Mixing Business With Mission

I have been through a number of paradigm shifts in my thinking in the past few years, particularly these past few months when I clearly heard God say to cross the Jordan and start a new season.

This particular paradigm shift started off with a conversation with a businessman who used to be a minister in a church. He said, "if a disciple is someone who loves God, loves the world they live in and loves their fellow believers; then I can't see why someone exclusively focusing upon doing church based ministry is responding in a more dedicated way than anyone else." I must admit I have been thinking that way for years, but what he said is so true.

More and more I realize that, in terms of mission (or loving the world), it is more advantageous to actually be in business than locked away in church ministry.

I have read Mike Frost & Alan Hirsch's book "The Shaping Of Things To Come" a few times. They claim that the basic mission principle is that if you want to be effective as a missionary you have to have proximity with those you are reaching out to.

I think businesses are places where Christians need to be in, not just to put food on the table and to help fund real ministry, but as a primary place of ministry/mission/faith itself. I also think that business, commerce and enterprise is perhaps the most powerful influences on our society in the west. The church used to play a major role in society, but now it has become the fringe of the society.

Businesses are now taking on the role of providing avenues for social concern and welfare, sometimes more so than the church and the government. I believe this will continue to happen in the future. Some business people do want to make a difference. They often just need to be encouraged to do so and see ways of ethical, life giving business to be modeled for them.

Mission and business are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They can be mixed together. Recently I actually did something that I thought I'd never do (since I quit my marketing executive job at Optus years ago to study at Bible College): I started a business!

When I start to be involved in the business, I'm beginning to see that rather than these being temptations or distractions from a life with God - they are actually quite often God at work within and around me. Now I see myself as a part time tent-maker business person or (in mission term) a bi-vocational missionary.