Saturday, November 14, 2009

Earning Commissions on the 'Great Commission'

[http://www.goglobalatsnu.blogspot.com]

"Earning Commissions on the 'Great Commission'" is an article in Friday's (11/13/09) Wall Street Journal that gives an interesting take on missionary-entrepreneurs. As the article describes them, this breed of missionary is not the same as an entrepreneurial missionary. An entrepreneurial missionary is one who takes an entrepreneurial approach or who applies entrepreneurial skills to evangelism and church planting. My observation from research, study and 20+ years of overseas and domestic mission work is that almost ever successful evangelist or church planter takes an entrepreneurial approach to what he or she does. [A little bit of digression at this point: When I was on the mission field in Latin America, I found that the Master of Business Administration work I did before going to the field was as helpful, perhaps even more helpful, as the Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry work I had done. On the other hand, in teaching the occasional business course as I do now, I find that my experience in overseas church planting is about as helpful as anything I studied in my M.B.A. program. Fields of study and practical experience often intersect in surprising ways.]

According to the WSJ article, missionary-entrepreneurs are individuals who use their business expertise to start for-profit businesses in other countries. They differ from the countless missionaries who have started non-profit health and welfare oriented organizations overseas in that the businesses the "business-planters" start are genuine, for-profit enterprises with one of their goals being that of turning a profit. On the other hand, while this "Business as Mission" movement stems from the ever increasing globalization of markets and opportunities in international business, those who start businesses under this new paradigm are as interested in impacting peoples' lives for good as they are in making money. Another contrast with a well-known model is that these mission-minded business people are not tentmakers in the mode of the apostle Paul who gives us the model for bi-vocational ministry (supporting yourself with a "secular" job while you pursue "ministry" in a traditional setting). For missionary-entrepreneurs, their business is their ministry and it opens up to them new ways of being missional.

I first came across the missionary-entrepreneur concept while I was a missionary in Guatemala. A fellow-missionary loaned me a tape (back in the days before CD's and MP3's) of lectures given by Tony Campolo in which he described his vision of newly-minted graduates of bachelor's and master's level business programs taking their skills overseas to start businesses that would have a mission impact. I remember well how I was so moved by one of the tapes that I was listening to as I drove that I had to pull the car over to the side of the road because I couldn't pay attention to my driving and continue listening to the tape.

Campolo's challenge to students went something along the line of instead of going to work for a big, international corporation that really doesn't need your talent, consider going to work someplace that desperately needs the business smarts you can offer. That is the kind of challenge I hope our students at Southern Nazarene University hear from our International Studies Program (ISP) and from SNU's Morningstar Institute. As one of the directors of the ISP, I know that too often I'm so immersed in the details of making sure students are fulfilling course requirements, preparing for their required overseas semester and scheduling the classes they need that I neglect to challenge them directly to consider using their interests in international work and the skills they are developing at SNU in ways that are creative, authentic and clearly missional.

Southern Nazarene University's International Studies Program is a fantastic way for Christian students to prepare to do what Tony Campolo challenged his students to do or to establish the kind of business that Dwight Martin, founder of Thailand-based data processor Pac Tec Asia Co. Ltd. has. Martin "employs Buddhists and Christians in his seven-person company," which converts paper documents into digital ones for Western companies. He then uses his profits “to build digital libraries…for pastors and teachers in Thailand.”