Getting Down to Business. From Micro-Enterprise to Frontier Missions, Business is Booming in YWAM :: Stacey Jillson
Sam Wilson (not his real name) is a YWAM staff member. He's also a businessman who has been in business in India for three years. "We felt called to an affluent business community in India," Sam explains, "and it was important to us to be business people to penetrate that community." Sam started out three years ago with a low-scale business but quickly found out that wouldn't work. "The expectation of our neighbors and peers was that we should do 'real' business."Sam's missionary purpose has led him straight into an office in a city in India. He's in business. He's in missions. He's in a place that more and more YWAMers for a variety of reasons are finding themselves. Some are involved in micro-enterprise to alleviate poverty, some in small businesses to provide income and resources for ministry needs, and some are working as tentmakers to gain access to restricted areas. For these reasons, when you visit many YWAMers around the world, you'll visit little shops and growing companies. There is a beauty salon, a travel agency, an internet cafe.
Is this good? Are our money-making ventures distracting us from real ministry? Is running a business too much of a financial risk? How and where do YWAMers get business training? To grapple with some of these issues, over 150 YWAMers, as well as many business people affiliated with YWAM, met in Pattaya, Thailand in January, 2003 for the Business as Mission (BAM) Consultation.
"People have been afraid because they looked at the pitfalls and problems," said consultation coordinator Lynn Green, YWAM's Field Director for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. "The vision we have here is that business is an integral part of the kingdom. It's not just a vehicle for mission, it's part of our mission."
Sam was one of the YWAMers who came to the consultation. He said that, for him, doing a "real business" hasn't been easy. Sam's company provides database upgrading for large businesses, with a client list that includes Ray-O-Vac and Dunn & Bradstreet. "We employ a dozen people, almost all of whom are Indian non-YWAMers. We're also apprenticing an Indian YWAMer who wants to start a similar business in the Middle East."
Tentmaking and Micro-Enterprise
For YWAM companies like Sam's, the business accomplishes many ministry goals: a legitimate community role, access to a people group, and even support raising. YWAMer Ron Eaton (not his real name) has been church planting for twelve years in a staunchly Islamic region. The nearest church is hundreds of miles away. Ron's ministry represents the only Christian work in the area. In recent years, Ron has helped to start nearly ten small businesses. "Developing tentmaking opportunities for national workers needs to be a high priority," says Ron. "These business projects help church planters access remote areas for extended periods and give them a legitimate reason to be there long term."
YWAMers involved in mercy ministry are also increasingly turning to business. Supatra Sirisomruthai of YWAM Bangkok Relief and Development manages a program called Step Ahead Micro-enterprise Development. Geared toward working-poor women, Step Ahead provides funding for women with at least one year's experience in their business. The women meet in weekly groups for accountability. "The groups provide people with friends, social contacts, and life-skill learning in areas such as saving, managing their business, and writing and following a business plan," says Supatra.
Funding for this program comes from Global Fund, an American organization. So far, Step Ahead has made thirty loans of US$125; women have used these loans to expand businesses such as grocery, food vending and dressmaking enterprises.
"Christian micro-enterprise development not only alleviates poverty," says Supatra, "it transforms an area into a kind, caring community." And as several BAM Consultation speakers said, it makes the poor less dependent on aid and empowers them to take control of their own lives.
Moving Forward
"Why shouldn't we encourage Christian entrepreneurs to use their skills to raise the living standard of poor Christians and their unbelieving neighbors?" asks author Gary Corwin. "And why shouldn't we expect them to make a profit while doing so? Strategic investment that meets human need with dignity, and that enhances long-term financial stability for church extension, should be celebrated."
Regardless of what facet of BAM we're called to, we must be committed to excellence and integrity. Australian business leader David Bussau says, "I think missionaries often get into business for the wrong reason. The business isn't really built around meeting a consumer need, it's just a methodology for the missionary to get into the community." David says that if a person claims to be a business person, he or she should seek to do business well, or else risk having a lack of integrity.
What will BAM look like as YWAM moves forward in this area? Steve Goode, YWAM’s international director of mercy ministry, says, "We've been slow-dancing around business for a long time as a mission. I think that micro-enterprise development, and business as mission as a whole, is going to be a key mission for us for the next couple of decades. It will help us fulfill the Great Commission and the Great Commandment, and the discipling of nations. It will bring us into contact with all areas of society and cause us to have a significant impact on the poor, more than anything we've ever done. The question isn't if we get involved, but how."
YWAM's new iniative in the corporate world: Business as Mission Resource Center.
