Like most of the world, my family has become infatuated (perhaps mildly obsessed) with the musical Hamilton. We had heard the hype, but until Disney released it to the adulation of the COVID-quarantined masses, we didn’t really understand. While the prude in me found...
https://youtu.be/ReeOdMxtreo Social media has completely transformed human social interaction. What started as a fun way to reconnect with old friends, share family photos, and watch funny cat videos, has slowly morphed into a political and ideological battleground...
Do you remember way back in 2017 when the most controversial thing on the internet was the picture of a dress? To this day, it’s a color-phenomenon simply referred to as “the dress,” where different people looked at the exact same picture and saw two completely...
The construction industry has a slight reputation of taking advantages of people and establishments. Although this can be true, companies like T&W have been doing everything they can to make God the focal point of their business. This week we sat down with our...
In my 40+ years of experience following leaders in fields of business as well as churches and missions organizations, I’ve identified one factor that, for me, is the greatest single differentiator between a good leader and a poor one. Want to hear what that is? Hands...
https://youtu.be/BNrUnXm8t3Q This year has been full of unexpected twists and turns to say the least. Although it's really easy to allow fear set in, there's one thing you can't let 2020 steal from you. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it! Transcript: Hope seem...
A few years back I spent three days in Djibouti. Outside of the non-stop jokes that the pronunciation of this country’s name produces (they just write themselves, folks), our time on the Horn of Africa also gifted me one of my favorite stories to share over long...
https://youtu.be/KO5OKsRpcFg As people of faith, how do we engage in politics in a healthy way? Should we engage in politics? These are questions we are all wrestling with right now, so we wanted to talk to our good friend Todd Scoggins about how he walks the fine...
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...
How do you make tough decisions in the marketplace when your desire is to love and lead people well? When it comes to parting ways with an employee or an employer, what’s the best way to move forward? Is it possible to lead well through tough decisions? This week we sat down with Bob Carrell, of T&W Construction, about how he is able to make tough decisions in the marketplace.
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.