregations are tackling this challenge. I’ve been working for a couple years now with our little network to build the right structures to bridge the church world in the US with the international business world. We have one small team forming of professionals dedicated to developing the right legal and ministry structures necessary while we work on the business front here in China. Just getting started and would love to connect to others with some experience at this who value both the ministry purpose and the importance of qualified business leaders/professionals to ensure sustainability and profitability (i.e. long-term impact for the Kingdom).
Just some thoughts. Thank you again for the post and your leadership on the issue. It’s catching on, especially if I found it, all the way over here in China via the Midwest.
oh, and i agree with the “next wave” idea. personally, i think the next wave not from the west is going to be from China, that is if they get the proper training and support needed to equip their new believers before this window of opportunity closes.
I worked for a BAM venture in the late 90′s in China. One word of caution… The Great Commission was given to the church, not a business. I think BAM can make many inroads and provide great opportunities for modeling and speaking the Gospel (I’ve experienced this firsthand), but ultimately the mission belongs to the church. I think some serious thought needs to be put into this dynamic. It’s not as easy as one might think.
Variation Number 5- a biz person who funds missions abroad from his/her entrepreunerial sucess at home, especially as many churches right now are broke
Im really excited about this post, this vision and been burning in my heart. I have started a online platform trying to build a community of professional financial seed sowers to grow the needs of ministries that are going forward and need business minded people to catch there vision and together we grow the kingdom faster then ever.
sowandgo.com