This is a story of a Business as Mission (BAM) practitioner on the field using business as a mechanism for planting the church in areas of the world you can’t go with traditional missionary methods. In order to protect the work being done there, we will not share the...
This article was originally published at LiveDead.org and was reposted here with their permission. Our friends and partners at LiveDead give their lives to take the Gospel to the unreached people of the earth, often utilizing business and the marketplace to engage the...
Because of our global missions engagement, I’ve had to do a fair bit of international travel over the last 5 years. Long hours on airplanes is not easy, but I won’t lie, interacting with so many missionaries around the world is worth the countless stiff necks,...
Your job is a beautiful platform for the Gospel. I’m not just talking about putting a Bible on your desk, wearing a cross necklace to a business meeting, or displaying a 365 days of Scripture calendar in your office. All those things are fine and dandy, but I’m...
This article was originally published at LiveDead.org and was reposted here with their permission. Our friends and partners at LiveDead give their lives to take the Gospel to the unreached people of the earth, often utilizing business and the marketplace to engage the...
God’s sovereign will is unfolding all around us everyday in thousands of different ways we will never see or fully comprehend. Occasionally, He gives us a little glimpse into how He is orchestrating His Story in the world. This was one of those moments. Stone Table...
My wife and I packed up our life in one city and started over in another place. After a year learning Arabic and immersing ourselves in Arab culture, it was time to put these things to use. In some ways we felt very blessed. Here in our new city, we are taking up the...
When I looked at my calendar last week I noticed something unusual. There was nothing, literally zero little colored blocks, on the Saturday column. It was glorious discovery and I embraced it fully. I slept until I naturally woke up (which unfortunately isn’t very...
I took one for the team gentlemen. Hugh Jackman’s world tour came through Indianapolis this weekend, and I decided that taking my wife of 24 years to see this handsome triple-threat heartthrob was a great anniversary gift. She seemed to agree. It was 2 1/2 hours of...
This is a story of a Business as Mission (BAM) practitioner on the field using business as a mechanism for planting the church in areas of the world you can’t go with traditional missionary methods. In order to protect the work being done there, we will not share the...
Let me tell you what the Gospel is not. The Gospel is not, “I am a Sinner; I work hard to improve myself and God approves me because of my effort.” That is not the Gospel. This is the Gospel: “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
You know when I was a pastor, my passion was the Gospel; the proclamation of Jesus Christ and the discipleship of people through the local church. That was my job. So, my job was pastor, my passion was the Gospel. But now for the last decade or so, I have been back in the marketplace. And you know what? My passion is still the Gospel. I sit at a different seat now. I’m in a marketplace seat. I’m involved in managing apartments and developing apartments and Realestate but my passion as a believer is still the same. My job is different but my vocation (my vocation or “vocare” from the Latin word “calling”) is still the same; the Gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ. I just do that now from a marketplace seat. So, I want to encourage all of you, whether you work in a church, whether you work in a marketplace, whether you’re on the mission field, the vocation and calling of every believer ultimately is the same. It is to embody the kingdom and to proclaim and glorify the name of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth. That’s your job, that’s your vocation.
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.