“Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life.”
“Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.”
“Love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”
– Jesus, to His followers (MSG translation)

Obeying Christ in Our Modern Landscape

For two millennia, Jesus’ commands have remained the same. And yet, as the global church heads into the third decade of the 21st century, strong and accelerating forces have transformed the landscape of the modern mission field—and with it how we interpret and respond to these commands. Of an estimated 3.1 billion people in unreached people groups, 2.4 billion of them now live in five countries that have become more culturally and politically hostile towards the Gospel since 2000.[1] As missionaries are sent home and the risk to local believers increases with each passing year, the church is struggling to reinvent centuries-old sending models in real-time. On the charitable side, the last two decades have seen a reckoning among the secular and faithful alike around the efficacy of donated capital. At the macro level, a number of studies have shown little-to-no correlation between foreign aid and GDP growth in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.[2] At the micro-level, a proliferation of randomized control trials has shown mixed results for the impact of charitable work,[3] and decades of anecdotal evidence support that “cycles of dependency” have been all-too-easily created by the well-intentioned. The church has rightly begun to ask, “Are we helping or hurting?” Additionally, in the last half-decade, the U.S. and Western Europe—historically the primary senders of both missionaries and charitable capital—have seen rapid rises in political, social, and economic strife which has both revealed and deepened inequities in society. Social trust in most public institutions, including the government and the church, is at or near historic lows,[4] and for many Christ-followers, this has brought about deeper questions. “Do we need to focus on problems right here at home?” Or perhaps, “Am I part of the problem?”

It is a challenging time for a Christ-follower to know how to be obedient to the commands of our Master. Make disciples. Care for the least of these. Love my neighbor. Yes, but how?

Business is Good

The good news is that business is good. Increased foreign trade, the openness of markets, and growth in the number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been tied to GDP growth, job and income growth, and a reduction in the number of people in extreme poverty.[5] The church has been pressed to overcome the vestiges of the sacred/secular divide and asks, “If missionaries are being shunned and business people welcomed, how can we equip missionaries with the skills of the marketplace?” Non-profit organizations have adopted more sustainable, market-oriented approaches to poverty alleviation. This is both increasing effectiveness and allowing those they serve to escape dependency and to grow in their sense of dignity and agency. Many Christ-centered organizations have led the way, integrating the Gospel into their work. And in the U.S., public confidence in “small business” as an institution has grown to a historical high of 75%, in contrast to an aggregate 19% rating for “big business.”[6] While the latter are perceived to extract value from employees and the community, small businesses are seen to add value. It is difficult to imagine a policy issue that inspires this level of cohesion—we seem to largely agree that we need more small businesses, more jobs within small businesses, and more pathways to small business ownership. Faith-driven entrepreneurs are building on the “BAM” and “tent-maker” movements before them in figuring out how to maintain strong business performance while addressing the eternal and temporal needs that are near and dear to the heart of our Savior. It appears that small businesses have never enjoyed more favorable tailwinds to become a force for Kingdom good.

So how can we reach the world with the Gospel? How can we create sustainable Kingdom impact for the least of these? How can we serve our neighbors and community, even amidst growing division and inequity? Christ-centered small business appears to be a pretty good answer to each of these questions. Many amazing books have been written on the scriptural foundations for the integration of faith and the marketplace—for redemptive entrepreneurship.[7] We agree with them, and we accept their general conclusions. Our question is a practical one: If redemptive businesses are truly what is needed to fulfill Christ’s mission both at home and abroad, what is the main constraint to creating more of them?

One Major Constraint: Redemptive Entrepreneurs

In the U.S. and OECD countries, both the availability of capital and the “supply” of businesses becoming available to lead are at or near historic highs.[8] To frame it another way, it appears that the platforms and the fuel, while critically important, are in ready supply. We believe the main constraint is the leaders themselves. We simply need more passionate, trained, on-mission organizational leaders. We need an army of redemptive entrepreneurs to take existing businesses, run them excellently and profitably, and lead them towards sustainable Kingdom impact. So what is our starting point? Where do we find these leaders? How do we train them? We need a critical path—robust pathways of formation for the “right” kinds of leaders. If you are reading this paper, we would venture that you likely are one-such leader.

Reflect on your own journey. What was your formative path? Did you start on the missionary track and work your way to a business platform? Did you start on the business track and work your way to holistic, faith-driven impact? Did you start on the non-profit track and work your way towards income-generating marketplace solutions? Perhaps you followed a circuitous route and did all three, as we did. Perhaps you have been on the same track for your calling and career, but you have figured out how to deepen your impact with each passing year.

The Critical Path: Starting with the End in Mind

While not an exhaustive list, we feel that the profile of an effective redemptive entrepreneur should include the following:

Crystal clear on vision & mission, leading to deep, holistic impact for the long haul.
Humble but resolute, showing tempered resilience in the face of adversity and setbacks.
Willingness to take significant risks and make extreme sacrifices.
Strategically minded, but tactically and practically flexible.
Ability to effectively overcome complexity and imperfect information and move forward.
Compassionate heart of a shepherd, developing and shaping people in love.
High communication skills and EQ, working effectively with many diverse stakeholders.
Acumen to build and scale organizations effectively.

Reflect on the above list. What else would you add?

An Exercise: Choose Your Candidate

Now, imagine you had a business venture with the potential for great Kingdom impact. The idea was sound, the platform was ready, and the capital was raised. You are presented with three candidates. Your task? To choose who you feel could most effectively build, scale, and manage a profitable Christ-centered venture that delivered on multiple bottom lines of impact.

Where would you place your bet? Tough exercise, right? You likely know a Hector, John, and Camille in your life and love their passion, drive, and capacity. And of course, there is not a “right” answer to the question—any of them could lead an organization towards great Kingdom effectiveness. It has been our experience, though, that there is one pathway that is often ignored and yet builds a deep Christlike love along with a unique skill set that could be the ideal starting point for a redemptive entrepreneur—the path of Hector, the missionary.

The Case for Cross-Cultural Missions as the Ideal Training Ground for Redemptive Entrepreneurs

Given that formative discipleship experiences most often happen in church and ministry contexts, it can be easy to neglect the role that our environments play in our shaping and formation. We would posit that the following factors of the mission field environment are ideal for shaping redemptive entrepreneurs.

People-orientation: Cross-cultural missionaries are discipled towards greater commitment to people than those who are developed in a purely market-oriented environment. Finding persons of peace, forming deep relationships focused on growth, and building trust with diverse stakeholder groups are just a few skills missionaries develop. People are the goal, and missionaries must learn to work effectively with them.
Vision and impact orientation: Missionaries are trained to think of success over the long-term (think Hebrews 11) and to define success in ways that are pronounced and real yet difficult to measure—culture change, movements of God, hearts and minds transformed for Christ. This lends itself well to developing the skill set needed for casting vision and building frameworks for pursuing important non-financial outcomes.
Resilience and sacrifice: Cross-cultural missionaries have a clear calling to a place and a people, and they often face great sacrifice to see the calling fulfilled. Despite hardship, trials, or setbacks, they are trained to trust God, steel their resolve, and continue on. Cross-cultural challenges and complexities require incredible faith, as life often feels out of control. This faith establishes great resilience and flexibility, an essential leadership quality for managing through failure and onto the next iteration of strategy or tactics.
Language and EQ: Learning a foreign language is one of the best formative experiences available in developing deep communication skills—the ability to listen to the point of understanding, to understand nuance and non-verbal communication, and to have empathy for those different from oneself. Research finds real advantages in multilingual people, including improved neurological processing, higher cognitive/executive function, broader vocabularies, better conflict management, and more adaptive learning abilities.[9]
Organizationally-minded: While not a trait frequently associated with missionaries, truly effective leaders on the mission field recognize that they must build sustainable, indigenous leaders to carry the mission forward. This means learning how to train, delegate, organize, and allocate scarce resources across a growing network of churches or discipleship groups over time.

For this pathway to bear its fruit, cross-cultural missionaries must pass a threshold of time and experience in another culture and environment. They must have had sufficient time for language learning, cultural integration, and ministry successes and failures to experience this deep learning. While it may sound heretical in some circles, we believe that they must have been effective in their context for the formative benefits of the environment to truly take root. This is effectiveness not measured in “fruit” but in learning, growth, and capacity to fulfill their calling—the outcomes of which can vary widely across contexts. We’ve seen that this will most often require a minimum of 3-5 years—perhaps up to a decade—but the length of time is less important than reaching a measure of depth of experience in their context.

Building the Pathways and Ecosystem

In recent years, missions sending organizations such as IMB, Navigators, and Cru have all been developing new pathways to mobilize professionals from the marketplace to the mission field or to equip missionaries with the training necessary to establish business ventures in their posting.[10] There are much-needed efforts that must be quickly expanded and strengthened for next-generation missionaries to thrive in their contexts, not just as a “cover” for mission work but also to create redemptive enterprises that allow for deeper mission fulfillment. The skills of the marketplace are desperately needed on the mission field.

In our personal experience, what is clearer still is that not enough is being done to repatriate missionaries back from the field, other than into full-time pastoral or ministry posts. These can be a perfect option for those thus called, but we believe more can be done to expand on these limited options. What pathways should we be creating for taking skills developed on the mission field, mapping them to the marketplace, and honing them in the direction of redemptive entrepreneurship? How can we utilize these talents to make current operating businesses more effective at integrated management of a multiple bottom line? Who can create the pipeline of opportunities, prepare the resources, and mentor these leaders towards effectiveness? With thoughtful planning and intentional investment, we believe these efforts would reveal some of the most potent candidates available to build effective, missionally-integrated Kingdom enterprises. The skills of the mission field are even more desperately needed in the marketplace.

We believe that the broader need is for the development of a full ecosystem—

equipping and sending, then repatriating and transitioning—training missionaries to function effectively as redemptive entrepreneurs both on the field and upon their return home.

Final Word

While the methods and means for the Gospel to reach every corner of the globe are beyond our temporal wisdom, one thing we know for certain—the Gospel will go forth, Jesus will build His church, “and then the end will come” (Mt 24:14). From our current vantage point in world history, it appears that the opportunity for Christ-centered small businesses to advance the coming of the Kingdom is substantial, both increasing the effectiveness of current missions sending efforts and unlocking the potential of missionaries in the marketplace upon their return. The role of current faith-driven leaders in the marketplace is to boldly create these pathways for them. If we can do so, we believe we will catalyze a host of new redemptive enterprises marked by sacrificial leadership and committed to creative restoration.

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[1] http://missionaryportal.webflow.io/stats India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and China

[2] Burnside, C., and Dollar, D. (2000) “Aid, Policies and Growth.” American Economic Review 90: 847–68. and Easterly, W., and Levine R. (2001) “It’s Not Factor Accumulation: Stylized Facts and Growth Models.” World Bank Economic Review 15: 177–219.

[3] Cameron, D (2016) “The growth of impact evaluation for international development: how much have we learned?” Journal of Development Effectiveness 8:1, 1-21.

[4] https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx

[5] https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2018/04/03/stronger-open-trade-policies-enables-economic-growth-for-all and Ayyagari, Meghana, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, and Vojislav Maksimovic. “Small vs. young firms across the world: contribution to employment, job creation, and growth.” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 5631 (2011).

[6] https://www.marketingcharts.com/cross-media-and-traditional/local-and-small-biz-114681

[7] Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller, Culture Making by Andy Crouch, Praxis’ Redemptive Frame and The Call by Os Guiness are among our favorites.

[8]https://www.globest.com/2020/03/11/competition-soars-in-debt-markets-as-capital-availability-remains-at-record-highs/?slreturn=20210420101833,and https://medium.com/@nick_haschka/from-unicorns-to-main-street-why-small-business-is-the-next-big-thing-c252aa3cc99, and https://www.oecd.org/cfe/smes/ministerial/documents/2018-SME-Ministerial-Conference-Parallel-Session-2.pdf

[9] https://www.dana.org/article/the-cognitive-benefits-of-being-bilingual/

[10] https://www.imb.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Student-Roadmap-Business-Professional-2020.pdf is a good example of a resource used to prepare missionaries for overseas marketplace ministry.

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Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ. This article was from a collection of White Papers compiled for attendees of the CEF’s Global Event.

From the Mission Field to the Marketplace - Formative Pathways for Redemptive Leadership

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