There’s a scene in the iconic Frank Capra classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, where George Bailey fights off a run on the Savings and Loan. In the chaos that ensues, Bailey successfully talks down a lobby full of panicked customers demanding the immediate withdrawal of...
As I began to think about Holy Week, I remembered this article I wrote a few years ago from a hospital bed on Easter morning. In light of all we are facing right now, all the sorrow, the sickness, the anxiety, pain, and loss, I thought it might be an encouragement to...
Like the rest of the world, I’m wrestling with the emotions of this historical moment we are living through. I ride the waves of encouragement and despair, parsing the data, looking for voices I can trust, trying to find some glimpses of hope as the global war on...
Keep giving to your local church. Perhaps I’m the right one to say this as I have no direct personal upside from the conversation. What I do have is a deep belief in God’s Word, a love for the mission of God in the world, and a network of dear friends leading this...
As both a pastor and a marketplace leader, I’ve given out a lot of advice over the years. It’s easy to objectively see things in other people’s lives and to offer much-needed encouragement and perspective. But what happens when your own advice is staring right back at...
Tables are gathering places, and The Stone Table is a Gospel gathering place. That’s a key phrase we continue to use when discussing The Stone Table’s strategic vision and role in the Kingdom. We routinely remind ourselves we don’t have to create everything ourselves....
No one overtly taught me about the origins of work. It was more of an assumed theology, ideas inferred from other biblical teaching or even popular culture. I don’t know about you, but I always had this image of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, laying in the lush...
A few years back, I shared a pertinent revelation that Retirement is not in the Bible. Today, I believe that even more deeply. I am not retired. I’m repurposed. In the intervening year-and-a-half since I stepped away from my “day-job” of 40+ years, I’ve embraced...
I’ve traveled over a half-million miles in the last 5 years. Fifteen different countries by a quick tally. Part of The Stone Table’s organizational mandate is to accelerate The Great Commission through the marketplace, and that Great Commission commands believers to...
"You are God. I am not." I try to pray some form of this prayer multiple times a day. Not because I fear God is having some kind of identity crisis. I know He’s been around forever and all, but He’s not suffering from dementia. As I declare His identity back to Him,...
And at The Stone Table, we define BAM this way: Business as mission is the intentional integration of business and ministry to create a sustainable, missional presence of the kingdom of God in a particular community. Across the globe, all kinds of marketplace work is being embraced as a Great Commission opportunity to take the Gospel to every ethnos. We have missionary entrepreneurs that are starting sustainable farms, tourism companies, CrossFit gyms, and coffee shops in areas devoid of Gospel witness. We have gig economy workers like graphic designers and book editors that are moving their base of operations to strategic missions’ outposts. We have take-a-job missionaries that are partnering with local church planting teams and are embedding in local corporations that are moving them to unreached parts of the world. We have business owners that are franchising their models to missionary teams that could take the Gospel into places that traditional missionaries cannot go. And missionary investors are underwriting the risky startup costs of these strategic BAM projects through grant and investment dollars. And they’re embracing this multiple bottom-line definition of success and Great Commission returns.
So, what is the Great Commission? Do you know? The Great Commission is Jesus’ last instructions to his disciples as he ascended into heaven. These instructions weren’t just for professional pastors and missionaries. Jesus’ words were aimed at all of us who call him “Lord,” including those of us with marketplace jobs. Look at Matthew 28:19. It says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” It says “go,” to move out, to train up followers of all nations. And the Greek word here is actually ethnos. It’s ethnos or a people joined by similar customs or culture. We can better translate this word, not as geo-political nation states, but as people groups. And Jesus said to go make disciples of all of them. But the Joshua Project estimates there as many as 7,400 unreached people groups in the world today. These 7,400 people groups total 3.1 billion people or 42% of the global population. And for many of these people, were not just talking about a general disinterest in Christianity, we’re talking no access to the Gospel. If you are born into this 42%, there is a good chance that you will live and die without ever as much as meeting a Christian let alone hearing the life-giving message of Jesus. And this should disturb all of us. See, if you belong to Jesus, the Great Commission belongs to you.
That’s why two recent Barna surveys on global missions and evangelism really shocked and troubled me. Maybe you saw these. According to Barna, over half of all churchgoers, 51%, are completely unfamiliar with the concept of the Great Commission. But I think even more disturbing, they found almost half of practicing Christian millennials believe that evangelism is wrong. And perhaps these responses reflect a rejection of some historical missions’ missteps that were rooted more in western colonialism than the gospels full redemptive work. Perhaps, but I fear something worse. I fear God’s people may actually be losing God’s heart for the nations. I fear we’ve turned the Great Commission into more of a great suggestion. If we really love people, won’t we move heaven and earth to tell them how their sins can be forgiven, how they can find union with their heavenly father, and how they can function in the fullness of the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. The answer is yes, and we passionately believe that mobilizing entrepreneurship, business, and the marketplace is a vital part of that Great Commission calling.